It was unusually chilly in Godric's Hollow for a mid-summer night, and a mournful drizzle of rain was keeping everything gray and damp.

It was a stupid thing to do, really, and Sirius knew it; he had spotted a couple people who looked as though they might be aurors, stepping through the doors of the Lion's Den, damp and shaking off their umbrella-charms from the tips of their wands as they went to warm up or else to go home for the evening. If there'd been two, surely there would be others - he would need to be extremely careful, lest he get caught on this fool's errand.

It wasn't as though James or Lily were really here.

But he had to see it for himself.

The moon overhead was a sliver - the new moon was just days away.

Sirius couldn't help but tell time by the cycles of the moon. It was ingrained in him the way breathing was - possibly even more so.

A part of him had hoped when he'd gotten here that he'd find a figure sitting on the stone wall - that he would be here, too, by some beautiful miraculous coincidence - but Sirius knew better. On a night so close to the full moon, he just hoped that wherever he was, he was drinking aconite tea and wrapped up in at least a dozen comfortable jumpers and blankets, or perhaps eating a nice, extra rare steak.

The shaggy black dog padded through the quiet streets of Godric's Hollow.

Sirius passed all the familiar landmarks of the little town, all the places that he and James had spent years haunting, trying to keep the places from haunting him now in return. There were so many memories built into this place, it made his stomach turn and his heart beat a tattoo of pain against his ribs as he passed by. The images were quite vivid in his imagination... There was the market he and James had spent their pocket money at for sweets, and the fountain where Lames had first got together (which James could never pass without telling the story again). There was the old dirt road that Sirius had first learned how to drive his motorbike on. There was the shiny new house that had been built where Charlus and Dora Potter's old house had been, long ago, and the Dumbledore house, behind which was the woods where the Marauders liked to go camping. And the big field where they'd first attempted their transformations, where Sirius had accidentally got himself stuck in his dog form for an entire summer which, then, had seemed an eternity. There was the duck pond where they'd always taken Harry for picnics... and then --

Sirius came to a stop, staring.

The rain that was falling around him wasn't ordinary rain, after all, and the cold was not natural. Rather, these unusual weather patterns were the result of a lingering hooded figure that had been stationed in the yard of the magical concealment that surrounded the site of the destroyed Potter house. A dementor, gliding as though pacing - back and forth, just inside the short stone wall, just past the broken white wooden gate. The billowing black cloak looked even more chilling and ghostly against the backdrop of the dead stems of passed morning glories and thick ivy that had claimed a good part of the trellises and crumbling stone of chimney. Thick clumps of moss, mold, and grime gave the house an old and decrepit appearance. It had always been a bit wonky - that had been part of the "charm" that had made Lily fall in love with it, and part of what had gotten James such an excellent deal in buying it, for that matter - but now it looked damn near ready to fall apart.

Especially with that terrible, gaping hole in the roof, where the wood beams had fallen in and the tiles and brick had crumbled to bits that now littered the dead garden and tiny patch of grass just inside the stout brick wall that enclosed the property. The little wood gate hung haphazardly from it's hinges, barely hanging on.

Sirius dared not get closer, staying instead across the street from it, by the edge of the old churchyard. From here, the dementor did not seem to sense him in his dog form, but he didn't dare press any nearer for fear that it might realize he was there. His fur pressed to the cold stones that squared off the cemetery.

Memories were flooding him - terrible memories of the last times that he'd been here. He'd come begging James to change the plan... and then he'd come to see the results of what he'd done.

He wished this house was haunted, wished that the spirits of James and Lily were there, just inside, but he knew they were not. The one place in Godric's Hollow that wasn't haunted, of course, Sirius thought bitterly. At least not properly. Plenty of memory-ghosts were hurtling through his brain without latching onto any physical form.

He would've given anything to see James and Lily again. Even in a spectral form.

Then he heard voices and he looked down the road and there came the aurors he'd seen before, and Sirius took one last look at the house before quickly jumping over the short stone wall and into the cemetery, sinking into the shadows.

The moonlight wasn't very strong and the shadows were dark as could be in that little graveyard. He held still, listening to the two aurors talking as they approached the Potter House again. Then there was a thump above where he laid as the weight of the aurors landed on the stone wall, sitting down. Sirius's ears flattened against his head and he slunk slowly backwards from them.

