Please Come Home

Sirius Black,

Right now, I am so full of conflicting emotions that any attempts to capture them on parchment will never be enough. You-Know-Who is destroyed. James and Lily are dead. And they say that you're the one who killed them, the traitor that gave your soul's secret to You-Know-Who, giving up your best friends' lives for your dark master. My heart cannot believe this perfidy, but the fact remains - you haven't come back since Hallowe'en a week ago. I have known nothing of you or your whereabouts since that morning, when I woke up to you getting out of the shower. When I kissed you goodbye for you to go to the apothecary on Cecil Court, I laughed that you had missed that little spot under your chin again. What wouldn't I give to touch you and taste you again - but would your sweet tongue fork, and fangs pierce my lips?

I'd have thought you far too strong and proud to bend to the will of You-Know-Who. I'd also have sworn that you'd never bring harm upon your brother. Yet the Daily Prophet at my feet says that you are the right-hand man and spy of You-Know-Who. Something does not connect. I would deny the paper of your supposed treachery, if only you would come home and tell me that you're innocent. But now that you're gone, what can I believe?

Remember when James's parents died? Remember the funeral? There were your own parents after you escaped from Grimmauld Place, and that was the first and only time I've ever seen you cry. Remember the wet grey rain, and how tightly I held you when we saw the double coffin? Through your wracking sobs and my own tears of grief I prayed that you and I would go the same way. We would die together so we'd never have to live alone, buried together with our skeletons intertwined so the dust of our living would intermingle for eternity in the quiet tomb.

And now? They say when they find you that you will go to Azkaban. I do not know how long they can hold you in the prison walls but I do know men leave that Tartarus changed. You know that I will love you forever, no matter what the guards do to you, but I want to see you again before your sentence and before you become hardened in the prison.

I do not know much about the Fidelius Charm, only what I can glean from Dumbledore and the news. I understand that only you knew the location of James and Lily, and it was with this information You-Know-Who that was able to destroy them and their house in Godric's Hollow. Please tell me the information was tortured out of you - that you played no evil hand in their deaths. But Hagrid tells me you were there among the wreckage, and when he wouldn't let you take your godson, you gave him the bike to help Harry reunite with Lily's family. Then, you ran, and haven't been seen since.

Sirius, I need you to return. How can I live with myself, not knowing whether you've been misjudged, set up, or extraordinarily hoodwinked? I want to believe in your innocence, but for now all I can do is hide in the flat waiting for redemption in the papers or the post. Andromeda and Ted wrote and asked me to dinner last night but I refuse to leave, sure that you're going to return or at least give me a sign that you're alive and all right. Whatever it was, whatever happened, I need to know. I need to understand James and Lily's deaths. Please, please, please come home. I know that there's no way for me to send this letter to you, but it is my hope that somehow, through the connection I know we still possess, you shall receive it.

Remus Lupin