When The Wolf Comes Home

by QueenyMidas

Remus Lupin has just died on the battlefield, survived by a son that isn't even biologically his. When he reaches the afterlife, it becomes apparent that even though his time on earth his done his story is certainly not over. Compliant with all Deathly Hallows canon. Remus/Sirius, James/Lily.

Title: When the Wolf Comes Home

Summary: Remus Lupin has just died on the battlefield, survived by a son that isn't even biologically his. When he reaches the afterlife, it becomes apparent that even though his time on earth his done his story is certainly not over. Compliant with all Deathly Hallows canon.

AN: I just really fucking love the marauders. Inspired by the song 'Up The Wolves' by The Mountain Goats, specifically the lines "Our mother has been absent ever since we founded Rome/but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home". Time to chronicle the adventures of some dead-ass characters. TW for major character death (obviously), depression, and drinking.

Chapter 1:

When Remus was a young boy in his quiet hometown mother had taken him to the local church sparsely.

She sort of lost her faith after her son was turned into a raging beast every full moon by one of her husband's wizarding colleagues, but she wanted Remus to grow up with a little good old-fashioned religion sprinkled into his life all the same.

Remus would sit politely through the service and his mother thought the sermons gave him some wise advice but little did she know that in his Bible he hid reading books.

After Remus started attending Hogwarts he didn't even bother hiding the massive tomes in his scarred hands. Sarah Lupin excused it and thought, there are much worse vices a boy his age could have.

Being an undevoted disciple probably wasn't what was going to send him to hell, though.

Remus Lupin hopped on the fast train to hell the second a boy with a mess of curly dark hair sat down across from him on the Hogwarts Express and smiled so big Remus was surprised it didn't break his face.

"I'm Sirius, Sirius Black! Merlin's beard, those scars are cool. Were you mauled by a bear or something?"

"Or something," Remus had told him. Sirius had gotten a hoot out of that one and their bond was forged immediately.

The boy with the huge smile was Remus' ultimate downfall.

Sure, Prongs and Wormtail hadn't been the best influences either, but Remus was never in love with either of them. They never made his heart drop to his feet or sent shivers up his spine with a single touch.

When Sirius kissed Remus in sixth year it sealed his fate.

Remus would always be attracted to blokes, but this one in particular was nothing but bad news. Freshly disowned from his Pureblood family and snarky as hell, Sirius Black was a troublemaker. He threw dungbombs in Slytherin showers, he told teachers how boring their class was—to their face—and he knocked the lights out of anyone who muttered something about him being a huge, huge queer.

Sirius was a huge, huge queer, but he didn't appreciate being talked about.

Either way, it was that quick temper and complete disregard for rules of any manner that made him so clearly hell-bound and so fucking irresistible.

Remus couldn't help but fall in love with him. Even when Sirius was accused of the unthinkable, Remus could never stop loving him. While Sirius toiled in Azkaban, Remus hated himself for every bit of him that was still crazy for Sirius.

When he escaped and revealed the truth about Peter, Remus stopped hating the bits of himself that loved Sirius and started hating the bits of himself that ever doubted the man.

That was the icing on the cake, he supposed. Not only was he a heretic homo but he also had picked one hell of a man to call his lover. It all added up to a verdict of 'guilty' in the eyes of the Catholic Church with a couple flourishes of 'sinful' and 'abominable'.

So it was safe to say that Remus Lupin was fairly surprised when he opened his eyes and saw the Gryffindor commonroom instead of the blazing inferno of lost and accursed souls.

He was sitting on his old bed, the one with chocolate stains on the covers that he could never quite magick out. Around him the room looked just as it did in 1976, just as it did when he and Sirius would close the curtains around one of their four poster beds shut and crawl under the covers together.

A quiet throb spread through Remus' chest at the memories.

Sirius Black. The only person Remus had ever been in love with, the only one he'd ever taken to bed with him. They were children in that room once, laughing and holding hands before the first wizarding war engulfed the world around them. After graduation their settings darkened.

Part of that might have been because of how poor they were—fuck, Remus could remember the nights where he and Sirius ate nothing but steamed noodles—in their tiny apartment with barely-decent salaries at the bottom rung of corporate ladders.

Sirius had wanted to be an Auror, but the training put him at the end of the Ministry food chain. He wouldn't be worth much without his badge, and he was actually set to earn that badge in 1981. He would have earned it, Remus was sure, if it hadn't been for Peter's betrayal.

Remus was just lucky to get a job at a small research facility without working papers, testing the various effects of charms. He had performed excellently in school (minus potions class), but there was no getting around a background check for his working papers. Remus was a werewolf, and if he wanted a better job then he'd have to take the risk of registering with the Ministry.

