an: ok! I think I deserve some chocolate! It's actually been less than a week, and I managed to write this during exam week! I feel dso proud

reveiwer responses:
emuerz: thanks for wishing me luck on my exams...I think i did pretty well on them. As for your question, and surprisingly you were the only one who asked. i thought more people would mention it. At the time Harry called for Sirius in the mirror, Sirius was wearing a different set of robes. The mirror was in the pocket of the robes he wore when he fell through the Veil. Since it wasn't in his pocket at the time, he didn;t know Harry had called for him.(i kno...ots kind of a lame excuse...)
luna: thanks for reveiwing, and for wishing me luck on my exams (i think i might have needed it). i'm sorry at stopped at the most interesting part, but it had to be done, otherwise it would have been the neverending chapter...lol. but, here's the coninuation for you :)
rockpaperscissor: you? abandon me? I would never think such a thing:) i'm glad that chap made yuo think ahead...its good for you.. I'm not going to really sort anything out for you, b/c it might ruin the ending (and part of this chap). But, just so you know, I'm not the type of person to create overly-happy endings.
dweem-angel: thank you for reviewing. I'm glad you saw the odd humor in them searching through everything, only to have the mirror be in his pocket
Dante Lewis:thank you for reveiwing. it was a long review too...I don't get many of those. I'm glad you appreciated how i showed both James/Jared and Sirius/James's relationship. About the spell they tried. For that particular spell, there has only been one instance when it has actually worked. If Sirius had kept reading, he would have known that, and known not to try the spell. On the page before the one Sirius read, there was information on to specify where the object went, but Sirius didn't read that pageeither. And actually, i think the fact that it took Sirius so long to find the mirror proves that he changes...he just doesn't luander...lol
katie: is this early enough for you? just don;t get spoiled, b/c this is a one-time thing...i almost never update this quickly.
legolasfanxoxo: the 'oh my lard' incident actaully comes from a friend of mine. we were on the phone, and i could have sworn she said that...she gave me the idea that i should that i should tie it in there...I'm glad i have reignited yur hope for the use of the mirror.

disclaimer:...still not Jo (sob)...

Remus Lupin snapped back to reality as people around him started to stand up and move around. I take it the meeting's over, he mused silently. He had been sitting in the kitchen at Grimmuald Place during a meeting for the Order, but found that his attention span was rather short that night. The previous night had, in fact, been the full moon, and he was still feeling some of the more negative effects of it; namely overwhelming fatigue. Remus pushed himself up out of the chair and headed towards the door. Several people stopped him to ask him how he was feeling and he simply said he was feeling fine, albeit tired, which was true, to an extent.

He made his way out of the kitchen, past the front hall, and was trying to make his way upstairs without anyone else stopping him. All he really wanted to do was to lay down and sleep, even though he had been sleeping all day as well. He had made it all the way to the second floor hallway when Athena caught up with him.

She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, Remus," she said grinning as he turned around. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he said automatically. "I'm just a little tired."

Athena looked at him as if he had grown an extra head. "You are such a terrible liar," she claimed. "You look awful."

"Thanks," he replied. "Your moral support means a lot to me."

"I take it you had a rough night last night," Athena commented.

"Worse than some, better than others," he said simply, not exactly wishing to elaborate.

"Well, by the looks of it, I'd say it was worse than most, but I guess I wouldn't really know," Athena said. "You did take the Wolfsbane Potion, didn't you?"

"Yes, but it only alleviates some of the symptoms. I'm stuck to bear with most of them," he replied. Just let me go, he pleaded silently. I want to sleep.

Athena nodded. "I just wanted to check how you were feeling before I left," she said. "From the blank expression on your face for most of the meeting, I think you might have missed the part about me leaving for a couple days."

Remus nodded. He had, in fact, missed that part of the meeting.

"Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of days, try not to get too lonely," she teased. "Get some rest while I'm gone, too. You look like you need it."

"I do need it. I'll see you in a couple of days," he said with a smile. Athena nodded again, and headed back downstairs.

Remus wandered down the hall after Athena left. He had plans to retire to the room he had claimed as his own in Grimmuald Place and quite possibly staying there for the next week. He walked past the room Harry had stayed in over the summer and noticed the door was ajar. For some reason unbeknownst to him, Remus pushed the door open and walked inside.

