Remus stepped back from the door, suddenly realizing that he should listen to Dumbledore, but he couldn't bring himself to leave, nor could he force himself to walk through the door in front of him.
Oh, Remus, just get over it, what are you so afraid of?
I'm not afraid. He thought, more or less trying to convince himself. I have every right to be scared of him. He took our friendship and ended it when he betrayed James and Lily, and then killed Peter. What's to stop him from killing me the minute I walk through the door? Maybe I'm afraid because he has powers I could never even dream of. Or maybe I'm afraid oh how… No, that's not it. I couldn't do that…
Remus stared straight at the door, the only thing separating him from the murderous man he had once called a friend.
He took a deep breath, and pushed the door open. He stood silhouetted in the doorway for a few seconds before he entered the cellblock.
He gasped at how cold it was on the other side of the door, and then he froze sold as he saw Sirius sleeping almost peacefully on the floor just feet from where he stood.
Even thought a jail door separated them, Remus felt as if he'd never been closer to Sirius then he was at that moment. A moment that Remus realized could possibly be from each of their darkest hours.
As Remus stood watching Sirius' chest rising and falling, he was put in mind of the darkest hour of someone else…
Sirius has just been sentenced to life in Azkaban, and Remus wasn't the only one who was falling apart because of it. The other members of the Order, Dumbledore and even many of Sirius' old school mates were having problems dealing with it.
But Remus doubted that no one was suffering as much as Carly was, and he was very correct in that assumption.
After Ali and himself had broken up because he was obsessive over Sirius, hoping that he could turn him from Voldemort, Remus knew that he had to talk to someone. Someone who might possibly understand how he was feeling. That someone was Carly.
He traveled to her house by Flu Powder, thinking that at that point walking was such a Muggle cliché, seeing as Muggles always went for a walk when they had things on their minds.
He arrived at her house, only to find her staring with a blank look on her face at the wall in front of her. But it wasn't the look on her face that disturbed him it was her eyes. They were glazed over, and Remus could tell even from across the room that they weren't their usual dark brown, they weren't even brown anymore, but hazel. That was when noticed that she was shaking uncontrollably, but he knew that it wasn't because she was cold.
She'd made herself sick. Not physically sick, but emotionally sick, and it had begun to affect her body.
Before he even got to her side she began to talk to him, "I've been wondering when you'd be coming, Remus."
He stopped beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. "You might have lost a friend, Remus, but I lost the one man I'd let myself love in close to ten years. I know we weren't together or anything, but that doesn't change that I loved him, and that I knew that he liked me.
" It probably doesn't make sense, but when you've lived the greater part of your life afraid of loving someone, you don't want the first person you love to do anything to hurt you. Sirius was the person I felt could be that person I could trust, and against my fear, I let myself like him. I shouldn't have, because he's hurt me worse than anyone else has.
"He betrayed his best friends, and tore apart so many lives. What hurt me the most was how he had me convinced that he was a good guy, how I let myself believe it. Remus, because of him, I'll never be able to let myself love another person. Having someone I love betray me once was enough, I didn't need for it to happen twice."
"He betrayed everyone, not just you, Carly. It hurts all of us; you don't need to be making yourself sick like this. Everyone is upset about it, there should be no reason why you're suffering the most." Remus tried to calm her down, to convince her that she wasn't alone in her suffering.
"But there's no way you could know how alone I feel right now. He was your best friend, but I bet your best friend has never betrayed you before now. If so, you might know how I feel."
Remus frowned, wanting to help her through the pain, but he didn't know how. He couldn't help someone if he didn't know how he or she was feeling.
"Remus, I'm going to tell you something that I haven't told anyone in almost ten years…"
For the next hour, Remus sat listening intently to every word that Carly said about her tragic past with her one loved one. How she'd made one simple mistake, and he'd over reacted, turning away from her, turning all her friends against her.
He'd stolen her trust, her friends, and drove her to a point that was quite near suicide; a point that she'd teetered on for almost two years; a point that challenged her everyday of that time period.
When she was finished Remus understood why what Sirius has done was killing her inside, why it was affecting her worse than anyone else.
She looked at him, and with great relief he realized that having told him what she'd kept inside for so long had taken tons of stress off of her feeble emotional state.
She smiled, "Thanks for listening, Remus. I feel much better now. I think I needed someone to trust, someone who wasn't going to betray me. I'm glad that you're that person, Remus."
"Anytime, Carly, anytime. Besides, why should we be two brokenhearted beings apart if we can be two brokenhearted beings who suffer together? Don't worry, I'll always be here for you."
Remus stood glaring at the sleeping form of Sirius. Even if five minutes before he'd had mixed feelings towards the traitor, he knew now exactly how he felt.
He hated the man he'd once considered one of his best friends. He hated him for how he'd betrayed Lily and James to their deaths, how he'd taken Harry's parents from him. He hated how he'd killed Peter and then denied it. He hated him for causing the breakup of himself and Ali. Most of all though he hated how much pain Sirius has caused everyone, especially Carly.
In the short time since Sirius' imprisonment, Carly and Remus had become so close, such honest ad loyal friends. Remus cared deeply for Carly, and helped her suffer through her pain.
Pain that had all been caused by Sirius.
No, though Remus, Sirius doesn't deserve company, no one who caused Carly pain deserves any happiness.
With that resolution, Remus decided to leave. After all, Sirius betrayed his friends. Even if he does remember me, why would he want to see me, if I never meant anything to him in the first place?
He turned to leave, but something caught his eye in the moonlight. He squinted in the darkness, trying to make out the strange shapes in the ground beside Sirius. He edged closer, his curiosity winning out over his fear of the inmate.
He was only two feet away from Sirius before he could fully see what it was that had caught his eye. He gasped as he realized that it was writing etched into the mud.
It was writing that belonged to Sirius, a fact that Remus would know before anyone else because of all the times he had corrected Sirius' assignments when they had attended Hogwarts.
Remus leaned closer, trying to get the best view of the writing, pressing his face against the bars, all fear forgotten as he became engulfed in the words he was reading.
The words that had been carved into the muddy ground by Sirius' own hands, words that Sirius has been writing ever since he'd started to remember the things he'd once forgotten.
Tears began to run down Remus' face as he sat in the cold cellblock, experiencing first hand the things that Sirius had never intended for anyone to see.
Well, there she blows. I'm sorry it took so long to update, I feel HORRIBLE about that. Hopefully, you'll all be able to forgive me when I tell you that it's because I've been busy with life, school, and I wrote two one-shots fics that I'll be posting within the next couple of days.
Sorry, don't have time tonight to reply to all my readers, but thanks to my faithful ones, and thanks even more to my new readers, I hope you'll hang in with me until the end! So, until next time, have a nice read!