"James, how did we get here?" Remus spoke softly to his friend, who's head was hung in shame the way it often did when Remus had to live up to his prefect duties and scold him, which was nowhere near as often as it should have been.
"I suppose you don't have any answers either, Lily?" A pair of green eyes flashed up to his defiantly, waiting for an accusation. "You're smarter than him. You always have been. But you didn't manage to see this coming?"
Remus' voice was raising as he continued, his words coming quicker and more heated with each statement. "I couldn't have expected Peter to have expected it when even I didn't, but James? You've always been better with people than I have. And Lily? You're smarter than I am! Don't try to fight it, you are. How could you have missed this?"
Remus collapsed in front of his friends, closing his eyes as tears fell freely. He couldn't even pretend to himself that they were from the aches that precursed his monthly transition. It was his heart that hurt. It hurt so much that it didn't matter that his scars all hurt as though preparing to be ripped open, or that his joints all felt like they had been dislocated the day before. Remus knew he shouldn't yell, his throat would be shredded after his transition the next night anyway now that he no longer had access to the Wolfsbane Potion, but he couldn't stop the words from coming out of his mouth and he had never been so angry in his life.
"What is wrong with you two?! Why didn't you trust me? What have I ever done to betray your loyalty? If you had trusted me, none of this would have happened! We would all still be happy! But instead you trusted that Slytherin! I did too, so I can't blame you, but we all should have known better! His entire family is made up of snakes, damn it! We were wrong, and you trusted him instead of me and now you're dead!" Remus snapped, opening his eyes to look at the gravestones he was sitting in front of while the images of James and Lily faded from his mind.
A year ago, Remus, James, Sirius, Lily, and Harry had all been together at the cottage nearby for the last time. Professor Dumbledore knew how much the marauders had enjoyed Halloween while they were in school, and knew how much Sirius and Remus had been through that year, so he'd told them to visit for an hour. With You-Know-Who hunting for James and Lily, they couldn't come and go very often, and Sirius and Remus were both needed elsewhere. So, Sirius had attached himself to the baby boy as soon as they entered the front door, fawning over his godson as always while Remus visited with the other adults. They had been happy for that hour.
"You're dead. Peter is dead. Marlene is dead. Hayden is dead. Sirius is in Azkaban. Harry is with muggles. And I'm alone. And it's your fault. Both of you."
His voice was back to its usual pitch and volume again, but Remus was little more than a puddle of a person.
"I wondered if I'd see you here, Mr. Lupin."
Remus sniffled and attempted to stifle his tears. Minerva McGonagall was the last person he wanted to see him cry now that he was an adult living in the real world. She was supposed to be able to be proud of all of the Marauders at this point, but he was the last man standing. He couldn't be a blubber baby in front of her.
"Hello, Professor," Remus choked out after clearing his throat. His former teacher was standing behind him, kindly giving him time to gather himself. He stood and turned to shake her hand, which she returned warmly.
"I always rather thought that Pettigrew would be the last of you boys standing. He was so quiet that I didn't think he would end up in any real trouble."
"Professor, he was only quiet so he could sneak around better," Remus said with his first small grin of the day and a sneaking glance at his former teacher. He quickly looked back at the headstones in front of him before she could meet his eye.
"I remember perfectly well. He still avoided all the conflict and blame very well considering he was a Marauder," McGonagall stated with a small smirk of her own.
"That was only because Black would always jump in as soon as anyone started blaming Peter. Remember how our first year everyone thought Black was the greatest prankster alive after he got all those cats into the Great Hall? He only did that after Peter told him that he put a half dozen cats in your office for a Halloween prank. He didn't think you'd find it funny. So he did it bigger for the Halloween banquet so you'd blame him instead of Peter."
"So I gave Black the extra week of detention instead of Pettigrew?" the professor mused while she blinked back tears. There were so few that if she blinked them away Remus wouldn't even notice that her eyes were tearing up. She then cleared her throat to continue their stroll down memory lane.