The room looked very much the same as it had when Harry was occupying the room. Some of his belongings had been left on the floor; things he hadn't needed for school. Remus passed all these items by and walked over to the window. He looked up at the night sky through the window, taking in its strange beauty.

When he was younger, before he had been bitten, he would often stargaze with his father. In the years after the bite, however, he had always detested the night sky. It was a symbol to him of all the pain and suffering he had to endure. It wasn't until after he started Hogwarts that he started stargazing again. It had taken his friends to help him realize the sky was not as dark and terrible as he had pictured it, but rather a thing of mysterious beauty. It had been Sirius, he recalled, who really seemed to understand the meaning of the night sky.

The night sky, according to Sirius, was created for two reasons. One was to help man understand how insignificant his problems really were. "How can someone look up into the sky at night, and still think that their life is so terrible?" he would say. "You look up, and you feel so small. You feel so tiny when you think about how you were brooding because you rowed with your friends. You realize how trivial things like that are." As for the second reason, well... The second reason for Sirius was simply to give a home to his namesake, Sirius, the Dog Star, and the brightest star in the sky, as he had been prone to constantly remind his friends.

Thinking of the Dog Star, Remus looked up into the sky, and searched for it. It wasn't long until he found it. It was the brightest star in the night sky, after all. Although, as he looked at it, he wasn't sure if it was just him or not, but Sirius did look quite a bit brighter than it ever had before. Remus smiled reminiscently as he thought of Sirius, the person, not the star. It had always been an adventure just to hang around Sirius; people like Sirius kept the rest of the world on their toes. He missed that feeling of never knowing what was going to happen next. Remus sighed. He missed his friend.

Remus yawned and remembered how tired he was. He turned on heel and made his way out of the room when something on the floor caught . The moonlight glinted off what looked like a shard of glass on the floor. Puzzled, Remus walked over to it and picked it up. To his surprise, it was not a shard of glass but a piece of a broken mirror. Even more surprisingly, there were more pieces of the shattered mirror scattered around the floor.

He pulled out his wand. "Reparo," he said with his brow slightly furrowed.

The mirror fixed itself. It was about the size of a small paperback book, old, and rather dirty, and it looked rather familiar, though Remus couldn't quite place where he had seen it before, or if he even had seen it before. Remus chewed on his lip thoughtfully as he tried to place where he had last seen this particular mirror. He reached over and grabbed a crumpled-up piece of parchment that had been near the mirror shards. He unfolded it read the note.

This is a two-way mirror. I've got the other.

If you need to speak to me, just say my name

into it; you'll appear in my mirror and I'll be

able to talk in yours. James and I used to use

them when we were in separate detentions.

Remus instantly identified the writing as Sirius's, and was able to piece together what had happened. Sirius must have given the mirror to Harry sometime during the last school year. When Sirius passed through the Veil, Harry must have tried to use it to communicate with Sirius, then broke it when the attempt failed. And no wonder the mirror had a familiar look. He couldn't recall the number times he had seen either Sirius or James pull out the mirror when the other was in detention, most of the time to ask a really stupid question and make the detention more bearable.

Remus chuckled as he remembered one such occasion when Sirius had pulled out his mirror to ask James what men with beards, more particularly moustaches, did when their nose started to run. Remus closed his eyes and shook his head, as he had been prone to doing when he was at school, and muttered "Sirius" under his breath

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"Sirius, you are a bloody genius!"

"I am?" Sirius asked, not quite sure what James was getting at.

"Yes, you are!"

"'Course I am," Sirius said, still not sure why James suddenly declared him a genius. "Why am I genius again?"

"The mirror, you dolt," James said impatiently. "Who has the other one?"

Sirius finally saw what James was getting at. "I gave it to Harry last Christmas. Just in case he needed to talk to me, you know."

James nodded. "Say his name in the mirror. We need to talk to someone," he said.

"Why me? Don't you want to talk to your son?" Sirius asked.

"I'm dead. Who knows if it works the same if one of the users is dead?" James said with an air of impatience. "You're alive. We know it will work."

"Right. I forgot about that," Sirius said.

"Get on with it," James snapped.

"Well, I would if you would stop interrupting me," Sirius said with mock aggravation.

James scowled, and Sirius grinned.

"Har- "he began, but he stopped suddenly when another face appeared in his mirror. Sirius blinked several times as he looked at Remus Lupin's prematurely-lined face in his mirror. "Remus?" he asked.

