A/N:This was written for the UR Christmas Fic Exchange 2008, and is dedicated to Christine (Pogonotrophy), who submitted this prompt and requested the story. It won third place for Best Gen Fic in the Hourglass Awards 2009. The prompt was a stanza from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. It's one of my absolute favourites, and if you've not read it, let me encourage you to do that right away (after you've read and reviewed!). Enjoy the story! My apologies to Mr. Eliot.

.

The Love Song (Or, In the Bleak Midwinter)

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

Remus winced at the biting sting of the winter wind against his exposed cheeks. What he wouldn't give for a scarf right now. He turned up the collar of his coat against the cold and continued down the road into the village. A scarf would be good, he thought; some gloves, even better. Still, in many ways he was one of the lucky ones. Many of his fellows didn't have a coat, and during the last full moon, Morgan had even lost his shoes. Remus wondered whether he'd escape frostbite without a new pair. After all, pads and fur only protected you one night a month.

Being well equipped (sartorially) was probably the main reason Remus had been chosen for this job. He was new to the pack and the alpha didn't fully trust him yet, but he'd been living rough far less time than the others, and as such was in much better shape to undertake a scavenging trip into the nearest village – Upper Flagley, this time.

The road into the village was getting more built up now, giving over from trees and bramble to small cottages and caravans. Remus plodded along silently; the stealthy tread of the wolf never left him from moon to moon. As a child, this had bothered him immensely. Remus had intentionally pounded, flat-footed, round the house and Hogwarts, taking care that each step should make a satisfying 'slap' on the flagstones or wood. But by early third year, Peter had worked out why he walked like that, and James and Sirius had teased him mercilessly about it, before it had occurred to all of them what an advantage his stealth might be in Marauding adventures.

Since he was thirteen, Remus had walked as quietly as, well, a wolf.

He smiled into his collar at the memory. It cheered him to think of his friends while he was undercover; gave him strength to know that they were out there, fighting as he was. The companionship they provided, even at a distance of hundreds of kilometers, was his greatest treasure.

He shook his head, clearing it of reminiscences and refocusing on the task at hand. He was nearly to the village centre now; a pub to his left was spilling light and noise into the night with each swing of its door. Remus walked on.

A row of houses marched orderly down the lane until it stopped abruptly at a junction with the high street. In the distance Remus could see the fluorescent haze of a chain store's lights, and his feet followed its beckoning. Silently he walked past the soldier-straight houses, shrouded by the night and the fog.

As a Marauder, and now as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, Remus appreciated his ability to move with stealth and secrecy; it had saved him from detention on many occasions, and from much worse on several others. But there was something in him – that young boy lurking perhaps - that longed to slap his feet on the pavement and announce his presence to the inhabitants of these houses. To shout, 'I am Remus Lupin and I am one of you. Here I am.'

Silently, Remus walked on.

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

Dorcas peered, wide-eyed, into the steam-laden mirror above her basin as she carefully traced her lid with a kohl pencil. She leaned back to examine the effect and she sighed.

She shouldn't be so ungrateful, really – it was a cushy assignment by all accounts. When Dumbledore had asked her, at their last meeting, to attend the Ministry's Christmas Gala as the Order's eyes and ears, she had naturally accepted. After all, the asking was merely a formality – a politeness observed unfailingly, if superficially, in the face of the rudeness of war. She could hardly have declined.

And really, compared to other assignments, it was a dream. Sirius had ribbed her about being Professor's favourite when they'd walked out into the night, and Lily had good-naturedly retorted for her that if McGonagall had been handing out assignments he knew very well he'd be 'infiltrating' one of Filch's detentions back at Hogwarts instead of manning a Muggle train station in Liverpool Street. (In false nostalgia, he'd wiped a tear from his eye.)

Even Sirius' task wasn't especially bad this week. As Dorcas dusted rouge over her cheekbones, Benjy and Caradoc were camped out on a godforsaken moor somewhere, as security detail for some higher-profile dissenters against Voldemort; and the Prewett boys were probably freezing their arses off in the highlands, liasing with the Scottish separatists from the Ministry in London. Her assignment was to go to a party – a party for God's sake. And here she was, painting her face and wishing she could be going anywhere else; could trade with any one of them.

