A Time Before Tears

Epilogue

Moving On

Watching Hermione tell Harry about Lily is painful for me. She tells the details so slowly, so accurately, that I am forced to remember the intricacies of Lily Evans that I have spent years trying to forget because it hurts my heart to remember the way she and James used to find each other instantly in a crowded room.

Harry will never experience this kind of hurt and I wonder, sometimes, whether he is better off than I am. He, unlike me, will never have James' voice is his head, guiding his conscience. He will never have Lily's laughter echo in his ears. He will never know their kindness, power, grace, or friendship. He won't even know their faces. The only piece of them that he has, that we share, is the pain that comes with being connected to people who are so obviously good.

Harry, because his parents died before he had the chance to know their faults, has created a perfect picture of them. He imagines them almost as gods and so that is what he has to live up to. I, at least, know that James once tripped on his own shoelace, fell down a flight of stairs in the middle of the night, was caught by Flutey, and served seven detentions for it.

"What are you doing here, Lupin?" A nasty voice shocks me out of my reverie. I spin around only to find the stiff, unyielding shape of Severus Snape standing solidly behind me.

"Watching Hermione tell Harry about his parents," I answer truthfully, too drained to dream of lying.

I turn my attention back to the two children sitting on the Gryffindor stands, dealing with grown-up problems, but I see Snape nod in my peripheral vision. I stand like that for a while, only barely noticing the other person who seems to occupy so little space when he wants to. Snape is probably the only person in the world who can say something horrible about James Potter without flinching. Snape is probably also the first person who knew there was something wrong with Hermione when she first entered our lives in Sixth Year. That first morning he knew she had not attended Beauxbaton. Maybe he knew even more about her but I would have never asked.

To me, Hermione was perfect and I did not want that to change. Even at sixteen, I knew how rare and fragile perfection was, and I tried to keep it clean and unbroken, especially after Hermione left. I forgot or pushed away any flaw I might have ever seen in her, and so I lived with the ideal woman in my mind. No other girlfriend could compare.

Noelle wasn't lying when she said I loved Hermione.

She wasn't lying when she said I changed after Hermione left.

I am still watching Hermione explain everything to Harry but I am carefully trying to block out her voice. I want only to look at her, not because I am in love with her anymore (twenty-two years tends to dull passionate feelings) but because I haven't seen her in years. Not this version of her.

When I came here in 1993, Dumbledore had mentioned something about finding a lost friend. I hadn't understood what he meant. I hardly ever understand what that man means but I have always respected him and his judgment, I just couldn't guess who he was talking about. My old friends were dead and my other friends, made after Hogwarts, lived far away from the werewolf prejudice of Europe.

Then I saw her on the train ride to school, barely recognizable with enormous front teeth, gigantic hair, and her simple countenance. I think I would have stared at her if I hadn't seen Harry right away. While I had wanted to talk to Hermione, I recognized that she was not the girl I had known, and the son of my best friend was lying on the ground as an after effect of a run in with a Dementor. Helping him gave me time to think and I used it well. I knew I couldn't tell Hermione what I knew about her because she hadn't gone back yet, but what if after she left 1973 she didn't come back to this time. What if she'd just disappeared? Was it my job to protect her? No, Dumbledore told me immediately when I discussed the issue with him, I was to tell her nothing.

So I said nothing, but that didn't mean I didn't try to protect her. Even on our first day of class I tried to watch out for her well-being. She had told me once how scared she was of Boggarts. She said that what she saw was more horrifying than anything she had ever experienced. I didn't let her see it that first day. Maybe that was stupid of me but it was the first time I had seen her in two decades. I didn't want to hurt her immediately.

The wind is blowing and her hair is down; it's whipping around, hitting her in the face as she continues to tell Harry all about his parents.

I think back to the sixteen year-old that I was, the one who had fallen for her. I was a naïve kid, ready to finally get over the memory of Arias, and falling for Hermione had been easy. She was kind, smart, and funny. She was also very pretty. My friends' reactions varied. Sirius told me to be careful, tread lightly. James trusted Lily and Lily trusted Hermione, but he wasn't exactly encouraging. Ironically, Peter seemed the only person who wanted us to date. He wanted to see me happy, he had said, and he thought Hermione would make do that.

I miss Peter.

