Remus woke inside a tent. Not a tent as wizards were used to them, but a simple thing made of canvas, not tall enough to stand in and barely waterproof. His head ached from having nothing to pillow it. He tried to curl himself into a ball, but his thinning wool blanket wasn't enough to keep out the chill of the ground and the air both. Finally, he gave up on getting more rest and threw the blanket off to crawl outside.

He was in small city of tents—some muggle camping tents in bright, slick fabrics, some makeshift canvas or tarp like the one he had slept in. It was the gray of early morning, and most of the rest of the camp was asleep. He walked a little ways into a stand of trees to empty his bladder, then ambled back to camp. Not really having anything to do, he thought about going back into his tent, but a woman's voice hailed him.

"Ay, Remus!"

It was Vicki, sitting at the mouth of her own tent, a metal thermos in her hands. If anyone was the leader of this little band, it was her.

Remus wandered over to her and sat in a camp chair across from her. From the information he'd received before he came here Remus knew she was only in her early 30s, but her eyes were framed in deep wrinkles and her skin had a leathery quality.

"What do you think, so far?" she asked.

Remus paused for a second and let her pour him coffee in a tin cup.

"It's not what I'm used to."

"Nah, I suppose it's not, at that. It's a life, though."

A life of hunting and stealing. Remus was a guest for now, so he wasn't expected to work, but he knew how the rest of the band made their living. Remus insisted on calling them a band rather than a pack in his mind, even though that's what they called themselves. They stole food, mostly, canned vegetables and luxuries like the coffee they were drinking. And they poached animals from nearby farms. Werewolves always loved fresh meat, after all. When the locals caught on, they moved.

Remus drank his coffee in silence. It warmed his throat and hands, if nothing else.

"Full moon's coming up," Vicki said.

"Day after tomorrow," Remus agreed.

"You going to stay? People might be more willing to hear what you've got to tell them if you do."

Remus didn't know himself. These werewolves didn't lock themselves up on the full moon. They were better hunters when the moon was full, and for many, the meal they caught as wolves would be the best they got all month. They didn't hunt people, not intentionally, but a werewolf was more interested in human flesh than anything else. It happened.

Remus looked into his coffee. He'd heard of divination techniques that call up images on a dark, reflective surface, but his cup didn't give him any answers.

"If Greyback and his pack showed up here tomorrow, what would you do?" he asked her.

"Fight him tooth and nail," she said, and squatted to snuff her cigarette in the grass. "I wouldn't win, but I'd fight. Greyback's disgusting. This life is nothing to run away from, but it's not something to be fucking celebrated, either."

"A lot of your men and women think he has the right idea," Remus said quietly.

"That's cuz they're young and foolish. They decide to go chasing his tail, they're no loss."

"Listen…" Remus said, suddenly feeling bold. "When Greyback comes recruiting your people, and he will, I don't think he's going to give them a choice."

"And like I said, it comes to that, I'll fight him, what do think I should be doing, running off to kill him first? Not likely."

"You could join with the Order. Strength in numbers," Remus offered.

Vicki laughed bitterly. "Order doesn't want a pack of werewolves."

"They do," Remus said, with sincerity he didn't feel. "They wanted me."

"You may be some kind of wizard, Remus, but these pups aren't, love. You stick a wand between their eyes and 27 out of 28 days there's not anything they can do about it. Joining the Order's not going to do anything for them but put a target on their back. A bigger target."

"So maybe don't join us, but please, I'm begging you, do everything you can to keep them away from Greyback. Away from Voldemort."

Vicki hadn't been around wizards enough to wince at the name, but she did frown.

"Listen, Remus, I like you. You're sweet. Cute, too, but those are terrible qualities for a werewolf. You want me to respect you, you want these pups to respect you? You're gonna need to start snarling."

"I can snarl," Remus said, he hoped without sounding petulant.

"Then prove it to me. Hunt with us."

"I can't risk biting someone," Remus said. "And you shouldn't either."

"We go further north for the change, and anyone who goes out when the moon is full and the wolves are howling deserves it. I sure as hell did. But you know… you could prove yourself to me another way," she said with a wolfish grin.

Vicki had been subtly and not-so-subtly flirting with him since he got here. Remus had hoped that he could ignore her for long enough that she would give up. It only seemed to make her more aggressive.

The thing was, he didn't want her to give up.

He had had girls that were interested in him at Hogwarts. Most female attention that might have been given to him was diverted to Sirius, or occasionally James. But Remus was polite and even-tempered, more than could be said for most teenage boys, and a certain type of girl (mostly Ravenclaws) had interpreted his quietness as deep and mysterious. Remus would have never noticed most of his shy admirers on his own, but Peter had pointed out no less than five girls that had gone over the moon for him before they had ever really had a conversation with him.

So he had channeled Sirius at his worst, walked right up to one of them and told her she was pathetic.

And that was the end of that.

But Vicki, even if she might not have been his first choice of lover, shared his affliction. The only way he could hurt her was by refusing her.

And maybe, just maybe, he could convince her to fight beside him.

So he set his thermos cup in the grass, extended a hand to pull her to her feet, and pressed his lips to hers.

