This is a fic that the incredible Kirralee said I should write a million years ago, and now I'm finally posting. A morbidity fic, so if you don't like death, run while you can...

Memory

Remus thought that he had never seen Grimwald Place so very silent and empty. Even when the place had been taken for headquarters, there had never been this deafening quiet, made so very loud by the absence of sound.

The rest of the wizarding world were out celebrating the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but as Remus stared around the now-deserted headquarters of the Order of the Pheonix, which had been abandoned quickly following their victory, Remus felt a desolation unlike any he had felt before.

The only feeling, he reallized, that was keeping him going, was a burning hatred. Not, as many would suspect, for thew now vanquished Death Eaters, or even for the Dark Lord himself. No, Remus's anger was directed toward all those of the Wizarding community who had stood idly by, or cowered and hid, leaving the Order to stand alone and hopelessly outnumbered.

They had all known, in that last battle, the one, they knew, which they would win or lose the war to, could very well be their death. But this would have to be the last, for they had no strength for more. The battle, however, had only been the distraction. The one hope, which every last hopeless member of the Order of the Pheonix had known, was Harry's prophosy. "Neither can live while the other survives," and so poor young Harry had gone to meet his death.

Distraction the battle may have been, but that did not lessen the cost in lives. Remus saw again, for the last time, he prayed, Hermione, as she had been on the night before the carnage, young and blushing as she announced her and Ron's engagement. Remus was helpless then to block out the image of that terrible day, as she sobbed helplessly over her fiance's bloody remains.

He was helpless, now, against the barrage of images he had tried not to see for days. Molly Weasley, leaping in front of her only daughter, using her life to block Ginny from the flash of green light. He saw the desperation in George Weasley's face as he searched in vain for his twin, whom he would never see again, Lavender Brown's cry of despair as her dearest friend crumpled to the floor at her feet, and he heard poor little Luna Lovegood's broken pleas as three Death Eaters dissarmed her and backed her into a corner.

Remus saw again Arthur's black disbelief when he was told that his wife and four of his seven children were dead, and the lost look on Dean Thomas's face as he learned of the death of his best friend for nearly seven years (Remus remembered that the boy had lost his family recently, too, when that muggle neighborhood blew up a few weeks back.)

So many lost. Kingsley Shackleblott had fought like a hero until the very last, when a severing charm hit him in the neck. Mundungus Fletcher's body was trampled until it was nearly unrecognizable. Ginny had been the one, when it was over, to find Harry's body, for it seemed he had defeated the Dark Lord at the price of his own life. And then there was the image Remus had tried so hard to hide from himself. Nymphadora Tonks, his young wife, lying bloody and broken on the ground, face contotred with pain, glassy eyes staring...

Remus wrenched his mind from the dead, and tried to remember the living. Arthur Weasley, George, who looked so lost and hopeless without his twin, Charlie, who hadn't known and come home until thyere were too many dead to count, Fleur Delacore who was such a young widow, and seven months pregnant, and Hermione, who was trying to run the household in the Burrow, since no one else was. Poor Ginny had hung herself yesterday, the loss of just one more who died far too young. Dean Thomas, Padma Patil and Lavender Brown were renting an apartment in the city together, and trying to go on with life. Neville seemed the least changed, but he was very quiet.

And Remus was alone again, as he had been for so many years. He really wasn't sure if he could take it again. He was certain he couldn't bear the memories any longer. He had come to this house since it was the last place he had been happy, but now he could find no trace of that but the ghosts which constantly haunted him.

Ghosts, he saw Harry and Hermione and the Weasley childeren running down the stairs to dinner, when they really were children, the twins still full of tricks, all of them so full of life, had it really only been two years? Remus saw Molly in the kitchen, bustling cheerfully, and Tonks trying so hard to help, but always dropping things and in the way. He saw Sirius, bright and cheerful as he had been so seldom in those last years before he fell behind the veil.

And then there were the older ghosts, the ones that had haunted him for so many years before this bloodbath had replaced them for tragedy. Remus saw Lily and James on their wedding, so bright and alive and so very in love. Sirius at the wedding, proposing toast after irritating toast until Remus and James had to threaten to lock him in a closet. And the very first; Remus, James, Sirius and, yes, even Peter, as they had been at school, young and happy, and with no idea of the bitter trajedy all of their lives would become.

Remus knows it isn't healthy to dwell on the past, but what if memory is the only place you have ever been happy?