A Chance You Only Get Once

Chapter Twenty Seven
What She Left Behind

There were two people at the funeral of Peter Pettigrew. Mr. and Mrs. Remus Lupin did not have a service in a church or at the gravesite. They had no vicar or priest preside over the proceedings. There was not even a Ministry official there to see that all the proper procedures were carried out. They did not even employ the services of a grave-digger.

They simply brought the transfigured body of the man who had been Peter Pettigrew to a small Muggle cemetery where they had purchased a small plot, years ago in fact. It was miles away from anyone who might have known him. No one planned to visit afterwards, not even the lone mourners. They did not cry or regret his death, but Mr. and Mrs. Remus Lupin were mourners nonetheless. What could be more tragic than a life that had been twisted by betrayals and evil? What could be more heartbreaking than the voluntary fall of a good man?

Remus and Nymphadora Lupin ensured that they were alone in the cemetery, then magically buried the bone and sealed the grave to prevent tampering. The tombstone had two lines written in plain, block letters:

Peter Pettigrew

Wormtail

Tonks had not nor would she ever understand why Remus Lupin insisted on giving Peter Pettigrew a proper funeral, even one so barren. She would never understand why he should have one of the honored plots where first Marissa Fletcher then Lily and James Potter then Sirius Black had been buried and where she and Remus would be someday. Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin saw the world in too much black and white to ever understand that some bonds never died, no matter how viciously they may be beat with a sword. The kind of friends that the Marauders were to each other, that does not break. Having loved the same woman, that does not disappear.

Yes, Remus Lupin had been fully and completely committed to killing him in the Shrieking Shack, and, were Peter Pettigrew standing before him alive now, he would have attacked him and been willing to physically rip him limb from limb for what he had done to Marissa and Lily and James and Sirius and Harry and Cedric and who knew who else? He would have torn his eyes out for being so cowardly and careless as to let Marissa be killed because he almost confessed to her. He would have beat him senseless for betraying the hard-won trust of James and Lily when they hadn't even been willing to give it to Remus at that point in their lives. He would have been willing to give him the Bite for framing Sirius and making him suffer Azkaban for thirteen years. He would have cursed him with Cruciatius for making Harry an orphan and forcibly taking his blood in the graveyard. He would have watched him be Kissed for bringing Voldemort back from the dead.

"Did I ever tell you that Peter was the one who came up with the idea of them becoming Animagii?" Remus said aloud as they both looked down at the plain, lonely grave of the man who had once been so very different. He could feel his wife's shock as she stood beside him. Remus chuckled slightly. "Yes, not even those who knew us then would have guessed that," he said with amusement. "James and Sirius are the ones who actually figured it out, of course, but it was originally Peter's idea." Suddenly, his voice sounded very sad, "Everyone always underestimated old Peter."

"How can you speak of him like that? Like he's still your old friend?" Tonks demanded of him sharply. "How can you bury him here? With all of the people that you love? Bury the man who betrayed them with all of these people who loved each other so?"

"Because beneath the hate, I pity him," Remus answered quietly. "And because, however he punished us for it, we were his friends. This circle of ours would be incomplete without him." Tonks stepped away from him, unable to express her disapproval of this sentiment. "The greatest good he did in his life was from a chance comment that became an idea in the heads of two boys he worshipped. The only time he tried to turn from Voldemort's service, it killed the woman that he still loved until his own death. The greatest evil that he ever committed resulted in thirteen years of peace. His entire life, everything he tried to do came out wrong, and always the people who suffered for it were those who trusted him. We are as guilty as Voldemort himself of that foolishness. And of course, that was all that he ever wanted: trust, love, attention. Yet he cursed all those who gave it to him."

Remus Lupin turned his face away from the tombstone and looked at the back of Tonks who had turned away. He walked the few steps to close the distance between them and put his hand on her shoulder. "How can you forgive him?" she asked quietly.

"Everyone deserves a burial, Tonks," Remus replied quietly. "Especially a man who befriends a werewolf." She stiffened. "Everyone deserves to have some tears shed for them, even a man like Peter. Especially a man like Wormtail, who lived a life so different from that which he intended."

When she did not relax, Remus eventually removed his hand and turned back to the grave marker. "If nothing else, the end of the Marauders deserves a ceremony." Remus chuckled again slightly. "It's strange how many times over the years that I've thought that the Marauders were ended. Now I suppose they really are.

"Don't worry, we won't come here for him again," Remus said, turning away from the tombstone and walking away from the Muggle cemetery. Tonks took his hand as they walked away from the final resting place of the Marauder that everyone overlooked, underestimated, overshadowed, undervalued, never noticed and never saw coming. Yes, Peter was still a Marauder. Nothing could change that.

* * *

"Some might ask: what, really, is the worth of only one life in this time of war and in a reign of terror that few honestly expect to live through? There is a trite answer that says that we all affect each other and that we are all interconnected to some degree or another, that however small the link is, we are connected to everyone else. The girl we come to honor today believed this, but it was easier for her to believe in it than for others. While for the rest of us, the connections may be strong in some cases and faint in others, for her everyone here today will feel the loss of her like a blow to the heart. For her, there is no one who will be affected only slightly by her death. Her case is different. She mattered greatly to everyone at Hogwarts, to everyone in her neighborhood, to everyone that she ever met. Her life was worth a great deal to everyone."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

The Aurors took pictures, drew gruesome chalk lines, and finally let David Potter and Sirius Black move her from the awkward position in the hallway and carry her into her room and place her on her bed. Without a mark on her, it was nearly impossible not to think that she was merely sleeping. Sirius shivered and turned away, unable to look at his friend when she looked so normal except for the one detail that made her death undeniable. Her mouth was stern. Sirius could scarcely remember a time that Marissa didn't have even the shadow of a smile tugging at her lips. Now they were gray and stern. She had tried to be serious on occasion, but even at her most solemn, there had been a smirk fighting to reach the surface plainly visible on her face.

The Aurors mercifully and insultingly left very soon. They made a few notes about another You-Know-Who hate crime then left them in peace, assuring them that the morgue would be along as soon as they could spare the personnel. Overall, the Ministry's treatment of the murder of Marissa Fletcher was both a testament to how jaded by Voldemort the magical world had become and a horrifying look at the treatment of Muggle-borns in that same world. Ironically, Muggle-borns were the ones that the Ministry should have trusted the most since they would never even be tempted by the Dark Lord or his ways.

Mundungus was made to sit in the kitchen with Atlanta Potter as she and Mavi, who had come over to serve Christmas dinner for them oblivious to the occurrences the night before, tried to save the Christmas turkey. No one was quite sure what had happened to it, and they eventually set it aside. Mrs. Potter decided to fry some chicken instead. Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Figg showed up about midmorning to keep watch on their owners. Mrs. Figg never left the young Mundungus Fletcher who seemed unable to sit still however much Mrs. Potter and Mavi tried to force him.

