AN: No one had an opinion, except for my best friend, who requested all of the plots, and gave me the order she'd like them in. So...We'll see how far I get. :) In the interim, this story, about two best friends trying to conquer a dark curse and a Dark Lord, with no help from anybody, is dedicated to my own best friend, with whom I was just starting to be so close when I wrote the original version of this story.

The truest of friendships really do last a lifetime. Spending most of your adult life sharing a flat with your best mate doesn't really sound so bad, does it?

Enough about me. On to Remus and Kara...

"Harry had the impression that Lupin wanted to leave as quickly as possible."

- J.K. Rowling, The Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter 1: Reckoning

He should have let Kara buy him a new suitcase.

That was his first, absurd thought upon entering their house for the first time in a year. The damned thing had burst open immediately upon reaching the hall, and he was now fumbling with the contents. Not the dignified entrance he would have liked, particularly after such a spectacularly terrible end to his career as a teacher. And, of course, as Kara knew, it was always the career he had truly wanted.

There was a light step, and his best friend of seventeen years materialized in front of him, brows raised and book in hand.

"Leave it for now," she said, nodding at the case and its associated spillage. "I'll put the kettle on."

Kara may have been born American, Remus thought as he followed her into the kitchen, but her soul must have been British all along. He didn't know anyone else who worshiped tea as she did, and he had lived in England all his life.

Nearly thirteen years earlier, he and Kara had been the only ones left behind after two of their friends were brutally murdered, another presumed dead, and a fourth locked up in a prison so terrible Remus hated to contemplate it, said fourth friend having been accused of all of the above. They'd done the only thing that made sense under the circumstances, when their lives had been quite literally crumbling around them, and clung to each other. Kara had left her drafty closet of an apartment, an used, unwanted room above the pub she worked at, the Leaky Cauldron, and moved into Remus' flat. Several years later, his parents now deceased, they had moved into their old house, which was not so far outside of London that it was any inconvenience for Kara.

Remus was not worried about convenience. He didn't keep employment long enough to do so.

The place had been somewhat neglected by his parents, but Kara had looked at it, and, with his permission, turned it into a comfortable home. She had seen something beneath all the grime and neglect. Remus sometimes thought that was how she viewed him as well, though just now he couldn't see it himself. But then, after the revelations of the past few days, he had to acknowledge her sight was just a bit clearer than his own.

He waited until they were seated comfortably, out in the back garden, infrequently tended to and boasting only a scattering of intended bloom, before telling her how right she had been.

She was very quiet for a long time.

Then she got up and returned with a bottle of Muggle whiskey, which she added to each of their teacups. Remus accepted the addition with the closest thing he had felt to pleasure for two days.

Had it really been such a short time ago?

Kara leaned her head on her hand. She looked...tired. So tired. Remus, who had been waiting for some sort of reaction and had learned a bit in the last forty-eight hours to pay better attention to his friends, studied her closely. There was sorrow there, and old, old pain...But something else...Something, now he thought of it, that had been there for a long time.

He had never known what it was.

His own disgrace and discomfort forgotten, he reached out and took her hand.

She looked up and him and smiled, grasping back, but the smile was wispy at best.

"I'm sorry, Kara. I don't...I don't know when you'll be able to see him."

That wasn't it either, it seemed, and he frowned.

"I wish I could explain," she said quietly. "Oh, how I wish I could explain, but-"

She stopped, and something about it felt abrupt. His grip on her tightened. She shook herself slightly, as if to rally, and changed the subject back to him.

"Severus told everyone, you said?"

He sighed. "Yes. I suppose...I am not surprised."

She hmmmed at this. As far as he knew, she and Severus Snape had had only one conversation over the course of their entire acquaintance. It had been the day they had all met, and it had not gone as Severus had intended.

He sighed. "I need to tell you something else." She looked at him. "When I told Dumbledore I was resigning, I asked him to tell Sirius not to contact either of us."

Kara sat up straighter, staring at him.

He took a breath. "I know. I know. I'm sorry, Kara. But the Ministry has been watching you too closely. It's too dangerous. If he even sends an owl...I don't know if they will be able to trace him, but you will certainly be under their eye again. Dumbledore agreed. I think...I think he will keep writing to him. Harry too."

She had a soft smile for the mention of Harry.

"You're right," she said, voice shuddering. "I hadn't really thought he'd...Well, I suppose that doesn't matter either."

Remus frowned more deeply, but Kara was already getting up. "I'll fix us some dinner," she said without inflection. She looked down at him. "I have missed you, you know."

Neither of them was particularly given to physical affection, but she leaned down to kiss his cheek. She was not angry at him, not that he'd been particularly concerned she would be, but it would have been a fair reaction.

He contemplated his tea when she'd gone inside, some kitchen sounds floating back to him through the open window.

She hadn't thought Sirius would try to contact them...After all this time. Hadn't thought...

When the realization came to him, he was annoyed at Sirius, who, as usual, had been rather thoughtless. Denied his right to guardianship of Harry, the fool had run off after Peter, then allowed himself to be led to Azkaban, without comment or protest. He'd left behind two living friends, one never convinced of his guilt. And perhaps, Remus wondered for just a moment, perhaps he had deserved it, for not thinking that she was worth fighting to get back to, worth surviving for.

Sirius would be horrified at the thought, Remus knew, if it had been pointed out to him, but that didn't stop him from being angry on Kara's behalf. He had thought Sirius had loved her just as entirely as she had loved him, but if he had, he had been too blinded by rage and his own selfish need to take action.

(This was not entirely fair to Sirius, Remus knew, yet it was not entirely unfair either.)

He thought over his conversation with Kara. And he thought over all that had taken place in the Shrieking Shack. And he thought of Kara's confidence that a mistake had been made in presuming Sirius guilty. And he thought of how she had never liked Peter...

And...somehow in all of that he came to another conclusion. There was something in all of this she was not telling him...Whatever that something was, it was eating her from the inside out.