From the playlist:

septembre - November Ultra

Old Days - Ingrid Michaelson

Chapter 49 - The Erosion, Part II

Two months had passed.

The leaves outside the beveled glass began to adopt autumn hues.

The flat was still small.

Exeter was still quiet.

But the mattress no longer felt like a death bed.

Emmeline must've taken whatever Alastor said to heart, and Remus watched as she slowly began to choose to live for Marlene rather than die because of her. First, she began getting herself out of bed earlier: just last week, Remus was amazed to find that she had risen before he'd even opened his eyes, and had already left a bowl of porridge next to his dose of Wolfsbane for that day. The second good sign came when she worked back up to eating her usual amount and getting seconds at dinner, building her strength back up for the day she was allowed to rejoin the fight. Emmeline missed her friends and little Harry terribly, and the sadness had not left her by any means, but at least it was no longer ravaging her.

This was not to say she had completely healed either, and Remus suspected they probably never would. Some nights she would wake up screaming, coughing even, having escaped a nightmare of the house fire. There was one particularly bad episode when it seemed no amount of shaking or calling her name could pull her from the flames in her mind. Remus had to carry her into the shower, pajamas and all, just to bring her back. But tonight was different. Tonight, he found her awake, thankfully not screaming, and instead sitting on the floor with her knees tucked against her chest:

September 19th

2:41am

Remus stirred from sleep, as his body had grown accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night. When he realized the other side of the bed was empty, he sat up. "Emmeline?"

"Down here," called a voice from the floor. His concern was quelled.

Scooting to the other side of the mattress, he found her sitting with her back up against the bed and lowered himself down next to her. "Did you have another nightmare?"

"Not tonight, no," she muttered, rubbing her eyes.

"What is it?"

"...I can't remember the last thing I said to her."

Remus sighed, laid a consoling hand upon her knee, and just let her talk.

"I'm almost certain it wasn't what I would have said if I'd known it'd be the last thing...we had some wine at Lily's after Knockturn. You were still gone and I was feeling a bit lonely and she just...spent time with me. Because she was a good friend. I can't remember everything we talked about, let alone the last thing I said to her…but Sirius showed up, and I was so pissed off at him that I left without really saying goodbye to Marlene…"

She trailed off for a moment, then started again. "It's just...I remember the last thing I said to my dad, you know?" Her mouth hinted at a smile.

Remus was surprised she'd brought him up. Despite the fact that her father had been the reason Emmeline joined the Order of the Phoenix in the first place, she rarely felt comfortable speaking about losing him.

"He was dropping me back off at the train after Easter. I hardly left my room that holiday because I was preparing for N.E.W.T.s."

"Yeah, I remember…"

"Anyway, I told Dad I was sorry that I hadn't spent more time with him and Mum while I was home; but he told me he was proud of me for finishing school and studying hard for exams and whatnot, and told me to say hello to you. And then I said I loved him, and I promised to spend more time with him once we were off for summer. Obviously I wish I'd had the foresight to get my head out of my bloody books, but I'm glad that the last thing I said was 'I love you.' I just wish I had said something more meaningful like that to Marley."

Remus nodded, as he'd felt similarly about his own mother's death. He couldn't remember the last thing he'd said to her, let alone the last time they'd spoken before she passed. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten the chance to speak to Marlene either. Because of this cross he bore for Dumbledore, he'd been absent for most of the last year. Now, with this realization, Emmeline's sadness began to creep into his own.

"So what would you say?" he asked. "If you could go back and do it again, what would you say to her?" he elaborated, pondering this for himself as well.

Emmeline thought very deliberately about her answer; but eventually just shook her head. "…Nothing I'm coming up with seems good enough now."

"…Me neither."

A cold silence commandeered their conversation.

...

9:26am

Then came morning, and though he didn't know it yet, today would be the first day Remus would no longer be able to distract himself with Emmeline's pain, forcing him to reckon with his own. It took him by surprise - he was about to scramble eggs for breakfast, right in the pan, when he suddenly recalled Marlene and could not even bring himself to crack the egg he'd been holding. It slipped from his grasp onto the floor and he began to cry. Emmeline emerged from the bedroom to find the egg broken on the floor and Remus leaning up against the stove with tears rolling down his cheeks.

He sniffled, wiping his face with his forearm. "The damned eggs."

Emmeline looked at him wistfully and flicked her wand over the mess so that it gathered itself into the bin. "She was very particular about them, wasn't she?"

"Too particular. They taste the same...It doesn't matter. I don't think I want them anymore."

"Toast and jam will suffice," Emmeline suggested, flicking off the stove and wrapping her arms around him from behind.

After breakfast they ended up going back to bed, where Remus stared at the ceiling in somber silence for much of the day. Emmeline took a lesson from his patience with her, and made no attempts to rush him. Though she hoped he might locate the end of the tunnel sooner than she had, she was prepared to wait for him should he get lost in the darkness along the way.

But what she could not see was that there was something else weighing on Remus: Somehow, Marlene's death seemed to mark the end of the Marauders, or at least the end of his place among them.

Wormtail was hiding in some unknown location, and his whereabouts were, for whatever reason, never disclosed to Remus amid all his absences. He assumed that Sirius must've poisoned Peter's view of him. Earlier in the year whenever Remus was home from one of his trips, he would try to send Peter letters as often as he could, though he never once got a reply. He'd eventually stopped trying, but he thought about Wormtail all the time.

He and Padfoot hadn't spoken since that day at the wreckage, and Sirius had ignored all his letters. Of course, Emmeline had later explained what he'd said at the previous meeting, and though Remus's heart broke for Sirius, he could not prevent himself from harboring a malignant resentment towards him. The war had taken its toll on all of them, now no one more than Sirius, but if he doubted where Remus's loyalties lie, he must've never known him at all. More cynically, Remus thought it all seemed too convenient. It's much easier to hide your own secrets when you have a werewolf for a scapegoat, and the Black family closet was bursting with skeletons. But if he was being honest, Remus often just found himself missing his friend - or at least how things used to be.

Prongs was Remus's only friend who seemed to still care for him at all. Before the no-contact order, he and Emmeline were always welcome at the Potters', and Remus visited as much as he could between assignments - which, regrettably, was not all that much. He had never quite gotten the hang of how to act around the baby (or how to react when Emmeline was holding him), and yet watching James and Lily step into their roles as parents had been immensely endearing to him. Remus had grown up with loving parents, but there was just something about the way the Potters doted on Harry...it set a pang in his chest. Remus missed them terribly.

Little did he know that a conversation would take place in Godric's Hollow that would alter the course of his and his friends' lives forever.