Moonlight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Secrets We Keep

"You alright there, Pete?" Sirius asked him, crinkling his brow.

Peter pounded his chest with his fist a couple of times and managed to swallow his bite of tart. Afterwards he caught his breath, and then smiled at them all reassuringly. "I'm fine. I'm fine." Then he took a deep breath, his face turning serious. "What do you mean, 'marked for death'?" he asked the Hogwarts headmaster.

"Well..." Dumbledore said slowly, "it means that Voldemort is after them. Personally." He turned to James and Lily again. "As soon as he finds out where you live, he'll be coming to your doorstep to kill you. All of you." His eyes rested on Harry a moment, who was smiling as he licked yummy tart from his fingers, completely and innocently oblivious....

"James..." Lily said, looking to her husband.

James took her hand resting on the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "It'll be alright, love."

"What do you mean, 'it'll be alright'?" Sirius asked almost incredulously. Remus heard the crack in his voice when he spoke. "Voldemort's out to kill you!"

Remus heard a drumming in his ears, and realized it was his own heart pounding loudly in his chest. "I know we faced him before," he said to James and Lily hoarsely, "but this time it'll be different. You don't know when he'll come, or what form he'll take...." He swallowed, trying to suppress the fear for his friends and their son churning in his stomach, already starting to eat at his insides.

"And there's Harry you'll be needing to look after through it all," Dumbledore pointed out, taking his eyes off of the child at last. "You didn't need to look after him the last three times you faced him bravely. But with a young one such as he in need of being protected, while trying to focus on fighting off Voldemort at the same time...."

"What can be done then?" Sirius demanded. "Albus, there must be something we can do." He glanced at James and Lily, and then Remus and Peter, and Remus saw that his face was bent with anxiety just as his own and Peter's were.

"I think you might have to go into hiding," said Remus quietly to James and Lily.

"Hiding?" James seemed almost repulsed by the idea. Remus could almost read the words in his hazel eyes: Since when does a true Gryffindor go into hiding? Never, that's when!

Lily seemed to read this too, because then she massaged James' fingers and said, "James, I don't think this is the time to be all...well...Gryffindoric, so to speak."

James lowered his eyes to his tart, still holding Lily's hand across the table, though he said nothing. Remus sensed his extreme aversion to the idea of holing up somewhere like a coward.

"You're best chance," Dumbledore informed the Potters pointedly, "is the Fidelius Charm."

At this, James looked up from his tart, his hazel eyes wide and alert. "Fidelius Charm?" he breathed.

"And under the circumstances, I think it best that someone other than either you or Lily ought to be Secret-Keeper," Dumbledore went on. He paused. "James, I know you don't like the idea of this, but it must be done. For your son's sake."

James glanced sidelong at Harry, who had now progressed to playing with the bits of apple from his tart, by way of squashing them one by one with his knuckles. He raised his green eyes from his task to smile at his father, and then at his mother, both of whom were regarding him with anxious love.

Remus bit his lip, catching Sirius and Peter's worried eyes.

Then James tore his eyes away from his son and heaved a tremulous sigh. Looking Dumbledore square in the face, he said, "Alright. We'll do this thing."

"You will go in hiding under the protection of the Fidelius Charm?" Dumbledore verified.

James locked gazes with Lily. "Yes," he said hoarsely.

"Very well then," said Dumbledore. "I suggest we perform this tonight. Time is of the essence. I don't know how long it's been since Voldemort started on his mission to come after you, but I was tipped off by a reliable informer as to these intentions of his. Never mind who," he added, raising a hand when James opened his mouth to ask who the informer had been. He closed his mouth without a fuss as Dumbledore continued.

"As I was saying, I think it best that we place the charm on this house tonight. Immediately, in fact. If you would like, I am willing to act as Secret-Keeper."

James smiled. "Thank you, sir, but that won't be necessary. If anyone's going to be the person to hold the key to my, Lily's, and Harry's safety, it'll be my good friend Sirius Black." He turned to Sirius, still holding Lily's hand. "Would you accept that responsibility, Padfoot?" he asked.

Sirius returned the grin. "You can count on me, Prongs," he said rather roughly, a telltale shine in his eye to match the one in James' as he clapped him on the shoulder. Then he cleared his throat and looked directly at Dumbledore. "I can do it, Albus."

Remus and his friends looked at Dumbledore, and Remus was surprised and rather alarmed to see the betrayal of fear in Dumbledore's otherwise calm blue eyes.

"I'm not sure that is such a good idea," said Dumbledore, seeming to weigh his words carefully as he spoke. "You see, I have reason to believe--a very strong hunch, and oftentimes my hunches are pretty reliable--but I have a strong hunch that someone very close to the Potters may in fact be a spy for Voldemort."

There was a dead silence, which Remus broke by saying, "Meaning...one of us...?" He indicated himself, Peter, and Sirius.

Dumbledore nodded. "Possibly."

Remus looked between Sirius and Peter. He could tell by their faces that they didn't like the idea of one of them being the spy anymore than he did.

But James spoke up almost in earnest. "I will have you know that my friends would never betray me, or my family," he said at once. "Especially not Sirius. Sirius would rather die than tell where we were hiding, were he made Secret-Keeper. In fact, he's planning to go into hiding himself."

"I am?" Sirius looked around at James rather incredulously.

"If you're going to be Secret-Keeper, I think you've got to," James said. "I know you don't like the idea of it anymore than I do...in fact, Peter, Remus, you should go to. The three of you could be in just as much danger, being our friends and all. It--It'll only be for a little while. Once the danger's passed, you know."

"Yeah," said Sirius, nodding fervently. "Yeah...that--that'd be alright."

"Yeah...yeah...sure," Remus and Peter muttered in agreement.

"You are certain about this?" Dumbledore asked James.

"Yes. I want Sirius Black as the Secret-Keeper, and no other. That's my final word."

Dumbledore appealed to Lily. "Do you agree with this, Lily?"

