A/N: As usual, I'm sorry this took so long. The good news is that, as of today, only 22 student days stand between me and summer break! Hopefully, I'll be back to updating at least once a week soon!

Thanks for reading and reviewing! I really hope you like this chapter. It's a bit transitional, but the major action resumes in the next chapter. Um … well … take that statement to mean the worst possible action …

Enjoy this chapter!

I don't own the Potter universe.

Useless

Remus somehow made his was back to headquarters. He immediately went to the kitchen, where Sirius was sitting at the table, drinking butterbeer.

"Hey, Moony," he said a bit listlessly.

"Hi," Remus replied as though in a daze.

Sirius looked at him closely. "Are you all right?"

Remus shook his head as he sat down at the table with his friend.

"What did Snape say?" Sirius demanded. "He refused to teach Harry, didn't he? I knew it! I should have gone myself! I knew you wouldn't ever think to hex him into agreeing to continue those lessons."

"No, Sirius, it's not that," Remus said. He thought for a moment. "Although, now that you mention it, he did refuse to continue teaching Harry Occlumency."

"Wait," Sirius said. "What else could have happened to drive that to the back of your mind?"

"He said – he said something else."

"And are you going to tell me what that was?"

Remus sighed and ran his hands over his face. "I told him that all that happened in the past was no reason to punish Harry now."

"That's true."

"Well, he said that it wasn't fair of me to accuse him of living in the past when I do the same thing."

"What?" Sirius asked, frowning in confusion. "I'd say you've moved past our school battles better than Snape or I have."

"He wasn't talking about that. He said – Sirius, he said that I'm still living the life of a married man, completely faithful to my dead wife's memory. He said that it's fine to live that way and he's not going to judge me for it, but I'm not allowed to judge him for holding a grudge against you and James."

"Well, as long as he's not being hypocritical," Sirius said sarcastically.

Remus looked at him miserably. "I think he's right, Padfoot. I am living in the past, aren't I?"

"Moony. . ."

"No, it's true." He held his hand up in front of his face, looking at it as though seeing it for the first time. "I still wear my wedding band. I wear it every single day. I never thought about it until Severus pointed it out. Even though Laura died fifteen years ago, it has never occurred to me to take it off."

"She was your wife, Moony," Sirius said gently. "You can't be expected to just forget that."

Remus shook his head. "But I do have to move on, don't I? Isn't that what everything and everyone was all about when she died? Lily and Harry spent every waking moment with me for weeks trying to help me get past my grief. Dana named her daughter Laura as a tribute to my wife. I remember telling Dana how much it helped me the first time I held her Laura." He shook his head. "It was all for nothing, wasn't it? I'm still stuck in the past, dedicating my life to the memory of a woman who has been dead since before Harry's first birthday."

"But . . . Remus, if you're happy this way, then I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing," Sirius said slowly. "You have to do what makes you happy. I know that Laura made you very happy. If holding on to her memory like this makes you happy, then you should do it. Snape was right about one thing – it's not for us to judge how others live. If you see a problem with your own life, then it's time to make a change, but you shouldn't change just because someone else thinks you should."

Remus sighed. "I don't know, Sirius. I always thought that I was happy, but now . . . I'm not sure anymore."

"You're thinking about Tonks, aren't you?" Sirius asked quietly.

Remus snapped his head up, but didn't respond verbally.

"It's all right if you are," Sirius said. "She's a great girl, Moony – and I'm not just saying that because she's my cousin."

Remus smiled, then looked down. "I don't know how I feel about her," he admitted. "She kissed me again. I don't think that I told you that."

"No, you didn't!" Sirius exclaimed. "When was this?"

"The day the twins came here after leaving Hogwarts."

"But that was weeks ago!"

"Two weeks," Remus nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

Remus shrugged. "I couldn't quite figure it out myself. I didn't want to drag you into my confusion."

Sirius shook his head. "You're my best friend, Moony. Your confusion is my confusion."

Remus smiled faintly. "The point, Padfoot, is that I don't know what to do. I don't know how I feel. I can't figure this out."

"Okay," Sirius said slowly. "Just start talking, and we'll try to find some sense in it."

