What if Lily and James had never died? What if Snape had managed to convince the Dark Lord that the Longbottoms' child was the threat? What kind of world would Harry, and Neville, have grown up in?
She looked beautiful. Radiant. Perfect. Remus had never thought he could feel so happy, so lucky, but finally, it felt like everything was perfect. Well, almost everything. If only Alice could have been the one with Neville sitting on her lap, if only Frank could have been arguing over the latest quidditch scores with the rest of the guys....Still, today was not a day to think about that. Today was not a day to grieve for those lost, or dwell on the way things could have been without the war. Today was meant to be the happiest, scratch that, the second happiest day of his life. Because as much as he loved Sophie - and he did love her, more than he ever thought possible - nothing would beat the day his daughter was born. The day that all the Marauders finally had a child to pass on their legacy too. Although Remus had to admit that he was secretly hoping that Seren got into a lot less trouble than he always seemed to find himself in.
And there she was. His little girl, walking down the aisle, basket of petals resting in the crook of her arm, angelic curls framing her smiling face. Remus felt a pang of grief looking into those stunning blue eyes - they looked just like her mothers. He could still remember perfectly the last time he saw those piercing blue eyes, how the light in them that always seemed to shine so brightly had flickered, and gone out. He could still remember that haunting sound - so savage, so animal that pierced the air around him. Still remember how the sheer, pure raw emotion in that sound had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The shock he had felt when Sirius had told him that that sound had emanated from his mouth, the notion that he had managed to verbalise, however basic the sound, some of the pain he felt at that moment, and above all the knowledge that that sound, the haunting, heartbreaking grief of it would never express even the smallest fraction of what he had felt, for so long. What, in a way, he would feel forever. But it was a different kind of grief now, it hadn't numbed or diminished, simply shifted, and changed. Ever present but eternally altered. By his daughter, and by the women in white, walking towards him, soon to be his wife.
The first time he met Sophie he screamed at her until his voice was hoarse, until his throat burnt with a pain so intense that it overtook all the hate he felt for her. There was no reason for this hate, no reason for the screaming, no reason for the blame that he placed on her, other than a need in him for Melody's death to have not been his fault. For him not to have to blame himself anymore. And, most of all, for it to have been avoidable. For someone to have been able to save her from them. For the Death Eaters not to have won, to never have won, especailly when it came to him, and his little girl. So he blamed Sophie, because she was there, because she hadn't lost the person she planned to spend her life with, because she let him, and, most importantly, because she was the one who brought his child back to him.
