Nighttime

Chapter 24- Broken

12th January 1977

*Remus POV*

He had received a blasted letter from his father every day since that first one. Peter, James and I tried all we could to intercept them, but to no effect. They still got here, every evening. And then every evening he would rush up to our dorm, and stay there. And I waited, waited until the muffled yells could not be heard through the walls, then waited two minutes more, then I went up. I would stand by the door for a moment, and let him turn me away if he wanted to. Then I would go up to him, and sit with him, a shoulder to cry on. It was difficult, seeing him hurting and not being able to do anything to stop the pain. How badly I wanted to make it all stop, to make the pain stop for him. But I never could. I would just sit with him, for hours, neither talking, sometimes I would put my arm around his shoulder, and he would sink into my chest and sob. Sometimes he would not. But I stayed, unless it seemed like he wanted me to go. One time I stood up to leave, but he turned around, and weakly, oh so weakly, sounding so broken, so hurt, so dead inside that I wanted to cry, and he asked me to stay. So I stayed. I would stay by his side for as long as I could. And when we went to bed we would go in separate beds, but often halfway through the night he would wake up crying, so I would go and sit on his bed, and he would curl up to me and I would hold him. And he would calm down, and go back to sleep in my arms. And if that was all I could do then I would do it. I would drop anything to comfort him, I would do anything to make the hurting end. The happy, bubbly, chilled out, funny, amazing Sirius that I had fallen in love with was gone, and he was replaced by the shell of a man. And I would stop at nothing to get the Sirius that was not hurting, back.