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Remus opened his eyes and looked down at the mirror when he heard his name called. Sirius's face was looking up at him in bewilderment. Remus's eyes went wide as he realized what he was looking at. Somewhere between surprise and terror, he yelled out something incoherent that sounded like "GWHUA!" and dropped the mirror.

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Sirius snorted as he watched Remus's reaction to him in the mirror. Across the desk, James raised his eyebrows to see what Sirius had found to be so funny.

"Remus has the mirror," said Sirius in explanation.

"I thought you gave it to Harry," James said.

"I did. I don't know how Remus got it," Sirius said. "Anyway, I think he must have dropped the mirror, or something, because he's not answering, not to mention I'm getting a lovely view of the ceiling in one of the rooms in Grimmuald Place." Sirius looked back down at the mirror. "Remus?" he called again. "Remus John Lupin. Lupin John Remus. Moony?"

As Sirius continued to call for Remus in the mirror, James got up, and walked around behind to see into the mirror as well. Just as Sirius had said, Remus wasn't there, but they were getting a nice view of the ceiling.

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"I've gone mad," Remus murmured to himself. "I've lost it. Sirius is dead. He can't be talking to me through the mirror."

"Remus?" he heard Sirius's voice call from the mirror. "Remus John Lupin. Lupin John Remus. Moony? Loony Lupin? Oh, come on, mate. Reeeeeeeeemus?" the voice kept calling.

"Only Sirius could be that obnoxious," he said to himself. He scrambled across the floor and picked up the mirror. Sure enough, Sirius's face was still there, looking up at him.

"There you are," he said brightly. "Took you long enough."

"Well, sorry, Sirius," Remus retorted. "It's not very often that I see dead people in mirrors."

"I'm not dead," Sirius said, seriously. "Jamesie here is, but I'm not."

Remus wasn't sure which part of that last statement he would like to have elaborated. What did he mean, he wasn't dead? Remus had seen him fall through the Veil. He had been there. And he didn't see James anywhere in the mirror. He was so confused, he was at an utter loss for words.

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"Remus?" James asked when he didn't reply. "Are you okay?"

Once again, Remus didn't respond. He just stared at them with a very confused look on his face.

"Hey, aren't you going to answer James's question?" Sirius asked, trying to bring Remus out of whatever type of funk he had slipped into.

Remus's brow furrowed, as it always did when he was unsure of something. "What question? I didn't hear anything," he said.

"James! He asked you if you were okay," Sirius said.

"What do you mean?" Remus said, looking even more confused. "Look, Sirius, I can't see James."

"What? How can you not see James?" Sirius asked incredulously. "He's this big– well, actually, he's not that big– mass of a person behind." Sirius turned around, making sure James was, in fact, still there. He slapped James lightly a few times for good measure. "See? Right here!"

James smacked Sirius's hand away. "Stop it," he said. "I don't think he can see me, mate. I told you it might not work the same because I'm dead."

Sirius turned again. "Do you always have to be right?" he said impatiently. "Can't you be wrong, just once?"

"I've been wrong before," James said. "If you don't believe me, go ask Lily. She can give you a rather lengthy list of all the times I've been wrong before."

"I don't want to ask Lily," Sirius snapped.

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Remus watched Sirius turn around and start talking. To all appearances, it looked as though he were having an argument with himself. Maybe Sirius and I are both mental, he thought. It would certainly explain quite a bit.

"Sirius," he said, trying to interrupt the argument Sirius was having, allegedly with James. Sirius ignored him. "Sirius. Sirius!"

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"I think Remus wants to talk to you," James said, realizing how stupid Sirius must look and sound if Remus really couldn't see him.

Sirius turned back around. "Sorry about that," he said. "What do you need?"

"Is James really there?" Remus asked.

"Yup."

"And he's dead?"

"Yup."

"But you're not?" he asked slowly.

"No, I am not," Sirius said.

Remus nodded slowly, however odd this whole situation seemed, it appeared that he was beginning to accept it. "How?" he asked.

"Interesting question," Sirius said. "I'm not sure, and neither is James. Awhile after I fell through the Veil, James gave me some big, long-winded explanation of why I didn't die when I fell through, because most people do. It sort of made sense, but not really. All that really matters is that I'm alive, I guess."

Remus nodded again. "Erm...if you say so."

