Author: CaptainTightPants12

Rating: K

Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I'd be jetting around the world looking awesome with JK Rowling, making sure that a Marauders movie would get made. And I would definitely dress better. No more buying clothes on Amazon. Actually, I probably would still buy clothes on Amazon. Who am I kidding? I'm more Weasley than Malfoy.

Summary: Harry Potter is given a gift that reveals to him an untold story about where he came from.

Chapter: #21, One Last Memory For The Road

Harry returned to the attic, and he sat down in an old dusty chair as he let some of his tears fall down his cheeks. He knew that his parents were incredible people. That was never something he felt the need to question. Everyone that he had met along the way told him how wonderful they were. He was still happy to have seen how they handled themselves, all the way to the end. He wished that Remus had been there now so that he could thank him for giving him such a wonderful gift. He looked down at the trunk that he remembered seeing all those years ago on the train to Hogwarts.

He noticed that there was still one glass left in the trunk, and he couldn't help but be a little confused. Surely the story was over in Harry's mind. He wasn't sure what was left to be seen, but he wasn't about to stop here. He lifted the glass and poured it into the pensieve before pouring himself back into the pensieve again. When he landed inside, he found that he was sitting on a bench. He recognized the neighborhood, but he couldn't quite place it. In the distance he could hear children playing and laughing. Harry looked around for a moment longer when he saw someone standing next to a tree, whom upon being seen, seemed to decide to come his way. Once he had been removed from the shade cast by the long branches of the tree, Harry quickly recognized this man to be someone that he had known quite deeply.

"Hello, Harry," Lupin said.

He smiled sadly, "Another impression?"

Lupin smiled and nodded. "I know that we're living dangerous lives right now. Tonks and I, the Order, it's a scary time. I lived through one Wizarding War, I don't know that I'll get a chance to talk to you about all of this someday. If you're here, if you're seeing me like this, well, I assume that things didn't work out for me the way they did the first time around."

Harry's face clenched up in pain, "I've missed you."

Lupin's heart nearly broke as he pulled Harry into a very tight hug, "Oh Harry, I've missed you too. I missed out on so much. Unfortunately, I think that we both did. It's not the life that I planned to have with you by any stretch, but I'm glad we got the time we got to have."

He nodded into Lupin's chest, "Me too." He took a deep breath and stepped back. "Thank you for this. All of this."

"No boy should go without the story of how his parents met and fell in love. Not when they were as extraordinary as yours. You deserve to know where you came from."

Harry smiled, "You were quite exceptional yourself."

Lupin gave him that trademark small smile and looked around them for a moment. "Do you recognize where we are?"

"No, not really," he shook his head.

Gesturing for them to begin to walk, Lupin led the way. "After your parents passed, it was, obviously, very hard for me. We thought Peter was dead. Sirius went to Azkaban. You were the only family that I had left in this world. The Order's work was over since, well, the war was over. They disbanded, and I never really saw them very much after that. Alice and Frank were attacked, and Dora was busy living her life. The Death Eaters went into hiding, pretending that they weren't exactly who we knew they were. You don't have to look far to see that the likes of the Malfoys were accepted back into society like nothing had ever happened. But me, I was still a freak even by wizarding standards. I was a just werewolf, and all I had was the kind words Dumbledore was willing to put on a resume. So, I used to come here. This was all that I had left."

"But why here?"

Lupin smiled and led him further along. They set their eyes upon a playground. Lupin eyed a bench nearby and they took a seat facing the swing sets. "I used to come here to see my family, Harry."

Harry was confused, but as he followed Lupin's eyeline, he realized what he was talking about. He saw a thin woman, quite tall, with nearly twice the usual amount of neck as some might have described her. She was pushing a stroller that had two children inside of it. Once she removed them from the stroller, they couldn't have been more polar opposites.

One was round, and immediately began to eat the sand he had been placed in.

One was thin, dark hair that stuck up in the back, and seemed to be quite bored with his surroundings.

Harry looked up at Lupin, "Oh."

"I used to come here and just watch you play from a distance because well, your aunt Petunia had made it very clear that I was not welcome around you. Your aunt and uncle did not want you to pursue magic. They wanted to keep that part of your life a secret, and me showing up, sometimes with fresh scars on my face from my unfortunate monthly activities. I couldn't blame her."

"You were family, she shouldn't have kept you from me."

Lupin smiled, "Well, unfortunately that wasn't in the cards. Your aunt had a plan for your life, and I didn't fit in it."

Young Dudley ran around the playground like a fool, while Young Harry had perched himself in the shade beneath the slide and shied away from the other children. "You see, I wanted to show you this memory, just so that you knew that I didn't abandon you. I had always felt so guilty for leaving you with them. I knew that they were your blood family, but it was so hard to leave you with them. I wanted you to know that I tried to be here for you, Harry. Not a day went by that I didn't think about you. From this one, until the day I saw you on that train again. You were always in my thoughts. I want you to know that, Harry," Lupin had explained to him.