"You were right when you said that she's a great girl," Remus said. "I'm not about to deny that. But there's just so many problems."

"Such as?"

"The werewolf issue comes to mind."

"She already knows about your furry little problem," Sirius said, waving his hand to dismiss Remus's fears. "She's fine with it. I don't think she sees it as an issue at all." He grinned. "She's taking it just like we did back when we found out in second year."

Remus smiled. "She has been really nice about it, but . . ."

"You and these 'buts,'" Sirius sighed. "But what?"

"I think it's more of an issue than she realizes."

Sirius shook his head. "She's an Auror. She knows all about the laws, the prejudices, the whole deal. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, shall we?"

"All right," Remus conceded. "There's also my lack of employment."

"I don't think she cares. Again, she understands the laws. She would never blame that on you." He grinned. "Next argument?"

"Well, obviously, she's considerably younger than me. The fact that I can remember you showing us her baby pictures when Andromeda sent them to you sort of makes me feel like a dirty old man for having kissed her."

Sirius laughed. "First, you are as far from a dirty old man as possible."

"Even though I was fourteen when she was born?"

"If you had been twenty-four when she was born, I'd say that you have a point," Sirius said. "But, Remus, fourteen years isn't impossible to overcome. Sure, she uses words and expressions that you're not all that familiar with, but you can learn them."

Remus shook his head. "It just seems wrong somehow. I feel like she's this innocent little girl who I'm corrupting."

"She's tougher than that," Sirius said. "I don't think she'd let herself be corrupted unless she thought it was right."

"That's sort of a problem for me, too."

"That she's tough?"

"Not necessarily that . . . I just . . . her personality . . ."

"Remus, please just get to the point."

"She's not like Laura," he said in a rush.

Sirius's eyes widened slightly. "No," he said slowly, "she's not like Laura. Not exactly, anyway. Why is that a problem?"

"It's like you said earlier," Remus said a bit desperately. "Laura made me happy. If Tonks is so different from Laura, how do I know that she'll make me happy, too?"

"Remus, Tonks is different from Laura in many ways," Sirius said. "She's a louder personality, if you will. She changes her hair color once a day, she wears bright, young clothes, she listens to loud music and she gets overly excited about the smallest things. But, fundamentally, I think she and Laura are rather alike."

Remus frowned.

"They both would do anything for their friends," he began. "They're dedicated to their families. They both work extremely hard to achieve their goals. They both are incredibly bright, gifted witches, whose main goal is to help others." He smiled and finished in a quiet voice. "And they both care very deeply for you."

Remus shivered slightly. "I guess you have a point."

"Laura loved you very much, Remus. You were the great love of her life. You believe that she was the great love of yours. Now you have Tonks, a young, bright, pretty girl who is willing to let you see if life will grant you two great loves."

"Life doesn't work like that," Remus said sadly. "Not for me."

"Maybe this time, it will," Sirius said. He sighed and ran his hands though his hair. "You know that I've been rooting for you and Tonks from the beginning, but, ultimately, I can't tell you what to do. You need to decide if you want to live in the past with Laura or give the future a try with Tonks. The choice is yours, but you need to make it. You can't have both. Either way, I won't judge you."

Picking up his drink, Sirius left the kitchen, giving Remus some time alone to process all that had been said.

Remus did not have much time to consider a potential relationship with Tonks; he left early the next morning on Order business. Sirius was once again left alone with Buckbeak. This time seemed harder than the other days and weeks that he had stayed in the house alone. For some reason, he couldn't get Snape out of his head. His refusal to teach Harry Occlumency weighed heavily on Sirius, who felt some indirect responsibility for the vital lessons' abrupt end. What if things had gone differently when he, James and Snape had gone to school together? Would Snape have a better opinion of Harry now?

In the end, Sirius knew there was no way things could have gone differently. He and James had disliked and distrusted Snape from the moment they first saw him at their Sorting. Even if they had met him at a time when they were not judgmental eleven-year-olds, they would never have been friends. Snape had believed in and stood for everything that Sirius and James opposed. Even if he had possessed a personality completely in synch with their own, they still would have taken issue with his obsession with the Dark Arts. And Sirius felt no remorse for that. In his mind, there was no gray area when it came to the Dark Arts. Those who opposed them were his friends; those who did not, his enemies.

