A/N: This is for the Harry Potter Post Secret challenge. The prompt I was given was:
My biggest regret is simply not giving you a love letter.
The 31st of October hit him hard that year. It was 1988 and the war was seven years over. Remus, age twenty-eight, was standing in front of a crowd of all the twenty-somethings who had survived the war. He wondered whether or not he was imagining the small turn-out as he stared around the room, gripping his goblet of firewhiskey tightly in his left hand while his right hand shook at his side.
He knew what was coming-it came every year, somewhere between the small talk and the assurances that they'd all get home safely, despite the amount of fire whiskey they'd consumed. It didn't matter to Remus how many times they said it, or how many times they actually ended up home safely (which they always did); he worried anyways.
But no, it wasn't time for that yet. That's right-they were all waiting for the toast. His toast. The part when he was supposed to talk about how his best friend and his wife had died for a good cause because apparently that was supposed to make it okay.
But Remus didn't believe that, and the others didn't either. Not really.
It didn't stop them from saying it out loud, year after year though.
It made his blood boil. He clenched his fist tightly, attempting to control his emotions before they got the better of him. The anger wasn't new, but it seemed to be seasonal. Each October for the last seven years, his transformations had been more painful, and took longer to recover from.
Like the hangover I'm going to have tomorrow, he thought bitterly, taking another sip of firewhisky.
He glanced around the room again, his eyes falling on a young girl with bright blue hair. She sat on a bar stool, sipping a butterbeer, and not speaking to anyone. She scooted her chair closer to the bar, accidentally kicking it. She looked alarmed, as if she was afraid she might have broken it. Remus smiled, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the Hog's Head would outlive all of them, regardless of the damage it ensued.
"Remus, are you ready?"
He turned around, startled, and slopping firewhiskey down his tattered sleeve. The crowd was suddenly gathered around him expectantly, so he was unable to figure out who had spoken. He glanced at the young witch at the bar, who had turned her attention to them-to him.
He wondered briefly why she was not at Hogwarts, but did not have time to ponder the matter for very long. All eyes had turned to him and he made eye contact with Kingsley Shacklebolt.
"Um," he started, and as soon as the stutter was out of his mouth, the crowd quieted, as if someone had uttered a Silencing charm. He glanced toward his goblet, hoping that somehow the firewhiskey might give him more courage to speak.
He tried to smile, but felt sure it didn't reach his eyes. "Seven years ago..." he began. His mind flashed to the stories he heard afterward, the witches and wizards celebrating in Muggle villages, the rumors about Sirius' motorbike being used to transport Harry out of the wreckage of the house in Goodrich's Hallow. He was ultimately left with the image of the bodies laying on the floor and the baby Harry, crying in his crib. Having not seen the scene unfold that night, it was all he could cling onto, the night that Lily and James lost their lives and Harry lost any sense of security he might have ever had.
"Seven years ago," he began again, "we became free," he said. He glanced at his goblet again, concentrating all of his energy on it so that he could speak to it instead of the crowd. "We stopped hiding. We could all breathe again," he said, and forced a smile. He looked around at the people around him. They all wore solemn expressions, and Minerva McGonagall was wiping at her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Some days I wish we had Lily and James back. Well, most days. But I think I'd rather have them here and still be living in terror because, right now, we don't know what we're living in, not really. If we did, we would know he was gone."
He looked up again; his gaze was met with looks of discomfort, as if they would all have preferred him to lie.
He shot them all a wry smile and nodded curtly, hoping this would be a sufficient end to his speech. It was not much, and had not been what he'd planned but it was all he had, and he was quite glad to be done with it.
The crowd thinned after that; the speech was their cue to leave, but Remus did not. He waited, felt certain he was waiting for something, although he could not have placed what it was.
He sat down at the bar; it was then he realized just how much he had had to drink. Perhaps it was he who would need to be careful getting home that night.
"I liked your speech."
Remus looked to his left. The young witch with the blue hair was sitting on the barstool next to his.