Werewolves that did register were constantly harassed, so Remus kept his status private.

The feeling that the current—rather dead—Remus couldn't shake off was that he and Sirius had never had enough time. Five years as friends in school, two as boyfriends for the rest of school, three living together after school, and two years after Azkaban… That was twelve years together. They had spent more time apart in their lives than they had together, and that was so wrong.

James' glasses were placed on his night stand as if Prongs would prance in at any moment to grab them and recount the gory details of his latest date with Miss Lily Evans, and Remus could hardly describe how much he missed his friend as well. He and James had only had ten years together.

Remus didn't want to think about the other bed in the room with 'P. P.' carved into the headboard. Had Peter even been at the Battle of Hogwarts? No, Remus couldn't afford to think like that. His last memory was hitting the ground with a hollow thud—had Tonks been calling his name?—and he didn't want that moment adulterated by Peter's presence.

Tonks, Remus thought dully.

She was probably dead, too. His fake wife.

"Remus, I need your help."

Remus had been so busy drowning himself in alcohol that he almost hadn't heard her. "Hm."

She let out a sharp breath. "You're drunk."

"Yes. Yes I am." It wasn't a happy sort of drunk, though. It wasn't the sort where Remus could fall into Sirius' arms and give him sloppy kisses. It was the sort where Sirius was dead and Remus could never be in his arms again.

"Remus…"

"What? You needed my help?" His tongue was thick in his mouth and his words were blurry around the edges.

Tonks gritted her teeth.

She loved Remus, she really had. That was the saddest part of it, Remus supposed.

"I'm pregnant," she told him with a certain ache in her voice.

Remus didn't understand at first. Why was Tonks telling him? He was a gay drunkard; it wasn't like the baby could be his.

"I want this baby to have a legacy, Remus, just in case…"

"In case you die?" Remus asked plainly. "I don't plan on living, Tonks."

That alarmed her. "Don't say that," she snapped. Sure, he was burdened with grief, but he could get over it, right?

Wrong. "I can't play house with you. Who's the real father?"

"A muggle I slept with at a pub." Before Remus could even tell her to go find that unlucky bastard, she cut him off. "You and Sirius, you always wanted children and I remember him talking about them having your last name…"

It had been a twist of the knife in his stomach.

"Sirius isn't here. I don't belong here, either. Not without him."

"Please, just… Just let me pretend that the baby is yours. I told the bloke at the pub about the baby and he doesn't want anything to do with it. Let me pretend his father is an honorable man."

Remus hadn't seen through her plan at the time but now he felt he understood. Tonks was trying to keep him alive; Tonks was trying to give him a reason to live.

Apparently a child with the Lupin last name wasn't enough to keep Remus from being reckless during the final showdown, and he'd gone out taking a half a dozen Death Eaters with him.

A chill ran down his spine. Harry.

In another life he could remember speaking to Harry in the Forbidden Forest, a fraction of his consciousness flying off to give his godson some final guidance. The memory was muddled, though.

Harry had to have won the war. The part of Voldemort inside of him had to have died. It just had to.

A flash of Lily's face telling Harry she loved him crossed Remus' mind.

Lily! James! They had both been there.

Oh, and so had Sirius. Remus clutched the crimson sheets of his bed tightly in his hands like it was his first night at Hogwarts all over again. He didn't know where he was and he was scared. Scared and looking for a familiar face.

"Moony," Sirius uttered, the word so wholly and completely filling his mouth. He stood in the door of the Gryffindor boy's dorm.

He was still unsure as to how travel worked in this strange place. Sometimes he was at James' old apartment trading jokes with his favorite couple and then a few minutes later he'd realize he was in Remus' old house, sitting on the edge of his bed.

Sirius remembered the first time Remus had fucked him in that bed.

"Padfoot?" Remus hadn't seen him enter but that didn't matter. This was Padfoot, he could tell. Not a drunken visage, the real deal.

In an instant Sirius was on the bed next to him, arms around Remus' neck. He tackled the other man and clutched at him to make sure it was really Remus.

"Sirius," Remus gasped before the tears came. Everything was a thousand degrees hotter and for a moment it felt like hell, all of the memories of Sirius' death crushing Remus under their weight.

"Oh, fuck." Sirius, still sprawled on top of Remus, cradled his chin. "Don't cry, Moony. Please don't cry, you know how I can't stand to see you sad." Sirius had seen how truly miserable Remus was without him in the two years after his death, too.

