Moonlit Horizons

Chapter 42, and EPILOGUE, THE END

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got a bit sidetracked with the real world, sorry L ! song of the update: Finch – (I cant remember the title, but its track 10, it might be called Untitled actually)  This is the end of Moonlit Horizons, it's a bit abrupt, but its been running for too long and I haven't got anything left to say about it anymore.

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"There's a certain slant of light, on winter afternoons, it falls heavy through the trees and lies softly on the dunes." Sirius mumbled to himself as he watched the evening sun set crimson over the tops of the forbidden forest trees. "Poetry, Remus, do you like it?"

Remus looked up at Sirius from across the room, "Very poetic, Emily Dickinson?"

"Might be, think I changed it a bit through remembering it wrong."  Sirius shrugged, "Darkness like midnight never sobbed from my woods, it was all of a hush like the trees knew it should."

"Isabella Eastham" Remus answered.  "In reply to another poet writing about sobbing woods."

"Do you ever get anything wrong?" Sirius rolled his eyes, for perhaps the first time since IT had happened.  Nobody referred to her name, and the whole incident was therefore euphemised as "it."

 "Fold the corners, just for tonight?" Remus sighed.  "Try and do something productive."

"Oh very well.  If it will stop your miserable face taking an even more downward turn." Sirius grumbled, Remus thought the entire remark was very hypocritical but wasn't about to tell Sirius that.

"Hogsmeade?"

"Oh no." Sirius shook his head emphatically. 

"Harry might want to see you?"

Sirius looked up at this, "Yeah.  Harry…" he brightened up for the first time in a long time.  "I never wanted it to hurt more than it should.  You know what it feels like, being alone."

Remus nodded, there was no need for a reply.

~*~

Half an hour later, looking through the arched window into the grounds Remus could vaguely see Sirius and Harry walking by the edge of the lake, both downcast, both black haired heads bobbing as they walked, a replica of another moment in time.  Sirius and James.  Sirius had run away from home, his mother issuing an ultimatum worth less than the ground Sirius stood on.  James had taken the initiative to help his best friend through all of the mess and had even turned up at the Black's residence to pick up what was left of Sirius' things that his mother hadn't disposed of the day before. 

Clouds swept past on the horizon and grew darker and heavier as they approached the castle, a storm was brewing again, Remus considered that it was probably going to snow.  A white blanked to cleanse the ground of what it had seen.

"You look lost."

Remus turned to see Anna holding two mugs of steaming hot pumpkin juice.  He took the mug offered to him and smiled weakly "We have lost, haven't we.  Really?"

Anna shrugged, "If we have lost, then at least we did our best in acting against it."

"Have we done our best?"

"I like to think so."  Anna nodded, "And death is never easy to cope with," she gestured towards Sirius "He'll be alright after time has passed, he'll be back."

"I hope so."

"I haven't known him as long as any of you, but I have learnt something, he bounces back.  He survives where other people fall, and Sirius Black will be back."

Remus smiled gratefully, knowing what she said was true.  "A bit of faith restoration?"

"A bit."

Remus chuckled, kissing Anna gently on her cold nose.  "I have a job to do."

"Then do it."

Remus watched as, just as he had predicted, snow began to fall softly to the ground, coating everything with a temporary reminder that all that ever glittered in Remus' life was temporary and washed away as fast as it had arrived, but some things would and could never change.

EPILOGUE, some years later:

"I refuse!" Sirius shook his head, "I am NOT forty-four! It makes me sound old.  I'm not old! No party with banners telling the whole world that I'm old."

"Okay," Hermione shrugged, taking her wand out of her pocket. "Happy birthday Sirius, well done for getting to forty-faux." The banner changed as she waved her wand and Hermione beamed as Harry and Ron fell about laughing.

"Forty-faux?" A smooth voice in the corner that could belong to no-one else remarked dryly.

"Does HE have to be here?" Sirius looked close to breaking point.  "Yes." He turned to Severus Snape "I'm forty-faux."

"Juvenility has not escaped you in your old age, I see."

"I'm not OLD" Sirius whined, "Why does everybody have to remind me?"  He stomped off into the kitchen where Anna was watching the pudding bowl mix itself under the watchful eye of Mrs. Weasley.  "Madame Lupin, where is my partner in crime?" he asked Anna loudly, to block out the laughter from the main hall.

"Outside."

Sirius winked at Anna and waltzed himself out the door into the back garden, where there was no sign of Remus at all, but a gawky teenage boy sitting on the wooden bench where the previous night Sirius had tried his charms on the young barmaid of the neighbouring village pub, and failed miserably. 

"Yo, Beefcake Junior." Sirius found it difficult to admit to everybody else, but he hadn't really got anything against the Snape kid.  Okay, so his father was nothing short of a bastard but the young version had some significantly better qualities, and he also had a bet going with him about the outcome of the European Quidditch League which had just hit the fifty galleon mark.

Pytheus didn't look up. "happy birthday Black."

"What's up?"

Pytheus shrugged. "Nothing."

Sirius rolled his eyes, "Liar."

"You don't want to know."

"That's possibly true, but like I would ever pass up the chance for some juicy gossip." Sirius gave him a nudge "Do I know her?"

Pytheus raised a Snape-esque eyebrow "What makes you think it's anything to do with a girl?"

"Fair enough."  It was Sirius' turn to shrug. "If you want to … you know… say anything, I'm around."  He turned and neatly sidestepped Snape Senior, who was coming out to find where his son had disappeared to.

Once Sirius was well out of the way, Severus awkwardly sat down beside his son.  "I can set some horrific curse on him if you want."

Pytheus shook his head.  "Why are we even here, you can't stand any of them."

Severus conceded defeat. "Because, perhaps, it's just the occasion your mother would have picked for some outrageously humorous insult to throw at Black and his gang of imbeciles, and we are here to try and do it for her."

Severus would never forget it.  Just when he thought they had all got through the Dark Lord's grasp as a family, strong and proud, with nothing left in the way for Harry Potter to end Voldemort's reign of terror, trigger happy Nymphadora Tonks tried to get in there first with an unforgivable, just to help Harry on his quest.  Voldemort was weak and deserted by those who had once followed his tail with delight, he used what power he had left to pull Draezyc between him and the curse with a summoning charm, in a twisted reversal of Moody, Edea, and Draezyc only a year previous, the curse hit Draezyc who could have done nothing about it.   

Pytheus looked across at his father and managed a brief smirk, "So… this curse on Black you were talking about?"

Severus returned the smirk, "Watch and learn, my son. Watch and learn."

END.

I decided I thought of a better person than Draezyc for Snapey, and it is on that note that I am going to write a better and more updated style of MH… I might call it "Until We Have Faces" or something like that. J thanks for sticking by this little story over the many years I've intermittently written it. Its done, over etc. love you all  J