Title: Waiting on a Star
Author: Tsukiyomi
Summary: Remus Lupin stargazes and thinks about what happened at the end of OoP. Songfic to Luna's Song from Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete.
Warnings: OoP spoilers, obviously. If you haven't read it, don't read any further, because I want you to be just as shocked and pissed off as I was, and plus it's a really good book and it's no fun if you already know what happens. Also, slash (implied? What do you call it when there's only one slashee left alive?), which means male/male romance, specifically between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. If you don't like that (but why wouldn't you?), don't read. Some cursing, but not too much.
Disclaimer: I obviously don't own Remus, Sirius, or any of the other Harry Potter characters, because if I did OoP would have ended rather differently. JK Rowling owns them, along with a whole bunch of companies, most of whom I don't care about too much, especially if AOL Time Warner follows up on its threat to start weeding out Harry Potter slash on the Internet. I think Squaresoft, Inc. and Jennie Stigle own "Luna's Song", but I might be wrong, and lots of other companies own that too. Probably some of the same ones that own Harry Potter. Die, synergy. Anyway, I don't own anything and am not making any money. Okay, here we go. The fic. Yay.
*
Wishing on a dream that seems far off,
Hoping it will come today:
Into the starlit night
Foolish dreamers turn their gaze,
Waiting on a shooting star
*
I suppose it was rather foolish of me to hope that I would be able to discern your star now, Sirius—lying here in the grassy square of this run-down northern London suburb, where the night sky, already obscured by the English fog, is further blurred by the lights and the smoke from the big city; and in the middle of June to boot, five months after the Great Dog is visible clear through the night—even so, I had hoped, with the unseen new moon occurring tonight, that the Dog-Star would be there to comfort me as it always has, outshining all the others. But no: no stars shine tonight, and no Sirius gleams, neither in heaven nor on earth.
Would you believe that it's been ten days now and I still haven't cried once? When it happened, I had to restrain Harry from joining you, and then I had to be a reassuring presence for him; after all, of the two who love you and whom you loved most, I'm the adult. Also, I'm now the last Marauder, and, as such, his only remaining connection to his family (not counting that horrid aunt of his; I met her the other day and again today when taking Harry home, and she certainly doesn't count for much of anything). The last Marauder. Lone wolf. I don't even want to think about it.
Your funeral was today, and, even when it seemed like the entire room had dissolved in collective mourning, I sat in the front pew without motion or expression, and my own pain continues to go unexpressed. Other than that fact (well, and the fact that I wore my "best dress robes", which looked absolutely ridiculous next to everyone else's), the occasion was absolutely perfect; you really would have appreciated it. I wanted to help eulogize you, but I simply could not express what was going on inside of me. No one would have understood anyway, considering the fact that only seven people in the world—well, eight, since Hermione's probably guessed by now—ever knew the true nature of our relationship, and three of those are dead or as good as dead. Professor Dumbledore did a wonderful job with your eulogy, and Molly Weasley, Minerva McGonagall, and even little Hermione Granger got up and said some lovely things about you, but I wanted it to end as soon as possible all the same.
After the funeral I took Harry back to Surrey by myself, and came back home—not my flat, obviously, but our home, 12 Grimmauld Place; it's certainly going to be different going back to my flat after staying with you since before Christmas—to pack up all our belongings and those of the Order. We're moving, of course; that rotten elf, Kreacher, has completely disappeared, and we don't know what he could have done to the house now that he's no longer bound to serve the Blacks, and it simply isn't safe. Of course, no one really liked having to work (or play) with all those pictures of That Bitch screaming at us all the time, but you know that better than any of us. I had to come back alone; Tonks, Kingsley, and the entire Weasley clan all offered to help me pack things up, but I didn't really want anyone else there. It was our life, yours and mine; anyone else's presence would have been a well-meaning intrusion.
