Picture This

Picture this:

You're thirty-eight years old, one of the remaining members of an increasingly hopeless organization that is trying to defeat one of the most evil wizards in history (who is, incidentally, growing in power and numbers by the day), trying to help protect the only person who can defeat the aforementioned wizard (and is a barely-seventeen-year-old boy who doesn't know really know what he's supposed to be doing).

You can't trust the Ministry, because they're being infiltrated by the evil wizards' henchfolk, and you can't trust people you either meet on the street or even the ones already know because there is a heavy possibility that one of the evil henchmen has attacked them or forced them through sorcery into following their orders. Your only remaining best friend (who hasn't joined the ranks of henchmen) is dead. And wait a second! You're also a highly dangerous werewolf two days out of the month.

So, what do you do?

You try and move on. You try and find what little happiness there is to be found in the world.
You marry your twenty-four-year-old girlfriend in a short, private ceremony. You might even try and get pregnant with her, because not only is it a small part of that happiness, but because in this time of great danger you are doing what all other species do: propagate your species and increase your numbers, leaving an imprint of your genetic coding on this planet so that there is a reminder that you were there; that you existed.

But after awhile, some of that happiness fades...
You think you're too old for your young wife. Too poor. Too dangerous.
You worry that you've passed on your lycanthropy---your disease---to your unborn child, and that he or she will grow up in a world of prejudice and hatred towards them that this innocent child does not and never will deserve.
But most of all, you worry that your unborn child will not grow up at all.

So what do you do?

You panic.
You revert to the basic fight-or-flight instinct that lives in your sub-sub-conscious and like any other human being on this planet of ours, you run.
You leave the wife with her mother, and you try to bury your fears and pain in distance rather than booze like Sirius did and you hope to whatever god exists that you can lose all these feelings you have bubbling under the surface of your skin.
You pray that Harry will let you tag along; let you play the "kindly old mentor" role that you filled once upon a time and go with him on his merry way to destroy something that he can't tell you about.

But he won't let you.

This no-longer-as-scrawny, just-turned-seventeen-year-old man/boy is calling you a coward.
Telling you to go back to your young wife and unborn child.
Telling you that you have responsibilities; that you can't go on an "adventure" at this point in your life.
Telling you that if you abandon your new family, that you really and truly are a coward.

So what do you do?

You leave him in the no-longer-filthy home of your dead best friend, door slamming behind you and your mind filled with anger.
But in all that anger and rage you have towards your former student, there is something else floating there.
There is an understanding...an understanding that this boy, whom you can no longer treat as a favorite student but as an equal, has grasped that you couldn't quite get at the time.

And it is at that point you lose some of your fear.
And you go back to your pretty young wife and the possibility of a wolf-child that you know you will love no matter what the outcome.
And you lose a little of the fear and embrace this shining light of happiness that you've managed to find in this time of darkness.

And you know as you apologize to your pretty young wife, and feel the baby she is carrying kick against your hand, that if you close your eyes, you can see a bright, happy, evil overlord-free future.

You can picture it as clear as day.