Thanks to you folks who reviewed - I assure you that I will complete this
fic, unless I get run over by a bus.
The story so far: An exhausted Sirius arrived to "lie low at Lupin's." The initial reunion between the two men was emotionally bumpy. Remus couldn't anticipate or understand Sirius' emotions. And Sirius could not or would not articulate them. Later the same evening:
II. Triwizard Trauma
Remus' misgivings subsided somewhat over dinner. By an unspoken, but natural agreement, the two men talked only about light and inconsequential things. Remus' garden, the lack of rain, the increased number of houses in the towns south of Hogsmeade. Sirius appeared more at ease than any time since his arrival. His face showed more animation, his eyes seemed livelier and some of the crushing exhaustion had lifted off his shoulders. Remus started clearing the table and realized that, in addition to holding up his end of the conversation, Sirius had also been unobtrusively ravenous. Without seeming to, he had consumed the major portion of dinner.
"Clean up will be easy tonight, since it seems I don't have to worry about storing any left-overs. You were hungry." Remus grinned over his shoulder at his guest.
Sirius' posture stiffened perceptibly. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I ate more than my share."
"No, no, it's okay. I'm not taking you to task. I'm happy you liked my cooking." He sat back down. "And I appreciate sharing a meal with someone. It's been a while."
Sirius' gaze was lowered to where his hands rested in his lap, cloaked once more in an unnatural stillness. With an obvious effort he looked at Remus. In a barely audible whisper he replied, "Yes, it has."
Remus forced himself to sit still, although he ached to caress the whippet- thin form across the table. His fingers wanted to scale the unaccustomed scallops of ribs exposed by the erosion of flesh, new territory on a body whose geography he had once known as well as his own. He'd be content to simply hold Sirius close, but feared that his friend would find that gesture intrusive.
Frowning suddenly, Sirius pushed back from the table. "I should tell you about what happened to Harry at the Triwizard Tournament, and the aftermath."
They went into the comfortable living room. Remus curled into his favorite chair while Sirius arranged himself on the sofa, stretching his injured leg along the cushions. He sat silently, gathering his thoughts. His expression darkened, hardened, making him look like the criminal the whole world thought him to be. Like a deadly fever, a palpable sense of anger and pain radiated from him, filling Remus with deep unease.
"The Cup was a portkey," Sirius began. He described the events in the graveyard as Harry had related them in Dumbledore's office, starting with Cedric Diggory's death.
Remus had read about it in the Daily Prophet, but didn't know the details. He had barely gotten to the point where he could accept that the handsome, bright student he remembered was dead. With growing horror, he now heard how Harry's gesture of sportsmanship had taken both boys to the graveyard, and within minutes, Cedric had been casually murdered, with no more thought than one would give to squashing a bug. A young man full of promise, tossed aside like garbage. The echoes of the past sent a chill down his spine.
Then Sirius moved on to tell of Harry's experiences with Wormtail and Voldemort. As he spoke, the emotional cocoon in which he had hidden himself burned away with his rising anger. Sirius soon sprang to his feet, his sprained ankle ignored. He paced the room in barely controlled wrath, eyes darting back and forth as if he sought to find Wormtail hiding in a corner.
"Wormtail tied him to a tombstone. Tied him up and gagged him like some sort of human sacrifice waiting to be slaughtered. Then he pulled a knife and sliced Harry open -"
"What!?!" Remus cried, leaping out of his chair.
"Pettigrew," Sirius snarled. "Pettigrew, who doesn't have the guts of a sheep! But, he's courageous enough when his opponent is bound hand and foot! Pettigrew cut Harry's arm to get his blood. The blood that Voldemort needed to regain a physical form. Yes, Peter," Sirius spat the name out, careening back and forth across the room, limping stiffly, sweeping his hands through his hair. "Little Peter willingly cut open the son of a man who had been his friend, to help bring that abomination back into this world!"
Remus was too stunned to do more than stare with horrified attention.
Sirius suddenly stopped, his expression one of sickened disbelief. "No, I'm selling Peter short. He *is* brave. He's brave enough to mutilate himself in order to please his master and save his own wretched skin."
His over-bright eyes impaled Remus. "He took blood from Harry and bone from Tom Riddle's father to add to the noxious potion needed to return Voldemort to his human form. And the other ingredient that was needed was his own hand. He chopped off his own hand."
Sirius suddenly erupted with a higher level of ferocity. His voice rising in disbelief, the dark wizard ricocheted around the room, gripped by a terrible fury. "How could he do these things!? How could he hurt Harry?! How? Why? Why did he turn on all of us?!"
