Surrounded by people he knew well, a sort of family he supposed, as much as comrades in war could be called a family. Molly and Arthur, Mad-Eye, Tonks, all familiar, all together, all empty. And the one figure that had mattered the most to him, now completely absent. One figure whose shadowy form seemed to loom large over the group. Lupin pushed the dark figure from his mind.

A grey drizzle washed across the suburban London streetscape turning the world into a dim shadow of itself. Making no move to get under shelter Lupin was dimly aware of his fellow Order members whispering hushed goodbyes as the fled back towards whatever area of their life called to them. Everybody was leaving the Black house.

He watched through dull eyes as each in turn raised a hand in farewell before disapperating. No one spoke to him. Just whip cracks piercing the air. And the accompanying beat of London rain. But behind this grim rhythm, Lupin could hear it. Flapping. It pounded inside his head; that hissed staccato flapping of the veil. This is what the horses of the apocalypse would sound like, he thought. Galloping before the breaking of the world.

Absentmindedly running a hand through his thinning blond hair his eyes swept across the now empty street. Through the drizzle his eyes ghosted, throwing his mind back nearly twenty years. Lupin stared, fascinated, as a group of four boys went running past him, all laughing. One light haired, two dark, all unconcerned and unaware of the grim future the Fates had woven for them. They had been laughing, he realised, because the Marauders had just played a prank on Sirius' younger brother Regulus, who was in every way the Black poster boy Sirius wasn't. The result of which had been Regulus trapped inside a cupboard with a Boggart for three days before the Black family had even noticed he was missing. Remus watched the ghostly face of his friend light up, dark eyes glowing like coals. They had stopped glowing many years ago. He had hoped that Harry and himself could ignite them again. But nothing had worked.

Then the sound of flapping overtook his senses and the illusion faded. Block it out; stop thinking about it, he told himself. Another voice whispered that to block it out would be like blocking out his whole existence. There were very few times in Remus Lupin's life that he remembered favourably. Six years at Hogwarts with James, Sirius and Peter were the best of them.

Lupin swallowed hard, trying to exorcise the names from his mind. His hands gripped tightly onto a nearby railing, white knuckles biting into hard iron. Grey rain swam around him and he was drowning, fading with the steady drizzle. He had weathered so many thunderstorms somehow it seemed ironic, he thought grimly, that he was finally just going to disappear under the relentlessness of steady rain.