That only made him cry harder, a pathetic little sob escaping his mouth when he tried to hold it back.

There he was, Sirius Black, and he could breathe in his musk and feel his long hair tickle his cheek. Remus hauled him in for a rough kiss, the tears on his cheeks falling onto Sirius'. Yes, his Padfoot was there to kiss again.

"Please don't cry, Remus. You've cried enough for one lifetime," Sirius begged before kissing Remus' salty wet skin.

"I don't know if you know this," Remus choked out between ragged breaths for air, a smile finally gracing his lips for the first time in years. "But my lifetime is over."

Sirius smiled, too. "I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not. I've been waiting for you for so long. You have no idea, Moony, it was torture knowing what you were going through all over again. I love you so much, I love you so fucking much," he blurted out all at once.

"I love you too," Remus managed, still gripping tight to Sirius as the tears stopped streaming across his scarred face. "I could never stop loving you. You're my soulmate, I'm sure of it. I've never been so sure of anything before."

"Then," Sirius replied sweetly, taking Remus' left hand in his. Sirius looked as if he was going to say something profound, something that would stick with Remus for the rest of his existence. "Explain this, you complete bastard." He held up Remus' ring finger, Tonks' golden band closed around it.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Remus stumbled over his words. "I haven't seen you in two years—fuck, I mourned you! I had to metaphorically bury you since we couldn't recover your body! I thought you said you could see what happened back on Earth when I—when I cried." Was this Earth? Was it heaven? Remus had so many unanswered questions that could wait for after their spat.

Sirius gave him a look he reserved for when he was extremely cross with Remus, one he pulled out during all arguments as he was the drama queen in the relationship. "I saw my cousin fall madly in love with you, yes! I saw you fall for her entrapment of a marriage as if people could actually believe you could sire a child. If you had lived, you would still be her husband! What were you thinking?"

Remus took off the offending ring without a second thought and pelted it at the headboard of Peter's bed. "I was thinking that I didn't want to live, Sirius. Not without you."

"Pffft." Sirius rolled his eyes. The transition into meaningless couple bickering was completely seamless. "Sure you were, that's definitely a healthy reason to pretend you're some kid's father."

"Sirius!" Remus exclaimed, moving to sit up with Sirius on his lap so he could look him in the eye and not feel utterly ridiculous. "I was just murdered and before that you were murdered! Fuck, forgive me if my logic wasn't entirely sound in dealing with your cousin after you went and died on me."

"I can't believe you married her! I was going to marry you; that was our thing."

"It was entirely falsified!" Deep down under the frustration he held for a certain Sirius Padfoot Orion Black was a sigh of relief. Sirius and Remus may have had their lives snuffed out, but certainly not their personalities. Not their banter. Sirius was just as jealous as he had been in seventh year when Dorcas Meadowes tried to ask Remus out to Madam Puddifoot's.

Sirius had stuffed firecrackers in her trunk and given her dirty glares for the rest of the year.

"I leave for two years and you lose your damn senses. I swear—"

"'Leave'? You died—" he really stressed the whole 'dying' part."—Sirius! Kicked the bucket! Pushed up daisies! Perished in front of my own goddamn eyes!"

He let out a huff of air, unsatisfied with that response.

Remus groaned. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I faked a wedding with your cousin."

Sirius cast his eyes down at the other man. "And?"

"And I love you. Stop being such a complete prick so I can tell you how much I love you," Remus breathed out, burying his hands in Sirius' hair.

The other man let out a ragged breath and fell into Remus' arms again. "I love you too," he sighed. Tonks didn't dare make a move on Remus while Sirius was alive, and he was honestly angrier with her than he was with anyone else. He could never stay mad at Moony for too long, anyway. Moony had forgiven him for that awful prank-gone-wrong in fifth year.

Remus had been mortified. He shouted at Sirius until his throat was hoarse and for the rest of his days at Hogwarts Remus had to make sure that Severus Snape wasn't slipping silver shards in his jam. Silver, as it did to most werewolves, made him terribly sick.

"Snivellus is dead," Sirius told Remus as if he were updating him on the current state of affairs rather than clutching to him like a simpering child, his head resting on the other man's chest. He couldn't hear a heartbeat under Remus' clothes and skin, but that was fine. "One of Molly's twins, too."

"Oh." Remus had taught them. He could see their faces looking up from their textbooks to whisper to each other. Remus had never punished them, they reminded him too much of Sirius and James.

"Tonks, too."

"Where are we?"

That was a loaded question. "The Gryffindor commonroom, you ponce."