Remus needed Sirius to slow down. He needed time to assimilate the horror. He interrupted. "Sirius, wait a-"
But, there was no stopping the human volcano storming around the room. "And then, it was time for some fun! Once Voldemort had regained his inhuman form, he needed to celebrate. He summoned his faithful minions, his carrion cloud of merry Death Eaters! They stood there and laughed while Voldemort used the Cruciatus Curse on Harry. What a funny joke this was to them! What sport! To watch their master torture a fourteen year old kid!"
"Voldemort made Harry bow to him, to humiliate him in front of all those hooded monsters. How very brave they were, cloaked in anonymity, taunting a boy! That fiend mocked him! Voldemort wanted to toy with him, play with him like a cat with a mouse, before killing him!"
Sirius trembled with emotion, his face bloodless as the image of Harry's weary body slumped in a chair in Dumbledore's office played across his mind. He hadn't protected his godson. Once again, he had failed, had broken his promise to James and Lily. He hadn't prevented this.this rape.
"They used him...violated him."
Remus grabbed Sirius' arms, forcing him to stand still. "No, Sirius! No! You can't mean that Harry was-" Sirius threw back his head and laughed a bitter, howling laugh. The sound made Remus' skin crawl. Gray eyes glinting with more than a touch of madness in them, Sirius' voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, "Oh, yes, Remus. He was raped. Not bodily, but raped just the same."
Sirius paused, the sound of his ragged breathing filling the room. Remus gripped the bony shoulders with bruising fingers, his eyes desperately searching Sirius' face. This story must have sprung from a diseased mind. Sirius must have imagined it. This couldn't have happened to Harry.
The heated quicksilver stared back, and Sirius' features slowly settled into a mask of raw hatred. "We should have killed him!" He shouted, his raised hands clenched into fists. "We should have killed him when we had the chance!" With a thunderous crash, a wood shelf on the far side of the room disintegrated into splinters, its row of books plummeting to the floor.
Remus jumped, shaken by the sound and by Sirius' maniacal fury. If Peter walked through the door at that moment, Remus had no doubt that Sirius would rip him to pieces with his bare hands. Remus relaxed his grip, his touch now seeking to calm the magical rage boiling out of Sirius before he did any more damage to the house or himself. "Sirius, stop! We can't dwell on that. Harry had the right to make the decision to spare Wormtail. He was right to think James wouldn't have wanted us to be murderers."
"James." Sirius moaned. "James.and Lily." His anger abruptly extinguished, Sirius pulled away from Remus, shoulders sagging, but not before Remus saw sharp pain etched like acid across his face. Haltingly, Sirius barely made his way back to the couch before his legs gave out from under him. Remus started to go to him, concerned by this sudden weakness, but stopped short at Sirius' next words.
"Harry saw them. James and Lily. Harry saw them."
"How? What do you mean?"
Sirius told him about the Reverse Spell effect and how the shadows of his parents aided in Harry's escape. With his helpless rage gone, Sirius' voice became weak and hesitant, as words began to desert him again. "They were shades.not real.His only memories of them.ghosts." The dark head drooped forward, face hidden behind a curtain of black hair. "They should be with Harry.Alive.Oh, God, I'm so sorry."
The break in Sirius' voice echoed the sudden crack in Remus' heart. He hurried towards the couch to gather his lover in his arms but was brought up short, hit by rasping words as forceful as gunshots. "Don't. Touch. Me."
"Sirius." Remus pleaded.
"Don't!"
Remus' anxious arms remained poised in mid-air, and then dropped uselessly to his sides. He came no closer. Sirius sat with his hands pressed to his face, the pale fingers stark against the midnight hair. The gentle sounds of a summer evening played in the background, mocking their torment.
Finally, with a shuddering sigh, Sirius sat back against the cushions. His eyes were dry, but bruised with a deep agony that even his exhaustion could not dull. Remus couldn't remember ever seeing Sirius hurt this much. A surge of hatred swept through him. He hated this. Hated Peter. Hated Voldemort. Hated everything in existence that caused such anguish. But, his gentle voice hid his feelings. "Sirius, *you* didn't kill them. It's not your fault."
Eyes downcast, the black head shook slowly back and forth in stubborn refusal. As Remus opened his mouth to say more, Sirius suddenly raised his head, piercing Remus with an icy glare. "I don't matter. Harry's the one who needs help. Let me finish."
