Author's Note: This fic is illustrated, but unfortunately I can't include images on this site, so if you'd like to see the version with art look me up on AO3. My id there is 'skyrat'

Hermione was coming at Harry with that look on her face. The one that usually said 'There is a problem,' and 'I'm about to say something unpleasant' and 'I don't want to upset you but I'm going to do it anyway.'

"I haven't been bossing around any house elves," he said defensively, hoping to head off whatever complaint she was about to lob at him. "Not today, anyway," he added under his breath.

"What? No, of course you haven't." The determined set to her frown shifted slightly, into a more bemused expression. "You know better."

"Yeah, I do," Harry confirmed. His eyes slid over to Ron. Maybe whatever was wrong wasn't actually his fault. Hermione and Ron had been butting heads a lot more often lately, so the chances that Ron was the source of her annoyance were decent.

Ron shrugged, and raised his eyebrows in a silent signal of 'Don't look at me, mate, I haven't done anything.'

"Oh, stop fretting, this isn't about anything like that," Hermione huffed with a roll of her eyes. "Although I can't help noticing that you haven't been wearing those S.P.E.W. badges I gave you. It wouldn't kill you to help me advertise, you know. But that's besides the point."

"Ah, so there is a point," said Ron.

"Of course there's a point!"

"Well, get on with it then," said Ron. "And get to it so that you can help me finish this potions essay. I still have to come up with another three inches of filler on the history of dittany use and I'm at a complete loss."

"I'm not doing your homework for you."

"I didn't ask you to do it for me. Just help. Like….maybe underline all the bits in the textbook I missed that could fill up three inches on dittany."

"That's doing your homework for you. Maybe you should go ask Lavender."

"Sod off," muttered Ron. He hunched back over his essay and made a point of not looking at her.

"Um, so what's wrong?" asked Harry.

The look came back with a vengeance. "Well…" said Hermione reluctantly. "You, actually."

"Me?"

"Well, yes," she said. "I'm getting a bit concerned, honestly."

"What have I done?" asked Harry suspiciously.

Hermione put her hands up in a placating gesture. "Nothing!" she said quickly. "It's not anything you've done. It's more of a matter of been."

"I've been fine," said Harry.

"No," said Hermione. "You really haven't."

"Yes, I have," insisted Harry. He nudged Ron. "Haven't I? Back me up here."

Ron looked up and exchanged a secretive glance with Hermione that Harry really didn't like the look of.

"Er, yeah. Harry's been fine," said Ron in a voice that clearly betrayed I-don't-actually-agree-with-you-but-I'll-say-whatever-you-want-because-you're-my-best-mate.

"I have," Harry repeated, feeling that Ron's assurance was definitely not compelling enough.

"You've been looking peaky lately."

"Well of course I have. We're doing N.E.W.T. levels. And apparition lessons. And the quidditch team's been a mess lately, and it's my responsibility to try and keep it together. I'm exhausted. Everyone starts looking peaky in sixth year."

"You've been looking peaky in a manic-obsessive way. Not in the usual overworked way," she elaborated.

"No I haven't."

Hermione just leveled him with one of her patented I-know-better-than-you-so-why-are-you-arguing-with-me looks.

"I just thought you should know that you haven't seemed yourself lately. And I've been worried," she sighed.

"Well I'm not sure exactly who you think I've seemed like, if not me, but I can assure you that I am in fact still one hundred percent Harry. And you don't have to worry."

"Your obsession with stalking Draco is getting a bit out of hand," she pressed. "It isn't healthy."

"I am not obsessed with stalking Draco!" Harry spluttered. "I'm obsessed with stopping Lord Voldemort. It's not my fault that Draco happens to be a key aspect of that problem."

"I know, I know," Hermione agreed. "Everything you've told us about that makes sense. We agree that something fishy is going on with Draco. You're just letting it consume you so much. I can't help thinking that you're mainly using it as a distraction because you're still upset over…you know. What happened."

By now Ron had quietly shut his potions textbook and was glancing uncomfortably between Harry and Hermione. At the words 'what happened' he and Hermione exchanged another significant look that Harry had been frequently catching on both of their faces. The one that said: 'I feel extremely sorry for you and don't know what to say.'

He hated that look. Harry found himself wishing that Hermione had been targeting him with a rant about house elf inequality after all.

He felt his face go stony, as was his usual reaction to any reference to his godfather's untimely death. He simultaneously was grateful that his friends always sidestepped explicitly saying the words 'Sirius died' and being frustrated that they always edged around the topic without directly mentioning it, like they had to walk on eggshells around Harry because he couldn't handle it.

(He was even more frustrated by the fact that he sort of felt like he actually couldn't handle it. Deep down he still felt like if he refused to acknowledge Sirius's death it would somehow cease to be as real.)

"I'm fine," he just stiffly repeated for the umpteenth time.

"You're not," Hermione insisted. "But that's okay. You know that right? I just wish there was something we could do."

"Well there isn't," said Harry bitterly. "There isn't anything that anyone can do. He's dead."

It was the first time he'd said the words aloud in months. They burned like acid on his tongue.

"And I can handle it," he lied. "I'm fine."

For the first time in his life, Remus Lupin was grateful for his condition. It gave him a shield he'd never expected to need. As the days slipped by, putting more and more space between now and the aftermath of the battle (there was no need for him to specify which one in his own mind, for no other single confrontation could compare to the devastating impact of that day in the Department of Mysteries,) Remus felt himself rapidly shattering. He tried to carry on as normal. He was used to hardship, he constantly reminded himself. He'd never planned on being happy. He'd known since early childhood that he could not expect to lead a normal satisfying life. The things he wanted simply weren't ever going to be on the table for him, so what was the point of feeling sorry for himself now? Life was just playing out the way he always knew it would. There was a war on and in the grand scheme of things he was utterly unimportant. He had to persevere and keep fighting for everyone else.

