This is for Fray, my friend in all things fandom, whom I'll love 'til the end of everything. I'm sorry there's no Regulus for you here, but I hope you love it anyway, because I cannot thank you enough for everything.

i. our games of make believe are at an end

The swing is frosty, and Sirius can feel what little snow has fallen seeping into his pants. It soaks into his calloused, tanned skin, creating little water droplets that drip from his hands; they fall to the ground like forgotten lovers, scorned by ignorance (exactly the type that this family deals in).

He hates the way they treat him like a game, something to be manipulated and beaten, and he wonders if there's something to be said for the Death Eater ideal of scorning love. If he can scorn his love for freedom and flying away on a motorbike he's still legally three years to young to own, he thinks he could conquer anything. His family today, the world tomorrow, that's his motto.

Sirius sits there for hours, wondering if the slowly melting snow can wash the pain of defection away.

ii. abandon thought, and let the dream descend

She sits in the grass, its spindly shoots wrapping around her ankles like those friendship anklets they made when they were ten. Back then, the world worked in black and white, and grey was nothing but the colour of the sky while you waited for the clouds to fade away.

The world is brighter now, a technicolour haze of hatred and deceit, and Lily wonders if it's really possible to feel such agonising ache. She reaches for the nearby swing, but his name fits perfectly into the silence between its weary groans – Sev, Sev, Sev – and she can only wish she was as inanimate and as emotionless as it.

How could he? Why did he?

Lily sobs gently, but only the grass feels her pain in the form of an early summer shower.

iii. what raging fire shall flood the soul?

Time passes. Seasons change, eclipsed by the power of wind and rain and sunlight, but people, they don't change. They always feel the need for pity, and sorrow oozes from Remus Lupin like a stream.

His hands are knotted and gnarled with scars, imprinted as deep into his skin as memories. They tear at the grass, thick and luscious under his thighs, pulling not only at the roots anchoring each stem to the ground, but at the marionette stings controlling his heart.

Remus hates himself for letting the monster within take over, hates himself for not hating Sirius, hates himself for everything. He's supposed to be the stuff of legends, a shadow haze that does not exist beyond the heavy, waterlogged pages of history (maybe that's why he likes reading so much).

This tiny park offers no solace, only wonder at how something so pretty can exist here at Hogwarts, and he leaves, his self-loathing dragging along behind him.

iv. what rich desire unlocks its door?

Life continues on, and soon it's Mary who finds the need to mourn. Her heartbreak smells of tearstained hair and endless blocks of Honeydukes chocolate, the silver wrappers unfurling as she sits in the grass and fumbles with them, her numb fingers roaming their edges in search of comfort.

She's not exactly sure what she's mourning; the last seven years have been spent in daily arguments of "you love him, Lily, you love him," and now that she's taken that giant leap of faith, Mary's found herself whispering, "you don't love him Lily, you don't love him."

It takes two people to make a lie, one to spin the web and one to fall in, and right now, the only person Mary's deluding is herself.

She too loves James Potter, but her silent plea to him cannot be heard over the sound of whistling birds and the violent snap of the hairline fracture running through her heart.

v. past the point of no return

James wonders when it all went wrong.

He's been trapped on this never-ending wave of emotions, time speeding along underneath him, and now he's come to – what's the Muggle phrase Remus taught him? – crash and burn.

She's said yes, stopped dancing around him with auburn tresses like a waterfall and a smile as bright as a burning flame, and suddenly, the last seven years are gone in a cloud of smoke. They're both finding it in within themselves to recreate their beginnings, and suddenly, he's finding that he never much liked what was there before.

James looks up to the sky, staring straight into a sun as vibrant as her lips and her hair and her eyes, and for the first time inn what feels like forever: he apologises.

He slings his words into the air, watching them scatter in the midsummer's day sky, and he fervently hopes that one of his words may just swoop down where it's needed.

With that, James brushes the dirt from his robes and leaves the park.

vi. where speech disappears into silence, silence . . .

He couldn't have, he hasn't, he…

…he has.

Silence is the deadliest sin, and Peter thinks that it's going to kill him. He lives day to day in a world of what ifs, waking up is a guilty pleasure as he discovers a world untarnished by creatures of the night (but he still has to survive the day).

He collapses in the grass and forces his lithe lips apart, trying to thrust the words out like mechanics, but he stutters and they flutter out like butterflies, just waiting for the predator to strike.

Peter sits and waits for someone to pounce on the words 'Lucius Malfoy wants me to help betray them.'

vii. imagined our bodies entwining, defenseless and silent

Severus cannot understand why it hurts so much, this brute finality. Hogwarts is a torture encases in four walls; they drip with ivy and memories he'd rather forget, and yet he cannot bring himself to leave what last connections he has with Lily behind.

There is death and destruction and despair out there, and none of them hurts as much as loosing her. She flits silently in and out of his daydreams – as a ten year old jumping rope with fierce determination, a twelve year old reading his tattered potions magazine, a seventeen year old in all her furious beauty – a beacon in the distance that he cannot reach.

Severus glances up at the sun, and all his visions of Lily fade away. He's not entirely sure if that's symbolic or not.

--

The park is destroyed during The Battle of Hogwarts. Time has left its footprints in this place, and it is not needed now; its mournful faces have somewhere else to cry.

Not much to say... I don't think it's the best thing I've ever written, but I like it, and... -shrugs- I'd love a review, if you've got time. :D The section titles come from the Phantom of the Opera song The Point of No Return and I claim no ownership.

Another big thanks to Fray, who is just too awesome and insane for words and makes me laugh all the time.