A/N: Wow, the last chapter. I'm sort of at a loss, to be perfectly honest; even though from the very beginning I knew how this story would end, and in fact picturing this ending is the reason that I was inspired to write this story at all, hoping that there could be at least one happy ending for the tragic Sirius/Remus romance, a part of me believed that I would never actually finish it. But here we are! Thank you so, SO much to everyone who has read this story. Especially to those who have reviewed or favorited this story – you guys all went a long way to inspire me to keep going. You all really are the best. I want to give a specific shout out to SilverIceBlueEyes, my favorite redheaded fanfiction buddy. LOVE YOU, LEPPIE! If it weren't for you, I'd never have been brave enough to post this fic online. Thanks for all of your reviews. I also want to thank DeliaDee for consistently leaving the most inspiring, loveliest reviews – truly, I appreciate it! You've definitely helped this story continue. I don't have enough time to thank everyone there is to thank – like Potterholic78 and Rachel, two awesome friends of the awesomest kind who have encouraged my writing and who finally have seen the wonderful sense of this pairing; or J. K. Rowling, without whom there would be no story, or all of the poets whom I have quoted in this fic, including Patrick Phillips, who I quoted in this chapter, or really, just anyone who has read this fic: without you all I wouldn't be writing at all, and I can't thank you enough – because I'm sure you all want me to stop being so silly and sentimental over an insignificant bit of fiction and get on with the chapter :)
Thank you all for sticking with me and reading this story to the end! I hope the last chapter doesn't make anyone else cry (I seem to be making loads of people cry, and for that I apologize) and isn't too clichéd. I've had an amazing experience writing this story, and I've loved every bit of it – well, most bits of it, anyways. I'm glad I could get the story of Remus and Sirius as I always imagined it down, and I've really fallen in love with these two boys, more than before. I hope I've done them justice. It's been a great first story, and I can't hope to keep writing!
Oh god, this is way too long. My apologizes. I'll stop babbling. Alright, then, here we go! This is the last part of Which In the Clover Dwell, my Madfoot (Moony + Padfoot – it works, right?) story. Enjoy!
It was an odd feeling, being dead. It was like being weightless, sort of, or almost like having forgotten something and knowing that it was important but not quite knowing what it was in the first place. This didn't concern Remus too much, however.
Remus sat up slowly in order to consider all of this a little more closely. As soon as he opened his eyes and looked around he became aware that everything around him was cloaked in a white, embracing mist. Delighted, Remus realized that this mist had the potential to become anything at all that he liked. He played around with this idea a little, having the mist form itself into bookshelves and novels and the sun, and then he watched it slide away, back into emptiness... or not really emptiness, but more like waiting, waiting to become something that it was supposed to be.
The bookshelves reminded him of reading, and of books. He had liked them once. Were there books here? Where was here, for that matter? Heaven? But that must mean... that he was dead? The thought didn't seem too worrying, although Remus felt like perhaps it should be. Was there someone who would be sad that he was dead? But who could be sad here? A poem drifted into his mind through the mist, a poem called Heaven by someone named Patrick Phillips, and as he remembered it, it seemed like the verses became tangible in the fog.
It will be the past
and we'll live there together.
Not as it was to live
but as it is remembered,
It will be the past.
We'll all go back together.
Everyone we ever loved,
and lost, and must remember.
It will be the past.
And it will last forever.
Satisfied with this, and the fact that poetry was still available to him, as well as feeling as though the poem was irrevocably true – and, for some reason, hoping it was dearly, although he wasn't sure why, Remus stood up and looked around. For the first time he realized that he was quite alone. He frowned at this, and wondered if the mist could not only turn into anything, but also anyone that he chose. Because a small irritating thought dancing around the edges of his mind seemed to remind him that he was supposed to meet someone here – someone important. But as for whom it was, he couldn't quite seem to remember.
Before he could pin down the thought, Remus was distracted by the mist once more, as it started to change in front of him again. But this time he wasn't the one changing it. All of a sudden his surroundings shifted, and a great domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. He was in a large, brilliant room, which was wide-open and shining and filled to the brim with possibility. There were suddenly benches that appeared, scattered all along the room, and gleaming train tracks, and a whistling, perfect train to go with the tracks, and then... people.
