It's November 1st, and when Remus wakes up, all he can feel are the aches beginning. The full moon is a week and a half away and old scars sting strong, he's found. He's been on this god-forsaken mission for two weeks already and can't wait to be home. He can practically smell Lily's bacon and eggs; she's the only one of the five of them that can cook. The thought cheers him up from the gloom that he's been feeling since late last night.
It's late now, almost ten, and Remus thinks that maybe he should get himself moving. No, he thinks sleepily, wrapping the covers more firmly around himself. Just five more minutes…
A tap at the glass of the hotel window alerts him to the owl with the paper just outside. A low growl rumbles in his chest, but Remus acknowledges the universe telling him it's time to get up. He stumbles over to the window, half dressed in yesterday's clothes; he'd been too tired to get all the way changed. A few Sickles into the money pouch and the paper was his. He tossed it upside down on the bed, flopping down next to it before picking it up lazily.
Seconds later, he's no longer tired. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Defeated in Battle in Godric's Hollow!
Godric's Hollow.
Harry.
Lily.
James.
Oh Merlin. Are they alright?
The mess that had taken Remus two week to create is swept into a carpet bag in moments with a sweep of his wand, a spell James had taught him as they packed for Winter Hols their first year. Swearing at his current lack of clothes, Remus rips out whatever is on top to shove on before stuffing the rest back in. His long legs carry him out of the rented room quickly. Less than five minutes later and he's checked out.
Remus has never been as strong a wizard as James, Sirius, or Lily; he's only a good wizard because of the breadth of his spell knowledge. Ignoring the Statute of Secrets, Remus doesn't bother plotting out his course in terms of legal Apparation points. He knows that the most direct route will take him three or four hops to get to Godric's Hollow via Apparation from the muggle hamlet he's in.
One hop and he's in Edinburgh.
Two hops and he's in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Three hops and he's in Sheffield.
Remus pauses for a moment to catch his breath, feeling the strain on his body that lets him know that he's expending magic at a rate that is not maintainable. But it's James, it's Lily, it's baby Harry.
And so he jumps again.
He lands in the gardens Peter and him had been forced to weed two and a half weeks ago. Now the flowerbeds and bushes are blown apart, spellfire evidence everywhere.
The wards Dumbledore set must have been overwhelmed, thinks the twenty one year old in horror, feeling his heart begin to fracture. The cheery noon-time sun, showing its shy face, lights the carnage up without remorse.
He's moving towards the front of the house seconds later; he has to find the Potters, make sure they are ok. He moves silently like Peter and Sirius taught him and James to do years ago. He's on high alert like James and Sirius had been drilling into him for years. And like James and Peter trained him as a second year, he sees every detail that he otherwise might have missed as he creeps stealthily around to the front door.
The front gate halfway off its hinges, weakly creaking as oblivious Muggles walk by on the road, greets him as he turns the corner of the house. The cracks in his heart get larger.
The bright shutters Lily had fallen in love with, now darkened with burns and framing broken windows, look out over the front lawn as he moves to the front door. He can feel his heart freezing in horror.
The shattered baby broomstick halfway out the door, a gift from Sirius to Harry only a few months before, forces Remus to pause. He just… He just can't…
His pause is only for a second. Remus can't break now. Not yet. Not while he doesn't know what happened to the Potters. And so Remus enters the house like he expects Death Eaters to be waiting inside, cautious and quiet.
Look left; the living room is in shatters. Mementoes of the boys and him, of Lily and Harry, everywhere. Shattered, like Remus is. Focus, Remus, says Sirius-in-his-head and the tall man sees all the destruction in seconds, sees James's wand on the floor and knowing that means the worst, and moves on with ruthless efficiency. An Auror's autopilot seems to guide him.
Look right; the hallway to the kitchen is ripped to pieces. At the end of the hall lies Lily's cat, the critter that James always hated, now neatly bisected into front and back halves, a pool a crimson liquid lit into a happy candy-apple red by the brutal sun. But Remus takes this in quickly and turns in search of his people, stepping carefully further into the house.
