Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling
Yesterday
It was always different with them.
"Love comes in all shapes and sizes." She used to say to him as he spoke about their differences, "Love isn't about normality."
He remembers the day she left as if it were yesterday. Remembers her back walking out the portrait hole, remembers her stopping for a solitary second hoping that he would grab her arm and stop her. He let her go.
He met her years ago when he was eleven. He remembers her bright red hair, her deep green eyes, and that smile, that goofy grin, always present on her face. He sometimes feels like it was years ago that she walked out of the rain and into his boat, that it was years ago that she smiled at him brilliantly and said "Hey, I'm Lily Evans" as she extended her hand. And then he looks in the mirror, sees the gray hairs sprouting all over his head, the wrinkles wedged into his forehead, and remembers that it was. That he hasn't seen her, hasn't spoken to her, in nearly twenty years.
That's when he'll whip out the rum. Raid his liquor cabinet for the strongest fire whiskey he can find because memories of her consume him. He'll sit in front of the mirror, survey his face, as he takes shot after shot of alcohol. Was it just a dream, he sometimes wonders. Did I just imagine her? Did I really let her go?
He thinks he loved her the day he met her. It probably isn't true, but he enjoys dramatizing situations, making little things seem extremely important so that the importance of big things is diminished. He needn't do that though. As if her love for him could ever be a small thing. It changed his life.
He remembers the first conversation he ever had with her. It was the day after the sorting at breakfast. He smiles as he remembers himself then. It was before the Marauders, before James and Sirius extended their hands of friendship. In a way, it was before life.
She walked over to him confidently and he remembers being surprised because she sat down next to him. He was alone for most of his childhood, most of his life, and imagined life at Hogwarts would be much like his childhood, lonely. But she smiled wide and dropped down in the seat right next to his own.
She was crazy. She was crazy in first year, crazy in second year, in third year, in fourth year, maybe even crazy in fifth year. He knows she wasn't crazy in sixth year, well, maybe she was crazy. Maybe she became a different kind of crazy. She did change a lot that year. Maybe he became crazy that year, too. After all, it was the year that he let her go. He had to have been insane to do that.
He remembers their relationship as if it were a play being put on stage before his very eyes. He remembers her as if it were yesterday that she whispered lewd jokes into his ear, as if it were yesterday that she sat in the common room every night painting her nails different shades of neon. He remembers it as if it were yesterday when he sat by the lake and she gave him his first kiss, yesterday that he looked at her with hard eyes and told her to just go away.
It's a rather sad story, really. It's probably one just like the many, a variation to some story you've heard hundreds of times before. He can't be the first person to love and lose and then spend his life pining for the one person who could make all his pain go away. He can't be the only one to stay up nights in his kitchen taking shot after shot as he remembers her hair shining brightly in the sunlight, as he hears her giggling in the distance. He can't be the only one in this world turned mad from a love that will never go away.
Her story turned out rather happy if you don't know the fine print, if you don't take into account her demise. She met the love of her life when she was eleven: met him, hated him, and then one day over six years later fell in love with him. They were perfect for each other, really. Even he has to admit that no one fit her like James did. Even he has to admit the perfection staring at them in the face.
But they don't know about the heartbroken girl who got her soul ripped out of her at sixteen. They don't know about the heartbroken girl who was never able to be fixed even when she met the boy who could take all her pain away. They don't know about the husband who lived everyday of his life knowing that the one he loves most may always love another man. The husband who looked at her wedding ring, watched the diamonds glow in the light, and wondered if on their wedding day she was imagining him, the one who let her go. They don't know about the tears both of them cried, the sadness each couldn't help feeling. And the worst part was that she did love James, loved him more than anything. She did love James and yet never once said it to him first, never once showed him that he did have the number one spot in her heart because of a fear she never learned how to get rid of. She blamed it on him, on Remus. A broken heart is afraid of being broken again, she used to say.
He met her when he was eleven. She walked up to his breakfast table, sat in the seat next to his own and said "Good morning" before piling scrambled eggs and sausage onto her plate. He didn't say anything to her that morning, but he remembers that when she sat with him again at dinner and inquired about his classes he replied that they were quite nice.
She was very different from him back then. Most people are different when they're young, most people are different when they walk around school hallways blind to the world going on around them. She was very arrogant back then. Not in a bad way, but she was always so into herself, in being as happy she could be, in having the most fun she could have. He remembers everything was always about her. It was her dorm, her school, her world. He never cared. Everything in his life was about her as well.
She wasn't like anybody he had ever met before and if the neon nail polish didn't clue you into her uniqueness I don't think anything will. She just lived how she wanted to, didn't care that her clothes weren't the most fashionable, didn't care that she wore a messy bun in her hair for about thirteen years. He asked her about it once, asked her why she didn't wear pink nail polish, why she wore a tie with her school uniforms like the boys, and why she wasted her time with him when there was a whole school of people to know? She smiled, "The day I hang out with Potter and his posse is the day pigs fly." She said that to James once. The next day pigs flew around the Great Hall. She went to Hogsmeade with him a few weeks later.
He doesn't like to think about seventh year of Hogwarts. Seventh year was when she fell in love, seventh year was when he cemented his loneliness, his fate to forever live in solitude. He figures, though, as he drinks his whiskey and rum, that he was meant to live this way, meant for the supreme melancholy he forgot how not to feel. He sometimes thinks that the bite he received on his ankle when he was no more than four changed his life in more ways than he can count.
