A/N: More post-war angst.

Disclaimer: Don't own. Never will. Please don't sue.

Shades of Gray

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing,
I think I thought I saw you try;

But that was just a dream


That was just a dream.

--Michael Stipe

The silence of it all almost hurts her, sometimes.

Nymphadora Lupin doesn't wake up in the middle of the night anymore, startled into consciousness by alarms and messages. She doesn't watch the moon from her solitary flat's window, hoping that her Remus was all right for one more month. She doesn't have to be life any more. She can let her hair fade, she can let everything go, and it isn't important.

There is nothing left to fight.

She is glad. The peace is what she'd wanted all her life. But now her purpose is gone. The things wrong with the world now aren't ones she can change.

It hurts her, every full moon, watching her husband weaken and suffer. He's been resigned to it for years now. She accepts it, loves him for his resignation...that doesn't mean she has to like it.

-&-

He's almost happy, now.

Remus Lupin doesn't wonder whether each full moon will be his last. He doesn't wonder what atrocities he may commit with Greyback's pack. He doesn't spend every morning after his transformation in the wild, trying not to retch as he searches through the fragments of his memories.

He's married, not quite respectable. After all, his wife is thirteen years younger than he, with a penchant for odd hair colors, and spends her days doing paperwork, wrapping up the very last cases of the very last Death Eaters. He's working on a book. It's not a memoir – heaven forbid. Let Hairy Snout, Human Heart fill that literary slot.

He's writing about teaching, under a pseudonym. Of course, Remus only taught for a year, but he kept meticulous notes while he did. He's always liked children.

But something's missing. Sometimes there's an ache inside of him that just doesn't go away.

One day his wife comes home, sits down on the sagging sofa, and bursts into tears.

Remus is beside her with three paces, and holds her until she stops sobbing and starts hiccupping instead. Nymphadora never bothers with attempts to be dignified.

"What happened?" he asks. Because it's obvious that something did. She's not the damp type, generally.

She conjures a handkerchief, and blows her nose. "It's so stupid, Remus." There's a pause, and she pushes her hair – long and dark today – behind her ear. "This poor bloke, barely out of Hogwarts, got frightened into joining the Death Eaters. He never did anything, never even got the Mark. Someone had a grudge against him, and tipped us off...we don't have a choice to investigate things like that, now. But his mother came in today – he's lined up for Azkaban. It's such – a – bloody – waste." She pounds her hand into the arm of the sofa. "After seeing what it did to Sirius...All right, he isn't totally innocent, but he doesn't deserve that. No one – not many do."

"Oh, love..." There's nothing he can do, and so he strokes her back as soothingly as he can, and tries not to think of all the lives this war and this peace have ruined.

"It's just idiotic," she continues. "The Ministry was in denial for a year after You-Know – Voldemort – returned, but now roots out every single thing ever to do with him, not caring about anything else. It's just...I thought peace would mean no more of this."

"I know," he answers, softly. "It's almost more justifiable when there is a war on."

"And there's nothing," she continues, "there's nothing that I can bloody well do."

There is never anything either of them can do, these days.

-&-

When it's dark out and her husband is asleep, Nymphadora Lupin looks at the ceiling and tries to remember times when the dark was clear; when the night is invading, you only need to know how to light a candle.

When the faintest edge of dawn is spreading in the east and his wife is asleep, Remus Lupin thinks about life in everlasting shades of gray, gray with a few unexpected streaks of color, and tried to remember the days when it was black and white, or longer ago, when it had all the shades found in a summer's day.

But even the brightest days have shadows.

Fin

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