There was, after all, absolutely no where to go. There was no where to go to escape this. So they all stood around nibbling at the edges at what would have been a great meal if not for the spoiled turkey and positively ruined appetites. Mr. Fletcher's work had been called. Hogwarts had been owled, but they had already known. The morgue had made an appointment for tomorrow. The funeral home had said they would call back. They had no where to go, nothing to do, and far too many thoughts running wild through their heads.

"What's that, Dung?" Mavi asked after a long time of silence. He was toying with the gold bow on a small box wrapped in Gryffindor red paper. There was a Hogwarts crest in one corner. He had been looking at it and playing with the bow for almost an hour now, contemplating it as if memorizing the sight. "Is it her present?" Although none of the others in the kitchen would have had the insight to make that guess, they knew instantly that that was the only thing that it could be.

They all gathered around. "Are you going to open it?" Mrs. Potter asked gently. She hit just the right note. It must be a mother thing. Marissa had, after all, been able to do just that for him.

"Marissa always made me wait until she was ready before I opened my presents," he said quietly, his voice distant as if he were speaking to people in a completely different world than the one he occupied. "She used to torture me trying to find just the right spot to settle in before she would let me rip open her gift. It was always the best gift in the pack. She always took so long that I eventually opened it behind her back. She'd be so mad. I always opened it behind her back. So why can't I do that now?"

"It's Marissa's last little joke," Sirius said quietly, sitting down on the stool next to Mundungus. He looked over at the boy who looked suddenly much younger than his now eleven years. Oh, Merlin! Sirius realized abruptly. On his birthday? Life really sucked with Voldemort around. Sirius recovered and blinked away his thoughts as the boy looked up at him in confusion. "What, you didn't expect her to go without a parting shot, did you? She always had to have the last word. So she left one last little irony behind for us to remember her by."

Mundungus looked down at the bow for a long minute after this speech. Then he pulled the ribbon out of the bow and unwrapped it from the package. He slowly, methodically tore the paper off and set it aside with none of the feverish frenzy of every other Christmas of his life. He slowly pulled off the top of the box.

It was a small leather-bound book that he pulled out of the box. In a fancy gold script were written the words, "The Never Ending Story." He opened the first page and saw a message written in Marissa's loopy handwriting.

Merry Christmas, Gus.

The first pages I filled out for you, picking my favorite memories of the bunch. Unfortunately, this means that the album is set to my preferences. So you'd better live a life that I would approve of or none of your memories will be recorded here for you. But after you get through the years that I made for you, after you finish remembering all the times that we shared together, the pages will begin to fill with the rest of your life.

Make me proud of what those pages will show, Gus, and never forget where you come from either. I'm only a few page turns away. I will always be with you, living in your memories and watching over your future like a hawk. Don't disappoint me or forget me. I couldn't bear either.

I love you, Gus. Don't ever let anyone else call you that, that's mine.

Your adoring sister,
Marissa

There was a full-page portrait of his mother that winked and smiled at him on the first page. Then it started with his baby pictures. It continued on with pictures and pages in decorated detail, often with a small slip of paper with the written anecdote attached, especially in the younger years when he couldn't remember the story of the picture for himself. When he came to the picture of them turkey bowling, he stopped and started at her for a long time. How very long it could seem to take when Christmas was approaching, yet moving from one Christmas to the next felt like no time at all, even when everything had changed in the meantime. Everyone watched with him, smiling at the memories that they could share with him. Mavi knew nearly every one.

Eventually it came to creamy parchment pages that were completely blank. Mundungus ran his hands over these. There was another note from Marissa written on the page before the first empty one.

The rest is yours to fill. Make me proud. I love you, Gus.

Gus ran his hand over this page silently. They were all silent as they stared at this empty page. They lingered there far longer than they had on the pages that represented the past, the happy and glorious past. This page represented the future, one that looked cold and bleak and as blank as that page without Marissa's warm and bright presence.

* * *

"You all know how strange it will be to walk into Hogwarts Castle and know that she isn't there. That she will never again terrorize the school with one of her outrageous stunts. She will never perform another Muggle magic show. She will never steal the show at a Quidditch match. She won't be there the next time that you feel like crying, the next time that you feel alone, the next time that you feel like the world is crashing in on you. She had a knack for showing up at those times. I think she's witnessed most of the worst moments of my life, and I think that that's true for many of you out there. Hogwarts itself will reel from the blow of losing her."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

The Girls' Dormitory staircase letting James up into Lily's room triggered the alarm system that would alert Professor McGonagall to the emergency in her house. She hurried to Gryffindor Tower, quickly sending a message to Dumbledore to follow her. She burst into the Common Room and looked up at the staircase. She had, truthfully, half-expected it to be some Marauder-induced disaster that left poor Miss Evans to be rescued by the only troublemaker who knew how to take off the enchantment.

She heard muffled sounds coming from the staircase and took them at a less than dignified run. She found Lily Evans and James Potter on the ground, Miss Evans sobbing on Mr. Potter. She looked over them into the room, and her eyes immediately found the boxes with the cruelly blunt words stamped on the crude boxes. A box was such a ridiculous looking thing. It was all right angles and perfectly straight planes that never gave, never bent, never surrendered. It's only use was the part that was empty, and the harsh box shape was not ideal for any of things it was called upon to store.

This was a far less painful train of thought than the one that the old Professor knew must, inevitably, follow it, but there is only so much railing one can do against a simple box. She clutched her chest as if she was having a heart attack, gasping and trying to force herself to breathe against the tightness there that had nothing to do with a weak heart. It had everything to do with the death of a great heart.

She nearly sunk down to sit on the stairs herself. Looking down at her students, one of whom was looking up at her with eyes that begged her to explain that this meant something else - anything but what he had initially assumed - she kept her unsteady legs under her and said in a very shaken voice, "Mr. Potter, Miss Evans, would you tell me please when this happened?"

"Just now, Professor," Mr. Potter answered her, sounding as if he was very glad to have something less wrenching to think about, even if only temporarily.

"When did Miss Evans go to bed last night?"

"She slept down in the Common Room," James said quietly. Professor McGonagall's eyes flicked over and looked at the still sobbing, broken redhead in surprise briefly. There was not much more room for small surprises in her mind today, however. Heart-wrenching shocks were crowding them out. "Professor," James said tentatively, clearly terrified of the answer, "Does this mean - what does this mean?"

"I'm afraid it appears that Marissa Fletcher is no longer with us," Professor McGonagall couldn't believe how steady she managed to keep her voice. True, there had been six years of darkness and a reign of terror to harden her against unjust deaths and losing those close to her. From the look in James Potter's eyes, however, he would never quite forgive her for the fact that her voice did not waver as she said those terrible words that broke his heart. He probably would have hated her merely for saying them.

Losing Marissa Fletcher was the cruelty of life in general, pure and simple. It was a cruelty outside of the systemized madness of Voldemort. It was not the focused evil of a war or a justifiable sacrifice for a great cause. It was a disease, or so she believed at the time. It was life inflicting a painful lesson on someone who taught children to transfigure everything except despair into hope. It was senseless. It was terrible.

