AN: At this point, I have no idea where canon Lupin ends and where my embellishments begin. What you recognize is not mine.
Remus Lupin tries to think of a valid answer, one that would end his random tears and bursts of jealousy (of all things), and lift him from his position in a graying spot on the couch. Remus Lupin tries to answer himself but finds that every cliché in the book is true, would always be true. But Remus Lupin also realizes, in a haze of shameless self-importance, that if he concedes that all clichés are true, then all he ever has to do is lie down for enough time to allow Time to start healing him.
"We're in dire need of an adequate teacher, Remus."
Remus Lupin was not always the sullen man on the couch. Two weeks ago Remus Lupin was full of muted vigor, accepting the short intervals of depression with the youthful knowledge that he truly had something to complain about—but didn't. Rejections from jobs at the Ministry frequently cluttered his flat, but more frequently ended up as makeshift towels for Sirius's "accidents." He had Sirius to share the everyday beer, to share the melancholy beer, to share the half-amused beer, and to quietly confide his deepest insecurities to a man perhaps less secure than himself. He had James to admonish when the werewolf felt like taking revenge on the world, to blushingly congratulate successful advances toward his normally level-headed wife, to listen to a man complain about his wife but secretly exult in his marriage, and to reassure that Godric's Hollow was fully protected and that his family could not exist if he ran away from his troubles—the secret of secrets that started to admit itself more often with deeper probing.
"I need not point out the alternatives—you're a rational man, Remus."
Now there is no Lily to flaunt her pomegranate beauty without knowing it in front of him, to tease him when James isn't there and to engage him in serious conversation when James is there. He no longer has to try to explain the curly red hair floating around in his flat to the sly old lady next door, who always tries to peep at his bedroom door because he is, well, 21. There is no Peter to cheerfully invent malapropisms whenever he felt bored with a staid outlook on life, or to stand around in the background with whenever James and Sirius toed every regulatory line with glee. There is no Sirius or James.
"What makes you think I can teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
Remus Lupin, in another two weeks, will realize that moping around is an extension of a vanity he never knew existed, will take a cold shower, and will fail miserably in an attempt to flirt with the girl at the bookstore. Remus Lupin, in another two years, will work out for himself an answer to his problems—that no answer can ever be completely articulate, that questions are useless when he already knows that there are no answers to them.
"What makes you think that will be your final answer?"
Remus Lupin, for the present, has only a comfortable couch and childishly soft brown hair to his name, has only celebrated four birthdays outside of school, has only celebrated having four best friends, and has only mourned four deaths.
FIN