More Than You'll Ever Know

"You never quit loving someone, you just learn to live without them."

Those words haunted Lily. She could not remember where she had read them, but that didn't matter. She must have read it in one of the thousands of books she had read in her twenty years. Reading was what she had done best, what she loved most of all, and what brought her both the words the memories that haunted her. When she thought about it, everything had begun with books.

He had loved to read. She had grown up being the only person her age with such a passion for books, but when she went to school and met Remus Lupin, that changed. They would sit and talk for hours about characters and far-away places. However, that friendship, that shared passion, those quiet nights alone all changed. She would be haunted by the consequences of those changes for the rest of her life.

By the time she was fifteen, she could no longer think of Remus as only her friend and intellectual match. When they sat in the common room together, she found herself noticing the way the firelight made his eyes sparkle, or the way his fingers looked when curled around a book. She could not longer give him a congratulatory smile in class when he answered a question correctly without blushing. Every casual contact they made caused her breath to catch; the once trivial occurrence of his hand brushing hers as she passed him the marmalade at breakfast would send a shiver through her.

Waiting for him to come back from the Whomping Willow was more tortuous than ever.

She had continued on, suppressing these feelings, acting as though things were the way they had been in first year. They would meet in the common room, and sit alone in the library, and talk between cases, and nothing ever happened. That is, not until March 11th, 1976.

The date was oh so easy to remember because it was permanently etched onto her parents' gravestone. March 11th, 1976 had started out normally enough. She woke up, put on her black school robes, and pinned on her Prefect badge before setting out for a full day of classes. After dinner (which, on March 11th, 1976, had been pot roast and carrots), she settled into a corner of the library to work on her Arithmancy project. Some time later, James Potter approached her. He informed her that Dumbledore wanted to see her immediately.

It had been a coordinated attack. Nothing personal. Voldemort wanted to punish Mudbloods who were gaining too much power in the wizarding world-at Hogwarts. There were eight other Muggleborn prefects at the school, and all of them lost their parents as well, on March 11th, 1976. Voldemort himself hadn't been there to take out George and Henrietta Evens, or so the Ministry believed-by all accounts, he took care of the Head Girl's parents. He had sent his minions after Lily's mother and father.

She was hysterical. None of those who had lost their parents were allowed to go home to be with what remained of their families-venturing out past the protections of Hogwarts was too risky. They begged and begged for hours, pleading with Dumbledore into the late hours of the night to let them go. He looked pained, but refused to let them leave until the Security Council of the Ministry had authorized it.

By the time she returned to Gryffindor tower, she was too upset to show any emotion. She felt numb, and drained. She couldn't do it anymore-mourn, plead, cry. She slowly entered the Common Room. The fire was still burning, and its crackling was the only sound.

A figure jumped up from one of the large chairs. Remus.

"Lily?" he questioned. He looked horribly worried, but she was too far into her own grief to notice. "What's wrong? Where were you? James said that Dumbledore had-"

The tears returned. She tried to run to the stairs, but he caught her as she ran past, grabbing her by the shoulders and staring at her with a look of total confusion and concern.

She must have told him, because she remembered the crushed, horrified look on his face. She also remembered him pulling her to his chest, and embracing her as she cried. She was too hysterical to remember later exactly what was said, but she could not forget the feeling of being so close to him, and the way he looked at her as she rambled incoherently about how she had killed her parents, about how they would have lived if she hadn't been born or been a witch or been too smart for her own good. She pulled away from him, disgusted with herself, and tried again to flee. He caught her arm, and pulled her back. She turned her face back to look at him.

The hysteria broke, and the next few moments made up the most vivid memory she had. Her mind suddenly became clear, and it was focused on Remus and his hand and her arm and her deep breathing and that look on his face and that fog in his eyes that she had never seen before.

He took a step forward, placed his hand on her cheek, and lowered his lips to hers.