Lily hesitated, surveying the others. Then she said, "I do agree with this, Albus."

"Right," said Dumbledore. He turned to James. "You will need your wand."

James nodded, and looked at Lily as he released her hand and reached into the inside pocket of his robes. Remus couldn't help but notice that none of them had really touched their tarts all that much, save for Harry, who still went on playing with his, prattling incoherently in various indistinguishable vowel and consonant sounds strung together. At the moment he was very keen on experimenting more with the "L" sound, and kept saying over and over in a rather sing-song way, "La lo lee, la, la, lo lee la...." Then James produced his wand and Harry spotted it. He clapped excitedly. He knew what happened when he saw a wand: someone might make pretty lights appear for him.

"Wand!" he cried, pointing. "Da wand! Da wand!"

"That's right, Harry, that's Daddy's wand," said Lily, smoothing Harry's jet-black hair, which was growing in a rather untidy style where it stuck out no matter how much you flattened it--rather like James' hair.

James resumed his seat and pointed his wand towards the center of the table. Remus figured it seemed as good a place as any.

"What's the incantation?" James asked Dumbledore.

"There are a couple of them to the spell as a whole," said Dumbledore.

The Marauders were not surprised to hear of such a thing. They'd had to use spells with more than one incantation attached when they were putting the magical properties on their long-since-lost-to-Argus-Filch Marauder's Map, particularly the one where they had to create the passwords for gaining access to the map's contents, and then "wiping" it when they'd finished so no one they didn't want reading it would be able to. But then they had been rather clever students.

Dumbledore cleared his throat and told James how to perform the spell. When James had it in his head, he tightened his hand on the handle of his wand slightly, and spoke the incantation, "Secreti orbis."

A golden rope issued forth from the tip of James' wand, and curled over the table into a perfect circle floating in midair.

"Magic!" Harry exclaimed, clapping his hands and feet with happy fervor. He reached out his hands toward the glowing floating ring. "Magic!"

Luckily he was stopped from saying anything more because Lily summoned a wet cloth from the kitchen to start cleaning up some of the tart all of Harry's face. Of course, she could've just gotten her wand and used the Cleaning Spell, but Remus had a feeling she was doing it this way as a less disruptive way of quieting Harry down. And it worked.

Meanwhile, James continued with the spell. He pointed his wand at the floating circle, which still had a string of the golden rope of which the circle was composed connected to the tip of the wand. He cleared his throat and said, "Celio"--and then gave the address of his and Lily's house in Godric's Hollow.

The circle became detached, slurping up the appendage-like bit of golden rope that had been connecting it to the wand tip like a string of spaghetti, until it was a full and completely separate perfect circle. It still, however, floated over the table.

Dumbledore motioned to Sirius to turn towards James.

Sirius did so, and James pointed his wand directly at Sirius' heart and said, "Deligo secreti-custos."

Remus and Peter leaned over to see a bright gold circle the diameter of a Snitch appear on the spot on Sirius' chest which rested directly over his heart. Sirius looked down at it, and nearly cried out in surprise to see it there, shining right through from his skin, but luckily he held himself back.

James pointed his wand at the floating golden circle over the table. "Huic fideo."

The golden floating circle unfurled itself and zipped right inside Sirius through the glowing gold circle over his heart. Sirius went rather rigid while this was done, and he grasped onto the back of the chair, but otherwise did not make a sound. When the last of the floating circle had been sucked up by the circle over his heart, that circle too vanished.

Sirius relaxed visibly.

"How do you feel?" James asked, lowering his wand.

Sirius swallowed. "Not...different...." He looked at Dumbledore.

"The secret is inside your soul now, Sirius," said Dumbledore. "So I would say, the fate of the Potters rest in your hands, but actually, in a way, it quite literally rests...in your soul."

~

After Dumbledore took his leave, the storm had taken its leave and now only tranquil rain drip-dropped outside. Lily unbuckled Harry and said to him teasingly, "Harry James Potter, you are covered in apple tart, mister. I think you need a bath. What do you think?"

"No, Ma!" Harry laughed.

"Yes!" Lily lifted her son into her arms (careful not to get much tart on herself) and nuzzled his nose playfully.

Harry threw back his head and giggled as Lily carried him off to give him a bath.

"Shall I save your tart then, Lily?" James called after her.

"No, I'll eat it after I get him into his pajamas!" Lily called from upstairs. They were just starting with bathing Harry in the big tub in the bathroom as opposed to the sink, where they used to do it when he was smaller.

Meanwhile, Sirius asked for a bit of parchment. James summoned some for him, as well as a bottle of ink and a quill, all the way from his study upstairs. Sirius thanked him as he took these things from him, and then he tore off a bit of the parchment, opened the bottle of ink, dipped the quill in, and began to scribble something down.

"What're you doing, Sirius?" Peter asked.

"I'm writing down this address," said Sirius, "so after you leave you and Remus can still find the place."

"But if one of us could be a spy--"

"Do you honestly believe that, Peter?" James asked. "Because I don't." He leaned back in his chair and surveyed his three best friends sitting there with him at his dining room table. Very quietly he said, "I trust all of you, I don't think anyone in this room would ever sell Lily, Harry, and me to Voldemort."

"Well said, James," said Remus.

James smiled and then proceeded to dig into his apple tart.

Remus did the same, as did Peter, while they waited for Sirius to hand them a slip of paper with the Potters' address on. After Peter memorized it, he handed it to Remus, who memorized it, and then wandlessly burnt it up into ash (just as a precaution). Meanwhile, Sirius banished the parchment, ink, and quill back to James' study.

After they finished their tart, James banished the dishes away to the sink, and then summoned them each a bottle of butterbeer. They spent some time talking and drinking, knocking about like the old friends they were, and for a moment they all enjoyed a peaceful lull in their conversation.

Then James chuckled and said, "There'll be no living with her after this."

"No living with who?" asked Sirius as he took a swig from his bottle.

"Lily." James nodded his head towards the ceiling to indicate his wife upstairs giving their son a bath.

