Harry Potter flipped onto his side, mostly just for a change of scenery; he had been laying in the dark in 12 Grimmauld Place, very much awake, for the past hour, staring at the exact same space of wall. His mind couldn't seem to settle… one minute it would be churning with so many thoughts his head would throb; the next it would be completely blank, empty. He shook his head slightly, so that his bangs fell in his eyes; this made him angry, and he roughly brushed them out of his face again. It took next to nothing to make him angry lately… Hearing a small yawn from Phineas Nigellus' empty portrait, he felt the sudden urge to pick up something heavy and heave it as hard as he could at the stupid portrait, but resisted, turning his thoughts instead, unwillingly, to the thing that had so haunted him for the past several days… Sirius' death.
What tormented him more than anything else, even his own utter stupidity up to that point, were the moments of and just before his death. It seemed to him that the whole terrible ordeal could have been avoided in so many different ways… if Sirius hadn't been duelling Bellatrix… if Sirius had been less cocky and more, well, serious… if Bellatrix had only missed him one more time… a very small, stubborn part of Harry even believed that if Lupin hadn't held him back, he, Harry, could've saved Sirius, he could've pulled him back from behind the veil… of course, general logic could tell him this wasn't true, there was no coming back from there. But then, how did he know? How could anyone possibly know whether or not Sirius could've reappeared from behind the veil?
They couldn't… and that was just it. Harry could see no way that Lupin, or anyone, could've known… His heart gave a small pang, as though vast, hollow space inside him where Sirius should have been was expanding a very little bit (he'd thought it impossible), and he flipped onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He knew it wasn't Lupin's fault. He didn't want to be angry with Lupin. But he couldn't help it… even being alone in the same house with him was disconcerting at the moment.
Harry had been unnecessarily cold with him, and a very small part of him felt sorry for it. He felt very faintly guilty, knowing he must have only been making Lupin feel worse the past few days. But it would be impossible for anyone to ever feel as horrible and miserable as Harry was feeling right now. And perhaps the worst part of the whole thing was that it seemed like he would always feel this way.
Downstairs, Remus Lupin moved his head ever so slightly, the bones in his neck clicking, stiff from hours of no movement. The man sat with his back against the crumbling wall of a shadowed living room and had done the same for hours on end, having moved for nothing but the agonizing transformation he had had to face the night before, leaving the house and Harry to be looked after by other of the Order members. A dim, flickering ray of light from one of the only street lamps that still worked out on the muggle streets outside slivered over his pallid, thin face, illuminating dried blood across one cheek from a cut he had obtained while in his wolf form.
There were several more bite and scratch marks on his body than usual, mainly because he had managed to calm himself temporarily by focusing on the pain of them rather than everything else. He blamed himself. He was not certain why, but he did. Sirius had been all he had had. It would have been Sirius who would encourage him to eat, like he always had done. Another crack of bones could be heard as Remus' back arched, his face in his hands as he heard Sirius' voice in his head: "Come on, Moony, you're a stick. Eat something, or you'll end up like me" followed by that bark like laugh. A dry sob escaped his lips, a pained expression on his face. A voice in his head pulled him back to reality: "Harry." He could not let his dead friends' son see him like this; the boy needed all the support that he, Remus, had now lost.
With immense difficultly he got up, clutching and scratching at the wall for support as he grew dizzy; the result of his weak state. Slowly and unsteadily he made his way to an armchair, falling limply into it. A hand reached for the now stale loaf of bread he had left there the night before and he ate it hungrily, following it with a mouthful of an amber liquid that ran slightly over his chin. He leaned back, observing the grate of glowing ash. He had to stay strong for Harry, however overwhelming the pain may be.
After another half an hour, it became clear that Harry was going to get no sleep for the second night in a row. He dragged himself out of bed and made his way slowly downstairs, hoping Lupin would be asleep so Harry could avoid him... unfortunately, he was still awake. Harry ignored him and sat down next to the fire for a minute, but eventually snuck a glance at him, and gasped slightly in alarm. "Professor Lupin... what... are you...?" His insides gave another guilty squirm at the sight of his face.
Remus turned to Harry, only now fully aware that he had come into the room. His lips twitched faintly in what would have been a smile as he asked, with a hint of vague confusion mixed with the pain, "What...do you mean, Harry?" His eyes fell over the boy's alarmed face, taking in the now familiar image of a young James with deliberate mistakes, the stab of memory scraping at his heart as it usually did when he set eyes on Harry.
Harry continued to stare at Lupin for a minute, then realized that his mouth was hanging open and closed it abruptly. He averted his gaze to the wall opposite him instead. "I dunno... you just don't look very, er... well. Are you alright?" But what a stupid question... If he was feeling anything like Harry was, then of course he wasn't alright... glancing at him again, Harry noticed that he also looked much more thin and pale than usual.