Since the incident with Noelle, there have been quite a few changes. In the world, the most noticeable change comes from within the castle of Hogwarts: the heightened security levels. There are now curfews, locating spells, and secret security on ever level of the castle. In the real world, after receiving frantic owls from their children attending Hogwarts, parents are beginning to become hysterical with the thought that Voldemort might return. For myself, the biggest change came from within my own heart. I began to pity both Peter and Noelle that night. They were pthetic and locked into a life that would never make them happy. I don't think I will ever be able to hate them again. Nor will I be able to hate the man standing beside me, whom I never pitied but now admire immensely for his strength to resist that which one of my best friends could not.

"I told him about her," Severus Snape announces, interrupting my inner monologue. I understand, without having to be told, that he is referring to Harry and Lily. She is the only person in the world whom Snape would talk about with a positive emotional inflection, and he is the only one alive that can invoke that kind of hatred in Snape's voice.

"How did it go?"

"Like his father, Harry hates me." His voice is so unconcerned that I glance over to make sure he actually spoke. He had. "But he was quite responsive to my knowledge. Doubted my word until I gave him a letter written by his mother saying that we were friends."

"Did you tell him everything?"

"I told him that Lily was one of six people in the world who could perform the charm."

"So you lied."

"If I told him Lily was the only one capable of pulling off that spell, if he knew how much Voldemort wanted that charm performed on himself, Potter's already gigantic ego might have expanded beyond the human capacity to hold it."

"He could handle it well. He's more special than you know." Snape looks sharply at me after I said this comment. I see the movement out of the corner of my eye and it forces me to meet his gaze.

"Then she really did perform it on him," he says. It is a statement, not a question.

"Yes," I reply, thinking back to the day James told me Lily had placed the Fuertisma Charm on their two-day-old baby. James, like myself, had been confused. Only now am I beginning to understand how brilliant Lily was. Harry was already powerful, but with that charm he would have the natural born instincts of a thousand of the world's greatest witches and wizards. He only has to learn how to unlock that knowledge.

"So he really is our greatest hope of defeating Voldemort," Snape comments quietly, a hint of irony laced into his words. He has a distant look in his eyes that I know perfectly well. It is the look of a man trying not to remember the people he lost.

I know that feeling. I spent eleven years of my life getting over the loss of my closest friends. It was especially difficult for me because while I grieved, the world celebrated. To them, the death of Lily and James Potter meant liberation from the Dark Arts. To them, the death of Peter Pettigrew was a heroic gesture, not something to cry over. To them, the betrayal of Sirius Black was the last tragedy in a brutal war and one of many Death Eater travesties that were made apparent in the following weeks.

The world rejoiced while I cried because I'd lost all of my school friends.

Maybe then I should have gone to Severus Snape, the only person I knew who was grieving as much as I, but I knew he would not have cared about James or Peter, and he definitely would not have let me go without a few shots about Sirius turning out to be the evil one instead of him. So I dealt with my pain alone, as I was most used to coping with things, and eventually I started to move on. Literally. After the funerals and everything I just left. I went everywhere and anywhere that wasn't England. I went to China and Japan. I hiked through Laos and Cambodia. I swam in Figi and Hawaii.

After those eleven years of running from my past, I got a letter from Hagrid, asking me for pictures of James and Lily. He wanted to give them to Harry, who was a First Year and had not a single picture of his parents. I look over at Harry now and still feel the little pang of sadness when I remember all that he has suffered so quietly.

The Ministry worked adamantly to keep me away from him because I am a werewolf and he is The-Boy-Who-Lived. I had petitioned to be Harry's guardian but was denied that right because of what I am. I think that was better. As much as I wish I could say I would have been good to Harry, I don't think I could have hidden my original resentment that he was alive while James was not; I got over that bitterness quickly but maybe living with his aunt and uncle was better for Harry in those early years. He never talks much about them but all the same, they're his family and Lily really seemed to love Petunia.

Hermione has stopped talking now and both she and Harry are just staring at each other.

"She deserved the best," Snape says, breaking our silence.

Once more he is bringing up Lily. I think, aside from speaking to Harry, this might be the first time he has spoken of her since her death. I look at him, his pale face almost a complete opposite of the robes hanging on his body. Like me, he probably ran from the memories of Lily, who had been her best friend. I see that his eyes are still looked on Harry so I move my own eyes to watch the same sight. I know that we are both thinking about the glimpses of her that we see in her son. In his quiet manner, Harry reminds me of Lily; she was also content with silence, unlike James, who always needed noise to be comfortable.