"Why not?" asked Peter.

"Oh, I'm not being serious, Pete. I just mean when this is all over and done with I'll probably want to get away from her for a while. Not like a holiday, but I mean I'll definitely want to take a day out probably with you lot and stretch my legs a bit...."

Though Remus did not know it yet, for years and years later on, Remus would often lie awake at night wishing that he had not reacted the way that he had to James' words that evening. The simple fact was that he did however, because his secret love for Lily was still so prominent in his mind. Not being married to her himself--actually, not being married, period--Remus did not understand how after spending time in fearful hiding with the woman he loved, that once free of having to hide, he would want to "get away from her for a while". To him, he would want to spend even more time with her, out of relief that they had both made it out alive.

So, the words that came next out of Remus' mouth were these:

"I...thought you loved her, James."

James crinkled his brow, stared at Remus and titled his head. "Remus...why would you ask such a thing?" he asked bemusedly. "Of course I love her." He chuckled and straightened himself, hunkering back over his tart. "I was just saying that--"

"But you said you'd...."

"Like to get away from her for a while after all this is over, I know. But I was only joking, couldn't you tell?"

"Well, yeah but--"

"When you get married and have kids you'll see where I'm coming from."

Remus stiffened. He glared at James, his fingers tightening around the neck of his butterbeer bottle. The hand that held it flinched, as though he had an unconscious desire to smash it against the table and slice James' smiling face off with the jagged edges--

No! He didn't want to do that! James was his friend. Had always stuck by him thick and thin. He loved James like a brother. Not a like a twin brother, as James and Sirius seemed to be, but a brother nonetheless....

But even so....

"Even so," he said aloud, keeping his eyes narrowed, "that was...really harsh of you."

James laughed in a way that suggested he was trying to lighten the tension. "Aw, Moony, come on now. I'm not trying to be a prick. Really. I'm just saying: when you get married and have kids, then you can talk."

A hot lick of anger swept through Remus quite unexpectedly. Yet he found himself starting to feed off of it. He hadn't realized how frustrated it really made him that he just couldn't lead a "normal" life like James, Sirius, and Peter could. And the fact that he let the woman he loved--Lily--slip away when he could have had her, and now James had her for good--and for what? For him to say something like what he just said? Behind her back?

How dare he?

"Alright then," he said with stiff and fake politeness to conceal the acid bitterness beneath, "I agree. Only one problem. Considering what I am that'll probably never happen. Remember? I've talked to you about this before. Or did you forget I'm a werewolf?"

James blinked, clearly stunned. It took a moment for him to form words properly. "No...I didn't forget that Moony. I was just--"

"Rubbing it all in my face?" Remus snapped, lurching forward in his seat.

"Come on now, Remus, what do you take me for?" James inquired defensively, his own temper clearly starting to rise.

Remus leaned back in his chair. He took a swig of his drink, swallowed, and smacked his lips smartly. He surveyed James with frostiness. "At the moment? A sad arse."

Right now his emotions were a very taught string, bent to snap in two--

BANG!

James slammed his bottle on the table. "Alright, Remus, out with it. What's this all about?"

BANG!

Remus slammed his own bottle down. "It's all about how you're mocking me, that's what," he growled.

"Mocking you? About what?"

"About Lily!"

"Lily? What's she got to do with this?"

"She's got everything to do with this!"

James leapt to his feet, matching Remus' glare. "You got a problem you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Lupin?" he demanded.

"Yeah!" Remus leapt to his own feet, his fists clenched, unable to stop the flood of words that now poured from his mouth, from deep inside the most inner sancta of his soul. "I do have a problem, Potter!" he yelled. "Lily is the problem!"

"You've got a problem with her, then?" James challenged.

"I loved her!" Remus exploded before he could check himself.

What followed was a poised silence waiting to spring, with the only sound being Remus' heavy breathing as he stood there seething and shaking. Unable to believe he had just divulged the secret he had kept from Sirius and Peter--and above all, James--for the entire duration of their friendship. Yet at the same time he found it deliciously satisfying to see the look of dumb shock on their faces--especially on James'.

So he blundered on, a creature he believed was the wolf inside him howling inside his chest with something like triumph.

"I still love her!" he cried. "And I gave her up ...my one chance probably at ever having a real beautiful bird of my own! I gave that up...for you! You lucky bastard!" He pointed a finger at James.

James had quickly recovered from his initial shock, and didn't have as much trouble finding his voice this time. "Well, I'm sorry, Remus, but that was your choice, not mine or Lily's! It's not my fault you're as goddamn noble as a bleedin' Hufflepuff--!"

Remus' hand flew to his wand quick as lightning and pointed it straight at James. Impedimenta! A bang erupted from the end of his wand, as the spell hit James square in the chest and sent him flying backward into the wall.

Peter shrieked.

"James!" Sirius shouted, springing to his feet.

Remus summoned his cloak and threw it around his shoulders as he stormed out of the room and around the corner towards the front door. As he did so, he heard Sirius yell angrily after him: "Remus! Remus, get back here!" But he did not care. He wrenched the door open and stepped out into the wet night, whereupon he shut the door behind him with a tremendous SLAM!

~

Remus Apparated back home and kicked his front door open after he lifted the wards from it so that he could get inside. Then he replaced the wards and lit the fireplace in the sitting room. He collapsed onto the sofa, quaking frighteningly from head to toe. He squeezed his eyes shut against the choking, squeezing sensation in his heart....

He'd attacked James. He'd attacked James. His friend. His best friend. He'd attacked him.

They'll probably all think I'm this supposed spy now, he thought miserably. How can I ever face them again...? How can I ever face James again? What have I done? What in Godric's name have I done? And Lily! God, she'll never forgive me for what I did! She's kind but not that kind! She can't possibly be! I attacked her husband in their own home! What will she think of me? She'll never want to see me again...none of them will ever want to see me again....

