Chapter 41 – The Art of Friendship

While the Order was holding the meeting in the kitchen downstairs, Harry was sitting in his room reading in the Quidditch Encyclopaedia Ron and Hermione had given him for his birthday. He had picked it up as a means to distract Ron from his attempts at cheering Harry up. He knew that his friend only meant well, but he was not in the mood for any games or a chat now. Not with all those thoughts about Sirius on his mind. Ron must have sensed that, because he had finally given up all attempts to engage Harry in a conversation or a game, and was now sitting at the small table in the room, leafing through a broomstick-catalogue which Charlie had brought along from Diagon Alley.

Distracting himself with the book only worked partly, but at least it worked. He could always read a few paragraphs before his thoughts strayed away to Sirius again. Or rather, to the lifeless hull that was lying in a bed in St. Mungo's, which in no way resembled the godfather Harry had gotten to know. He had risked so much, and yet in the end it all had been in vain. He had brought Sirius back all right, only he seemed to have forgotten a crucial part about it.

Another paragraph, about the team history of the Chudley Cannons. Ron's favourite team. He wondered what Sirius' favourite Quidditch team was. His godfather had played Quidditch, that much Harry knew. Who had told him that? He could not remember, but from some recess of his mind the information that Sirius had once played Quidditch had come crawling out.

Harry breathed in deeply and stared to read another paragraph. Ivan Jenogiew, the famous Russian beater had once played for the Cannons, during the time when they had won their only championship. Which position had Sirius played? Harry could imagine him being a beater. For some reason, that fit. Seekers were mostly small and lithe. Harry remembered the younger Sirius he had seen in Snape's pensieve, and his godfather hadn't seemed particularly lithe to him. Rather broadly built around the shoulders, muscular. Not a chaser's physique, though. Beaters had to bee strongly built, it took quite a bit of strength to beat the bludgers around the pitch, with precision and the necessary force behind it. That was one of the reasons why so few women made excellent beaters, at least not on a professional Quidditch level. Yes, Harry could very well imagine Sirius being a beater. Probably a keeper, but for some reason Harry was sure that he had been a beater. The picture of Jenogiew began to swim in front of his eyes as his mind tried to replace the Russian's head with Sirius', and Harry quickly read on.

An injury had finally caused Jenogiew to end his career during his third season with the Canons, and he had started a new career as manager in his brother-in-law's broomstick factory. What had Sirius done after leaving Hogwarts? Of course he had been in the Order during the war, but "member of the resistance against Voldemort" was not a job-description. Sirius must have done something to earn a living, and Harry had no idea what it was. Remus could surely tell him, but Harry didn't want to ask his former teacher. He didn't want to talk about Sirius, he wanted him back. Nothing more, nothing less. Just having him back.

Harry shot the book so forcefully that Ron jumped in his chair and turned around, eyes wide. Harry threw the book onto the bed and got up.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

He went over towards the door.

"Where are you going?", Ron said. "You can't go into the kitchen, they're having a meeting there."

"I don't know. I just need to move around a bit."

And without offering another explanation, he left the room and started to walk up and down the corridors, aimlessly. Had Buckbeak still been there, he'd have gone and visited the hippogriff, but he had been told that Hagrid had taken him away to wilder him out again. Hedwig was somewhere in the attic, but Harry didn't have any idea how to get up there. After maybe five minutes, he found himself back in the corridor where his and Ron's room was located, but he stopped in front of Remus' room. Now it was Remus' room, but at some point during his first stay at Grimmauld Place this summer, he had heard somebody – had it been Mrs. Weasley? he couldn't remember – mention that it had been Sirius' room before. Not quite knowing why, he raised his hand and knocked.

No answer. of course not. Remus was downstairs in the kitchen, attending an Order meeting. Harry half-decided to leave again, but then decided differently and reached for the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand and he opened the room and stepped in. He didn't feel entirely comfortable breaching Remus' privacy like that, but he guessed that the man would understand. It was not as if Harry was searching through his things, he just…well, he just wanted to be close to his godfather. And being here in his former bedroom was as close as he could get at Grimmauld Place. He stepped fully into the room, closed the door behind himself, and took a look around.

