House: Ravenclaw
Year: 5
Category: Drabble
Prompt: Attending a funeral
Word count: 506
Remus had attended many funerals these past months. This was war, after all; he could expect no less. They had each been painful in their own way, because he had known all of those people, had been to school with them, had fought beside them since this war began.
But this one was worse.
This funeral was the one that might just break him because, of all of them, this was the funeral he'd never thought he would have to attend.
Remus watched in silence as James and Lily's coffins were lowered into the earth. He felt oddly detached from it all, as though he was drifting outside his body. He barely even registered the conspicuously small crowd of other mourners surrounding him - James and Lily had been well-loved, but there were too few people left to mourn these days.
Had been. Strange, Remus thought dully, how quickly a person goes from present to past tense, like it's nothing, when, in fact, it's everything. The finality of the past with James and Lily was jarring and, for a second, Remus was violently pulled out of his trance and back into his body. Noise came crashing down on him as he saw tears coming in floods from the others' eyes, their cries of grief grating painfully against his eardrums. He reached up with a gloved hand to touch his own cheek, frowning when it came back dry.
Strange. He'd cried at other funerals.
Then again, he'd never been alone at other funerals. He'd always had Peter and Sirius and James and Lily by his side, offering comfort when the grief became too much. He'd never had to pretend with them.
Perhaps, though, it was just because he has nothing left inside him. Three of his best friends were dead, the other as good as, and Remus couldn't even shed a single tear over any of them because he had none left, all of them wasted on the people who didn't matter. He felt hollow, empty, like a few organs rattling around inside a husk of a person.
After the funeral, Remus shut down. It was all too much - James and Lily, and Peter (fuck, he'd have to go to Peter's funeral soon, too), and… and Sirius.
Sirius, who had done all of this, who had killed three of the closest friends he'd ever had, who had doomed Remus to a life of being alone.
Of everything, that hurt most of all. The realisation of the full extent of Sirius's betrayal was what finally pierced the shell Remus had so carefully built around himself, stabbing right through to his heart. Remus screamed and cried and yelled until his throat was shredded, until he was nothing but a sobbing mess, curled up on the floor of his dingy little flat.
Then, Remus picked himself up, wiped his eyes, and began putting himself back together. He held his bones together with duct tape and safety pins, and hoped that it would be enough to get him through the next funeral.
A/N: Thank you guys so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed and please leave a review if you have a minute!