Then Dumbledore had arrived. She turned to him, her face displaying all the emotions she had, out of a habit too long to be changed, hidden from the students on the ground below her. "Oh Albus," she said quietly, her sigh almost covered by the ragged breathing of the nearly hysterical Lily Evans. There seemed to be no comfort for her. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

The twinkle was already gone from Professor Dumbledore's eyes. They were a cold and still blue. The wrinkles in his face looked more pronounced than Professor McGonagall had seen them in a long time. "I have just received an owl from your parents, James, and Sirius Black. They are at Marissa's house now with her brother," he said, his calm voice belying his altered appearance. "If the two of you would like to return home, it will be arranged. If you are going to stay, Mr. Black has stated his wish to return with you. Mr. and Mrs. Potter have volunteered to handle the funeral arrangements." Funeral arrangements. Until that moment, no one had actually said it. The words echoed down the staircase, even Lily's sobs silenced as the words rang around them. Funeral arrangements. Marissa needed funeral arrangements made for her. Marissa needed a service. Marissa needed a church. Marissa needed a cemetery. Marissa needed a tombstone. Marissa needed a coffin.

"If she has not calmed in a few minutes, Mr. Potter, please administer a Calming Charm," Professor Dumbledore said soberly. "Minerva, if you would provide us with a pot of tea, we can wait in the Common Room for these two to join us when they have composed themselves after the first shock. At this moment, we are unwelcome intruders on their grief."

So it was that James Potter held Lily Evans as they both cried for the death of a friend, the death of someone closer than a sister, the death of a bright light in their lives, the death of the peculiar person that had been Marissa Jane Fletcher. Had been.

* * *

"She was crazy most of the time. She was unique; I suppose I should clarify. No one else will ever make a mural out of clouds to paint the sky or crack into the Christmas crackers to plant inside jokes in them. Even in her death, she was unique. Only Marissa, when faced with multiple Death Eaters coming to kill her, could manage to trick them into barreling head first into a roasting turkey."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

Evelyn Lupin was doing, in short, everything that she could. Considering that she was a McKinnon who married a Lupin, this was a great deal. She stormed right into the Ministry of Magic itself on Christmas evening and demanded to see the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Only shameful use of her husband's position and property and reputation could have dragged him away from his family. With any other department head, it might still have been a very tough draw.

But the news that Evelyn Lupin, the queen of the upper social circle, was incensed at an action of the Ministry was enough to turn heads. She was a loyalist to an extreme degree, and she knew every reporter, publisher, and investor in the Daily Prophet. Her turning on the Ministry would be front page news and very bad publicity, and if it wasn't, she would make it front page news.

When she was granted the interview, she walked in with her guns blazing. Dropping names was below her. She had no need of it. Everyone knew what connections she had and how ruthlessly she would be willing to wield them. It would be below her, and not the sign of a lady, to speak of them bluntly. Evelyn Lupin was one of the very few beings in this world or the Muggle one that could have threatened a powerful politician like a lady.

"This report is ridiculous. She is a sixteen-year-old Hogwarts student who has not been involved in any politics. This was obviously a well-planned attack as they had to break through several protective wards," she was explaining in her best righteously indignant tone as if to a dunce. "And you aren't interested in the least why they might have done so? Were you not aware that my son was engaged to this young lady?" She demanded as if this obviously should have been common knowledge. "What if he is in danger? You treated this girl with such terrible disrespect!"

"Mrs. Lupin, I had no idea about her connection to your family," Bartemius Crouch was saying very calmly (and not a little condescendingly) as he sat at his desk facing the enraged lady. "As the girl is Muggle-born, we believed this to be a clear cut case of racial prejudice and one of the many such attacks, I might add. You must admit that it is a terribly dangerous time to be a Muggle-born."

"Would you have reacted in this same dismissive fashion if she had already become a Mrs. Lupin herself? I most sincerely hope not for your sake," Mrs. Lupin told him, her tone stern and unforgiving. "My son may be in danger because of his association with this rather spectacular young lady, and the Ministry thinks nothing of following this up? Of determining what she knows or what she has done to offend the Dark Lord? You put the Lupin heir, my son, in danger far too easily for my tastes!"

"Mrs. Lupin, we did not know that you would be so concerned about the death of a Mud-"

"Mr. Crouch, I sincerely suggest that you alter what you were about to say," Mrs. Lupin said evenly and calmly. There was a very long silence during which electricity seemed to spark between them and shoot about the room. "You will, of course, pursue a proper investigation now?"

"Of course, Mrs. Lupin, I will put my finest Aurors on the case," he replied wearily. He would promise anything to get rid of the old bag in a way that wouldn't ensure that she would go straight from the Ministry to the Daily Prophet. Her husband was a far too influential bait for the publisher to do anything but bite. "Incompetence in the Ministry," that was the last story that he needed to see on tomorrow's front page. For most people, tomorrow might be too soon to manipulate a newspaper into printing her story, but not for Evelyn Lupin.

The very quiet, sad boy that walked slowly behind her, watching his mother as if he had never quite seen her before, was obviously the fiancée of the victim. He was so young. Bartemius Crouch groaned and sent an owl to one of his relatively new but still promising new Aurors. Ted Tonks may be only a few months out of training, but he was still good - and a Muggle-born. His wife had even once been acquainted with the Lupins closely, her family anyway. Mr. Crouch sighed. Why couldn't Mrs. Lupin just plan the funeral if she wanted to look to her son like she was being helpful?

She should probably get that boy home soon. He looked like he was going to explode. Bartemius Crouch was right. That was precisely what Remus Lupin felt like he was going to do. Very soon.

* * *

"I never guessed this day was coming, but I knew that she must surely realize how disappointing I was eventually. She probably did; she just had faith in me."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

Peter decided that he hated Muggle airports. They were loud and ridiculously complicated and everyone was insanely paranoid. Unfortunately, his grandparents had dropped him in one and told him they would return as soon as they could attain magical passage. They seemed to think that his mother's "Muggle" influence would enable him to know how to fly on a Muggle airplane in a way that they couldn't.

Peter was afraid to think of any of these things. He was afraid to think of anything except the floral pattern on the suitcase his grandmother had given him for the trip. He forced himself to think not even of his embarrassment at the large flowers or the overall ugliness of the bag. He thought intensely of only one flower that was sewed into the design. He looked and looked at it as he waited for his plane to arrive. He stared at the delicate petals and the individuals threads that created it. He found it fascinating. He had to find it fascinating. It was the only thing that he had found that kept back the terrible litany going over and over in his head whenever he so much as blinked and looked away from that one lone flower. The one lone flower that would never bloom.

The litany in Peter's head was very different from the ones that chased each other around in his friend's heads. Sirius's mantra was a confused blur of terrible words that should never have become linked together, "The Dark Mark...I know this house...Marissa...the Dark Mark...Marissa." Around and around these words, these snippets of phrases, whirled in his mind, chasing each other and blending together. They were all things that he had said himself. It was his own voice that was causing the terrible crashing pain in him, so he knew he would never be able to escape it.