All the logic and determination in the world though didn't seem to stop the very air from feeling like broken glass as he tried to breathe. No matter how many mantras he recited to himself, his food felt like glue when he tried to swallow it. Sleeping felt like dying, only it was worse really, because if he died Remus could at least hope there might be a chance he'd see Sirius again, in some form or another. Instead all he could look forward to were guilt ridden nightmares, where he watched his best friend die over and over again, sometimes replaying history, other times in new inventive ways, the only constant being that it always felt like his fault.

He was losing weight (not that he had much to spare,) and no one noticed. His eyes were becoming increasingly bloodshot, the sickly chartreuse and violet shadows beneath them more pronounced, and no one noticed. His hands had developed a rather annoying tremble that hadn't used to be there, but no one commented on it. It was terribly convenient, really, that everyone had grown accustomed to him looking haggard and frayed. God bless lycanthropy.

The full moon, which had once been the source of all his worst nightmares, transformed into a sanctuary; it was only in wolf form that he could escape the constant torture of his thoughts. It was a reprieve from the What Ifs.

What if he'd been paying closer attention to Sirius in the battle.

What if he'd gotten in the way of Bellatrix.

What if he'd used a forbidden curse before the Death Eaters got a chance to hurt anyone.

What if he'd remembered to take the wolfsbane potion the night Sirius showed up at Hogwarts.

What if he'd been there the night James and Lily died.

…What if he'd actually told Sirius how he felt about him.

The inside of his head had become his own personal torture device. Transforming into a mindless slavering beast was its own kind of hell, but the reprieve from his guilt and grief was a welcome respite. Ripping himself apart physically was less painful than facing the battlefield inside his mind.

It scared him when he caught himself thinking this way. Embracing lycanthropy was truly a sign that he was finally losing himself. His sanity.

He began to trust himself less. Not that he had ever trusted himself completely, how could he when he completely lost control on a periodic basis? But before he'd felt fairly confident that he was in command during the other twenty-some days of the month. Now though…with dangerous thoughts creeping into his mind, and the waxing moon inviting feelings of relief instead of dread, Remus was afraid that he no longer had control over the wolf. It was instead gaining the upper hand over him.

So he stayed away from the others to make sure no one got hurt. He didn't even bother to make excuses for why he was avoiding people—it never occurred to him that anyone would notice. He hadn't allowed himself to get especially close to anyone since the Marauders had been torn apart.

Well, not until Sirius had come back into his life, but that hardly counted, did it? Because he wasn't avoiding Sirius, Sirius was—

He couldn't even really think it.

His throat closed up and his eyes burned and the unformed word 'dead' was usually eclipsed by 'hold it together Remus, you're not the only one who's lost someone, that's how wars go and this is just how life is.'

Often followed by the equally painful thought, 'he wasn't exactly yours to lose, anyway.'

Yes, it was much easier to melt into the oblivion of a full moon than to dwell too hard on that.

She was just researching horcruxes. That was all. Really. Her only agenda.

But really. It would have been remiss of her to not be very thorough in her research, wouldn't it? Hermione reasoned that it was perfectly logical that information pertinent to Voldemort's schemes might be found in other, less obvious sources of information. How was she supposed to get any clues to his horcruxes if she was afraid to check out all of the dark magic sources that she could gain access to?

Not being thorough in gathering information never sat well with Hermione. She couldn't abide by sloppy research. She was just being a responsible investigator.

That was all.

If she just so happened to find any clues about mysterious veils or resurrecting people who had vanished…well. That would just be a funny coincidence, wouldn't it?

She certainly wasn't looking for those things.

She just…wasn't opposed to taking in some extra information that she might find while searching for those horcruxes.

Right.

That was exactly what she was doing. And sneaking into black market bookstores in Knockturn Alley and breaking open locked cabinets was obviously a necessary course of action to fulfill her purpose. Where else would she be expected to find information relevant to the inner workings of the darkest wizard who ever lived? She'd already exhausted every book in Hogwarts's library, including the restricted section. This was the logical place to look next for clues, and definitely had nothing to do with a rumor she'd accidently overheard two Slytherin first years whispering about how the estate of a particularly notorious illegal necromancer was about to go up for auction and thus several banned books were going to come onto the market and were being stored in this very bookshop.

She was doing worse than just breaking school rules right now; she was acting like a criminal. And it was really a sign that everything in the wizarding world was going to hell in a hand basket that this didn't particularly bother her. She was feeling much guiltier about the fact that she hadn't told Harry or Ron what she was up to. She almost had, but at the last minute had made up a story about how she needed to borrow Harry's invisibility cloak so that she could sneak into the potions cupboard to pilfer some ingredients to make a draught for staying up all night so she could study. She told herself that she'd left her best friends out of it because it was easier for a single person to avoid getting caught than three. In actuality, she just hadn't wanted to get Harry's hopes up if her plan didn't yield any results.

She was glad she'd come alone though. Navigating Knockturn Alley was considerably more precarious than sneaking around the school. She very nearly set off booby-trapped alarms no less than four times. She was almost certain that adding any additional collaborators to this scheme would have only resulted in one of them stumbling into being apprehended in some extremely unpleasant manner.

Once she had liberated the stack of rare and unsavory books from their holding cell, Hermione (very, very carefully,) settled down on the floor to sort through them.

Some of them she immediately dropped into a discard pile. No matter how much Sirius was missed, she was fairly certain that no one would be very keen for him to make a reappearance via any means found in a book called How to Animate an Inferius in Ten Easy Steps. Nor did the Field Guide to Foraging for Common Graveyard Pestilence seem especially useful. Soon she had whittled the stack down to only a few especially fragile and ancient looking texts.

She very nearly overlooked the second to last book. It was thinner than the others, and while most of the stack had had their titles boldly displayed in (sometimes flaking) gilt, this volume was discreetly labeled in modest black text. It proclaimed: Understanding the Void.

The spine creaked as she opened its brittle pages.

