This is undoubtedly the longest of these chapters and by quite a way, but I suppose it makes sense. The previous chapters have touched on important characters but have all been from the perspective of bit-players in the original universe. This takes a relatively central character and whilst the brokenness is no more real here than with any of the others, it is perhaps that little bit more raw, a little more personal.

It goes without saying that this is dark and potentially triggering. This is a fic examining the shifting shards that are left behind after a suicide. The betrayal, the anger, the fear and the loss. The cries unheard and the tears shed alone.

Try not to cut yourself.

Chapter 6; A Life In A Chest

Life never ceases to amaze me. I have lost count of the number of times over the years that I have truly believed things couldn't possibly get any worse. Life delights in proving me wrong, time and time and time again. At five years old, sat in St. Mungo's crying helplessly because the pain was unbearable and yet the adults stood around with grim faces, talking quietly and seriously around me. The look on my father's face as he told me that I had become a monster, the very thing he had declaimed to the Ministry. The fear on my mother's face each turning of the moon. And yet, the world was still not done with me. Despite all these years of being prodded and poked by experts and healers, there is still no cure for lycanthropy. There never will be, at least not in my lifetime.

Or that terrible Halloween night, the night I lost all of my closest friends in one foul swoop, or so I thought at the time. Lily and James betrayed to the death, brutally murdered in front of their baby son, only a year old. Sirius the betrayer, the traitor; sentenced to life in Azkaban for his heinous crimes against the Potters in the name of the Dark Lord. And Pettigrew, the rat, blown to smithereens at the end of his best friend's wand as he tackled him in grief fuelled fury. But even that wasn't enough. Even having my entire life torn apart, my only friends – the only people who truly knew me and loved me for what and who I am – ripped from me in the blink of an eye, that was not punishment enough.

By my distrust and my inaction, my only remaining true friend lay rotting miserably surrounded by soul sucking demons for over a decade. If I had stopped and used the brain I had been blessed with, I could have reasoned that Sirius had to be innocent of the betrayal at least. In truth, I wouldn't have put it past Sirius to blow Pettigrew off the face of the earth in his fury; in fact, he nearly did exactly that not all too many years ago. But I allowed myself to be blinded by my grief and my anger and so I railed at the world for its unfairness as I slunk away to hide forgotten whilst an innocent man lay in Azkaban. Twelve years we lost. And two years was all I was granted with him. It could have been different. It should have been so very different.

Now? Now, less than a year after the death of my best friend… less than a year after I watched the last of the true Marauders fall through a veil of death… less than a year after I held his struggling godson in my arms, fighting the boy to stop him leaping straight after the only family he had ever chosen… It's been less than a year. There should be some kind of rule, some kind of basic decency in the world that means the foundations of life world shouldn't be torn apart more than once. When tragedy strikes, you should have a chance to find your feet in the newly shifting landscape before the next quake strikes you down. Less than a year and yet tomorrow, less than twenty four hours away from now, I have to watch the only son of my closest friends be lowered into the ground in a wooden box.

Minerva dropped the boy's chest off this morning before heading off to some meeting of the Order or another, whatever they have left to say. Since then, I've just been sat here, sat with a bottle of mead, willing myself to open the thrice damned chest and get this over with. Somehow, the act of opening that chest and looking through Harry's belongings will make this feel read and it simply cannot be real. Lily and James' son cannot be dead. The Harry I taught to create a fully corporeal patronus before the end of his third year cannot be dead. It simply cannot be true that I will never see that magnificent stag soar through the air again, that I will never watch Lily's bright eyes light up in excitement, enthusiasm, pride or just sheer joy again. If I refuse to accept it, then it cannot be, it will not be true.

If I close my eyes and will hard enough then this entire nightmare will be turned back and it won't be real. Except when I open my eyes again, I'm still sitting here. The chest is still here and the remorseless ache in my chest that hasn't left me since I heard the news, that is still here too. I am here and Harry, that wonderful, selfless, bloody idiotic boy; my Harry, my cub, is lying still and cold in a box. This isn't going to go away. Harry isn't going to come back. I am now the last of the Marauders. But am I a true Marauder at all? Some days the answer seems clearer than others. Some days I know I am not worthy to wear this mantle.