Harry didn't know what he had expected, but at first glance nothing in the room immediately brought Sirius to his mind. There was a bed – not a four-poster, a normal bed, a desk next to the window, a shelf beside it. No more furniture, except from a wooden wardrobe and an armchair in front of the window. Biting his lip, Harry looked around.

Most of the possessions in the room seemed to be Remus'. A few books on the shelf, papers on the desk, his briefcase on the floor beside the desk. A tattered robe hanging from a hook on the back of the door. It took Harry maybe a minute to see the picture frame on the shelf. It had been placed facedown, as if Remus had not wanted to look at it. A snapshot, taken at some point long in the past, a time Harry could not remember. The frame cradled in his hands, Harry stepped back towards the armchair and sat down. There were his parents, smiling into the camera, his father holding a still very small Harry in his arms. Remus was standing next to Lily, his hair not yet streaked with grey, his face not yet looking as tired and worn, his robes not as patched and tattered as they were now. And next to James, Sirius was standing, beaming into the camera. A beater, definitely, Harry picked up his earlier train of thoughts. If Sirius had still played Quidditch at that time. A handsome man, yet not wasted by Azkaban. Young. Smiling. His blue eyes sparkling with mischief and simple joy.

From time to time, Remus would vanish from the picture, and a moment later Peter Pettigrew would appear, waving into the camera from the left side of the picture before vanishing again to send Remus back, but Harry was so wrapped up in his godfather's image that he didn't pay any mind to Pettigrew. As much as he despised the man for all the horrors he had unleashed over Harry's family, he was woven into his parent's past. No matter what had become of him, once he had been his father's friend. Remus' friend. Sirius' friend. He had betrayed them all, had caused this horrible chain of events that had brought nothing but unhappiness into Harry's life, but Harry would not allow him to taint even the few memories he could steal from his parents and Sirius. Wormtail had destroyed too much already, Harry wouldn't let him destroy anything more.

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The meeting went on for another twenty minutes. Not that Remus could keep up with what was being said during that time. Janus' presence still had him far too confused and upset, so he was actually quite glad when Albus called an end to the meeting and the sound of chairs scratching over the tiles filled the room. People began filing out of the room, a few remained behind to exchange a few words with each other, Molly cleared away the dishes, and Tonks occupied herself with waking Dung up. Moody had pulled Janus into a corner near the pantry door and was talking to him in hushed tones, his magical eye revolving wildly. Janus listened to what the older Auror had to say, then responded in equally hushed tones. Contrary to Moody, he didn't seem to be agitated at all. The conversation continued for another few minutes, then Moody ended it with an abrupt gesture, said something else, and began limping towards the door. Remus looked around, astonished to find that he and Janus remained alone in the kitchen. He hadn't even noticed that everybody had left already.

As Remus got up, Janus turned towards him. Remus didn't particularly fancy a conversation with his older brother, but right now it seemed inevitable. Janus re-warmed the coffee in his cup with a quick tap of his wand, then drained it in one gulp.

"Remus", he said as he put the empty cup into the sink to the other dishes. "It's been a long time."

"Nothing new for you, is it?"

Janus shrugged, as if he couldn't care less about how often he saw his brother. Probably he couldn't.

"What do you want?"

Remus frowned. "Pardon?"

A martyr's sigh escaped Janus' lips. He seemed to be practicing those tonight. "You stayed behind and waited until we were alone, and you've got that look on your face which says you're about to start lecturing. So get over with it, I don't have much time."

"I didn't wait for you on purpose. And I have no intention to give you a lecture."

Janus snorted disbelievingly. "That would be a first. Then what do you want? An amicable chat between brothers?"
"With any other brother, that might even be possible. But why did you even come here tonight if you have absolutely no intention to help us?"

"Because Alastor asked me to come along. And had you been paying attention, I did answer all the questions I was asked."

"And of course you didn't hold anything back", Remus said.

"I told you everything you need to know."

"And who made you the one to judge what we need to know?"

Janus shook his head and leaned against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankles. "Remus, if you honestly believe that you can make me tell anything I didn't tell earlier, then you are mistaken."

