Authors Note: This is the last chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who has read and left favourites or reviews or followed this story as I have been writing it. This one's for you.

Chapter Fourteen

The fighting continued.

Lights flashed. People fell.

Remus only saw Sirius.

He should have died a dozen times on the way across the courtyard. He wasn't paying attention, focused only on reaching Sirius as quickly as possible.

Sirius was sprawled across the shattered remains of a statue. His eyes were open, glazed with pain. Remus fell to his knees beside him, hands reaching for his face.

"Fuck, fuck, Sirius," Remus couldn't breathe. At least he was alive. He hadn't expected him to be alive when he had seen him fall. Whatever Bellatrix had done, whatever curse she had used, at least it hadn't been the killing curse. He was alive. He was alive.

That was about the extent of the good news, though. Sirius's mouth was moving, but no sound came out. Just blood, spilling out the side of his lips and smearing across his cheeks as gravity claimed it. His nose was bleeding too, rivers of red, and there was blood in his hair from his ears. But Remus couldn't see where Sirius was hurt. There was no wound, nothing that Remus could focus on trying to fix. Sirius was just dying in front of him. There was nothing he could do.

Nothing.

"Merlin, Sirius, don't die, please." Remus dimly noticed the chill of a shield charm as it was erected around them, but he didn't look away from Sirius's face to see who had cast it. The battle wasn't over. But it had ended for him the moment Bellatrix's curse had hit Sirius. Nothing could make him leave Sirius's side now.

Sirius's bloody face was lit intermittently by flashes of light, like some kind of macabre Christmas display. Remus wanted to clean away the blood, but his fingers just smeared it across Sirius's pale skin, mixing it with the salt of his own tears as they fell onto his friend.

Friend. Merlin. Sirius was more than that, surely. Sirius was everything. In that moment, Remus knew that if Sirius didn't survive, he wouldn't. It wasn't a loss he could take.

War was a funny thing. With all of the shouting, the clang of metal, the crash of stone, with all the screams and the sound of feet pounding against the hard ground, with all of the noise it was somehow silent. Quiet. A buzz of chaos, a roar of death and the universal struggle for life. It tasted like bile and smelled like copper. It felt like an end.

He was dimly aware of his own voice, repeating words he wasn't aware of forming. Promises and threats and desperate pleas. Sirius's eyes never left his face. Full of pain, and fear, and something else that Remus couldn't put a name to. The same something that was threatening to consume him as images of life without Sirius forced themselves unbidden into his mind.

If only there was something he could do.

He felt so useless, watching. Pleading to nothing for his everything to be okay. He wished he could turn back time and do everything over. Be there as Sirius fought with Bellatrix, stop the spell before it could hit him. Go right back to the start of all of this and take the fall for that stupid prank in the Great Hall, join Sirius in the headmasters office and stop him from falling into Slughorn's memory. Anything, if it meant Sirius wasn't dying on the cobblestones where they'd had their first snowball fight and Sirius had nailed Remus in the face and they'd laughed as Remus's blood turned the snow pink.

"Remus," a hand was on his shoulder, firm but gentle. "Let me see him."

Madam Pomfrey. Remus hadn't even realised that the fighting had slowed, ground to a halt as those who were left either emerged victorious or fell lifeless into the dust and rubble and blood from countless others who had fallen before them.

He didn't want to let go of Sirius's face, didn't want to move where Sirius couldn't see him, in case Sirius thought he was gone. Thought he was leaving him. The hand on his shoulder slid to his wrist, pulling his hand away from Sirius's face and placing it over Sirius's hand. Remus curled his fingers around Sirius's, letting Madam Pomfrey move him out of the way so she could inspect Sirius. So she could save him.

If he could be saved.

Madam Pomfrey was pouring a potion into Sirius's mouth, holding his head in the crook of her arm and coaxing him to swallow a small amount at a time. Remus watched in silence, clinging to Sirius's hand as if he could hold him on this plane by will alone.

"He needs to go to Mungo's." It took Remus a few moments to process the words.

"Is he…"

"I don't know." Madam Pomfrey had sent up a flare of sparks above them. A detached part of Remus's mind realised that there were other such lights flickering above other bodies around the courtyard. Urgent, they seemed to say. Take me first.

There were a lot of people moving around, arms filled with potions and bandages and faces filled with horror and grief. Students who hadn't been old enough to fight, or too scared, holding everyone together now that the flashes of death had been replaced with the slow reality of dying.

"They're not far away," she promised, as she rose to move to the next person. "There's nothing else I can do," she added, when Remus clutched at the hem of her robe to stop her from leaving. "Keep talking to him. There are other people I can help." Remus let her go, swallowing down the bile that rose in his throat and that other something that threatened to tear him apart.