Remus nodded, defeated again by the mercurial mood changes. Speaking with renewed determination, Sirius summarized the part played by Barty Crouch, Jr., the scene in the Hospital in which Dumbledore and Fudge drew their respective lines in the sand, and Dumbledore's instructions to Sirius about the "old crowd." At the end, Remus vainly tried to wrap his brain around this information and ignore the sickened feeling roiling his stomach. An involuntary shiver rippled across his body. It was all too much.
Now that his narrative was complete, Sirius collapsed in on himself, huddled at one end of the couch. Remus felt overwhelmed with the story of Harry's torture juxtaposed against the suffering that was all too evident in Sirius. Harry was physically beyond his aid right now. Sirius was three feet away, the door to his heart barred against the invasion of comfort.
Remus stood and slowly walked towards the kitchen. "I'm going to make some tea before I write a note to Dumbledore. We could both use a cup."
No response.
He returned a few minutes later with two steaming mugs of chamomile tea. He had taken the liberty of adding a few drops of tincture of valerian to Sirius' mug, hoping that it would help him sleep. Sirius was reclining against the arm of the couch, long legs stretched out on the seat cushions, staring unseeingly towards the windows. "Thank you," he muttered as Remus handed him his mug.
Pulling out a clean piece of parchment, Remus began his note to Dumbledore, his neat, even script flowing across the page.
'Dear Albus,
Your dog has arrived. He is indeed extremely tired, and in pain, both in body and in spirit. I've cleaned him up a bit and fed him a good meal, but I fear it will take some time before he regains his past strength and enthusiasm. His emotional attitude reflects the hurt and angry mood of your messenger.
I have been given all of the truly horrible details surrounding the end of the Tournament. I hope and pray Harry is recovering from this. If there is anything that can be done from this end, in addition to writing to him, please let me know.
I await your instructions. In the meantime, I will devote myself to giving the dog as much tender care as I can, although he is currently somewhat unwilling to accept it.
Sincerely,
Remus'
He carefully rolled and sealed the parchment, glancing cautiously at Sirius. Whether it was the tea, the tiring journey, emotional exhaustion or some combination of the three, Sirius now lay flat on the couch, eyes shut. Remus watched him closely, noticing the deep, regular pattern of his breathing. He was asleep. Good. Remus considered using a mobilicorpus charm to move Sirius upstairs to the bed, but decided not to risk disturbing him.
He sent his owl off to Hogwarts and headed towards his bedroom. Halfway up the stairs he stopped, considering. Then, he turned and tiptoed back into the living room. He settled himself comfortably in his chair and thought about his guest.
Guest. The mere word indicated there was a problem. Neither of them should consider Sirius a guest, with the obvious implication that his stay was temporary, that he had no claim to Remus or the house or anything in it. As far as Remus was concerned, Sirius was finally where he belonged. Home. But, he wasn't at all certain that Sirius agreed with him. All he knew for sure was that Sirius hurt with wounds that bled from his soul.
One little, disquieting sentence popped into his mind. One small thing Sirius had said, that Remus had overlooked in the brutal tale of Harry's ordeal. "I don't matter." Remus watched the soft candlelight play across the drawn features. He looked so vulnerable. "I don't matter." What had Azkaban done to him, that he believed himself inconsequential, or somehow unworthy of help or comfort?
'If he'd only talk to me, tell me what happened to him, I know I could help him,' Remus sighed. He suddenly realized that the articulate man he had lived with so many years ago, the man who loved words, who played with them and juggled them, who strung them together like precious jewels, now used that gift to compose elegies of torture. He spoke fluently of other's nightmares, but seemed mute to express his own.
An epiphany stuck Remus. James and Lily had been dead for a long time. He missed them, but his grief had receded. However, Sirius' sorrow was still sharp. The constant exposure to the Dementors had imprisoned him in a jail far worse than the cold stone of Azkaban. He had been trapped for years in an emotional quagmire of pain and loss and self-recrimination. Remus had received at least some support from others in the dark days of 1980 and after. Sirius had had no one. He had been solitary, with only monsters and madmen for company. There had been no one with whom to grieve. No one to offer him forgiveness. Small wonder that he seemed so damaged.
Drawing an odd comfort from the thought that he had successfully identified the problem, Remus felt the tension drain from his body. He'd figure out a way to help Sirius heal. Feeling his eyes beginning to droop, Remus shifted in his chair so that he was looking directly at Sirius' face. It would be the last thing he saw before he slid into sleep. 'You *do* matter, love.'