James's litany was the plain words stamped on the boxes. Those six words that were so painfully blunt, so unbearably honest and so terribly present in his life. The image of the letters ran through his mind, the words danced in front of him relentlessly. He could not escape the cold, impersonal words stamped on boxes that had given him the shock of his life. "For the family of O. Fletcher." There was no more Marissa Fletcher. There was only the family of a girl who, on record, was nothing more that: "O. Fletcher." He closed his eyes to block it out, but he could not shake the image out of his head.

Lily's ears rang with the voice of Marissa herself. "Eventually, you're may have to open this door and see only one bed in it," she had said to her best friend before she left. It was almost the last thing that Lily had ever heard her say. Eventually had come upon her. Eventually had snuck up and surprised her. Eventually was here. And the room had only one bed in it. She had known exactly what that meant. Marissa's own voice was ringing in her ears, telling of her own death, explaining herself that she was gone. Lily didn't know if she could take the pain of her friend's voice delivering such awful tidings.

Remus's mind was consumed with the last phrase he had been able to see before his vision went red. "Killing Jerome and Marissa Fletcher." Someone had killed Jerome and Marissa Fletcher. It didn't matter if his mother found out whom or why. It didn't matter whom. It didn't matter why. Nothing mattered. It was all gone. For the first time in his life, Remus wished that he could be in his wolf form. After so many, many years of wishing he could be free of it forever, he now longed for it as he had never longed for anything else in his life. To be free of thoughts, to be free of those words that were the only thing that he could see, to be free of the truth, for that he would gladly give up his sanity, even his humanity. He also found himself, for perhaps the first time outside of his wolf form, wanting to rip and tear and beat and destroy something or someone. He wanted the frenzy of his transformations. He wanted his thoughts wiped out and his emotions spent in fury and carnage. Remus Lupin, for the first time in his life, wanted to be, for as long as it took to make those words go away, exactly what everyone thought werewolves were supposed to be.

Mundungus's memory played over the entire night. The last words she had ever said to him were there, "Merry Christmas, Gus," more often than any other phrase. All of the poem she had been reciting was there. All of the muffled shouts and scuffles he had heard. The face of the woman waking up before he had slammed the door. A great holler from a voice far too familiar, "Obliviate!" His memories made no more sense. There was no sense in what had happened. There was only evil. He wished that his sister's memory charm had been directed at him. If only Obliviate could wipe everything away entirely.

Peter's mind was occupied in a very different way than all of these responses. There was no whirling confusion of images and words and undeniable truths. There was only one question, and it was not unsteady. It pressed at him relentlessly. It came again and again like an orderly line of soldiers each pressing for the attack. It was the marching sentence that beat at his defenses and did not stop coming. It was not confused. It was not in a jumble. It was horribly, awfully, terribly clear. Is this my fault?

So he stared at the flower and thought of nothing but the different colored threads weaving in and out of each other, because he was too afraid of the answer to admit to himself that he was asking the question. It came persistently any time that he let his attention waver from that flower, and the echo reached him even then. Is this my fault? Is this my fault?

* * *

"Many of you know that Marissa Fletcher was the President of my fan club. This is very misleading of her opinion of me. She thought that I was arrogant, big-headed and a bit of an idiot. She was probably right. Those who knew her soon learned that Marissa had an annoying habit of always being right. I never thought that I would miss her telling me any of that, but I was very wrong. I'll miss everything about her now."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

The first day was the worst. It had to be. None of them could take a day worse than this. Lily and James sat with Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall for a long time in the afternoon not touching their tea. There was silence most of the day. Lily calmed and sat with red-rimmed eyes that occasionally spilled over like the cup of tea James started to pour and forgot to stop pouring. James seemed more distracted and clumsy than tearful. His world had been rocked. He couldn't even make sense of it enough to grieve properly.

Lily had suspected that it was coming soon. Not this soon, but soon. James had been caught completely by surprise. The two of them stayed together while they packed their suitcases to go to James's parents' house tomorrow.

Lily, probably erroneously, thought that her family would not want to see her even now. This was what Marissa's death cost Lily besides her best friend. Her family would never recover from this, that she did not return to them in her hour of need. But also in the day after her friend's death, also in the things that came in it, were the seeds of Lily's new family. This was when she joined the family of the Marauders, the family that she would eventually bind herself to forever when she married James Potter and gave birth to the next generation of Hogwarts' heroes and troublemakers.

Marissa's death cost James Potter more than his cheerleader and friend. It cost him his confidence and, with it, his arrogance. Life was not easy. His life was not simple. He would no longer believe that he and the others were invincible. He lost much of what made him such a remarkable and daring young hero. He lost his love of danger. He would still walk willing into it for those he loved, but he would never again enjoy something that he had seen end his friend's life. Adventure was very costly, that was the lesson he learned. He was luckily too stubborn to learn to give it up, but he lost his readiness. What he gained, however, was perspective. It was a groundedness, and it was what eventually would let Lily look past everything and finally allow herself to see the man behind the bravado. He would lose the big-headed, fearless boy he had been. He would gain the steady but ultimately hopeful, brave and rational man that Marissa had always known he could be. Her death would not steal everything that made him James Potter, just enough to make him into the man that James Potter was meant to be. He knew his limits now, and almost more importantly, he knew the limits of his luck.

Lily would not go into her room to pack. Instead she summoned everything that she needed. James helped her as much as he could. He even gave her her only smile of the day since the shattering when he packed by summoning charm too. He played it off as a jest, but most of all, he didn't want to leave her alone today.

She made her bed on the couch by the fire again in the evening. She sat curled up in a ball with a heavy quilt around her. James sat down on the ground beneath her, their forgotten Christmas presents still strewn around them. James's voice came as a surprise for two reasons when he spoke. The first was that Lily had grown accustomed to the ringing silence of the day. The second was the hoarse and broken voice that came from the throat of James Potter where only cockiness had come forth before, "Are you going to open the rest of your presents?"

Lily jumped and looked over at them. There was a still the pile at the foot of the couch. Even the house elves, apparently, were too shocked to do their work today. Or they didn't want to move her things. Lily didn't care either way. She shook her head, her usually magnificent but currently unkempt hair flipping around her then drawing forward to cloak her face. "Even hers?" James asked again.

Lily looked over at him, "What did she give you?" she asked quietly. Her voice too was very different from the angry and self-righteous one that was the only one that he had heard in too many years. It was fragile and vulnerable and wounded.

"The mistletoe," James said quietly. A smile rose to both of their lips, but the amusement at Marissa's unsubtle tactics was too familiar, too common. It was too close to what they had felt so many times in their lives. It hurt to feel it now when they couldn't mutter about what they would say to her when they saw her next. Because they never would. It was too painful to think that this feeling would soon be gone completely and forever. The smiles fell from their faces. "And these, with a letter," James said, holding up a large engraved box. He opened it and showed Lily the set of Quidditch balls, the two Bludgers giving a belligerent push against their straps.

"What did she write?" Lily asked, a small smile for Marissa's thoughtfulness coming to her lips but fading for the same reasons as the last one.

