Disclaimer: not mine. Not a sausage.

AN: so, I was in the optician's t'other day, admiring my…ahem…fair self in various frames and so on…thinking arrogant thoughts such as 'yes I look rather intelligent in these' even if all other significant evidence points in the opposite direction. And then I wondered, because I had been eating Skittles all afternoon, and my mind tends to do weird things under the influence as it were, whether Sirius ever wore glasses to read the blackboard…and also, whether he ever did any school work. I'm kind of going on the fanon perception of Sirius the dosser relying on hyper-intelligent Remus here…rather than the truth that JKR gives us, that in fact Sirius and James were the best students in the school. Yep, rant over.

So the basic premise is…how would Sirius react to a particularly offensive article in the Prophet? Would he get his delectable ass in gear to defend the honour of the man he loves? And other such dramatic questions…enjoy )

Boxes, trunks, folders…all scattered around me, spewing mouldy contents onto the floor, carving new paths through a frosting of dust and fluff. The pointless, pathetic detritus of a wasted life.

I can find so many treasures and half-forgotten remembrances here, in these troves of the past. Journals, odd gloves, reels of film, wizarding and Muggle. A pressed flower from the Potters' wedding. My mother's old rosary beads. A yellowing programme from a concert I attended a decade ago, alone, I can see myself now, losing myself in such sumptuous Rachmaninoff.

But not the frame I seek so urgently.

What have I done in the past few days? They seem to spill like milk into each other, as though they belong in one crazy delusion. Hours spent beside Tonks, talking to her still form, pouring out hearts full of foolish gashes, too late. Watching as flowers by her bed die almost perceptibly.

There must have been conversations, with Kingsley, Molly and Arthur, Dumbledore. But I cannot remember their vapid words of comfort, of stoic acceptance. I cannot remember. Fuzzy, blurry, like an old man…my sharpness, my intellect, my zeal have all been drained away, dripping spilt blood down, down steps and behind the veil.

Mindless wanderings through this house…to this point, this culmination of a grief I challenge you to name.

In truth, I am searching for a newspaper article, in a cheap plastic frame. I have no wish to see his laughing face before he died, twice, without my arms about him. I want words, always words with me, codes of language to hide from tears and wailings. Words that represent the purity of clouds, of waterfalls and fireflies at dusk.

If you are prepared to listen to the ramblings and futile recollections of a spent force clinging on to the dead, the young and the beautiful – it began, as did so many tales of love and laughter in those days, in the Great Hall at breakfast.

Let me elaborate. Only a precious few details are actually seared onto the flesh of my memory…but for appearance's sake let me say: the ceiling was a watery, sallow blue peppered with cotton wool drifts of cloud.

And again in the pursuit of art…the daily invasion of owls drifted majestically overhead, an exodus from a cursèd land – bearing tidings of good news, winging, soaring. So many images to recall.

As any day, I assume I was poking mulishly at a bowl of dry cornflakes (during my vegetarian phase…I had not quite recovered from the guilt of gorging myself on three of Hagrid's beloved fire roosters in fourth year), while Sirius and James slathered ketchup on their sausages.

I was the only one from our little group (we would deign occasionally to talk to other Gryffindors…but only of trivialities) to subscribe to the Daily Prophet. It was my Great-Aunt Frederica's legacy that funded it year after year, but I knew that it would not be long before the money, as ever, ran out…poured into expensive medical care and my father's attempts to find a job. I sometimes wonder how I stayed alive, knowing I was the cause of my father's almost regular redundancies.

But that is fundamentally old news…werewolves and their families are impoverished. That much is evident, inevitable, usual.

As is persecution - sly, underhand and democratic. Oh, I was so accustomed to reading benign articles with vicious subtexts, insults so subtle and invisible my blood ran clear.

That day, a day of cornflakes, owls and double Charms in the hazy afternoon, the headlines concerned proposals for the privatisation of the Floo network. I handed Sirius the sports insert without glancing up from the chamomile tea I was stirring with a toothpick, and immersed myself in legislation and reforms, ignoring the 'oohs' and 'aahs' from across the table at the various results from the quarter-finals for the League Quidditch Cup. At least, I suppose I did. Something similarly banal, no doubt.