He wished, though, that he had been the one to talk to Snape about resuming Harry's Occlumency lessons rather than Remus. While he knew that Remus was, and always had been, the diplomatic one, the one who could best present a case, he also thought that this time, Snape needed to hear an argument with more force than reason. He wanted desperately to go find Snape and talk to him, but knew that he couldn't. He had promised Dumbledore that he would remain in the house. That promise grated on his nerves more than any other he had made in his lifetime. Even the knowledge that it was for his own good didn't placate him.

I promised James and Lily that I'd take care of Harry, he raged inwardly. How exactly am I "taking care" of him if I'm trapped in this house? What good am I to my godson if I can't even help him when he needs it? See him when he needs to talk?

"Sirius? Are you here?"

Sirius was immediately irritated by the question, even though he knew the voice to be Olivia's. Where else would he be?

"Sirius?"

"I'm up here with Buckbeak," he called.

He heard her footsteps getting closer; she entered the attic with a smile on her face. He tried to return it, but, for some reason, found it almost impossible to smile.

"Hey," she said, leaning down to kiss him. "How have you been?"

"Bored," he replied honestly. "You?"

"Busy," she smiled as she sat down next to him on the attic floor. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you, too," he said automatically.

"Are you all right?" Olivia asked, looking at him critically. "You seem a bit off."

"Oh, really?" he said sarcastically. "I wonder why that would be."

"You don't need to get so snippy, you know," she said. "I'm just trying to help."

"Maybe I don't need your help," he said coldly. He had a feeling that he was going to regret this conversation later, but he couldn't stop himself. He was frustrated with his situation in life, and felt completely, utterly useless. He needed to take his anger out on someone, and Olivia happened to be the unlucky one who was there with him.

"I think you do need my help," she countered. "I think you need it more than you know."

"Since when did you decide that you know what I need? That you're the expert on what I think and how I feel?" he asked, feeling the oddest sense of déjà vu.

Her eyes widened as she, too, remembered those words from a long-ago fight. "Sirius, I love you," she said. "I know you as well as I know myself." She paused and bit her lip. "Or, at least, I did know you as well as I know myself – once upon a time."

"What do you mean by that?" Sirius asked, suddenly feeling extremely tired.

"I don't know," she sighed. "I just – I used to be able to tell what you thought or felt just by looking into your eyes. But, lately, that just isn't as easy as it used to be."

"What are you trying to say? That you don't love me anymore? That you don't care?"

"No!" she yelled. "Dammit, Sirius, I love you more than anyone! What I don't love is the way you constantly try to shove me away! You act like you're the only person on the planet who's ever had problems or dealt with frustration. You're not, okay? Plenty of people have been in situations far worse than yours and lived to tell the tale."

"And have those other people you're talking about been completely cut off from their godchildren even after promising to take care of them?" he yelled back.

"This isn't about Harry!" Olivia yelled. "This is about you!"

"You – you don't understand," Sirius said. He wasn't yelling anymore; he sounded defeated.

"Can't you explain it to me?" Olivia asked. She touched his face. "Please, Sirius, make me understand."

He shook off her hands. "I can't," he said. "No one can ever understand."

Olivia jumped to her feet. "My God, Sirius, was it always so much work to love you?"

"I'm not asking you do strain yourself," he said in a low, cutting voice. "If it's too much effort, you can leave the same way you came."

She dropped back to her knees in front of him. "Sirius, I want you help you! Can't you see that?" She sighed. "In some ways, I swear you're still the same seventh year I fell for all those years ago. Haven't you learned by now that you shouldn't try to push everyone away? You don't need to be alone right now, Sirius! I'm here to help you!"

"Are you completely deaf?" he yelled. "I don't need your help! I'm fine on my own!"

She looked at him for a moment as though weighing her options, then jumped to her feet again. "Fine," she said, breathing heavily. "Fine. If you don't need me or want me, then there's no reason for me to stay."

Without waiting for him to speak again, to insult her again, she Disapparated.

Sirius looked at the spot where she had been standing for what felt like forever. Then, he yelled wordlessly as though expelling all the anger from his body. He grabbed the closest thing he could find – the plate he put Buckbeak's food on – and threw it against the wall.