"Fudge in't thinkin' right," said one of the voices overhead, a male, low and tired. "Black's figured out how to get out of Azkaban, he ain't dumb, he ain't about to come trudgin' along through the likes of this place. Gotta know we'd be watchin' it, dunnhe?"

The second voice was a woman's. "You never know, though, Black thinks a different way than us. Might be part of the conquest, thinking we'd be here waiting, you know? You've got to always be on your feet, Clark, that's what Moody always said - remember? Constant vigilance?"

"Ah bugger old Moody - he's as mad as that eye of his," spat the first wizard.

"Brilliant rather," corrected the woman's voice.

The first wizard grunted in a way that told Sirius he didn't really agree with her. Then, "I s'pose we ought to do another lap around."

"Alrighty." The woman got up from the stone wall and Sirius caught a flash of hot pink in the moonlight before she tugged her hood up over her head.

As the two aurors got up and started walking away, Sirius backed away, too, and ducked between a couple of the stones, and glanced over his shaggy shoulder to be sure they hadn't heard him. They were already several feet away, though, on their way 'round the side of the Potter house, their wands lit as they trudged through the rain. Satisfied that he'd avoided their attentions, Sirius turned back around only just in time to stop himself walking smack into one of the gravestones, coming to an abrupt halt.

POTTER.

He stood there, transfixed, staring at it, unable to breathe.

The marble was engraved with the name, the stone beveled to form the letters, and Sirius had a funny desire to transform back to a human to run his fingertips into the relief of them. He knew better, so he wouldn't do it - good way to end up worse than dead, that would be - but he wanted to. It was as though feeling it with his own two hands would make it more real to him. Gingerly, he stretched his neck and touched the stone with the tip of his nose and found it tangible as could be.

His legs - all four of them - gave out from beneath him at this and he lay there in the damp grass and mud, staring at the mossy stone.

In loving memory.

James C. Potter. 27 March 1960 - 31 October 1981.

Lily J. Potter (nee. Evans). 30 January 1960 - 31 October 1981.

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

It was so... final. As the old proverbial adage said - it was written in stone.

Sirius shivered, and lay down carefully there on the grass, his paws crossing over one another as he buried his nose against them, his eyes staring at the names, tracing them slowly over and over again, burning them into his mind. He imagined them there, laying right there, so close to him physically. Only six feet of packed earth and a couple inches of grass separated them. It was hardly anything at all, yet it was an entire world apart as well.

He stayed there for hours. He would've stayed there all night.

But he was awakened by a sound behind him, a crack of a twig, the swish of a cloak... He leaped up, expecting there to be a dementor hanging there in the air behind him, coming nearer, lowering it's hood...

What was there was so much worse.

Wand held high, lit with the lumos charm, a small ring of flowers over the arm holding it up, his other hand holding onto his suitcase, robes all tattered, and staring in wide-eyed shock... Remus Lupin.

Remus stared at the dog with a horrified expression.

And the dog stared right back.

It was a positively terrifying moment. Neither dared move. It was as though they'd both been petrified by the sight of the other.

Remus's hand shook and his power went out of him and the wand tip went dark as he lowered his arm, the ring of flowers falling from his wrist.

Sirius made to take a step forward - and Remus took a step back, panic on his face now, and he turned as quick as Sirius had ever seen him (especially for being under a nearly new moon). Remus moved so quickly that he tripped, and Sirius made to go over and help him but the instant Sirius took an actual step toward Remus Lupin, he heard a shout - the woman auror. "REMUS? What's happened, are you alright?" and the sound of the old gate creaking as she came into the cemetery and, knowing he had no other choice, Sirius turned and bounded away, leaping over the stone wall of the cemetery and streaking off across the lawn behind.

The shaggy black dog disappeared into the woods behind the church, even as Nymphadora Tonks pulled Remus Lupin to his feet, collecting his wreath of flowers from the ground and dusting him off quickly with some quick brushes of her palm against the back of his robes. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I - y- yes, yes I am," Remus stammered in disbelief.

"Are you sure? You're pale enough, you look like a muggle who's seen a ghost."

Remus stared after the way the dog had gone.

He wished it was only a ghost.