Rating: PG for mild mature themes.

Pairing: Remus/Sirius (past), Harry/Remus

Warnings: Homosexuality, depressing content.

This Is Your Life

Smile, as if you were truly happy

Laugh, as if the world were alright

Cry, as if you'd never shed a tear

Hold onto him, as if you do not ever have to let go

Live, as if no one you loved had ever died

Hope, as if I were coming home

A Muggle by the name of Darwin once said that the world is ruled by the strongest. The cleverest. Whichever race is able to adapt above the rest. Humans may be fragile creatures, but our wits and skills protect us from the hostility of the bolder creatures. Survival of the fittest. But time has taught me its lessons in a different manner.

Life is not a planned act, you see. One may write it out on crisp clean paper with unbanishable ink, erect walls and build upon his dreams, and form his perfect happiness with bare hands until it is just as he likes it. No matter how likely life may seem, it is never how we wish for it to be, nor how we anticipate. A set path may be washed away by a sudden flood, or misdirected by some man farther up the path with a shovel. Nothing white can be forever pristine, and any map may be changed according to some new find. Life is the greatest prankster of them all.

Take my life, for example. When I was born, my parents held me lovingly and gazed down upon their first child. The only one they would ever have, so valiantly fought for and long-awaited. Their baby, whom they would watch grow into a happy and successful man. He would marry a beautiful and kind young woman, perhaps have children and a nice little house in the country. Be just as they wished they had been.

Surprise, Mum and Dad. The superstitious villagers of your lovely little town forced you to surrender yur baby to a hungry monster that terrorized them. My parents never expected to sacrifice their five-year-old son to a ravenous werewolf. They resigned themselves to it, let their child go with heavy hearts. They did not think they had a choice. The night of the full moon was filled with the terrified screams of a child too young to understand, and the howls of a wolf that was lonely. Again, life played a cruel joke. I was not dead when my mourning parents came to the forest clearing the next morning. Instead of the crimson carnage of a child on the forest floor, they found a mangled but living little boy, marked by the monster that had spared me. I didn't understand. But they did. They never touched me again, did not hug me or tell me how overjoyed the were that I was not made a meal for the werewolf. Who could celebrate the curse that now doomed my life?

I forgot what it felt like to be held. Forgot what my mother's smile looked like. Forgot how it felt to be happy. Our house became rundown and dirty, my parents exhausting their resources in search of a cure that did not exist. I was never sure if they loved me. Isn't that a strange twist of fate? Scratch the 'growing up happy' part of their plan. I was clever, I was gentle, I had a smile like golden sunshine; I would have been perfect if I had been someone else. 'No, Remus, you can't go out and play. You know that.' This was always the answer when I gazed longingly out of half-heartedly scrubbed windows at the children that laughed as they ran past our home. I knew what was wrong with me. I knew that I was considered the lowest of the low, a Dark Creature. A werewolf, as well as a shabby little boy with a Muggle father. I would be considered filth in the wizarding world.

When I was eleven years old, a wonderful man by the name of Albus Dumbledore did what every other school of the wizarding world had not. He allowed me to learn. On my very first day, I was presented with three boys who would forever change my life. Sirius Black, James Potter, and Peter Pettigrew. Padfoot, Prongs, Wormtail. My first and dearest friends. They were all that I had fantasized about made flesh, three people who loved me for everything I was, despite my curse. But feelings change, don't they? Oh look, Mum and Dad! Life has gone and erased another part of your plan! You didn't want your son to fall in love with a boy, did you? I am sorry to inform you that he had. And that boy loved him back.

We thought that we would be forever united, the four of us. It seemed unthinkable that any other ending could come about. We were the Marauders! Four friends that were closer than blood, closer than mere best friends. Doing anything and everything for one another. I would have joyfully put the noose about my own neck, if they had asked me to. War leads even the strongest bonds asunder, however. Peter betrayed us all by becoming a double-agent traitor. James and Lily died for it. I lost my three best friends in one night. James to the Killing Curse, Sirius to a wrongfully convicted life-sentence in Azkaban, and Peter to his own poisoned tyranny and alleged death. I, the one who needed those three more than anyone, was the last left behind. I survived, as I always had. Why? I'll never know. I think, if it were not for Harry and my unshakable love for an imprisoned and now-dead man, I might have asked for death. I do, at times, but only to the bare walls that cannot answer and an empty sky.

So you see, life enjoys giving us our deepest desires, and then tearing them away at the most inopportune moments. I suspect that fate finds it funny. I do not. As an ex-prankster myself, I know how rewarding it is to laugh about a joke that you have exacted upon another person. I admit it with no shame. But to force so many to suffer? Harry should never have been given the burdens that he has. Sirius should never have been sent to Azkaban and robbed of his lively joy. James and Lily should have grown old together, rather than died at the age of twenty-one. And yet I live. Peter lives. Voldemort still wreaks havoc on the world. What amusement do you find in all of this, life?

Maybe I shall receive an answer someday. Perhaps when I have at last been eaten alive by my disease, at an old age and far too tired to live any longer, life will at last stop laughing at me and tell me that it intends to cause me no more pain. I've heard that dying is like sailing on a ship, being absorbed by the mists until we find ourselves on the opposite shore. Who will wait for my ship? Who will greet me when I arrive? And will the hereafter be any better?

"Remus?"

I turn to look at Harry, who watches me with haunted jade eyes. I see him as a broken creature caught somewhere between child and man. Where has gone the smile that I used to know?

"Yes, Harry?" I answer at length.

"What are you mooning over now?" He asks, his voice neither kind nor harsh.

"Life." I answer, summoning a small smile.

"Don't think about it. Life's too much of a bugger to be worth meditation."

"I can't help thinking."

"You think too much." He answers, holding out his arms in beckoning. "Now come back here. I'm cold."

I do smile, this time, without forcing it.

"How can you be cold? It's the middle of August." I answer, gesturing pointedly to my knee-length t-shirt.

I see a spark of the old boy in him now, when he had made jokes and playfully smirked at me.

"I just am, you snarky wolf. Am I married to you, or aren't I?"

I arch an eyebrow and hold up my thin hand, letting the narrow gold band on my fourth finger catch the pale moonlight.

"Yes, it would seem so."

Harry rolls his eyes and grabs my arm, tugging insistently in the direction of our bedroom.

"I really need to think about that divorce."

I know he is joking, that the statement holds no true meaning. It is an old tease, and the warmth of his tone makes the bite of such words vanish, but I am upset all the same. I glance back at the half-moon shining through the windowpanes, and am filled with dread. I am happy just now, more happy than I have ever been since Sirius was murdered. And that is what frightens me. For every time I am happy, life plays another one of its jokes.

As we climb into bed, settling comfortably into our familiar spots and wrestling the pillows into the perfect shape for sleep, Harry turns to me and snuggles close.

"Mmm. This is much better."

I say nothing, though I silently agree. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine that it is James I am hugging, back in our school days, and that Sirius will return from the bathroom at any moment to curl up with us.

Every rose will wilt eventually, bitten by the frost of winter. And then it will die.

This love will die. Or this boy will.

"I love you, Moony." My husband murmurs drowsily.

I nuzzle my cheek against his bony shoulder, comforted and yet still very sad. I do not want this to end. It always ends, whenever I am happy. I suppose life does not wish for my affection.

I believe Harry is asleep, now. He rests so soundly, as ifat this momenthe can forget the destiny that awaits him, his legend and those he has loved and lost. My Boy-Who-Lived. The man that I love, and the child that I care for.

"I love you too, Harry."