Remus ran a slightly bony hand over his cheek and brought it down, looking at the flecks of blood with a look of vague surprise and amusement. After several moments he looked back at Harry, concealing his true feelings from view as he always had done as a child, and said slowly; "We have all suffered a great loss...very great," and turned to the fire yet again, taking up his wand in a shaking hand and setting the fire alight again.
Harry's stomach gave a lurch. Of course they'd 'suffered a great loss,' but he'd thought that Lupin at least would be a bit more sympathetic, and less like Dumbledore... he was tired of people being practical about it... but as he turned to say something in anger, something occurred to him as he looked at Lupin's face. They were more alike than he'd realized... Harry's parents had been Lupin's best friends, so they'd both lost them... and Sirius... Harry blinked rapidly several times, and after a few minutes, turned away from Lupin.
The werewolf spoke hoarsely to the sprouting flames, not looking at the boy; "I take it...You could not…sleep?" He glanced at the boy as he replied, "No, I couldn't... haven't been able to lately, actually..."
Remus bowed his head in an attempted nod and said in a soft tone; "No, I suppose not… neither have I." He was unsure why he was saying this to the boy, for he knew he had to give all of his support to him, be positive and, like the other handful of Order members and close friends, avoid the matter completely. Yet that was foolish: a direct insult to Sirius' memory, and as his sullen eyes met with Harry's momentarily, his lips twitched again in what would have been a smile; he seemed to know what the boy had been thinking. His eyes flickered back to the flames, his hands digging into the armchair's cloth, violently attempting to suppress the memories of his friends that unwillingly flashed before his eyes momentarily.
Harry had offered a very small smile as their eyes met, but stopped fairly quickly... it felt like his muscles were having to stretch awfully hard to do it, like he hadn't smiled in years... He stared into the fire for several minutes, his mind blank. Turning back to look at Lupin, he noticed that his eyes had a faraway look, as though Lupin was in another time, another place... and suddenly memories came rushing to Harry's mind that he would much rather have forgotten... A jet of red light; Sirius falling slowly through the curtain; Bellatrix's triumphant scream; to Harry's horror, he felt a hard lump rise painfully in his throat. He shifted his gaze to stare at the floor, trying hard to swallow.
Blurred sounds and images seemed to flare up in front of Remus: echoing laughter. The sly, mischievous grin Sirius' young face always seemed to have carried, a younger James smirking as he held a struggling, stolen snitch between his fingers, showing off to passing people. Both of them were gone. They had left him behind; both had left him to deal with all the problems and worry, like they had always done when they were back at school. His hand curled into a fist until his knuckles were white. He glared down at the flames dancing playfully in the grate below, his eyes somewhat bright as reality dawned on the werewolf yet again. He was being foolish and he knew it. It was selfish to blame it on them, for James and Sirius had hardly wanted to die. It all seemed so unreal…
Harry turned slightly in his chair to stare at Lupin some more, mostly to take his mind off of Sirius. He was slightly startled when he saw the look in Lupin's eyes, because he had a very strong feeling he'd seen it before, very recently... and then he realized where he'd seen it: staring out of the mirror at him... it was the look he'd had in his eyes for the past several days, when he'd been blaming Lupin for Sirius being gone... "I'm sorry," he muttered, staring at the floor once more, though he knew Lupin wouldn't know what he was talking about. "I am... I didn't mean to..."
Remus showed little sign of having heard Harry, always having been good at concealing fright or other weak feelings; he had, however, jumped when the boy spoke, almost having totally forgotten that Harry was there. He turned slowly to look at the boy, allowing his clenched hand to relax so as not to alarm the boy. His lips twitched ever so slightly into what might have been a calm smile as he croaked a reply in his hoarse tone: "What…do you mean, Harry?" His sullen, tired hazel eyes met again with the bright emerald ones across from him, as though already knowing what the boy had meant. A confused yet meaningful question ran through his mind: were he and the boy really that similar when it came to grieving over lost ones?
Harry stood up abruptly and began pacing the length of the room, idly running a hand through his hair. He continued to pace for several minutes, never taking his eyes of the floor, until at length he stopped, several feet from Lupin, and looked up at him, again noting how much older and more tired he looked than he remembered him being at school. "Look, I know these past few days I haven't been exactly… friendly to you. The thing is, er… you know I haven't been exactly happy, of course I've been feeling awful because of… well…" He cleared his throat hastily. "But the thing is, I've sort of been… blaming it on you." He couldn't look at Lupin anymore; he strode over to the window, leaning his arm on the cool glass pane and his forehead on his arm, then continued as if addressing the dark street outside. "I've been thinking, maybe if you hadn't held me back… maybe it would've been different… but I know it's not your fault. You didn't want this to happen any more than I did. And I shouldn't have been so cold and awful to you, you don't… deserve that…" His voice faltered-- he trailed off and continued to stare out the window. At length he began again, in a voice barely above a whisper. "I suppose I'm trying to say… I'm sorry, Remus." That surprised Harry… he had never addressed Lupin by his first name before. "Sir," he added quietly, not taking his eyes away from the empty street.