All too soon, the time came for Remus to leave Peter's house and return home. "Did you have a good time?" Remus' father asked as he led him away from the house.

"Absolutely!" said Remus. "It was brilliant!"

"Good," said his father. "Er, Remus. Your mother's feeling a bit unwell right now, so I think it's best if we give her some time alone. What do you say we go to Diagon Alley and get your books? Your letter came while you were out!"

"Sure!" said Remus, who had been excited about this for ages. "Is Mum okay?"

"She's fine. Just needs some time to process. So... would you like to see your letter?"

"Of course!" said Remus. He took the letter in his hands and scanned it quickly. "Yes! The Defense teacher is normal! We've got Practical Defense, Year Three!"

"You also have a couple of books on curses," said his father, grabbing Remus' hand. There was a crack, and then Remus and his father were standing in a secluded corner of Diagon Alley. "And I think Practical Defense covers some... well, some Dark creatures. This might be an uncomfortable year for you."

"Well, third year's the year that we learn about those things," said Remus. "I'm sure it'll be fine. I mean, Practical Defense isn't by one of the Dark creature authors that Professor Questus liked, but I think he only liked two people."

"What do you mean?"

"Apollo Mannaro and Alexander Adamson. He liked them, and they were werewolf experts."

"Oh, right. And the last one didn't even write books—he wrote newspaper and magazine articles."

"And speeches."

"How many did he make you listen to?"

Remus rolled his eyes. "Twenty-something."

Remus' father smiled, eyes slightly misty. Remus was alarmed at the sudden change in mood and decided to omit Professor Questus from future conversation. He could almost hear Questus' voice in his ear, telling him that it was stupid and annoying to avoid talking about sensitive subjects, but Remus ignored the voice as best he could.

"Guess what, Dad?" he said instead. "James is going to be in all my elective classes! Peter and Sirius are taking Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, plus Peter's taking Muggle Studies. Sirius is only taking two electives. Peter didn't want to take Muggle Studies, but his mother's super strict about a rigorous course load. We'll all be in Care of Magical Creatures together, though, so that'll be fun, and…"

"You're taking Care of Magical Creatures?" said Remus' father, interrupting Remus' incessant rambling.

Remus hadn't wanted to mention Questus again, but he felt it was necessary. "Er… yeah. Professor Questus told me that Professor Kettleburn would be accepting. Of, you know. Of my condition. He said that, even if some magical creatures are scared of me, Kettleburn will find a way to accommodate… and also that Care of Magical Creatures is an important class. Besides, my other options are Divination and Muggle Studies. I don't think I need to take Muggle Studies, and Divination is—in Professor Questus' words—bogus."

Remus' father shook his head in disbelief. "Remus, you probably only should have taken two electives. You'll be in the Hospital Wing for an average of three days a month—"

"More time to study."

"Don't you want to spend time with your friends?"

"I can do both."

"I was hoping that you'd take two electives and then use the free period to get a short check-up in the Hospital Wing..."

"Dad! Did you really think that I would do that voluntarily?"

"Er... no. I suppose not. And I support your decision. I just worry about you."

"Yeah, I know."

"But I know you'll be fine. Now, let's go get your books, yes?"

Remus nodded happily and grasped his father's hand, not even caring that he was thirteen years old and far too mature for hand-holding.

"And then James threw the rubber ball, hit the spider, and killed it on impact! But Ms. Pettigrew heard the thump and thought that someone had gotten hurt, so she came in, and she saw the dead spider and screamed. 'What on earth is going on here?' she said, and then Sirius said, 'It was bugging us, that's all,' but he couldn't even get the last word out properly because he was laughing so hard, and then James hit him over the head with the ball, even though it had spider guts all over it, and then Ms. Pettigrew told us to go outside and play," babbled Remus. His ice-cream was melting, but he really wanted to finish detailing every second of his visit before he started eating it.

"Mm-hm," said his father, whose ice-cream was half gone already.

"And then Sirius and Peter and James and I took the spider outside and held a very dramatic funeral—Sirius knows a lot of sad songs—and then—" Remus stopped abruptly. He'd told himself that he wouldn't talk about Professor Questus, and he'd already broken that promise once. But… "Is Professor Questus going to have a funeral?" he asked. "I was wondering about that."