He kicked off his shoes, and exhaustedly he pulled off his cloak and threw it aside. He dragged the afghan from over the back of the sofa, and enveloped himself in its warmth as he curled up into a ball and drifted wearily off to sleep.

His sleep however was not peaceful. He had terrible nightmares of Voldemort laughing cruelly as he murdered Peter, Sirius, James, Lily, and even little Harry, despite how hard Remus fought against invisible bonds to try and stop him. And when he had killed them all, he laughed at Remus' pain, and cursed him so that he would have to transform into a werewolf every night of his life, and not just one night per month on the night of the full moon....

He awoke with a gasping start.

"I can't go into hiding," he muttered breathlessly to himself. "I've got to do what I can to protect them." He stumbled out of bed, and hurried up the stairs to his study. There he quickly inked out a letter to Dumbledore asking for an assignment. He popped this into an envelope, sealed it, and rushed back down the stairs to the kitchen, where Blodeuwedd slept in her cage. He gently prodded her awake and opened the cage, whereupon she stuck out her leg for him to tie the letter on with string. After he did so, he sent her off into the early grey of morning.

While she was gone, he went back upstairs to his study to start working on an apology letter to James and Lily.

~

When Blodeuwedd returned with Dumbledore's reply, Remus was scratching out the first draft of his apology letter so much that he had to abandon that one--crumple it up and toss it in a bucket he kept for trash which he would then use later to burn as fuel in his fireplace. He couldn't understand why it was so hard to explain himself properly--or at least in a way he felt justified, yet at the same time conveyed his sincerest regrets for what he had done. He was glad to have a break from it to open Dumbledore's reply while he went down to the kitchen and gave his beloved Blodeuwedd an owl treat.

At first the letter expressed Dumbledore's surprise, his alarm even, that Remus did not want to go into hiding considering his close standing with the Potters. (For the moment, Remus felt that his standing with the Potters was not quite so good as he was certain it used to be, but he brushed that aside.) After expressing his dismay with Remus' request, he gave Remus instructions for a task to carry out if he was indeed so disinclined to go into hiding.

The task was to investigate the tendencies of the dementors of Azkaban prison.

Remus wrote a reply back saying that he accepted the mission. Then he sent another letter to the warden of Azkaban, requesting an audience with the dementors. During his wait for the reply, he worked on the second draft of the apology letter. Still he couldn't get it right, and was on the third draft when the Azkaban warden's reply returned, saying that he could certainly have an audience with the dementors (though he couldn't fathom why). He said he would have to pay a price. The cost required every last Sickle that Peter had given Remus for Christmas last year. He sent this is in, and as he waited to hear back from the warden, he worked more on the apology letter. He still couldn't get it right though, and was into the fifth draft when a letter from the warden arrived giving the date and time of Remus' appointment: the following day, at seven o'clock in the evening.

So the following day, Remus took a broom flight to Azkaban after procuring directions to the place from the warden. He arrived promptly at 7pm, and met with the rather seedy warden outside the gates. In an oily voice the warden escorted him inside, and led him to a room. Before he even opened the heavy iron door, Remus could already sense a terrible cold seeping inside him. When the warden wrenched the door open, Remus was hit with a full blast of that cold, heavy and thick with frigidity. He felt his blood drain, and his skin go white.

"Go on," the warden urged, giving Remus a yellow, toothy grin. "They're waiting...."

Remus forced himself to raise a foot and put it in front of the other, all the while wondering how he could have been so stupid.

Somehow he made it into the room where the door shut behind him with a deafening clang. Already he felt like vomiting though. He caught a glimpse of a bunch of very tall figures in hooded cloaks breathing in death rattles. Shudders erupted through Remus body, and he raised his wand and muttered, "Expecto patronum!"

A few wisps of silvery smoke issued from the end of his wand and then flickered out.

Then an icy fog filled his head, swirled deep into his very heart, and voices echoed in his head that caused him physical as well as mental pain to hear again....

The bounding monster stopped short of him and then leapt, its enormous, clawed front paws outstretched.

Remus screamed.

The paws hit Remus square in the chest, knocking the breath of out of his tiny body as he was pinned flat to the ground, strangling the sound of his cry....

"REMUS!" his mother screamed....

"GET AWAY FROM MY SON!" roared his father.... "JOANNE, STAY BACK...!"

Snarling, the beast flung out the paw it had used to tear at Remus and shoved John Lupin away, knocking him to the ground.

"JOHN!" Joanne shrieked.

"DADDY!" wailed Remus. And then he felt more pain in his already burning, bleeding shoulder, as rows of the beast's pointed teeth rent more flesh in a single, fleeting nip that lasted less than a second--yet the agony was so exquisite that the monster could have been sinking its teeth fully into his shoulder and biting down for over a minute. Even long after the thing had pounded away, retreating into the darkness, it felt like it was still there, gnawing on him. "Mummy...Daddy..." he panted, his breathing labored as darkness enclosed him....

Remus gasped and staggered, fell back against the wall, his head pounding, his bones shattering....

The roaring sounded deafeningly in his ears like a fierce howling wind rushing past him. He became rigid, and his limbs began to shake uncontrollably. The pain erupted in the pit of his stomach--that was where it always started--and he bent double as it continued to spread rapidly throughout the rest of his body, giving him the terribly agonizing sensation that every atom of his being was being violently and mercilessly ripped apart. He gave strangled screams and yells, falling to his knees and convulsing on the floor like he were having a great seizure. Bones shattered and reformed themselves, and muscles rent themselves and then sewed themselves up again, and skin stretched, as his entire body shape changed into that of what looked like a regular wolf, only it was slightly larger with a hunched back. This was where the pain reached its peak--when his spine forced itself into the hunched shape with a sickening crack--and this was where Remus lost his mind to the darkness....

Remus gritted his teeth, and pointed his wand at the dementors closing in around him. "Expecto patronum!" he gasped. They reminded him so much of a description in one of his mother's favorite books--another Dickens novel called A Christmas Carol, and the description he thought of was of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come...the tall hooded figure that never spoke, and had pale hands, and whose face was hidden by the blackness of the raised hood of its cloak....