Lily had always joked that only Remus couldn't see into the house from the front door since he was tall enough the rafter in the foyer impeded his vision. And now, seeing what lay at the top of the stairs, Remus would have given anything to be so tall that he could never see what he now saw.
James.
His heart thumped once. Twice. Move, Remus¸ instructs Sirius-in-his-head coldly. What are you doing, frozen in an unprotectable position in the middle of the foyer? You aren't helping James, Lily, or Harry like this.
This takes less than a second; an observer would have seen only the smallest of pauses between the left, right, and forward assessments made by the werewolf. He steps forward, on alert for the slightest of noises, and ascends the stairs. A quick test for Prongs's pulse proves his greatest fear. If not for his face, angry and scared, James could have been sleeping; the Killing Curse had taken Prongs. Remus can't help but notice James's glasses, crooked at ever, and fixes them before moving on.
The nursery is next. It's where James and Lily would have run to if Harry were in trouble and Remus just knows that James leapt to get between his wife and child and danger. Without his wand, James wouldn't even have hesitated to be a physical barrier. So Remus steps over his best friend in a smooth motion and prowls over to the door to Harry's room.
Lily.
The vivid eyes and vibrant face of his best friend's wife are locked into a rickus of fear, anger, and desperation. It's the last face she'll ever make at him that greets him as he woodenly checks her pulse. Remus sees the lack of injuries and knows that the Killing Curse took James's doe and his friend.
Harry? Where is he?
He steps back. Lily's body -his whole self shakes suddenly, but Remus knows that Harry is what is important, he can't fail James and Lily now- is positioned between the door and the crib, so Harry must have been here when her soul was ripped from her body.
Remus spends the next the next hour searching the house from top to bottom. His eyes, trained by the observant and sneaky Peter, the brilliant James, and Auror-trained Sirius, see everything, save it for his nightmares, and move on to see more. Absent mindedly, he sends stasis spells to both Lily and James's bodies as he searches, avoiding the dead gazes of his closest friends. It's almost one before he knows for sure that Harry, helpless and tiny Harry who only four weeks ago walked for the first time, isn't here. Shoving unproductive emotions like bone gripping fear and debilitating panic aside, Remus walks outside and Apparates to Sirius's.
It's empty and looks like a troll went through it. Looks like it was tossed by a professional; either Death Eaters or Aurors, observes his inner-Sirius. Either way, a thorough search shows neither godfather or godson are here.
He apparates to Peter's doorstep, but when he sees the for sale sign, he smacks himself. Peter's lease was up two weeks ago. It seems to be the last straw for him when he realizes that he doesn't even know where Peter now lives. He stops.
Two friends dead.
One friend and a baby missing.
And he doesn't even know where his only other friend lives.
Remus Lupin's spirit breaks at that moment.
Remus knows now that he is a failure of a friend. He has failed all of them in every way. Failed even baby Harry. How did it come to this? He sinks down onto the doorstep, head in hands, and when the first sob comes out, he doesn't stop it. The second one rips through his lanky frame moments after. The third, the fourth, the seventh, and those after blur into one.
It's dark when Remus finally lifts bloodshot eyes to the despicable moon. Something about the moon bugs him more than normal, but he can barely stand, let alone assess his emotions, so he lets it go. Bent by the weight of the day's struggles, he trudges a step or two, twisting a bit to Apparate away.
It's at the doors of his own home that he realizes that he hadn't told Dumbledore he left his post. Remus almost ignores duty, but rules and following what should be done are so ingrained into him that he just gives a heavy sigh-almost a sob, but not quite- and leaves. It's a war and he's a soldier and he needs to let his general know he left his post.