"That is not the point."

"Then what is the point?", Janus snapped. "Because I slowly tire of this. I'm doing your Order a favour by coming here, but unfortunately I cannot help you in the way you'd have wanted me to. Sad, but true. But that doesn't mean that I can stand at the ready just because Professor Dumbledore might snap his fingers for me in the future. I've got a job to do."

"Even if sharing information, working together with us, might help things?"

"Remus, why don't you just leave law enforcement work to law enforcement specialists?"

"Spare me that, Janus. Spare me that. I don't need you to patronise me, and I don't need your arrogance. You might not be able to see it, but there are people outside the DMLE who are able to work against Voldemort."

"Yes, but it's not my duty to give them the information they need to pursue their little resistance."

"Their little resistance? That's all this is to you, right? Because only the almighty Janus Lupin and his colleagues can fight the war, right?"

"Remus, just because you've got nothing else to do, don't vent your frustration out on me. I can't help you, period. And if doing what you do is your way to keep yourself occupied, fine by me. But don't involve me into this."

Remus just shook his head. "Just when did you become this way, Janus?"

Janus raised a hand, indicating that it would not be wise to pursue this line of thought any further. "Don't go there, Remus. Don't start all this personal, emotional bullshit with me just because your friends have a tendency to die away under your hands and you're obviously not able to deal with it."

"I wouldn't ever waste my time with talking emotional to somebody as cold and self-centred as you! Just because you were never able to make, much less hold friends, you will not dare to judge what I've been going through! And I will not allow you ever to speak of Sirius again like you did earlier, did I make myself clear?"

Janus only laughed. "If you want to threaten me, you'll have to think of something else. Get a grip on your life, Remus, it's about time."

And without waiting for an answer, he turned around and left the kitchen. A few moments later, Remus heard the front door being shut, fortunately not loud enough to wake the portrait of Sirius' mother up. That would have just topped the day. Remus remained standing in the kitchen, breathing hard. Confrontations with Janus always did that to him, though he didn't know why. He always felt tongue-tied, always thought of a hundred things he wanted to tell his brother when the confrontation was long over with. In Janus' presence, he always had enough to do not to lose his composure immediately. He just couldn't stand his brother's presence, he just couldn't.

Remus slammed a hand onto the kitchen table angrily, then he turned around and left the kitchen, heading back for his room upstairs.

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By the time he reached his room, Remus was still upset about his encounter with his brother. Not about what Janus had said about him, Remus was used to that by now. The fact that his lycanthropy stopped him from getting a normal job was not something Remus liked to have rubbed in, but coming from Janus that was not what caused Remus' anger. Not anymore. What had enraged him was how Janus had talked about Sirius, how he had talked about the Order, generally how Janus belittled everything that other people did. Janus had always been arrogant, but slowly he was taking it to the extreme.

So when he finally reached his own bedroom and flung the door open, it took him a moment to notice that Harry was sitting curled up on the armchair underneath the window. The teenager flinched upon Remus' loud and forceful entry and immediately got to his feet.

"Sorry, I shouldn't be in here."

Remus stared at Harry for a moment, as if he had difficulties placing him, then he shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.

"No, it's all right. I didn't notice you at first, I was a bit preoccupied."

"Did something happen?"

"No, it's just…", he waved himself off. "I had an encounter with my brother. I was a bit confused. What brings you here? If you were searching for me, you could have called me out of the meeting."

Harry shook his head. "No, I wasn't…not really at least. I…I don't quite know why I came here."

Remus seemed confused for a moment, then he sat down on the foot-end of the bed and gestured towards the armchair.

"By all means, sit down again. And then tell me what's bothering you."

Harry reluctantly sat, picking up the picture he had dropped onto the armchair earlier. He fingered the frame and looked down at the floor.

"It's nothing, really. No, that's not true. I just couldn't stop thinking about Sirius. Ron tried to distract me, but that didn't work. Then I tried to read, but that didn't work, either. I just thought, you said I could come and talk to you, but you were downstairs, and then I remembered that this had once been Sirius' room. I know I shouldn't have come in here without asking first, but I thought that, you know, that something in here might remind me of him. I found the picture on the shelf. I'm sorry, I really didn't want to pry."