Before he could speak, Harry noticed a much younger Remus Lupin coming from across the playground towards the slide that had been shading Young Harry from both the sun and the attention of others. He looked worse than Harry could ever remember seeing him short of the night at the Whomping Willow when Harry was just a third year. "I was, well, I was basically homeless these days," Lupin offered. "I had nowhere to go. I never lasted at a job because they quickly figured out what I was, and I had to move along elsewhere. It was a hard life for me, and it didn't get any easier from here."

Young Harry noticed Lupin from a distance, and they could hear him cry "Moony!" across the playground.

The following sound was a huff from Petunia as she crossed paths with him on his way to Harry. She glared at him and hissed under her breath, "What did I tell you about coming here?!" But then she cut him off before he could answer. "We will not have you messing up his life! He will not be partaking in that nonsense that got my sister killed!" she whispered under her breath heatedly. "You are to stay away from my family before you get him and us killed too with your magic nonsense! Do you understand me?! We will not allow it!"

Lupin let out a ragged breath, "He's all that I have left, Petunia. Lily and James were my only family. Harry is all that's left. I don't have anyone else. I understand you don't want him to be involved with magic, but please, take pity on me."

Petunia looked at him, and then looked at Young Harry who was looking at him so excitedly. She let out a sigh and shook her head, "You may say goodbye to the boy, but then I want you to leave this place. I mean it. I want you to leave him alone forever. You never come back. He will never be a part of that world. Do you understand me?"

"Please don't do this…"

"I'm sorry for you, Lupin. I'm sorry for your loss. But he is my family. He is my blood. And I have to protect him from your world. From what killed my sister. I cannot allow you to be in his life any longer than this goodbye."

Harry looked to the much older Lupin. "This is why you never came back, isn't it? This is why you went away."

"Your aunt was right. You were her family. Did you know that she and your mother had been close once? Your aunt was jealous of what your mother was. She didn't hate her. And then she lost her to all of what we've been dealing with our whole lives. She doesn't know what we went through. She doesn't understand why we're the way that we are. To her, my face is a reminder of the world that stole her sister away, and you were all that was left of her. She was right to send me away. She did love you deep down, Harry."

He let out an angry breath, "I needed you. I needed to know where I came from. Why I was the way that I was. I could've used you in my life."

Lupin shook his head, "You found out the way you were supposed to find out. You became your father's son on your own. I didn't understand why Dumbledore sent you away, but it was the best thing for you. You needed to grow up away from our world. It was your only chance to become who you were meant to be. You're the boy who lived, Harry, but you didn't need to hear that every day of your life. You would've never become the man I know you to be if you had lived any other way, so I wouldn't have it any other way because I will be forever proud of the man you became all on your own..."

"I still would've liked to have had my Uncle Moony, I would've liked to have not been so alone.."

He smiled, "All in good time."

They watched as the younger, more ragged Lupin made his way over to where Young Harry has been excitedly waiting. He knelt down on the ground next to the slide, and Harry whispered to him from beneath the slide, "Moony… Go home…"

As if he needed a reason to cry at this point, Lupin began to cry openly to a confused Harry. "We can't go home, Bud."

Harry looked up confused, "Hmm?"

"This is your home now," he winced. "And I've gotta go away for a bit. Aunt Petunia will take care of you. And you've got your cousin to play with. You'll be ok, Harry. I'll see you somewhere down the road. When the time is right, ok?"

"Moooony…"

He closed his eyes for a moment, "I'm so sorry for everything that has happened, and I'm so sorry I'm leaving, but it's the best thing for you, Harry. Someday you're going to understand that. I'll always be around if you need me, I'll always come back for you. But I have to say goodbye for now, buddy."

Harry opened his arms and whispered bye-bye to Lupin, whom quickly wrapped him up into a hug. Not understanding anything that was happening, he simply cooed that nickname into Lupin's ear, and it just broke everything inside of him. He pulled back and let Harry crawl back under the slide.

Whispering a goodbye and then making his way back towards the street away from the park. Lupin looked back with one last glance, and the tears were evident in his eyes. In that little boy was the last bit of family that he had, the last prospect of a normal life, but he knew that it was time to go. He waited for a car to pass to make it less suspicious, but as soon as it did, Remus Lupin apparated out of Harry Potter's life for the time being.

"I have to admit, I didn't always stay away, of course," the older Lupin confessed. "I just got better at not letting your aunt know that I was around. I bumped into your uncle once. He didn't recognize me at all. I'm not sure that man really ever cared to remember any of us or anything about our lives. I think he was glad to be rid of it all when he found out what had happened. I tried to come back for every birthday. My favorite was the one at the zoo."