Remus realized with a start that suddenly he was no longer alone. It wasn't like people had just formed out of thin air, though; it was more like they had always been there, but now Remus had noticed them. Some of them were staring into empty space, clearly unable yet to see their surroundings, but others were looking around and making eye contact with others peacefully.
So, thought Remus slowly, trying to muddle it all together, if these people were here too, then they must be dead as well. His heart sank a little at the thought, but then it lifted. It was happy here, bright and clean and nice, and he didn't pity the dead. He felt sad for the living though, who weren't here yet, and who missed the dead.
He looked around, wondering if he would see anyone he knew. He was supposed to meet someone here, he remembered again. Someone important, who had been waiting for him. He couldn't remember who, though...
His attempts to remember were cut off again when he finally saw someone he knew. It was Fred Weasley, who was standing and smiling at a small blonde boy who Remus thought he knew too. It took a moment, but then Remus remembered his name – Colin Creevey, a young boy who had been a student of his, once.
And then Remus did feel a little sad, because he realized why these two boys were here. They must have been killed in the battle – just like him. But they looked peaceful, unconcerned, and despite the fact that the possibilities of the rest of their lives stretching before them minutes ago had been cut short, and despite the fact that there were many people still alive who would be grieving for them, Remus knew that they were safe here, and happy, and would be reunited with their loved ones soon enough. So he smiled a little bemusedly and kept scanning the crowd, looking again for that someone. He saw Snape, which saddened him again, but mostly he just hoped Snape would soon find peace, and then next to him spotted Dumbledore, which surprised him a little, but it was just like Dumbledore to be waiting to greet the newly dead. Remus waved, and got a thumbs-up and a twinkly wink in return, and then kept looking.
As he examined the train, wondering where it was going and if the person he was supposed to be looking for was on it, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He smiled, and turned around, beaming, but his face fell a little when he saw who it was. It wasn't who he was looking for, he knew somehow.
She was smiling at him, but when she saw his disappointed face the smile slipped slightly. "You're looking for him, aren't you?" she asked quietly, stating it calmly as though she already knew the answer instead of asking him in an accusatory way. Remus felt excited – did she know who he was supposed to be meeting here? – but then felt guilty, for he had clearly let her down in some way. And then he realized why, for standing in front of him was Tonks.
"Dora," he said, quietly, almost reverently. For of course, she had been killed too. "I – I'm sorry," he whispered, feeling as though it was appropriate to apologize.
Tonks smiled gently back at him, clasping his hand to hers. "No," she said. "Don't be. I always knew that you loved him best, and that you never loved me in the way that I loved you. I tried to pretend, tried to force you to, when you so clearly didn't – so I'm the one who should be sorry."
Remus shook his head, remembering now. "No," he protested. "I did love you. Really, I did. Not in the same way, true," he allowed. "And for that I apologize, for I shouldn't have married you if I didn't love you the right way. But you made me happy, and I wasn't so lonely, and so I was selfish... and... you gave me Teddy."
Teddy. He suddenly remembered his son, and finally he felt sad for his own death. Sad for his son, who would grow up without a mother or a father, without knowing Remus.
But it would be alright. Teddy would be surrounded by his friends and loved ones, and he would have Harry, and his grandmother. And he would know why Remus had died – of a noble cause, fighting to keep the world less full of evil. Still, Remus was sad. It would be a long time before he would see his son again, and by then he would be grown-up, different. There was so much he wouldn't be able to teach his son.
He sighed. But Tonks was smiling at him, gently. "Thank you," she whispered. "That means a lot to me."
And Remus smiled back, embracing her softly. Then he laced his fingers through hers, and started to walk towards the train. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
But she shook her head, not following him. "No, Remus."
Remus looked at her, confused. He had a strong feeling that they were supposed to get on the train and go... to wherever was next. On. So why wasn't Tonks coming?
"I'm not coming with you."