It is a common misconception, she read, that the path from the living realm to the Underworld is a direct one, which may be traversed efficiently. In actuality, the two existences are separated by a wide gulf. This gulf is filled with a noxious atmosphere of diaphanous mist, the exact composition of which has never been determined due to its inhospitality to life. Were one to attempt to venture into the gulf, the combination of extreme cold and unbreathable atmosphere would paralyze the subject before a sample could be obtained and analyzed. While this atmosphere makes an immutable barrier to the living, it does not impede the progress of the deceased, as they have already departed their corporal forms and thus have no dependency on air or temperature. Theories abound that this chasm consists of primordial leftovers from the creation of the world, or that its invention had a more deliberate purpose of impeding travel between the realms. Throughout time several portals have been discovered or constructed….

Hermione caught her breath and flipped ahead several pages. She found a series of engravings, one of which looked eerily similar to the crumbling stone arch and tattered veil that Sirius had fallen through.

With unsteady hands, she griped the book a little tighter and continued to read.

Contrary to expectation, death is not instantaneous upon entering the void. Due to the immediate extreme temperature drop it is possible for a body to be preserved in a cryogenic stasis. This preservation is unfortunately short lived, as the severe conditions are corrosive and will eventually break down a body beyond the possibility of resuscitation. Generally speaking, a living creature could last approximately one full lunar cycle before the damage becomes irreversible.

"Oh Merlin," Hermione whispered to herself. "Sirius didn't die immediately after falling through."

One Lunar Cycle.

Sirius might not have died when he first fell through…but he was certainly dead now. It had been eight months since the battle. If it had been possible to save Sirius from the veil, they'd already missed their chance.

Hermione turned the pages quicker, her heart thudding as she rapidly scanned the pages.

And…there. There it was.

Spells.

Spells for pulling someone out of the gulf.

Spells that would have saved Sirius—if she'd only had this book eight months ago.

Spells that are utterly useless to her now.

…Unless….

Her mind racing a mile a minute, Hermione pulled out a blank notebook and began to copy.

Apparently the whole people-not-noticing thing had been short lived. All of the sudden it seemed like everyone was noticing.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were constantly staring at him.

Molly Weasley was constantly staring at him.

Tonks was constantly staring at him, although that might have had something to do with the fact that Molly Weasley was also staring at her, and in particular was often letting her gaze drift between himself and Tonks and then back to him. Yeah, Tonks had probably noticed that.

It was making him uncomfortable.

Although not as uncomfortable as being under Snape's sudden scrutiny was making him.

"Might I remind you," Severus said nastily, cornering Remus one evening after a meeting, "that the wolfsbane potion is exceedingly difficult and time consuming to brew. I do not appreciate having my efforts wasted."

"I have no idea what you're talking about Severus," Remus lied. "Your efforts are not being wasted."

(As far as Remus was concerned they weren't: the hellebore growing in his window box was getting a nice boost from all the cups of potion he'd been emptying over it. He should probably tell Pomona Sprout about wolfsbane's apparent fertilizer potential.)

Snape's sallow brow creased. "I also do not appreciate dishonesty," he hissed. "But I'm not sure what else I should expect from the likes of you. See that you take the potion Lupin." With that he strode off, his black robes billowing dramatically behind him.

(A little too dramatically, really, Lupin had always suspected that Snape had put an enchantment on his robes to increase their impact.)

Remus would have been annoyed by the entire encounter, if things like 'being annoyed' still reached him. He was feeling a bit too emotionally flat though for mild annoyances to register. He was feeling too emotionally flat for much of anything to register.

What was the point, really?

He was fairly certain that his entire life was probably some sort of cosmic joke. He'd been cursed by the werewolf bite so young he hadn't been allowed to have a proper childhood. That had been depressing, but was somewhat redeemed, when he finally made it to school and not only managed to make friends, but friends who miraculously didn't mind his condition. Friends that became so crucially important to his happiness that the very idea of losing just one of them would wreck him. And so of course (how had he ever expected otherwise) he'd lost all of them. And just when he'd adjusted to functioning with that devastation the universe saw fit to toss one of them back to him—the one that meant a bit more to him than just friend. The one that made his heart stutter when he grinned conspiratorially at him. The one he'd been meaning to confess to for years now, but there just never seemed to be a good time, because Remus was afraid that revealing that truth would cause the conspiratorial grins to fade, the friendly shoulder slaps to abort in mid-air, hands hovering awkwardly as Sirius stumbled over how uncomfortable Remus now made him…. Remus had stupidly thought that that would be the worst feeling. But he had been so wrong, because now he would give anything to see that discomfort flash across Sirius's features. He'd even settle for outright disgust, because seeing any emotion at all on Padfoot's face would be better than this stark reality where Padfoot no longer existed.

What was the point in letting anything reach him when the universe was obviously determined to cause him only pain? Even the good parts had just been setting him up for a harder fall. He simply didn't have it in him anymore to keep playing that game.

Staying out of the game though depended on staying away from people. Which was growing increasingly difficult.

For the past few months he'd had no barrier to stop him from skulking out of meetings before they were quite over. If he stayed shut in for weeks at a time no one bothered to come looking for him. If he took a little longer than necessary coming back from Order missions, no one called him out on it. It was a perfect arrangement, really.

Suddenly though, it seemed like he couldn't even slip into the loo without someone accosting him.

"Remus, dear!" The voice that he had come to associate with the greatest sense of dread interrupted his escape to his personal quarters.

"I'm in a bit of a hurry, actually," he attempted to object as Molly Weasley's hand latched around his arm, pulling him back from the staircase.

"Nonsense, the meeting adjourned early, we still have twenty minutes until you expected it to be done. Just the perfect amount of time for a nice cup of tea."

"I'm not thirsty—"

"So have a scone. Goodness, you look like you haven't eaten in a week!"

Remus was tempted to retort with 'You're wrong, it's only been a day and a half, actually,' but bit his tongue, knowing that that piece of information would hardly help him in worming out of the situation.

