Why did you vanish
into the empty sky?
Even the fragile snow,
when it falls,
falls in this world.
- Izumi Shikibu
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.
"We're going to be together forever!"
He smiles a tired, jaded smile, a few strands of his already greying hair falling over his face.
He knows, and they know, that this is a fantastic dream, but no one breaks the illusion. No one speaks the words out loud – that if anyone is to go first, it will almost surely be him.
Sometimes he wakes up at night and wonders whether it could have been different. He wonders whether one simple word, spoken at the right time and place, could have changed history as they know it. He wonders whether it would have been enough to save him and him and her; whether it would have been enough to save them.
He sits alone at a pub, fingering a glass in one hand, and clenching a piece of parchment in his other. He already has its lines memorized, yet his eyes keep going over the same words over and over again.
I'm sorry to inform you... death... torture... Bellatrix Black suspected...
"I'm so sorry, Remus..."
"Are you okay?"
"I just heard the rumours, is it really true that your family...?"
A hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "Remus, are you okay?"
"NO!" he shouts, violently shoving away the hand, his even temper finally snapping. "No, I'm not all right! No, I'm not okay! What do you expect? I've just been informed that my entire family has been wiped out by the Death Eaters, my seven year old sister had been tortured for hours for information on me, my father, my mother... they're all gone... and I couldn't do a thing..." His voice breaks, and he rubs away unwilling tears, wishing that the hard, painful lump at the back of his throat would just go away.
"Moony..." James puts his hand on his shoulder again, and this time Remus doesn't push it away. He doesn't say that it was going to be all right; everyone knows that in wartime, there are no promises.
"She was just seven, Prongs. She had her whole life ahead of her... and it wasn't her fault! None of them deserved to go the way they did!" His face suddenly grew furious. "And it's all her doing – Bellatrix Black."
"Moony!" He hears the call from behind, and turns around. Only to look into the grey eyes and aristocratic profile of Sirius Black – a face that is a carbon copy of his cousin Bellatrix Black's.
He doesn't see the differences – the warmth and concern in those same grey eyes, the laugh lines... no, all he can see is her, with her cold, dead eyes and maniacal smile, and all he can feel is a sense of betrayal and pain.
"You!" he snarls. And before any of them know what's happening, he had punched Sirius straight on the nose.
"Moony!" he vaguely hears James shout, but all his attention is on the bloodied face of his former best friend. Sirius stares back at him in shock, betrayal and hurt written all over his face. "Moony..." One hand cradles his obviously broken nose.
"You! You knew about this, didn't you? You knew that she was going to target my family, didn't you? And you didn't tell me! Of course, why would you? You're Pureblood, why on earth would you care about some seven year old halfbood screaming in pain from the Crucios of your insane cousin?"
"Moony, no!" James attempts to say, but Remus carries on, silencing even him with the venom in his words.
"You're just like the rest of your family, Sirius Black! You're cruel, you don't care a whit about anyone else – I don't even know what goes on in that twisted mind of yours! You will be a murderer, just like the rest of them – you even tried to use me to kill Snape or turn him! You may pretend that you're not of them, but you can never deny your very blood!"
Sirius' face has gone bone-white. The hurt in his expression magnifies a hundredfold, and then, there's nothing at all. His face blank, his eyes cold, he says in a voice icier than anyone has ever heard from him, "If that is what you think of me, Remus, after eight years together – if you still don't realize that I would give everything for my friends – then I don't know you... and you don't know me."
He turns around and walks out of the pub, back stiff and shoulders held high.
Remus Disapparates, and in a few hours, lets the beast within him run wild, alone for the first time in years.
Yes, he apologizes to him later, and they make up, but the first rift in their friendship has already been created. And in the months that follow, it only grows wider and wider, and he drifts farther and farther away from them.
He leaves to seek alliances with the neutral werewolves. Sirius becomes James and Lily's Secret Keeper. Remus never hears about it, until the day he hears of their deaths and the fall of the Dark Lord from the Daily Prophet.
Sometimes he wakes up at night, feeling horribly alone. And he wonders, if he had had better control over the raging beast inside him, would he have said those words? Would they have drifted apart as they did, would their friendships have shattered as they did? Would they be alive? Would Sirius still have betrayed them? Would he still be... alone?
It is at these times when he feels the weight of the words echoing in his head – I am the last Marauder.
And Remus looks at the mirror, and sees his haggard features and greying, thinning hair, and he laughs; he laughs at the bitter irony of it all.