Note: title from the Carly Simon song, Letters Never Sent. Thanks to the support of my lovely beta, multi.

Dear Harry,

I hope this letter finds you doing well and not consumed with too many responsibilities. I've been meaning to send it for sometime, but as you know, it's a busy time for many of us. That does not mean I haven't been thinking about you often. When I see you the next time perhaps we can talk about –

Dear Harry,

Forgive how long it has taken me to send you this owl with greetings and news. You have been much in my thoughts since the events at the beginning of last summer but I have been involved with many other matters. That doesn't excuse how long it has taken me to get in touch with you. I know Sirius would want me to –

Dear Harry,

I trust this owl and package will come as something of a pleasant surprise. While it isn't much, I feel there is not much in this world that a bar of chocolate can't make seem a little brighter, as you know. I remember what an occasion it was to receive any package during breakfast. Your grandparents used to love to send your father elaborate packages, and we would all gather around to see what latest delights they had –

Dear Harry,

Dumbledore keeps me apprised of your well-being and upon his last report I thought now was the opportune time to seize a few moments to write to you. It's such a hectic period I know you'll understand why it's taken me some time to contact you. It seems as though you'll be having quite an interesting year! Snape as the Dark Arts Professor: my old job, no less! I can think of quite a few wizards who never thought they would see the day –

Dear Harry,

It appears as if we'll be spending Christmas together at the Weasley's. I wanted to send you a brief note to let you know how much I am looking forward to seeing you there, I believe we all need a holiday respite during these trying times. I've been especially preoccupied with a special mission of late, but I did not want you to think that I've forgotten about you. I know you probably miss the occasional letter from Sirius so I –

Harry,

It has become increasingly clear to me over the last few weeks that, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I will be unable to write a letter that it suitable for sending to you. I don't know why, exactly, this is the case. I only know that the contradiction of trying to write something both neutral and personal is beyond my grasp. So, I have arrived at the conclusion that since this is a letter I'll never be able to send, I might as well say whatever I'd damn well please in it.

Sirius Black loved you with a reckless, single-minded focus. It was the way, I think, he loved almost everything and everyone. I don't know if someone has actually looked you in the eye and said that exact thing so I wanted you to know it. Sirius Black loved you, even if he couldn't always express that in the most responsible manner, your godfather truly loved you and would have done anything for you.

(and he would most definitely take this opportunity to chastise me for daring to suggest that love should ever be responsible.)

Your parents truly loved you too, of course, but I don't want to write about that now, because you know that, and it has been hammered into your head more times than you can probably count since you entered the wizarding world. Not that you should ever become tired of hearing it, however.

The day you were born was a rare moment of honest, unfiltered joy in troubled times, and you were greeted with unadulterated adoration. We had all been waiting for you, Harry, and not because you were prophesied to do or be anything, but because we all loved you so much we could barely stand it.

I think these are important things for you to know, and I think they are important things to be written down by someone who was there to witness and feel and know them to be true.

Which is now, I've come to realize more and more lately, only me.

These are hard times, Harry, and I will be honest with you when I say that I never thought I would live to see them come around again. That is foolish of me, I know, but I believed that my part in this war was over: that even if this same fight were to return, I would not be alive to take part it in. I think I must have believed that because I lost so much the first time. How can a person go on after having lost so much? How can anyone possibly be expected to do it again?

Naturally, I know that I was no where near the only person who had so much of their old life reshaped by the war, by the Dark Mark glittering in the sky and rearranging everything we knew to be true. I am not quite that vain. We all paid our own prices, as you are coming to see.

But I lost everyone I loved, everyone wiped out in one sweeping act. James and Lily were dead, you were taken from us, Peter had died as well and, perhaps worst of all, I lived with the knowledge that it had all happened because of Sirius' betrayal and now he too was lost to me forever.

Because I did love Sirius, Harry. I don't suppose that anyone has ever told you that, though I think all the adults in the Order were aware of it. It wasn't relevant at the time, I believe. It probably still is not relevant now. But since I'll never be sending you this letter, there is no reason not to write it down: I loved Sirius Black with a reckless, single-minded focus. It just might have been the most irresponsible thing I ever did, but it was definitely one of the best.

My dearest hope for you is that you will never have to go through the endless suspicion and insidious doubt that James, Peter, Sirius, and I went through. It is this one thing I wish I could tell you above all others, when I try to talk to you and find my mouth heavy with the past. You have been given a gift beyond telling in the friendship of Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger and you can only go wrong if you don't trust each other, if you don't speak to each other.

As close as Sirius and I were it took us a whole lifetime, Azkaban and supposed betrayals and death and growing older, to learn how to speak to each other.

I know you might sometimes feel that you cannot confide in them, that they would never understand. Or perhaps you will feel what I felt, that there is no way they could understand your struggle. Believe me when I tell you that although they may never know exactly what it is you are going through, your most loyal friends will be by your side regardless.

You have realized long ago, Harry, that things in our world are bad and getting worse. I do not feel the need to deny this to you or to dismiss how awful and scary it is. I think I know what you might be feeling, these long days where death seems to wait around every corner, when you feel the full weight of what is expected of you pressing on your shoulders and …

as Remus Lupin, member of the Order of the Phoenix, former Professor at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, I must tell you to work through those feelings, set them aside, do not let them distract you from what must be done, accept them as part of your due as a soldier in this war and battle on, because that is what we soldiers do in situations such as this.

But I do not feel like telling you any such thing, and I do not feel as if that Remus Lupin is even anyone I know.

Instead I will tell you something a beautiful boy with black hair once told me, when I was just your age, feeling the weight of the world pressing down on me.

One warm afternoon in our sixth year your godfather found me brooding by the lake, musing on the fact that I would be alone forever, isolated by my condition, convicted that I would never have a partner in life. Perhaps you feel like this on occasion.

He slung an arm around me and said, grinning despite my dour expression, "Don't be a git, Moony, haven't you figured it out yet?"

I looked into his eyes and honestly said that no, no I had not.

And then Sirius Black kissed me, in the sunshine on a perfectly cloudless day.

When he pulled away, I felt hope fluttering in my chest as his grin expanded. "See? You'll never be alone. Everything is going to be OK. I plan on always being around."

I believed him on that day, when he smelled like grass and springtime.

At that, I had sheepishly lowered my head, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid to believe him, afraid to let him know how much his words had meant to me.

I felt his hand warm on my wrist. "And besides," his grip was suddenly iron. "to hell with what the rest of the bloody world thinks."

I raised my head then and we found each other's mouths again, possible and new.

Harry, to hell with what the rest of the bloody world thinks. Find someone to sit by the lake with and kiss until you are so dizzy you cannot stand up.

You won't regret it. And I know that is what Sirius would have wanted for you.

Harry, just because I could not send you this letter doesn't make it any less true. Perhaps you will find it after my death, when I do not make it to the other side of another war. If you do, then know that even though I never told you: I loved you very much, because you were the best of what we could do, and because you gave Sirius such joy, and because you will have the life four boys dreamed of another lifetime ago.

-Remus Lupin