The ground shook, and Remus squeezed his eyes shut, belly down on the cobblestones. Everything after that moment - seeing Lily and James's heads turn, before the building in front of them exploded - everything after that made so little sense. It was all too slow, or too fast, and Remus found he did not react in his usual way - he was weak, frightened, his comprehension muddled. He felt stunned.
They raised their heads - he and Sirius - much too long after it had gone quiet, when people around them were already standing up, and were shouting, or crying. Someone was definitely crying, a woman. That seemed loudest of all. And someone laughing, too, a thin, razor sharp cackle in the distance, pure joy.
Diagon Alley looked like a bomb site. The shops which had been destroyed were like broken teeth in a gaping maw; strange blue patches of sky where something else should be. It was hard to see much on ground level, but they squinted through the settling dust further down the street towards Gringotts, where most of the noise seemed to be coming from,
"You two!" A woman hissed, coming towards them from behind, picking through the rubble, her wand raised, "Get back! Behind me!" She stalked ahead. Her robes were deep maroon, an auror's uniform.
"James!" Sirius choked, his voice strange and strangled with terror. He scrambled to his feet, his robes all dusty and his hair full of soot. He half ran, half stumbled, towards the hole in the sky where the quidditch supply shop had stood, minutes before.
"Sirius no..." Remus coughed, weakly, following him, feeling stupid and heavy.
"James!?" Sirius was shouting, but so many people were shouting.
"Sirius!" Remus coughed again, trying hard to keep up, but he'd bruised his hip when he'd hit the ground, and his ears were still ringing, and his eyes were starting to go blurry as he wiped away tears with dusty wrists. "Sirius-"
"MUDBLOODS OUT!"
Remus dropped to his knees, covering his ears, and he was not the only one. The voice seemed to be right behind him - inside his head, it was everywhere. The crowd was silent, finally, as everyone stared around, blinking, looking for the owner of the horrible, insidious voice.
Whatever was going on, it was happening further away - Remus could smell magic now, and see beams of light firing through the dust cloud surrounding Gringotts. He could smell Moody, and... Ferox? Maybe him. And the death eaters. Some of them he recognised, others he didn't - but they were there, and there were a lot of them. Where was Sirius? The ruins of the shop which had stood before them was still bleeding smoke, and Sirius had wandered straight into it, the idiot.
Gritting his teeth, and with not a little pain, Remus pushed himself to his feet again. He had to find them.
The shouts of battle were getting louder, more desperate; the woman who had ordered him and Sirius back had joined in, and Remus's conscience told him he ought to go and help. But James, and Lily, and Sirius...
"Morsmorde!" The same voice spoke, close and far away.
The smoke filling the street seemed to writhe and darken, expanding and swirling upwards to form an enormous snake entwined with a screaming, hollow eyed black skull.
"It's him!" A man near Remus shouted, "It's you know who!"
"Silencio!" Someone else hexed him into quiet. An odd stillness, more flashes - blue, green, yellow, red, and then...
CRACK CRACK CRACK, they were getting away!
For the first time, Remus thought to withdraw his wand, fumbling about in his borrowed robes for it. As he did, his fingers brushed against something else - smooth and heavy. His fingers closed around his pocket watch and he wrenched it out, prising it open quickly and saying aloud,