"Remus…" Sirius's voice was faint, broken, nearly not there at all. Remus was over him again in a breath, hands gentle on his cheeks.

"Shh, don't talk."

"No, I…" Remus shook his head, pressed his lips to Sirius's forehead.

"I know, I know. I love you too."

o 0 o

The emergency Mediwizards appeared in the courtyard together. Remus wondered how they'd managed that, but realised as they started to disappear again with their patients – students, children, professors Remus had known half his life – that the Anti-Disapparition Jinx on the castle must have been lifted.

"And how are you?" A Healer in his lime green robes knelt on Sirius's other side, and Remus reluctantly released him again, hope and despair flaring equally inside of his chest. "Let's get you back to Mungo's. It's going to be alright, okay?"

Sirius's eyes flicked to Remus and the Mediwizard nodded, "of course, your friend can come. Hold tight."

Apparating was never fun. Remus fucking hated it. But doing it like this – with Sirius like this – but the Healer knew what he was doing. He was trained for this. Trained to Apparate people who were on the verge of death, to get them to Mungo's as quickly as possible.

And the worst part was he knew why he was allowed to come. The Mediwizard didn't think Sirius was going to make it.

o 0 o

Hogwarts was going to have a lot of new ghosts.

The Great Hall had been turned into a morgue. Bodies were laid out in neat rows where the tables usually stood, blank eyes staring up at the stormy ceiling. Two Hufflepuff boys, barely fourteen, stumbled under the weight of a seventh year Ravenclaw as they carried his body toward the end of the row. Not all of those ghosts would be dead.

James was looking for Lily. She'd been with him when the fighting had slowed and then ended, but they'd been separated since as they tried to do what they could to help those more injured than they.

James had been lucky. He'd come through the mess with barely a scratch. Lily had been bleeding when he last saw her, her fiery hair matted to her skull with congealing blood. But she'd been okay. Sirius – he'd seen Remus kneeling over him, caught a glimpse of the green robes of the Mediwizard before the three of them had Disapparated out of the courtyard. He was trying not to think about it. Sirius was his brother, in all but blood, and if he – but he wasn't thinking about that. He was looking for Lily.

The courtyard was cold after the stuffy heat and cloying smell of death inside. It looked no better than it had when he'd left it. Less bodies, as the dead were taken inside and the injured treated or taken to Mungo's where more experienced Healers could work their magic. Less bodies, but the devastation remained. Death Eaters were being de-masked, their bodies not taken inside but moved to a relatively undamaged area of the courtyard and laid out respectfully, as if anyone would claim kinship to them now, after this. James could have sworn he saw Snivellus, his greasy face looking more pathetic in death than it ever had in life, but he didn't stop to check. It was no victory.

Lily was helping a Slytherin student who was nursing his left arm and swearing through tears. From the snatches that James caught as he headed towards them, the betrayal of friends was biting harder than the wound to his flesh. Lily's smile was sympathetic, her touch light as she directed him to the tent that some Hufflepuffs had set up to treat the more minor of injuries, under Nurse Wainscott's tutelage. James reached her as the student left, and she turned that sad smile to him.

"Frank killed Podmore," she said, by way of greeting. James turned in the direction her eyes flicked and saw Longbottom at the end of the courtyard. He was too far away to see his face, but the set of his shoulders told him all he needed to know about his mental state. "They were best friends."

"He didn't have a choice," James said, as if that could make it better. Sirius flashed into his mind and he banished him again, every part of him aching to go and make sure he was okay. Terrified to go and find out he wasn't.

"No," Lily agreed, stepping forward to wrap her arms around James and press her face into the front of his shirt. His hands ended up in her hair, still sticky with blood.

It should feel better, knowing it was over. Voldemort was gone. Defeated. His followers were dead or scattered, powerless without their leader. But there was no victory in this. How could there be victory in this? Too many people dead, too many injured, too many more inching their way toward death in hospital beds, alone. And yet the war was over, even if the last – the hardest – battle was not yet won.

All they had left to do was survive it.

o 0 o

Sirius slept.

Slept.

Alive.

Remus clung to the word like a lifeline. Alive. Sirius was alive.

He didn't notice the others arriving until James spoke.

"How is he?"

Peter and Lily were there too, all looking rather the worse for wear. Remus wondered how he looked himself.

"Alive." The word sounded like a prayer on his tongue.

o 0 o

Peter was the first to notice that Sirius was awake. James and Lily were asleep against each other, and Remus's head was resting on the bed, fingers still tangled with Sirius's.

"Hey Wormy," Sirius's voice was hoarse, but less broken than the last time he'd used it. Remus's head lifted at the sound.

