(A/N: Kudos to Lady Alchymia and Jeconais, both on my Favorite Authors list, for inspiring me to put music in Harry Potter's world. Thanks a million! Your fics rule!)

Chapter 7: Lament

Harry got up and put his glasses on, listening. He could almost name the piece... he knew he'd heard it before. It had a processional feeling, and he could remember stepping carefully on the notes, on the beats... but when had he ever been in a procession?

Abruptly he had it. His primary school graduation. The Dursleys hadn't seen any reason to ban him from that, since it didn't cost anything, and Dudley had to go anyway. So Harry had walked down the aisle with the rest of his class, and this was the song they had entered to.

Even as he remembered it, the song moved into the quick portion, swooping gracefully up and down. Harry grinned, remembering how Dudley, in rehearsals, had tried to take a step on every note of this part and ended up running down four smaller children before the teachers got him stopped.

He went out into the hallway and stopped, confused. The music was quieter outside the room than in it – in fact, he could barely hear it in the hall. That didn't make any sense.

He went back in the room and listened again. His foot itched, and he sat down on his bed to scratch it.

The music got louder.

Curious, Harry knelt on the floor and put his ear to the boards.

He smiled. Whoever was playing, was doing so in the room directly below his own.

He padded down the stairs in bare feet, noticing that the music had completely faded by the time he reached the top of the stairs. Hmm... stairs are there, hall is here... I think this is the one.

He knocked at the door of a small room he didn't remember from last summer. After a moment, it opened. Remus Lupin was behind it, wand in one hand and violin bow in the other.

"Hey, Moony," said Harry, grinning. "Long time."

"Harry!" Lupin's face lit up, and he hurried to put down the two valuable pieces of wood carefully and offer Harry his hand. "I heard you were here, but I thought you'd still be asleep..."

"Well, not with someone playing beautiful music right below my bedroom, I wasn't," Harry said, pointing at the violin carefully laid on what looked like a curved wooden table in the room.

"You heard me?" Lupin looked chagrined. "I thought I put Silencers on this room... oh, I forgot the ceiling again, didn't I? It's my worst failing, when I get a chance to play I forget even the most basic courtesies..."

"Don't worry about it," Harry said, coming into the room. "It was a great way to wake up. I didn't know you played."

"My mother taught me," Lupin said, taking his violin off what Harry could now see was a piano. "And my father taught me how to hide it. That was one of the things I used the Marauders' Map for, finding private places to practice. I had two charms on my violin – one made it audible only to me, and the other one made it look like a scroll, so if anyone walked in on me, they would think I was just reading over my homework with one end tucked under my chin..."

He demonstrated, showing Harry how the violin fit against his collarbone, then paused, looking somewhat embarrassed. "I don't suppose you'd care to hear any more?"

"Are you kidding? That's why I came down," Harry said, relieved that he didn't have to ask if he could stay. "What was that piece you were playing when I knocked?"

"Pachelbel's Canon. It's an old favorite. Any memories for you?"

"Just primary school graduation. One of the very few normal childhood things the Dursleys didn't stop me doing."

Lupin looked at Harry musingly. "There is a question I've been wanting to ask you, Harry, about your relatives. Perhaps later, after breakfast – or rather brunch, it's nearly eleven – we can talk?"

Harry nodded. In truth, he would have agreed to a friendly lunch with Draco Malfoy if it meant Lupin would play for him.

Lupin lifted his bow and began.

The swift, darting melody lifted Harry and swept him away. He had never been exposed to music much, and certainly he had never seen anyone who loved music perform before. Now he could see the quiet rapture on Lupin's face as he moved through an intricate passage, and he felt a great longing to share that rapture.

Maybe learning to sing wouldn't be so bad, Harry thought, and wondered vaguely why he should think about singing. He had never been in a choir, never bothered much about music class in school. What did singing have to do with him?

Something about a dream...

Lupin finished a passage and paused. Harry's recollection fled.

"I wonder if I might share something with you, Harry," Lupin said quietly.