I thought it was difficult to accept Sirius' death. There was no body, nothing to bury, nothing to weep over and all the time I kept expecting him to saunter back into the room. His hair would be all over the place and that half-cocked grin would be on his face as he yelled, "GOT YA GOOD THIS TIME, REMUS MY MAN!" And of course I'd engulf him in my arms just before I hit him and hexed him sideways for putting us all through this hell, only to hug his again. And then I'd drag him to Hogwarts by the ear, berating him the entire way, and pull Harry out of class and watch those emerald eyes light up and… Harry. There's that stab of pain through my chest again, that tight band of constriction that makes it difficult to breathe, the sideways flip of my stomach and the wave of nausea that would send me running to the bathroom if only I could trust my legs. Harry. Harry James Potter.

With that thought, I almost force the lid of the chest open, propelled by grief and anguish and waves of guilt that don't quite make it into anger. The catch comes off effortlessly, well looked after over the years and the first thing I see makes my heart catch in my chest. I can't stop the tears that fill my eyes and drip uninterrupted down my face at the sight of that shimmering, silver material nestled so carefully at the top. I don't need to pull it out to know what it is. James' Cloak of Invisibility. It doesn't look a day older than when I last saw James himself wear it; no frayed edges or tattered corners. The tears continue to fall as I reach into the chest to lightly touch the silky smooth material, before running it through my fingers, watching as it slide across my hand, sections of skin turning invisible beneath it.

I can't hold back the desperate sob that escapes from my chest and I find myself clutching at the cloak as though it could bring my cub back to life somehow. If I'd have been told some twenty odd years ago that one day, I would be in possession of James' Invisibility Cloak, that it would belong to me, I would have laughed aloud in sheer delight. I would never in a million years have imagined the cost incurred in gaining such a frivolous childhood dream. I could never have envisaged the rawness of the anguish or the unbelievable depths of loss and despair I would feel in my ownership. Such things simply cannot be imagined until you experience them, and that is not a horror I could wish on anyone, much less one in the first blooms of youth.

"Are you all right, Remus?"

It's a mark of my abject distraction that I hadn't sensed Tonks at all until she spoke. Under any other circumstances, my senses would have caught her long before she even entered the room. I should have heard the light tread of her footsteps on the wooden panelling or smelled the slight florally sweet fragrance of the conditioner she has used. There are very few benefits to lycanthropy, but at the very least nobody has been able to sneak up on me since my childhood. Even when everything is silent and you think you are moving like a ghost, I can hear the slightest of inhales and exhalations. I can sense the thrumming of your heartbeat and smell the slightly tangy sense of your tension. It has been a long time indeed since anyone managed to make me jump, but Nymphadora manages it.

"Sorry, stupid question," she says wearily, sitting down beside me in the kitchen of this old house full of memories and negativity. Yet it is genuine concern that I can see in her eyes as she looks up at me. "Minerva mentioned that she had dropped Harry's chest off with you. I thought… I thought I'd check in on you. See if I could do anything."

"Can you bring him back?" I almost don't recognise the voice that finally emerges from my throat in a dry rasp originating somewhere from the very pit of my chest. They are the first words I have spoken since Minerva came with the news. There hasn't been much reason to speak. Now, it's a rasping, unfamiliar growl and Nymphadora staggers back from the force of it. There is no hiding behind the gentle courtesies, the full force of my helpless grief underlies my tone. "Can you manage that? Can you do that?"

"I'm sorry, Remus," she says quietly. "I really am sorry."

"I thought not." I laugh bitterly, a laugh that is more of a sob than anything else. Like my voice it is rough and hoarse and I can hear the wolf in it; the lone wolf baying at the moon. "So why ask?"