TBC
The story so far: An exhausted Sirius arrived to "lie low at Lupin's." The initial reunion between the two men was emotionally bumpy. Remus couldn't anticipate or understand Sirius' emotions. And Sirius could not or would not articulate them. Later the same evening:
II. Triwizard Trauma
Remus' misgivings subsided somewhat over dinner. By an unspoken, but natural agreement, the two men talked only about light and inconsequential things. Remus' garden, the lack of rain, the increased number of houses in the towns south of Hogsmeade. Sirius appeared more at ease than any time since his arrival. His face showed more animation, his eyes seemed livelier and some of the crushing exhaustion had lifted off his shoulders. Remus started clearing the table and realized that, in addition to holding up his end of the conversation, Sirius had also been unobtrusively ravenous. Without seeming to, he had consumed the major portion of dinner.
"Clean up will be easy tonight, since it seems I don't have to worry about storing any left-overs. You were hungry." Remus grinned over his shoulder at his guest.
Sirius' posture stiffened perceptibly. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I ate more than my share."
"No, no, it's okay. I'm not taking you to task. I'm happy you liked my cooking." He sat back down. "And I appreciate sharing a meal with someone. It's been a while."
Sirius' gaze was lowered to where his hands rested in his lap, cloaked once more in an unnatural stillness. With an obvious effort he looked at Remus. In a barely audible whisper he replied, "Yes, it has."
Remus forced himself to sit still, although he ached to caress the whippet- thin form across the table. His fingers wanted to scale the unaccustomed scallops of ribs exposed by the erosion of flesh, new territory on a body whose geography he had once known as well as his own. He'd be content to simply hold Sirius close, but feared that his friend would find that gesture intrusive.
Frowning suddenly, Sirius pushed back from the table. "I should tell you about what happened to Harry at the Triwizard Tournament, and the aftermath."
They went into the comfortable living room. Remus curled into his favorite chair while Sirius arranged himself on the sofa, stretching his injured leg along the cushions. He sat silently, gathering his thoughts. His expression darkened, hardened, making him look like the criminal the whole world thought him to be. Like a deadly fever, a palpable sense of anger and pain radiated from him, filling Remus with deep unease.
"The Cup was a portkey," Sirius began. He described the events in the graveyard as Harry had related them in Dumbledore's office, starting with Cedric Diggory's death.
Remus had read about it in the Daily Prophet, but didn't know the details. He had barely gotten to the point where he could accept that the handsome, bright student he remembered was dead. With growing horror, he now heard how Harry's gesture of sportsmanship had taken both boys to the graveyard, and within minutes, Cedric had been casually murdered, with no more thought than one would give to squashing a bug. A young man full of promise, tossed aside like garbage. The echoes of the past sent a chill down his spine.
Then Sirius moved on to tell of Harry's experiences with Wormtail and Voldemort. As he spoke, the emotional cocoon in which he had hidden himself burned away with his rising anger. Sirius soon sprang to his feet, his sprained ankle ignored. He paced the room in barely controlled wrath, eyes darting back and forth as if he sought to find Wormtail hiding in a corner.
"Wormtail tied him to a tombstone. Tied him up and gagged him like some sort of human sacrifice waiting to be slaughtered. Then he pulled a knife and sliced Harry open -"
"What!?!" Remus cried, leaping out of his chair.
"Pettigrew," Sirius snarled. "Pettigrew, who doesn't have the guts of a sheep! But, he's courageous enough when his opponent is bound hand and foot! Pettigrew cut Harry's arm to get his blood. The blood that Voldemort needed to regain a physical form. Yes, Peter," Sirius spat the name out, careening back and forth across the room, limping stiffly, sweeping his hands through his hair. "Little Peter willingly cut open the son of a man who had been his friend, to help bring that abomination back into this world!"
Remus was too stunned to do more than stare with horrified attention.
Sirius suddenly stopped, his expression one of sickened disbelief. "No, I'm selling Peter short. He *is* brave. He's brave enough to mutilate himself in order to please his master and save his own wretched skin."
His over-bright eyes impaled Remus. "He took blood from Harry and bone from Tom Riddle's father to add to the noxious potion needed to return Voldemort to his human form. And the other ingredient that was needed was his own hand. He chopped off his own hand."
Sirius suddenly erupted with a higher level of ferocity. His voice rising in disbelief, the dark wizard ricocheted around the room, gripped by a terrible fury. "How could he do these things!? How could he hurt Harry?! How? Why? Why did he turn on all of us?!"