Changeover of power in some departments of the Wizengamot. A visit from the chief Soviet warlock, Comrade Andrenkov. Riots at the annual rally of the Pureblood Families' Association. I tutted quietly.

'New Minister for Social Relations calls for stringent measures against half-breeds.'

I have never been one to believe in first impressions (I have read 'Pride and Prejudice enough times in various waiting rooms of various quacks and false prophets), but the photograph that accompanied this rather ominous headline (on page 8) struck me immediately as being evil. Or at least cruel…maliciously weak.

The caption beneath the fairly young woman with a simpering smile and piggy, black eyes read 'Dolores Umbridge: controversial proposals in her first month in office'.

My orange juice tasted putrid in my mouth.

I felt a stinging at the roots of my eyes, little tendrils of fiery disappointment and rage and humiliation caressing my optic nerves. I had never felt so hated.

Forsaking a single period of Arithmancy, I fled the Hall, neglecting James' shouts of 'Oi, Moony, where you going?' and Sirius odd look as he picked up my discarded paper. Almost as though he had been punched in the stomach.

But, as ever, I was too concerned with my own hot shame to look behind me (but I looked, days ago, cruel aeons ago, to see him fall and fight to catch my eyes with his dying orbs) and notice such things.

I preferred to storm angrily, impotently into the dead grounds. Early spring. A time of barren twigs and grey skies, a hiatus between the majesty of frost and snow and the comforting heat and newness of golden nodding daffodils. February always reminds me of death and desolation, and even Hogwarts seemed a charred waste land then. And my eyes were fuzzy with prickly saline tears, and I had no inclination to admire the imperial beauty of the castle black against the translucent sky.

For once, my doubt and hatred overthrew my own self-importance and whispered horrid truths into my lungs: I did not belong there. I never had…Dumbledore had taken such risks, bent over backwards to admit an ungrateful, inferior wretch like myself.

I remembered snippets of text from the interview I had skimmed in disbelief.

Phrases cloaked so maliciously in political correctness, so shrouded in democracy and righteousness. 'Scourge…half-breeds…sub-species…menace…protection for our citizens'. Some other planet, surely? Invisible hands tore at my robes, pulling me no werewolf can help his condition and pushing me a murderer, given the right incentive and rage.

Doubt, a subtle poison that weeps into corners of minds and drenches, stains, taints. This was the end, I knew with dramatic teenage certainty. I would become like my father…nobly cast out, dying penniless and pitiful. And with no beauty in the castle I had called home for six years, with no thought for the friends who would have died for me, I relished an end. If not in anguished blood and gleaming razors, then in an exodus from this place.

Let me out into the world, to wreak what havoc my dwindling star can contain.

Aimless rage, aimless sorrow – wasted wanderings seem to have defined me my life long without my realisation. I am outlined by my pointlessness. But, dragging my mangled limbs back to tales of hate and twisted salvation, I returned, my foolish tears spent, to the dormitory, with the skin beneath my eyes tender, and my head feeling somehow far from the ground. I could feel my face pull tight as teenage weepings dried across my face.

There was some numb peace at my core, caused by utter physical exhaustion (much as I feel now, old man that I am) – and I crept slowly to the door of the dorm with my bed on my mind, and oblivious immortal sleep.

Nevertheless, I found some hidden vestige of energy to feel distant shock and indignation at the sight of Sirius Black alone in the huge, shadowy room, working diligently. He was unaware of my tired figure slumped in the doorway, as he pored over a tatty piece of parchment, a bedraggled quill behind one ear.

On the small table before him was a simple, decrepit Muggle typewriter, which Sirius was prodding with his two forefingers, stabbing furiously with startling vehemence. He referred constantly to his scrawled manuscript, occasionally correcting and amending with whispers and mutterings as makeshift punctuation, and he would use his ink stained right hand to push up the glasses I had only ever seen him wear once before.

I was torn, slit Solomon-like down the centre of my shell.

The way the lenses flashed and softened his grey eyes…the sight of his brow furrowing in gentle thought, the scattered balls of scrunched-up paper that betrayed his Iliadic endeavour. Such beauty, such new, wondrous images to cherish, in which to revel. That he had become like me…and that he had chosen such a time to work.

May the leaves remain unturned, Merlin damn him!