"You said what they were all thinking; they were all just too stunned to admit it."
He looked over at her. She couldn't have been more that fifteen. "You think?"
"Yeah," she said. "They all lost friends in the first war, and are too afraid to say that that they'd all rather live in fear than have their friends dead. The Potters', I mean, and all the others who died and were tortured. There was fear then and there's fear now. This one's just more uncertain."
"You sound like you've thought about this."
She nodded. "I guess. I've had a lot of time to."
"Why aren't you at Hogwarts?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Don't have a lot of friends there," she said. "This felt more important than a Halloween feast. This matters, y'know?"
He nodded.
The girl swiveled her chair, and then looked past Remus. He followed her gaze to Professor McGonagall who was waving at her. "That's my cue," she said. "I've got to go back to the school now."
He nodded as she hopped out of her seat. "I'm Tonks," she said, more as an afterthought, and sticking out her hand for Remus to shake.
He smiled and shook he outstretched hand. "Remus Lupin," he said, but was not sure how he would want to be addressed, feeling like this was too formal a greeting from a fifteen-year-old.
He turned back to the bar as she walked away. Then, on an impulse, turned back, and shouted after her.
"Do you think it's over?"
The words fell from his lips before he could stop them and he had to pointedly look away from the alarmed face of Professor McGonagall leading Tonks back to the school.
Tonks turned back to him. "Can't be," she said, and she said it with such conviction he was sure she was right. "You said it yourself. If it was over, we would know for sure what happened seven years ago, wouldn't we?"
He shrugged, finding himself unable to argue with such logic.
"I don't think so either," he whispered but when he looked back to see if she had heard him, she was already gone, and he was alone but for the barman in the Hog's Head.
/
Remus was walking through the doors of the Great Hall, glancing along the House tables, and finding himself torn between nostalgia and unbearable grief. It was April of 1990 and the war was nine years over.
He stopped short when he saw a glimpse of bright purple hair, sitting towards the end of the Hufflepuff table. Tonks turned in her seat and Remus looked away hurriedly, but he watched as she all but jumped out of her seat, racing down the center aisle.
"Remus!" she said, waving her arms wildly.
He bit back a laugh as she ran towards him as if they were longtime friends. It startled him to think she might even consider him as such. He smiled when he saw her and held up a hand as way of greeting. The purpose of his visit had already slipped his mind.
"Hello Tonks," he said and found that the melancholy feeling he'd had as he'd entered the Hall had all but vanished.
"Remus," she said, nodding her head at him as if trying to cover up the fact that she was excited to see a friendly face in the Hall. She glanced around the room, and found a few curious onlookers.
The look on her face told him that she relished the fact that she was the only student to know the man who'd walked into the Great Hall unannounced and turned all the heads in the room. The idea made him somewhat sad.
"How are you?" he asked, looking up at the Head table to find Professor Dumbledore watching them curiously and Professor McGonagall watching them too, her lips pursed like she did not approve of the scene she was witnessing.
"I'm great!" said Tonks. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you too," he said, although the words sounded forced, but she did not hear them that way.
"I'm graduating next month," she said. "Got all the NEWTs I need to become an Auror. But I'm really going to miss this place. This is home and yeah, my house is home too, but this place is...wow. It's amazing. I'm going to miss it."
He nodded, unable to help the smile forming on his lips. She had a strange sort of confidence for someone so young and he found himself drawn to it. "I know what you mean. My time at Hogwarts was the best of my life."
She cocked her head to the side. "You were friends with James Potter. From what I've heard about him and the rest of your friends, I can definitely see why you had such a good time here."
He chuckled, thinking that she didn't know the half of it, but appreciated her words all the same.
"Without them, I don't know that I would feel any attachment to Hogwarts," he said.
She nodded, looking like she wanted to say more but didn't. She just smiled at him.
"Professor Dumbledore needs a word with me," he said, looking to the Head table again. He felt awkward suddenly conversing with her and was unsure whether it had more to do with her age or his own.