It's frightfully eerie trying to sleep there all alone, though; I don't know how you did it for all that time before I moved in, or when I had to go out on Order business and you had to stay home. I definitely couldn't sleep with That Bitch staring at me—she hasn't spoken a word since I told her you were dead, but I can tell what she's thinking: GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU MUDBLOOD UNHUMAN WEREWOLF SONFUCKING FAGGOT! So I did, and that's why I'm out here sleeping under the stars, or lack thereof; I thought gazing upon your star would be more comforting than gazing upon your mother, but as it turns out, I'm here looking at nothingness, and it's the same as the nothingness in my heart, and I'm almost afraid to hope for anything else.
*
But, what if that star is not to come?
Will their dreams fade to nothing?
When the horizon darkens most,
We all need to believe there is hope
*
It's so hard to believe that you're actually gone, Padfoot. If any of us were to die, it shouldn't have been you, you who survived Azkaban for twelve years and who were the only prisoner ever to elude its dementors, you who were clever enough to figure out how to become an Animagus at the tender age of sixteen; slain in a useless battle, when you shouldn't have come with us at all, when the cause of your death wasn't actually your inferiority to your opponent but the bizarrely unlucky presence of a random ancient gateway to the world of the dead near the place in which you were dueling. It could have been any of us; it shouldn't have been you. How could Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood, two fourth-years with no practical experience against the Dark Arts whatsoever, have survived when you did not; or Neville Longbottom, whose only successful spellcasting in his entire Hogwarts career consisted of making an image of Severus Snape become a drag queen? I wish any of them could have died in your place; I know you wouldn't want me to think such things, but I would gladly trade any of their lives to have you here with me now, lying out under the stars.
It almost makes me feel guilty when I realize that I'm here and you're not. For twenty years, we've shared everything: love and joy, anger and grief, a bed, and saliva, and semen. Couldn't we have shared death as well? When you fell through that veil in the Department of Mysteries, I grabbed Harry, not just to save him, but also to save myself. I would have died with you, Sirius, but you had to go and die alone, and it's hard to live with myself the way things are. Am I going to be able to live without you? We've all heard those rumors that werewolves mate for life; well, even if it weren't a special requirement, I'm bound to you and no one else, but I have to have some hope of living a normal life after this, and I need you to help me. I need you to come back to me, Sirius...
The way you died was definitely dubious enough. Dare I hope that it wasn't a finality? I mean, in every fantasy book we ever read as children, a death without a body is no death at all, and your body is nowhere to be found; all the evidence of your death resides in an empty grave and in the memories of the people who were there that night. Could you find a way to cross back to this side of the veil, if only for a moment, if only for me? Maybe if I wish hard enough...Come back, Sirius, please. I'm tossing and turning in the grass, and I half-expect to see my Padfoot happily bounding up the road, showering me with affection...
*
Is an angel watching closely over me?Can there be a guiding light I've yet to see?
I know my heart should get me by, but
There's a whole within my soul*
But you don't come, and, discouraged, I lie on my back and search the sky once more. And suddenly there isn't so much fog, and the Great Dog is bounding, not up the road, but over the horizon, and your star appears as its heart and glistens brighter than any others in the sky. With no moon in sight to torment me, the night sky is indeed a comfort, and I want nothing more than to bathe in the warm and loving light of Sirius; but you are tantalizingly distant, and no warmth covers me.The night has become clearer than most in London, but it is not nearly so clear as those nights we spent at Hogwarts, up in the rural Scottish Highlands, before Voldemort and James and Lily and Peter and everything. That was happiness. The Dog would rarely be visible so far north, but when it was, you'd take me up to the Astronomy Tower and we'd gaze, enclosed in each other's arms and in perfect bliss. And I remember what you said to me, the night we made it official, on February 14th, 1975, in the midst of our sixth year:
"You see that constellation, Moony?" And of course I did, I always loved Astronomy, and especially the Dog that had been dearer to me than any other once I found out that its alpha star bore your name. You continued, "That's Canis Maior, the Great Dog, and that star right in the middle—that one, right at the Dog's heart. That's Sirius, and it's where I got my name. And there, watch for a while; the Dog is going to charge right up the middle of the sky at the moon and it'll chase it down under the horizon. And that's me, Remus; I promise tonight that I'll always protect you from anything that hurts you. Always and forever." And then you had wrapped your arms around my chest and kissed me, and as I watched the other Sirius, the other Padfoot, chasing the moon, I knew I'd found the man whose life I was destined to share.
