Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling

Powerful

It was a long time ago.

Well for you and me and possibly all your friends it was ages ago, decades ago, before you were born. Something to read about in history books and listen to within the whispers of your parents when they think you aren't around.

For him it was like yesterday, though. October 31, 1981, Like yesterday

Yesterday in the way that he can't remember what he ate for breakfast or the color of his tie but the pain, oh the pain, he remembers so vividly, too vividly. The pain of loss, of all consuming despair, because everythinghe knew,his whole world, was suddenly in pieces and what, what couldhe do?

There was nothing to do. Nothing can be done when death sinks its claws in a person and drags them into a grave.

Oh it's so hard for people like me and you to understand the dread of each day when we never had such a tragedy in our lives.

One friend dying, excruciatingly painful

Three friends dying, all consuming despair

Three friends dying at the hands of a fourth friend, how can it even be explained?

It's a miracle. One of those things people awe at and ooo at because how is it possible for him to find the strength to survive another day? How has he found the strength to be alive when every person he cared for died at once so many years ago?

But he does. He wants to wake up each morning and smell the fresh London air. He wants to bake crumpets and drink coffee and read the daily news. He wants that boringly mundane existence he thinks he read about in a book or magazine when he was young in which the unexpected never happens and happiness is boring and plain.

The magical world is not all it's cracked up to be.

Us muggles, we think its all tricks and waving a wand after shouting some ludicrous spell. We think its all riding broomsticks and playing quidditch. We think it's a world where life is beautiful and fixable because what's the point of magic if you can't fix your problems? What's the pointof magic if each day you live in painful reality?

He's learned different, knows different. He knows about prejudice and about terrorism and knows what it's like to stay up nights and cry because magic, magic is so hurtful. Magic kills and magic tortures and even if it does a single inch of good in a day, it still does a whole lot of bad to balance it out.

And he no longer sees the point. What's the point of magic if it can't take away your troubles?

He was so young when he lost them. Of course at the time he thought he was so old. He was only twenty one, twenty one, and twenty one isn't so old after you've lived a lifetime and realize you have a lifetime more to live.

But maybe in this lifetime he'll be happy, as he was supposed to be.

Because he has her. And how cliché is it that a girl, such a child she seems to be, can be the reason for his faith and his strength? She is so young, twenty three or twenty four I believe, but she's an auror and beautiful and lively and so full of love, of love, and for him of all people. Love for him

It doesn't seem possible that in a life of so much terror a single good thing can make it all worth while.

And she does.

She makes him feel alive. She makes him feel like a boy, like he's twenty one and his friends weren't murdered in a single night. She makes him feel as if he could live another lifetime and drown in dreams and happily ever afters and forget the reality magic has created for him. She makes him believe. He's never known how to before.

She holds his hand when he visits their grave. He whispers to Lily and to James and she stands quietly by squeezing his hand as small tears falls silently down their faces. She hardly even knew them, Lily and James, but her heart breaks when she knows he's in pain. It's what love does.

When they go to her cousin's grave she cries from her own pain and each hurt more than at the previous grave of his dear, dear friends because it was this particular grave that his other best friend rests and her cousin lays and each one's pain is doubled from feeling not only their own grief, but each others as well.

But it's love.

It's love and it isn't reality and it isn't magical and, you know something, they'll never want it to be.

Their love is painful. It hurts and heals and creates beauty as love should do and within it, within the angst and the tears, he's found a reason to live. A reason to be alive.

It's her. It always will be.

End (Remus/ Tonks)

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