Thank you all these people who submitted reviews: Demus, ShatteredDesire, andrea-88, Queen of the Paperclips, Lucky Moony, Achava, im-a-daydream-believer, BreathingFlames, loonyluna9, Green Bird, Icy Sapphire15, Jess, PadfootsMoony, Jedi Master Moose Ass, 0mrsprongs0, Mooncheese, Nikufei, checkmarks, Lain-Iris, bae'geshel, sanguisiphiliac, ChinChila1369, Tanya J Potter, judas, DragonHunter200, Ruby Love and mssparrington. I enjoyed all the guesses for 'E'! Achava's suggestion of 'empty' was probably nearest.
This chapter has leapt forward to Order Of The Phoenix time. Don't worry- I'm telling the story is alphabetical not chronological order!
E is for Endings
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth
He not busy being born is busy dying.
-Bob Dylan
The beginnings in their relationship had always outnumbered the endings.
And then Sirius had fallen through the veil and nothing was ever the same again.
It was a fitting death, somehow. No blood, no screaming and no long slow descent into nothingness. Remus knew he should have been grateful for these small mercies. After all, it was how Sirius would have wanted to go: in the midst of a fight, with his eyes as bright as they'd always been.
But Remus couldn't be grateful. He just couldn't. Everyone seemed to expect him to carry on as normal; to carry on as if half his heart had not just been ripped from his chest, torn up and scattered like a thousand shards of glass to be crushed underfoot. How the hell was a person supposed to live like this?
Remus didn't think he could. He didn't spend hours weeping or anything and he didn't scream or curse; he just sort of gave up. Faded.
He kept remembering a conversation they'd had, a few months after graduating from Hogwarts. Sirius had had this crazy idea that he was about to die.
Or perhaps the idea hadn't been so crazy at all, with Voldermort on the rise...
"If I die, Moony – no, don't shush me; it needs to be said. If I die, I want it to be quick. I don't mind pain as long as it's quick-"
"Sirius, you're not going to die."
"-I don't want to spend twenty years in St Mungo's, clinging to this mortal coil by my fingernails. I'd rather just be dead... Tell me you understand what I'm saying."
Remus hadn't understood. "I think you're being selfish, Sirius," he'd replied.
Sirius' eyes had widened for a moment but then a warmth had entered his face and his mouth had relaxed into a smile. "Given the choice, I'd never leave you, Moony. Never."
Never say never, Sirius…
Remus hadn't been able to smile back. He'd tried and he'd failed. "You'll only die if you go out looking for death."
That had been true back then: it wasn't until a couple of years later that things had become really bad. Then people had been dying everywhere, for any reason. Or perhaps for no reason at all. And around that time, in the midst of darkness when every embrace might well have been the last, Sirius and himself had become lovers of such intensity that-
Remus sighed. He couldn't bear the memories.
He couldn't live with then any more than he could live without them.
A couple of days ago, Remus had apologised to Dumbledore. "These days I'm always so distracted..."
Dumbledore had shaken his head. "You're not distracted, Remus. Your heart's broken and that is a wound which no amount of magic can heal." He'd reached out and briefly encased Remus' hand in his own. "Sometimes we can only hope that what magic cannot heal, time will."
Remus had watched Dumbledore go through eyes that had once been bright amber but were now a dull brown. He couldn't help but think that Sirius was still selfish, to leave him like this.
Alone.