"Oh. Erm, no, Remus. He's not."

"Why?"

"Do you really think he would want that?"

Remus thought about funerals (well, what he imagined a funeral to be; he'd never attended one). He thought about sappy speeches and memories and songs and crying and things. If Questus had been there, he'd probably be sitting in the back and grumbling the whole time about how woefully insincere and trite it all was. "No," Remus said, laughing a little. "No, you're right. He'd hate that."

"I asked Dumbledore the same thing, you know, and he said that he didn't think attendance would be high enough to warrant a funeral. Questus had no family; no friends... he really only had the Hogwarts professors and the three of us, and most of the Hogwarts professors wouldn't have been very happy to be there."

"Oh."

"Besides, the funeral industry in that general area is… swamped."

A shadow came across Remus' father's face, and he stood up suddenly. "I'm going to the toilet, Remus. Stay here, all right? I'll be back in less than fifteen minutes."

"Okay," said Remus.

He sat alone at the table, eating his ice-cream cone. He felt overwhelmed with guilt.

He wanted everyone to be happy, and he wanted to make things as easy on his parents and friends as he possibly could. But how could he solve this? There was no way to justify anything that had happened, and Remus was just so sick of all the sadness permeating throughout his house. But, at the same time, he felt guilty for wanting it to go away. Questus had helped Remus so much, so he deserved a little bit of remembrance, didn't he? Why did Remus want to skip over this step entirely? And why wasn't he overwhelmingly sad about it yet?

He waited.

He wondered if it would be better if he mentioned Questus more instead of less… or less instead of more… or perhaps if he found a balance and only mentioned him three times a week. And the town? Should he mention the town? Or maybe talking about it more or less didn't really help. Maybe only time would help.

Remus remembered what Questus had told him about his own home life after his sister had died. He'd said that time didn't really heal it all. He'd said that his house had been judgmental and weepy up until the time that he'd cut contact with his parents and left for Auror training. Remus couldn't imagine life being like this for years. He just wanted everyone to be happy again.

Remus gazed out the parlor window. He was so sick of being sad.

His father returned about fifteen minutes later, as promised, and Remus didn't say anything about his red-rimmed eyes. Together, they walked through Diagon Alley, picked up every book that Remus needed for the following year (plus an interesting-looking one about the history of butterfly nets), and did not speak of Fiendfyre, Questus, or the painfully evident fact that they money that they were spending had likely come from what Questus had left them.

Remus found ancient runes to be fascinating, and he ended up reading the entire textbook in three days. "It's just like a language!" he told his mother. "If I learn it, then I can read ancient accounts of wizardry and old spells in their original language! It's not at all like English, but I reckon I can get the hand of the vocabulary with a little bit of studying. I've already made flashcards."

"That's wonderful, dear," said Remus' mother.

"Yeah, and we were also assigned a verb dictionary and a separate noun dictionary. There are so many words. And the conjugation patterns are different from English or Latin or even Welsh. It was like… a separate language made up just for wizards. They believed that the words had magical properties, but most people nowadays say they didn't—still, it's interesting historically. There's a basic accepted pronunciation, too. Maybe James and I could speak it to each other. Then no one else would know what we're saying, and we could talk about almost anything!" Remus threw his arms out, trying to get more of a reaction from his mother. She only smiled.

"That might be fun," she said. Remus waited for more, but she simply returned to her coffee.

Well, there was no chance of cheering her up. Remus sat down next to her and asked a different sort of question. "Mum, remember that job you got as a Muggle schoolteacher? You were supposed to start this summer."

She nodded slowly. "I had to quit. It's too far to drive there every day."

"Oh."

"Now tell me a bit about Arithmancy," she said. She wasn't happy, exactly, but at least she'd been listening to Remus. Perhaps his chattering was helping a bit.

"It's like maths, but with magic and future-telling," said Remus. "I think. I don't get it, exactly. I'm going to have to memorize loads of formulas and number charts, but I like memorizing things, so I think I'll be okay. And James says that…"

Remus went to Peter's house again a little while later. Peter had a small shed, and even though it reminded Remus a bit too much of the shed that he had transformed in just a few short weeks earlier, it was the perfect place for the Marauders to stay when they wanted to talk about things that Ms. Pettigrew ought not overhear.