James pulled out the piece of paper that was now hundreds of times more precious than it had been when he had carelessly skimmed over it this morning. He couldn't believe his thoughtlessness. Marissa had probably already been dead, a disappointed ghost peering over his shoulder as he hardly read her last words to him. He tried to set the grief and guilt aside enough to read the words aloud to Lily, "Merry Christmas, Prongs. I give you this for several reasons. First: the best Seeker in a fifty years should not be without the best equipment. Second: You need the Bludgers to remind you both to keep making mayhem and to run interference on it occasionally, the Quaffle to remind you that there are other players in the game, and the Snitch so that you always know the prize that you are so diligently seeking. Third: so that you can stop stealing the ones from the school, not that I know for sure that it will work. I'm having to go to drastic measures to try to make a better man out of you.

"But truthfully, I have no doubt that you'll be that man someday. Then you might even be worthy of chasing our darling Miss Lily around with my other present. Always be who you are, Prongs. Above all, make me proud to be the President of your fan club," James finished this with a choked voice he could barely keep under control. He looked down for a minute to hide the emotions crashing down on him from Lily, to save her renewed pain.

He felt a small, delicate hand on his shoulder, gripping it lightly. He looked up at her in surprise. When their eyes met, he felt the warm compassion and renewed bond of shared suffering. In her pained eyes, he saw the friendship that they had lost two years ago. It had always been there, buried so deep beneath the surface that nothing short of this mutual pain could have forced them to uncover it. He saw the Lily that he had fallen in love with for the first time in two years instead of the Lily that made him wonder whey he had risked his friendship with Sirius more often than not. He saw the Lily that he had known he would rather have than anyone else in the world. He also saw that she remembered who he had been then. He found comfort in her eyes.

In their two naked gazes that hid nothing of the terrible pain they both felt, Lily and James renewed their old bond. It had always been there, never fully severed. They had, after all, known about it and decided to reach for it in this time of darkness.

Marissa had, in her death, done what she had always hoped to do in life. She had brought Lily and James back together. Not as lovers, not for a long time yet, but as friends. Lily and James were friends again. They lost a dear friend that terrible Christmas day, but they both recovered one who would become even dearer at the same time.

"She wrote that as if she knew that she were going to..." James found himself saying to her, opening himself up to Lily Evans as he hadn't dared in nearly two years.

"She did know," Lily replied in a whisper. After a long moment, she looked away back to the pile at her feet. She reached down and rummaged through the now meaningless packages until she found the only one that did matter in this moment. James had looked down when Lily looked away, but he looked up when he heard her tearing paper. He saw her ripping off the paper of the present. She had not changed her unwrapping strategy in the least. It was not more hurried or less, more careful or less. It was quite simply how Lily opened the Christmas present that her best friend had given her.

She opened the box and the next moment, saw what looked like a glass spinning top the size of her fist. A bit of parchment fluttered down to the ground. James picked it up and handed it to her. She did not hesitate to take it from him. She did not read the words that burned into her heart aloud as he had.

Merry Christmas, Lils.
This is the biggest Sneakoscope that I could get the lady at Dervish and Bangs to sell me. I tried to get her to check the back of the shop, but she peered suspiciously at me and asked when I had graduated Hogwarts. She seemed about to call the school, so I settled for this one.

It lights up and spins whenever there's someone around who isn't being truthful. This is probably the only way that you'll ever be able to trust me again. I hope that this gives us the chance. I never wanted to lie to you, Lils, and I never will again.

Speaking of which, let more people call you that. Open up your heart. Don't only let me through. You have to have someone to hold to in your life. You've been the best friend a girl could ever have. Don't keep the great gift that it your friendship away from the rest of the world. I've been selfish long enough.

James watched Lily read it, tears forming again in her eyes. She reached the bottom of the page and looked sharply at the large sneakoscope he had seen emerge from her package. It wasn't moving in the least or even humming slightly. Then her eyes fixed on him, and setting the last tangible gift but not quite the last important gift that Marissa would ever give her aside hurriedly, hugged James Potter who was sitting down under her couch.

"I'm so sorry, James," she said with a ragged gasp as sobs returned. They returned for the truth she realized at the last words that the best friend she would ever have had left with Lily Evans. Maybe you'll even be able to trust James Potter again with this. I think that you might need him in the days to come. She cried because she had hidden from this truth so long and was so wrong to. Mostly, however, she cried because however painful it had been to feel the old, familiar twinge of affection and annoyance at Marissa's sense of humor, at her thoughtfulness in selecting the perfect gift, it was nothing compared with the all too familiar flood of disbelief and safety when, at a moment like this, she realized that Marissa had an infuriating habit of always being right.

When she calmed, she sat back against the couch exhausted with all the emotions and trials of the day. She was nearly asleep when James sat up and started up towards the stairs. "James," she whispered, sitting up and looking at him entreatingly. "Please," she said, not knowing how to voice her request after so long of keeping him at a distance.

James looked back over her and nodded. "Right, I think I'd be far more comfortable here on the floor," he said simply, plopping back down on the ground under her couch. "I'll just enlarge your blanket here." As he did so, Lily transfigured a couch cushion into a sleep pillow. They said no more words. They did not reach out to clasp each other hands or reach for each other in their dreams.

But they did stay together on the first night that their world was without Marissa Fletcher. It was the first night that Lily and James spent together, but not the last. Peace had come between them, and in this terrible time, it was the only peace that they could hold onto.

* * *

"The more I thought about how much I would miss her smile and her laugh and that devious twinkle in her eyes, the more I realized just how many people this would affect. I will not be the one who misses Marissa Fletcher the most. The brother to whom she was more like a mother, the love of her life and who will always consider her the love of his, the best friend who must now see their empty room every day of her life, the ones for whom she was the only one who listened or cared, these will hurt far more than me in the days to come. I have a life. My life is bound to hers forever, but I think I always kept it just separate enough to keep her at a distance. Those who bound up their lives irreversibly with hers will still be reeling from this loss when Marissa is a both sad and pleasant memory to me. It won't happen for a long time, but it will happen for me. For others in this crowd today, she will always be a missing piece. Perhaps, however, there are also people for whom she will be the foundation, or a piece that didn't have to disappear. That is, I'm sure you know, what she would have preferred. She liked building better than tearing down. I'm very jealous of you who will never be able to get over her death, because you got the most out of her life while she was here with us."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

Remus sat down on his bed, lying back on top of the covers. The world was swirling around him, and he had no wish to restore order to it. When time was fluid, Marissa was still there like she had always been. All the times that they had shared weren't over and gone. When the world was spinning, the distance between them meant nothing. She was right there, just out of sight, just out of reach. If he stretched out just a little, he would touch her...

He stayed still and let the world spin around and shift wildly. Eventually, he moved slightly and his foot hit the packages at the edge of his bed. The house elves must have moved them up to his bed sometime since he had woken up on the floor of the shack this morning when his world was wonderful and now as he lay on a gigantic, luxurious four-poster bed in a cold, bleak world he hated.