He remembers falling in love with her as if it were yesterday. He may say he fell in love with her when he first saw her, but the truth is that they took a gradual stroll to love. It took many years for the feeling of love to take place of friendship. It took many walks through the rain as they stood by the lake and she danced over their secret wooden bridge. It took many quidditch games as she sat with him in the stands decked out in scarlet and gold trading her neon nail polish forred with golden sparkles. It took many hogsmeade visits, many butterbeers, before he finally reached over the table, grabbed her hand, and told her he loved her. It took many kisses, many hugs, because they were two oblivious children for a very long time.
She kissed him the first time when she was in second year. She took his face in her hands and pulled their lips together because she wanted to know what it felt like. He didn't like kissing then. He says when she kissed him that time his lips were shocked and stomach was knotted and that they were twelve. They shouldn't be kissing other people any way. He remembers her shaking her head. "You never want to try new things, Remus." She had said. "You're so boring." And she rolled her eyes and walked away as the dinner bell sounded from inside.
They fell in love with each other when they were fourteen years old. It was raining that day. He remembers the thunder booming in the sky and remembers the lightening that struck all around them. He remembers her school uniform sticking to her body and the swish of her skirt as she moved fast in circles over and over again. He remembers how her mouth always hung slightly open and the water droplets slowly falling over their bodies. He remembers kissing her that night. Remembers holding her close and the taste of cherry lips gloss on his tongue.
It was all very innocent, very easy. He sometimes hates the fact that they grew up. When he was twenty years old and accompanied her topick out a wedding gown he decided that age complicates things. When he was a child he didn't have to worry about the future, about how she could live with him as he had a monster growing inside of him. When he was a child he could turn a blind eye to everything he didn't want to know and completely consume the goodness emitted from her. With age comes responsibility and pain, true pain, not childish pain. With age comes the pain that eats away at your soul and makes you takes shot after shot of rum or whiskey or whatever alcohol is in the cupboard at the time. With age comes knowledge, comes light. He sometimes thinks he'd rather be in the dark.
But innocence marked their relationship up until the middle of sixth year. It was all strolls through the woods and butterbeers at hogsmeade. It was accompanying her to dances and holding her hand as she walked to classes. When he was young it was just looking at her, no matter what she was doing, no matter how ugly she looked, and knowing that he loved her, that she loved him, and because of that love knowing that no matter what they would be together.
They were two different people, though. He seemed to understand that early on. He understood that he would never have her optimism, her beauty. He understood that he could never be the life of the party, that the shadows would forever beg him for company. He understood, from a young age, that happiness wasn't meant for all people. And that's what he said to her the day he ripped her heart out, that he wasn't meant to love her.
He sometimes makes himself feel better by pretending he was being chivalrous. He tells himself he was only giving her a chance at real happiness, at real love. That he broke her heart because he loved her, because she deserved more, deserved James. He changed that year. Was no longer that quiet, studious student she fell in love with. She knew it, she saw it, and yet, she loved him anyway.
He almost killed someone a few months before he broke it off. Snape got into the Whomping Willow and if it wasn't for James would be dead. He thinks that's what changed him, what made him see himself as more than a werewolf but a regular monster terrorizing the streets. He couldn't look in a mirror for weeks because he would cringe at the sight of himself, and her, he treated her horrible during those months, treated her with disdain, hatred. She tried to be there for him, to speak to him, to love him. But with each passing day he would push her farther away.
He remembers the tears she cried that night. Remembers her coming up to him in the common room as it stormed outside. Remembers how when he saw her standing at the foot of the stairs flashes of that night in fourth year entered his head. He remembers the light way she stroked his face, how in a quiet voice, which is highly unusual for her, she told him that she loved him. He turned away, slapped her hand away from his face and screamed that she doesn't even know him. He closes his eyes whenever he thinks about that night, recalls every last detail as if it happened yesterday and relives it as if it were today.
He remembers screaming at her how he's a monster. How she lives in this little bubble called Lily Land and doesn't understand or realize anything going on around her. He screams at her that he almost killed a fellow student, that his life, everything his falling down around him. And by that point she's breaking down crying as he tells her that it can't work between them, that it has to end sooner or later. He can hear her begging as he sits in his flat. He hears the desperate no's she cries over and over again, the I love you's she's naïve enough to believe will makes everything okay. Finally, he tells her to go, tells her that he doesn't want her in his life anymore. And then he watches as the only girl he ever loved walks slowly passed him to the portrait hole. Walks slowly passed him and out of the common room turning back just once to see that his eyes were now cold, that he was finally gone, finally dead.
He did die that night, in a way. Young Remus died, the boy she once knew, once loved. She knew he was gone, knew it and yet wished to never believe it. When she fell for James Remus was never far from her mind. Not her love for him, well, in a way her love for him, but mostly the pain he made her feel for months, the scars in her heart she wasn't sure could heal. She knew she loved James, loved him more than she ever thought possible, but the pain Remus inflicted on her was never far from her mind. Made it impossible to take any chances on James, any chances on love. She was afraid of hurting from him, afraid of the pain she felt that night when she was in sixth year of Hogwarts. In a way, she died that night, too. Carefree, neon nail polish Lily was gone. At her and James's wedding, she wore pink nail polish and her ties were locked away in a box in her closet.
He knows it was him that changed her, him that killed her. But she still seemed like Lily. Still had a goofy grin, still thought everything was about her. He could never forget her, still remembers how she felt in his arms, still remembers how it felt to be loved. He's alone now, lives in a dark apartment just getting by on the little money he makes in the muggle world. He lives alone now, but he knows, that it was meant to be. He was meant for loneliness, just like she was meant for James. It was fate. Well, that's his opinion anyway.
End
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