"Did you read that last letter from John yet?" asked James. It was rather dark in the shed, and Remus wondered how much his friends could see with their inferior night vision.

"No," said Remus, hugging his knees. "It's… the last thing, you know? I'm saving it for the right time."

"Why not now?"

Remus thought about that. Why not then? What if the letter was, in fact, the magic thing that would help him to actually feel something and then move on? There was no time like the present, and Remus sort of did want to open it around his friends. "Sure," he said, pulling the letter out of his pocket.

Sirius made a face. "You carry the letter around in your pocket?"

"Well, I never know when the right time may strike."

"That's so weird, mate."

Remus smiled. "It's hard to open this with gloves on. Mind helping me out, Peter?"

Peter nodded, undid the string around the parchment, and handed it back to Remus. Remus hesitated for a bit before flattening it out on his knee. "May I read it aloud?" he asked.

"Knock yourself out, mate," said James. "I'm curious, anyhow. You haven't read us many of his letters. It's kinda weird to think about you and John being pen-friends."

"I guess," said Remus. "Anyway." He took a deep breath. "Lupin—" he read, and then started blinking very quickly.

"Well, don't stop there," prompted Sirius.

Remus cleared his throat, but he didn't continue. He kept blinking, staring at the familiar curve of the L and the shaky handwriting and the dash after his last name that was always longer than it needed to be.

"Are you… okay?" asked James, but Remus didn't respond—all of a sudden, he was crying and clinging to Peter's arm, who looked altogether uncomfortable.

"Ah," said James. "I guess that did it, then."

Remus nodded. "W-would y-y-y-ou hold the-the… I mean, I d-don't w-w-want to…."

"Yeah, I can hold the letter," said James. "I'll just put it in your purse."

"It's n-n-not a purse!" protested Remus. "It's a—"

"It's a bag. I know." James took the letter. Remus heard a rustling noise, and then James was hugging him and Peter, and then Sirius was there, too, and the next thing Remus knew, Sirius and Peter were leaving because it had been twenty minutes already, and James was still there and he was crying, too.

"Are you crying?" whispered Remus. It was odd, being just the two of them in the shed.

"No," said James quickly. And then, "Maybe a little."

"You're such a baby."

"Shut up. You're crying, too."

"Star Quidditch players don't cry, James."

"Neither do bloodthirsty werewolves."

"Hallelujah, I'm cured," said Remus, and then they were sort of laughing. "I really do want to read that letter," said Remus, wiping his eyes. He was glad that it was so dark in the shed, because he was sure that he looked incredibly pitiful and ugly.

"Here, I'll get it for you." Remus heard rustling once more as James removed the letter from Remus' bag-not-purse. James handed the letter back to Remus and then wiped his spectacles on his shirt. "They're all wet with tears," he explained. "Your tears, I mean. Not mine. Because I wasn't crying."

"Right, because my tears managed to get on the inside of your spectacles."

"Probably another side effect of being a werewolf. Flying tears."

Remus giggled and then looked down at the letter. "Do you still want me to read it aloud? I might not make it through."

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Okay. Erm… all right. Here I go."

Lupin—

Glad to hear that your exams went well, though I'm not sure what else you expected. I'm not feeling terribly well at the moment, so I'm afraid that this won't be a very long letter. I'm fine, obviously, in case you were thinking about panicking. I'm just a bit tired. Your parents are acting like I'm dying or something, though—I suppose you know how that is. I hate pity.

I am highly impressed that your friends have all mastered the Patronus, and I'm not surprised that Potter managed to do it only after winning the Quidditch Cup. That boy really is something else. I managed a Patronus only once. I'd just passed Auror training. I never did it again. Couldn't even catch what animal it was, but my roommates reckoned that it was a donkey. Still don't know whether that was an honest evaluation or if they were just teasing me. It was hard to tell with them sometimes.

There was more, of course, and Remus managed to get through the whole thing with only a couple of pauses here and there. But the thing that hurt most about the letter was that there was nothing notable. There was nothing new. It was painfully Questus-like, yes, but it wasn't closure. There was no indication that Questus thought he'd be dying soon (of course there wasn't), there was no type of goodbye, and there was no ending, happy or otherwise.