At the gates of Hogwarts, he begins the spell the four boys had learned as fourth years to send a message to the Headmaster. "Expecto…"
But the memory he normally uses, of that moment when his friends stood strong and proud next to him for the first time as second years, knowing his faults and quirks, stabs his heart. He falls slowly into the gates of the castle, barely keeping himself upright as it hits him again; dead or missing, all of them. He doesn't know how long he stands hunched there before the caretaker sees and recognizes him, letting him onto the grounds and leading the broken twenty one year old up the castle steps. Remus can tell the other man is shaken by broken look in his eyes. He is led past the Dining Hall, through the halls, until they reach a familiar gargoyle statue. A murmured word from the other man opens the passage to the Headmaster's study and he is left alone in the room.
Remus doesn't think he's ever been in this room alone.
James or Sirius or Peter were always right next to him if they were called here for troublemaking. If it was prefect business, Lily stood here, worrying about everything under the sun. Even for werewolf related things, his parents or Madame Pomfrey kept him company.
A soft touch on his shoulder, and Remus, now used to touch after the years with his friends, responds slowly to the stimuli. Professor Dumbledore guides him to a chair that Professor McGonagall Conjures for him. The old man nods soberly at him. "You've heard."
He hunches down in the chair just like he used his first and second years when he was still trying to avoid being noticed. Tears- when did those start?- drip down his nose into his lap. But Remus has had a lifetime of hiding these his feelings (Sirius was the dramatic one, James the emotional one; Remus knew how to be strong and silent even at five when his mom stood over him after the full moon in tears as his dad magic-ed his self-inflicted wounds closed) and this is a war and he is a soldier, so he straitens in front of his general to report, and takes a breathe as he scrubs his tears away.
"I left my post, sir, when I saw the news. I'm sorry for that." Remus speaks softly, as usual. That slight quiver isn't usual though; Remus injects a bit of steel born in full moons spent alone into it. "I went to the Potters. James and Lily are dead and Harry is missing. Sirius is gone too, and his place looks like it's been tossed looking for something. I… I'm sorry, sir, but I don't even know where Peter is."
A gasp from his old professor makes him pause. A horrified McGonagall and a grave Dumbledore look him in the eye. "He doesn't know, Albus." Whispers McGonagall. "Oh, my boy."
And so they tell him that he is truly alone.
New protections had been erected shortly after he had gone incommunicado for his mission; a Fidelius Charm held his friends safe with Padfoot as the Secret Keeper. A week gone and Sirius had betrayed them to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, apparently his true master, culminating in an attack last night. Peter had discovered it this morning and had confronted him bravely this afternoon, the littler man finding his inner Gryffindor to stand against his friend.
Killed by his friend.
And so now they were both gone, one to be with James and Lily and the other to the Dementors. The attack had been witnessed by so many people and every single one said the same story of Sirius's guilt.
Remus didn't even know how his heart could break anymore. But break it did.
Peter gone too?
Sirius, a Death Eater? No, not… Not Sirius…
But the rational part of his head scoffs at him, thinking the best of people like his friends. Sirius? A boy from a dark family, a boy that has been drawing away from you who can smell a lie but gaining the trust of James and Lily, now sacrificed by the lord of Sirius's family? Face it; you were wrong. The facts all say it. Even Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of this age, who knows Sirius, believes him to be guilty and he is much smarter than you.
Remus would have hung his head, had the two others not been there. How long have I been wrong for? How could I not see?
Training kicked in before he could crumble sitting in the Headmaster's office of Hogwarts. He wasn't done yet; there was one more thing that he could still do for his lost friends.
"Harry? I know Sirius was his godfather, but… Lily and James would have wanted me to take care of him. The only one of us left, but better than nothing." He couldn't help but think that Harry didn't deserve to have to put up with the prejudice of growing up with a werewolf. But Remus's parents were both still alive, and he knew that they would love to take Harry in on full moons for him. Financially, it'd be a stretch, but they'd make it work. They were all that each other had left.
