Glue
All of his friends were dead, or they might as well have been. James and Lily were slaughtered, their child was out of his reach, Peter was blown to bits, and Sirius was locked up in Azkaban. The Prewetts, Benjy Fenwick, Caradoc Dearborn, the McKinnons, and Dorcas Meadowes didn't survive either, but it was the loss of his Marauders that broke Remus the most. They had been together for so much of his life that he had actually forgotten what it was like to be without them.
He drank a lot, without them.
James raised his glass to them, grinned maniacally, and said, "I'm the leader, Sirius is co-captain, Peter is support, and Moony is Glue." It is sixth year and Lily is not friends with Snape, James is Quidditch captain, (and not a virgin), and Remus had recently torn a gash in his arm during the full moon. It was wrapped in gauze, and they pretended he had accidentally hurt himself cooking.
"Glue?" Remus asked. James got like this, sometimes, when the dormitory was a non-Marauder- Free-Zone and they could be as weird as they want.
James shrugged. "You keep us together, you know? Glue."
"Oh. I get it."He hadn't.
Five years later Remus sat on the floor of the flat James had rented for him – werewolves couldn't get jobs and his friend wouldn't take no for an answer – more drunk than he should have been and laughing. Because he wasn't the glue, not at all.
The glue was James.
When James and Lily had gone into hiding, and hadn't been at their immediate disposal in the Order headquarters, things had fallen apart. Peter was quiet, everyone was mistrustful, and their numbers started to dwindle until one day there was no one around to make breakfast and Dedalus Diggle brought his fifteen-year-old cousin in to do it.
Sirius had suspected him… no, Sirius had pretended to suspect him. Remus was still working to convince himself that the sharp glances and curt words had been fake. (The funny thing was that he had always thought Sirius had been terrible at lying.)
James was Glue.
Without James, they had fallen apart bit by bit. And now Remus was drunker than he should have been on the floor of the flat James had paid for, wishing he could go back in time and somehow change things.
"Fuckin' Trelawney and her fuckin' prophecies," Remus said. He raised his firewhiskey to himself and took a sip. In an hour he would pass out, creating a dent in the floor until someone from the Order came to clean him up.
The Marauders had been him, and he had been Marauder, but now the other ones were dead (or they might as well have been.)
He needed new Glue, and a new place to stay for when the last of the money James had forced upon him ran out and he refused to take any from the child with black hair and green eyes that was out of his reach.