Dumbledore spoke directly to Remus: "There is no easy way to say this, Remus. I'm afraid that late this morning your mother and father were found dead in a forest a few miles outside of London...."

"No..." Remus moaned, tears leaking from his eyes as one of the dementors closest to him reached out a macabre, moistly rotted hand towards him. "No...listen I need...to ask...." He fell to his hands and knees, his entire body shaking violently with cold and fear....

Ramirus has become an unfortunate victim of lycanthropy, and even if we do find him, that fact cannot be undone....

The imagined transformation screams of his little brother echoed painfully in Remus' head, and he couldn't find him anywhere, no matter how desperatey he searched through the thick darkness....

James leapt to his feet, matching Remus' glare. "You got a problem you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Lupin?"

"Yeah...! I do have a problem, Potter!" Remus yelled. "Lily is the problem!"

"You've got a problem with her, then?"

"I loved her...! I still love her! And I gave her up ...my one chance probably at ever having a real beautiful bird of my own! I gave that up...for you! You lucky bastard...!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Remus, but that was your choice, not mine or Lily's! It's not my fault you're as goddamn noble as a bleedin' Hufflepuff--!"

Remus' hand flew to his wand quick as lightning and pointed it straight at James.... A bang erupted from the end of his wand, as the spell hit James square in the chest and sent him flying backward into the wall....

"James...James I didn't mean it..." Remus groaned. James...Lily...Sirius...Peter.... He gave a roar of rage and knocked the dementor's outstretched hand out of his face.

All of the dementors recoiled, and Remus stood on his feet and cried, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A great big silver wolf burst from the end of his wand and leapt at the dementors, baring its teeth at them and snarling.

The dementors backed away, and the wolf remained faithfully between them and Remus, pacing back and forth, protecting Remus from further harm by them.

"Right," said Remus, still shaking but managing to keep his focus, "now, I've got some questions for you lot, so pay attention."

~

Despite his efforts, Remus didn't get much out of the dementors. As they didn't speak vocally, they gave a lot of signs instead, like shaking their heads slowly from side-to-side for "No" and nodding their heads slowly for "Yes", and a few other hand motions that Remus gradually figured out as he struggled to communicate with them. In the end, he bid them farewell, and then left, keeping his wolf Patronus solid until he'd completely left the room. The moment he shut the door tight behind him, he let his Patronus disappear, and then his legs turned to jelly. He sagged to the ground, and tremulously he reached into the pocket of his robes for a couple of the chocolates he carried around with him. He couldn't have been gladder that he had that habit. After he went through nibbling about five, he found he found he had the strength to stand and see the warden in his dungeon-like office. He still felt quaky though, and surmised that he was going to need to carry around bigger pieces--whole bars in fact--of chocolate if he really wanted to keep up his internal defenses against the after-effects of dementors.

In the seedy warden's office, he found the warden reading the usual grim news in The Daily Prophet. He did not like the smile the warden had on at all, but he brushed his ire aside and politely asked for a copy of the dementors' records. As the warden had files on each and every dementor, there was almost a veritable mountain of files to go through. The warden was at least kind enough, once he'd made duplicates of every single file, to shrink them down to size so that Remus could tote them with him. Then Remus thanked the warden for his assistance, tucking the shrunken files under his arm and grabbing his broomstick. He bid the warden good evening, and left the prison as swiftly as possible.

He flew straight on to Headquarters at Elphias Doge's mansion, to give his report of what he'd found out so far (which was very little) directly to Dumbledore. Dumbledore seemed unsurprised that Remus had not been able to make much headway talking to the dementors directly, and was pleased to see him prepared to do a lot of boring file-digging to get better results.

Instead of heading home then, Remus set himself up in the quaint little sitting room. He sat down on the sofa, and spread the piles and piles of files in stacks all about him on the coffee table. On a nearby table set a crackling Wizarding Wireless radio. With a sigh, he picked up the first file off the stack nearest to him and opened it up to start reading.

~

Blodeuwedd was a highly intelligent creature of her kind. She arrived a few hours later, somehow managed to carry a small bag of Remus' clothes to him, just in case he decided to stay over a couple of nights. Though he couldn't fathom how she had managed to pack the clothes, as stated before, Blodeuwedd was very intelligent, and who better than her owner to know this to be true? Remus rewarded her with a treat and a few minutes of stroking her feathers affectionately while she in turn gave his ear a few affectionate nips with her beak, and then sent her to perch in a big cage--a sort of aviary--where other owls of other members of the Order who were staying currently at the mansion were keeping theirs.

Then he went to the kitchen, made himself some tea, and sat back down to his file-digging. Thus far he hadn't turned up much of anything of any consequence. But he couldn't stop. He had to be thorough. He had to be certain of each dementor's loyalty to either the Ministry, or Voldemort.

He did take a break to read The Daily Prophet that day, and read to his shock and grief that there had been some surviving members of Marlene McKinnon's family--"had been" because the article hear reported that actually only Marlene had been killed, and so her family, without even telling the Order to be on the extreme safe side, had staged their deaths, and then gone into deep, deep hiding. But eventually, after years of living so clandestinely, they had been found out, and this time they were all dead for real.

After reading all of this, he needed a couple shots of Elphias' firewhiskey to get his courage and strength back up, before he could continue working through the dementor files.

It took him six days just get through most of the piles, and on the sixth day, he unfortunately had to stop and prepare for his transformation that evening. At sundown, he slipped out naked into the cold, and walked alone through the trees. He felt so desolate and empty inside, a deep yawning well of dark despair echoing inside him, inside his heart...because he knew that this time, he'd be suffering the transformation alone. It had been ages since that had happened. Not since his friends had had to miss it because of the trick that Sirius had played on Severus....

That was so painfully long ago--a whole lifetime beforehand, it seemed....