She turned on the spot to see more eyes drawn to them but she did not head back to her seat.
"It was good to see you, Remus," she said.
He laughed again as she stuck her hand out for him to shake. He was almost certain she was going to go in for a hug, and he found the idea not so unwelcome.
Instead, he placed a hand on her arm and said, "It was good to see you, too, Tonks."
/
The hot August air was sticky and Diagon Alley was filled with students and their families shopping for their books and robes and wands for the upcoming school year. It was 1991 and Remus couldn't help but scan the streets hopefully for the face of Harry Potter.
It was a strange thing to think about, the fact that he had never met the boy. It felt like somewhat of a betrayal that he'd known the boys parents' so much better than Harry had.
He walked along the shops with no destination in particular, and trying not to let his emotions get the best of him. He was walking past Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlor when he started hearing excited whispers behind him. He drew a deep breath before turning around, not daring to let himself hope. It was then that he saw them, the man more than twice the size of a normal man and the young, thin boy with the lightning bolt scar on his forehead at his side.
Remus' heart leapt, but even then he could not bring himself to walk closer to the scene-the boy was going to be crowded enough as it was. He watched after them, watching witches and wizards nervously approach the boy, who, Remus was sure, had almost no idea what was going on.
He had heard nothing of the boy's experience growing up with his aunt and uncle, but from everything Lily had mentioned from their childhood, Harry could not have been a welcome guest in the Dursley home for all these years.
"Remus!"
He started out of his thoughts at the sound of his name being called somewhere up ahead. He saw her before he reached her and was unsurprised to see that Tonks was alone. She pushed through the crowd, her small frame getting lost in the throng of people trying to get a look at Harry Potter.
When she reached him, her mouth fell open, her eyes searching beyond him, at the scene of Harry Potter's return to the Wizarding World.
"Is that...?" she asked.
Remus nodded absentmindedly, his shock and excitement turning to feelings he could not quite describe. He looked at the girl in front of him, having graduated from Hogwarts only three months before and witnessing a moment he was sure no one in the Alley would ever forget.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled her into a hug, feeling sure that all he needed right now was someone he knew, despite their brief history.
"Remus, are you okay?" she asked quietly into his ear, nerves apparent in her voice.
He let go of her, unsure how he would ever come up with an answer. "I have no idea."
"Do you want to grab something to eat?" she asked. "Somewhere else?"
He looked at her then, taking a deep breath. "Anywhere but here."
/
The next time he saw her was four weeks after Voldemort's return to power. It was the summer of 1995 and the shock and grief they had all been feeling was now enclosed and apparent in every inch of Grimmauld Place.
They had taken to writing to each other and he had come to enjoy their correspondence more than he would care to admit.
He kept thinking back to the day in Diagon Alley when she'd all dragged him out of the Alley to a muggle village she'd happened upon a couple months earlier. They'd eaten lunch in near silence and paid separately, despite his protests for having dragged her away from her afternoon.
"You alright?" she asked when they'd walked out.
He glanced her way. "It's just a lot, all at once. I never thought I'd see James again but he was there, standing in the Alley. Of course, it wasn't him. I just didn't think they'd look so similar. It was like stepping back in time," he finished, not bothering to apologize for dumping all of this on her.
"I get that," she said. "And now it's all these years later and part of you was hoping you'd be able to move past everything that happened during the war and seeing Harry...everything came rushing back. You have nothing to feel bad about here, Remus."
Those were the words that stuck out most to him. He'd been offered the post of Defense Against the Darks Arts teacher two years prior to Voldemort's return and he'd taken it, knowing he would not be able to face Harry in any capacity if he did not just jump into it. So the fact that he would also be teaching hundreds of other students would leave no time for him to be upset about the events that had occurred thirteen years earlier.
He'd considered bolting out of the school the first time he spotted Harry in the Great Hall. It was James' voice in his head that had kept him there, and throughout the year, he had actually come to enjoy Harry's company, despite his striking resemblance to his father. It was not his fault, after all.
