A/N: I don't own Harry Potter or the story's last sentence, which is borrowed from The Great Gatsby. Thank you my beta reynardinepttr! I didn't change one or two things you pointed out and I take all the blame sorry!

She sat in the corner with broken ribs poking her lungs and blood flowing from the Sectumsempra wound on her left leg. The dark wizard who did it was lying on the floor several feet in front of her, blank eyes unseeing.

She had come here to investigate the crime scene. She hadn't expected the criminal to linger.

Ambush.

Harry didn't know where she was. She knew she should send him a message after stopping the bleeding and mending her bones.

She looked at herself. Dirty, broken, blood leaving her body slowly. It was so easy and so tempting to give up in this very moment. Her fingers relaxed, dropping her wand to the ground with a click.

That afternoon when she walked into the Department of Mysteries, the new guard asked her, "Filing? Application? Looking for someone?"

She wanted to say yes. Yes. I'm looking for someone. I'm looking for the man I love.

—

It was the Second Wizarding War memorial gala where they - the Order of Merlin, First Class winners - gathered and got drunk.

Harry and Ginny were on the dance floor. Ron was competing with her about who's passing out first, the colour of his face approaching his hair by an alarming pace. She was in a black dress with layers and layers of flowing silk covering the holster and wand fixed on her thigh. Ron's face got redder and redder as her face got paler and paler. One hour later, Ron finally succumbed to unconsciousness, falling forward and smacking his face on the bar top. She laughed out loud, kicked off her heels, and walked out onto the balcony.

Remus was standing there, one hand holding a glass of champagne. He was staring at the wedding ring on his finger.

She knew that look. She had seen that look on a lot of faces these past few years. That look had some pain and some sorrow and a lot of sweet melancholy. That look meant that they had had something, but then they lost it, and they experienced so much painful struggle, but finally they let go and years later they looked back -

She never had that look.

"I miss her, too. Tonks, I mean." She walked up to him, took his champagne and sipped it.

Remus quietly said, "I believe you're done for tonight."

She just smiled. "Harry is still standing upright. I still have something to conquer."

Remus laughed. They stood in the tender night wind, watching the dancing couples inside.

And then he said, hesitantly, "I know you went to the Department of Mysteries today."

She topped off his champagne.

He was still talking. She listened half-consciously. He was talking about letting go, moving on. Life is short. Sometimes she felt like that he was still her professor, offering advice and wisdom anytime.

You think I don't understand, Remus?

Death is the next great adventure. Unknown, exciting, grand, the kind that the forever-young souls fall in love with. I'm not Harry. I never thought he'd come back as a ghost, lingering in the world. He's not coming back. He's not going to walk through the Veil after twenty years and stand in front of me. His life ended in a battle. That's how soldiers are supposed to die. He's with his friends now. He's gone far away with his pride that'll never wither or fade away.

You think I don't understand? He doesn't need my tears or my broken heart or my love.

It's me who needs all of that.

The dead don't need the mourning. It's the ones left behind who have to bear the long nights.

Let go. Move on. Life is short.

She's not a princess living in a fifty-floor tower, surveying the kingdom through the small round window, determined to live her life alone.

She kept telling herself it was not love. It was just a flimsy teenage crush, shallow and ignorant attraction, rosy fascination that would fade with time.

She kept telling herself that until she believed -

Until she realised that she was looking for him in every man she had dated.

She was looking for a pair of grey eyes full of pain and solitude and loss long ago but still burning with the enthusiasm for life.

She was looking for that man who had seen the darkest betrayal but still offered love without hesitation.

She was waiting for that little electrical shock every time they brushed shoulders. Who knows whether or not her cotton shirts and his leather jackets had actually touched? Her pounding heart was real, but the hug was not. The heat of her fingertips was real, but the understanding at the corner of his lips was not. The scent of firewhisky was real, but the taste was not -

Until she couldn't find what she was looking for. Only then did she remember that there was a veil between here and there, and then she'd taken the lift to the Department of Mysteries, walked into the Death Chamber, and stood in front of that arch.

She was sixteen years old and then twenty-six, and now thirty-six. He was also thirty-six that year.

Not old, not young, just the right age to die.

Time never ends. Time flows forward. Time never stops for her or turns back for him.

She'll never get what she wants.

—

She couldn't find that man who turned his back to his family for his belief and burned himself for his friends.

She couldn't find that man who swam across the sea for revenge but stopped himself from killing at the last moment.

She couldn't find that man who was scrawny and haggard, had just experienced a Dementor attack, but still had eyes that were so bright and warm, and told her that she was the brightest witch of her age indeed.

She spent twenty years and all her stubbornness in vain to find him.

So she became an Auror. She threw herself into fighting. She gave all the love she had to her friends. She laughed. She put on her leather jacket half-drunk after parties and got on her motorbike in the night wind. No, she didn't fly. She still didn't like heights.

She was alone.

—

She closed her eyes and whispered the charm. Expecto Patronum.

"Harry. Nott Manor. One body. Bring some Blood-Replenishing Potion or there's gonna be two bodies in five minutes."

Maybe all she could do was to become him.

The princess didn't fall in love with a prince or wait for a kiss sitting in the tall tower. The princess fell in love with a passing knight and she picked up the sword after he left.

She'll become Sirius Black.

And Sirius Black wouldn't sit in the corner and wait for himself to bleed out.

—

She wants to tell a story.

The story is extremely simple. She fell in love when she was sixteen, and then he died. The story turns into a void since, but it won't end. It's her who's holding on. She knows that the ones who love us will never truly leave us, but -

But she's not in the list of people he'll watch over.

She's just background music, a too-young colleague, a friend of his godson, not him.

She had something she wanted to say to him, but she was too young to gather up the courage. Now she's grown up but there's no chance anymore.

There was nothing between them from the start to end. She refuses to move on because there's really only herself alone in this story.

So she beats on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.