The transformation that night meanwhile was probably one of the worst in Remus' memory. It was black and red and wracked his body with so much pain that he could still feel most of it in his poor bones when he awoke in the late, cold morning, naked and shivering and slumped at the trunk of tree. A wave of humiliation washed over him. It still humiliated after all this time out of Hogwarts having to wake up without any clothes on in the middle of a cold forest, sometimes covered in blood. This morning he looked down on himself and saw so much red that he screamed a blood-curdling scream. His heart slammed wildly in his chest, and he staggered to his feet. He touched the blood that dripped all over him, and it was still so wet and so warm. It was all over his mouth too, and flowed thick down over his throat and neck too. With what strength he had, he wandlessly Summoned his wand from Elphias' mansion, and then with his wand performed a simple Cleaning Spell on himself, and breathed a sigh of relief as all of the wet blood disappeared.

He shuddered with an oncoming fever, and so he then Summoned his clothes bag from the mansion, and pulled some on him right there in the depth of the wood. Then he stumbled with the rest of the clothes of the bag in one hand, and his wand in the other, all the way back to the mansion. He passed through the security wards, and tossed his bag in the room Elphias had made up for him. Then he went down and managed to down a slice of toast and a cup of tea before resolutely diving straight into his work, trying not to think about anything else.

Later that evening, when he was taking a break, he tried to work some more on that apology letter, which he still couldn't finish to his liking, although he was most definitely getting there. As he worked on it, he listened to Elphias singing Halloween song limericks under his breath merrily as he put up Halloween decorations to celebrate the Halloween holiday, which was to come the very next day.

And despite Remus' exhaustion from the full moon, he could not get a wink of sleep that evening. He kept tossing and turning in his bed upstairs, whereupon he would arise and pace restlessly on his aching feet for a while before going back to bed. But then he would just toss and turn some more. He wanted to try some potion for dreamless sleep, but unfortunately Elphias was out of it at the moment. So he tried an old Muggle trick he'd learned from his mother: warm milk. But even that didn't help. Something was nagging his mind terribly, and he couldn't put his finger on it.

He managed at last to get some sleep an hour before dawn, and then at dawn he woke with a start, not remembering what he'd been dreaming, but had definitely felt as though someone or something had been suffocating him. He rolled over with a moan and tried to fall back asleep, but to no avail. Another hour passed, and in the end, he heaved a sigh and dragged himself out of bed.

He downed a crumpet with butter and jam and some tea for breakfast and then set himself up in the sitting room again to continue file-digging. As Order members throughout the day passed through, they all nodded courteously to him and they exchanged "Happy Halloween" greetings to each other--including Minerva McGonagall, whom Remus and his friends only saw at meetings during the summer months because of her needing to keep a good eye out for the students at Hogwarts during the school year--however, today she seemed to be here on a special need.

"Mister Lupin--Remus! Fancy seeing you here!" she said to him, her eyes widening behind her square spectacles.

"Er, yes, Professor," said Remus. "I'm--I'm working on things...."

"Oh, Remus, I think you can address me as Minerva. We are both adults, and I am no longer your teacher."

"Erm, yes, alright, erm, Minerva." Remus felt weird addressing his old Transfiguration teacher by her first name, especially since memories of her scolding Peter for his numerous exasperating mistakes during class kept creeping to the forefront of his mind. He even thought of few times when he himself was being scolded by her, as well as James and Sirius.

James and Sirius....

Remus sighed.

"Something wrong?" Minerva tilted her head and peered at him concernedly.

"No, not at all, Prof--I mean--I mean Minerva. I--I'm just worried about...my friends...you know."

Minerva nodded. "Well, I'm sure.... Whatever will be will be, Remus."

"And I also read...about the McKinnons...."

"Ah yes...very sad business...." Minerva's voice cracked every so slightly, betraying the presence of her grief she was trying so hard to keep hidden for composure's sake. She took a deep breath and went on, "Well, have a lovely Halloween, Remus," with one of her rare smiles, something Remus and his friends could also remember getting from time to time during school.

"You have a lovely Halloween too, Minerva," he told her, giving her a more sincere smile.

Around midday, Remus received a letter owled from Lily. This created a small amount of happiness, which considering Remus' misery, he did not regret.

The letter was written pretty much in code, so it opened with, Dear Moony, rather than, Dear Remus....

He found himself laughing for the first time in days as he read Lily's account of how one-year old Harry had just recently almost killed James' cat Abra and then knocked over and smashed a vase (a present from Lily's estranged sister, Petunia), while riding around on the toy broomstick Sirius had finally gotten Harry for Harry's first birthday. She said there was a picture enclosed. Remus smiled sadly when he read Lily say that James had said that he thought it was funny how Harry was riding around on the toy broom, saying he was going to be a great Quidditch player someday. He also read about the visit Bathilda Bagshot had made to their house. She had been the only guest at Harry's quiet little birthday tea, as Remus, Sirius, and Peter had all been busy with Order business. She mentioned that Bathilda actually was quite a frequent visitor, telling them incredible stories about Dumbledore (apparently she'd been his family's neighbor too when he'd lived in Godric's Hollow with his family growing up), and one example of these wild yarns that Bathilda had spun for them was that Dumbledore and the notorious Gellert Grindelwald had been friends!

Remus himself was very incredulous.

Meanwhile, James was getting frustrated penned up like a prisoner in his own home with Lily and Harry, though he was allegedly trying not to show it--Remus wasn't surprised to read about any of this. The letter also said that Dumbledore had James' Invisibility Cloak. Still had it in fact. Remus wondered if he had borrowed it at some point after the night Remus had stormed out of the Potters' house....

He shook his head, not wanting to think about that.

She also said that she had cried all evening when she and James had learned of the McKinnons deaths, now for real, and not staged like before for their protection.

And then she sort of spoke to Remus directly:

I know you left the other evening on the wrong foot with James, and I know you didn't mean to. I know you. I just feel awful about this really. I don't want you and James to get estranged over this. James feels bad about it too. He tries not to let it on, (of course) but I can tell it's just another thing that's eating at him. He feels terribly about the whole affair and he really wants to see you and make up with you. If you could just drop by, or even drop us a letter. We're worried about you.