Remus needed Sirius to slow down. He needed time to assimilate the horror. He interrupted. "Sirius, wait a-"
But, there was no stopping the human volcano storming around the room. "And then, it was time for some fun! Once Voldemort had regained his inhuman form, he needed to celebrate. He summoned his faithful minions, his carrion cloud of merry Death Eaters! They stood there and laughed while Voldemort used the Cruciatus Curse on Harry. What a funny joke this was to them! What sport! To watch their master torture a fourteen year old kid!"
"Voldemort made Harry bow to him, to humiliate him in front of all those hooded monsters. How very brave they were, cloaked in anonymity, taunting a boy! That fiend mocked him! Voldemort wanted to toy with him, play with him like a cat with a mouse, before killing him!"
Sirius trembled with emotion, his face bloodless as the image of Harry's weary body slumped in a chair in Dumbledore's office played across his mind. He hadn't protected his godson. Once again, he had failed, had broken his promise to James and Lily. He hadn't prevented this.this rape.
"They used him...violated him."
Remus grabbed Sirius' arms, forcing him to stand still. "No, Sirius! No! You can't mean that Harry was-" Sirius threw back his head and laughed a bitter, howling laugh. The sound made Remus' skin crawl. Gray eyes glinting with more than a touch of madness in them, Sirius' voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, "Oh, yes, Remus. He was raped. Not bodily, but raped just the same."
Sirius paused, the sound of his ragged breathing filling the room. Remus gripped the bony shoulders with bruising fingers, his eyes desperately searching Sirius' face. This story must have sprung from a diseased mind. Sirius must have imagined it. This couldn't have happened to Harry.
The heated quicksilver stared back, and Sirius' features slowly settled into a mask of raw hatred. "We should have killed him!" He shouted, his raised hands clenched into fists. "We should have killed him when we had the chance!" With a thunderous crash, a wood shelf on the far side of the room disintegrated into splinters, its row of books plummeting to the floor.
Remus jumped, shaken by the sound and by Sirius' maniacal fury. If Peter walked through the door at that moment, Remus had no doubt that Sirius would rip him to pieces with his bare hands. Remus relaxed his grip, his touch now seeking to calm the magical rage boiling out of Sirius before he did any more damage to the house or himself. "Sirius, stop! We can't dwell on that. Harry had the right to make the decision to spare Wormtail. He was right to think James wouldn't have wanted us to be murderers."
"James." Sirius moaned. "James.and Lily." His anger abruptly extinguished, Sirius pulled away from Remus, shoulders sagging, but not before Remus saw sharp pain etched like acid across his face. Haltingly, Sirius barely made his way back to the couch before his legs gave out from under him. Remus started to go to him, concerned by this sudden weakness, but stopped short at Sirius' next words.
"Harry saw them. James and Lily. Harry saw them."
"How? What do you mean?"
Sirius told him about the Reverse Spell effect and how the shadows of his parents aided in Harry's escape. With his helpless rage gone, Sirius' voice became weak and hesitant, as words began to desert him again. "They were shades.not real.His only memories of them.ghosts." The dark head drooped forward, face hidden behind a curtain of black hair. "They should be with Harry.Alive.Oh, God, I'm so sorry."
The break in Sirius' voice echoed the sudden crack in Remus' heart. He hurried towards the couch to gather his lover in his arms but was brought up short, hit by rasping words as forceful as gunshots. "Don't. Touch. Me."
"Sirius." Remus pleaded.
"Don't!"
Remus' anxious arms remained poised in mid-air, and then dropped uselessly to his sides. He came no closer. Sirius sat with his hands pressed to his face, the pale fingers stark against the midnight hair. The gentle sounds of a summer evening played in the background, mocking their torment.
Finally, with a shuddering sigh, Sirius sat back against the cushions. His eyes were dry, but bruised with a deep agony that even his exhaustion could not dull. Remus couldn't remember ever seeing Sirius hurt this much. A surge of hatred swept through him. He hated this. Hated Peter. Hated Voldemort. Hated everything in existence that caused such anguish. But, his gentle voice hid his feelings. "Sirius, *you* didn't kill them. It's not your fault."
Eyes downcast, the black head shook slowly back and forth in stubborn refusal. As Remus opened his mouth to say more, Sirius suddenly raised his head, piercing Remus with an icy glare. "I don't matter. Harry's the one who needs help. Let me finish."