I wanted his embrace, his epic humour and his lazy smile promising the world…not sterile words and essays on banal subjects. Throughout the years…every silent doubt and condemnation, every regret and disappointment at the way my friends acted…I could feel hateful, wicked words form themselves indolently in my craw, and threaten to spatter out onto the floor at Sirius' feet.

Of course, I did not dare to crack my mild, passive façade. It was all I had left that day.

I stood in mute rage at his ignorance of my hurt, feeling each click of the typewriter shiver up my spine. He was muttering lovingly under his breath, and he scratched his jaw line with his nib in contemplation. The fragile exquisiteness of his jawbone, stretching languidly into his milky collar bone and his glistening hair. My throat tightened with regret for my own insignificance…decisions that pressed themselves upon my brain, to rip myself away from better men than I. One last favour, one last cry for martyrdom…the salvation of those I aspired to love from a wretched monster.

A dry sob and he turned, pushing up his glasses with one ink-stained hand.

'M-Moony?'

I could only wrestle silently with my own despair, and watch his eyes fill with care.

'What are you writing? Don't tell me you're doing that essay for Potions?' Funny how my voice was calm, level…I could almost pretend life was a version of normality, that I was not preparing to renounce any claims to worth and value.

Sirius looked…not shifty, entirely, but certainly uncomfortable.

'A letter.'

'I see.' I had no wish to read his rose-scented memoranda of honey-dripping love.

'Why are you typing it?' My voice began to steel, to drip with coldness and distance.

'Because I'm submitting it to the Daily Prophet.'

I crossed slowly to the desk by the window, standing behind Sirius' chair to read the tidy text. He looked down at his clasped hands, a faint bloom of red along the tops of his ears. We were both perfectly still, a twisted romantic tableau. Maybe dust swirled like a faraway cosmos in the still air and the dying sunlight.

I caught odd phrases through the tears that were misting my vision, against my will.

…resent the cruel and unnecessary treatment of werewolves in our society… deserving of respect, not persecution…bemoan the death of equality and decency in our age… I suggest the immediate dismissal of this Fascist…hurt and angered that such an established institution would print this filth…call to all other lovers of human rights…hateful and contemptible prejudices prevalent in today's community… from personal experience…the most decent human being of my acquaintance…I would die to defend his rights

Though the meagre sunlight had heated the room a little, my body felt icy. Frozen, I was. And I could see little icicle tears at the corners of Sirius' raging-sea eyes.

I forget…

It pains me with too much piercing agony to recall my realisation of his loyalty and love.

There might have been an embrace…a ghostly kiss…hiccupping sobs…breathy promises and thanks. But they are not important…only that my doubt evaporated, wisped away into nothingness, I could barely hear its lontano echo as it fled.

That he would do so much for me…for me…

They published the letter the week after, signed anonymously. I can almost hear the heavy February rain's insistent tattoo against the window, as Sirius and I lay stomachs-down on my bed and read silently, pressed together in gluey friendship.

I framed it, and prized it, and worshipped it above all monochrome prints of vanished moments. In our respective flats, above our lonely beds, Sirius had a poster of some Muggle model…I had a small, cheap frame containing a crinkled 2inch strip of newspaper.

When I took it down and shoved it somewhere to be forgotten, there was a discoloured patch on the wall. Patches…so many darned, faded, threadbare pieces in my life. 1981. A year of heartbreaking betrayal and solitude. I wanted no reminders of a past, fragmentary happiness.

And now…God, the injustice of it…now I will never have moments to share, to cherish, to reignite memories of boys smiling ruffled-hair at each other in glorious sunlight, now I cannot find my most precious memory of all.

I am a channel of rage, of wasted years of love and friendship I never got the chance to give…and I need to find this article. To convince myself that I was not alone in my youth, even if I am tragically lonesome now. Maybe then I will be strong enough to say to Tonks lean on me, I am a rock, a fortress for your battered heart and mine.

I keep searching, pulling moth-eaten relics of my past from boxes and trunks.

Here I am, in the musty half-light of the attic, sorting through dead decades, a grey shadow of a man, searching for childish reassurance that once, once, I was worth the love of a great, departed man.

AN: as ever, cheery stuff. I know I'd be touched if my friends did something so out of character as to defend me…I guess my rather pissed off emotions at the moment drove a lot of this fic, as well as the afore-mentioned opticians visit. So there ya go. Hope you enjoyed xx dd