He stepped closer to her, baffled. "Why?"
"I'm going back." She was whispering now, her eyes imploringly golden, then green-gray, and finally settling on an honest brown. "I'm going back to watch over our son."
Remus paled a little, realizing what she meant. "Dora – but... you'll never get to come home." Home, he realized suddenly, was where the train would be taking them. Onward. To peace, to the next adventure.
She smiled softly, and in that smile was something he didn't understand. It was a smile less of pain, and more acceptance. Of excitement and mystery. "I'm going to watch him grow up, and be there for him. I think I'll live in Hogwarts for a while. Then maybe I'll stay in the Ministry, in the Auror's office... or perhaps my mother will let me stay with her, or the Potter's will."
She was rambling, and had let go of his hand. He didn't understand why she was going back. Tonks swallowed, and then reached out a hand to caress his face. "Remus," she said softly, gently, almost humming. "Do you really think I could be happy here? Watching you choose him, over me, as I know you would? I don't want to put either of us through that pain. So I go back willingly, to watch our son grow up, and his children grow up, and all the Lupins after that... all the Marauders who come after you. Everything I want is back home." There was that word again, home. She took a deep breath, and then tried to smile again. "Besides, I've always wondered what a Metamorphmagus ghost would look like."
And now Remus understood, even though he still couldn't remember this shadowy someone who eclipsed his thoughts, who Tonks felt so saddened by. He stepped forward and hugged her again, tightly. "I do love you, you know," he promised. "And I won't forget you."
She looked at him, full of a love that he couldn't return. "I'm counting on it."
He kissed her, and then let her go. "Watch over our son. Tell Teddy how much I loved him, how must we loved him. And still do. That I'm waiting for him."
"I will, every day. If you see Mad-eye, tell him... that I say hello." A pause, and then, "Goodbye, Remus." And she slipped away.
"Goodbye," he said, saddened. But still, his heart felt light, because who could feel sad here? His son would be watched over, and would remember.
And Remus had someone to find. He felt with ever-increasing certainty that it was time to figure out just who this someone – this mysterious him – was. It was important.
He walked towards the large, lovely scarlet engine, noticing that several others were doing the same. He found a quiet empty compartment and sat down, and almost immediately the train began to move. It whispered forward, pulling away from the station, and suddenly there was just the train floating through the mist and everything else had disappeared.
Remus peered out through the window, wondering where he was going, feeling as though he were going to Hogwarts for the first time again and not knowing what to expect. As the train flew by he could see different things pass him by, bits of familiar scenery. And somehow he realized that everything he saw he had seen before, and that he was remembering parts of his life. He could feel himself grow younger again, growing more peaceful and carefree and buoyed up by life. It was strange – being dead made him feel more alive than he had in years.
He suddenly saw his parents through the encompassing mist, and he hesitated, wishing to get out and embrace them, but they looked so young, so happy, that he decided against it. He knew that there would be more than enough time to seek them out soon later, and besides, he had someone to find. Someone important, someone waiting.
So the train rolled on, beautiful landscapes coloring the window in front of him and then vanishing. Eventually the train rolled to a stop at a little house, but Remus frowned – this wasn't where that person was waiting for him, somehow he knew that. But the train had stopped, as though this was an important place, and Remus reluctantly got up and stepped out of the train.
He entered the house, and sitting in front of him, grinning, were Lily and James. They looked the same as they had when Remus had last seen them, young and happy and in love, but it was a shock to look at his friend's faces and remember them in the exact way that memory never could.
They looked up at Remus and suddenly all three were laughing and crying, for apparently the dead could cry, and embracing and delighting in each other's company.
"Remus," said Lily, holding onto his hand and smiling as though she were about to cry with happiness. "Dear Remus."
And James looked at him and laughed, and punched his shoulder. "Still as straggly as ever, eh Moony?"
Eventually their euphoria turned quieter and more awed, and Lily turned to him and smiled again. "Thank you," she said reverently. "For watching over Harry."
James nodded. "You taught him the ways of the Marauder well, old friend."
"He is a true Marauder," agreed Remus. "And I did what I could, although I fear it was not nearly enough."