I regret the words almost before they leave my mouth, certainly before I see the shadow of hurt cross her face. It's that hurt that reminds me. She isn't Nymphadora; a tool of the Order. She is Tonks, and she came here of her own free will. Her hair flushes as red as her face as she stands to leave.

"No. I'm sorry." I admit wearily, still gazing at the silky smooth material between my fingers. "I shouldn't have said that. You didn't deserve that. I don't know what came over me…"

"It's all right, Remus," Tonks replies with a wan smile, her hair lightening to a gentle auburn as she speaks. "Nobody can blame you. We all say thinks we don't mean when…"

"That doesn't excuse me," I interrupt wearily, passing the bottle across the table to her. I wave at the chest in front of me; that three foot box. "A whole life. The life of a vibrant, strong and caring boy, so loved by so many of us. A box. That box holds all that remains of my cub. James and Lily's son, Sirius's reason for living. James, Lily, Sirius and now Harry… all gone."

"I don't know what to say Remus," Tonks admits, pouring herself a glass of mead. I don't have the energy to wonder where she found the glass. "I don't even know if there is anything I can say. I know how much you cared for Harry. How much you cared for both of them. I can't imagine…"

"An Invisibility Cloak passed down through four generations of Potters," I interrupt her wittering grimly. "Four generations, only to end up in the hands of a mutt of a werewolf…"

"You're no mutt." It is Tonks' turn to interrupt me, her voice sharp, as I place the cloak gently onto the table and reach down into the chest once more. "James never thought of you so. Neither did Lily or Sirius. Certainly Harry didn't. They loved you, each and every one of them…"

There's a deep indrawn breath as though she were to continue, but instead she closes her mouth sharply at the sound of my bitter snort. Running my hand lovingly across the cloak once more, I reach down into the chest again and this time my hand closes on a folded piece of parchment that I more than recognise. That snort turns into a pained gasp. I don't just recognise this scrap of parchment, I spent many hours creating it. More than anybody else left alive, I know how it works. I remember the research that went into bringing it to life, the long hours of forcing Sirius to make good use of his excellent cartography skills despite his lamentable attention span. The outright bribery and occasional threats. James' Homonculous Charm and my very own Tabula Charm, a piece of magic I had pieced together from numerous historical texts and had not the courage to admit to my fellows quite how astonished I was when it worked.

The Marauders Map, a piece of stunning magical craftsmanship if I do say so myself… and I do. The same Marauders Map that I confiscated from Harry less than three years ago. The same Marauders Map that Sirius, in his typically ill-considered and juvenile fashion, somehow jinxed to repel Severus Snape. I never did figure out how he managed that. Another opportunity lost. Despite my best efforts at control, my tears once more spill over and I let out a sound that is somewhere between a sob and a howl. It's a noise torn from the very centre of my soul and it releases something within me, a barrier I have worked so very hard to keep standing. The Marauders Map, the final link between Harry and James, between father and son, much like the Invisibility Cloak, somehow left in my frail and trembling hands.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," I choke out, my tears falling like drops of rain onto the parchment.

"What…?" Tonks begins, only to gasp aloud as the map comes to life before us, the spidery lines tracking out in Sirius's distinctive hand. "Merlin's balls! That's amazing!"

Before I know what is happening, the now orange haired and highly excitable Auror has reached her hand out and snatched the map from my grip. I bite down on the growl that bubbles up in my throat, although my lip twists slightly regardless. My property. Mine. I fight down the irrational rage that threatens to overtake me. Thankfully, Tonks is far too fixated on the wonders of the map to notice my momentary lapse of stiffly held control. Her eyes scan over the moving dots hungrily, soaking in as much as her mind can hold.

"Minerva… Flitwick… Snape…" she murmurs to herself, her hair almost flashing in its luminescence. How that girl passed her stealth exams I will never know. She doesn't just wear her heart on her sleeve, she quite literally advertises it in every fibre of her being. "Even Albus himself! Everyone is here! Where in Merlin's name did you get this from?" Her last question is clearly aimed at me, even though her eyes never leave the parchment in front of her. "What I'd have given for this when I was a wee squirt!"