It wasn't the first time she'd undertaken a similar task. Her position as a junior administrator in the Minister's office had afforded her the opportunity to meet people who, in other circumstances, she wouldn't give the time of day. She remembered clearly the first time she'd seated Sirius' parents in the Minister's antechamber. His father had spared her barely a look, but his mother's gaze, haughtily attractive and arrestingly like her son's, had swept over Dorcas and caught her own eye with a clear message: lacking. It had been wholly unsettling.

Her date for this evening had been acquired at work, as well. Bevan Morby was the son of a wealthy donor to the ministry, and she'd been out with him twice before – each time at Dumbledore's behest. He wasn't an actual Death Eater, as far as Dorcas knew, but there was little doubt where the family's sympathies lay. It made her skin crawl.

Dorcas didn't like the subterfuge of socializing with those she was surveilling. She could crouch for hours in bushes gathering intelligence, could fight fiercely when called on, and had even managed to use her position in the Ministry to disseminate the Order's message to sympathetic ears; but to drink wine with those she knew to sympathize with Death Eaters, to laugh over canapés with their financial backers, even to rub elbows with some of Voldemort's troops themselves, that was too much. The misrepresentation made her nervous, as though if she played the part for too long she might forget who she really was, what she really believed. Did her mascara simply camouflage who she really was, or would she get lost behind it? Sometimes Dorcas wasn't sure.

She sighed and scrutinized her reflection once more. The steam from her shower had nearly dissipated and she saw herself in sharp relief: blonde hair gathered off her neck, black dress robes clinging to the curves and planes of her body, heavily lined and shadowed eyes, glossy red lips. The person staring back at her was utterly unfamiliar – a stranger. But tonight it was who she needed to be.

She straightened her shoulders and adjusted her robes. There was a knock at the door.

Showtime.

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

The fire was dying down, but Peter couldn't bring himself to re-stoke it. Instead, he sat silent and still, staring into the last licking flames.

His mother was out (at a carols service at their local church) and the house was empty and quiet. So quiet that the thoughts in Peter's head tumbled round on each other, echoing like a cacophony. He didn't like the quiet or the solitude; it afforded far too much time to think.

And God knew Peter had things to think about. Three days ago Marian Avery had approached him with a proposition – information for information; a simple trade.

Two nights ago they'd found Edgar Bones and his family dead in their home, and Peter'd known it was his fault.

Yesterday afternoon Theodore Nott had stopped him on the street and given him a slip of paper – a meeting time and place. It had self-combusted once Peter read it. Theatrical.

The meeting was tonight, and here Peter sat unable to move, in front of a dying fire, feeling as though the fire in him was dying, as well.

Outside the wind hummed softly on the windowpanes and cocooned the house in its chilly embrace.

Inside, the fire went out.

Time for you and time for me,

Usually, James thrived on his work with the Order. The planning and intelligence work stimulated his mind, the opposition (in the persons of Voldemort and his Death Eaters) inspired his competitiveness, and the life-or-death stakes made it all more than worthwhile. It made it necessary. So usually, whether he was strategising before an operation, or participating in one (like now), James rarely wished he was anywhere else.

Tonight was different, though. Thanks to Order business – a prolonged envoy trip to the Ministries of Spain and Portugal for him; some intensive experimental charm building for her – he hadn't seen Lily and properly spent time with her since Guy Fawkes, and it was now less than a week to Christmas. Tonight, though, was theirs. As soon as he could get out of this shipyard and home to change, Lily wasn't going to leave his side. She'd told Petunia to stuff it when she tried to insist Lily help pick out wedding place settings, and he'd told Sirius to bugger off when he tried to cajole James into going to some bar after their shifts. Tonight it would just be them.

James pulled his woolen cap down further over his ears and stood, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, toying with the small box there and gazing out over the port. The pose was deceptively casual – just another dock-hand, catching a smoke between shipments. He gazed at his discarded cigarette on the tarmac with a detached eye. It was just a prop – he didn't smoke, had no liking of the habit. Sirius did from time to time, and when they were younger he and James had taken to sneaking fags in the broom-shed by the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts. James had mostly given it up by sixth year, when the novelty had worn off and he'd just started to feel the pinch in his chest when doing drills for Quidditch.