"It was more than enough," protested Lily. "You really did become the teacher that I always knew you'd be."
"And to make him Godfather to your own son..." said James, nearly unable to finish with the amount of emotion in his voice.
"Thank you," finished Lily.
They all stared at each other happily, deeply content in each other's company after so many years apart. But then Remus felt that little nagging thought in the back of his head again that someone was waiting for him, that he was missing someone.
James seemed to realize this, too, because he poked Remus and gestured towards the door. "He's waiting for you, just a bit further on."
"He's just been waiting there for ages," put in Lily. "He hardly ever comes round to tea these days, says he doesn't want to miss you."
"The wanker," added James affectionately. "Making us go out there to visit him."
Remus felt a great excitement well inside of him, and although he still didn't know who this mysterious person was, he knew that it was deeply important that he find him. He said goodbye, promising to come back to tea very soon, and then set out again. The train was gone, and the Potter's house was like an island, a little oasis of color and warmth among the drifting mist. Remus picked a direction and began to walk in it, fascinated as the scenery flickered and changed and created itself as he walked, wondering how it possibly worked.
He kept walking, trusting his feet to find where he needed to go. And sure enough, after an unknown amount of time he looked up and realized that in front of him was sprawling countryside, just like the old fields that he used to roam around in at the Lupin farm.
A great feeling of excitement built up deep inside of him, and he stumbled forward, nearly tripping. Remus looked up and realized that the sun had come out of hiding from somewhere and was now making everything pleasantly hot and toasty. He waded through grass that was nearly up to his waist and then looked around, spotting a couple of fat bumble bees lazily meandering around some bright flowers. He followed them, and they led him to a cool, shady place that was surrounded by hundreds of tiny clovers. The bees disappeared into the clovers and Remus looked up, his heard beating quickly and there he was, the him he had been looking for –
Sirius. He was sitting down, lazing beneath a tree, and as Remus approached he scrambled to his feet, a look of fierce happiness on his face. He broke out into a grin, that grin, the one he had always saved for Remus, and Remus could hardly breathe. Sirius had lost all of the harshness that the years in Azkaban had forced on his demeanor, and he was young again, young and tall and handsome, his hair gorgeous and perfectly mussed, his limbs long like a foal's. He loped forward with an easy grace towards Remus.
Remus grinned, beaming, unable to shake off the sudden fierce happiness that blazed through him, and unwilling to ever do so again. Sirius. Sirius!
He walked forward, hardly able to manage even that, his happiness so intense he was nearly blinded by it.
"It's all I have to bring today, this, and my heart beside, this and my heart, and all the fields, and all the meadows wide," said Sirius, and Remus's breath was stolen from him as he let Sirius's voice affect him, remembered exactly what the perfect cadences of the young Sirius were like, remembered what his memory had allowed to be stolen from him.
"Be sure you count, should I forget – some one the sum could tell – " said Remus, somehow managing to find his voice and speak. Sirius shivered, his grin growing wider, Remus's voice affecting him in the same way.
"This, and all my heart, and all the bees, which in the clover dwell," Sirius finished, reaching out to his lover, and they embraced.
It was better than he could have remembered it being – more heart-pounding, more full of love, more alive than Remus had ever remembered. Remus was suddenly full of Sirius, full of his scent, and of the way his body felt, of the particular lines and symmetries and angles that made up Sirius, his Sirius. It had been so long since Remus could perfectly recall the exact color of Sirius's eyes, or the way his face had looked, and Remus stared hard into Sirius's perfect, beautiful face, tracing a hand over his cheeks and his chin. Then he let himself melt into Sirius, into his mouth and his chest and his arms, let his world align back into the way it was supposed to be.
When he stepped back, still holding onto Sirius's hand, he still couldn't stop beaming up at him. Sirius, too, had to take a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes gleaming with happiness, letting his fingers trail up Remus's arm and trying to relearn everything that had been stolen from him.
"Hello, gorgeous," said Sirius finally, and Remus couldn't help himself from laughing and smiling and feeling utterly foolish, like a teenager in love for the first time again.
