Frivolous comments first: I saw the title of this last night as I was logging off, and Holst's "Mars" has been thumping in 5/4 time in my brain ever since, thank you very much. ;) Also, it occurs to me that, as a horse person, you actually know how to write plausible centaur gestures!

But, then, wow. You've really created a tangible atmosphere of mystery and portending doom; I love the way it's clear that Firenze and Dumbledore know more about what it all means than we do, heh. Also the way you've given some of those candles just enough distinguishing characteristics to identify them... (I'm guessing the missing candle is Sirius?) And of course Dumbledore's concern for Remus is sad but lovely.

I may beg to differ here from the majority opinion, actually -- the sense I got in DH, from the King's Cross chapter and the portrait at the end, is that Dumbledore may be rather more ruthless than we all thought, but he doesn't spare himself from that any more than he spares anyone else, and he does genuinely love Harry (thus, presumably, others too). So I think DH-compatible Dumbledore could certainly have been having these kinds of regrets about Remus. *sigh*