"She got the best," I reply after the long pause. Snape did not argue the point.

Harry is riffling through the pictures in a dreamlike way and I wonder if he is going to be able to get through this without crying. I wonder if I want him to. Hermione is putting her hand on his knee and making him look at her. He is shaking his head.

I wish I could have honestly told Hermione what it was like after she left. I could have told her about hating myself for believing in her. I could have told her about being sixteen and heartbroken. I could have told her about slowly cutting off all my friends, protecting myself from being hurt again, and giving them cause to suspect I was working with the Dark Lord. I could have told her about how much losing her had terrified me. But I know that if we ever did have another conversation, I would never mention any of these things to her. It would hurt her and that has never been my intention.

If we ever actually sat down and had a conversation I would have given her advise about the coming years. I would have explained the fear of growing up during war and flinching every time an owl knocked on my window because I knew it was never good news. Yes, I remember that and I would have told her about it in much the same way she explained Lily to Harry; it would have been forced and necessary.

I don't think she told Harry everything about Lily. Hermione only spent a little more than an hour recounting the events, occasionally picking up a picture from the stack she gave him, and that isn't nearly enough time to explain who Lily was. I barely knew my best friend's mysterious wife and it would have taken me days to explain the little I knew. Then I would have tried to explain James and that would have taken forever, let alone talking about the rest of my year: Valerie, a girl whose life seemed blanketed in shadow, Noelle, whose easy friendship with Peter I had always been jealous of, Peter, whose belief lead me to become the kind of man I am today, and Sirius, whose loyalty I have only ever questioned once.

But this is not my chance to tell The-Boy-Who-Lived about my brothers and friends. This time is for Hermione, who is his best friend, to share what happened to her. She probably spent more time talking about the good personality traits than the bad ones, so as to not hurt Harry. But she probably doesn't realize how much more that must have hurt Harry, to hear only the good things, the things he would never get to know in person, because he never once shed a tear. I want to ask him if he has ever cried, but I do not think I want to know the answer. Thinking back, I can only recall a few times when either Lily or James cried- Lily cried the day she erased her own memory, James cried when his parents died.

Hermione did not stay long enough to see that though. She arrived just a few years after Sirius' sister died and left just before the war got really bad. In that, I guess I am happy for Harry. His vicarious memories of his parents are of the best of them, after they met and before their first big fight, but I don't doubt he'd want to know about that as well. Harry was never one to want to know only the good side of people. He always wants to find out anything and everything about his parents. In that way I guess it was good for him to learn about Lily from Severus, who would never skim over the bad or emphasis the good parts in Lily.

Harry and Hermione are standing up now and hugging. I think I ought to leave. I don't want Hermione to see me standing here, a little ways away from Hagrid's house, staring at her and Harry. If she sees me she may come over and ask me the one question I never want her to ask, the one that I know is eating away at her insides. She wants to know if I have moved on and I know that no matter how I answer, I will hurt her because while she does want me to have moved on, she doesn't want to think of herself as replaceable.

I am holding a Boxmora right now and as I uncurl my left hand I find, gratefully, that it hasn't changed shapes. I smile ruefully because while I have moved on, I know that it is not in a good way. I distance myself from the people I knew at Hogwarts. I still distrust people more quickly than is justified. But that isn't what I want for Hermione. I want her to move on the right way, to fall back into her old friendships, to stay top of the class, to go to Ron and be happy. He took a curse for her that terrified him. He could hardly stand, but for Hermione he ran across the room and dove in front of her. He carried her body, with strength he did not have, up to the Hospital Wing and cried for her. She deserves someone who is willing to do that for her.

As I look up I see that she and Harry and standing together, hugging, and she is smiling serenely. Hermione will have these friends to support her and she will live to fulfill a great destiny. I put the Boxmora back into my pocket feeling strangely happy.

"Maybe you and I are more alike than you thought," Severus says, slipping past me like a ghost. He probably saw the unchanged Boxmora. "And while I will never admit that James Potter deserved her, maybe Harry Potter was the man Lily needed."

I am sure that is as close to a compliment as Severus Snape will ever come to giving James' son and I smile slightly as I watch Snape's lonely form walk away, barely making the ground under his feet shift, and silently agree that we might have more in common than I thought possible.