Remus could hear her speak these words to him in his head, and he could feel his eyes burn with tears like the ones he could imagine in Lily's pretty green eyes perhaps as she wrote this. He pushed them back and traced his fingers over the last few words Lily wrote.

Lots of love,

Lily

"Lots of love," Remus muttered under his breath. Impatiently he brushed away the wetness in his eyes. He reached for the envelope in which the letter had arrived and picked it up, intending to stick the letter back inside so he could keep it there with him for always, safely...always have a part of Lily that was his, and his alone....

As he picked up the envelope, something fell out of it. He sat up from his reclined position on the sofa and leaned over to collect it from where it had fallen onto the carpet below. He turned it over and saw that it was a recent photograph--the photo she'd said she'd enclosed with the letter!

He smiled.

There was Harry, zooming around on that toy broomstick in his feet pajamas, roaring with laughter, while James' legs ran around him, the rest of James presumably chasing his son around and around playfully along with his legs. There was also Lily's face, radiant and shining with laughter as she watched them and glanced at the camera too. Slowly Remus lay back down and stretched out on the sofa, and simply watched them all. He drank in the sight of Lily's beautiful, beloved face, so full of life, the sight of little baby Harry so happy on that toy broomstick, and even the sight of James' legs, though he wished he could see James' face too....

He couldn't be sure how long he laid there, staring at this picture of the happy Potter family. But after a while in the drunken light of floating jack-o-lanterns Elphias had lit at some point, and the taste of cauldron cake he accepted with thanks and ate up as he continued studying the photo...at some point, he stuck these things back in the envelope and stuck them safely in the inside breast pocket of his jacket, right over his heart, right next to his copy of the photo of the Order, and the photo of him and his friends on their last day at Hogwarts. He then reached for the topmost dementor file, and was about to take it, when he sagged back in the sofa, feeling suddenly quite drained and overwhelmed with exhaustion. He hadn't realized how itchy his eyes were with tiredness, how achy he was with fatigue....

Before he knew it, he'd drifted into the peaceful embrace of sleep.

The sleep was not peaceful for very long of course. Remus had more recurring nightmares of his friends getting massacred, and he powerless to stop it from happening...sometimes, Voldemort, always there, forced him to transform into the werewolf and do it for him...and no matter how hard Remus fought, he could not resist the terrible cry for blood, and before he knew it, he had his friends' blood on his hands...literally--

Something gentle and soothing brushed his bangs--he felt it...so vividly...it had to be real--they were like...angel's wings--

Remus' eyes flew open, giving a great jerk and yelp of surprise, expecting to see a great angel standing there before. But there was nothing. No one was there in the sitting room but him. There were dying embers in the fireplace, but otherwise the grey light of morning was streaming through the window. The jack-o-lanterns were gone, and the candles and lamps had been snuffed out, no longer needed as Halloween night had now passed.

On the little table beside the couch, the wireless was still crackling like white noise.

Remus blinked and sat up, running a hand through his hair. He regarded the crackling wireless a moment, eager for the news report and needing of course to get some good reception if he wanted to hear it. With a sigh, he took out his wand and noted the time on a nearby ticking clock on the fireplace's mantelpiece: 8:30.

Just in time for the morning report, he thought. He gave the wireless a light tap with his wand. Clarete. The reception cleared up at once, and he caught the broadcast in the middle of a flash news bulletin.

"...Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has fallen--yes, witches and wizards, he has fallen--"

Remus staggered. Voldemort? He's fallen? He's gone?

"--at the hands of none other than a little one-year old baby by the name of Harry Potter!"

Harry...? But that could only mean--!

Remus sucked in his breath and turned towards the Wireless, no longer groggy now but completely wide awake.

Earnestly he fixed his wide-eyed stare on the broadcasting device as the bulletin continued, his heart thudding wildly in his chest.

"...how he did it, but he did! The little tyke did it!" The wizarding newscaster's voice went from cheery to solemn. "Unfortunately, it is my deepest regret to also bear the news that before little Harry Potter saved the day, it all came at a terrible price: in He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's attack on the Potters' cottage in Godric's Hollow last night on Halloween, Harry's father, James Potter, and his wife, Lily, were both murdered, most likely in their effort to protect their son--"

Remus heard a pained cry, and realized it was pouring from his own mouth. His face was cold, drained of what little color it had. He screwed his face up, trying to fight the pain lurching upward from his heart and into his throat. Helplessly he slid off of the sofa and onto the floor, on his knees before the wireless, clenching the arm of the sofa so tight that his nails dug into the fabric. "No!" he gasped. "No...Sirius! Sirius! You--You--You traitor! How could you--? James...Lily...dead...? No! I never even...got to tell him--No! It's not true! It's not true, dammit!"

He pounded the arm of the sofa with his fist. He let out a sob and gazed up hungrily with stinging, moistening eyes at the wireless as though it were some of sort of deity, and he begged it with all of the love he had in his heart for James and Lily to make it all untrue.

And Sirius....

He let out another anguished sob, and another and another and another before he could stop himself. He buried his face in the arm of the sofa, and let sob after sob tumble out of him like rocks over a cliff, until he was absolutely wracked and shaking with them.

It couldn't be...it just couldn't be.... How could Sirius have betrayed them like that...?

Somehow he stopped sobbing altogether though, when the broadcaster asked for a moment of silence for James and Lily's deaths. With tears gliding down the sides of his face he stared straight ahead at the leg of the side table, hiccupping silently, trying with all of his might to grasp the terrible truth....

The broadcaster suddenly came back on.