"That was the day I realized you four were students unlike any I had ever taught before, that you were more than mere pranksters."
Her statement managed to draw a watery chuckle from Remus. A handful of their pranks flew through his mind, but the ones he got caught on were the ones from Halloweens past. Apparently the same thing was happening to Professor McGonagall, because she was the next to speak.
"Your fifth year, Mr. Black once told me about a tea party with some spiders. Is that what happened to upset the acromantulas on Halloween?"
Remus burst into true laughter for the first time in weeks. He hadn't thought about that in years.
"Yea, Sirius decided it was a good idea to drag James and Peter into the forest to cheer the acromantulas up for Halloween since I couldn't celebrate the Marauders' holiday with them. He dragged out a table that was half a metre tall, made for house elves. Then he went back in and grabbed a table cloth filled with tea cups," he stated, hiding the fact that he had actually been with them, in his wolf form while they were actually in their animal forms for the entire charade. There was only one animagus left, and there were only two of them left alive who knew about it, but he, Remus John Lupin, would NOT betray his friends the way Sirius had.
"He set the table up for all the 'guests'," with his teeth, Remus omitted, "before he went back for the tea," which meant a dog sneaking through the castle with his head completely sideways to avoid spilling any. "Apparently at the party, he brought a cup over to the first spider he saw that was bigger than a cup. Then he poured it on the spider. They didn't take kindly to it," his eyes glittered with mirth as he remembered the spiders charging at the dog while the rat disappeared and the stag made the strangest sound imaginable before trying to defend the dog and getting charged as well.
"The best Halloween was our last at school though," Remus said.
"You boys did go over the top. That was our last Halloween Ball, Filch saw to it."
"That's a shame. It was a fantastic way for us to figure out what we thought about each other," he responded, his mind drifting to his Hogwarts sweetheart.
Professor McGonagall seemed to understand where his mind was going because she suddenly changed topics.
"It's not your fault, Mr. Lupin. None of this is. Miss Prewett died fighting for what she believed in."
"She died meeting me. Coming to talk to me. She wouldn't have been in Hogsmeade if it weren't for me."
"You may be right about that, but she was out battling death eaters once a month anyway. But you know that. You know that all you could have done for her was die with her."
"Even if I couldn't have saved Hayden, they would have trusted me. They would still be here."
"Mr. Lupin," McGonagall snapped with the harsh tones she had most often used on either Sirius or James while they were at school, "You helped Professor Dumbledore immensely by going underground. And if they were still here, that would mean the traitor would still be undiscovered. It's a tragedy that James and Lily perished," her voice was beginning to falter, and this was the first time Remus ever heard her call one of them by their first names, "but it was war, Mr. Lupin. Lives were lost, but good came out ahead. And Harry is alive."
He finally looked at his former Head of House, and saw tears falling down her face to match the bittersweet ones streaming down his cheeks. She walked past him to stand in front of the headstones that they were here for. McGonagall drew her wand and began fluttering it about until a wreath was conjured at the Potters' graves, with a photo of a toddler with black messy hair framed in front of it. She turned to face Remus before fluttering her wand once more to conjure a second framed photo that she handed to him.
"Mr. Lupin, you may be the last of your friends standing, but they still live through Harry. That should be reason enough for you to keep living a life they would want for you. When he's old enough, he'll need you to tell him about what he never knew; about the parents that loved him enough to die for him. Harry will need you one day."
And with that she walked out of the cemetery and disappeared with a turn on her heel. Remus looked down at the photo she had given him, to see Lily's eyes looking up at him out of James tiny, baby face. Old Minnie McGee was right again; this was a boy who would need to hear about his parents one day, and one that Remus needed to know.
He took his wand out and conjured a sunflower and an Easter lily to lay behind the photo of Harry from McGonagall, and then he wiped his face and followed in McGonagall's footsteps, feeling more at peace with the destruction that had overtaken his life than he ever had.