3.

In all the years that came after, Remus never forgot the strange three hours he spent with Sirius' magically enhanced reflection, sitting at a shabby sidewalk table in a seedy pub in Knockturn Alley. Remus had ordered them both drinks and he had been relieved to see that Sirius' estimations had been correct; the thing could indeed drink naturally, just as though it was a living being. He had also made sure that the two of them would look convincing to any observers by keeping a covert eye on Bagman (who was seated among some goblins inside the pub), and by "conversing" with the effigy at intervals. Years later, he would have no clear recollection of all the inane prattle he must have babbled at the thing; but he would never forget the interested look on the effigy's face and the polite inclination of its head as it appeared to be listening to him attentively.

Remus, in between keeping up a stream of conversational gibberish, ordering rounds now and again, and playing decoy, also kept a sharp lookout on his wristwatch, making sure he would not exceed the time limit set on his magical companion's existence. The three hours that had been pre-marked as the limit had seemed to him to pass excruciatingly slowly, and he had felt more and more … disturbed as the time had crawled by.

Certainly it was a bizarre and rather unnerving situation, and it was only natural that he should feel a bit nervous; he was engaged in an important espionage operation, after all. But what really disturbed him most was the way he could not quite shake off his feeling of comfort with the thing, his ease with it, his vague feelings of protectiveness and affection toward it. It was only a spell; he knew that intellectually, he knew it wasn't his boyhood friend or his comrade-in-arms; nor was it the treasured companion of his bed and his love. It wasn't Sirius. It was only a piece of rather brilliant magic temporarily inhabiting Sirius' well-known shape. But that familiar shape had long since found its accustomed niche in Remus' deepest emotions, and he was learning that what had been designed only to fool the eye could also, given time, begin to fool the heart.

He would often catch himself staring intently at the effigy, searching for the minute differences between the copy and the original, looking for the tiny details that could differentiate Sirius himself from Sirius' embodied mirror-image in Remus' own mind. Looking for any small differences, and finding none. Remus would catch himself doing this, and he would shake off his own unease with an effort and make some new, pointless remark, or order another round of drinks, or make a show of gazing toward the inside of the pub, as though he was looking for Bagman (who, just as they had hoped, had snuck out the back way after some forty-five minutes, and had, if all had gone well, encountered a big black stray among the rubbish bins behind the bar). Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Remus would always find himself staring at the effigy again, and the whole process would repeat itself. And in this slow, uneasy way, three hours gradually passed.

After checking his watch a final time, Remus was just about to stand up and make his good-byes, and was feeling both relieved to be going yet also strangely reluctant to abandon his temporary companion. He was just draping his scarf around his neck and rising from his chair when the effigy heaved a great, gusty sigh and raised its eyes turned towards him mournfully.

"I'm bored, Moony," it said.

Remus abruptly sat back down in his chair, hard. "What?" he gasped.

"This is boring, just sitting here like this," the effigy said. "I don't like it. Aren't you tired of it?"

"I – I – I was just thinking of leaving…" Remus mumbled inanely, and rubbed his hands over his eyes, before gazing at the effigy once more.

"I don't blame you. I expect I'll be leaving soon too. From what Sirius said back there in the alley, I think my time is almost up. Good thing, too, because I'm sick of this awful pub. Did you notice how dirty these glasses are?"

"I – I – I'm not – I-"

The effigy laughed. "It's cute, when you stutter that way. I like that. But hadn't you better get going? It's been what – about three hours and fifteen minutes?"

Remus found himself peeking at his watch again before he knew what he was doing. Then he caught himself and stared at the effigy once more. "You …can talk," he said, shaking his head, a bit dazed. "And … you were listening, back in the alley? You heard what…Sirius… said? About you, I mean?"

"Sure I heard. Three hours and forty-five minutes, along with my complete purpose in life. I'm lucky, in a way – I imagine Sirius doesn't know how exactly how long he'll live or exactly why he was born. Not that I was born, precisely, but you understand the analogy."

"Why – why didn't you say anything sooner?" Remus asked. "You've just been sitting here like a …like a wax dummy all evening."

The effigy smiled. "You were talking. I like listening to you talk."

"You like listening to me talk?" Remus repeated stupidly, at a loss.

"Of course. You're funny and you're nice. And I love you, don't I?"

"No," Remus whispered in reply, unaccountably horrified. "No, you don't. You can't."

"Well, I admit it came as something of a surprise, when I first realized. There you were, blathering on and on about those two new rare editions you got such a bargain on at Flourish and Blotts last week, and then there it was. I knew. But it's not so strange, really, Moony, is it? Sirius loves you, doesn't he? And he's me … in a way … or I'm him …sort of …or something like that, anyway."

"But you're not him," Remus objected. "You're not. He said so himself."