He sat up mostly against his will. He reached for the box that he knew would be from Marissa. He wasn't sure how, but he knew that it could only be hers that found his hand. Feeling exhausted by the effort of picking up this relic from a long-gone time, he pulled off the bow and delicately peeled off the paper. He had always opened his presents very precisely. Now, he treated it like a fragile fossil that would disappear if he made the slightest wrong move.

A small book was the first thing in the box. Remus felt a smile on his face when he saw the title: "The Art of Kissing by Arthur Melton." It was an old-looking book, and when he skimmed it, looked perfectly hilarious in its contents. The funniest part was that it was a serious attempt at a step-by-step guide. On the inside front cover, there was a note from Marissa.

For my star pupil.
I thought you might want to catch up with a little homework.
You have another final coming up soon, you know,
and you never know when your gallant tutor will surprise you with a pop quiz.
Love,
Marissa

Time was fluid in Remus's emotional and physical exhaustion. Christmas was also a time of miracles, however devastating the holiday had been this year. So Remus's mind went back to a simpler, happier time in his old life. He had always divided his life in half. First it had been before and after the Bite. Then before and after the Marauders. Now and forevermore, it would be his life with Marissa and his life without Marissa. He went back to his old world for a minute, smiling one of the old Remus's smiles at the memory that came.

Marissa had practically tackled him the moment that he had closed the door behind him. "Darling," she had said sternly after kissing him, "You're late for your lesson." She kissed him again. "We really need to practice this," she laughed, leaning in for a kiss again. Remus loved these conversations, breaking after every phrase for a kiss.

It was a great way to spend time. The banter was nearly as enjoyable as the kisses that broke it up. It was playful and intimate and proved how well they knew each other. When they talked this way, they always knew exactly what the other person was thinking. They made ridiculous jokes that were only fun because they were about each other. It was a wonderful way to communicate. The trouble was, today he actually had something that he wanted to say.

"Marissa," he said, pulling away, "I need to talk to you."

"And I need to teach you," Marissa replied readily, closing the distance between them again for another quick kiss. "You really can't afford to miss a lesson, Remus."

"Riss," he protested before she cut him off again. "I'm being serious."

"So am I," she replied immediately. "You've got a final coming up soon." Any other person would be extremely frustrating at this point. Then again, any other person wouldn't be kissing him and making it feel like his head would explode in the process at this point. "And just think, if you pass, you'll be licensed to kiss on your own. You'll no longer require my supervision." It was an old joke that she seemed to like best from their very first day as a couple. It had been born in their first such conversation, in fact, about how she would have to teach him how to kiss.

"Is this your subtle way of breaking up with me?" Remus asked, her bait into her little game too irresistible when she threw in something to challenge his insecurities. She really knew how to play him like a fiddle. In anyone else, it would have been worrying, but he trusted Marissa and would rather have been manipulated by her than be in control of a relationship with any other person. "Giving me license to kiss other girls?"

It wouldn't seem so from the way that she was kissing him now. "Ah, well, you haven't seen my evil plan yet," Marissa replied simply. She smiled mischievously at him, "I don't actually intend to ever let you graduate."

"So you're going to flunk me on purpose?" Remus replied with a matching smirk, leaning in to kiss her for the first time in their exchange.

"Over and over again," Marissa replied. "I'm going to keep you doubting your abilities," she continued a moment later. "Until I've got you so entranced that you'll never want to leave me."

"You've already done that," Remus murmured, leaning in for a longer kiss.

Marissa sighed when it was over. "All right," she said, not in her playful voice. She took a deep breath and sighed again, "What do want to talk about?"

Remus went blank for a minute. Then he laughed. "I have absolutely no idea," he laughed again in dismay.

Marissa's smirk came back full force. "Already my evil plan is working," she had laughed gaily.

Remus smiled at that simple memory. He still didn't remember what he had wanted to talk to her about. He wondered if he had ever said it. It hardly seemed to matter now. The only part that mattered now was that he had been with Marissa. Like he would never be again.

There were other books under the joke she had planted in his present. He immediately looked on the inside cover even before looking at the title. He was looking for her loopy handwriting, but it wasn't there. There was, however, a small sticker on which were printed the words:

This Book Belongs To:

Then, written below it in a handwriting similar but not identical to Marissa's, was the name "Olivia Nelson." Remus's eyes widened. Her mother's books? He knew exactly what these would mean to Marissa. Why would she give them to him? He thought he might know the answer, but it was too precious a gift for him to understand immediately. It was a token of her devotion. She was showing him that he would share with her the things that meant the most to her. They would share their life together. Those books would be hers again soon enough when, as his wife, she owned everything that he did.

The sobs he had been too shocked and angry to shed all day came then. It was the perfect gift. It was herself. It was her trust. It was her love. It was her pledge. It was what Marissa had always been: perfect love hidden just under a joke. He would never again think of any gift as "just books." Books could be too precious. A small pile of books could symbolize everything that a person was and had been to someone. Perfection hiding just under a smile. Love hiding just under a joke. A wink and a smile over absolute trust.

"You want to what?" Remus had cried in shock when she told him her plans for Valentines Day. Only one thought had been running through his head: Was this really better than Lockhart? They had all known that Marissa was insane. They had just, oddly, thought that there were limits. Foolish people. Didn't they know who they were dealing with?

"It couldn't be that hard," Marissa said with a shrug as if the difficulty of her proposed stunt were the issue. "After all, my mother did it."

"She charmed all the couples that kissed on Valentines Day so that they set off fireworks and singing cherubs?" Remus said in surprise. He could certainly understand where Marissa got her spirit from now. Olivia Nelson indeed! The Nelsons were an old and respected family. She had cousins out the nines that she had never met, purebloods all of them. Respected most of them. And Marissa Fletcher, like Olivia Nelson, had been living the life of a Muggle. The other Nelsons probably knew nothing at all about Marissa or Mundungus and wouldn't care if they did. A lot of them had been hunted down and killed in this reign of terror. More would follow soon. Others survived because they had probably joined him.

"Yep, it's in her yearbook," Marissa said cheerfully, showing him the page. "Please, Remus? I really want to do this. It would be like ... a tribute to her memory!"

Remus didn't need to read the words on the page. She wouldn't have lied about them. Instead he looked up at the expression on her face. In her eyes he saw vulnerability and hope. "She really means a lot to you, doesn't she, Riss?"

"Of course, Remus," Marissa had said as if surprised that he would ask. "She's my mother."

"But you can barely remember her. She died when you were so young," Remus said quietly. "How can someone you hardly know mean so much to your happiness?"

"I do remember her enough, Remus," she had told him simply. "She's a huge part of my life, of who I am. That'll never change. I just want to feel like I know her. I would give anything just to have a little piece of her back in my life."

It was a very long time before he could breathe freely again and even longer before he calmed. When, at long last, he could see enough to read the letter she had stuck inside the pages of the worn, used books, he read the last words of Marissa Fletcher.