"We made it," I respond, a strange rasp in my throat as memories flood back of the long weeks and months spent poring over this document. I can't help a small yet sincere smile at the sheer disbelief and awe in her face. "James, myself, Sirius… and I suppose the traitorous rat helped slightly. He always did have a knack for ferreting out the hidden corners and hidey-holes. Peeves helped us too actually, believe it or not. We were buying him dung-bombs for weeks afterwards."

"No wonder you lot are the stuff of school legend!" Tonks almost gushes with undisguised excitement. "I can't imagine the amount of chaos I could have caused if I'd have had this in my youthful arsenal!"

"I'm rather tempted to gift it to Filius, actually," I remark dully, not taking anywhere near as much joy as I might once have at the look of horrified astonishment that suffuses Tonks's face. Without thinking I pull Harry's Firebolt from the chest and run my hands down its smooth length, feeling yet another stab of pain as images of Harry flash through my mind. The way he'd soar through the air with such joyous abandon, his hair flipping across his face, constantly in his eyes but somehow not impairing his vision; how similar he looked to James, in fact up in the air you wouldn't have been able to tell the two apart. "It would likely make the man's century…"

"But you can't…" Tonks begins, but abruptly closes her mouth with an almost audible snap. Strange how grief puts a barrier around you. Only last month she would have had no hesitation at all about tearing my hide into tiny little strips for such a goodie-goodie-two-shoes suggestion. Now, she is silent, fearful of upsetting me any further. As though anything could possibly cause as much hurt as Harry's death has already caused.

"Sirius bought him this, you know," I muse thoughtfully, placing a jar of Fleetwoods High Finish Handle Police, a pair of silver Tail-Twig Clippers and a small brass broom compass down on the table. "He told me all about it that last dreadful year in this damned house. He was so pleased with himself, like a child who has been left unaccompanied in Zonko's. He used to love watching Harry fly… it was so stupid; despite the dangers, he'd sneak into Hogwarts as Padfoot every opportunity he could. It was one of his favourite pastimes. He just used to sit and watch Harry fly from the bushes."

I clear my throat brusquely, trying to shift the blockage that seems to have become lodged there.

"You'd have thought Albus would have fixed that minor snag in school security, but then again, I had always assumed that Hogwarts would have an alarm of some sort to alert staff to a student in mortal danger. Particularly after the Chamber business." That bitter laugh forces its way out of my throat once more. "Wrong on both counts. Wrong again."

"Remus, you know…" Tonks hesitates before continuing in a rush. "You know this isn't your fault? You didn't cause Harry to…"

"Isn't it?" My voice is harsh and guttural as I pull another sheet of parchment out of the chest. I look at it in confusion. It could easily be a toddler's artistic representation of the Boy-Who-Lived, at least I assume that it is meant to represent Harry from the lurid scar and what I looks like a Weasley sweater with a shaky 'H' on it. It's that detail that assures me it isn't fan mail; after all, there are few enough people who saw Harry wearing that jumper. I screw the picture up, but flatten it back out instinctively. It was important enough to Harry. "It isn't my fault? Is that what you're trying to say?"

"You can't…" Tonks begins again, but this time I wave a hand at her sharply. Despite the rudeness of my gesture, or perhaps because of it, she tails off into silence.

"I blamed Harry," I try to hide the break in my voice, but the pity in Tonks's eyes tells me that I don't succeed. Blinking rapidly to try to conceal the shameful tears in my eyes, I continue, looking down at that awful painting as I speak. "If Harry hadn't been so foolhardy, so reckless, so damned self-sacrificing and impulsive, if he hadn't gone to the Ministry of Magic that day… Sirius, the one true friend left to me, would have been alive. I blamed Harry. I tried not to let him see it, but… he knew. How could he not know?"