"Remus..." the Headmaster sighed. "Harry was taken from Godric's Hollow shortly after the event. He is safe but…It's not a good idea for him to stay with you."
Maybe Remus of first year might have shrunk down into his seat. Maybe even Remus of this morning, tired and willing to follow his general to the ends of the earth, might have. But this is Remus of today, who has had everyone taken from him. "No," he says with a mix of horror and anger. "No, Dumbledore! He's all I have left!"
"He won't be safe with you. And… you won't be safe for him."
The words, coming from the man who had brought him to live and learn at a school of children, who had believed in him when he almost killed another student in 6th year, who had given him purpose after he had proven to be unhirable upon graduation, were devastating.
"No…" Remus protests softly in shock.
"Those left of Voldemort's people and the Ministry, too, will try to take him. You aren't strong enough to defend him from the first. For the second, you are a werewolf, so the Ministry will never allow you to keep him. On top of that, you don't have an income. I'm sorry, my boy, but you can't support a child, let alone this child." The old man shakes his head slowly.
His entire body stiffens and he began to argue passionately. "My parents would take him in on full moons and-"
"Petunia is taking him in. She-"
"She hates magic, Headmaster!" Remus interrupts. He lays out the ways he thinks that this is one of the worst ideas he's ever heard, most of them direct quotes from Lily spoken months before when James had suggested her as Harry's godmother. "She and Lily haven't talked since Lily's wedding and the woman is vindictive, likely to take out her dislike of his parents, his magic, on Harry! She is a shrew and her husband is even worse. They don't know anything about the magical world and can't even protect him since they don't have any magic. He will be helpless and alone-"
"Enough, Remus." The werewolf found that he had gotten to his feet at some point, but at Professor Dumbledore's look, he reseats himself. "Lily cast some strong blood based wards to protect Harry that will be activated by living with one of his mother's blood. It is a stronger protection than anything I can think of. Additionally, Petunia has a husband who makes enough so that Harry will never want. He will have a sibling in his cousin who is of a similar age. And he will have a parent that knows how to deal with a child. Growing up away from the magical world will protect him from those who want to hurt him and also aid him in living part of his life without the spotlight of fame on him. I have made provisions to see that he will be cared for and loved." Dumbledore's visage softens. "I didn't just leave him with the first option, Remus. Petunia will offer him a stable home that is protected by strong magic. He will be fine."
Remus disagrees that this is the best option, but he understands the argument. He knows that she has more to offer than him, but he doesn't have to like it. He can tell his tone is still a bit hostile when he responds. "I understand, sir. But I'll still be dropping by on her to check up on James and Lily's son."
This time it's McGonagall who responds. "You can't, Mr Lupin.".
"Why." The growl from his throat isn't a question and he notes in some other part of his brain that he is standing again.
"Because someone might follow you to Harry, just like what happened to the McKinnon family. You can't endanger him like that. The wards are strong, but the anonymity of a muggle family will be almost as good as protection for the Potter child."
Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "We are adding wards to inhibit owl mail as a further precaution; his Hogwarts letter will be the only thing sent to that address from the magical world for the next decade."
The Headmaster continues talking, but Remus isn't listening anymore. With the realization that even Harry is out of his life for good, he drops like a puppet with its strings cut into his chair. His head droops and he tunes Dumbledore out to stare blindly at his hands.
Gone. All gone.
All alone now, even baby Harry out of his reach now.
For the first time in ten years, Remus Lupin feels as alone as he did when his parents sent him onto the Hogwarts Express for the first time.
When Hagrid is called to escort Remus away, Remus waits only until they are out of earshot before he explodes at his long time friend.
