31 Days of October - October 5 - Ficlet: Peter, Remus, Sirius (Challenge #76)
Title: Peter, Remus, Sirius
Summary: Three men (separately) visit a graveyard.
Characters/Pairings: Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black
Genre: Angst
Challenge: #76: Loss
Rating/Warnings: Well, the prompt was graveyard. So if you don't like sad things, don't read it. :(
Medium: Ficlet
October Prompt:Graveyard
Word Count: 499
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: No, thank you.
It was late November, cold, with gusts of wind swirling the crackling leaves up from the ground. The graveyard stood silent and empty, the new headstones under an ancient oak tree glossy in the sheen of the full moon.
A rat scurried over the damp earth, nose twitching. Its whiskers flicked against the newly settled headstones. It stood up on its hind legs, front paws pressed against the stone, as though the rat were reading the large letters imprinted on the stone. The rat pawed at the stone, squeaking.
A howl came from the south, causing the rat to turn, tipping its nose up into the cold air, then skitter away.
*
He meant to come sooner. He did. But with Wormtail's death and Sirius's arrest and the Order scattered and You-Know-Who gone and then the full moon, Remus simply hadn't been able to carve out enough time.
When he finally had an afternoon free to make the trip to Godric's Hollow, to walk past the shattered shell of a house that he'd spent so much time in, to walk unnoticed into the graveyard at the end of the lane, he carried hothouse lilies in his trembling hands.
The headstones were easy to find, tucked out of the way under an oak tree whose leaves had already fallen away. It was blustery, a chill in the air that got down into Remus's bones, and the sun barely peeked through the clouds. He tightened his shabby cloak tighter around himself and stopped in front of the graves.
"I'm sorry," he said, laying the flowers on the ground between the two headstones. For what he was sorry for (it was a long list, he knew), he didn't specify. Instead, he sank his knees into the damp ground, bowed his head, and wept.
*
Over a decade had passed before the last of them made it to the graveyard. By then, the stones were weathered, the wind a direct hit on the front of each. When the large black dog entered the closed cemetery early one morning through a hole under the wrought-iron fence at the perimeter, the air was crisp and the ground frozen, cold. The dog made its way, panting out puffs of frosty air, to the graves. It sat back on its haunches in front of the tombstones, gray eyes moving as if it were reading the words. A great padded paw pressed against the words.
With no one around that early in the morning, before the sun had fully poked its way up off the horizon, the dog took a chance. Moments later, where the dog had once sat, now a fully-grown man squatted, in greyed, tattered robes, his hair stringy and tangled, his face scarred and unshaven.
Sirius rubbed his calloused fingertips over the words -- J-A-M-E-S and L-I-L-Y -- then coughed, a sickly sounding hack that he felt deep in his empty stomach. "I'll make this right," he said, his voice hoarse and scratchy from years of disuse. "I promise."
Sarah / Gryffindor / 17 (+5) = 22 points