He'd written to Tonks a lot that year, and her words had come to mean a lot to him.
He slipped through the front door of Grimmauld Place. The voices coming from the kitchen ceased as the door slammed. They did not pick up again but he heard a single pair of footsteps coming into the hallway.
He looked up. "Hey."
"Hi," she replied. She was five years out of Hogwarts and had qualified as an Auror only three months previously.
He could see the excitement in her eyes at the prospect of having joined the Order officially, despite the dire circumstances.
"Everyone's in the kitchen," she said. "Harry got here a couple of hours ago. Mad-Eye and I and a few others got him from his Aunt and Uncle's house."
He nodded. "I was supposed to be there-"
"I wondered where you were, was hoping to see you then."
They stared at each other then before she looked away, acutely aware of the implications of her words.
"Dumbledore needed me elsewhere," he said carefully, wishing he could tell her more but knowing full well that doing so would not help the situation-he feared it would only make her worry. "But I'll be staying here for the time being."
She nodded. "What do they have you doing?"
He gave her a look. "Shoring up support for our side," he said.
"And where will that take you?"
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I know what you're asking," he said. "Dumbledore does not think it is critical to be making contact with the werewolves right now. I think there will come a time when we'll need to, but for now..." he looked around the hall like the words he was looking for would be written on the walls. "We're not that desperate."
She nodded, allowing herself a moment to take in his words. "Let me know if that changes. I mean, if I don't see you..."
He shot her a half-smile, as she stumbled her way through the rest of the sentence inaudibly.
"We should go," he said. "I'm sure the meeting's already started-"
"It has."
He nodded again, realizing then that he was still wearing his coat. He shrugged it off, hanging it up on the coat rack and then making no move to walk toward the dining room.
"There's food inside," she said, as if hunger was the reason he was hesitant to move inside. "Molly's almost finished with dinner." She began to walk through the hallway, failing to realize that he was not following her.
She looked back at him, seeing the blank look on his face, understanding dawning on her that this meeting was going to be difficult to face, especially considering that Sirius would no doubt want Harry to be part of the conversation.
"Everything's changed since the first war," he said. "Everything."
She shrugged. "We're making the best of it," she said, and took his hand and led him into the meeting.
/
He left civilization in the summer of 1996. The work that had been done with the werewolves had been minimal, and circumstances were worsening seemingly by the day. Sirius' death had shaken him more than he'd care to admit, and he all but relished the idea of turning off his real life for a few months.
He wrote to Tonks, as he'd promised he would, but did not get a reply before he journeyed underground, and once he'd reached his destination, he put her out of his mind. He was on orders from Dumbledore and letting down the man who had given him a chance was not an option.
He was able to contact the Order in rare moments of peace, but had a difficult time feeling like anything he would have to say would be encouraging.
Harry, who was grieving Sirius' death as if he'd lost a parent (the irony was not lost on Remus), was not someone he felt inclined to talk to in his moments of peace. He could not talk to Tonks, afraid of how he would react seeing her again, and he did not, under any circumstance, want to leave a conversation with her feeling worse than he already did.
The conversations he had over the few months underground were some of the worst of his life. He was the only person able to do this job and he felt an immense amount of pressure to convince the werewolves of their worthy cause. He feared, however, that Voldemort was more convincing.
Voldemort was stronger, they all knew it, and those who said otherwise were kidding themselves, and the werewolves' support was crucial to both sides. Without the werewolves, there was no chance of victory. Not anymore. Not with all of the unexplained disappearances, not with the Ministry's lack of understanding about the dire situation at hand.
The most he felt like he could hope for, was to come out of the war alive.
/
He returned to the Burrow in December of 1996 to find most of the Order gathered there for the holidays. He stepped out of the fireplace, using magic to remove the soot from his robes. He was greeted by shouts of welcome and was all but thrown into a chair. He was holding a glass of firewhiskey within moments of arriving.
Everyone gathered into the room, clearly hoping to find out just how his time with the werewolves had bettered their chances of defeating Voldemort.