Tonks was, unsurprisingly, already seated in the kitchen, a mug of tea in her hand. Remus sensed an intervention.

It's not that he didn't like Tonks. He liked her quite a lot, actually. She was one of the people in the Order that he hit it off the best with. It just hurt a bit to look at her now, is all. Out of everyone (aside from Harry of course,) Tonks had been hit the hardest by Sirius's death. Remus had watched her decline almost as rapidly as himself. Looking at her and her diminished persona felt a bit too much like looking in a mirror. Remus had never been very fond of mirrors.

"Wotcher, Remus?" She gave him a weak smile and listlessly stirred her tea.

"Hello, Tonks. Okay, fine. I'll—I'll just have a scone then. Just a small one. I must be going soon though."

He reached for one only to have Molly snatch the plate out of his grasp.

"Here, allow me to get it for you," she announced, grabbing one with currants in it (he'd been reaching for a plain one.) She then proceeded to slather it with a truly obscene amount of clotted cream. The plate she set in front of him ended up looking more like some kind of cream pie than a proper scone.

"Um, thanks," he murmured, scrapping off about 80% of the topping.

An awkward silence settled across the table. It had been months, but it still felt weird to not have Tonks combating the quiet with a humorous transformation to make everyone laugh or loosen up.

"So," said Tonks finally, looking up from making a miniature whirlpool in her mug, "how 'bout them Cannons?"

"Er…I dunno," replied Remus. "I haven't really been following quidditch lately."

"Me neither," admitted Tonks, and went back to staring at her tea.

"How's…how's it been in Hogsmeade?" he asked, feeling obligated to reciprocate her attempt at some sort of conversation.

"Dull," said Tonks. "It's turning into a ghost town, what with all the shops closing and people disappearing."

"Ah," said Remus, not really sure what to say to that. It was just an unsurprising truth.

"How's it been with the werewolves?" asked Tonks back.

"Uncomfortable, mostly," confessed Remus. "It's not terrible. Well, the food's pretty terrible." He shrugged.

"I can tell," interjected Molly, dropping a second uninvited scone onto Remus's plate. "You look like you haven't seen decent cooking in months. I have an idea! Why don't the two of you go out and get a nice meal? You could bring Bill with you. He knows all the best places."

Remus caught a faint glimpse of the old Tonks as she briefly rolled her eyes at Molly's suggestion, but it didn't last. Her face quickly faded back into a depressed blankness.

"I have plans already," Remus said without even stopping to think about it. It was just a habit now to deflect social interaction whenever possible.

He watched, actually a little surprised as Tonks flinched, definitely looking more depressed at his answer. Had she actually wanted to go to dinner with him? Odd. Now he felt a bit guilty.

"Um, maybe tomorrow though?" he said compulsively, simply wanting to undo the miserable expression he'd put on her.

He immediately regretted opening his mouth but there was no taking it back. Not when she brightened at the offer, breaking into a smile that was a lot more genuine than the one she'd given him as he sat down at the table.

"I'd love to, Remus." She beamed.

"I think Hermione is up to something," mused Harry as he lay on his bed, listlessly staring at the Marauder's map.

"Yeah, I'm sure she is," grumbled Ron. "Probably plotting how she can meet more famous quidditch players to snog."

"I sincerely doubt that," said Harry, seriously not in the mood for getting in the middle of Ron and Hermione's snit.

"Probably just busy writing buckets of love letters to Viktor Krum then," Ron continued to gripe.

"She keeps borrowing my invisibility cloak," said Harry. "And her reasons always seem a bit weak. Why would she need to steal ingredients from the potions supply room? Slughorn likes her so much I bet he'd just hand over whatever she wanted if she asked him."

"I'll bet she's using it to sneak around and snog people," said Ron.

"Oh, will you lay off it?" Harry snapped. "You know she isn't."

"No," retorted Ron glumly. "I don't."

"Well whose fault is that then," muttered Harry, dropping the subject.

It was taking Hermione a lot longer than she'd planned to gather all of the instruments she needed to enact the spell she'd found in the book. Some of the supplies were rare, and others expensive. She'd had to brew a potion that had taken an entire month to set. The greatest impediment though, and the thing that was truly the key to pulling her entire plan off was her need for a time-turner.

Time-turners had never been an easy thing to acquire due to them being very strictly regulated by the Ministry of Magic. However, their elusiveness had recently become significantly worse, considering that the Ministry's entire supply of them had been destroyed during the battle. Now the only way to procure one was through strictly illegal means.

Luckily, it wasn't hard to guess where you should look if you needed to find something illegal. Hermione had yet again borrowed Harry's cloak, invented an excuse about needing to visit a sick relative, and taken the Knight Bus back to Knockturn Alley.

It had been laughably easy to find a time-turner at Borgin and Burkes. As she took it she promised herself that she would be returning it promptly. She was definitely not stealing—just borrowing—and for a very good cause. If she pulled everything off right, no one would ever even know.

It took an extremely long time to turn the time-turner enough to go back to where she wanted. She counted meticulously, tense with anxiety that she'd lose track and end up in the wrong point in time. She was glad for all the arithmancy classes she'd had, which had trained her to be exact with numbers.

The next difficult hurdle was getting back into the Department of Mysteries, but with the invisibility cloak she managed to sneak in.

Like before, Hermione carefully tested the doors, marking the correct ones with a flaming 'X' (although this time she modified the spell to last longer.) For the first time she questioned her decision to come alone. It was significantly creepier searching these corridors without Harry and Ron. (Or maybe it was just the fact that the last time she'd been here she had been blissfully ignorant to the horrors that were about to happen.) The air felt thick and heavy, the lingering sense of dread almost tangible.

The debris from the battle had been removed but the Death Chamber still bore marks from what had happened. The stone steps had chips and scorch marks that had not been there the first time. They blended in with the already decaying state of the arch, but Hermione could remember the contrast.