My voice trembles, cracks, shatters and I find myself holding my head in my hands, desperately trying to control the wrenching sobs that threaten to overtake me. When the child I had sworn to protect with my life needed me the most, I was not there for him. When James and Lily's son needed the closest thing he had left to a father figure, there was no one to stand by his side. I blamed the boy for his godfather's death and he knew it, even if I never said the words out loud. If he'd just learned Occlumency like he was damn well supposed to, if he'd only given Severus a chance to act on his words, if he had trusted in Sirius… if, if, if…"

None of the ifs or buts or maybes will bring Sirius back. They never would. None of them will bring Harry back. They are both gone.

My hands rummage in the chest again, if only as a way to avoid seeing the pity and the disgust that must be stamped across Tonk's face. My fingers close tightly first around a small metal badge, and I squeeze it tightly in my palm, allowing the sharp pain to distract me from the roaring agony rising in my chest. And as I relax my fist, my fingers brush against another cold metal surface. The first, a badge worn both by Harry and his father in our day; a badge of pride on the Quidditch fields and beyond, a testimony to their skill, their talent and their effort. The second is unmistakably Miss Granger's work; I can't imagine any other student that age managing to enchant an object so unbelievably well.

"The Protean Charm," I say quietly, turning the coin over in my fingers gently. "A perfect Protean Charm, repeated Merlin knows how many times and perfect each time…"

"What is it?" Tonks asks in obvious bewilderment. "It just looks like a galleon…"

"And therein lies the genius," I say softly, rubbing the coin gently as I speak. "One of Miss Granger's finer moments, I think anybody would have to admit. Although once more an example of a situation that should never have been permitted to escalate that far. I don't know who was worse, Albus Dumbledore for running such unbelievably poor damage control or Fudge for being well… the malfunctioning gibbon that he is."

"You can hardly blame Dumbledore for being removed from his own school by that evil toad-faced hag!" Tonks exclaims, her eyes wide, looking for all the world like I had kicked a puppy rather than merely questioned a figurehead. "He couldn't have foreseen what happened…"

"On Merlin's tangled beard…" The words come out as a bellow and Tonks shrinks back at the repressed fury lurking below the surface of my tone; waiting, bubbling, stewing. "Why not!?"

The two metal tokens strike the wall with a distinctly unsatisfactory twang as I stand to turn and pace restlessly across the room, ignoring the look of horror on the young auror's face. I fight the rising tide of almost unbearable rage that surges through me, but I can't hide the snarl in my voice or the hot and violent anger on my face. Tonks just stares at me, the beginnings of fear starting to dawn on her face at whatever she sees in my eyes.

"Why in the name of all that is good and right and proper, why not?" I demand again, gesticulating sharply. "He's Albus Bloody Dumbledore! The Leader of all that is light! Why did he stand by and let Fudge and his band of baboons meddle in Hogwarts? Why didn't he stand firm and fight for what he knew to be right? Why were a group of students, a rag-tag group of children, left to lead a rebellion, forced to band together in secret and learn what should have been taught them as their right in dusty corners and hidden nooks? Why Nymphadora? Why didn't Albus do something when he had the chance? Why did he allow himself to be made powerless? Why did he let them chase him out of his own castle!? Why didn't he see it coming!?"

And in the background of course are all the questions I do not dare to voice, for fear that if I do, I will be unable to stem the flood of emotions that will be awakened. Why didn't Albus or Minerva or somebody, anybody, notice just how badly the boy was struggling? Why was he left alone, with only teenagers around him as support? Why wasn't he offered professional help? How was this allowed to happen? How in Merlin's name could everyone have been so blind?

Of course, I have to include myself in that assessment. But it's far easier to expend my fury on Albus rather than myself. It's not as if I won't spend long hours awake doing exactly that anyway.

"This is Albus we are talking about!" I realise my hands are shaking, and clench them tightly. "How did he miss this!?"

"Because he's not perfect?" Tonks says the words quietly, but somehow they ring in the enclosed space. "Because he is one man and he isn't omnipotent and he can't see everything and he was trying to lead an illegal resistance group in a country wide war whilst the Ministry stuck their thumbs up their backsides and whistled merrily? Because sometimes he has no choice but to trust other people to be his eyes and his ears, his hands and his feet? Because we are those people and we failed?"