Her center of balance was lost. She felt as though she had just fallen off the edge of the earth. She had imagined this happening so many times, but now that it was real, she realized how foolish she had been, believing that she could have comprehended this feeling in her innocent mind. It was life-changing, soul-tugging, mind-altering. She allowed herself to forget everything and loose herself in that kiss and the untainted delight it evoked.

He finally pulled his mouth away, and she collapsed.

The logical part of her mind told her that she was exhausted, mentally and physically, but her heart told her that she reacted in that way because whatever part of her that hadn't died with her parents had just been mortgaged off to Remus.

Nothing else happened for a good six months. He held her when she cried, and he and James held her up, each holding one arm, when she had to stand during her parents' funeral. To anyone else, the relationship was completely platonic. But she and Remus had a secret, that hidden bond that only they knew of.

One Staurday in Spetember, she and Remus spent the day outdoors. James, Sirius, Peter, and Julianne Petersburg had been with them, but they returned to the castle as it grew dark, leaving Remus and Lily alone in the twilight. She threw a pile of leaves at him. He retaliated by pulling her down into the leaves and tickling her until she begged for mercy between her shrieks of laughter.

He lay on top of her, pressing her into the leaves, and kissed her. She would have thought that the second kiss wouldn't have been as shocking as the first, but she was wrong. The years that followed would show her that Remus would always evoke that reaction from her, with every kiss.

He told her later that he hadn't kissed her for so long because he felt he was taking advantage of a young girl in mourning. He knew that day, though, when she laughed for the first time since the death of her parents, that she knew what she was doing, and that she would respond because she wanted to, and not because she was upset.

She had appreciated the chivalry, but didn't think the wait was necessary. That first kiss was like a drug; it sucked her in and all of a sudden, she was addicted. She had lain awake at night during those six months, sometimes missing her parents, but sometimes feeling her chest expand from the pure want she felt for him. For the next two and a half years, she could not go very long without seeing or touching or kissing him without going mad.

He eventually broke her heart, of course, and she had to find a way to live without him. She had loved him without reservation, and the absence of him was devastating. She missed the feel of him, the smell of him, the familiarity of him. But the physical void was nothing compared to the emotional hole he ripped into her. Remus so much a part of her, and she had loved him so deeply, that normal human function seemed impossible without him.

She hated him. Really, she did. She hated him for being so insecure. He said that he could never be good enough for her because of his lycanthropy, and he made himself believe that. He couldn't fool her though; he couldn't sell her the lie. She knew that what she had with Remus was the best thing that she had ever had, and that the full moon and its effect on Remus had no influence on the basic truth of it.

Lily began seeing James shortly after Remus ended their relationship.

It did seem rather sudden, in retrospect, but at the time, it felt perfectly natural. James had helped her get through those first few weeks, then months, and as their time together increased, so did her feelings for him.

She loved her husband; there was no doubt about that. She truly loved him. But for a while, she feared that she was taking advantage of him; that she was tricking herself into having these feelings for James so that she would forget Remus. But one day she realized that she could never love anyone else the way she loved Remus, just like she could never love anyone the way she loved James. Love was like a fingerprint, it varied with each person.

If someone asked her who the love of her life was, she would not have been able to answer. It would have been impossible. That is, until the birth of Harry. He was the love of her life, the one person she lived and breathed for. No emotion she had ever felt for anyone else even began to compare with the love she felt for her son. His birth brought her a lot of peace.

The memories still haunted her, though.

She played the "What If?" game with herself constantly when she was alone. What if she had gotten back together with Remus? What if Remus hadn't been bitten by the wolf? What if Harry had been Remus' son?

But there were never any answers to her questions, and so many possibilities that her head ached from so much as even beginning to think about them. She never mentioned any of it to anyone. She lived her life in silence, haunted by her memories and thoughts and old books and words, and still held onto that piece of her self for Remus- that secret, ancient part of her heart that she could never get back, even if she wanted to.

She wasn't so sure that she did.