Olivia considered it a small miracle that she made it back to France without splinching herself. She was in her house for all of thirty seconds when she realized that it was not where she needed to be. She took off at a run, knowing exactly whom she needed to talk to.

Remus had been gone for four days before he was fully able to process his feelings. It took four days of thinking through Tonks's daily routine before he realized the truth: He cared for her – very deeply.

She was the first person he thought of every morning when he awoke. She was the last person he thought of before falling asleep. During the day, he would think of how much fun he would have had if she were with him. He thought of what she was probably doing, of the battles she and Kingsley were fighting. He wished there was some way he could be there to protect her.

Even his dreams were haunted by images of her – and, he had to admit, those were far more . . . intriguing . . . than the thoughts he had of her during the day. The first time he dreamt of kissing her lips, touching her body and feeling her beneath him, he awoke drenched in sweat. He had not known how deep his desire for her was until he realized how much he wanted that dream to be a reality.

Sirius was right. He needed to choose between living in the past with Laura and pursuing a future with Tonks. He wanted to choose Tonks. Desperately. His only fear was that he wouldn't have the strength to do it.

By the time Olivia arrived at Dana's house, she was nearly in tears. She opened the front door without knocking and walked inside.

"Dana?" she called. "Are you home?"

"I'm in the kitchen, Liv!" Dana called back.

Olivia rushed through the house to the kitchen. Dana was alone, up to her elbows in dough.

"Hi," she said cheerfully. "I'm trying a new recipe. Mum got it from some woman that she knows from the village. It's a Muggle recipe, so I'm . . ." She trailed off as she saw the tears that stood in Olivia's eyes. "My God, Liv, what's wrong?"

"Sirius Black is a horrible, unfeeling prat," she spat. Although her words were full of anger, the tears that ran down her cheeks were of sorrow.

"Oh, sweetie," Dana sighed.

She pulled her hands out of the dough, muttered a charm to clean them, and pulled Olivia into a tight, comforting embrace. Safe in her friend's arms, Olivia burst into tears.

Remus was exhausted both physically and emotionally when he returned to Grimmauld Place. He moved silently through the hall before calling out to his friend.

"Sirius? Where are you?"

"Library," came the slightly slurred response.

Remus made his way to the library, where Sirius was sitting before the fire. An empty shot glass stood next to a bottle of firewhiskey.

"Rough night?" Remus asked, sitting down with him.

"Olivia was here," Sirius replied. "We had a fight."

"About what?"

"I don't really remember – she said something about how much I needed her and that I shouldn't push her away or some other rubbish."

"Where is she now?"

"France, I suppose."

Remus contemplated him silently for a moment, then used his wand to conjure a second shot glass. He poured himself a glass of firewhiskey, downing it before speaking.

"Do you ever feel like we're stuck in seventh year?"

"What?" Sirius asked, shocked to hear him use nearly the same words that Olivia had.

"Do you remember that night in seventh year when we all sneaked out to the Three Broomsticks? Kathleen had died over Christmas, and Peter was so screwed up he could barely see straight. You and Olivia had had some huge fight, and James and Lily had blown a stupid disagreement out of proportion into a huge fight. You, James, Peter and I all went to the bar to drown our sorrows."

"Yeah, I do remember that," Sirius said. That had been the night that Olivia had declared her love for him, shocking him into the realization that he had no idea how he felt about her. "But how is that like this?"

"We're sitting here, drinking away our problems with women."

"What problems do you have?"

Remus drank his second shot before answering. "I fancy her."

"What?" Sirius said eloquently. "You fancy her?"

"I told you I feel like a seventh year."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Sirius asked, grinning broadly.

Remus shrugged. "Don't know. What are you going to do about this fight with Olivia?"

Sirius mirrored Remus's shrug. "Don't know," he echoed. He smiled. "Yeah, you were right. We are seventh years."

"Shouldn't we be more evolved? Shouldn't we know what to do in a situation like this?"

"You've always been more evolved, Moony. You've always known what to do."

"Not this time."

Sirius grinned and poured himself another shot. "Here's to not knowing what to do. If you can't find the right way to handle a situation, I'm completely lost."