Remus put a hand on Harry's knee and silently looked him in the eyes until the teenager stopped babbling.

"It's all right, Harry. Really." He looked around the room. "Though I'm afraid that while you're right and this has once been Sirius' room, there hasn't remained much to remind of him. He hadn't been living at Grimmauld Place since he was seventeen, those things he left behind back then have disposed of by his parents long ago. Tonks and I found the boxes with everything that was confiscated after his arrest in the attic. Sirius went through the boxes once after he arrived here, but he didn't unpack much. I couldn't bring myself to do it, either. So there isn't all that much here. But you can go up to the attic and have a look at the boxes anytime." His eyes fell onto the framed picture in Harry's hands. "That is one of the few things Sirius brought down here. That and the picture I gave you. After everything that happened, however, I found that I couldn't look at it anymore. That is why you found it lying face-down on the shelf."

Harry looked down at the picture, and Remus asked himself for how long the teenager had been sitting here already.

"That was taken about three months after you were born. Sirius' birthday, October 26th. He didn't throw a big party, but he invited all of us over for the evening. He even cooked. Merlin, that was awful, I can tell you. I've never eaten a worse lasagne in my entire life. He even managed to over-salt the salad. In the end, we called out for takeaway food because nobody was able to eat any of it." He laughed and shook his head. "Looking back, it didn't matter, we still had a great evening."

Harry's eyes had misted over. "I didn't even know when Sirius' birthday was", he said in a rough voice. Remus gave his knee another squeeze, then leaned back against the wall so that he could still look at Harry.

For a few moments, they sat there in silence. Harry was fingering the frame of the photograph, and didn't manage to tear his eyes away from Sirius' smiling face.

"There's so much I don't know about him. He appeared in my life over two years ago, and still I don't know anything about him."

Finally, he looked up at Remus. "Can you tell me something about him? Only if you want to, if not you don't have to."

Remus smiled gently. "Of course I can. What do you want to hear?"

Harry shrugged, his fingers nervously working over the glass beneath which the image of his parents and godfather was caught. "I don't know. Just something about him, something good."

"Then I most certainly won't tell you anything about his never ending attempts at using a kitchen. Those were never good."

That did the trick and brought a small smile onto Harry's face. Remus thought for a moment.

"I don't quite know where to start. The Sirius you have gotten to know…Azkaban has changed him. No small wonder, it has taken a lot away from him. Not only time to live and experience, it has left many scars. Over the past year, I often had the feeling that I had to get to know him anew. But one thing I learned quickly – Azkaban had not changed the person he was, inside. Some parts of it were buried deeper than before, but he had not become an entirely different person. Though at times that was hard to believe, having known Sirius before he went to Azkaban. There were times when he was depressed, and during those times it was hard to recognise the old Sirius again. Living in this house didn't do him any good, either.

One thing that never changed about him was that he is an incredible friend. Has always been. There is a saying. A good friend stands in harm's way for you the moment you ask – but a great friend does it without being asked at all. That has always been Sirius' understanding of friendship – incredible devotion. To those whom he let close, he was such a great friend, one who always wanted to keep the others from coming to harm, even if it meant that he had to put himself in harm's way for it. Like when he immediately volunteered to become your parents' secret keeper, and I'm absolutely sure that nobody would have managed to get any information out of him, no matter what they did.

One of his biggest talents is that he could always read people very well. He knew when somebody was not telling him the truth, when things were kept from him or when there was something wrong. Not always, like all of us he didn't see the truth about Peter, but Sirius had a knack for judging people and their behaviour. And when he sensed that something was wrong with his friends he didn't let go until he had found out which way there was for him to help. Fierce and incredibly loyal, that describes him pretty well. It has always been either entirely or not at all for him, either he was behind something with all his heart, or not at all."

"Did he and my Dad know each other before they came to Hogwarts?"