"How could you?! You took Harry, you took him and you saw Sirius, the traitor, and you did NOTHING!? I thought you were my friend!" He yells and keeps yelling until the soft hearted man, already in tears and sobbing, runs away. Remus chases after him, his hotheaded self overtaking his body, yelling and screaming at the other man. But the half-giant's legs eat up the space away from him quicker and Hagrid disappears into the forest. Remus slows to a walk and blinks away furious tears. Turning away from his chase, he stalks off to Hogsmeade, knowing that he had taken out his anger on the wrong man. He knows that another day he will regret what he has said to poor Hagrid, but for now, he has no empathy for anyone.
It's six AM the next morning when Remus wakes like a zombie. He mechanically gets out of his bed at the cheap home he rents from Muggles and shuffles into the kitchen. He'd somehow made his way back here after walking back to Hosmeade, though he can't remember any part of the trip. He notes the number of letters with his mother's tiny writing lying on the floor and distractedly lets another owl in a window, accepting another note with his father's loopy script. He ignores them.
It's six thirty AM when he realizes that he is staring at a frying pan that Lily gave him and crying. He turns away; he doesn't have an appetite.
It's six forty-five AM when he realizes, standing at his window and watching the sun rise, that the last time he was up this early was James and Lily's wedding, when Sirius had forced the four of them awake to see James's last sunrise as a single man. Remus is not a morning person then, but the nightmares of the night before could turn him into one, he thinks.
It's six fifty five AM when he catches himself wondering what will happen to James and Lily's bodies. And their home. And Sirius's flat. And Peter's place- not that Remus even knows where that is.
It's seconds later, at six fifty six AM, when Remus Lupin breaks down in his hallway, howling and shaking like his transformation has come early.
It isn't until a bit past noon that he can get up and crawl over to the fire. He jabs at the cold wood with the wand he didn't even notice in his hand, lighting it, before tossing in a palmful of Floo powder.
"Forty two Maker's Road in Gosport, Hampshire." He sticks his head in when the flames turn green, tears running down his face still into the fire to make ssszzzzzzssss noises.
"Mom? Dad?" He starts shaking as the pain of the last day overcomes him. They come into view as he says, "I need you."
They haven't seen him cry since he was six, before he finds out how much his tears pain his Muggle mother who can't help him during his Transformations. His mom pushes his head back to his home. Moments later, she and his dad step through, gathering him into a hug as he sits slumped on the floor.
Much later, his mom hands him chocolate from her pocket, just like she has since he was little and in pain and watches as he chews mechanically. She sends his dad to make tea and cradles his grief-stricken face in her two small hands. She traces the scars, the wrinkles, the tear-tracks, with her eyes before kissing him on the forehead once. She meets his eyes again and he can see understanding and pain in her eyes too. He realizes that she lost three sons and a daughter in the end to this war: James, Sirius, Peter, and Lily.
His father walks in and he sees his mother's pain reflected in his father's eyes as well. Mr Lupin sets the tea on the ground and engulfs the two of them into a hug. The tea goes cold as the family mourns their lost members, supporting each other as they shake and cry.
The next few days he feels that he could be his parents' puppet. They swoop in and take care of him like they have always done. That first morning, his Muggle mom makes him tea and toast the Muggle way and his dad magics Remus's clothes into a bag. They bring him to his childhood home.
Between his long periods of silence interrupted with boughts of tears, anger, and babbling, his parents get the picture of what had occurred the day before. They had seen the newspapers; everyone had. But the story was different coming from their broken son. The three relive the pain of the betrayal of one of their boys and the loss of the other two and Lily.
He is grateful when his mother stands strong, not a tear showing after that first day. She holds him up in the way he has for her for years, feeding him chocolate and offering tea. His father stays by his side and just listens. Both are bulwarks against a depression that starts to grow.
When he can't take sitting anymore, they reach out to Peter's mum. Years of the boys colluding to gather at each other's houses had made friends of their parents who had had to arrange the trips. With the death of her son, Peter's mom is just as alone as Remus is, the Lupins know. They invite her to stay with them when they see the stacks of tea cups and handkerchiefs everywhere in her house, though the plump lady keeps denying that she isn't fine. Huge tears well up when Remus asks dully about a box on the normally pristine dining room table and she explains that they had given to her the only part of her son left behind. Both Lupins give each other a look, one that says Our son is alive at least, thank Merlin, and gently ask her again to join them at their house for a few days.