The effigy chuckled again. "Oh, I expect it's probably more a case of yes and no - but you know how he is. He thinks he knows everything. Or …well, we think we know everything, I suppose. We're awfully conceited, you know."

Now Remus rubbed his forehead, vigorously. He felt as if he'd just fallen down a rabbit hole.

"Of course, we really do have a few things to be conceited about," the effigy continued. "I think his new spell just worked a lot better than he ever expected it would. I wish you wouldn't be upset, Moony."

"I'm not upset … I'm just … just …" Remus let his voice trail off.

"Just running late, for one thing," the effigy said, and reached across the table and tapped at the watch on Remus' wrist. "You really should go."

Remus could not remember a time in his life when his emotions had ever been in such an abysmally confused snarl. "But …" he said, and then stopped, trying to find the right words to express the inexpressible and gazing silently at the figure seated across the table from him. A problematical entity that had been raised by magic far more powerful than its originator had ever intended and was both a magical wonder and a magical mistake. An entity that, in word and deed and thought, was Sirius, and yet was not.

A living, feeling being doomed by a miscalculation at birth to the life expectancy of a mayfly.

"But now I can't just leave you here," Remus continued at last, however reluctant he was to speak the truth, to face the truth he had only just discovered. "Surely you can understand that? I can't just leave you to face what's coming next alone. When you do … return to the pentacle you came from …you won't have to go alone. I'll go with you – be there at the end with you."

The effigy frowned deeply, and the expression reminded Remus so vividly of all the times that Sirius had strongly disagreed with him that it raised a lump in his throat.

"No!" it said. "No – I don't want you to do that. Please don't do that."

"But I want-"

"I don't care. I don't want you to see it. I don't want to see you seeing it. I don't think you really want to see it either. Do you really want to watch …Sirius … vanish into nothing before your eyes?"

"I …no, I don't. But I think I might owe you a little consider-"

"If I were the man and not just the copy, maybe you might be obligated. But I'm not really Sirius; you know that, you just said that. It will be the living image of your worst fear, won't it? I think so, anyway. And it would all be for nothing, Moony, nothing at all. When I'm gone, Sirius will still be here, and that's what will matter. I'm only a sort of an echo - nothing but 'smoke and mirrors' – you heard what he said - and he was right. I don't want you breaking your own heart over something that isn't even real!"

Remus blinked. "But …but you are real!"

"Not for long," the effigy replied coolly.

This too, this propensity for bluntly speaking the unadorned and occasionally brutal truth, was so much like the original Sirius that Remus once again felt his throat fill. There were times, only a few of them, when all arguments would slide off the hard surface of Sirius' will like water sluicing off granite. Sirius was a loving, kind-hearted, good-natured man, and there was a true warmth and gentleness in him. But, Remus knew well, there was also something cold and hard and immovable in him too.

And his magical copy must, by the inexorable logic of magic, necessarily be equally hard.

As above, so below …

"But you are real, nevertheless, you know," Remus said gently, though he knew he had already lost the argument. "You were from the first word you said to me."

"I wish now I hadn't," the effigy answered.

Remus wrapped his scarf a bit more snugly about his neck; it seemed there was a nip of frost in the night air. "Don't say that," he remarked mildly and slowly rose from the table. "I'm glad you did. I won't argue with you – I can see you're every bit as stubborn as he is. I'll just say good night. But I'll also say this. You're apparently as kind as he can be as well. Kinder to others than you are to yourself."

The effigy smiled, and it was that rare, uncannily beautiful smile that Sirius bestowed only on Remus and no other. It both gladdened and pierced Remus' heart to see it on the effigy's face.

"And I'll tell you something else, since you're listening," Remus went on. "You may not think all that much of yourself – certainly I suspect that in some ways, Sirius doesn't. But never doubt that he is loved by many, and that he's warranted all the love he's had, many times over. Sirius is a good man, and so it follows that you must be too. I'm glad to have met you."

"Thank you, Moony," the effigy replied. "You're kind too. And it hasn't been at all bad a life, you know. Short maybe, but decent enough. After all, I've spent nearly all of it with you – a generous loan on Sirius' part, if you ask me. If you… if you should decide to tell Sirius that his spell went a little …off the tracks, tell him that I had no regrets, will you?"

The effigy rose from the table too and offered its hand to Remus. Remus took it, and held it firmly, a warm and all-too-familiar weight. "I'll think carefully about what to tell him," he said. "Never fear."

The effigy smiled. "I know you will. Good bye. I'd kiss you if wasn't so crowded around here."

Remus could not help smiling back, though his heart was aching a bit as well. "If it wasn't so crowded around here, I imagine I'd let you. Good bye. Good…good journey."

Remus had put his head down and walked away. And although he did not look back and never truly saw it, the visual image of the effigy staring after him until he was out of sight would haunt his mind's eye and reappear in symbolic form in his dreams intermittently for the rest of his life.