There were a couple of offhand werewolf jokes that almost made Remus chuckle in spite of it all. There were some teasing remarks that nearly pushed Remus to write a pseudo-angry reply, just for the heck of it. There were some more anecdotes about Remus' parents, and there was even one about Clementine. There was a little story about Voldemort the cat, and Questus had, humorously, omitted mentioning that he was talking about the cat until the very end. James' expression while Remus read the phrase "Voldemort got into the cupboard yesterday and ate all the breakfast cereal" almost made the whole thing enjoyable.

Tell your friends I said hello. Good luck on Friday. See you this summer. Insert any other platitudinous pleasantry that you like here.

—J.Q.

P.S. Care of Magical Creatures, Study of Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy next year. I won't settle for anything less.

Remus finished the letter, an air of sadness following his words and hanging in the air. Neither James nor Remus spoke for a very long time.

"I have handkerchiefs in my bag," said Remus after a while, "if the Great James Potter Manly Quidditch Star needs them, of course."

The Great James Potter Manly Quidditch Star, it turned out, did.

That night, Remus and his parents cried for three hours while they ate a half-hearted supper of beans and toast.

Remus realized that there was really no point in trying to help his parents feel happy—not when there was benefit in feeling sad for a while. Professor Questus had left them a wireless, and they managed to listen to a short news program while Remus' father tried to rearrange the furniture in the sitting room. The second the reporter mentioned a murder, however, the wireless shut off before Remus could even register the word "murder".

"The couch isn't going to fit," said Remus' father. "I'm very sorry, Remus. I can put it in your room, if you'd like. Or the second bedroom? Where would you like it?"

"I don't care," said Remus dully. "We don't have to put it anywhere. We can just leave it somewhere else for storage, and I'll heal in my room."

"If you're sure," said Remus' father, frowning.

"So what are we doing for the sitting room?"

"Well, we got two armchairs from John Questus' house, and we have two from our house. That's enough for the three of us, plus one visitor. The only problem is…." He started blinking rapidly, and Remus' eyes felt hot. "The only problem is the constant memories, I suppose. Is that all right with you?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

"Hope?"

She nodded. "It'll be all right." Then, to Remus' surprise, she smiled. "Wouldn't John hate it if he learned that his only legacy is all that ugly furniture that he constantly complained about?"

Remus laughed, utterly surprised at his mother's comment. "He didn't seem to hate the armchairs, but yeah, I guess. Where are we putting those curtains?"

"Dad and I were thinking about putting them in our room. We'll give the horrible pink blanket to you—"

"And the rock?"

"Oh, Dumbledore won't be able to give that back, no matter how hard he tries. We sent it back by owl post. I do hope it didn't kill the owl."

The Lupins had always dealt with difficult situations with humor. In past years, it had stemmed from avoidance and fear, manifesting itself in a maladaptive coping strategy for which Professor Questus had constantly called them out. But now, it was more or less intertwined with a healthy grieving process, and Remus felt much better for it.

They weren't only grieving the loss of John Questus, who had become an integral part of their lives for almost a year (and a year and a half for Remus). It didn't even stop at the town that had died with him—fifty-eight innocent men, women, and children, all dead at the hands of a couple of Death Eaters. They were also grieving the presence of fear—fear of a brewing war, fear of the lack of Ministry support, and fear for their own safety. The future did not look bright, and Remus and his family knew it. Remus, who was part-Muggle and full-werewolf, did not have much hope for his future.

But they would take it one day at a time. They would keep their senses of humor, but they would not use them as a method of deflection. They would look at the past with jokes and fond memories instead of avoiding it entirely. Above all, they would move on—as anyone would—with a spirit of persistence.

And Remus decided that he would talk to his friends whenever they were available. Somehow, even in the midst of confusion and fear and sadness, they still managed to make him happy.

Even though those nicknames were still stupid.

AN: Missed an update due to a chronic pain flare :/ I'm all good now! Next chapter comes out Sunday, as per usual... and believe me, a LOT happens in the next chapter!