thankyou to those sweet few who reviewed, it means the world xxFuschiaBoots

---------

'I am being haunted.'

Dumbledore did not ask whom Lupin meant. Instead he sighed and indicated that Lupin should take the seat across from him in the dimly lit study he had established in Grimmauld Place.

'Remus. You know, as I do, Hauntings are performed by specific entities. As...as Sirius has manifested as neither a ghost, poltergeist or spirit I cannot say...I don't...' he drew off, pressing a finger into the edge of his left eye as if trying to unlock a thought.

Lupin was shocked by the exhaustion evident in the other wizard's voice.

'...May I suggest, Remus, as much as you may not wish to hear it, that you are merely creating this Haunting? Perhaps as a grief mechanism.' Again the older wizard paused, face clouded with emotions not easily read. 'We have to accept Sirius as a casualty. One I take it upon myself to be answerable for...when the time comes.'

Remus sat silently, as he often did, and followed the progress of those blue eyes as they searched his face. The eyes he always remembered as being bright were now rheumy. Faded. A dishwasher blue. The river after rain. They were eyes Remus wasn't sure he knew.

'What is behind the curtain in the ministry?' he asked, his voice cool. Dumbledore's eyes, he noticed, drifted from his face and rested a moment on his hands.

'I knew only what I told you, and the others, on our approach to the ministry. It brings death. Believe me Remus, I don't know everything.' A faint smile crept onto his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes. 'Although on my good days I rather fancy I do!' The smile slipped away as the sun on an overcast day.

Lupin lidded his eyes and pushed up, knees cracking.

'Goodnight.'

Dumbledore watched the door shut and listened as Lupin's light, even footsteps flowed up the stairs and across the landing. They stopped outside a room on the third floor, near the end of the corridor. Sirius' room. But there was no sound of another door opening.

Lupin reached the door to Sirius' room. What was Sirius' room, he corrected himself.

All that was left of the dim moon's light seeped through a small high window and down the corridor, managing only to pick out tiny details. The corner of a photo frame. An uneven floorboard. A glint on the bronze door handle. Remus felt boneless as he slid down the wall until he was pooled, knees to chest, robes flowing around him, just staring at the door.

If Dumbledore had walked into the corridor then he would have seen only those tiny details picked out in the moon's icy light.

A photo frame.

A floorboard.

Sirius' door handle.

And the edge of a fine patrician nose with a glint of a tear upon it.

More than a day had passed.