Really, the opening line hit me and just wouldn't go away. Forty-three pages later...
Many thanks to Moony's Girl and Rapunzel for the betas. Hugs for you both! .
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He spends the first full after James and Lily die at Hogwarts wandering the Forbidden Forest. There he howls at the moon until it disappears below the horizon, replaced by the haze of early dawn.
That morning Professor McGonagall's tracking charm finds him curled up in a clearing, human once more. She smoothes his hair, making soft shushing noises as he sobs uncontrollably beside her, crying tears that he thought had already been spent. Eventually he allows her to wrap him in the blanket she's brought with her and lead him back up the hill to the castle. Inside once more, he collapses in one of the many beds of the hospital wing. Lying there, he stares at the wall, not seeing the people that move about him, not hearing the hushed voices of the students as they peek through the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange young man that Professor McGonagall has brought in.
After classes have ended for the day, it is again Professor McGonagall who comes to see him in the hospital wing. Looming over the broken man in the bed, she is not kind and consoling this time. Instead, she gently but firmly grabs his arm and pulls him until he is sitting upright. He sways for a moment, but she quickly steadies him. Then she places in his lap the squirming young child that has followed her around all day, clinging to the bottom of her robes, and folds the man's arms around the boy.
For a moment, he does not see the child in his lap. As the boy wiggles around to face him, staring up with wide green eyes, he gasps and clutches the small body to his chest, barely noticing as Professor McGonagall sinks down onto the bed next to him, putting an arm around the two of them.
"You have to live," she says, her own voice thick with the tears she will not allow herself to shed. "You have to live and be strong. For Harry, if no one else."
Clasping the boy to his chest even more tightly, the man nods, his eyes clenched shut against a rising tide of tears. He is too young for this, too young to take on the responsibilities of a father. James and Lily and Peter are much too young as well, too young to be dead, leaving him alone with Harry.
He tries not to think of the man that he mourns for the most, the one whose soul he howled for in anguish the previous night. He tries not to think of Remus Lupin, rotting away in Azkaban after having betrayed them all.
Mostly, Sirius tries not to think.