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There was an owl soaring towards my house. I noticed it from my bedroom where I was changing the sheets. Hurriedly I opened the window to take its delivery. The owl flying into the room had a letter - and something else tied to its leg. As soon as I had undone the bindings, it took flight again, disappearing over the trees in my garden. I sat down on my bed and unfolded the parchment. There was a short note on it.

Dear Remus,

the phoenix has again risen from its ashes.
Your dog, too, is returning home. Watch out for him.

Albus Dumbledore

That was all. But there was still the long, thin parcel. I opened it - and a sugar quill rolled onto the mattress. I knew the message.

Dumbledore’s words, years ago, when we joined the Order of Phoenix.
"A sugar quill is highly curious," he had said. "If you look at it, you see a normal quill. Nothing strange, really. But when you try to write with it, you’ll notice it doesn’t work.
"So remember this. Whenever I send you a sugar quill, it is a sign of danger. Send letters only if you absolutely have to, and if you do, disguise your words so that no one but the addressee could tell their true meaning. The sugar quill gives you its advice: it looks real, but it isn’t. That's how your letters shall be."

A sugar quill. The phoenix.
I knew it at once:
Lord Voldemort had risen again.

He has risen again.

I noticed I was shaking, and I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Well, it had been bound to happen sooner or later, hadn’t it? And Trelawney’s prediction... Dumbledore had told me about it.

The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years.Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant’s aid, greater and more terrible than ever before.

The letter had been crumpled it my fist, and I straightened it to read it again.

Your dog is returning home. Watch out for him.

My dog - Sirius. I hadn’t seen him nor talked to him since that day in the Shrieking Shack. He had written me sometimes, and I had answered, but you just can’t say everything you want in a letter. It had been a polite exchange about, How are you, How’s Harry, Where are you now, What are you doing. The sort of seemingly important and yet completely insignificant things you write to people you don’t really know anymore.

It was bitter, the thought that I didn’t know Sirius anymore, but it was true. My best friend, my lover, my mate. Never meant to be separated.
Yet we had been.
Twelve years.

Twelve years change a person.

Loneliness changes a person.

Grief changes a person.

Prison – prison changes a person.

We both had changed, I knew it. The man I was now didn’t know the person Sirius had become. But –

I still recognized him in the Shrieking Shack. No matter how different we both had become – underneath it, he was still the Sirius I had known and loved.

And now I was going to see him again, that was what Dumbledore’s note told me. See him, finally be able to really talk to him, get to know him again.

Voldemort had risen again, and so had the Phoenix, ready to fight him with all its might. And here I sat and was happy with the knowledge that I was to see Sirius again.

It has begun. The arrow signalling the end of the world has been fired...

And I was happy.

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That was two days ago. Now it’s evening, and I’m sitting in the living room, reading. The window is open, letting in the warm summer air, and I can hear a sound. It’s the shuffle of paws on ground, drawing nearer. I get up to look out and see a great black dog running towards the house. At the corner he halts. There’s no one to see him here, out in the countryside. He turns back into a man.

I lay down my book and walk to the door. He’s here at last.

Sirius.

Author’s note: The line "It has begun. The arrow..." has been taken from the manga "X" by Clamp, translation from Rabi’s X Page