Written for the wonderful Vicky (SiriuslySarcastic). I hope you enjoy it :)
"The dead don't cry." It was his mother's saying, or at least he was pretty sure it was. At any rate, she was the person that he'd gotten it from, and that was enough for him. Little did he know that it would later become his life motto.
He was four the first time he heard it. He was semi-conscious and all he was aware of was the terrible pain in his side. He didn't even know that his parents were there until he heard them speak. He supposed they had been there for a little while, but the pain had blocked out everything else. Everything that is, except his father's harsh whisper. "I can't find a pulse. He's dead Hope." No! No, no, no! He wasn't dead, he couldn't be! Mummy said that dying was like falling asleep and that Heaven was a nice place where people didn't hurt anymore and where his Granddaddy lived now. But Granddaddy wasn't here and he hadn't gone to bed yet and he definitely, definitely hurt. But Daddy thought he was dead and soon Mummy would too and they'd leave him here to hurt forever and he didn't know how to stop them. And so, even though he was a big boy now, he started to cry. Only a little, because he still hurt so, so much, but he just couldn't help it. Little did he know that one tear would be the signal he so desperately wanted to send.
"Lyle look. The dead don't cry Lyle. He's alive!"
After that first incident, he kind of forgot all about the saying for years. After all, it wasn't terribly poignant – well, not to a four year old anyway – and he had much bigger issues to worry about. Like the fact that he turned into a big, scary monster every time the moon got big. But his Mum and Dad obviously didn't forget about it, because every so often he'd wake up after the full moon to hear one of them telling the other "the dead don't cry." Apparently he cried in his sleep at the tail end of every transformation, and that was the one thing that signalled to his parents that he'd survived another month.
The first time he ever used the saying himself was sometime during first year. He was having dinner with Peter Pettigrew, one of the boys in his dorm and the only other person in the whole school who hadn't seemed to make instant friends. He wasn't meaning to eavesdrop, really. But Potter and Black were just so loud all the time, and they were sitting only about 30cm away from him. It really wasn't his fault. Nor had he meant to say anything to them. He'd been very good at avoiding the two boys, whose friendly overtures were just a little too tempting. After all, a person like him wasn't meant to have lots of friends. But when he heard the two boys talking about the ghosts, he got interested. And when one of them – he couldn't remember later which – commented that all the ghosts were either happy or grumpy, but never sad – well, it just slipped out by itself, honestly. "The dead don't cry."
Apparently that one interaction signalled Remus' willingness to engage with them, because after that James and Sirius refused to listen to his protests. Soon Peter was pulled in as well, and the four of them were very quickly inseparable. How he had survived without them, Remus never really knew. But one thing was for certain, and that was that he would never let them go. He finally knew what it was like to have friends, and he never wanted to forget that feeling.
In a weird way, his mother's old saying became their catchphrase. After the others ha discovered his lycanthropy they would always be there waiting for him to wake up in the hospital wing after a full moon. And inevitably, one or the other of them would echo his mother's words: "the dead don't cry boys. He made it through this time." He never did seem to grow out of crying during the full moon.
It wasn't all serious though. There was the time that Sirius was raging about his heartless mother for instance.
"I swear boys, she's the most unfeeling woman I've ever met. I don't think she's cried once in her whole life."
Looking back, he's pretty sure it was James that said it. It always felt like a James thing to do.
"Well Padfoot, maybe you've got a corpse for a mother."
To his shame, he didn't get it until after the other three were all doubled over in hysterics. But as soon as he did, he joined them.
Or there was the first time James and Sirius snuck firewhiskey into the dorms and got themselves completely and totally drunk. They woke up the next morning with bloodshot eyes and pounding headaches, complaining that they felt like death. He and Peter shared a look and simultaneously kicked one of them in the side. Looking at the tears of pain in their eyes, they just managed to get out "the dead don't cry" before they had to leave the room to conceal their gales of laughter.
Somehow, the motto seemed to grow up as they did. Very soon the war came and stole their innocence, and gone were the four carefree boys who joked about corpse mothers and hangovers. Instead they were four hardened young men who habitually turned to the "Dead or Missing" page of the Daily Prophet as they ate their breakfast. What had been a childhood joke oddly turned into a way to comfort each other. "At least they don't have to deal with this anymore. Remember, the dead don't cry."
The last time he ever heard one of his friends say it was just after Marlene had died, and it no longer comforted any of them. It was Peter who said it – which is ironic considering it was Peter who had passed on the information that lead to Marly's death in the first place. "Guys, maybe it's for the best. Remember how upset she always got about the war? Well, she won't be crying anymore now will she?"
As he remembered, that particular conversation ended with Sirius breaking Peter's nose. He couldn't really blame him. He had just lost his wife after all.
On the 7th of November 1981, Remus decided he hated that saying just as much as he now hated Sirius. Sure, the dead don't cry and that was great for them. But Lily, James and Peter were all safe from tears and he hadn't stopped crying for a week. For the first time in his life, he truly wished he was dead as well.
After that he made a vow to never even think of his mother's saying ever again. It just hurt too much. But then Sirius was there and Peter was a rat and the last twelve years were a lie and he just had to try this out once.
"You look like death Padfoot."
"The dead don't cry Moony."
And after that there was no doubt that either of them were well and truly alive.
He did say it to Dora once, when they were first married. He didn't think the others would mind much. It was the first full moon after the wedding, and nothing he had told her would have been able to prepare her for what she saw the next morning. He woke up to her sobbing beside him, convinced that he had died during the night. (He really didn't blame her. James had once taken a picture of him after the full moon, just so he knew what he looked like before he woke up. He really did look like a dead body.) Pointing to his own wet cheeks he managed to whisper "the dead don't cry Dora." Like his parents and later his friends, his wife hung onto that for the rest of their – admittedly short – lives.
He has to admit with a small amount of shame that his last thoughts were not of his wife or son. Sure, they were there, but the very last thing he thought of was those four little words that had somehow become so important to him. And maybe he somehow spoke them out loud, because suddenly there was a very familiar voice behind him. "You're wrong Moony. It turns out that the dead do cry."
And when he opened his eyes they were all there. His Mum and his Dad, James with Lily tucked up against him, Sirius with his arms protectively around Marlene and Dora, already running towards him. And they were all crying and soon so was he.
He didn't know how long it was, but eventually it was just him and James and Sirius, and at first they just stood there staring at each other. And in the end it was James – it was always James – that broke the silence. "Moony, we need to change that saying of yours. Because I don't know about you, but I call all that stuff we did back there crying, and I'm pretty sure we're dead." And the three of them couldn't help but laugh until the tears came back and they were all leaning on each other to stay upright. But it didn't matter that the motto was wrong, because they were back together, and he had friends again, and this time, there really was nothing that would take that away from him.