Harry got the feeling that this was something Lupin had never shared with anyone before. He nodded, and Lupin put down the violin, picked up his wand, and shut the door with it, then cast a Silencing Charm on each wall, the floor, and (with a wry look at Harry) the ceiling. He swapped wand for bow again and set the violin.

"This is something I wrote myself, very recently," he said. "I think you'll understand."

The music this time was low and wailing, not the full long notes of the Canon but wavering, incomplete sounds that always seemed to go somewhere other than where Harry thought they would. It was bewildered and pain-filled and lost, and yet it always managed to keep going, until finally it worked itself up to a high note, cried there for a few moments, and descended slowly, finishing on a quavering, long-drawn-out sound that seemed somehow wondering.

Slowly, Lupin lowered his bow.

"What is that?" Harry whispered, though he already knew the answer.

"I call it Lament for Sirius," said Lupin, setting the violin aside and meeting Harry's eyes. Slowly, almost questioningly, he opened his arms. "We knew him best, Harry. Perhaps we can grieve together."

Harry felt his throat close. It seemed too good to be true – someone who was asking him to cry for Sirius, not just putting up with it. He would have refused, except that in Lupin's eyes he saw something akin to his own grief, and he couldn't help himself.

He pulled his glasses off and threw them onto the piano. They bounced off – he heard them hit the floor and smash – and he didn't care. He flung himself into Lupin's arms, sobbing.

Ginny and Ron and Hermione had comforted him, but they had been outside his grief, not part of it. Now he had someone who could cry with him, who was crying with him. Harry felt Lupin's shoulders shaking, felt warm wet drops on his own shoulders. Crying on Ron's shoulder had felt awkward, but this didn't. It felt...

... it felt like having a father, Harry decided, and then he lost himself in tears again.

When they were both at the shaky breathing stage, Lupin conjured a box of tissues, and they sat together on the couch and talked.

"I think I feel worst about the years I lost with him," Lupin said, wiping his eyes. "Even counting the time since his escape, I knew him as my friend barely longer than I knew him as a traitor and the reason your parents died. I feel so guilty about believing the lies. I feel as if I should have known better, I should have seen that Sirius couldn't possibly have done it..."

"Got you beat," Harry countered. They had begun a macabre game of I-can-feel-worse-than-you-can. "I killed him. I killed Sirius. Maybe I didn't push him through the veil, but I'm the bloody reason he was there in the first place..."

"You were tricked by Voldemort," Lupin said angrily. "Just as I was tricked, we were all tricked, by his flunky I once called a friend. You are not the cause, Harry. Voldemort is the cause."

"Well, maybe I'm not the cause, but I sure as hell helped along the way!" Harry shouted, glad that the room was soundproofed. "If I hadn't gone to the Department of Mysteries, Sirius would still be alive!"

"If you hadn't gone to the Department of Mysteries, Voldemort would have found some other way to get at you," Lupin said. "He excels at that. He finds the weaknesses in our natures and plays us against each other. He knew two things about you, Harry, and one of them I'm not sure that you know yet. He knew that you loved Sirius, and he knew that until this June, you had never yet been wrong."

"Never been wrong?" Harry repeated blankly. "I don't understand."

Lupin held up his hand and touched his pointer finger. "Hear me out, Harry. In your first year, when most Muggle-raised wizards are still trying to comprehend that magic exists, you discovered a plot to steal a precious magical artifact, warned Minerva McGonagall about it, and when she disregarded you, you and Ron and Hermione saved it anyway."

Middle finger. "In your second year, you and Ron tried to give Gilderoy Lockhart the information he needed, then when he proved untrustworthy and even dangerous, you still defeated a pair of deadly foes and saved many innocent lives."

Ring finger. "Third year. You tried to save Sirius by telling Cornelius Fudge the truth, but when he wouldn't believe you, you and Hermione broke laws left and right by going back in time. You stole a condemned hippogriff and a condemned man from the law, and you cast a Patronus Charm that I doubt has ever been surpassed, possibly ever even equaled."