As first kisses go, it wasn't anything magical. She tasted like coffee and cigarettes. He tensed for a moment. Kissing didn't feel like he thought it would feel, but Vicki responded with enough enthusiasm for him to forget his lack of experience, pulling him tight.

Sirius turned the knob of the door of the Head Auror's office with a sense of mounting dread. He had been pulled out of drills by an Auror he didn't know and told to report to Scrimgeour immediately. No explanation.

Sirius wished he had no idea what this could be about, but he was smart enough and imaginative enough to narrow it down to two possibilities: he was being kicked out of the Auror training program or someone he knew was dead.

He opened the door to face his fate and was very tempted to close it again.

"Black, have a seat," Scrimgeour said, considering him over his glasses.

Sirius pulled out one of the two small chairs across from Scrimgeour's, he did so very slowly and carefully, because in the other one sat his mother.

"What," Sirius started, and found he couldn't continue.

"I thought it best to deliver bad news only once," Scrimgeour said.

"You thought wrong," Sirius said, not taking his eyes off Walburga Black.

"So is this what you're doing now?" she said, not looking at Sirius. "Upholding law and order?" She sniffed.

"Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doing now," Sirius said, his anger simmering.

"Please, sit down, Sirius," Scrimgeour said again.

Sirius did, still watching his mother out of the corner of his eye and pulling the chair slightly away from her as he did. She looked the same as ever, well dressed and well made-up as she always was in public, maybe a bit more gray under her very traditional peaked hat.

"There is really no easy way to say this, so I will be blunt," Scrimgeour said. "Regulus Black is dead. His body was found this morning on the bank of the Thames, just outside London."

There was a long silence. The clock on Scrimgeour's desk ticked. No one breathed.

"How did it happen?" Walburga asked.

"He appears to have been the victim of several curses. It's difficult to say which one finished the job. The body was in… rather poor condition."

"And where were you?" Walburga asked.

"Excuse me?" Scrimgeour asked.

"Where were you?" Walburga asked through gritted teeth. "Where were you and your Aurors when my son needed you?"

"Madam," Scrimgeour started. "I understand that you are very upset—"

"Upset? Upset! I am livid. How dare you. How dare you! Bring me into this office to tell me that my son is dead when you killed him yourself!"

Sirius let out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding to laugh. His mother and the head auror stared at him.

"Oh god, you actually believe that don't you? Poor little Regulus, the picture of innocence—"

"Are you, you filth, suggesting that my son deserved this?"

"No. No," Sirius laughed again, but this time it sounded slightly hysterical. "But you're suggesting that aurors killed him, and not, I don't know, that merry little band of blood purist psychopaths he ran with?"

"Why would his allies do this to him? Why would anyone?" she was crying now. God help him, it was actually hitting her that her son was dead.

The right thing to do, Sirius knew, would be to bridge the gap between them and mourn with her. Or at least to mourn separately beside her. But Sirius didn't do that. Sirius didn't want to do that. He wanted to twist the knife.

"So you admit it? You admit he was a Death Eater? I had my suspicions, but it's good to finally know for sure. Of course he would follow Lord Voldemort, you always admired him, always said he had the right ideas about things. Regulus always did hang off your every word. Always longed for your and father's approval. Such a shame he actually took you seriously and—"

"Sirius, perhaps you should leave," Scrimgeour said.

"I should leave?" Sirius said in disbelief.

"Your mother has lost her son," Scrimgeour said, staring meaningfully at Sirius.

"And I didn't lose….?" Sirius started, looking between Scrimgeour and Walburga, seeing nothing but scorn on Scrimgeour's face and nothing but hatred on his mother's.

"You know what, you're right," he said suddenly, horrified to hear how thick his voice sounded as he stood. "You're right. Not like I lost anything I didn't lose a long time ago."

Regulus lay on a narrow mattress in a metal box, one of hundreds on an enormous ship in the middle of the Atlantic. He idly waved his wand, carving pictures on the ceiling, barely visible in the light of a little lantern. He drew a snake, the hounds and sword of his house crest, a snitch. He animated the snitch's wings then thought better of the whole business and erased everything. All were symbols that could be traced back to him.

Regulus flopped on his side and sighed. Thankfully he had decided to flee the country rather than hole up somewhere, because if he had to be locked up in a small space by himself like this for longer than a few days he would…

What? What would you do? He asked himself. Turn yourself in? Commit suicide? Join the Order? What?

He didn't know.

Dumbledore had given him a couple of travel guides for his destination. He had flipped through them, but even in his extreme boredom he couldn't seem to concentrate.

He thought about Voldemort and his horcruxes, how Dumbledore had said there were at least three more. At least. Regulus wanted to cry in frustration. He almost died. He had been willing to die. For nothing.

But that wasn't all he thought about. To make a horcrux, one had to take a life, an innocent life, the life of someone who was no threat to you. He had thought that so abhorrent, when he had first researched horcruxes, when he had first started trying to understand the Dark Lord. But isn't that what he, Regulus, had done?

Regulus sat up and dug his fingernails into his thighs.

He had killed an innocent. He had killed a child. Not even for a horcrux, the way the Dark Lord had done. He had done it for nothing.

He was as mortal and afraid as he ever had been.