This is in no way affiliated with JKR, or HP, nor is it affiliated with George Clooney, his movie, his Oscar, or his Most Beautiful Person award.
.x. Goodnight, and Good Luck .x.
Anyone walking down that London street would only have seen a ordinary, threadbare man making his way to his destination like everyone else in the crowd, but She would have seen so much more. The one he had had once. Before She fell in love with Him, before She married Him. He was his best friend, had always been his best friend…but he, unwittingly, took her from him. Shattered his heart irrevocably. Rung it out like clothing, always blind to his actions, and then dropped it at his feet in the dirt, because that was what he was. Dirt. Remus Lupin, a werewolf, had been dirt since he had been bitten. And today, it was this ordinary man that waded through the crowds filled with Muggles and witches and wizards alike a marked man.
He was not a marked man in the sense that he was meant to do anything extraordinary. He was not like Harry Potter. He did not have to kill the most evil wizard in the world or be killed. What he had set out to do earlier that day was not unusual. Millions did it. He thought it odd, however, that he was choosing to do it now. After all, those years when the pain had been so much sharper—when She was gone for the first time, or when They were both dead—would have been a better time, but his choice was being made now.
It was a rainy Tuesday. It was Halloween. Not an unusual day—not by weather standards, at least. It was evening, dusk or so, but too early for the young trick-or-treaters to emerge from their homes. As he walked, his ears filled with the droning of people's voices and the soft splashing his feet made when they hit the ground, he imagined them all peering sadly out of their doors, wondering if they would be allowed to take part in the night's revels with the torrential rain coming down. He didn't think so, but he thought that, had he ever been a father, he might have let his child go out for a bit, or possibly bought them a large assortment of candy to compensate for the lost holiday. He smiled slightly. He would have made a good father, if She had ever given him the chance…
He looked up at the people around him. They were all dressed in work clothes; nearly all of them had umbrellas and the ones that did not grumbled and wished they did. All of them were rushing to get home, to get to where they had made arrangements to be, to get out of the rain. And Remus didn't understand why. He enjoyed the rain, the feeling of the drops rolling down his face and getting tangled in his stubble. The way they slid over the dark circles under his eyes that had developed after years of tossing and turning at night, after years of remembering and wishing and wanting and losing. They way they reflected his constant feeling of sadness and emptiness. The way they reminded him of the tears She cried at their parting, when she confirmed that She truly loved him the way he had always, would always, love her.
It was twenty years now, to the day. Halloween, 1980. Halloween, 2000. Twenty long years without her, and yet there had been so many more. So many other times when She was gone but She was still there. Times when he could have innocently pretended that he was discussing something simple like the weather—like this rain that poured down now—but have been proclaiming his deep, unfathomable love for her in every word. Every syllable. Every glance in her direction, every accidental brush against her skin, it was all to tell her. He could never speak the words, never let those words reach His ears, let those words shatter his trust and betray his friendship, but nor could he let this feeling go unnoticed to her. But She didn't notice. And, in time, She forgot about him. Because he never did have those small talk conversations with her. Because those touches and glances weren't enough. And he wished he could go back in time and forget his inhibitions. He wished he could go back to the time when she was still his, or even freshly disappeared, and tell her. He wished he could go back and shout it from the top of North Tower with a magically magnified voice and let everyone know and that She would come running up to him and that he could kiss her like he had wanted to every day since he'd first met her. His goddess, his life.
He looked around him again. He was alone. It was much darker now, but at long last he had arrived at his destination—a bridge. Bridges were funny things, he thought. A person spends all their life building their bridges—their jobs, their relationships—but, at any moment, it could all just crumble. Fall to pieces around you in such a devastating manner that you were lucky if you ever survived. And sometimes, if things got too hard and too tough, you just…jumped. And you fell, and you were fortunate that fall killed you.
He was standing on top of that forsaken bridge now.
He hated bridges. He had never even had the chance to build his own. That werewolf, that bite. He lived a judged life. Everyone wanted to degrade him, to make him believe that he wasn't fit to keep company with proper wizards. But they were wasting their time. He was dirt, and he knew it. He had always been dirt. He had never built a bridge and had it fall. He had grown up with the broken pieces of what could have been and nothing to do with them. She had been his last hope, and, in the end, She gave up on him too.
He looked below him. There were no cars, no drivers, no noise. Just silence and emptiness and the rain. He swallowed and closed his eyes. Memories of her came to mind—her smile, her laugh, the way She used to wrinkle her nose when she read something scandalous in one of her books, her body laying in the open casket… And with that, he jumped. He fell. And he was fortunate.