She knelt down in front of the veil and uncorked the protective potion she'd brewed, swallowing it in a single swig. With a determined look at the arch, Hermione began to recite the spell.

The first thought to float through Sirius's thoroughly muddled mind was 'I must have had too much to drink last night.'

He frowned at the thought as soon as it appeared. He was pretty sure he wasn't in the habit anymore of drinking to the point of obliterating his memory. It had been a pretty long time since he'd been carefree enough for that—years, for sure. For one, there had been a very long stretch of time where he obviously hadn't had access to alcohol. And after he got out of Azkaban, he'd needed to be too careful to take stupid risks like getting drunk. Even when he'd been holed up in Grimmauld Place, and going so out of his mind with boredom that drinking sounded extremely appealing, he'd been careful to stay alert. He never knew when he'd be needed, if Death Eaters might attack or Harry might get in trouble….

Was Harry in trouble now? He was missing more of his memory than just the previous night. There was a huge yawning gap there that he couldn't account for. He couldn't even lock down on what his most recent memories were…. Had he been captured? Had his mind been altered?

He sat up abruptly and nearly fell over again from the wave of dizziness that swept over him.

"Sirius."

There were hands on him now, scalding hot points of contact. How could anyone have skin that hot? Had he just been grabbed by a dragon?

No…no, wait. It wasn't that the person's hands were hot.

It was him. He was cold.

Oh, Merlin, was he cold.

"Sirius!"

The voice was getting more urgent. He tried to focus on it but his teeth were chattering in a distractingly violent manner and his mind was running in panicked loops. He might not be able to remember anything specific, but a clinging sense of wrongness sat low in his gut.

"Sirius, we have to get out of here!"

The voice was familiar…not a Death Eater then. But maybe Death Eaters were closing in, going by the urgent pleas to escape.

"Where's—where's Harry?" he hoarsely stuttered out.

"Not here! He's fine though!" The answer was accompanied by a tug on his arm.

"What's going on?" he asked next.

"I'll explain after we get somewhere safe."

He glanced around. He was on a slate floor in what looked like a shadowy amphitheater. The rows of elevated stone benches looked familiar, although the nagging bad feeling in his stomach worsened as he took it in.

The Department of Mysteries, his brain sluggishly supplied.

"Can you transform into Padfoot?" asked the voice.

That question startled him out of his mental haze. Not very many people knew about Padfoot. Whoever was talking to him was part of his inner circle.

"Hermione?" he asked tentatively, the familiarity of the voice finally clicking into place.

"Yes," confirmed Hermione. "We need to sneak out of here. It'll be easier for you to fit under the invisibility cloak with me if you turn into Padfoot."

Sirius nodded and melted into his dog form.

He very nearly immediately changed back. The room had an overpowering smell of death that had been undetectable as a human. It was almost unbearable to his newly sensitive nose, and triggered his heightened flight or fight instincts. He had to suppress the urge to growl.

Hermione disappeared under a swirl of shimmering fabric, and then an arm appeared from the nothingness and pulled him under.

Being under the cloak sent a pang of nostalgia through Sirius. It was a painfully familiar situation. He'd spent more hours than he could ever possibly count using it to sneak around Hogwarts. But every other time he'd been under it James had been the one sharing it with him. Being under the cloak without James only amplified how off-kilter everything felt.

"We're in the Department of Mysteries," Hermione whispered. "We need to get out and we absolutely cannot be seen. We cannot be seen by anyone. Not even after we get out of the Ministry. Do you understand?"

Sirius wanted to ask questions but his canine vocal cords prevented him. He let out a faint woof in affirmation. He could always ask questions later, he supposed.

He took a tentative step forward, following Hermione's lead. An almost magnetic pull seemed to slow his progress though. He felt like he was fighting gravity, or wading through molasses.

Sirius.

His head whipped around, he was certain that he'd just heard someone call his name. The room had been empty aside from him and Hermione though, hadn't it?

Sirius, Sirius, Sirius Black….

It wasn't just one voice, it was several. People were whispering all around him, calling him back to the center of the room. The voices were coming from an arch on a dais.

That's something important! Screamed his brain. But he wasn't sure why.

"Sirius!" A louder voice, a closer voice, Hermione's voice, hissed directly overhead. "Sirius, c'mon, we have to go right now."

Right. Follow Hermione. That's what he was supposed to do. He lifted a reluctant paw.

Siiiirius….

The whispers were like an itch in his brain, a niggling irritation of a memory just out of reach. Maybe that was why they were calling to him. Maybe if he just got a little closer to the arch they could tell him what it was he was forgetting….

A hand closed around the scruff of his neck and gave a forceful tug. He whined in protest, but the sensation jolted him out of his trance. The arch was bad. It was where the death smell was coming from. Why had he wanted to get closer to it? They needed to get away.

Without any consideration for the invisibility cloak, Sirius bolted up the rows of benches, forcing Hermione to scramble to keep up. The moment they were through the heavy door the viscous pull lessened and Sirius found himself able to move more freely.

He slowed and allowed Hermione to set the pace again. They were now creeping down a long hallway lit with flickering torches. The blue light undulated across the floor like rippling water. He kept waiting for someone to appear and stop them but the hallway remained deserted. They in fact made it through two more doors before the need to freeze and edge out of the way of a ministry employee occurred.

The farther they got from the stone amphitheater room, the less deserted the halls became. Their progress slowed to an agonizing crawl. No less than three times Sirius was nearly kicked by a scurrying passerby. At one point Hermione had to physically restrain him before he accidentally ran headfirst into a clerk.

He let out a held breath as they finally squeezed out of the building but his relief did not seem to reach Hermione. She continued to stiffly escort them away from anything that Sirius found familiar, carefully wending them around pedestrians and steering them away from crowds. They did not stop until arriving at a decrepit tenement building with boarded up windows. "Alohomora," whispered Hermione, allowing them to slip in through the door.

