Alastor wasn't so tall but he was still too tall for the tub. His knees stuck out of the water as he angled himself to get his shoulders into the warm water. He mimed a yawn and tried to forget but he was neither tired nor forgetful. He remembered the stars in the sky. There were a collection very bright points in the sky and he looked away and when he looked back they had moved. So he stared at them for a while but they did not seem to move any longer. He looked away to reassure himself. Were they even stars? He wondered. He gazed back up at the sky and their orientation had changed again. Not their distance, though something felt like it had changed. He wondered if he was hallucinating as he stared them down, it felt like hours but they didn't move while he watched them. He still couldn't make out what it meant.

He remembered the McKinnons. He remembered Marlene's body. The dark red stickiness in her hair and the stroke it left on the ground. He remembered the ocean smell, a thick, live smell. It smelled warm in the cold and that made him think about the roar.

Once Dorcas said she loved that feeling. The feeling of the ocean always pulling you back into itself. Always begging you to stay she said. Something like that. He couldn't remember everything but he remembered the idea or thought he did. They were not children, they were not sentimental by trade because they were not sentimental in spirit but and he tried to remember when she had said it. Fabian, he knew liked Dorcas. Edgar too liked Dorcas. Edgar liked a lot of women but he felt fond of her. And Lupin also loved Dorcas though he understood that he loved her like he would have loved a sister. And this feeling moved around the house and he wondered if he felt a certain way about her because everyone else did. He thought she was talking about a person about a man even but when he looked at her it was very clear somehow that she really was talking about the ocean itself, about large bodies of water.

He remembered the roar of the waves not as they were but that they were from another memory. He had ached to find her at the cottage but was glad also that he hadn't. What would he have said? What would he have done? What could he have done? Apologize? She had been very clear the last time they were together and this he remembered perfectly: 'I will never forgive you for this'. He remembered that and always would. He remembered that Lupin was just around the corner in the nook that led to the outside door. If Lupin had heard what she said, he would pretend he hadn't. This had led Alastor to ask Lupin what his hands looked like. Alastor resented Lupin but he trusted him. Lupin's quietness had recently made Alastor short-tempered. It only magnified a feeling, growing worse after he had been told by Lupin what had happened.

He could sneak around largely unnoticed and it unnerved him though he had never admitted that to himself. He knew he wouldn't say anything though. Even if Alastor was going crazy Lupin would find no reason to broadcast this to anyone. He had his own problems, apparently.

"It's me, Sirius." he said sternly. That day Alastor had somehow snuck up on him. On both of them. He remembered how strange that was. He had unnerved himself so engrossed in their argument that Alastor was almost completely in the room when they finally did notice him and even then it didn't really matter. They would feel no need to justify or explain what they were arguing about. Small comfort.

He remembered, too, the day after the house flooded. The look Dorcas had given him. They joked later but he had seen and recognized it for what it was. She thought, for a moment, that he had had something to do with it. That someone, that he had betrayed them, cast the curse that flooded the house. She did not believe for a split second that he had told him where the wands were kept and it was not until much later that the reason came to light, they had been moved. Who had he told? He thought. This he searched his mind for who he'd mentioned it to. Was it Sirius, Peter, Gideon? Emmeline? It didn't matter now. Sirius was in Azkaban and would remain there forever. He would remain there till he died for what he'd done. It crossed his mind that Lupin might have moved them but no. He felt lulled by the sound the water made as he tried to get more comfortable as he tried to submerse more of himself in the bath. He had seen that look on other peoples faces before. But she had shut it off or pulled it into herself. She wasn't sleeping well, he heard.

"It's making her testy. She has a little temper." Emmeline had said which everyone within earshot thought rich. Sirius had rolled his eyes which was even richer.

He could do it, he knew. Change his memories or at least take a walk in another part of them. Notice and focus on something else. He remembered Antonoff, Anthony? What was his name? He had driven himself completely mad but for a moment he was happy. Was that what he wanted, to be happy?Alastor brought his pruning hands out of the water. They were pale and ghostly. And not dripping with thin, red blood, diluted. They were wet with just water.

He had asked Lupin to look at his hands, tell him everything he noticed. Lupin hadn't asked questions. He hadn't even hesitated.

"Your hands are wet."

"Go on." Alastor grunted, not wanting to influence his answer but impatient for it.

"They pale and look cold."

"And, what can you surmise I've been doing?"

"I think washing the dishes or else you;ve just rinsed your hands."

"What makes you think that?"

"They're wet with water."

Alastor took a tea towel from a hook by the oven and wiped his hands dry and walked away without saying anything else. Maybe Lupin would think that this was some sort of test or training. It didn't matter, so few things did anymore.

Lupin watched Alastor hunched over exiting the kitchen, into the nook and out the door. He understood very plainly what had happened. He could have told him immediately that his hands were not covered in blood. That they were wet with water and he didn't understand why he hadn't. Lupin did not hallucinate but he read the Daily Prophet for the same reason Alastor had asked about his hands, to make sure. He usually didn't because Sirius had always there but he had started again, reading the paper in its entirety. In the meantime, he had sent an owl to Dumbledore to make arrangements. Later, he would tighten the trees in the circle, maybe add another layer. He could have just asked Alastor but not only was he grieving, a fact that everyone seemed to understand but Alastor himself but he was projecting it onto himself. It was making him jumpy. Jumpier. Lupin had caught him unawares several times. He didn't do it on purpose, at first, he thought it was a little funny but after Dorcas had been found at the cottage, Alastor started to look at him with that look. The look he knew everyone would give him if they knew. Did Alastor know? He wouldn't ask, what for? Lupin decided that he too would take a long walk. First, he opened the fridge found some leftovers and sat in the quiet of the kitchen. It was so quiet that he could hear mumbling the murmur of old memories and voices. It crossed his mind that the house, probably not but the kitchen could be haunted. Alastor was imagining things and now so was Lupin. The biggest differences was that Lupin tolerated it better. He had nothing in his age and training to tell him what those memories could do over time. That all the world's worst hauntings occur exclusively in the mind. That even when the murmuring was kind and those memories joyful, that they exist firmly and only in the land of the dead.