Sirius grinned. "I do say so."

"So what have you been doing this whole time?" Remus asked. "It's been months since you went through the Veil."

"I've been here with James and Lily," Sirius said.

"And he's been eating all my food," James said, grinning.

Sirius turned to him. "He can't hear you, remember?" he turned back to the mirror. "James wishes me to tell you that I've been eating all his food. How this has any relevance, I don't know. James is being stupid."

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Remus laughed. "He does eat a lot, James," he said. "And I hope you realize how stupid I feel talking to someone I can't see."

Sirius smiled. "He says he appreciates it. He also says that he is madly in love with you, and has been since our third year."

Remus watched as Sirius flinched, no doubt being told off by James, and possibly being smacked up side the head by him as well.

"All right. All right," Sirius said over his shoulder. "No need to pull your hair out." He looked back at Remus. "I made that last part up, although you probably knew that already, didn't you?"

"I figured as much," he said. He couldn't help but smile. It had been nearly 15 years since the three of them had a conversation with each other. And even though he and James couldn't speak directly with each other, it felt so good to be back in the company of his best friends.

"Right, now James the Conversation Tyrant would also like me to tell you several things, so listen up. One, there is most definitely a way for me to get back to the Living world, and we're in the process of working that out. Also, we're having difficulty– mind you, difficulty is an understatement– working out a way to actually get me back. Everything we've read indicates that someone in the Living world must cast at least part of the spell to bring me back..."

"Which is where I come in, I take it?" Remus commented.

"Precisely," Sirius said brightly. "I always knew you were smart."

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"Smarter than you, leastways," James muttered. Sirius turned to glare at him.

"Well, do you two know what spell you need to use and everything?" Remus asked.

"Tell him that we haven't quite found it yet, but as soon as we do, we'll lt him know," James said.

Sirius relayed the massage to Remus, who in turned nodded. "How long do you think its going to take you guys to find it?" he asked.

Sirius shrugged. "We've got some decent leads as to what the spell might be. Actually we found a spell to move small objects from the world to the Living world," he said. "But it kind of backfired on us."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Remus asked.

Sirius and James smiled. "Because it shouldn't," they said at the same time.

"Remus, can you do me a favor, though?" Sirius asked.

"Anything, Sirius."

"Don't tell anyone about this, alright?" he asked seriously. "I don't want anyone to get there hopes up that I'll be coming back, and then have it backfire on us. Especially Harry. If he knew that I could come back, but then it didn't work...I don't want to put him through that."

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Remus nodded. He understood exactly what Sirius meant. He had seen how distraught Harry was after Sirius first fell through the Veil. Even now, he knew from the letters he and Athena received from him that he was still feeling some of the effects from the loss. If he had to go through that again... "I won't tell Sirius. I promise," Remus said.

"Thanks, mate," Sirius said. "I owe you one. Anyway, I think James and I better go. I'm not sure how long we've been in his office, but Lily tends to get annoyed if we stay in here too long."

Remus nodded. "Say hello to Lily for me, alright?"

"No problem. We'll talk to you later," Sirius said. With that, he disappeared from the mirror.

Remus set the mirror down on the table, and sat down on Harry's bed. He took a deep breath and tried to make sense of the conversation he just had. Sirius was alive. Not only that, but there was a way for him to return. He could come back. Back where they needed him. He thought of what that would do for Harry. Harry needed his godfather, just as surely as Remus needed on of his best friends back. And Athena. Sirius didn't yet know if Athena still had feelings for him. When he got back, and Athena found out...Remus could almost picture how elated the two of them would be.

Remus stood back up. He was not sure if he understood all of what Sirius had told him, or even if he was sure they could pull it off. All he was sure of was how tired he felt now. He felt physically tired before the conversation, but now he felt mentally and emotionally drained. It wasn't everyday that you were able to speak with loved ones who believed to be dead.

He picked up the mirror off the bedside table and pocketed it. He would sort through everything they had discussed later; it wouldn't do him any good to try and figure this out when he was as tired as he was. He sighed and headed out of the room.

an: please please please forgive any typos! i didn't reread this chap like I normally do...there is simply not enough time! Anyway, I leave on Monday, and will be gone for a week, so don't expect me to update then. But, now that shcools out, i think i will be able to update more often...

please review...I hoping to get 100 reviews by the end of this story...only 15 more to go!

Delano