"Hullo," managed Remus, his mouth nearly aching from smiling so widely, which felt like the most delicious feeling in the world.
Sirius pulled Remus down towards the shade, settling among the clovers. Sirius had his back up against a tree and Remus sat leaning against him, his head on Sirius's chest, soothed by his heartbeat. He listened with awe at the sound, wondering how it was possible for the dead to have such beautiful heartbeats.
"I've been waiting for you," said Sirius, his voice full of pride and love and happiness.
Remus smiled, softly this time. "I never doubted it even for a moment. Lily told me that you've been neglecting her and James, though."
Sirius scoffed, and Remus delighted at the sound. "Bollocks," he said. "Besides, I couldn't leave this field, now could I? What if you'd of gone and died and I wasn't around to meet you?"
He almost had to smile at the casual way Sirius treated death. It had seemed like such a mystery, such a terrifying ordeal before, but now... it almost seemed funny. Like the most natural, easiest thing in the world.
"What indeed," mocked Remus, snuggling against Sirus.
"Mmm," said Sirius, staring down at Remus's freckles. "So what's this I hear about a certain young lady named Tonks, then?"
"I remember a certain wanker making me promise to find someone else, don't you? Not that I was terribly happy, of course, but it was better than offing myself I suppose." Remus, too, found that he could suddenly joke about death as though it were a friend who had the annoying tendency to stick its nose into other people's business. "I do have a son, now, though," he added thoughtfully, more than a little pride in his voice.
"Keeping up the Marauder legacy, I see," said Sirius, a little teasingly, his voice proud, too. "Though I think you should have named him Sirius, instead of Teddy. I'm glad you found someone, though. Even if she wasn't as spectacular as me. What was it like, then, being married to my cousin?"
"'How should we like it were stars to burn, with a passion for us we could not return'?" quoted Remus.
"W. H. Auden?" guessed Sirius, a little smugly.
Remus started in surprise, twisting his head up to look at Sirius. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
"I met him."
At this ridiculous statement Remus had to smack Sirius lightly, awkwardly reaching up to hit his shoulder. "You liar."
"No really! I did. We had a nice chat, once, when he was strolling through. He was quite friendly, although he reminded me of you, which made me sad."
Remus made a small noise of unhappiness at this and sat up, kissing Sirius. Sirius was smiling though, waving away Remus's distress at this statement. He pulled Remus back down onto his lap, and Remus resettled himself with his head against the crook of Sirius's neck and shoulder.
"Who else have you met, then?"
"Shakespeare."
Remus let out a gasp, his eyes widening. "No!"
"Yeah."
A dreamy sigh escaped Remus's lips, and he decided it was so wonderful he had to believe it. "Wow, Pads. Shakespeare."
"He was very cool. Gave me a copy of his latest play."
This Remus could not believe, and he rolled his eyes.
"I haven't met Emily Dickinson yet, though."
"We'll have to go looking for her, then."
The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in beautiful apricot and cinnamon and amethyst and navy. Remus wondered lazily how this was possible, but then decided that anything was possible here. He snuggled against Sirius, yawning a little, suddenly tired. Dying was an exhausting business, he decided.
"Moony?" came Sirius's voice, softly.
"Hmm? What'sit, Pads?"
"I love you." A smile blossomed on Remus's face. He had forgotten how wonderful it was to hear those words.
"I love you, too." The same smile was now gracing Sirius's face, and he clasped Remus tighter to him.
"Just wanted to make sure you remembered."
"How could I forget?"
"Perhaps all of the poetry crowded it out of your head," suggested Sirius.
Remus grinned, and then sat up, leaning forward to kiss Sirius breathless.
They would stay there all night, realized Remus happily, and perhaps they would stay there among the clover for all the next day, until forever passed them by, leaving only to visit family and good friends or to drink tea with Lily and James, or to seek out Emily Dickinson. It was a good place, this field of clover, a beautiful place in which there was no moon, only millions upon millions of perfect, beaming stars that shone down on the two lovers nestled together, content in each others arms at last.