Disclaimers, etc, see part one.

Author's Notes: Thanks to Chaos for beta-ing. The third, and last, chapter should be soon. It will focus on Wesley again.

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Remus wanted to tear the house down around his ears. He couldn't, however, because it was all he had left of the Marauders. So he was taking the house apart slowly instead. He started in the back of the pantry in the kitchen and picked up every article. He was a man on a mission, everything was going to be either cleaned or thrown out.

People came to help him occasionally, but he rarely let them. Molly forced food on him, Tonks took him for walks to trade Sirius stories, and Harry wrote asking for progress reports. By Easter Remus made it into the room Sirius had procured for Buckbeak. The higher up in the house he got, the more often he was overcome by memories that he had long since refused to call upon.

Buckbeak had gone back to Hogwarts after Lucius Malfoy's arrest. Draco had, apparently, been persuaded to amend his statement. It hadn't helped Remus's temper at all: the reminder that the Ministry bureaucracy was so easy to manipulate in so many ways. But he couldn't have cared for a Hippogriff in his manic state.

The bedroom, which had been Mrs Black's before is was Buckbeak's, was now as soulless and dusty as the rest of the house. Remus didn't expect to find much here, but he took down the curtains and sent them to the 'furnishings' pile with a wave of his wand. He stripped the bed and treated each sheet, the hangings, and the mattress in the same way. Carefully he went through the room until it was completely empty and performed a vanishing charm on the dust.

For the first time, he could see a trap door in the floor that had been under the dressing table. With his wand drawn, Remus carefully opened it and removed the crate that sat snugly in the gap between the joists. He felt like a little kid winning treasure hunt. He opened the box fearfully.

Nothing leapt out at him, and he almost laughed at his fear. Then he saw what the box actually contained and sat back heavily on the floor. Staring up at him was… himself. It was old photo, maybe fourth year, of him, Peter, Sirius and James. They were sitting together at the edge of the lake, taking in the first of the spring warmth.

It was fourth year, he remember, because Susan had taken the photo with Sirius's camera. Sirius was grinning his most charming smile at her (he'd been wooing her for months), and Remus tried to remember how he had ever thought his friend capable of betraying them.

"Because you had to," he told himself, not for the first time. "The only thing you had besides grief for James and Lily, was anger at Sirius."

He went through the box just like he had gone through every room in the house. He took each item out, cleaned it with a wave of his wand and set it in its own space on the old wooden floor.

There was the banner Peter and fifth year Prefect Douglass Croft had made when they had finally beaten Slytherin for the Quidditch Cup in third year. He wondered how Sirius had managed to steal it off James.

There were other reminders of happier times at Hogwarts. Remus supposed that Sirius had collected them together and hidden them as preparation to go into hiding. He forced himself to go through them, to remember the story behind each one; the feather they'd tried to bewitch to take notes in Binns's class, the prototype Marauders' maps, and the carefully laid out Transfiguration notes Remus had copied for Sirius before his NEWTs.

At the bottom of the box were two letters, still folded. They looked like they had been pushed past everything else, buried in the bottom of the box. The elder had been screwed up into a ball at some stage, too, and even here and now, Remus could recognise Peter's meticulous, but childish print.

He opened the letter slowly.

Dear Sirius,

I know that you've been worried about that draughty window. I think I found the cause of the leak, although you won't be pleased. And I am so very sorry.

I saw Moony talking to Edward McNair this morning. I was walking up from West End, and I saw the two of them outside one of the hotels. They obviously knew each other, and seemed to reach an agreement that pleased them both.

I naturally thought that they were merely 'playing nice' to avoid attracting attention. But I know that Edward and Moony have more in common with each other than we will ever understand.

Peter.

Well, that explained a lot, Remus thought, vaguely. The weak rat couldn't even lie to Sirius's face. There was a detached part of him that was still able to form coherent thoughts, and it wondered how long it was before the rest of him got over the shock. He never had asked how or why Sirius had thought him the traitor. It had always seemed just the way things went, a convenient blip on the monster story of their lives that would never be better for being acknowledged.

The second letter was from Lily, and he opened it carefully. A photograph fell out of it. It was a group of four unfamiliar men, in Muggle clothes. It looked like they were in a pub somewhere. They all looked drunk, but the middle one was staring straight at the camera, poking his tongue out at whoever was taking the picture.

The letter was all Lily, neatly written with the occasional flourish at the end of a sentence.

Dearest Padfoot,

I am allowed to call you that, because as the only dog I would ever write letters to, you are any superlative I want to throw at you.

I think I may have been very foolish last night. Thank you so much for taking Harry for us. I know James spent part of the evening talking to his parents. I went to a pub. Crazy, I know, but I just wanted to be Muggle again, in a world where there aren't Dark Wizards trying to kill your baby boy because some crazy old woman had a fit.

Although, I didn't do very well, look at who I found. Each of these young men is going to be a Watcher. I stumbled across one of the secrets of the Wizarding world, and beat the middle one (Wesley) at pool. (You remember, the game with the colour balls and the sticks?)

I feel better about everything now, though. I think your plan is a good one. Just make sure you keep an eye on the rat for us. I worry sometimes that he feels in a little over his head. With him to keep us safe, and you to keep him safe, I think we'll be fine.

Wesley and his friends were telling me about the Slayer. There are prophecies about her, too. I know we have a better chance than she does, and more help. Did you know that there's just her and her Watcher? They take her away from her family and everything. As much as Petunia seems to hate me, I would hate to loose her.

If going out, drinking too much and bemoaning my fate to Muggles wasn't foolish enough, this letter certainly is. Part of me is still reckless, though, because if we're found, I'll have something to fight. James assures me it's the part he loves best, so I'll send the letter, and proof that I met people faced with other horrors.

Be well, and flea free,

Much love,

Lily.

The rat will tell the dog the secret of the stag, and he shall soon see the son God gave him. Let it not be long.

Remus placed the photo and the letter carefully aside before the tears began to fall. There had been no mention of him in the letter, which was a small mercy. If they'd just had it… he began the thought several times, but managed to quash it before it went too far. Sirius had lived with the proof of his innocence right under the very same roof, and he had either forgotten, or repressed the memory. It probably wouldn't have done any good, he reminded himself. Fudge's angry and uncomprehending face rose in his mind's eye.

It was replaced by Lily's, as she bent to kiss him farewell. Sirius was supposed to have performed the charm that day. But instead they had waited a day, and had Peter perform it instead. She had looked at him so sadly, and he had thought it was only the acceptance that this was all too real for them now. All too real.

Slowly he began to cry, sitting alone in his dead friend's house, surrounded by long forgotten mementoes of a happier past. He cried for the first time. For Peter, whose weaknesses had never been contemplated by his friends; for Lily and James, whose lives had been given to protect their son; for Harry, who had never know them; and for Sirius, whose own guilt had kept him a prisoner long after the crimes he had been framed for. For both Sirius and Harry, whose sense of bravery and battle had been the undoing of both of them. And he cried for himself, which he had never done before, as the last surviving member of group of friends who had thought they would last forever.

Night fell and room grew cold. Remus knew that if he didn't let someone know he was still alive they would send someone to look for him. Mad-Eye had always worried about how haunted the house really was. He carefully repacked Sirius's box of keepsakes and sealed it, keeping only Lily's letter and the photo free. He would be able to join dinner at the Burrow with a lighter heart, once he had done one last thing.