Like pebbles dropped into a stream, displacing the water just by falling and creating ripples that expand and reverberate, Tonks's words drop into my subconscious. They force me to confront the reality I have been endeavouring to avoid. The reality I have always known but could not bring myself to think, let alone to say out loud. Even if Albus were Merlin himself, he still wouldn't be able to be everywhere, to see everything, to know all that passes for knowledge in those hallowed halls of Hogwarts. Yes, he should have seen. Without a shadow of a doubt, he should have seen how close my precious cub was to shattering and falling to pieces.

He should have seen.

But so should Minerva, so should Severus, so should Filius and Hagrid and Poppy and Horace. So should I. But so engrossed in my own misery and grief was I, that I failed the one person who needed me. The one I should have protected with every fibre of my being. I should have seen, I should have reacted, I should have been there.

"You can't blame Dumbledore, Remus," Tonks continues softly, pity and concern warring in her expression as she looks at me. "He's devastated. McGonagalll, Arthur Weasley, even Snape. They are all devastated. But perhaps Dumbledore most of all. But he's a wizard, Remus, not a god. He can't be everywhere, know everything, see everyone. He just can't. And the loss of Harry… I saw him today, Remus. It's eating him alive. It's killing him."

I don't react to her dramatic turns of phrase, instead continuing to look bleakly into the chest that holds all that remains of my cub. Books, in various states of disarray; some clearly well-loved and falling apart at the binding, others virtually untouched and pristine. Clothing, neatly folded in a way that almost hides the careless creases left by the day to day abuse of a teenage boy; Minerva's work, if I don't miss my guess. His wand. I reach into the chest and pick it out of the folds of clothing it has been nestled in. Eleven inches, holly, phoenix feather. It reverberates in my hands as though ringing an echo of my own loss, my own grief.

Can wands mourn? The deep sense of loss that I am getting from this stick of wood, thin and supple, disquiets me more than I can say. It all but trembles in my hands with it and I cannot think of another word to describe the sensation but grieving. It reaches, searches… pines. For Harry. For my cub. I can almost feel it searching me, delving into my magical core and finding me wanting. I am not Harry. I am not its wizard. The wand chooses the wizard, Ollivander always says. And it doesn't understand why the very heart of it has gone away. It doesn't understand why I am not Harry. Because Harry, the wizard with whom it shares its very lifeblood is gone.

Never have I felt such a connection with a wand that is not my own. I feel it as it trembles in my shaking hands. Still searching, still desperately reaching. Until it goes dead between my fingers. The sudden absence of sensation is shocking and I gasp. I look down at it blankly, not comprehending what has happened. Waving it sharply, I mutter an incantation, ignoring Tonks's shocked protest, but there is nothing. No spark, no light, no energy. I suddenly realise what I knew instinctively; the wand is dead. It is merely an inert stick of wood. There may as well be no magical core hidden within it. Because I am not Harry. Because Harry is gone. I didn't know wands could do that.

"Remus, whst!?" Tonks gasps as I slam the wand against my knee, winces at the unmistakable sound of a wand snapping. "No!"

"It's gone," I say hollowly, looking at the tufts of ref feather I can see poking from the broken ends of the wood, such thin and brittle wood. A wizard's lifeblood. "He's gone."

Finally, the tears break uncontrollably and I sub as though I were a cub once more. Utterly unrestrained, the tears match my heartfelt anguish. My chest heaves, my shoulders shake. I cry unashamedly, almost forgetting my company as I pound the table in unimaginable rage, lift my head to the sky and howl, a mournful, empty sound of desolation.

It is the scent of flowers that enfolds me. Rose petals, ylang ylang, petunia and… and lily. Lily. I feel arms enfolding me, so gentle, so breakable. I feel the soft brush of breath of breath at my ear and the silky sweep of hair on my cheek. I feel the reverberations in the air even as I hear Tonks's gentle words.

"You are not alone, Remus."