Remus smiled and shook his head. "No. I don't even think they met on the train. I remember seeing James with some boys he knew who later ended up in Ravenclaw. The first I became consciously aware of them together was after the sorting. Sirius had ended up opposite of James, right next to me. Already back then, Sirius had been a very exuberant personality, and he ended up entertaining our end of the table with the plans he had made for his first weeks at Hogwarts. What happened between him and James was the friendship equivalent of love at first sight." He laughed. "They just matched. It happens often that childhood or teenage friendships don't work out, but after a few weeks already it became obvious that this would not be the case between your father and godfather. It just…it was as if they were meant to meet. What Sirius lacked, James had, and vice versa. Sometimes I got the feeling that there were moments when they didn't even need to speak to understand each other. It was downright scary at times. They did have their fights, and if you were unlucky to be in their vicinity when that happened, you could get the feeling that the world was coming to an end, but it was always over as quickly as it came. James and Sirius both knew that they needed each other far too much than to spend their time fighting. They were both extremely devoted and loyal when it came to friendships."

"Yes, and if I can believe everybody, Sirius was also rash, impulsive, and basically not a good person."

Remus looked up at the teenager, a slight frown on his face. He thought for a moment before he answered.

"Sirius is a good person. Has always been. Don't let anybody tell you something else. But he has never been a saint. Like any other human being, Sirius has flaws in character. Personally, I think that his good sides outweighed his flaws by far, but even I cannot deny that he has them. Which doesn't make him a bad person. Everybody has their flaws in character."

"Then why does everybody keep talking about him as if he had been a bad person?"

"I cannot tell you why people talk the way they do. But I don't think that anybody you know considers Sirius a bad person. Except from Severus maybe, but that's another story. Some might not like him as much as others, but that happens with everybody. I wouldn't think that everybody who talks about Sirius' vices negates that he had good sides as well. They just don't explicitly mention them."

"I don't quite see the sense in talking badly about a person they consider dead. Whether or not they liked him. And let's be honest, nobody here in the Order seemed to be overly sad that Sirius was gone."

Remus sighed deeply. "Not as sad as you and I, probably not. But I'd still not say that they were left cold by it."

Harry shrugged awkwardly, but he didn't say anything. Remus didn't know whether anything he would say could convince the teenager that he wasn't the only one who cared about Sirius. And in all honesty, the degree of grief the other Order members had shown upon his death had not exactly been high. And while Remus knew that one way or another, Sirius' death had affected them, he also knew that it certainly wasn't as much as it had affected Harry, or him.

"What was it like, living with him?"

Remus smiled. "Seven years during which you never knew what he'd come up with next. Already at the age of eleven, he had a hard time sitting still. He always needed something to occupy himself with. Lessons – but only if they were interesting – Quidditch, pranking, investigating the castle, Sirius was a package of perpetual restlessness. Not that he literally couldn't sit still, or that he was bouncing up and down during lessons. It was just that he needed to occupy himself somehow, physically, and with his mind. And as Sirius was an incredibly talented wizard, he never had to work hard for most lessons. There were some subjects which he had to work for a bit harder, but aside from Divination there was nothing that posed any real trouble for him. He always had the ability to grasp things quickly, not only how to master them, but also to understand the theory of why those things worked the way they did. So because he didn't have to work overly hard for school, he had to occupy himself otherwise. He was a prankster from the very first days at Hogwarts, but that quickly developed away from throwing Dungbombs into the girls lavatories. The schemes he and James cooked up became more and more sophisticated. And after a few nights of sneaking around under James' invisibility cloak, we developed the idea to draw a map of Hogwarts. It wasn't as easy as we had imagined it to be, so it became a project we spent more than two years on. And then of course there was their project to become animagi. And despite all that, he managed to exceed in his lessons and be on the Quidditch team.

That is one of the reasons why he was so unhappy last year. Sirius has always been a man who needed to do something. It was driving him insane that all he could do was hang around the house, sit in the Order meetings and listen to others telling about what they were doing. He just couldn't stand it, he felt useless. Of course he couldn't just go out and leave Grimmauld Place, but he should have been given at least a little task that would have made him feel useful."