He looked around the room, taking in all of the eager faces surrounding him.
"Where's Tonks?" he asked once they'd all sat down and had quieted enough so that he'd be able to start reliving the past few months.
He saw Hermione and Ginny exchange glances, and then watched as Ginny glanced hurriedly at Molly.
"Remus," Molly started quietly, and the gentleness in her tone scared him more than anything he'd experienced in all the months he'd been away.
"She's spending the holidays with her parents," Hermione cut in. "She hadn't visited them in awhile and she needed time away from all the talk of strategizing against Voldemort. Can't say I blame her, I think we'd all like to get away sometimes."
Remus studied her as if trying to catch her in a lie. It did not seem so far-fetched, however, that she might be making it up to save him from the guilt he felt having driven Tonks away, regardless of the circumstances.
He smiled at them all, at their willingness to protect his feelings, and hers. He glanced at Harry, who had his head down, who was perhaps feeling the same strong sense of grief for Sirius that Remus was, especially in the midst of the Order.
"Fenrir Greyback is still on Voldemort's side, and he's got many more staying on. I wasn't enough," he said simply, and then sipped his fire whiskey for something to do while they all processed his words.
He kept his eyes on Harry, who did not look up, but rather, continued to stare at his feet, and Remus could not help but wonder if he would ever stop thinking he was James.
/
In August of 1997, Remus found himself back at Grimmauld Place and staring into the face of Harry Potter. He sucked in a breath and then swallowed his nerves, hardly taking in the three wands being pointed in his direction.
"Harry," he said, putting his hands up as if in surrender.
"What are you doing here, Remus?" he asked almost too quietly, lowering his wand. Ron and Hermione followed suit from behind him.
He walked further into the house. "I came to talk to you about what you are doing on Dumbledore's orders."
"I can't tell you that," he said, and the response seemed almost automatic.
Remus figured Harry would say this.
"Do you want to sit down?" Harry asked. He sounded uncomfortable, like there was nothing he'd like to do less than invite Remus inside.
Remus looked back at the closed door behind him. "I've got a few minutes."
Harry nodded, and Ron pulled up a fourth chair to the small kitchen table. Harry glanced at Hermione, who shot him a half-smile he wasn't sure how to interpret.
"How are you?" Harry asked once they were all seated.
"Fine," said Remus. "Everyone was able to escape Bill and Fleur's wedding unharmed...It's the little victories we need to focus on at this point, isn't it?"
"Yeah," said Harry. "But you're not fine, Remus, and you're not very good hiding it."
"Why wouldn't I be fine?" he asked, staring at a footprint on the kitchen floor.
"Because you're in love with Tonks and she's in love with you, and there's no reason you shouldn't be together, but you're not," said Hermione heatedly. "You're both walking around heartbroken, Remus, and there's no use trying to deny it."
He addressed her warily. "Hermione, we're in the middle of a war."
"And why should you give that half a thought? You've given half of your life to a cause bigger than yourself, and the other half trying to just be an accepted part of society, and it's high time you got some happiness," countered Harry angrily. He looked directly at Lupin as he said it and whatever discomfort Remus was feeling already, increased tenfold.
He stared at Harry and then smiled wryly. "Sometimes I forget you're not your father. He'd've said the same thing."
"She's miserable without you," said Hermione. "She's been hanging around the Burrow for ages."
"She stays for dinner more nights than not, and sleeps in Ginny's room if she's not at her parents'," said Ron.
"You've lost too much, Remus. I think Dad and Sirius would've wanted you to be happy," Harry said, meeting Remus' eyes again.
Remus swallowed hard and then glanced at Ron and Hermione. "Would you two mind if I spoke to Harry for a minute?"
If either of them had any objections, they did not voice them, but walked out of the room without another word. Remus had no doubt that they would still be standing close by in case something were to go wrong.
Harry turned to him once Ron and Hermione had rounded the corner.