"Padfoot," Peter replied, fighting against his grin and failing to supress it.

"Sirius," Remus's free hand fluttered, wanting to touch Sirius's face again, assure himself that he was real, that he wasn't dreaming this. Sirius squeezed his fingers and smiled in a slightly off kilter way that made Remus's eyes fill with tears all over again.

Peter elbowed James awake.

"The fuck," he began, but broke off when he saw Sirius's eyes were open. "Sirius! You're awake!"

"I'm awake," Sirius agreed, and then he repeated, voice filled with wonder. "I'm awake. I'm alive."

"Well, you're not quite there yet," another voice spoke from behind them, a Healer coming to check on her charge. "But you're doing a mighty fine job." Peter moved aside so that the Healer could check Sirius's vital signs, and they all waited as Sirius swallowed his potions and followed the Healer's instructions in a way Sirius had probably never actually followed instructions before in his life.

"Voldemort?" Sirius asked, once the Healer had left.

"Proper dead, this time," James told him. "Lily killed him." He looked proud enough that it might have been his own wand to have cast the curse. Lily, still leaning against James's shoulder, rolled her eyes.

"Nice to see you awake, Sirius," she told him.

"Nice to be awake," he replied, though his usually charming smile was still crooked and shaky. "So it's over?"

"Mostly, yeah." James answered again. "Some of the Death Eaters got away, but with Voldemort gone there's not much they can do. The Ministry already has Aurors out searching for the ones they know of."

"Bellatrix?"

"She disappeared."

Sirius sighed. "And our side?"

"Bones is dead, so are Podmore and Emmeline. He was hit by an Imperius curse, killed her. Longbottom killed him." He'd hesitated, not wanting to hurt his best friend, and Emmeline had paid for that hesitation with her life. "A lot of people are dead."

And Sirius was lucky not to be one of them.

"I saw you," he said, looking at Peter now. "In the courtyard."

"Yeah," Peter replied.

"Saved my life," Remus said, speaking for the first time since Sirius had woken up. "Thank you."

"Well," Peter's cheeks were flushed red. "I couldn't let you get eaten by a snake."

"I thought you went to the dungeons though?" James said.

"Well, yeah. I, uh, came back out."

"No shit."

"I, well. I was sitting there, waiting for something to happen. And I realised, I couldn't stay there. Yeah, I might die if I was out fighting, but at least I'd die for my friends, just like you were willing to die for me. And, and I couldn't stay, then." He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and stared at Sirius's hospital bedspread. "It was easy enough to get out; the dungeons aren't exactly rat proof." A wry smile. "I'm glad I did."

"I'm glad you did too," Remus said seriously. Sirius squeezed his hand again.

o 0 o

Sirius recovered.

Many others didn't. His time in Mungo's was punctuated by the grieving of friends and relatives of his ward-mates. Howling cries of misery and soft broken sobs came from across the room, while his friends sat with him and kept him up-to-date on what was unfolding outside.

Bellatrix was eventually captured. She'd surfaced to attack the Longbottoms, and she would live to regret it as she rotted in Azkaban. Frank and Alice had been okay, or would be, given time. Remus found himself entirely able to hate her, in a way he hadn't thought himself capable of. A burning hate that started in the pit of his stomach and made his hands curl into fists when he thought of what she had done – what she had tried to do.

But she had failed. Sirius was alive.

James and Lily got married. It was a small ceremony. Sirius stood proud as James's best man, still pale after too long spent in a hospital bed, but very much alive. Remus walked Lily down the aisle because her family refused to attend. She said she didn't mind, but she did, and James kissed her and told her that they were their own family now. Peter caught the bouquet, to everyone's amusement, and even though he went bright red and stammered he couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

The war left people suspicious and angry for a long time. Grief manifested itself, wrapped around families and dragged them down into its thick mire. But there was hope, twining amongst the shattered remains of their pasts. Weddings, births, and new beginnings. Life continued, and it dragged everyone along with it.

o 0 o

"You coming, Moony?" Sirius stood silhouetted in the doorway. Remus looked up from his book.

"You're ready, then?"

"Been ready for ages," Sirius lied, teeth flashing with his grin. Remus didn't throw the book at him, because Remus didn't throw books, but he considered it for a moment.

"We're not taking that awful bike," he warned.

"Aw, Moony, you're no fun." Sirius dodged away from Remus's half-hearted attempt to swat him, catching his hand and pulling him around to pin him against the doorframe.

"We're going to be late," Remus told him.

"We're always late."

Remus huffed a laugh. "You're always late," he replied, reaching forward to straighten Sirius's tie. "But you can't be late to your own Godson's Christening."

Sirius couldn't wipe the smile off his face.