A Sirius/Remus once again. Takes place post-PoA, and pre-OotP, if you're wondering.
Degrees of Separation
by
Redex
I finally believe now that it is better to feel this pain than to feel nothing at all. Because when there is pain, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope.
-
At
first, I thought he was going to come back. A part of me that was not
so small was just repeating over and over "it wasn't him, they'll let
him go, he'll come back.
The slow agony of the dawning fear that he
might not come back was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
It is one of the reasons why I didn't like to hear him mentioned
afterwards.
I can't believe I'm going through it again. It was like
a slow, omnipresent weight, a malicious demon that had a hand on the
string of our hearts and tugged on it whenever fond remembrances
threatened to draw us closer together, if only in spirit. Because of
this, I isolated myself. It was painful just to have to be with people;
most of the time it was easier just to lie at home in my misery. But I
didn't die.
And I eventually realized I had to live. Live without him.
Live without them all.
I
was lost at first. I felt like I must have an aura of sadness that
floated around me, but when I realized that I could loose myself in
these happy, uncaring and oblivious people, I started to forget.
I
was scared of forgetting, but that was what I did. And then, after
nearly ten years of this grace, history came and yanked my chain once
again, in the form of my old schoolteacher and mentor, Albus Dumbledore.
Sure,
we had kept in contact: he was my connection to Harry, my last
surviving connection to the past. He was the one who told me that
Sirius had escaped. He offered me a position at the school, and maybe
he guessed what was going to happen. Sometimes you can't tell with him.
Sirius.
A
connection to my past best forgotten, or so I had thought. He still
existed, if only having been mutilated into that creature that was so
hunted by society. Even though I didn't know what I would do if I faced
him, I accepted the teaching position.
But then...being back at the
school, with Harry and his precocious friends of his, and all those
niches so familiar and haunting... I had nights where I stayed up, not
because of an impending full moon, but because I was just remembering.
Sirius...James...Peter... Gone.
And I contemplated how we try and save bits of ourselves in
the things we leave behind. That column that was chipped by an errant
bludger smuggled into the Great Hall by Sirius and James, those scrawls
on the walls of the Shrieking Shack, even a few notes in the column of
a dark arts book that I could swear were in my own writing. Someone
could look at these things in a few hundred years and never have any
idea the value that they have to me, and maybe in a hundred years the
entire castle will be torn down. I don't know. Then Sirius was in the
school. I found myself thinking, "What if I'm off in a transformation,
and that's when he comes, and he kills Harry and I never see him"
It
didn't make sense. And that was when the ache came back again. It hurt;
it hurt like the purest holy water on my soul. Except now ihe/i was
supposed to be the tainted one - I was the one leading a normal life. I
should have known better, but I still believed, then, that Sirius had
killed Peter. I believed that Sirius had betrayed Lily and James. And
now, when I look back on those days, I shudder on the thoughts I had of
Sirius. And then, that night. It was a full moon and I can't say I was
quite sane. Perhaps it was easy for sceptics to say I wasn't. But
believe what I had before, this was still Sirius. Still the mutt in a
purebred's body, still the gruff but intelligent conspirator. But now
he was conspiring on something much darker, and I saw it. And when
Ron's rat turned into Peter... I nearly threw up, and wanted to hug
Sirius all over again and tell him how sorry I was. I didn't then, but
I did afterwards. After Peter got away.
After Sirius had to run.
But there were
times where he stayed at my home. I cherished those brief, all too
brief times. And in between was the ache of a tied heart, tugged to
span the distance between us.
Comments, Critism, Declarations of Undying Love?