DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
BETA:Taralynne Moon
Written for a TSS Challenge:
Challenge #3, Howl & Growl, Contest #3
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It’s so bleak out today. Dismal, depressing weather really. Might as well top it off, I suppose. Damn I wish I could find a steady job so I could stop going about in these rags all the time. Disgust filled me as I put on the patched up trench coat and battered old hat. I sighed as I exited the shabby shack I called my home. A faint rise of steam came from my lips and I turned my collar to the cold and damp. My feet took the path as a matter of habit up the hill. But today was different I knew it in my heart. It was time to put the death of Sirius behind me at last. Stupid really why I had put if off so long, as if a waiting period would bring him back to me so I could tell him…
Damn wet weather. I should head south. Maybe if I could make it to a different country where no one knows me I could find a job. Damn shoes don’t even keep out the wet anymore. I looked down at the torn, faded leather shoes. I sighed again and another puff of steam filled the air. My feet stopped and my tears started in earnest.
“Hello Lils, James. Sorry it’s been awhile but I’ve been putting this off, you see.” I choked on my own words as my knees gave out and I slipped into the cold, wet grass. Immediately my trousers were soaked through because they were so thin. I shook with emotion and the damp chill coursing through me. “Why? Why? I just got him back and he’s gone! It’s not fair! Take me with you! I had the curse yet I live on why? So I can live this miserable existence without a single friend? Without him? Oh god Siri what I wouldn’t give to hold you in my arms just one more time.”
I wiped away my tears and wondered why I’d bothered. A cough racked my body and I spit up blood not for the first time. The cold that had infused me at the changing of the season had taken a hold of me settling into my lungs. It'd made me so ill that I couldn’t keep the Wolfsbane potion down and had added insult to injury by running through the woods in my werewolf form. I found myself naked by a brook shivering from the cold. Hacking up some more blood, I turned my head aside so as not to mar the tombstones of my dear friends. With shaking hands I took out the collar I’d so often put on Siri in his animagus form.
“Siri, Padfoot,” I coughed again hearing the wheezing in my chest as I tried to find a breath. “I never told you, there was no time. There was never a time for us, or a place for us anywhere. Someday I will see you again. When I do,” I began to sputter and choke. Perhaps coming here in this weather was a mistake, but I had to. Laying the collar down by the small handful of flowers for Lily and James wedding anniversary, I managed to gain an unsteady purchase on my breathing and began again. “When I see you Sirius, know that I love you. I’ve always loved you and I always will.”
This time I coughed and choked until I had to hold myself up by both arms getting my hands wet and colder than they had already been. I closed my eyes against the pain. My whole body convulsed with the pain and coughing that would not cease. Dimly my mind registered a great deal of the now all too familiar coppery taste of blood in my mouth. “Siri.” I felt myself fall into the grass and my ears heard not my heart but a rush of sound as everything became cold, so bitterly cold.
“Moony get up,” came a familiar voice. My eyes opened as my mind registered that the cold damp was gone. “Moony my love it’s time to come with me, now.” I felt odd as I stood as if I were floating. Looking back I saw the shell of the man, the beast I once was, eyes unmoving in death. I turned toward the sound and saw shimmering in white light, looking as he had all those many years ago when we laughed at Hogwarts as schoolmates, Sirius Black holding out a hand to me. Behind him was a white light so bright it should have hurt my eyes but instead it felt warm and like ‘home’.
“Siri?” I asked in confusion.
“Moony, there is a time and place for us. We will be together always. I love you too, Remus Lupin, and always will for all eternity. Are you ready?”
I took his shimmering hand in mine and said. ”What took you so long?”
Smiling we turned and walked toward the light to be together, eternally and forever.
Fin
Eternally and Forever by Keikokin [ - ]
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