When she refuses yet again, Mrs Lupin pulls her aside to tell her that they don't know how to help Remus and they hate to impose but can she please come help them? She can't say no.
So the day after her son's death, she descends on the only one of "her boys" left to her. She and Remus's mom bully him into eating food that afternoon as his father goes to Godric's Hollow to put stasis and protection spells on the house. He begins looking for coffins and grave locations that night as the two mothers put the only child left to them into bed.
At 6 AM the next morning, noises from the main room wake the house. The three elders stumble into an absolutely ordered room with Remus, dressed and washed, moving around in its center. In his hands and set in precise rows on the floor and furniture lies all of Mr Lupin's research from the night before. The young man looks at them as they enter, the spark gone from his eyes.
"They would have wanted to be buried in Godric's Hollow with James's parents." He tells them, exhaustion clear on his face as he looks up from his father's research on graveyards. "And for the service…" He hesitates, looking at Mrs Pettigrew.
Somehow, she understands what he is thinking. "I think Peter would very much like that he would be remembered along with James and Lily at the service." Her trembling smile breaks at the last word, and she pulls out one of her innumerable hankies from her nightgown pockets. "It'll all be the same group in any case."
Mrs Lupin hands her a square of chocolate.
The four band together for the next few days. A week before the full moon, the Potters and Peter are both laid to rest in their familial plots. School friends approach Remus, who is flanked by his parents and Mrs Pettigrew, to offer condolences. He is perfunctory but perfectly polite, emotions hidden under lock and key like they had for so many years. He can't help but be wooden though, watching these mourners who hadn't talked to those dead since graduation three years ago; how could they be sorry about this loss that was peripheral for them, but to him, devastating to his entire world? How could they even cry when they wouldn't recognize the wonderful mother that Lily makes, the amazing confidant that Peter has become, the responsible man that James is?
Was.
The past tense everyone keeps using puts Remus on edge. The term unsettles him. The feeling of wrongness doesn't go away.
His mom hands him part of a bar of chocolate and it takes the edge off of a depression that has settled deep into his bones. He is able to give Amelia Bones a sad smile as she wishes him meaningless nothings.
As Hagrid stands gingerly at the edges of the funeral grounds, Remus remembers his harsh words. When the larger man steps up, Remus grasps his outstretched hand. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean it. I shouldn't have said it. I'm-"
But the other man shakes his head. He responds simply and breaks Remus's heart with his goodness. "I know. S'ok. I forgive yeh."
And like that they are ok again.
His parents force him through the motions of life, helped by Peter's mom. They find him up every morning before the sun rises, bed made and room tidied. They busy him with things they think will calm him down; attempting to argue with him about the Wizarding Wireless's soaps, putting a book in his hands, or beginning a game of chess, and all the while, his mother's endless pockets produce chocolate.
But the arguments over the soap remind him of Lily and Sirius doing the same thing. The book is a gift from James long ago. And chess is a game he and Peter had spent many a night playing over the past four years.
The chocolate his mother keeps feeding him struggles against the despondency and gloom that threaten to overtake him.
It only takes a day for the older people to figure out that being busy wouldn't be a cure. At Mrs Pettigrew's suggestion, they go the opposite direction completely and drag Remus along with them to close up the last parts of James, Lily, and Peter's lives and deal with the traitor's incarceration.
First, they settle up with money; Gringott's goblins show records that Sirius leaves everything to Remus. Peter leaves half to his mom and the rest distributed among the three of his friends. James and Lily are generous as well, leaving Godric's Hollow to Sirius to raise Harry in, or in the case of Sirius's demise (for they never thought he could betray them) to Frank and Alice Longbottom to hold in trust for Harry. Frank and Alice have just been admitted to St Mungo's after torture by three of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's lieutenants, leaving their own son as good as an orphan. The rest of the Potter money is split three ways; Harry, the Order, and Remus.