Harry had put the picture down into his lap and was nervously twisting his fingers. He didn't look up at Remus, and despite his sixteen years he looked so much like a forlorn child that Remus wanted to get up and hug him. He settled on scooting forward so that he could put a hand on Harry's arm. Harry hesitantly looked up at him.

"He cares about you. Deeply so. And the two of you will finally get the time to get to know each other. You'll get your firsthand experience at what living with Sirius is like. He's a great friend, and he'll be a great godfather once all this is over."

Harry smiled shakily, not at all convincingly, and Remus bent forward and hugged him tightly. Harry clung to him for a moment, then he released Remus, leant back on the armchair and pulled his knees up to his chest. Remus leaned back against the wall again and watched Harry.

"What you did in the Department of Mysteries…"

Harry turned his head sharply. "We have talked about that already."

Remus smiled. "I wasn't going to give you another lecture. What I wanted to say was that what you did that night…that was something Sirius would have done. That's what I meant earlier when I said that he is an incredibly devoted friend. He'd do just about anything for somebody he holds dear, completely disregarding at what cost for himself. I don't particularly fancy the idea of either him or you risking your lives, but hold on to that devotion. It's a good thing." He folded his hands across his lap and looked up at the ceiling. "There was this one time, at the end of our fifth year. We were all studying for out O.W.L.s. Sirius and James weren't in any danger of failing any tests, but there were courses for which they had to work quite hard to get the grades they wanted to have. Potions was no piece of cake, and neither was Charms for Sirius or Transfiguration for James. Not to mention History of Magic. We all had classes to attend to, and the final Quidditch match against Ravenclaw was set for the afternoon after the last O.W.L.s, so Sirius and James also had Quidditch training every night. You know how it is before the O.W.L.s, everybody is wired up, stays up late to do more learning even though they're dead tired. And on the evening before the tests in Transfiguration – that was the last test – Peter panicked. He always panicked before exams, that was nothing unusual. He had more difficulties in learning what came easily to most of us. A bit like what I got to know about Neville. But this time, Peter panicked worse than usual. It turned out he was behind on his learning schedule, and horribly so. Recapping the first four years had taken him so long that he had not even started on the things we had covered in the fifth year lessons, and it was the evening before the exam.

Transfiguration has always been Sirius' forte at school, and when Peter threw a fit that evening in the common room as he realised that he'd not get an entire year's worth of Transfiguration into his head in one night, Sirius sat down with him and explained it. And again. And again. Peter was the kind of student who had a tendency to give up when he didn't grasp something immediately, pushing it off until later. Only this time there was no later. So Sirius did his best to get it into Peter's head, until half past four in the morning. Never minding that between his lessons and Quidditch and learning for the tests, he had not had that much sleep during the previous nights as well. I had to literally throw him out of bed the next morning because he didn't want to get up. He even fell asleep in the middle of the test, and you can believe me that Professor McGonagall wasn't exactly enthusiastic about that. I think he preferred being thrown out of bed by me to being woken by a furious Minerva during his exam.

He was lucky that the Quidditch match that afternoon didn't last all that long, otherwise he'd have probably fallen off his broom. And in the evening, while everybody was celebrating that the exams were finally over and that Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup, Sirius lay curled up on a sofa in the common room, snoring loudly. Peter was horrified that Sirius had missed the party because of him, but Sirius only said that the main thing was that he had passed the O.W.L.s. Which Peter did. Later, when we were out of Hogwarts and the war was raging, this devotion more than once nearly had more serious effects than a missed party. As we grew up and the world around us grew darker, saving a friend from harm required greater sacrifices than a sleepless night, but there was never any doubt that Sirius was willing to bring that sacrifice. That is one of the things that is uniquely Sirius – you can always rely on him, no matter what."

"Like when he came after me into the Department of Mysteries."