Dearest Remus,
This summer I found my mother's old school books hidden away in a trunk in the attic (after I dismantled a few incantations my mother used to hide them). I've been using her sixth year books all year. I put years one through five in Mundungus's room, hoping that he'll find them when the time is right. I thought that you might need these next year. She took Muggle Studies ironically enough, which is this book, and I've given you the final year of Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Astronomy, and Defense. She didn't like History of Magic, apparently. I'm most disappointed as you can imagine.

They are yours to keep. I've given or will give you every other part of me. It's time that I gave you this part: the person whose death warped my life, the person that I should have been able to know and was impoverished for losing early.

I trust you to keep my mother's books safe and preserve this small remnant of her memory. There aren't that many pieces of her left. Please keep this one safe for me.

Sometimes I wonder if we walk through life surrounded by ghosts we can't see and if Nick and the Friar and the Baron are only the visible ones. There are echoes of others everywhere. I wander if anyone will remember us a hundred years from now or realize that we are in fact there influencing their lives. You're probably rolling your eyes now and saying how much I must really love to meddle to aspire to do it from beyond the grave.

Well, the truth is that I really love you. Merry Christmas, Remus.

Yours,
Marissa

P.S. If you're wondering if I'm still mad at you about our little fight on the train, then the answer is yes. If you're already starting to consider us broken up in your mind, kindly remember that at no point in the argument or since have I taken off the ring. If you'll let me, I'll die with it still on and in that way remain forever yours even after that. You're not getting rid of me so easily.

Love,
Marissa

Remus leaned back until he was staring at the blessedly plain drapes over the top of his four-poster. Yet, even there, an echo of Marissa taunted him and tormented him, reminding him of what he had lost. They had slept in a similar bed staring up at a similar ceiling, feeling as if they were in a world of their own. It had been a world that nothing but the two of them and their love could enter. It had been a world where they were safe. It had been a world that neither of them ever wanted to leave. But it was only one night that they stayed there, resting in each other's arms and sheltered from the storm.

Then they were outside again and at the mercy of the rain and waves and the blasting wind that had blown her where he could not reach her. It had blown her to where he would never see her again.

* * *

"I sat around thinking on Christmas this year about how my life was going to be now without her. I still can't fathom it ... not really. I always thought of her, in a very vain way, as all of my good qualities without any of the bad ones. She was confident without being arrogant, popular through kindness rather than a broomstick, beautiful without messy hair."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

The day after Christmas, the morgue finally got around to sending someone for the bodies of Marissa and Jerome Fletcher. All night long, they had lain side by side in Marissa's bedroom. It was the first time in many years that those two had been in the same room for an extended period of time and had not fought with each other. It was the first time that neither of them felt the need to make a dramatic exit. Then again, to those who watched, their exit was not unremarkable.

Mavi went home. The Potters, Sirius, and Mundungus went to the Potters' home. There had been a brief scuffle with the Ministry yesterday over that when they had returned at Evelyn Lupin's orders, but it was resolved by the fact that no one else who was registered in the Muggle world (and the wizarding world) had come by for Mundungus. Why contact an orphanage on Christmas if there was somebody else to take him? At least temporarily, the Potters would watch over him. No one liked to ship a kid off to an orphanage on Christmas.

Lily and James would be arriving soon and probably a Muggle social worker as well. Sirius didn't want to think of any of this, but even that was better than thinking about the broken statue of Mary that had collapsed out from under him unexpectedly. It was far better than thinking of the quiet way that Marissa had laid there on her bed as if she were sleeping. There had been no blood, no mark. There was a bruise on the back of her head hidden completely by her short blonde curls, not a hair of which was out of place. It was one of the sick jokes that Dark Magic was so fond of playing on its victims. Everything looked just fine, but nothing would ever be the same again.

Sirius had found himself clinging to the image of her mouth, the only thing that was different enough to prove that something had indeed happened. It was stern. Marissa was always smiling. It made him want to tell jokes to her body, to whisper double entendres in her ear until she finally cracked and smirked, to pull some wild stunt to see her glowing smile of admiration, to drag Remus in front of her to see the joyful smile that she always greeted him with.

He would never see her smile again. He sat down on his bed heavily. He jumped up again, startled, when he sat on paper-wrapped packages. He sighed and plopped down again to the side of them. He had no heart to open his Christmas presents, but could he resist seeing the last words that Marissa had written to him? Even if they were just, "To Sirius, From Marissa"? Marissa always put a joke in her cards anyway. Even if Sirius couldn't give her a joke to coax a smile from her still, stern, cold lips, perhaps she still had one to force a smile on his.

He found a letter pinned to a package. He unrolled it to see Marissa's handwriting.

Merry Christmas, Padfoot. I've been thinking about what you said after the last Quidditch match last year. You were right. It isn't fair that I can sabotage your dorm, and you can't even get up into mine. I told you to blame the Founders then, but I had a way all along to level the playing field. There's a way for boys to enter the Dormitories outside of an emergency.

If you're willing to be my pupil, I will teach you. I have devised a series of clues. The first and second are your Christmas gift. This is the first: The enchantment that detects a male's presence is centered on the plane above the first ten steps. If you step on any of them or are above any of them at any given time, the slide is triggered.

The second is this: you'll need the enclosed tool.

You've always had a skewed but unshakable sense of fairness, Padfoot. I suppose I just had to earn your respect back by showing you that I can have one too. You'll know you're on the right track by my growing smirk I'm sure. That is, if you trust me not to be leading you into an ambush. Oh, and just one more hint. You did, after all, probably just cheat off James to get your twelve O.W.L.s.

You probably should have paid more attention to the Scavenger Hunt last year.

Happy hunting!
Marissa

Sirius opened it to find a magical pocketknife he remembered admiring in Dervish and Bangs what seemed like a lifetime ago on the last trip to Hogsmeade of fifth year. That crazy chick, he thought again as he had so often over the course of his friendship with Marissa Fletcher. As the familiar thought and feeling that accompanied it faded, he realized with a sharp pang that he would never feel it again. Happy hunting, eh Marissa? I could hunt all the rest of my life, and I'd never find a quarry like you ever again.

* * *

"She was so much more than any list of adjectives describing her. She was so much more than a tally of all the crazy and wonderful things that she did. As amazing as all of the different parts of her were, she was so much more than the sum of her parts."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

There were two funerals held for Marissa Jane Fletcher on December 28th, 1976. One was a joint funeral with the two closed caskets sitting side by side in the front of the church. Expensive flowers and costly velvet covers draped over them as the crème de la crème of the Muggle world sat arrayed in their finest funeral attire. There were many black diamonds in the jewelry. Members of Parliament, the Cabinet, top business leaders, Lords and Ladies, a veritable Who's Who of upper-society London and most of the surrounding areas, filled the church. It was an expensive testimony to the world in which Jerome Fletcher had built his place in his self-powered surge up the business, political and social ladder. It was a world that had already forgotten him.

The smaller, more private ceremony that was held several hours later was an eloquent testimony to the world that Marissa Fletcher had become so integral a part of that her death had shaken it from its foundations. It was a world that would never be able to forget her. Here, the casket was open and Marissa lay before them, simple wildflowers strewn about her final resting place with no particular plan.