"You remind me of James," said Remus simply. "I went back to teach because I needed to stop seeing him when I looked at you. If I've been distant with you, Harry, or seemed uncomfortable around you since Sirius' death, it's because I'm afraid..." he started slowly. "It's because I'm afraid I'm going to start seeing you you for someone you aren't. They were the only friends I had for awhile and I'm sorry if Sirius' death has made me nostalgic." The name Peter Pettigrew rolls around in his mind on a loop.
Harry nodded. "I needed you after Sirius died," he said. "We weren't the only ones who took it hard but I figured you'd be the only one to take it as hard as I did and it would've been nice to have someone to talk to about it."
Remus shook his head. "I couldn't talk about it. To anyone, and especially not to you. I couldn't take it. Harry, you remind me so much of James, I couldn't face it. So, if I failed you in some way, I am sorry, but you need to understand that I had things I needed to do to grieve him and I needed to do them alone."
"You went underground," Harry said.
"I needed to get away from all of this. I needed to do what I could to ensure our side a victory in this war so we wouldn't have to do this all again, grieve someone else who died fighting."
Harry looked away and traced a scuff mark on the floor with his shoe. "You know she was writing you love letters, don't you? Hermione told me. She wants to be with you, Remus, and what's wrong with that? Make yourself happy for once."
He stood up and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Remus dumbfounded.
/
Remus stood at the door of the Tonks' household in March of 1998. He raised a fist to the door and knocked three times and then stepped back. He considered turning around before the door opened, but knew he'd regret it instantly. He'd come on a whim with no clear idea of what he wanted to say to her. His conversation with Harry months before had sparked a sort of longing he had not experienced in some time. He wanted to see her, speak to her, figure things out if they could.
He froze when the door opened.
"Remus," she said breathlessly, clinging to the door as if her life depended on it. He hair was short and brown. She looked more tired than he'd ever seen her.
"Hi," he said. "Can I come in?" His discomfort melted away the moment the door opened and his heart broke when she started speaking but he found himself drawn to it.
She glanced behind her. "Not right now, but we can go somewhere else if you'd like."
He studied her for a second, hardly taking in her words. "I'm so sorry about your father," he said.
He'd heard about her father's death a week before in the Daily Prophet. He'd been too stunned and too numb to go to her before now and offer his condolences.
She nodded. "Thanks." She looked down at her feet as she said it.
He took a breath and held a hand out to her before he lost his nerve, and she glanced at it hesitantly before taking it. He led her outside and they Disapparated to a snowy hillside outside of a small Muggle village he'd taken refuge in recently, in moments of longing for life to go back to normal.
She squeezed his hand once they reached their destination. "Thank you," she said.
He nodded and shot her a fleeting smile. "This was the best place I could think of," he said. "I've been using it as an-"
"Escape," she supplied.
"Yes," he said. "It helps clear my mind."
He thought about what else he could say to her but nothing seemed quite right. It was not the time or the place to apologize for not contacting her once he'd gotten back from his trip underground. In fact, they had not seen each other at all since the Second War had really started. Since Sirius had died. Since everything started to fall apart.
"You've been coming here alone?" she asked, her voice rising, whether out of mere curiosity or something deeper, he was not quite sure.
He shrugged. "Is there something wrong with that?"
"No," she answered.
The word lonely crossed his mind but he could not bear to say it out loud.
"I'm really sorry about your father," he said again, as if he is trying to squeeze more meaning out of the words than came out the first time he said them.
"I'm okay," she said but it came out in a whisper. "I can't marry you, Remus." She said it so quietly he thought she might not have said them at all.
It was as if she'd read his mind. The image of the world he'd written on a bit of parchment flashed in his mind and he wondered for the thousandth time why he never sent it. "I know," he answered.
"I'd never be sure why I was doing it. Because I was lonely or I was in love. I don't know that I'd be able to tell the difference anymore."
He nodded. "I know."
They stood in silence, watching the snow swirling around them. Then he took hold of her hand, and they Disapparated back to the Wizarding World.