Sirius had been rather expecting the run-down appearance of the outside of the building to simply be a clever disguise, and that they would find a cozy and comfortable abode once they entered. Alas, this building had not been magically amended. The inside was just as condemned in appearance as the outside, and had the additional drawback of being extremely dark due to the plywood covering all the windows.

Hermione dropped the invisibility cloak and nodded in silent permission for Sirius to reveal himself.

He collapsed in a shivering heap as he transformed back. In his anxiety to escape unseen he'd somehow managed to forget the bone-cutting cold that felt like it had seeped into his very blood and marrow. But now that he could relax all of his physical discomfort came rushing back and was fighting to gain his attention.

"Sirius?" The urgency that had laced Hermione's voice for the last hour or so was ebbing into softer concern. "Are you alright?"

"C-cold," he mumbled. "Why am I so cold?" he noticed that Hermione didn't seem to be shivering.

She immediately cast a warming charm and the stinging bite embedded in Sirius's skin began to fade.

"What's going on?" he asked again, as soon as his racking shivers quelled enough for him to think straight. "Why are you here but not Harry?"

"Well…" guilt flashed across her features. "That's a bit complicated, actually. How much do you remember?"

"Everything's a complete jumble," Sirius admitted, frustratingly running his fingers through his hair. "There was something going on for the Order, wasn't there? I can't really remember anything. Just…a lot of people. And some sort of conflict. Where did everyone else go? They didn't…." a lump like liquid lead began to slide down his throat. "The others didn't...they didn't die, did…they?"

Hermione's expression became guarded and calculating. "No…" she said carefully. "The others didn't."

The silent 'but' hung heavy and unmistakable in the air, answering a question Sirius hadn't even thought to ask.

"Just…me, then, was it?" Sirius stated. The horrible sick feeling spreading through his veins told him the answer before Hermione needed to. He somehow intrinsically knew. He suspected he'd known since the moment he'd regained consciousness, but his mind had been fighting to reject it.

"Just you."

"Merlin's beard." Sirius looked down at his hands as if he expected them to turn transparent before his very eyes. "I died."

"Well…sort of," Hermione corrected.

"How does someone 'sort of' die?"

"I went back in time," Hermione admitted. "You did die. But I've come back. And I pulled you out before it could happen this time. So you didn't actually die. Not in the here and now. You were just sort of…supposed to."

"I died," he just numbly repeated, running his hand through his hair again in bewilderment.

"Not this time," Hermione said forcefully. "I figured out how to fix it."

He finally looked up, gratitude spreading through his gaunt features. "Thank you," he said breathlessly.

"Well, I had to try," said Hermione, a bit embarrassed. "I couldn't stand seeing Harry being so torn up all the time. He's just been a shell of himself since it happened—and Lupin too. They're painful to look at and nothing you do to cheer them up reaches them."

"Lupin?" asked Sirius, confused. He was not surprised to hear that Harry would take his death badly, but he hadn't expected anyone else to be especially fussed about it. Remus was the most stoic person he knew, and had already written him off as lost when he'd been sent to Azkaban. It was true that their friendship had been reconnecting a bit during the few months they'd lived together at 12 Grimmauld Place, but Remus had still been more closed off than he had been…before. Not that Sirius blamed him. He would be the first to admit that he'd been a moody git all those months, he would have self depreciatingly joked that Remus might have been glad to be rid of him even.

"Yes," said Hermione with a nod. "He seemed okay at first, honestly. Upset, of course, but in the normal way that everyone else was. But while Harry's actually been doing a bit better with time, Lupin has been going downhill. It's gotten a bit alarming, really."

"Huh," said Sirius, completely at a loss for what to make of that surprising news. "Well, what are we doing wasting time here then? Let's go let them know I'm alright."

"We can't," said Hermione simply.

"What?"

"We can't let them see us," said Hermione with a grim set to her jaw.

"What do you mean we can't let them see us? I have to see Harry. I can't let him think that I'm dead when I'm not!"

"Sirius, I just told you that I had to go back in time. You know how that works! We cannot be seen. By anyone. We have to wait for the timeline to join up again! If anyone sees us it could have catastrophic ramifications."

"Yeah, but…but surely it couldn't change all that much if we just…gave Harry a message or something."

"It could change everything," Hermione insisted sternly. "The whole reason I went searching for a way to bring you back was because Harry was so gutted. If you send him a message that you're all right he'll cheer up, won't he? And I might never find the book that had the answer to bring you back through the veil. So this will never of happened and you'll go back to being dead."

"But—"

"No buts! If they find out what is happening before the point where I left it could ruin everything! It's too dangerous to interfere! I'm sorry Sirius, but it's crucial that we wait. Time travel is one of the most dangerous things that you can do. And I've already pushed my luck enough by breaking into the Ministry and pulling you out of the void. Not to mention the book I illegally copied and the time-turner I stole. We have to wait."

Sirius was frowning heavily but he didn't object further. "Okay," he said slowly. "Alright, then. We'll wait. How long are we looking at? I didn't think that time-turners were good for going back more than a couple of hours. You make it sound like some time went by though. Was it a few days then? A week maybe?"

"Eight and a half months," said Hermione, sounding apologetic.

Sirius broke into a harsh coughing fit. "What?"

"I'm sorry, but you were gone for a while. Everyone assumed you were dead. And it took me a while to come up with the idea for saving you. And then it took me even longer to implement the parts of my plan."

"You must be joking. How—it's not even possible to go back that far—is it?"

"Well—the limit for going back is more of a safety regulation than a physical impossibility," Hermione explained. "The Ministry doesn't want people to know that they can go back farther than a few hours because the danger that you'll mess things up goes up exponentially the farther back you go. I think the Ministry regulation ones had safety charms on them to stop them being used like that. I read about it in A History of Magical Law Enforcement. But those are all gone now, anyway. I nicked the one I used from Borgin and Burkes. It not too surprisingly didn't have any impediments on it."