Remus nodded, defeated again by the mercurial mood changes. Speaking with renewed determination, Sirius summarized the part played by Barty Crouch, Jr., the scene in the Hospital in which Dumbledore and Fudge drew their respective lines in the sand, and Dumbledore's instructions to Sirius about the "old crowd." At the end, Remus vainly tried to wrap his brain around this information and ignore the sickened feeling roiling his stomach. An involuntary shiver rippled across his body. It was all too much.
Now that his narrative was complete, Sirius collapsed in on himself, huddled at one end of the couch. Remus felt overwhelmed with the story of Harry's torture juxtaposed against the suffering that was all too evident in Sirius. Harry was physically beyond his aid right now. Sirius was three feet away, the door to his heart barred against the invasion of comfort.
Remus stood and slowly walked towards the kitchen. "I'm going to make some tea before I write a note to Dumbledore. We could both use a cup."
No response.
He returned a few minutes later with two steaming mugs of chamomile tea. He had taken the liberty of adding a few drops of tincture of valerian to Sirius' mug, hoping that it would help him sleep. Sirius was reclining against the arm of the couch, long legs stretched out on the seat cushions, staring unseeingly towards the windows. "Thank you," he muttered as Remus handed him his mug.
Pulling out a clean piece of parchment, Remus began his note to Dumbledore, his neat, even script flowing across the page.
'Dear Albus,
Your dog has arrived. He is indeed extremely tired, and in pain, both in body and in spirit. I've cleaned him up a bit and fed him a good meal, but I fear it will take some time before he regains his past strength and enthusiasm. His emotional attitude reflects the hurt and angry mood of your messenger.
I have been given all of the truly horrible details surrounding the end of the Tournament. I hope and pray Harry is recovering from this. If there is anything that can be done from this end, in addition to writing to him, please let me know.
I await your instructions. In the meantime, I will devote myself to giving the dog as much tender care as I can, although he is currently somewhat unwilling to accept it.
Sincerely,
Remus'
He carefully rolled and sealed the parchment, glancing cautiously at Sirius. Whether it was the tea, the tiring journey, emotional exhaustion or some combination of the three, Sirius now lay flat on the couch, eyes shut. Remus watched him closely, noticing the deep, regular pattern of his breathing. He was asleep. Good. Remus considered using a mobilicorpus charm to move Sirius upstairs to the bed, but decided not to risk disturbing him.
He sent his owl off to Hogwarts and headed towards his bedroom. Halfway up the stairs he stopped, considering. Then, he turned and tiptoed back into the living room. He settled himself comfortably in his chair and thought about his guest.
Guest. The mere word indicated there was a problem. Neither of them should consider Sirius a guest, with the obvious implication that his stay was temporary, that he had no claim to Remus or the house or anything in it. As far as Remus was concerned, Sirius was finally where he belonged. Home. But, he wasn't at all certain that Sirius agreed with him. All he knew for sure was that Sirius hurt with wounds that bled from his soul.
One little, disquieting sentence popped into his mind. One small thing Sirius had said, that Remus had overlooked in the brutal tale of Harry's ordeal. "I don't matter." Remus watched the soft candlelight play across the drawn features. He looked so vulnerable. "I don't matter." What had Azkaban done to him, that he believed himself inconsequential, or somehow unworthy of help or comfort?
'If he'd only talk to me, tell me what happened to him, I know I could help him,' Remus sighed. He suddenly realized that the articulate man he had lived with so many years ago, the man who loved words, who played with them and juggled them, who strung them together like precious jewels, now used that gift to compose elegies of torture. He spoke fluently of other's nightmares, but seemed mute to express his own.
An epiphany stuck Remus. James and Lily had been dead for a long time. He missed them, but his grief had receded. However, Sirius' sorrow was still sharp. The constant exposure to the Dementors had imprisoned him in a jail far worse than the cold stone of Azkaban. He had been trapped for years in an emotional quagmire of pain and loss and self-recrimination. Remus had received at least some support from others in the dark days of 1980 and after. Sirius had had no one. He had been solitary, with only monsters and madmen for company. There had been no one with whom to grieve. No one to offer him forgiveness. Small wonder that he seemed so damaged.
Drawing an odd comfort from the thought that he had successfully identified the problem, Remus felt the tension drain from his body. He'd figure out a way to help Sirius heal. Feeling his eyes beginning to droop, Remus shifted in his chair so that he was looking directly at Sirius' face. It would be the last thing he saw before he slid into sleep. 'You *do* matter, love.'
TBC