Remus forces the goblins to put all the money towards him into little Harry's accounts. He can't look at the totals on that sheet showing him how the death of his friends (because Sirius, he decides, is dead to him too) will result in him being comfortably wealthy for the rest of his days.
The parents don't understand. Peter's mom tells him that he is doing a good thing for poor baby Harry even as she looks reprovingly at the secondhand robes with mended pockets that hang off his gaunt frame.
Remus knows that he doesn't deserve the money and the comfort it would bring. There is no reason to reward him for this tragedy that somehow, in some way, he might have been able to avert. But he lets them think what they want and they leave the bank.
They stop at Honeydukes in Diagon Alley, end-of-the-war celebration all around them looking macabre given their tasks of the day. His mother buys more chocolate that they could ever eat and hands everyone of them a piece before venturing out onto the bedecked Alley once more. They are a single solemn procession winding their way back to the apparition point.
If Remus could have dredged up any sort of laugh, he might have; the fact that their losses were the reason that most were celebrating was ironic in some way.
They clean all three houses over the next few days, his dad using the celebrations of the community to delay going back to work while his mom calls in sick for four days straight. He sees Peter's house for the first time as they clean it. It's like a reflection of the pudgy boy- no, the stalwart man who showed himself to be the truest of Gryffindors on his final day alive.
Sirius's house is next. They all go through it woodenly and without words; this is the man responsible for the deaths of all the others. Remus finds it strange that so little Dark materials are present while so many Muggle objects are proudly shown off. He decides bitterly that it must have been part of the deep charade that the man played for years to gain the trust of the others.
When he pauses for a moment in Sirius's tossed bedroom, he looks back and thinks that Sirius must have committed to his Dark Lord in the last year and a half, just before the birth of Harry. After all, he had made sure that Remus couldn't attend the Christening and began trying to stop him from spending time with James and Lily after that. At the time it had seemed so minor. In fact, it still did. But it was the only way he could attempt to explain the betrayal that pierced so deep. In their shared pasts, he saw no signs that the other man had turned dark. It made no sense, but the facts were undeniable for the logic driven Remus.
A hand on his shoulder and a piece of chocolate thrust into his palm from his mother shake him out of his misery. The chocolate soothes a throat that still aches from sobbing every night and stays the misery that never leaves him, pushing it away like it does the fear of a Dementor's visit. He packs up the room with his mother's help, packing away photos that he can't see for tears for little Harry to see someday. When he can contact him.
That would be many years from now, won't it? He thinks. He drops a picture frame and it brakes.
His mother picks him up off the floor where he has sunk and sends him to the kitchen with a call for Peter's mom to take him out for air while she and his father finish up. They reconvene that night and nothing is said about his actions.
The final house is Lily and James's. It's been only a week and a day since the attack, but the stasis charm keeps everything looking like it had the day he walked in to find his dead friends on their own floor. Brownies have come into the house and doxies are starting to get in through the smashed windows. They begin cleaning up the place.
Remus opens a kitchen cubboard and out comes this thing, bringing intense feelings of fear. He knows this; it's a boggart. His strangled half yell brings the others running as it folds up into its form for him.
It's the full moon.
Just the moon.
He sinks to the floor and the two mothers wrap their arms around him as his father calls the counterspell at the boggart. They try to comfort him about the full moon that will come tomorrow night, but they don't understand what it means.
He isn't afraid of the moon, not anymore. James, Sirius, and Peter took care of that, sacrificing so much for him when he turns into a monster.
He is terrified being alone.
His fear isn't of his transformation, but rather of that symbol of friendship that is now torn away from him; the moon that has been a pleasure since he was fifteen years old is now a terrorizing symbol of all that he has lost.