Now, as he watched the glowing embers dying on the wet pavement, he thought back to his fifteen- and sixteen-year-old self. What a rebel he'd fancied himself then; arrogantly clever, foolishly proud. In some ways he missed that boy; missed the optimism, the confidence, the innocence that he had offered. But in so many, more important ways James was proud of the man he'd become. He was a better comrade, a better soldier, perhaps even a better friend (although he admitted to himself that he'd always been a good friend to those who had counted to him). Most significantly, though, he was a better person, and that was what had finally won Lily over.

James chuckled to himself. That certainly hadn't been an easy battle. It seemed he'd trailed after her like a lost puppy for months, waiting for scraps of conversation, casual greetings to fall his way. Lily, knowing James to be an insufferable braggart and occasional bully, dodged him at every turn and avoided him wherever possible. Sometimes, just to initiate contact, he would pick rows with her, in class over answers, in the common room over homework, in the Great Hall over dessert choices... He'd really been a prize git, but it was worth it every time to see her cheeks redden and her eyes light up. Lily had looked so alive when she yelled at him. Before he'd known her, truly known her, James couldn't have imagined that she could ever invigorate or captivate him more than she did in those moments when she was defending custard over sponge, or deriding Divination in favour of Arithmancy.

Of course, that was before he'd really known her. Before he'd know that Lily Evans attacked everything she did with fire, with energy. When she set her mind to something it was done with a whole-hearted, single-minded determination that belied her generally conciliatory manner. James still wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but he was profoundly grateful that somehow 'despiseJames Potter' had been removed from that list. He was even more delighted that it now had been replaced by something along the lines of 'snog James Potter as much as possible'. He gripped the velvety box convulsively for a moment. She had to say yes.

He inhaled deeply, the salty brine of the sea mingling with the leftover smoke in his throat and nose. He checked his watch and gazed out to sea again. He picked up a nearby broom, as though preparing to clean the dock, but he made no move to sweep.

Perhaps by now a casual observer would have decided that James was a layabout worker, stargazing while his fellows worked to unload a ship that had docked ten metres away. They might think him idle, and perhaps a bit dim for staring at nothing for so long. If they squinted into the fog, following his gaze, they'd see nothing but the mist, thick and gray and hovering on the bay like smog over a factory.

James, however, looked past the fog, cataloguing the occasional shimmer and distortion that signified magic in the area. At least four people were there, meeting on brooms, in the dead of night, above the sea. Great care had been taken to keep this meeting secret, and James waited impatiently to see who would emerge from the fog, concealed or otherwise. If they split up, he would have to choose who to follow – an unpleasant proposition, so he focused his energy on finding out who was there before they dispersed.

The wind picked up, blowing in an icy gust that shifted the fog and managed to disrupt the rendezvous. All of the riders were clearly not comfortable on brooms, and two of them spun out of the protected circle.

Fuck. This was just what he didn't need.

James watched the five figures flying off in different directions, made a split-second decision, and prepared to give chase.

As he urged his broom upwards, he sighed. He might be a little late for Lily tonight.

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

Lily crept out of bed and crossed the cold floor, cringing when the boards squeaked under her weight. She turned to look at James to see if she'd woken him, but his chest continued to rise and fall rhythmically and he gave no sign that he'd noticed her exit. Silently, she opened the door of the bedroom, stepped out into the living room, and pulled it shut behind her. She turned to face the room before her, lit only by the dawn half-light and the glow of the street lamp outside filtering through the un-curtained windows. It was enough to illuminate a pile of unfolded laundry and an array of butterbeer bottles littering the floor and little table in front of the couch. She smiled and shook her head. Sirius and James were proper slobs; there was no getting around it.

In one corner stood the scraggliest, sorriest looking Christmas tree Lily thought she'd ever seen. Sirius had brought it home one day last week, saying the place needed some 'holiday cheer'. The plan had been to decorate, but the quest for cheer had led them out of the flat and down to the local pub, and somehow the decorating plans had gotten put on permanent hold.

Lily cocked her head at the tree in a considering manner. She picked up a discarded lace from someone's trainer, and with a swish and a flick of her wand, it became a string of blinking fairy lights. She tucked them into the boughs of the little tree and stood back to admire her work. Some bunched up pages of old daily Prophets became tinsel, and it was simple third-year transfiguration to turn some old socks from the laundry pile into baubles for the branches. She doubted the boys would miss them. The tree was still scrawny, with wide and uneven spaces between its branches, and it showered needles liberally on the floor every time she touched it, but it twinkled brightly in the corner, casting a hopeful air of Christmas into the room.