"Blimey," said Sirius in awe. "I ought to make you an honorary Marauder."

"Well I don't plan on making a habit of doing those sorts of things," Hermione confessed. "These were extenuating circumstances."

"Eight and a half months," Sirius repeated, beginning to pace around the room. "We have to stay out of everyone's sight for eight and a half months?"

"It can't be that bad," offered Hermione. "You were in hiding a lot longer than that after escaping from Azkaban."

"But Harry knew I was alive then. I could send him letters!"

"Look, Sirius. Harry is going to be okay. Where I came from he's already gotten through those eight and a half months. He's fine."

"You just said that he was gutted."

"Well…yes," Hermione conceded. "But he got through it. And he will be more than fine as soon as we catch up with the proper time."

"Why didn't you bring him back with you?" Sirius asked unhappily.

"I didn't want to get his hopes up in case my plan didn't work."

"I need to see him."

"That's really not a good idea. I think we should stay here and leave the building as little as possible."

"I won't let him see me!" Sirius insisted. "I'll keep my distance. We can use the invisibility cloak. I just want to see him. I watched him all the time without him noticing when I first escaped from Azkaban and he didn't know who I was! I'm excellent at stealth!"

"Yeah, well," said Hermione. "The emotional stakes were different before he knew who you were, weren't they? I imagine it would have been easier to not interact."

"I won't let him see me," Sirius stubbornly insisted.

"You'd better not. You do realize that if you change anything it could have unimaginable consequences? Right now, in the future Harry is fine. But if you interfere with the wrong thing, he could end up dead."

Sirius's pallid complexion turned even ashier than normal. "I won't let him see me," he just solemnly repeated.

"You'd better not."

Sirius and Hermione spent the next several days enchanting the inside of the abandoned building into more suitable living quarters. Sirius took on the endeavor rather enthusiastically. In fact, he was a little too enthusiastic as far as Hermione was concerned. The way his attention had completely dropped the topic of needing to observe Harry in favor of interior decorating struck her as suspect. After the third day of watching him put up only to take down and then put up again a succession of different colored damask wallpapers, she was fairly convinced it was all a front to lull her into dropping her guard.

That night she placed a charm on the invisibility cloak to sound an alarm if it was touched. She only managed about thirty minutes of sleep before a loud ringing startled her awake.

"Sirius!" she shrieked indignantly.

He stood, a guilty expression frozen on his face, in the middle of the room with the cloak clutched in his fingers.

"No!" She insisted. "Sirius, you can't!"

Instead of answering her though, Sirius shrank into Padfoot, grabbed the cloak in his mouth and bounded out of the room. She tried to stupefy him, but his dog reflexes were much more agile than a human's and he easily bounced out of the way from her wand blast.

Hermione took off after him, but wasn't nearly as fast. She didn't dare keep chasing him for long. Without the invisibility cloak it would be impossible to be sure no one saw her as she ran.

She resigned herself to having to wait for him to come back. Instead of going back to sleep, she settled down with a book to wait. Sirius might have escaped her apprehension, but he was not going to escape getting chewed out for it.

It wasn't the first time Sirius had snuck out. He'd stolen the invisibility cloak every night since his first day back. He was surprised it had taken Hermione a few days to catch on. How could she expect him to not check on Harry? It would have been easier to ask him to stop breathing.

Especially considering the disturbing sight he found when he did make it to Privet Drive. Did Hermione know just how bad it was? Had she seen Harry in the aftermath while he was still staying with the Dursleys?

It didn't matter what time Sirius showed up. The light in Harry's window was always on, and Harry was almost never asleep. Sirius climbed up the tree in the yard to survey the window, and every time without fail found Harry lying on his bed, eyes blank and staring at the ceiling. He could see untouched plates of food cluttering the floor. He'd watch for hours and Harry barely moved. He was more devoid of vitality than the average Azkaban detainee.

How the hell was he supposed to carry on without interfering? How could he turn a blind eye to his godson suffering so much?

The only thing that had stopped him from immediately intervening was the echo of Hermione's words in his head: if you interfere with the wrong thing, he could end up dead.

No matter what, Sirius would not risk letting anything bad happen to Harry. And so, even though it repeatedly shattered his heart to do nothing and every fiber of this being screamed out against inactivity, he stood guard without letting Harry see him. Although he had sworn to Hermione that he wouldn't let Harry know, he couldn't swear that he could keep that up indefinitely. He wouldn't however, do so impulsively. If he revealed himself, it would only be the result of careful planning and consideration. He would not gamble with his godson's future recklessly.

Which meant that tonight, like the ones before it, Sirius spent hours unmoving in the tree and resisted all temptation to lean forward and knock on the glass, or send a friendly patronus inside to comfort Harry. As he sat sentinel his extremities went sore and then numb but it was nothing compared to the numbness spreading through his insides at the sight of Harry's misery and the fact that his legal guardians did not care and were not offering him an ounce of comfort.

"Sirius."

Sirius put his hands up as he slipped back into their hideout. He probably shouldn't have been surprised to find Hermione waiting to ambush him.

"No one saw me," he immediately assured.

"Someone could have!"

"I was careful." He dropped the cloak onto a table and flopped down on the bed he had conjured for himself. (It was twice as big as necessary and barely visible under the massive mountain of duvets and pillows piled upon it. After years in prison followed by months spent sleeping on the stony floor of a cave, Sirius could never get enough blankets or pillows.)

"It doesn't matter how careful you are!" Hermione sprung up so that she could loom disapprovingly over him. "Accidents can happen! A wind could come along and blow the cloak off! You could trip and reveal yourself!"

"You worry too much," said Sirius flippantly. "I'm not going to let anything like that happen."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "If you actually had as much control over unforeseen complications as you seem to think you do, you wouldn't have died and we wouldn't be in this situation."

