nota bene: this fic assumes that 16 is the age of consent for plot purposes. There is some student/teacher slash. If you have issues, move along, please. OotP spoilers contained within. Please do not archive without my express permission. Contains excerpts of George William Russell's "A Vision Of Beauty," used without permission - that'd be all the text in italics.

For Fill In The Blanks, for Jaida. I know I owe you a Severus/Remus fic, but I felt, somehow, this might be more fitting, and appreciated. Sans inflatable mummies, of course.

Harry slept in his room, now. A strange thing, perhaps, for a boy of Harry's age; but no one denied him that small bit of comfort, that refuge. Sirius's room was - the last vestige of Sirius, in a way. Or so Remus thought. He did not ask Harry about it.

It was summer. The heat was a pall, resting on them; appropriately so. He had not taken to drinking. Sirius would have. But he was not Sirius; Sirius was dead, and he would not think about it. There were things to do, so many things to do, for the Order...

(but if not thinking about it was life... he felt easier with death... what was the world without the memory of: sirius's embraces, his sheltering warmth, his kisses, padfoot and moony and prongs and yes, wormtail... what was the world? but he must not think...)

It became easier. Few people mentioned Sirius to him. Occasionally there was a sickening lurch of pain - (oh, god, the years he'd believed him to be a traitor, oh, sirius, brother, lover, dead now, he let him go) - but it passed. Everything passed. His hair grew grayer.

Harry was quiet, also. Calmer, perhaps. Remus let himself watch the boy, deep in his Occlumency studies; watching, he saw something of Lily in him. He saw something of himself, as well - a recognition of guilt, the eternal self-abasement that followed. All would be lost, if not for the boy. Bless him.

It became harder and harder to sleep. He wandered the house aimlessly at night, where Sirius had grown up, yes. It was cruel. It broke something in him to walk these floors, knowing Sirius would never tread upon them again.

(sirius....)

Dawn came, one morning in early August. He heard weeping - Sirius's room. He had not been there since the morning of Sirius's death - it seemed so long ago, so terribly, interminably long ago since he had had Sirius in his arms, warm flesh against warm flesh.

("i don't know how to love," he had said many years ago, on the first morning, to the boy who had become a man who had always protected, who had always been honest, had trusted; he had believed the lie, had broken the trust. he had deserved to die. he alone.)

Harry looked up at him, from the edge of Sirius's bed, face wet with tears. Angry, perhaps. Remus was jealous of his grief.

"Go away, Remus." Bitter words. He had not expected less.

"Harry -" Remus said, as if a name could excuse a loss. He was not good at this. Who was he, to give anyone consolation?

Harry turned away from him. He looked like his father, just then - the messy hair, yes, bare chest white-pale in the moonlight in contrast. "You lied to me. You kept this from me, all the time, and you made me think - he was a good person. All of you. And my parents-"

"He was not a bad person, Harry! Impetuous, yes, but Sirius was not-"

(warm flesh on warm flesh; a cry to the moon...)

"He was a bloody fucking moron."

Remus sat down, leaned against the wall. "Your father," he murmured, after some time, "Was a bloody fucking moron. We all were. You have been. Sirius was, at times, but he died how he would have wished. Saving you. He cared less for more ethereal things than life."

"Why should you care?"

He did not answer. Once upon a time he had kissed a boy on the off-chance he would shut him up. He had never shut Sirius up. The passion that had been there was an unceasing wave that swept him along, one he could never escape, not even after James and Lily had died, before the flight from Azkaban; there was no escape, no end, even in death.

(somewhere beyond the veil, pulled aside this brief moment, he thinks sirius must be furious, luminescent with rage in eternal night.)

He did not weep. He was too tired to weep. Tears would mean acceptance, closure, and there could be no closure. ("i don't know how to love," he had said many years ago.) There were worlds into which he could not cross, by death or any other means.

(ashes to ashes, dust to dust...)

Harry leaned forward; his eyelashes glimmered faintly in the moonlight. Remus shook his head, softly. "I am sorry," he said at last. He was not quite sure why he said it; words were so very little, never enough. He had always tried, and failed, in every endeavor worthwhile. How to repay the boys who had stood by him in his monthly exile? He did not even make a very good wolf.

"It's all right. I don't know."

No answers. He had never had any answers. He had done what he could to help James's boy, yes. At the end of the world he thought it would be beautiful, a sea, the waters liquid light, as Narnia had promised him as a child. He had not expected this bleak emptiness, the wasteful slipping by of the days.

Harry stood up from the bed, then - how tall he was getting, like James - and knelt before him, gently drawing him into an embrace.

Then, he cried. Only then.

Once upon a time he had gone to a Seer - a real Seer, not Trelawney - who lived in India, amongst Muggles, quite happily. Remus had never learned the man's name. The Seer had placed his cool hand on Remus's forehead, held it there for a moment, and then clasped his hands together once more in the lap of his saffron garment. They had been seated, as if for tea. "You will doubt," the Seer had said, "And be forever transfixed by the heavenly gates. But you must remind yourself of the turnings of human spheres."

He was not turning. He had been standing still, blinded by the light, all this time.

"You- we can't go back, ever," Harry said after a while.

Remus shook his head. "You should not have had to learn that yet. We have failed... you."

"Voldemort's fault," Harry answered him, sharply. "Sirius - is dead, and Cedric, and you didn't let them die. I hate him for it. I hate the world a lot."

Hate was better than complacence, at least.

It was wrong. The world was wrong, Sirius was dead, and he might never move past it. He kissed Harry. That, too, was wrong - Harry was not Sirius, would never be Sirius, but grieving together was easier than grieving alone.

In the morning, Remus would leave the house. He would catch a train to London. Some day, he might come back, when he could breathe again, when he could rest comfortably with whispers and echoes of Sirius that would never leave his head.