Rating: PG/PG-13

Disclaimer: I do, nor will I ever, own these wonderful characters and I am not making a dime from them. I only use them for my obsessive purposes.







Calm before the Storm

He had no one to talk to and nowhere to go.

Strangely enough the rain wasn't beating down on the pavement and lightning was not flashing in the sky. It was just.grey. Remus could find no other words to explain it, it just lacked any emotion whatsoever, the air was still, the sky was a dull uniform light grey and the light form the sun was even and bland. It was the exact opposite to how he felt. He wanted thunder and lightning because then maybe he would have seen a sign that the universe had a reason for what it had done to him, or that it was angry at what happened but instead all he got was stillness, dullness and greyness. Nothing.

It was the day after the funeral and the Ministry had unceremoniously tossed him out of the house he had inhabited for the last two years saying that it had to be, what were their words? Ah yes, 'investigated for things of any possible significance to the case' meaning they were going to take the whole house apart, effectively his lover's life apart seeking things which they could claim linked him to his Dark Master. So here he was homeless and utterly alone. Three days ago he had three best friends and a person who he loved like no other, and now? Nothing. It was like there was a gaping hole in his consciousness, like there was something fundamentally missing, which of course there was. How could you replace that? Something that had meant everything to him, something that had been taken away so quickly? It just left a hole, an unimaginable hole.

However the more he thought about it as he walked, walked aimlessly with no destination, the more he thought about whether he had really had all that. At one point he had, he could remember that time but three days ago he didn't have that. He had two friends who were constantly hiding because their lives depended on it, another friend who he hardly saw any more and a lover who had seemed to have lost all that it was about him that in Remus's eyes made him, well, him. The light that he used to see behind those pale blue eyes he had seen in glimpses but never for more than a second, and then it would disappear behind a mask that showed one emotion that Remus has never expected to see on his face, fear.

That face has made him see that while they had all have pretended that everything had been okay, that it really hadn't been and that there had been a darker layer present. A layer of something they had only ever seen glimpses of before, a shadow on the edge of their vision, but now something that was very much more tangible, more real. Call it distrust, call it fear, call in anger, it had been there and maybe it was the sight of this shadow on the fields of there once seemingly idyllic and perfect existence that had made them all wary, made those last few months different from those that had come before.

The eventual bitterness had not yet arrived; he still hadn't recovered from the shock. He knew he would be angry and he knew he would replay the last couple of years in his head wondering in the back of his mind whether there was anything that should have clued him in, made him realise that the man he loved was really selling his soul for power, but now there was none of that, there was just emptiness. Maybe the greyness of the day suited him after all, the calm before the storm so to speak. But instead of one of thunder and lightning it would be one of emotions and pain.

He kept walking, stoically putting one foot in front of another, he had no destination, but everything to flee from, pity the thing he wanted to flee form most was in his head.