Sirius winced. He still couldn't remember the actual battle, let alone 'dying,' but Hermione had filled him in on what had happened. "That was different," he argued. "I was being forcefully attacked. That's a completely different circumstance than me being an undetected observer. I was on the run for ages, and never got caught, wasn't I? I'm more experienced at sneaking around unseen than pretty much anyone. I was watching Harry for months after I broke out of Azkaban. He didn't see me then."

"He did, actually," said Hermione. "He told me that he saw you a couple of times. He thought that Padfoot was the Grim."

"Well I didn't have an invisibility cloak back then, did I? Still not the same. He's not going to see me this time."

Hermione slapped her hands over her eyes and dragged them down her face in frustration.

"You're going to ruin everything," she despaired.

"You're going to make me go insane," Sirius predicted.

Hermione continued to try to foil Sirius's escapes, but he was older and had had more years of schooling under his belt. Not to mention all the elite training his parents had instilled in him as a child. Hermione might be a brilliant witch, but natural talent could only take you so far, and sometimes quantity of experience won out. Sirius repeatedly managed to slip by her or overpower her interventions.

The first two weeks Sirius doggedly shadowed Harry, hoping deep down that although undetected, his mere presence might somehow subconsciously offer comfort.

Unfortunately, Harry's status never seemed to waver or improve. In the middle of the third week Sirius decided that it might be time to spread out and spy on people other than Harry—other people mainly consisting of Remus, of course. Because Sirius was still having trouble wrapping his mind around the idea that Remus was stewing over his death as badly as Harry was.

He wasn't certain that Remus would have stayed at 12 Grimmauld Place without him there, but as it was the last place he knew Remus was living, it was the obvious first place to check. As he had hoped, Remus hadn't yet moved out.

Observing Remus was significantly more difficult than dropping in on Harry. His family had been far too paranoid about security to allow a tree to grow near enough to any windows for eavesdropping. Even if they had though, the house was too large for that to be an effective means to gather much information. There were internal rooms and corridors without windows, making it easy for an occupant to move about unseen for hours.

Knowing that he was being stupidly risky, Sirius climbed up to the roof and let himself in through an attic window. The house was still coded to allow entrance to anyone in the Black family, so it did not set off any alarms. The only danger was making sure that Kreacher did not see the window open.

Kreacher was apparently nowhere to be found, however, and sneaking inside was easier than Sirius had expected.

He found himself further in luck that apparently none of the doors to any of the rooms were shut. He imagined that there was no need for privacy when you were the house's only occupant.

As he cautiously made his way through the hallways, he couldn't help lingering outside the empty master bedroom in quiet disappointment. He knew that it was unrealistic to expect Buckbeak to still be there without him, but he missed the hippogriff almost as much as Harry, and had secretly hoped to see him again as well. He made a mental note to interrogate Hermione about where he had been taken.

An eerie glow was emanating from the door of the bedroom Remus had occupied when they'd lived there together. Sirius frowned, raised his wand under the cloak, and sped up his pace as he approached. The cool silvery light was not consistent with the warm hues of the gas lamps present in the house. Nothing he was familiar with in 12 Grimmauld Place glowed like that. Had something bad happened? Was he going to look in and find the aftermath of a terrible hex or jinx?

Remus sat at an old ornately carved desk, an empty crystal tumbler in his hand. He had it tipped on its bottom edge and was rocking it around in circles while sightlessly staring at the age worn wooden desktop. Suspended above him were six silver orbs, throbbing with ethereal platinum light.

The scene was so unexpected that Sirius wasn't able to stop himself from audibly gasping. The rhythmic rolling of the tumbler abruptly halted and Remus's head snapped up to peer at the seemingly empty doorframe. Sirius held his breath for what felt like centuries as Remus's hollow eyes bored straight through him.

Finally Remus seemed to give up on determining where the noise had come from and let his gaze fall back to the desktop. As if he'd never been interrupted he returned to mindlessly rocking his empty glass, not a shred of acknowledgement going to the unearthly light sources bobbing above his head.

For a second Sirius had thought that the room was filled with ghosts, or that a spell had been cast on Remus. He'd never seen six full moons at once and the unprecedented quantity of them had been disconcerting. It took a moment for him to remember that the house had been infested with boggarts.

Six was a lot of boggarts in one place. Why wasn't Remus bothering to banish them?

It was extremely alarming to watch his very dear friend, someone who had once been able to masterfully evaporate a boggart without even blinking, someone who would go to any length to avoid reminders of the full moon no less, simply sitting there and allowing his worst fear to dominate his living space.

He didn't even seem to be noticing them. Was he actually oblivious? Or had they been hounding him so long he'd grown numb to their presence?

Why wasn't Remus banishing them?!

Sirius lost track of how long he hovered there staring at Remus's sunken features and mechanical hand movements. He was pale and unshaven; his hair laced with noticeably more grey than the last time Sirius had seen him. Eventually Remus released his grip on the tumbler, and it spun precariously before wobbling to a stop.

That's from my mum's favorite crystal set. Pity it didn't break. The thought came unbidden to Sirius's mind as he watched.

Remus stood up, stretched, and then paused, looking as if he'd lost his train of thought. He remained frozen in the middle of the room for several minutes. For a moment Sirius was afraid he'd accidentally made another sound that Remus had detected. But Remus didn't turn towards the doorway again. Instead he began to pace. The boggarts trailed behind him as he circled, sometimes bumping into each other when Remus haphazardly changed direction. The sight would have been comical if it wasn't so disturbing.

The sky was already fading into a rose tinged charcoal when Remus finally collapsed onto his bed. He fell asleep on top of the blankets, without bothering to change his clothes.

Sirius lingered much longer than he knew was a good idea, fighting the temptation to eliminate the boggarts before he left.

Hermione had said that Harry had gotten better…but Remus had gotten worse. If he was like this now…how bad was 'worse'? What was he like after eight months of this?

It was with a very uneasy heart that Sirius finally slunk home in the early dawning light.

Hermione was waiting, as always, to reprimand him, but he barely even heard her.