Tomorrow night will be the first night that he will face the moon alone without his pack.
It's a kind of irony that this group of friends had devoted themselves to keeping him from being alone, going so far as to break laws, only to leave him all at the same time.
The others remove him from the house. The stasis spell is renewed by his father, who mutters something to the women about coming back later to do the job when Remus feels up to it. Remus knows that he will never be able to enter that house again.
The moon comes and goes and it is one of the harshest ones he has ever gone through. His parents finally help Mrs Pettigrew home and clean up his wounds that next day. They bring up the house in Godric' Hollow a week later and he walks out of the room, a show of disrespect that he has never done before. They never bring it up again and the Potter's home stays under stasis until the Ministry moves to protect it as a memorial.
The next few months are an experiment in how to survive. Three parents look after him, but it often feels as though their first of four sons was lost a week and a half after their others, taken by the moon. Mrs Pettigrew badgers him, his mother cajoles him, and his father pulls him into actions resembling living, but they all know that's not what he is doing. He finds a Muggle job for a few months at their insistence, then loses it when the bizarre days off for his condition prove to be too difficult for his boss to work around.
He only occasionally answers letters from Hagrid, checking up on him. These letters get fewer as time goes on.
He gets another job and loses it. He moves out when he finds a new one.
Peter's mom visits less and less. He loses another job.
He watches his parents grey and wrinkle. The sparkle is gone from their eyes, just like it is from his. But he knows that he is the reason for their pain. He just… He doesn't know… He can't…
He doesn't know what to do. He can't move on. He is a shadow of Remus Lupin.
He lives like a ghost until his mother fall sick three years after the loss of his friends. His father and him both know her illness is connected to her struggle with depression, finally overcoming the chocolate she used as her only treatment. She passes on weeks later with a final wish that he live for her. The day after her funeral, he finds a job researching magical beasts that doesn't have regular hours and tells his dad, putting on the face he had perfected in the days before Hogwarts to protect the parent he has just lost. He hasn't cried at all in these three years and he refuses to crack now.
He begins storing chocolate in his pockets, just like his mom. In his more honest moments, he knows it's not because of her memory that he does so, but because he struggles with the same affliction she had dealt with for years. He doesn't have many honest moments with himself anymore.
His dad and Peter's mom wish him well and check in occasionally when he is around. He always acts well, or at least, better when they drop by, even though the rotating jobs that he works with leave him tired. A new potion works its way onto the market and Remus shells out his few galleons to get it, his clothes and accommodations getting shabbier and shabbier.
Both Mr Lupin and Mrs Pettigrew die within a few years of his mother's death. He misses them, but sheds no tears as he takes care of both funerals. He is frozen still, unable to conjure up any emotion than tiredness and pain, both dulled by the ever increasing depression creeping up on him, his daily dose of chocolate increasing as years go by. The indulgence is less a pleasure than a necessary medicine. He is vaguely aware that he is following the path of his mother.
It will be another decade before he actually begins his path to recovery, seeing a boy with James's thin fingers and Lily's strong opinions collapse on the floor infront of him. It was the same car that he had once met Harry's father and godfather in, giving the boy chocolate in a bizarre echo of his own first ride on that train. When he steps out of sight moments later, it's the first time in years that he realizes that he doesn't actually need any chocolate for himself even though he had just fought a dementor. He starts to rebound into the Remus who was. He is even late for the first time in 12 years to his very first class and can laugh as young Neville Longbottom shifts a boggart Snape into the boy's grandmother's clothing.
He will never finish his journey to recovery; death finds him before his wounds can even scar over, stripped raw even after years by the resurgence of his innocent friend, the betrayal of the blonde traitor, the new wife and baby that he fears for every day of the Second Wizarding War just like James had his own during the First, and the boy with Lily's eyes and James's hair that he was only just being able to see as Harry.
Fin.