Remus nodded. "Yes, like that. He…during the war, he always gave the impression that he wasn't afraid of dying. That could become unnerving, more than once I was afraid that he didn't have enough fear of dying to take proper care that he'd come back alive. Janus is like that as well, but unlike Sirius he has a complete disregard for what effect what he's doing had on him or others. I always told myself that Sirius enjoyed life far too much to even take dying into consideration, but it was always him I worried about most. It was so ambivalent. I was constantly scared that something might happen to him, and yet I never really allowed myself to believe that it could become true. Sirius was always…he was larger than life. Already during our time at school. When you're young, exuberant and also a bit reckless, but talented and intelligent enough to get out of everything relatively unscathed, it's not difficult to believe that you're immortal. It definitely wasn't difficult to believe that Sirius was immortal, because it was just impossible to imagine that he could no longer be there one day. And then he had to fall through that stupid archway and had to turn everything upside down."

"Mrs. Weasley would have called it rash and impulsive."

Remus shifted slightly on the bed. "Molly and Sirius have an own story, one which might shed a different light on those remarks."

"Yeah, Bill told me about it. When he and Mr. Weasley got into that safe-house where Sirius was planning a trap."

Remus nodded. "That was the breaking point, yes. It started much earlier, though. Those two simply never got along, they were too different to ever become close. But there is a somewhat true core to what Molly said, though not as negative as you might have understood it. But impulsive describes Sirius actually pretty well. Of course he can plan ahead. Planning has always been one of the things Sirius was actually pretty good at. But the best plans sometimes do not work out, and you reach the point where you have to improvise. And though he is a good planner, improvising was always his forte. Reading situations, reacting accordingly, trusting his gut feelings to tell him what to do. That is why he didn't always see the necessity to plan ahead, because he knew he had the ability to get through even without making detailed plans about everything he was about to do. Of course Sirius tended to act impulsively, but he could afford that. However, Sirius never took risks which he couldn't justify. He never risked anybody else's life intentionally. Which is something Molly saw differently, but then again she has a different view on life. Sirius was always only responsible for his own life, Molly had a family to think about. She saw Sirius differently than you or I do. This doesn't mean that she is right with what she thinks about Sirius. As I said, he has never been a saint. But he is and has always been a good person. A person I'd entrust with my life and everything that's important to me at any time, because I know that he'd do everything in his power to protect me. It's a trait about him I once doubted, one I will never doubt again."

Harry still had his head bent down and was looking at his knees. "Hagrid said that he had died in battle, that this was the way he would have wanted to die. It made me so angry that I couldn't even respond to it."

"No, he definitely wouldn't have wanted to die by falling through an archway. Even if it was while duelling Bellatrix. Knowing Sirius, he'd have laughed about it as a ridiculous idea. Besides, I doubt that Sirius would have wanted to die. Period. No matter what way. But I firmly believe that he'd have accepted dying as a possibility if it was for something he deemed worth dying for. Like protecting you. To get you out of the Department of Mysteries that night, Sirius wouldn't have worried whether he was doing something glorious or something ridiculous, as long as you came out of it alive. Assuring that, he'd also have accepted dying by a poisonous butterfly-bite."

"Not exactly a way to go, one way or another."

Remus bent forward and lifted Harry's chin up with his hand. "Sirius didn't want to die. Never. But he accepted it as a possibility if it was for something that was important to him. Like you are important to him. I don't need to rely on guesswork to tell you that."

Harry breathed in deeply. "But he didn't die. Not yet. We brought him back."

"Yes. And won't let him die now, and we'll bring him fully back. I have no idea how to do it, but I'll make sure you'll get him back."

Harry smiled shakily at Remus. "I know. I just…I just want him back so badly. So badly it hurts."

"I miss him too, and it's not bad to feel like that. I want that stubborn old dog back, as well."

Harry remained sitting in the armchair for a few minutes longer, a companionable silence hanging between him and Remus. Eventually, he got up and placed the framed photograph back onto the shelf, though not face-down like he had found it.

"I'll best head back to my room and go to bed, it's already late."

"Come back anytime you want to talk, I'll be here to listen."

"I know, thank you. Good night."

"Good night, Harry."

Remus remained sitting on the bed after Harry had left the room. It was past eleven already, but he didn't feel tired or wanted to go to bed. Instead, he leaned out of the bed so that he could reach his briefcase next to the desk. He pulled it up onto the bed, opened the old and loose clasp and pulled out the parchments he had taken notes on during his earlier research in the Hogwarts library. There was a way to bring Sirius back, he only had to find it.