A/N: this starts a week before Halloween, when the rest of the marauders come to visit James and lily.
"Moony! You didn't do it again, did you?" James asked, pushing his round glasses up his nose. I hung my head shamefully. James burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry, but I don't see the point in starting a relationship if she doesn't know the truth!" I protested. It pained me that, at 21, I hadn't gotten past a first date in four years.
"That is just pathetic, Moony." Sirius said, shaking his head.
"Just because he has values!" James laughed mockingly.
"We all know its fuck first, talk later with you!" I laughed, snorting into my fire whiskey.
"What can I say? The ladies love it!" Sirius said, grinning nastily.
"So Remus, what happened?" James asked.
I recalled the evening to them.
"Well, I took her to that fancy new restaurant, and we got through the mains ok..."
***DESSERT THAT NIGHT***
"Stephanie?" I asked, playing with my gateaux with my fork. She smiled at me, taking a bite of banofie pie.
"There's something you don't know about me."
"Something...Exiting?" She asked.
"Depends how you look at it."
"Well..."
"I'm a werewolf."
Her eyes opened wide in horror. She stood.
"Um… I just remembered. Its my cousins birthday. I've got to go. Bye." She practically ran out of the restaurant. Well, I cant say I didn't expect it.
***
"So it didn't really go that well," I concluded, as James and Sirius both roared with laughter.
"Sorry mate, but it was so blunt!" Sirius groaned.
There's that word again. Blunt. I told you I was blunt about it. Bad habit I suppose.
"Hey, what am I going to do at work?" James asked, panicking. "Stephanie's going to kill me! I'm the one who set you guys up! She'll cut me up into little pieces and hide me under the floorboards!"
We all laughed at the thought of Stephanie running after James with a carving knife. His worst nightmare.
"James?" Lily called from upstairs. "Come read Harry his bedtime story!"
James rolled his eyes, getting off the couch, just as the doorbell rang.
"Just a sec!" James called up the stairs, running to the door.
He came back in the room with Peter.
"Sorry I'm late. It's my mum's birthday." He sat in James vacated seat.
"Hey, did you guys hear about the last quidditch match? Chudley cannons slaughtered by the Holyhead harpies. Disgusting." Sirius observed, shaking his head.
We spent the next half hour discussing the match, before James and Lily came back downstairs.
"Harry's asleep. Finally." James said, laughing.
I checked my watch. 11 o'clock.
"Well, id better be off." I said, getting up. "Ill see you next week!"
I nodded to Peter and Sirius, grasped James' shoulder, and hugged Lily.
"Hang in there." I told her.
She smiled at me. A sad smile.
"Take care of yourself, Remus."
"I will." I promised.
***HALLOWEEN NIGHT***
"Breaking news! You-know-who is dead!" the news reporter said over the wireless. I snapped my head up. Did i hear right? Or was i imagining it?
"That's right folks, You-Know-Who is dead! Unfortunately, before dying, You-know-who murdered James and Lily Potter. Their son, Harry has been taken in by relatives."
The rest of the report blurred into the background as I sank to my knees. It couldn't be true. I could feel my eyes brimming with tears. I let them come, feeling them flowing down my cheeks. I had just lost two of my best friends. I couldn't believe it. And Harry was being sent to relatives? Not Sirius? That had to mean Lily's crazy sister, Petunia. She was off her rocker when it came to magic. I had been there when Lily met Petunia in a shopping centre, and she had started screaming at us. Absolute nutcase. I couldn't believe anyone would send Harry there!
I woke the next day, still lying on the floor, to a familiar name over the wireless, which i had left on.
"Sirius Black has been found at the scene of a mass murder. 12 muggles and 1 wizard are reported dead, killed by a single curse. Black has already been given a life sentence in Azkaban. Mother of the murdered wizard, Peter Pettigrew, Has received her son's order of Merlin, 1st class, and his finger, the biggest part of him found by the retrieval squad."
My jaw dropped. Literally. It had been Sirius, Sirius, my best mate, the whole time. And he had killed 13 people with a single curse?! And Peter, poor, bumbling Peter, had gone after him. Lily, James, and Peter dead, and Sirius in Azkaban for life.
I was the last one left. The last Marauder.
I never would have thought that that day, last week would have been the last time I saw my friends together. Alive.
Now I had no one. Now I truly was alone.
That was the last time. The last time I trusted, the last time I loved, the last time I cried. By the end of October, I was out of tears.
