The eighteenth time I shared a bed with Sirius Black was the night my parents, our parents died. I got the news by owl from the ministry. There had been a death eater attack on my house. They had found the bodies in the bedroom, eyes closed. They'd been killed in their sleep, hadn't even noticed.
I'd been in the common room when I got the letter. My hands had started shaking when I'd read it and my vision blurred before I got to the signature at the end. It didn't matter who had send the damned thing, my parents were gone. My whole family, my whole world, obliterated. I had nothing now, and nobody. That knowledge stung like nothing else could. I was alone. It was the worst feeling in the world.
And then Sirius had taken the letter from my unresisting hands and I'd seen his world fall apart just as mine had and I knew that I was wrong. The worst feeling in the world is watching your best friend lose his family for the second time. I saw the pain in his eyes just as clearly as he saw it in mine, and
Moony must have seen something in both of us, because he took the letter and scanned the contents before taking both our wrists and leading us up to our room and depositing each of us on our respective beds. I think the whole of Gryffindor must have been staring at us. That's why he did it, and he knew we needed to be together. I doubt either of us would have found the motivation to even make it up the stairs without him. I was grateful, later.
Then he hugged us both and went to help Wormtail with his Charms in the library. Except that Wormtail was in the common room, and I'd already done his Charms homework for him. That would have made me smile if it had been any other time.
I stood there, numb, looking at Sirius for a few moments, watching him fight for control, watching his guilt that he couldn't help me when I had lost my family because he was grieving too. I couldn't help it. I crossed to him and wrapped my arms around him.
'Don't try Padfoot. Don't try to hide it with me. I know they are...were your parents too.' I whispered and something in him broke. His tears fell, joining the ones that had been flowing out of my eyes for quite some time now.
'I'm sorry Prongs.' He answered, 'I should be the one comforting you.' I could hear the guilt even more easily than I could see it. The idea was absurd. He shouldn't feel guilty about loving my family. They loved him just as much, goddammit. I loved him as much.
'No.' I leant back and looked him in the eyes, 'You're my brother. That makes my family your family. Understand? No guilt.' He nodded. I pushed him backwards, collapsing next to him and holding tightly as we let the wave of grief sweep us both away.
Later, the grief numbed to a constant ache, as if we were too exhausted for it to carry on so fiercely, but I stayed where I was, for the nineteenth and twentieth nights at least.
Somehow, the feeling of loss always seemed to be less when I had my best friend in my arms.