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It has already passed a year.
He never came to the funeral. News found him in Scotland backwoods when it had only just passed the new moon. It always was the best time of the month when his alter ego was sleeping away and let him feel free. His youthful naivety was waking up so he couldn’t help hoping that new month would bring cure from his curse and there would be no need in putting himself in chains.
It was his youthful naivety who muttered that it was a mistake. Then he received letter from Peter that made naivety shut up. It was the moment to realize Sirius had joined the Black family at last. He hadn’t been Black while they’d been studying, sleeping, living together (in one room!) for the whole seven years but became Black after all.
Sirius’s owl arrived few hours later and he threw new letter into the fireplace without reading. He couldn’t believe in this pathetic attempt to justify after everything Sirius had done. How could you possibly justify betrayal and almost murdering of your best friends? Friends who welcomed you at their home like a family member. Yes, they welcomed Remus as a family member as well but he could never become a secret keeper for them. He could never be trusted because of his inner beast ready to break loose and take the other side.
In a day or two he got a letter from Mary with date and place of funeral. No one knew where little Harry had been gone but Remus carried about only one thing. That Sirius — damned — Black couldn’t reach the boy. Black disappeared, so did Peter. Peter hasn’t answered Remus’s letter in a week or even in a month. He decided that Marauders broke up forever and ever because they lost James who’d always been main connecting link between them all.
Remus couldn’t make himself go to the funeral though Mary later wrote that he’d been missing there. Well, that wasn’t first funeral he missed. "Yeah, like Dorcas’s, Marlene’s, Fenwick’s and many others", said his inner voice with perceptible malice.
Remus found enough strength to apparate in Godric’s Hollow only a year later. It was Halloween again and magical community was cheerful and had festive mood. There was no one at the cemetery so he could walk alone among old graves in a dismal silence.
Remus sat down near light gray (as it was new) stone with a line below the names: «The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death». He had a page of the Daily Prophet with an article about finding and imprisonment of Sirius Black.
Remus was looking at the grave covered by old withers leaves while talking in a quiet voice.
"They’ve found him. Peter’s found him and died. Who would’ve thought, huh? Peter was the most frightened, quietest, youngest of us all. Well, maybe that’s the reason you made him our friend and Lily’d been always kind to him. You knew Peter was worthy, really worthy and we made jokes of it... But you had no idea about Black, hadn’t you? That’s who’ve been the real wormtail all this time, who should have turned into a rat as an animal. Our ship hadn’t been sinking yet and he ran away like a rat. Now Azkaban became his home. It’s a right place for him. Hope he’ll die there though it won’t bring you back. It won’t bring back anyone..."
He let himself a sigh, sniffed and touched headstone. He used headstone as a support to get up and stood a few minutes more with a cold thought that everything and everyone had an end. When his hand got down along his body Remus disappeared. Only the page of the paper had stayed near the grave and then was blown away by the wind.
