All Alone
I was all alone. The last one of my group of friends that was alive and not working with Voldemort. It's a sad thought. Of course, per se, I'm not the ONLY person. There are other people that I'm friends with from my Hogwarts days, but it's just not the same as the relationship that I had with James, Peter and Sirius.
Peter was the first to leave us even if we weren't completely aware of it. James, Sirius and I had noticed that he was disappearing often, but Peter always had an excuse for it, so we never gave it a second thought.
Then it was James. James. The leader of our little group. The smart, popular jock sort of man in our clique. He was taken next. We were such close friends, and we were young. James, Sirius and I never thought that anything like this would have ever happened to us. But then again doesn't every one think like that? If one of their family members dies in an accidental curse, no one would ever have thought that that would happen. If you had asked them a year before, they would never think that such a think would happen to their family. It's a rarity that people expect to die unexpectedly.
After James, it was Sirius. I didn't want to believe that Sirius would betray James, Lily and their son, Harry. He was their god damned secret keeper. They chose him and he betrayed them! I couldn't stand that thought. Sirius was a good man. I'd known him since first year. He was my best friend. My lover. My everything. What else could I have thought? Was I expected to instantly believe what The Daily Prophet wrote about him? How could I do that knowing how many lying journalists they'd had prior. But all the clues pointed to him. There was no one else to pin the blame on anyway. What else could I be expected to believe?
Werewolves mate for life. I had never wanted to drag Sirius down when were had started dating. I never thought that it would be the other way around. After he was sent into Azkaban I kept having nightmares. Our roles had been reversed in it. I was the accused in Azkaban while Sirius was free. Sirius had come to visit me. His face was devoid of any emotion; the twinkle in his eyes gone. Suddenly he started to laugh. It was a cold cruel laugh that I had never heard from him before. He laughed as he told me that he didn't love me and never would. He smiled maliciously and told me that he could leave me now that I was in Azkaban. Leave me for good. Many a night after he was sentenced to Azkaban I would wake up with built up tears in my eyes, plagued from this nightmare. I could feel myself withdrawing from the outside world both physically and mentally because I was so far from my mate. I would ignore the door when someone knocked and hide when someone flooed me. Not a day went by without me wondering how much longer I could go on like that. Had it not been for Dumbledore and his visits, I would have easily died in my flat and no one would have been the wiser.
I was tormented endlessly. During the twelve years he was in Azkaban, I'd managed to convince myself that everything written by The Daily Prophet about Sirius was true. I hated myself and them for it, but I did in the end. How could you not? It was the entire wizarding world against one man who was not even allowed to defend himself in court. I was sure that I would never see him again.
Then in 1993, I'd found out the truth. My beloved had been an innocent man all along. I'd been ecstatic to hear the truth from him. At that moment, I'd wanted nothing better then to kill Peter for all the pain he had caused so many people. Harry could have had parents. Countless other people would have been saved. I would have never doubted Sirius.
After Voldemort rose, Sirius came to hide with me. It was the happiest I'd been for a while. We were together all the time and it was the closest I'd been to him in the longest time.
When we were fighting against the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries, I was too preoccupied to notice much going on around me. All I saw was the final blow delivered by his own cousin, hitting him square in the chest. I watched his eyes as his back arched and he fell backwards past the veil. There was still a smile on his face and the laughter was nearly gone from his eyes. It hardly seemed like he had died.
One of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life was having to hold back Harry from going after Sirius and convincing him that he wasn't coming back. How could I convince a fifteen year old boy who had just lost his only parent figure in his life, when I was so unwilling to believe it myself? Before I knew what was happening, Harry had fled the room after Sirius's killer, Bellatrix Lestrange.
I felt myself collapse mentally. All my carefully built barricades shattered into a million pieces inside of me. Only Sirius could ever do that to me. But this would be the last time.
Now it's been fourteen years since the first time I lost him. But now that I've lost him for a second time, I know that I will never see him again. This time, I'm positive. Now I truly am all alone.
fin
Edited and Reposted on April 3rd, 2005. Thanks to "C'est Moi" for the check.