Remus chinked his glass against Sirius's, then took the shot. "Shit, Sirius, I don't know what to do."

"I think we already established that. Personally, I think you should just tell her. We both know she's not going to shoot you down."

"I don't know if I can."

"Even though it's pretty much a guaranteed fact that she cares for you?"

"There's still too many complications," Remus said. "I'm afraid it won't work. Then, I'll have lost a friend who I value very much and have let her break my heart. Not a good outcome."

"You worry too much," Sirius said, waving his hand in a rather haphazard pattern.

"Fine," Remus replied. "What are you going to do about Olivia, then?"

"What can I do? She's the one who got all mad and left."

"And you didn't say anything to make her want to leave?"

"Me?" Sirius said, grinning drunkenly. "All right, I may have said some things that may have upset her . . ."

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not," Sirius said honestly. "Let's just say that it wasn't pretty."

"You and Liv have had plenty of fights before," Remus said. "You've always managed to find your way back to each other."

"Yeah, but this time, I can't even go and hunt her down," Sirius said miserably. "Moony, all I want to do right now is to go to France to tell her how sorry I am. But I can't! I can't leave this house! I'm stuck in here like some sort of prisoner. I love you, Liv, Tonks and Andromeda for being here for me, but just once, I want to be the one who visits someone else. I want to be the one to drop in unexpectedly. I want – I just want to be out there, doing something to help." He sighed. "I want to help Harry. I want to keep my promise to James and Lily."

"You are," Remus said urgently. "You help him more than you know, just by being here. He knows who you are now. He knows that you're here for him. He knows that you're innocent and that, as soon as your name is cleared, you'll be able to be the godfather that James and Lily had hoped you would be."

"But is it enough?" Sirius asked.

Remus smiled sadly. "It has to be, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Sirius said. "I don't have a choice. I can't leave." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he spoke.

Remus sighed, wanting to distract Sirius from his bitterness somehow. "Do you want me to go get Olivia? I can tell her to come over so you can apologize."

Sirius shook his head. "I'll owl her or something."

"You're going to apologize through a letter?"

"It's better than not apologizing at all."

"True enough."

"There, I've made my decision," Sirius said. "Your turn. What are you going to do about Tonks?"

Remus smiled. "Analyze the situation further."

Sirius groaned. "Three more months of our lives, just gone."

They looked at each other for a moment, then both laughed. Remus picked up the bottle to pour them another shot, and was a bit dismayed to find it empty.

"Well, we've killed it," he said lightly.

"We could always refill it, you know," Sirius said.

"Do we really need more?"

"I suppose not," Sirius sighed. "Well, I guess you were wrong about one thing."

"What's that?"

"We're not seventh years anymore."

"Why do you say that?"

"In seventh year, we would never have thought to cut ourselves off."

"Do you think I was wrong in how I handled the situation?"

Dana smiled sadly as she looked across the kitchen table into Olivia's miserable face. "Of course not. You love him, Liv. You don't want to see him sink into depression. You tried to bring him back."

"But I should have tried harder," Olivia sighed. She wiped the last of her tears from her cheeks. "I should have stayed. I never should have let him convince me to leave like that."

"You weren't getting through to him," Dana replied. "You can only try for so long before you give up."

Olivia fiddled with her teacup. "I shouldn't have given up."

"Liv . . ."

"No, Dana, really. I love him and I want to help him. How could I have let him get my temper up like that? How could I have let him convince me that I should walk away?"

Dana smiled. "Because this is you and Sirius that we're talking about. At Hogwarts, the two of you were famous for your explosive battles. It's in the nature of your relationship to argue. It always has been. You know how to push each other's buttons and you know how to hit one another where it hurts." She reached across to cover Olivia's hand with her own. "But, you also know how to humble yourselves enough to apologize after every fight. For every mean word you hurl at one another, there's a kiss waiting to more than make up for it."

Olivia looked at her silently for a moment, then smiled. "You're right."

Encouraged by the first smile she had seen on Olivia's face during their visit, Dana smiled back. "Feel a bit better?"

"I feel much better," Olivia corrected. "I feel better enough to go find Sirius. The argument is over – it's time to let those kisses work their magic."