Lily settled down on the couch, tucked her feet up under her, and admired her handiwork. The tree reminded her of Hagrid's lavish decorations at Hogwarts, although it was a comical comparison. They were only a year and a half out of school, but it felt more like ten the way this war was going. Standing at Edgar Bones' grave that morning, a powerful wave of exhaustion had washed over her, numbing her grief and displacing her sadness. It felt as though she'd been doing this for years, and some days it seemed as if the only rest was to be found lying beneath the cold ground.

Lily shivered on the couch, both from the chill and from her morbid thoughts. It did no one any good to get bogged down in grief and despair. Giving up was as good as saying Voldemort was right and Muggle-borns were cowardly and useless. And Lily would be damned if she'd let that happen.

It was important to cling to the good things in the face of her own exhaustion, the things that were really worth fighting for: this scrawny little tree and all it represented, and her own ability to decorate it with magic; the place she'd made for herself in the magical world and the people she loved there. Lily worried the band on her ring finger, put there only hours before. She twisted it round and round; pulled it off and watched as the dim light caught the stone and glanced off it.

She'd said yes before she'd even had a chance to consider it. She loved James and he was everything she wanted. But was she ready? Ready to admit that her childhood was gone and it was time to grow up (albeit too fast, in a too-cruel world)? Was she ready to leave her family in the Muggle world to start a new one in the magical one?

She looked down at the ring again. How could such a tiny thing be a symbol of so much? And then she looked back up at the tree, and considered the same question.

And really, they were symbols of the same things, weren't they? Hope and love, and faith and trust.

She'd put her heart and her faith into the tree, and it was shining hopefully in the corner, undeterred by its inadequacies. Perhaps it was time she put the same heart and faith into herself.

Lily slid her ring back onto her finger and tiptoed out of the living room and back to bed.

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of toast and tea.

Sirius loved London in the very early mornings, before the traffic had had a chance to clog the roads, before the commuters began to hurry to their jobs in the City, and before the coffee vendors looked harassed by crowds of waiting customers. He loved it when the newsstands were just opening, but the bakeries had been at it for hours; when he could get a cup of tea and chat with the girl behind the counter for a bit because there weren't twenty suits in line behind him. He loved the time it afforded him to see the city at its dawning, with a world of possibility laid out at the break of the day. These things appealed to him particularly, he knew, for one reason: it was as unlike the London he'd grown up in as it was possible to be. That London had been a city held at bay by the curtains and the panes of glass, the mortar and brick of Grimmauld Place. When ventured into, that London was only a conduit to Diagon Alley or acquaintances' houses by the fastest means possible. It was never a place to linger, or to savour.

Some days, when he was in a hurry, Sirius would apparate directly home to the flat. Or, if he was in a secure location, he might take the Floo. But on days when he was working in London, and especially, like tonight, when he'd just gotten off an all-night shift, Sirius much preferred to walk.

He wasn't in a hurry to get home today, either. Last night James had planned to ask Lily to marry him, and Sirius still wasn't sure how he felt about that. He loved Lily to pieces; loved how she fit into their group without forcing herself in, how she knew instinctively where the boundaries for her place in it should be. He loved her passion, and her often sarcastic sense of humour; and he loved that she loved James as much as he himself did. But no matter how much he might like Lily as a person, Lily as a wife was a flower of a different colour. They would no longer be the Marauders, first and foremost. It wouldn't be Sirius' name coupled with James' in a single breath. Having James married was going to change things irrevocably. How could it not?

Sirius scuffed his way down the pavement, sharing space with last night's beggars and drunks, and this morning's lorry men. He ducked into an all-night caf and found a blonde girl no older than he was manning the counter, looking dead on her feet. She straightened a bit when he sidled up.

'What'll it be?'

'Tea, please. Milk and two sugars. And in a take-away cup.' He threw in the last bit as an afterthought. Usually he'd have sat here, chatted with this girl, forgot for a while that there was a war on in a different world.

But this morning was different. He needed to think, and to think he needed to walk.

The girl handed over his cup of tea and Sirius dropped some Muggle coins in her palm. He cradled the hot container in his hands and walked out the door into the London morning.

The girl at the counter watched him go, the aristocratic bearing and accent at odds with the affected slouch. He didn't look back.

-End-