"You're the ponce and you know what I mean," Remus chuckled against Sirius' neck. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be that close to someone.

"I don't know," Sirius answered honestly. "Nobody's bothered to explain it to me because nobody else quite knows, either."

Remus asked the question that had been stirring in his stomach. "So there are other people besides you and me here?" By 'other people' he distinctly meant 'James and Lily'.

"I told them I had to see you first. Prongs put up a fight and said he was the one who hadn't talked you in longer, but I played the 'soulmates' card and got him to back off," Sirius mumbled fondly. "And then Harry won the war, so James and Lily decided they'd have plenty of time to see you."

"Won?" Remus asked breathlessly.

Sirius nodded. "Tom Riddle is dead and most of the Death Eaters have been rounded up. Harry won."

Harry won. Their deaths hadn't been meaningless. Their lives had been sacrificed for a higher cause, for the freedom of those who didn't fit into Voldemort's regime of pureblooded and proud.

"He won," Remus said out loud with a quiet fervor just to confirm what he heard.

"He won," Sirius echoed.

"He won!"

"He did, he really did, Moony. Harry's going to be okay, he's going to finish Hogwarts and find some nice bloke and have a normal life."

Remus squeezed Sirius tighter. "I tried, once," he murmured. "To tell him about you and I. The words were coming out wrong, though, I hope he knows—I hope he knows his parents couldn't be more proud of him with his sexuality included."

Sirius smoothed back Remus' hair. "I think he knows he's loved no matter what. Fuck, James and Lily would have made the best parents…"

"So everyone is here?" Remus asked in desperate need of some confirmation.

"Everyone," he sighed. "Which is a blessing and a curse. Prime example? Your parents are here, but so are mine."

"Walburga!" Remus laughed as if she hadn't completely made Sirius' life miserable. In retrospect, she was just a sad and hateful woman. She didn't matter in the long run, right? "Oh, Merlin's beard, that means she saw everything that happened after she died."

"At least here she can't smack me around. She can't smack Regulus around, either."

Remus cursed himself for forgetting the abuse for a moment. When he looked at Sirius he never saw someone who was thrashed as a kid, he only saw Sirius. "Good," Remus replied carefully. "And Regulus, he…"

"He was on our side the whole time. I knew I was his brother for a reason," Sirius declared proudly. "He started the hunt for the horcruxes and was killed when he got too close to the truth. I love that sorry son of a bitch." He paused for a moment. "And he doesn't let mum boss him around anymore. Reg grew a spine when he died, apparently. He goes on dates with blokes and tells Walburga to fuck off."

"Dates? But we're…?"

"Dead," Sirius nodded. "So very dead, just like everyone is one day. We've got Julius Caesar here, Cleopatra, Harvey Milk, Dumbledore, Elisabeth Sladen, all the King Henrys, and half of the Beatles. Regulus hooked up with Abraham Lincoln once."

He couldn't help it, Remus laughed. "Wow."

Sirius had missed that laugh. He snuck in another kiss, which wound up lasting much longer than he had expected—not that he was complaining. His hand had just drifted down to Remus' waist with thoughts of their teenage stamina and bottomless pit of passion when the door to the commonroom flew open again.

"I couldn't wait any longer!" James announced before pouncing on top of his friends with a heavy 'thud'. It didn't hurt, though. It just sort of tingled. "Moony! Moony, this sorry fuck here is so hopeless without you and I guess I am too!"

Remus and James, with Sirius pinned in between them, wrapped their arms around each other as best they could. James looked like he was twenty-one all over again, like he hadn't aged a day, just like Sirius looked. Remus wondered what he looked like.

"Hey! I'm not done yet!" Sirius argued, elbowing James in the stomach.

"Don't care. Keep it in your pants for like five minutes, Padfoot," James teased before affectionately kissing Remus' cheek over Sirius' shoulder in the Sirius sandwich they'd made. "The three musketeers are together again—I always did think four was a rubbish number! Remus, thank you so much, thank you for what you did for Harry—"

"Oi! We're the three musketeers, not a threesome. I'm the one who kisses Moony, Prongs."

"What? Jealous that he might finally figure out I'm sexier than you and fall wildly in lust with me?" James teased his best friend right back. Remus could have cried again; not even their banter had died.

Sirius rolled his eyes and made a valiant attempt to wrestle James off of him, creating a mess of arms and legs out of the three Marauders. "You have a wife, don't steal mine."

"Wife?" Remus snarked, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, right, you're Tonks' wife now!" Sirius shouted back, biting James' hand when he tried to push Sirius' face away.

