The Houses Competition: Year 11, Round 2
House: Slytherin
Class: History of Magic
Category: Standard
Prompt chosen:
-(Emotion) Sadness
-(Song Lyric) I told you I'm not bulletproof; Now you know. (Tell me why, Taylor Swift)
Word Count: 1115
Warnings: mentions of death and death idolisation.
Notes: we be going with welsh!remus, that being said Mam is the Welsh word for mom. Also the use of "last but one" is intentional - i just felt like it lol.
There had been a time when Remus was used to hiding his feelings. Bottling them up and tucking them carefully on the little shelf above the head of his bed. That proverbial bottle had kept him safe, and more importantly, it had kept his parents safe. For the longest time he thought that the proverbial bottle was unbreakable. That even if it was shot with a muggle gun (also proverbially, of course) it wouldn't shatter. He was wrong, of course. The bottle was made of glass, and even the most robust glass could break under enough pressure. It was like Mam had always said. Never move a glass pan from the refrigerator to the oven or the other way around; the shock of going from cold to hot or hot to cold would break it. That's what broke the bottle. It wasn't a bullet, it was a thermal shock. Emotional thermal shock.
ooOoo
Remus burst into Dumbledore's office at the Order's headquarters. This couldn't be happening. It couldn't be real. He felt like his whole body was shaking like it did before a full moon. He was a mess.
"What happened?" he asked, no, demanded. "You said they were safe, you promised…" His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard to try to push back the slew of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.
"I'm sorry, Remus," Dumbledore said calmly. How could he be calm at a time like this? "It seems we placed our trust in the wrong person."
"No, no," Remus said. "Sirius wouldn't, he…"
The door opened behind him, and Remus spun around, his hand on his wand. It was Frank, who looked worried and hesitated as he saw Remus standing in the office.
"What is it, Frank?" Dumbledore asked.
Frank looked between the two of them before turning to face Dumbledore. "The Ministry has apprehended Sirius," Frank said.
"That's good," Dumbledore said.
Remus almost shook his head but caught himself at the last minute. This couldn't be real. Despite their arguments and the accusations Sirius had thrown at him of late, Sirius couldn't have betrayed them. Peter would back him up on that.
"I'm afraid there's bad news, though," Frank continued with an unusual hesitance in his voice.
"What do you mean?" Dumbledore asked.
Remus' eyes were locked on Frank, who was once again looking apprehensive between the two of them.
"I…" Frank's eyes met Remus' for a moment longer before he very firmly fixed his eyes on Dumbledore. "When the Aurors found him, it seemed Peter was trying to confront him. He, Sirius, that is, he attacked Peter and…" Frank glanced at Remus again, a pitying look in his eyes. Remus hated pity. Hated it with everything in him. "Peter's dead."
The proverbial bottle on the proverbial shelf above Remus' proverbial bed hovered and shivered for a moment. Peter was dead. Peter was dead after the Aurors had arrived. That's what Frank had said. That meant… Sirius had killed Peter. That meant Sirius really had betrayed them. Without a second's warning, the bottle shattered. It was like Pandora's Box had opened inside him, only this time hope escaped the box with everything else.
An insurmountable wave of sadness crashed into him. The room seemed to disappear. Sadness didn't seem right to describe it; it didn't seem enough, but even in the years after, Remus could think of no better word. James, Lily, Peter, and so many others. They had been so perfect, so innocent. They were gone, and it was all Sirius' fault. His best friend, his boyfriend, the man he had sworn to spend his whole life with while standing on the Astronomy Tower on their last but one night at Hogwarts, he had taken everything from Remus, from all of them. Now Remus was alone. Completely and totally alone.
"Remus, are you alright?" Frank asked from a million miles away. "Sorry, that's a stupid question; of course you're not." The world was quiet again. "I'm so sorry."
Sorry. He hated that word. It was just pity in word form. Tears were running down his face, they felt hot, painful. James was the one who taught him to cry again. For so many years he had only cried for the moon, but now, now he remembered how to cry, and oh how he wished he didn't.
He felt a hand on his shoulder but couldn't manage to say anything. "I have to go back to Alice; I left her alone with Neville."
Remus barely nodded, his eyes blurry as he stumbled away. Where to? Even he wasn't sure. What he didn't realize as the silhouette that was Frank left, was that this would be the last time he heard him speak, too. Because while the Aurors had captured Sirius, they hadn't captured the Death Eaters.
When his vision finally cleared, he was sitting on the edge of his bed in his flat. He didn't know how he'd gotten there, and he didn't care to know. The bottle that had faithfully held his emotions for so many years seemed to be lying in shards on every surface around him. He looked around the room, hardly seeing anything until his eyes locked onto the one picture that hung on his wall. A picture of the five of them—James, Lily, Peter, Sirius, and himself—in their last year of Hogwarts. It still didn't seem real or even possible that they were gone. They were gone, and he was alone. He tried to shrink into himself again, tried to shove his feelings into a new bottle, but they wouldn't go. He was all alone. He would live alone, transform alone, and on one blissful day, he would die alone.
A small voice in his head tried to whisper to him, but it sounded like the words were coming from deep underwater. He could only catch one word: Harry. James' little boy. A perfect bolt of light in the pitch-black darkness of the war. Harry was alone, too. Maybe he should go and find him, to comfort him, to assure him that Uncle Moony would always be there for him… but what use was he to Harry? What use was he to anyone? The proverbial bottle was broken; he couldn't protect Harry from himself. No, Harry would be better off if he stayed away.
He lay down on his side, pulling himself into a tight ball, ignoring the way it made his knees hurt. How wrong he had been all these years ago, a little nine-year-old boy curled up on a bed much nicer than this one. He wasn't unbreakable. He wasn't bulletproof. He was broken
The bottle was gone. The marauders were gone. Remus wasn't.