And now the tears are finally streaming down out of my eyes, and I'm feeling the emotion rising in my chest, and in a moment I'm bawling like a baby, the water obscuring my vision of your constellation, and I try to cry out, but it comes only as a whisper:
"It wasn't supposed to be this way." No, it wasn't, Padfoot. The day Molly brought us that copy of Harry's interview with the Quibbler, we celebrated; it wouldn't be long before the Ministry would crack and realize that Dumbledore and Harry were right all along, and then your name would be cleared, and soon, everything would be okay. You would be able to get away from your house and That Bitch and do useful work for the Order, and maybe we could even go out together. And someday we would sit down and tell Harry about us, and he would be able to get away from the stupid Dursleys and live with us, and we'd be a real family; if we weren't his parents, he would at least be the godson, and you would be the godfather, and I suppose that would make me the fucking werewolf fairy godmother, but we would be happy. Together. A family.
And then someday Harry and Dumbledore and the Order and maybe us too would defeat Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and nothing more would trouble Wizarding Britain ever again, and we would live peacefully always and forever and grow old together and visit Harry and his wife on weekends and have a perfect life. That's the way the story was supposed to end. It's not supposed to end like this, with you falling through a random gateway for no apparent reason and me lying on the dirty ground trying to find solace from a damned star that happens to have your name.
Why did you have to die? Why? Isn't it obvious that I need you, Sirius, and that Harry needs you?
*
What will fill this emptiness inside of me?Am I to be satisfied without knowing?
I wish, then, for a chance to see
Now, all I need,
Desperately,
Is my star to come
*
And now I feel like I've cried so many tears that no more are left, and I stare blankly at the sky, and Sirius is now directly over my head. Sirius in the sky, but no moon; Moony on earth, but no Sirius. I raise my head, and I almost feel like Sirius—you and the star as one—is leaning in for a kiss; my eyes are closed, and I wait for something to happen. "I love you, Sirius," I say expectantly.
But nothing happens. This is real life, and I'm not Demi Moore, and your spirit doesn't appear out of nowhere to ease my pain. I try to at least discern a complimentary breeze with my lips, to show that somewhere, someone understands my grief and wants to console me. The night is dead still.
I open my eyes, and it's only me and the star, and I realize that you're really and truly gone from me forever, and you aren't coming back.
*
A/N: Think I'm mad at JKR much? Yeah, I cried at that chapter of OoP, and every time I think I'm over it I go up on ff.net and read something that reminds me that I'm totally not. I had to write something to get my feelings out, and while this story is definitely about how I think Remus is actually feeling at the end of the book, it's how I feel about what happened as well. I heard Luna's song last night, and this story pretty much wrote itself. I'm pretty sure all my astronomical information is correct, other than that I'm not sure that Canis Maior ever actually chases the moon, but it's certainly possible, isn't it? This is also my first posting to ff.net, which is another reason I'm so angry—if I ever tried to post my happier ideas about Remus and Sirius, it would all sound hollow, and after these mourning fics get old, there won't be anything left of my favorite pairing other than deusexmachina things about Sirius coming back to life and stories about the period before Sirius died, which will only make me sad because I know how their story Really Ends, so I'm not just mourning Sirius, I'm mourning the death of the pairing as well (which is, of course, why I included the fanfiction clichés). And she also ruined my second-favorite pairing, Oliver/Percy, because she made Percy evil and obnoxious in OoP! But that doesn't have anything to do with this fic, so read and review it. But don't send any flames, because that might make me cry again.
Uh, just kidding. ^_^