Remus sat in the hard wooden chair, staring blankly at the cold stone floor as tears escaped into his lap. Had somebody glanced into the room at that moment they could be forgiven for thinking that no one was there, for Remus hadn't moved for a good hour and half aside from the occasional lifting of the Firewhiskey bottle to his lips. His grey clothes and complexion seemed to melt into the stone and at this point in time, Remus wished he could just melt away into the nothingness.
It had been four hours since Sirius died. Four hours since his last remaining best friend had gone, leaving Remus alone. He had been sorely tempted for a second, to follow Sirius through the veil, he had hardly believed it had happened, he was alone, he was now the last of the Marauders. At only thirty-six years old he had lost nearly everything that had been most important to him. Over the years he had come to think of the people he was at school with as the 'Cursed Years', with Frank and Alice Longbottom who were a few years older than the Marauders being tortured into insanity, with Marlene McKinnon and her entire family being killed and a few months later, his bestfriends Lily and James being killed only three years after they left Hogwarts. Many others Remus had known or at least been at Hogwarts with at the same time had passed away over the years and now, perhaps inevitably, Sirius was gone too. Maybe no one in his year was supposed to grow old thought Remus bitterly as he took another sip from his bottle.
Everyone else had moved on, but why not him? Why was he left here alone suffocating in the grief for his dead friends that pressed itself upon him? Why couldn't he rejoin them?Why, throughout his life had everything been taken from him? Why couldn't he have had normal childhood without the worry and pain of turning into a monster every month? Why couldn't he watch as his friends grew up alongside him, watched as they all got married, had families and then all grown old together, surrounded by loved ones? What had any of them done to deserve their lives to be cut so tragically short?
Nothing.
No one had done anything to deserve this Remus thought as waves of fury began to coarse through his veins. All these lives had been destroyed because of one man's ambitions, one man's twisted view of how society 'should' be, of one man's fear of death. Remus shook with fury at Voldemort's hypocrisy. The man who feared death the most would kill to make sure that he would never have to face his fear. Suddenly Remus's desire to be with his friends again vanished. He was still here, he was still able to keep fighting, to keep doing what James, Lily and Sirius had been doing until the very end. Remus shook his head and stood up, stretching out his back and made a silent vow to his three bestfriends that no matter what, he would never stop fighting, he would never, while he still had a beating heart, let their deaths be for nothing.