Beloved Wife

You were the love

For certain of my life

You were simply my beloved wife

I don't know for certain

How I'll live my life

Now alone without my beloved wife

My beloved wife

1978

Remus Lupin held his daughter Damaris against his chest. Inside Forest Oaks Funeral Home, he was supposed to speak about his late wife, Kirsten B. Lupin.

But those people--Kirsten's family, Lily and James, Sirius, Peter--could never visualise the love him and Kirsten had shared. They could never realise what had gone on between him and her. Remus, the elusive werewolf who never spoke, and Kirsten, the boisterous pureblood who deserved much better than Remus (as the Blakesons were convinced).

He looked at the piece of paper in his hand. This pathetic scrap of a eulogy couldn't encompass the grief in his heart. Kirsten had been twenty-two. She had died giving birth to Damaris. She had had a family and a life ahead of her. Why?

He was alone now.

"And now," said the operating minister at Kirsten's memorial service, "a eulogy by Remus Lupin, Kirsten's husband."

I can't believe

I've lost the very best of me

"Um, hullo," Remus began. "Erm, first, I'd like to thank the Blakeson family for renting this beautiful funeral home. But to the eulogy.

"Kirsten and I met through a mutual friend, Vesta Casanova, three years ago. We instantly hit it off. She was everything I wasn't, so our friends were a bit...startled by the match. No one understood that Kirsten filled my empty spaces.

"A year later, we were married. Many of you were there, and understood Kirsten when she said, 'My last name is the least of all of the things I change.' But despite it all, she adapted."

His eyes began to sting with tears. "Kirsten was a real religious woman, and several of her favourite passages have already been read. But I quote her interpretation of Romans 8:39: 'For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to keep us from love.'

"So I urge you to keep loving Kirsten as if she were still with us. For she is...merely in spirit. I know I will."

You were the love

For certain of my life

For two years, simply my beloved wife.

With another love I'll never lie again

It's you I can't deny

It's you I can't defy

A depth so deep

Into my grief

Without my beloved soul

I renounce my life

As my right

Now alone without my beloved wife

My beloved wife.

1979

It had been a year since Kirsten had died. Mrs Blakeson had come for Damaris, claiming a werewolf couldn't be trusted with an infant. Abandoned by all, Remus sat alone in his house. In Kirsten's and his house. A wood sign outside his front porch read: "The Lupins" in a fancy cursive, and in small print said: "Remus, Kirsten, and Damaris."

Remus caught it in the corner of his eye. Why hadn't this relic of his old life been demolished? A wolf inside of him growled, and he proceeded to destroy it.

It cracked in half so easily against the concrete sidewalk. A group of children looked at him, as if to question his acts. But they were kids, Remus didn't need to answer to them. "Get on, now!" He pretended to enter his house, but came back out once the kids were unaware.

"So typical of the Evil Wolfman," the oldest girl said. She was around eleven.

"Evil Wolfman?" the youngest girl asked. She was about five or six.

"Evil Wolfman. He was married to a goddess. Know how I know? She had purple eyes. Purple eyes always means divinity, in case you didn't know. Anyhow, the goddess ascended to her heaven, leaving her daughter and the Evil Wolfman, and now the Evil Wolfman is alone."

"He's not an evil wolfman! And Mrs Lupin wasn't a goddess, and Mrs Blakeson wasn't crazy!" the littler girl replied.

Two out of three isn't bad

, he thought silently.

The littler girl continued. "Mr Lupin has been through more than we give him credit for. Mummy says that." The girl turned around to look at me. Before I realized that she had known I had been listening, I noticed who, exactly, she was.

It was Nymphadora Tonks.

My beloved wife

My love is gone she suffered long

In hours of pain

My love is gone

Now my suffering begins

My love is gone

Would it be wrong if I should

Surrender all the joy in my life

Go with her tonight?

1998

Nymphadora Tonks's stomach lurched whenever she passed Remus Lupin's desk in the Auror office. Many pictures were on it: A picture of him with Harry Potter after his graduation, a picture of his daughter Damaris and his son-in-law Oliver Wood at their wedding, his granddaughter Whitney. But only one made Tonks freeze up.

The picture of Remus's late wife, Kirsten.

A caption etched in metal beneath it said, "God Bless Thee, Kirsten Blakeson Lupin. 1955-1978."

Tonks didn't know why. Maybe because she hated the idea of her colleague and friend losing such an important part of his life.

But he had Mary and Whitney, so why did she absolutely hate that picture of "Kirsten Blakeson Lupin"?

~

A gaunt Remus Janus Lupin, aged 43, surprised his co-workers; Alastor Moody, aged 43, and Nymphadora Tonks, aged 24, by revealing suicidal thoughts and imagery had re-emerged since the death of close friend Sirius Black, aged 40 at death.

"Remus." The name gave her chills.

Rita Skeeter hadn't even left Remus a whit of hope with this one. He hadn't gone and said, "Yeah, Mad-Eye, Tonks, I'm a suicidal whacko." They weren't even suicidal thoughts. He had bloody said, "I miss Sirius and Kirsten."!

And the division leader'd fire Remus because of those incriminating lies, and it wasn't at all fair. Remus deserved all fairness possible.

No one could stop it.

Tonks decided she'd someday write a killing article on Rita's early menopause and call it a night.

Looking from her cubicle to his, Tonks saw a middle-aged man, crying for a lost wife, a lost friend, and a lost job, to top it. All of Tonks sought to comfort him and tell him others loved him.

But then he'd ask, "Who?" and she wouldn't have an answer, because she really couldn't say if she loved him or if it was a deep, platonic love.

"Hopefully, God knows what to do with you."

My love is gone she suffered long

In hours of pain

My love is gone

Would it be wrong if I should

Just turn my face away from the light

Go with her tonight?

2019

Black. Everywhere, she saw black. She should have known she'd outlive him.

Mary Blakeson Lupin Wood, now a sensible forty-one-year-old woman, grinned towards her stepmother Nymphadora Tonks Lupin. The grin was weak, but had the essence of someone unknown to Nymph, Mary's biological mother.

"I'm...so sorry, Mom," Mary put her arms around Nymph. Nymph returned the hug warmly.

"I'm glad you can call me that."

"Aunt Kattel!" Whitney whispered.

Nymph loved how great her stepgranddaughter and daughter got along.

Seeing his headstone, Nymph thought of how she had rushed into the marriage, foolishly thinking Remus'd live forever. And the twenty years they had together seemed like a thousand to Nymph. She couldn't complain.

And Kattel and Victor--they had been the entirety of Remus's life. And as he aged, they understood that their precious father was going to die.

A worn piece of paper that had the article about Rita's early menopause on it was laid on Remus's grave.

And on Kirsten's, a picture of Whitney was laid on it.

As Mary and Nymph began to walk back to Forest Oaks Funeral Home, Nymph tipped an imaginary cap towards Remus's grave.

And here's to you, Remus

.