"This just in, fellow witches and wizards: I'm afraid to say that even after the fall of You-Know-Who, more mass tragedy has occurred in his name. Sirius Black was taken into custody today and sentenced to life in Azkaban. Shortly after the attack on the Potters' residence, Black decided the time had come to show his true colors as a Death Eater of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and went on a Muggle killing spree. Reports indicate that Black, shortly after the attack, was unhinged by his master's unexpected downfall, and so came upon the closest Muggle street filled with Muggles heading off to work, where he planned to kill as many Muggles as possible. One wizard by the name of Peter Pettigrew allegedly tried to stop Black, but of course he was no match for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's most loyal servant. With a single curse, Black murdered Pettigrew, along with twelve, horrified, Muggle bystanders. The damage includes a crater caused by the force of the curse, cracking down to the sewers below. All that was found of Pettigrew were a few fragments of hair, bloody robes, and one whole index finger. Black was thereafter taken into custody and sentenced without trial to life in Azkaban prison."

For a moment, Remus could only choke on his own breath.

"Sirius!" he gasped savagely. "Sirius! You bastard! How could you! James? He was your best mate! Your fucking best mate! And Peter!" Remus crumpled. "Wormy...oh Wormy...you stupid little idiot...what were you doing? What were you thinking? Oh, how could you, Sirius? You could never give that poor little bloke a break, could you?"

He started sobbing again, and wrapped his arms around the arm of the sofa, holding on for dear life. He was so terribly lost inside...so terribly, terribly lost....

"And...and Lily..." he moaned. "Oh God.... No.... Not her.... Why her...? If only...if only.... I loved her so much...I should've.... No...!"

He cried and cried as he had never cried before. He cried for his parents, for his brother Ramirus, for his beloved Lily, for James and for poor Harry...wherever he was....

Thank God he survived...thank God...thank God....

Still...he was so alone...so completely and utterly alone now....

He hiccupped even when he'd cried himself dry. So he concentrated mostly with his eyes closed on calming his breath, as he continued to lay there, crumpled against the arm of the sofa, clinging limply to it, his head pounding, his heart wounded.

After a while, he heard the front door of the house open. He gulped and wiped at his reddened eyes as he rose to his feet, sniffling. He turned around to see Elphias walk in, followed by Mad-Eye, sauntering in with his walking stick and his wooden leg, his wooden face worn as though he'd just made quite a few arrests, and still had more to make.

"Remus!" Elphias exclaimed, his hands fluttering wildly. "Remus! We heard! We heard everything!"

"I don't want to talk about it," Remus said curtly. He hesitated, and realized where he needed to go. Without another thought or desire in his mind, he grabbed his cloak from over the back of another nearby chair and threw it around his shoulders.

"Where're you off to then, young Lupin?" growled Mad-Eye.

"Nowhere," Remus growled in reply as he pushed passed him and Elphias towards the front door. He grabbed his father's old Silver Arrow from the broom cupboard and slammed it shut. Then he slammed the front door shut behind him and walked out onto the middle of Elphias' vast front lawn.

He kicked off from the ground and rose high into the air. He sped off into the night, passing fireworks and showers of owls flying everywhere. Below in the cities he saw witches and wizards sporting their celebration everywhere in plain view of Muggles.

But how could they be celebrating? Sure Voldemort had fallen, but how could anyone make merry when a beloved person like Sirius had turned into a stranger, as though he'd died overnight and something vile had reinhabited his body? When beloved people like Peter Pettigrew and Lily and James Potter were dead and gone forever? And beloved little ones like their poor son Harry had been orphaned in the blink of an eye?

~

He had to see for himself. He had to.

He landed at Godric's Hollow just as evening was falling. Through the cold leaves he walked through the village, toting his broom. In the skies overhead, he saw a beautiful display of meteor showers and shooting stars.... More celebrations for the fall of Lord Voldemort, and the triumph of Harry Potter.

Up ahead he could already make out the shape of the pile of rubble just beyond the familiar front gate, miraculously intact. When he reached it, he held his breath. He found he was shaking all over. With his trembling free hand, he unlatched the gate and stepped over into the yard.

He gulped as he made his way up the path.

A stone dropped out of the bottom of his stomach as he suddenly distinguished the outline of a body lying on the ground. He approached, and upon seeing it he stumbled, his knees giving way.

It was James.

James dead.

With two parallel planks of wood across his lifeless legs, his mouth slightly open in shock, his hazel eyes wide and empty. His head was turned slightly towards Remus, his dark round glasses askew. The only thing about him that moved was his tousled jet-black hair, and that was only because the wind caused it to quiver at it passed through....

Remus knelt beside him and reached over to fix James' glasses, but then decided not to. It didn't seem right: now that he thought about it, James' glasses had always been slightly askew...when he'd been alive.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into the dark void of the silence that surrounded him. "I'm sorry...everything I said...I wish I could take it back...." His voice cracked and broke. He wiped furiously at the wetness forming in his eyes again, and with a rather childlike sniffle, he looked around, wondering miserably where Lily lay.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, and staggered slightly as he picked his way through the rubble--

Until he spotted her.

Spread-eagled on her back.

And beautiful even in death.

Her wide green eyes had lost their fire of life, but her blazing red hair was spread out, and like her husband's hair, it quivered in the crisp November breeze. He knelt down beside her, and this time he did not wipe away the fresh tears. He did not break down into senseless sobs like earlier: he simply allowed the tears to roll down his cheeks and drop and splash right down onto the ground. He reached over and stroked her lovely red hair. Had he ever actually been able to do such a thing when she'd been alive? He couldn't remember.

He seized a fistful of it, and rubbed his thumb over. It was so silky and soft it broke his heart even more than it already was. He looked about him, and nearby, he saw the splintered remains of the bars of a crib.

Harry's crib....

Harry...wherever he was...most likely in the care of Albus Dumbledore himself, perhaps.... He didn't see him anywhere here anyway....

He heaved what might have been the heaviest sigh of his life, stroked Lily's hair for a small while--just one last time--and then, with all of the strength he could muster, he wiped at his tearful face and rose to his feet, sniffing in a rather childlike way again.

"Remus," said a sad and quiet voice behind him.

Remus snapped around towards the front gate.

And there stood Albus Dumbledore.