Six Hours

Six Hours

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life; it goes on. ~ Robert Frost

Dear Sirius,

It is times like this that I result once more to my writing like when I was in school back when Harry Potter was still unknown and unmarked. It was before I even began to think about a career as an Auror; it was when I was still innocent I suppose in an odd sense of the word. But how could one manage to stay untainted in a world of bloodshed and prejudice? You managed to.

Now there's something that I never thought I would do. I called Sirius Black innocent. I just called a Marauder innocent. I guess I was hit pretty hard earlier. You were, too, but I guess you've already figured that out. I wonder what you thought when you was in a duel with dear old auntie Bella. You told me once that you wished that you could go back in time to when your friends were still alive and raising their son. Back to when they had not been betrayed and you were a free man like you should have been when you died.

But it always comes back to that, right? Your death tonight. Exactly five hours, forty-five minutes and thirty six seconds ago.

Thirty seven... Thirty eight...

Okay, now you are probably thinking that I'm pathetic if you can even form conscious thought wherever you are. (I wouldn't know as I have never been to the Afterlife.) But you shouldn't criticize me as I am the one that has always listened to what Mad Eye said about 'Constant Vigilance'. I am not the one who got thrown within the veil by your estranged cousin (and my estranged aunt, mind). What does it take to defeat Sirius Black? No, not twelve years in Azkaban, it takes one stunning spell and you're thrown behind some curtains never to be seen again.

I wonder what you would have said if I told you that you would die by drapery. Probably laugh at me. You wouldn't believe it. Sometimes, I wish I was a Muggle. Then there would be a fairly thick line between the possible and the impossible. As it appears, there isn't a line at all in the Wizarding World

I have hated a lot of things in life: Voldemort, prejudice, the cafeteria food at St. Mungo's. But the one thing that I hate the most, I found out what that was tonight. The look on Harry's face when you, well, you know. The poor kid couldn't take it. Remus had to stop him from going in after you. It was weird because I knew in my soul that going in there to be with you was what he wanted to do but he was stopping another person from doing it.

I love you, you know. You were family, the family that really mattered, more like an obnoxious big brother than a second cousin. Mum doesn't know and I guess I am going to have to be the one to tell her. You were like her only family besides me and Dad. Aunt Bella hates her for marrying a Muggle, so does Grandma - I guess the old hag is dead by now though. Aunt Narcissa is too scared to talk to Mum because of Lucius, Grandma and Bella. But, of course, she hates Muggleborns too, so there you go.

I was being serious - oh pun, sorry - when I said that you were like an older brother to me. It was so cool to be in Gryffindor and tell people that I was related to a Marauder. I was popular because of you or at least I was until you 'killed' Pettigrew. People hated me then saying that I could be a 'murderer' like you. That was in first year. I slept in the Common Room for three months until McGonagall found out and had a serious talk to my dorm mates. I gained a new respect in the woman as she struck a fear in them far worse than I ever could. But people were still afraid of me.

I didn't have any friends. No one would sit next to me at meals as they were frightened that I would poison their food when they weren't looking. Really, that was a joke. I couldn't make it through one lesson in Potions without exploding a cauldron. So, it would be a miracle if I could even make a potion let alone one that works the way it is supposed to. Of course, they might have thought that I would use one of my reject potions on them. Now that I think about it, they could have been poison if taken.

I was amazed when I gained a friend in fourth year in spite of the three previous years of blatant hatred. Her name was Felicity Murdock. She was in my year, a muggleborn Ravenclaw. She was my first and only friend in school. She started hanging out with me because she admitted that she felt sorry for me. I didn't care. I had a friend and she was the greatest. She was like the 'sister' I never had like you were the 'brother' that I never had.

And like you, she died.

It was the summer after fourth year that I found out that her and her family was murdered by radical, rouge Death Eaters. It was because she was a muggleborn. I miss her. I never told you but she was the reason that I choose to become an Auror. You would have loved the look on Professor Slughorn's face when I made it through Potions on the first day of fifth year without blowing anything up.

Okay, I hear Remus. Duty calls. I am not going to tell him about this letter that I wrote to you. I conversed with a dead man and that's something that I never thought I would do. Of course, in my own little world I never thought you would die. And yet again, things come full circle.

It's been exactly five hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-six seconds.

Fifty-seven... Fifty-eight... Fifty-nine...

Six hours...