"With the python?" Harry laughed.

Lupin grinned, "Your father's son indeed."

They sat there for a long moment. Harry wondered how long it could go on for, actually. He would've given anything for it to have gone on for much longer than it probably could have. But he knew that this Remus Lupin wasn't actually the real Lupin, and that meant he only had so many responses and so much time left. "Why did you do this for me? What made you want to do this? Not that I don't appreciate it, not that it hasn't meant the world to me. But why?"

"Tonks is pregnant, Harry," he smiled. "And if… If I don't make it through this, I would want my child to know why I loved his mother so. And the love that we shared. I would want him to know that he was born of a great love. And it made me realize that you needed to know that you born from an amazing family. And your parents loved each other so dearly. You deserved to know where you came from. There's so much about you that reminds me of myself when I was younger. I had nothing, and nobody. And I met the best friends I could've ever asked for. James and Sirius were like the Ron and Hermione of my lifetime. We had adventures, and we had heart ache, and there was so much love between us all. Your mother would even joke that perhaps there was a twinge of romance between James and Sirius the way I suspected there might've been between those two," he chuckled. "And if I'm going to be gone, you needed to know all of it. You needed to know your family history. One last lesson from your old professor if you could stand it. A lesson that family comes in all different shapes and forms, and you were mine. I couldn't be more proud to have been a part of it. You need to know your story, so you can pass it on, the way I hope that perhaps you'll pass my story down to my own child if I'm not around to do it myself. Do you understand what I mean?"

Harry nodded, "I do."

"Well, hopefully it doesn't come to that of course," he chuckled with a nudge on Harry's arm as the sun began to go down. "Hopefully I'll be kicking around for a long time."

He clenched his jaw, "Yeah. Hopefully."

A few moments later, the sun was gone, and the playground was beginning to drift away as the memory was coming to a close. It was just Lupin and Harry sitting on the bench at this point, in a sort of comfortable silence. "I hope you knew, that I loved you, Moony."

"Oh, of course I knew that, Harry," he smiled as he began to fade away. "We were family after all. I loved you too… Even though I wasn't always around."

As the scene faded away from view, Harry found himself falling back into the attic again. This time, all of the vials were used, and there was nothing more to be seen here. He put each of the vials away and closed the trunk with a sigh and a sniffle. When he began this quest, he wasn't expecting the emotional rollercoaster that had unfolded before his very eyes. He remembered seeing this trunk all those years ago. He had no idea who this strange man was, or the fact that he was among the closest things to a family he would ever experience.

He thanked his lucky stars that he had been, though. For a boy who started out in a cupboard, not knowing anything about the life he was destined to live, he couldn't have been more thankful for the love that had been shared throughout his days. To have seen the bond his father had with his own friends, it made Harry feel honored to have built that kind of bond with those of his own. It meant everything to him that he was able to create his own family the way that they had been able to create their own family. It made him feel even more so that he was the son of James and Lily Potter.

That he had that strength and love in him too. It made him feel confident that he would be able to be a good godfather to Teddy and hopefully someday a father to his own children, not that he and Ginny were exactly in a rush. Teddy was already like a child to them as he spent half the time with them and half the time with his grandmother, but it made him feel optimistic about it all. In order to know where one is going, you have to know where you've been.

Now Harry Potter knew exactly where that was, and he was proud. Never in his life had he been more proud to call himself a Potter than he was just now.

He climbed down the stairs from the attic and made his way to the kitchen where Andromeda was feeding Teddy.

"Were you up there all night?"

He nodded, "I must've passed out." He looked over to Teddy with a grin. "How's this big guy doing?"

"Hungry as a horse, this one," she chuckled as she held the spoon with a tired expression. "Wanna sub in?"

Harry nodded before sitting down across from Teddy. He stirred up his food with the spoon. "What do you think, bud? How do pears sound to you?" Teddy licked his lips hungrily. "Yeah, I think that'll do just the trick," Harry laughed as the pears were quickly devoured.

After a beat, he looked to the ground and smiled.

"You know, your dad used to visit me when I was about your age. I can't wait to tell you about him sometime. How he really was… How he was really the best guy, and the best family I could have ever asked for…"

Author's Note: Well, there's my story! Originally I had a lot more in this story, more characters and plot lines, I ended up scrapping them to streamline the story a bit more! Anyways, let me know what you thought! I know that it's a very popular franchise, so I imagine there will be a lot of opinions. I didn't include much Snape, but I tried to show he was still a good man in there as well. I know that's a controversial aspect of this era. Anyways, make sure to drop me a line and let me know what you thoughts about my version of James and Lily's story! Thanks for reading!