Little finger. "Fourth year. You held your own in a tournament designed for students three years more advanced than you, then you dueled Voldemort, wand-to-wand, and returned alive – and the general public refused to believe your story."

"I know what I've done," Harry said, annoyed. "Your point?"

"My point, Harry, is that every one of your adventures was accomplished against the odds, in the face of disbelief, and you were successful every time. This pattern had led you to believe that you were invincible and infallible – don't interrupt me – "

Harry had jumped to his feet, but sank back onto the couch, furious and yet unwillingly comprehending.

" – you believed this unconsciously, but you believed it, and so did your friends. Most teenagers believe it of themselves at some point. Unfortunately, with your tendency to get into trouble of the life-threatening kind, you can't afford to think that any more."

Harry had never noticed the gray in Lupin's hair or his wrinkles quite so keenly as now. The man looked old, far older than a contemporary of Harry's own father should, and Harry suddenly wondered, through a sullen anger that didn't want to acknowledge the truth in Lupin's words, how much of that was due to lycanthropy, and how much to fighting evil no man should have to face...

"Harry, you are brave and intelligent and strong, but you can make mistakes. You made one in June. And yes, partly – partly – because of you, Sirius is dead."

Harry was astonished to feel a sudden surge of gratitude toward Lupin for not sugarcoating the facts.

I was involved. I am partly to blame.

Logically, the thought should have made him feel worse, but accepting part of the blame, Harry realized, meant he didn't have to take it all...

"His death will have one positive effect, and only one. You will never accept things at face value again. You will always probe, always suspect a trap. This is good, a valuable ability, but – "

Lupin's eyes closed for a moment, pressing back tears, Harry was sure.

" – God, how I wish you could have learned some other way!"

The words could have been hurtful and accusatory. Instead, the naked pain in them was twin to Harry's own.

He found himself in Lupin's embrace again. He was crying, if it was possible, harder than before, crying for two losses – for Sirius, and for the idealistic boy who had been so sure he could never lose a battle.

Somehow, he was sure Lupin felt both losses as keenly as he did, and was crying for them both.

When they finally ran out of tears, it was closer to noon than eleven, and Harry was hungry. Toast with Ginny at 4:30 in the morning was fun, but seven and a half hours later, he was ready for a meal.

"So what's for lunch?" he asked.

Lupin wiped his face one last time and blew his nose. "Molly and Arthur went out earlier – Arthur on Order business, Molly to do some shopping, she said – so we'll have to scrounge. I heard about toast-making this morning, did you eat all the bread?"

"I think there was some left," Harry said dubiously, starting to look around for his glasses, "but it won't feed everyone. Ron and Hermione and Ginny should be up soon. And the twins – or are they out too?"

"Yes, they're out at the shop," Lupin said, putting his violin away in its case. "We'll have to get you there somehow, it's amazing."

Harry had found his glasses on the floor. One lens was shattered. "Can you give me a hand here?"

"Oculis Reparo," said Lupin distractedly, pointing his wand Harry's way, and the lens reassembled itself in the frame. "So, I suppose if there's no sandwich materials in the house, we're left with the one alternative of bachelors everywhere."

He unsealed the door and led the way to the kitchen.

"Do you happen to know what your friends like on their pizza?"

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(A/N: Well, it probably will be Wednesday by the time this posts, and since I have it done...

Sigh. Having slightly sad week. Reviews cheer me up and make me write more and update before schedule, you know...

MackenzieW: Thanks! Here ya go!

Basketballer33: Thanks for the compliments... and I've given up typing till 2. The concussions I get when Lanie drops her o-chem book on my head are bad for me.

Caprice-Ann HedicanKocur: Yeah, kind of a wish fulfillment thing. He sees the insanely normal (or normally insane) world of the books and wishes he could have that, and since in dreams you can actually get what you want... Expect more dreams in future chapters. Harry's gonna need the relaxation, and he might learn a thing or two.

Thanks everyone! See you on Saturday, or Friday if you're a Home reader!)