l'osservatore della bellezza | wolfstar

but when the bottle runs empty

The door was not really a door.

It was a wall: a massive one, a reddish-brown brick one, a heavy one, solid under pounding fists, unrelenting before a pounding heart. His knuckles felt like they were bleeding, but didn't care, he wanted - no, needed - to get through to the other side, and he would have done so by now, if not for this bloody pretend-door.

It was in the way. It was between them.

It made him want to scream.

Someone opened it - he didn't see who - and he stumbled into the house that was not a house but a place of mourning, faintly smelling of vomit, faintly aching with what was happening inside it. It was like the building could tell, could sense that there was something unspeakably terrible occurring within.

"Mr. Lupin, please, sit down."

"Where's Sirius?" he asked, gripping arms and staring blindly into a familiar freckled face.

"Inside, he's being treated. Please, I need you to sit down."

Remus pushed past her and made his way down the hallway to the sitting room. He imagined Sirius being taken there, through the door, on a stretcher, as the man who had come for him said he was.

Remus had been woken from a fitful sleep by this man, by his frantic knocking, by his shouting. He hadn't wanted to answer the door. Nearly three weeks without any reply from Sirius had broken Remus more completely than he could have comprehended.

The man had talked about blood. Remus didn't want to think about blood. But he had to know.

Another door, to that sitting room. Closed, always closed.

Taking a breath, he knocked, then pushed it open. He didn't wait for an answer. He couldn't stop himself.

He had talked about blood, the man who had come to him like a messenger of death.

Remus saw that blood, and saw that face, so different and so familiar, like someone else's memory. That face, once so warm and bright, once brimming with life, was now like a dark, empty well, with naught but futile pennies in it, from faithful futile wishes.

He stared with wide, unseeing eyes. His mind was vacant with terror. 

"Sir, you need to leave," the man treating him said, brows stitched together. He was holding a needle in one hand, thread in the other. His beard was turning grey.

"He's dying," Remus whispered, barely audible.

"You have to go," he repeated gently. "Wait outside, and I'll be with you later. But I need to treat him now."

Remus stumbled backwards without thinking, leaning against the wall that had appeared behind him, watching as Sirius disappeared behind the sitting room door. His heart was tearing at his ribcage. There was a rushing in his ears. There was bile in his throat.

Sirius... that was Sirius. He couldn't believe it.

"Will he be okay?" he blankly asked the woman, who was looking at him with something like pity.

"We don't know yet."

"What... what happened?"

"He was... he got hurt," she replied, deliberately vague. Lily Evans, her name was, Remus suddenly recalled. He wondered briefly what she was doing there.

"But how?"

"He was attacked." That was weird: she seemed to have spoken with her mouth shut -