Tearstained Photographs

I don't know what it was that drove me to his room that night, but somehow I found myself outside his door. I knew the room was empty, as it had been for two months now. But I still felt that if I were to open the door, I would meet with a scene that I always cherished. I would see him, reading by the candle on his bedside table, then glancing up at me and greeting me with the familiar "Moony! What brings you here this late?"

But the sane part of me told me that he was gone, just as I had told his godson on the night he died. Just as I had sobbingly told Tonks when I came to Grimmauld Place the night it happened.

I reached out for the doorknob, and had barely touched it when I lost my courage. I pulled my hand away and turned around, fully intending to go downstairs and get a good strong glass of firewhiskey, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave. I had to make myself believe what I was forced to tell everyone. What I had said at the funeral. I turned back around.

The door swung open just as easily as it would every other day. The room inside was black, and with a wave of my wand the candelabra on the bedside table lit itself. The same little rusted candelabra he would always read or write his letters by.

The yellowed newspapers in the corner of the floor bore the faded headlines of the spring long gone. His pet Hippogriff, Buckbeak, used to lie on those rumpled pieces of parchment. Buckbeak has since been moved back to Hogwarts, back to the herd he once traveled with. Hagrid visits him on occasion, but not too often because the centaurs that make the forest their home have forbidden him from traversing through it.

He loved that hippogriff.

I took a few steps into the room, breathing in the dust and stale air. The bed was still unmade. He never made his bed. Not even when were kids would he do it, but we had an excuse then. The house elves would do it for us.

I sat down on the very edge of the bed, staring at the yellowed parchment on the floor where Buckbeak once sat. I felt a great surge of anger at all of it. None of what had happened would have happened if he hadn't been up there, in that room, tending to that blasted animal when Harry went looking for him! But then I remembered: it wasn't Buckbeak's fault. It was the damn house elf that had hurt Buckbeak in the first place, trying to lure Sirius away from the only room Harry would be able to look in!

Then I felt a rather sickening pang of pleasure. Kreacher was dead now, just like his master. He wanted his head mounted on the wall with those of his ancestors, but I didn't do it. I wouldn't have been able to stand looking at it day after day, remembering that it was the blasted elf that had caused my surrogate brother's downfall.

I looked over at the wall to my left, the wall above the bed. There was nothing but peeling wallpaper there. I scanned the headboard of the bed, and my eyes came to rest on the bedside table next to it. The little table on which stood the rusted candelabra. There was a drawer, slightly open, set into the front of it.

Curiosity got the best of me, and I stood up and walked over to the little table. I pulled open the drawer and saw a book, bound in leather. I pulled the book from the drawer, and sat down on the bed again.

The book wasn't technically a book. It was a photo album. I recognised it then, from what was written on the inside cover.

Sirius-

Happy 16th! I noticed you didn't have a place for all your pictures, so here you go. I hope you don't mind that I put a photo of me in here... just remember, a picture is worth a thousand words!

-Emily

It was the photo album Emily had given him on his sixteenth birthday. Emily was his girlfriend at the time. They broke up the year after we left Hogwarts. Well, rather, she broke up with him... sort of, anyway... The truth is, she died. Bellatrix Lestrange got to her. But Sirius liked to think that she just broke up with him and moved to some remote island somewhere. He could never really accept the truth about her...

I looked at the first picture. It was Emily, leaning against that birch tree on the Hogwarts grounds that we all liked so much. There were tearstains sprinkled on the photograph. And I saw one word written in the bottom right-hand corner. "Gone."

We always teased him about her. Hell, she would tease him about her! We never knew how much he really loved her... It must have hurt him a lot to hear that she wasn't ever coming back...

I turned the page. There was a photograph of him and Emily, snogging under that tree. James had snuck up on them one night while they were out for a walk and taken that picture. James, Peter, and I laughed about that for weeks, as at the point when that picture was taken, Sirius had still been trying to hide the fact that he had a girlfriend. The look on old Padfoot's face when we dropped that picture in his lap at lunch one day was hysterical.

On the next page was Emily again, and the page after that and the page after that. All of the photographs of her were tearstained.

It was the next page that got me. It was the four of us, sitting on the floor in front of a Christmas tree. I remembered the day that one was taken, also. It was Christmas Eve, and we had all gone to spend the Winter Holiday at James' house. That was the year James told us all about how in love with Lily he was.

Page after page of photographs, all grinning up at me and waving. Tearstained photograph after tearstained photograph. Some of James, some of Peter, and even some of me. Different groupings of the four of us. Some more of him and Emily. A few of James and Lily. One of Lily and Emily. Every page of the book was full of pictures from our school days.

Then there was the first picture from after we graduated. It was of the Order. We all had a copy of that photo somewhere, but this one seemed to have been cried over the most. And I could see why. Most of the people in the picture were dead now.

Then there was the photograph from James and Lily's wedding. He had been the best man that day.

Opposite from that wedding photo was the only other one from our adult lives. The four of us, sitting on a park bench. The day that picture was taken had been the last time we were all together. Peter had already become a Death Eater at that point. It was the day before James and Lily went into hiding. Just eight days later, James would be dead. And two days after that, Peter would come up to Sirius on a city street, hiding his wand behind his back, and kill twelve Muggles, faking his own death and framing Sirius in the process. After that day, I would be the only Marauder left for twelve years.

I turned to the final page. It was empty. I closed the book and held it to my chest.

I leaned backwards, coming to rest in a supine position on the bed. Tears began to run down my face onto the rumpled sheets.

"Padfoot," I sobbed. "Wormtail. Prongs. Why did you all leave?"

I rolled onto my side, pressing my cheek into the bed. It still smelled like him. I don't know how long I stayed there sobbing, but when I finally got up, I waved my wand again, extinguishing the candles, and I left the room, shutting the door behind me. I walked down the hall and a flight of stairs, tears still streaming down my face, and retreated to my room.

I sat Sirius' photo album down on my bed, and opened my trunk. I knew exactly what to put in the last remaining page of the book.

I rummaged around in my trunk for a minute, trying to find it. When I finally found it, I took it out of the frame I had it in, and gingerly placed it on the bed next to the book. Then I opened the book to the last page. I went back to my trunk and got a quill and ink. I wrote the word, tears falling down onto it with each shaky letter.

I set down the quill, leaving a little black ink spot on the bed. I picked up the photograph I'd removed from the frame, and placed it in the last page of the photo album. Then I held it out at arm's reach, just looking at it.

There he was, Sirius, grinning and waving up at me from the tearstained photograph, with one word shakily written in the bottom right-hand corner.

"Gone."

Then I closed the book, packed it safely away in my trunk, and went downstairs to get a good strong glass of firewhiskey.