The knowledge that they’ll remember him as a coward rises in his mind like fog, and, finding nothing it can cling to, dissipates. He’s forfeited his chance to be remembered any other way – though he wishes Sirius could know something, could be chased by the spectre of him in some way other than this, a way more solid, with purchase and finality. He’s read in the old poets what happens to unburied men.