She was wearing a Hogwarts robe, and over the bottom part of the casket which remained closed to hide her feet, a red cloth with gold trim and the Gryffindor lion sewn onto it was draped respectfully. Her hair looked perfect, of course, but the make-up artist had done a heinous job of trying to make her look more alive.

Lily even used her wand to wipe it off when she approached the casket. It was better for her to look pale than to look so false. Marissa was nothing if not real. She was herself and nothing more. She had never pretended to be something that she wasn't, except healthy for the last few months of her life. She had hated that. She wouldn't like pretending to be alive, especially when the jig was so very clearly up.

Her hands were folded in front of her, a posture none of those present could ever remember her assuming. She was holding a Gryffindor scarf, one of the ridiculous winking James Potter buttons fastened onto it. A large diamond ring sparkled on her finger.

She looked as she always had. There were trinkets that supposedly represented her life. The spirit that had made her who she was in a way that looks and even memories couldn't was gone. Forever.

All of Gryffindor House was here and the all the first through third years from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff as well. Every Muggleborn in the school was there. All of the prefects were present, including Igor Karkaroff and Valerie Malfoy. Up front, sat Mundungus Fletcher with Lily Evans and the Marauders. The Potters, the Lupins, and the Pettigrews sat one row behind. There were as few dry eyes as there had been tears at the earlier funeral.

James Potter stood up to give the eulogy at the end of the service. He walked to the podium and stood in front of the assembled, taking a deep breath to steady his voice. Neither Mundungus or Remus could do it. Lily had tried to write it, but she couldn't think of something to say worthy of Marissa Fletcher. Truthfully, neither could James, but he was still arrogant enough to try. Sirius had written something as well, but the Marauders and Lily had read them both and decided on James's. Sirius claimed half-heartedly that it was only because his delivery hadn't been factored into it.

James's voice eventually came to him, and he began to say the words that he had practiced for this day. Lily watched him, this boy that she had thought had confidence to spare, who loved an audience. The problem was that this time, the audience was not the people who were listening to him, it was the person who couldn't. He spoke of memories that produced small ripples of laughter and talked of Marissa as if she were a saint and a queen, just the way that everyone there felt that she should be spoken of.

Lily watched the boy she had befriended at eleven taking on a grown man's burden for the first time in his life. She thought of his words. The truest in his long speech, she thought, were that nothing he could say could ever describe her. Luckily, he didn't have to. There was no one there that day who's life hadn't been profoundly touched by Marissa Fletcher, and the church was packed.

* * *

"In the end, Marissa died the way that she would have wanted to; I'm arrogant enough to think that I know. She lived fully, loved fiercely, and died fighting. She died protecting someone she loved. She never bent and never broke. She died fighting for something even greater than a cause, a son."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

The large group that gathered at the gravesite of Marissa Jane Fletcher trickled away very slowly but surely. The five teenagers at the center of it and the small boy clinging to their hands did not move. They did not leave. To leave would be final. It was a terrible thing to be living through this ceremony, but when it was over she would just be gone. As terrible as it was to think of Marissa shut up in a box and buried under the ground, the fact that they would never see her again was what they couldn't face.

Marissa Jane Fletcher left behind a fiancée who would never forget her or ever love another as much, a best friend who would be lost without her, a celebrity who had finally learned that he could not save everyone, a lost boy who still wondered if he could ever be loved with his tainted blood, a betrayer whom only she had suspected and who had, in loving her, caused her death, and a brother who knew that his whole world was over.

That alone was a fine showing for one small life, especially considering who these people would become. The first defeaters of Voldemort were the ones who were so affected by her death, whose world was torn asunder by her murder.

Historians would never mention Marissa Fletcher in the great chronicles of Harry Potter. James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew would all play a role in the beginning. Their stories would be mentioned. Remus Lupin would be largely overlooked until the end, but even he would make the footnotes of their stories: the reason the rest became Animagii if nothing else. What future generations would never know was that it was the death of one very young girl who shaped their greatness and focused it. What would not be known was that the life of one girl would give them the strength to be the people that she alone had known they could be: spectacular beyond anyone else's imagination.

She will not be remembered by future generations though she meant so much to those who would pave the way for Harry Potter. Her own generation, however, would always carry her in their hearts. She would live on in every student who was at Hogwarts at the same time as her. Future generations would never know her name, but her own generation would never forget her.

"She was a kind person. When I say that is sounds like I mean she would give up her seat on a bus for an old lady or bring you a snack if you missed a meal. She would, but that's not what I meant. She would do much more than that. She would risk expulsion and imprisonment to save her brother pain. She would give her best friend a way to keep track of her safety when she was gone because she knew that she would be worried. She would hide an illness and face it alone to save those close to her worry. She would befriend someone that no one else trusted or liked and make sure that no one in Hogwarts Castle was lonely if she could help them."
-James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

Severus Snape waited until the Marauders, Lily and Mundungus finally turned away from the small, flower covered grave of Marissa Fletcher and turned to walk back toward the waiting cars. He had not shown himself at the ceremony, knowing that they would have had him evicted if they noticed him. He had heard James Potter's speech and wanted to growl at him that he didn't know Marissa Fletcher. None of them did. He didn't either. Marissa was beyond understanding.

So he waited them out. Of course he did. Marissa Fletcher meant more to him than she ever had to them. Yes, they had known her better. Yes, they loved her more than he did. Yes, they would never feel the way that they did about her for anyone else. Lily would never have another best friend, but she would leech onto James's. She would have other friends. Peter would never idolize another person quite the way he had adored her, but he had felt that before for others. Sirius would miss her desperately and feel lost without her calming reassurance, but he would find comfort elsewhere. James would never have anyone take so much care for his happiness besides Lily again, but he would move on. Remus would never love anyone else so freely. He came the closest.

But for Severus Snape, Marissa was literally the only one who had penetrated the wall of fire surrounding his heart. He would never feel even the smallest shred of affection, friendship, or love for anyone else for the rest of his life. He would never care for anyone else ever again. She was the only one for Severus Snape.

"I would have done anything for you," he said softly to her tombstone. He said it bitterly and almost spitefully. She wouldn't have expected anything else. "You were my friend." This was her parting gift and parting shot to Severus Snape. "I cared about you." He had said that, for the first and last time, to someone whom he really did. Perhaps they were the infamous unnecessary words that Snape fought all of his life, but it seemed important to Marissa that he say them.

"You see, fans should always maintain a certain amount of detachment. Idols are never so wonderful close up. They disappoint, and then they can no longer be to you what they were. Detachment is better. But I can tell you that I saw Marissa up close, and I saw her so closely with eyes that were still able to look objectively. And she was every bit as wonderful as she seemed. She who always seemed impossibly wonderful to those of you who relied on her to heal your hearts or open them up, really was just as wonderful as you thought her. And I am her biggest fan."
- James Potter's eulogy for Marissa Fletcher given on December 28, 1976

©KatyMulvaney5-24-2005