A heavy, exasperated sigh escaped Remus and he sank into the mattress while the two men above him grappled with one another. "No, I am not." Sirius was always bringing things up they'd already settled before into new arguments.

"You should have seen how he was fuming!" James cackled. "He pined for you, Moony, don't ever let him tell you otherwise. Padfoot pined."

Remus hadn't heard the next person enter, but he heard her speak. "Remus," Lily greeted him, thankfully not plopping herself on top of him like the two Marauders had.

Promptly, Remus pushed the fighting mess that was James and Sirius off of him. They rolled off the bed, still sniping at each other.

"My Moony!"

"Only until he comes to his senses!" James teased right back. "We've been having lurid affairs." He used to say stuff like that at Hogwarts just to get under Sirius' skin. James didn't even like blokes, he just liked bothering Sirius.

"Remus," Lily said again, allowing him to stand before ambushing him with a hug.

Remus' knees felt weak. "Lily," he replied, returning the embrace. "Lily, your son is so much like you in so many ways, and he's like James, too, but—Lily, I've really missed you."

She wore her favorite yellow sundress, the one that made her hair look like a bonfire. "I've missed you too, Remus. Thank you, thank you so much for watching Harry—" Lily cut herself off before she started rambling about her wonderful, perfect son. "And thank you for coming home. Do you see what I've had to deal with? These two are out of control." She nodded back to James and Sirius, who had begun yanking each other's hair.

"Lily," Remus laughed. "They were never in control."

"Yes, but I needed my partner in crime." Lily had always reserved a soft spot for Remus Lupin in her heart. They were the ones who sat by the lake and read while their boyfriends attempted to pin Christmas crackers onto creatures of the deep with a sticking charm.

"Well." It was nice to be needed. "Here I am."

"You're disgusting!" Sirius yelled from the floor to James, who was currently trying his hardest to give Sirius a wet willie. He jerked his head side-to-side, pawing up at James to keep his fingers away. "Lily, your husband is clearly the gayest of all of us."

Lily smiled wide. "Probably. But we have a surprise for you two, for when you both wound up here." Wherever 'here' was. "Don't we, James?"

"Ah!" James hopped off of Sirius and abandoned their brotherly wrestling with a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. "Yes, we do." That was his I-Have-A-Plan voice.

Even Sirius seemed to be in the dark about this. He cast a doubtful look to Remus who also had no idea what they were talking about, and the couple figured they'd have to be surprised.

"This way, this way," James ushered them both after helping Sirius up off of the ground, arms wrapped around their shoulders. They sped towards the door of the Gryffindor commonroom, but when Lily opened it, there wasn't a red couch or a wizarding chess table in sight.

Remus' heart leapt out of his chest. After every happy surprise this one had to take the cake. Sure, he wasn't in hell, he had his lover again, he finally had his friends again, he could see his parents once more, but this…

"Surprise!" James and Lily shouted in unison with the seated guests.

In a clearing of the Forbidden Forest where the Marauders spent every full moon, there was an ivory carpet splitting two crowds of white chairs. A flowered arch stood at the end of the walkway, with the sun shining brightly enough to make it seemingly glow.

In the chairs themselves were people Remus thought he would never see again.

Mad-Eye Moody, Dobby the house elf, Remus' parents, Regulus, Fred Weasley, the Prewett brothers, Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadowes, Igor Karkaroff, Amelia Bones, Cedric Diggory, Benjy Fenwick, Colin Creevey, a mix of at least fifty other students Remus taught, and Albus Dumbledore presiding as the Minister at the end of the altar.

James and Lily being the obvious Best Man and Matron of Honor, they took their place at the end of the aisle, too.

That left Remus and Sirius to sort things out. "Sirius Black," Remus announced, the moment sweeping him up. He'd never proposed to anyone before even though he had married someone before, and he wanted to make this marriage start the right way.

Remus dropped to one knee even though he had no ring to offer. "Will you marry me?"

"Of course I will, you absolute berk," Sirius laughed, hauling Remus up off of his knees by his elbows in front of the cheering crowd of their impromptu-wedding guests. "You didn't have to ask." Sirius' answer would always be 'yes'.

"I wanted to," Remus admitted, clasping one of Sirius' hands. They felt so right in his, with all of Sirius' fancy and entirely unnecessary rings, his long, aristocratic fingers in his. Remus never wanted to let go.

Their hands stayed intertwined as they walked down the aisle, Albus Dumbledore's patient smile waiting for them at the end of it all.

"If you're ready?" the older man prompted, his light blue robes shimmering in the light. Even he seemed to look younger.

Remus and Sirius nodded.

"Then let's begin."