Teenage boys think that they’re immortal. Young men don’t know about death and grief and the emptiness of loneliness.

November 1, 1981
8:04 A.M.

Remus stirred his tea counter clockwise, the Daily Prophet unfolded before him. But the ink was just a blur; the words on the paper didn’t make any sense to him. The photographs should have made him cry—Lily and James on their wedding day, baby Harry, James when he finished Auror training—and he wondered who gave the Prophet these personal pictures, wondered who gave the paper permission to tell the tragic ending of his best mates.

‘They have no right,’ Remus thought. ‘They never knew them the way I did.’

Remus knew Lily and James as well as he knew his favourite books. He knew that James liked to wear his favourite red and green socks on Wednesdays and, even if they were dirty, he wore them religiously. He knew that Lily stuck her tongue between her teeth when she was concentrating hard. And he knew that no story in the Daily Prophet could have made the story more real for those who knew the Potters as personally as he did.

Not the ink of the newspaper or the voice on the WWN but the words in Remus’ head told him the story of last night.

Sirius Black, a lover once, traitor, betrayed the Potters…Lily and James are dead. Hagrid came by earlier, Sirius was there—why wasn’t I there? Could’ve killed him, should’ve killed him. Voldemort is defeated…Harry, little Harry, The-Boy-Who-Lived, taken to Muggle relatives. I’ll never see him again.

Remus wandered his small flat restlessly like a ghost who hadn’t realized he’d died yet, sipping his tea absently, ignoring the heavy taste of blood and betrayal on his tongue.

There was a rapping at the door. Go away, Remus thought. I don’t need your pity. He stood in front of a table lined with picture frames, a shrine to the friends he won’t forget but would never see again. In one photograph, James was standing proudly, a bright smile gracing his handsome face, with his arm around Lily’s waist. Lily smiled shyly, waved to Remus, and then rubbed her swollen abdomen. Remus remembered when this photograph was taken and wished that he could remember them this way, always: young and beautiful.

‘Too young to be dead,’ Remus murmured, running a finger along the edge of the frame.

Behind a photograph of the Marauders on their graduation day, Remus discovered one he had forgotten he owned. It was a picture Lily took during Hogwarts after a Quidditch game; a picture of Sirius, in his Quidditch Robes, with windswept hair and a glorious smile on his regal face. But Sirius wasn’t looking at the camera, or at the raucous crowd behind him who had James upon their shoulders; Sirius was looking at a lone figure sitting in the Gryffindor seats, he was looking at Remus.

‘You aren’t looking at me that way now are you, you fucking traitor,’ Remus snarled, slamming the picture down on the table. The glass shattered and Sirius hid behind the frame, glaring at Remus reproachfully.

The rapping at the door was incessant and Remus stumbled wearily to the door and threw it open.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped, looking at the war-weary, stony face of Alastar Moody.

‘Lupin.’ He nodded his head in acknowledgment, his fake eye spinning wildly in his head, his paranoia mounting with each passing day; his battle wounds from this vicious war.

There were too many deaths and Remus could recall each casualty by name. He used to memorise the obituaries and secretly wept with joy that the names of his closest friends weren’t listed among the dead. But now, the names were no longer those of impersonal acquaintances or fellow Order members and Remus wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to add these most recent names to the growing list he’d kept inside his head. Remus leaned against the doorframe, suddenly tired, and wanted to curl up in his bed and never return to the wizarding world again.

‘Lupin,’ Moody said again, ‘there’s been another death.’

October 31, 1981
9:47 P.M.

Remus looked up from his book when he felt a sudden shift in the air, a thick, heavy silence suddenly descended upon the wizarding world. He didn’t think twice, had no time to worry, before the door shut behind him.

The Floo call came twenty minutes too late.

The house was destroyed. Remus found it easily now that the secret had been revealed. Remus knew the Aurors would be arriving shortly and he wanted to find his friends before they did.

He found James first; the first one to fall. Remus gathered James’ lifeless body in his arms and wiped the ash of death from his face.

‘James?’ he questioned uncertainly, hoping for some reply. ‘Prongs.’ Remus choked back a sob and for a few moments of silence, cradled James’ body.

‘Listen, James.’ His voice cracked and he looked down at James, hoping for him to wake up and see what his death had caused. ‘Listen to me!’ Remus sobbed to James, to death, to the unresponsive night sky.

‘You weren’t supposed to die, Prongs. You’re our king; you’re supposed to be fucking immortal, James. We all thought we were immortal…’ Remus faltered, clutched James tighter, and hoped faith would bring the dead alive.

‘You were supposed to live forever. How could you leave me here like this, James? How could you abandon me?’ Remus’ voice was loud and harsh in the still October air as he demanded answers from his fallen king. ‘How could you…? Why won’t you answer me, James?’ Remus bit his bottom lip and hiccupped, wiping at his face, but for once, he wasn’t embarrassed to cry in front of James.

Remus rested James’ body in the rubble of his destroyed home and remained kneeled before his king. Remus wiped at his eyes with the back of his trembling hand and in one fluid movement, stood and swayed slightly before stumbling through the debris to find Lily.

Remus found her where the nursery should have been and briefly wondered if young Harry had become a victim of betrayal as well. He sat down in the rubble beside Lily and pushed auburn hair, stained by death and destruction, from her face. Even in death, she was young and she was beautiful. Remus felt old wounds reopen and buried his head in his hands. He whimpered. He felt alone and confused, not unlike the morning after his first transformation. The pain of grief throbbed in his veins and he couldn’t understand why this had happened. He didn’t understand the motive behind betrayal and couldn’t possibly understand why Sirius would surrender friendship for power.

Remus thought that seeing Lily and James dead was worse than being tortured by ten Cruciatus curses and, if he stayed any longer, he might fall apart. He was unsteady on his feet, weighed down heavily by his grief, but he had one more mission here. He searched through the rubble for Harry, could not hear cries (he hoped he was still alive), but he could not find a body. Remus hoped that if he wasn’t the first one to visit this tragic ending, someone found Harry alive and brought him to safety. He wondered, bitterly, if Sirius found himself at this destruction and fell to his knees to cry, spill pleas for forgiveness from James because even he couldn’t understand why he betrayed them.

Remus clenched his fists when he thought of Sirius. He snarled and said, ‘I’ll kill him,’ because he wanted to avenge their deaths and he wanted to be the hero today.

November 1, 1981
8:42 P.M.

Remus sat in his worn, faded brown chair with a mug of tea. It was his favourite chair in the house and he curled up on it every night to read a new novel. But tonight, he was not reading a novel. Tonight, he was mourning the loss of four beloved friends.

His long, thin fingers were wrapped around the mug of tea, the liquid sloshing about in the cup. The tea was getting cold but there were too many thoughts racing through his mind and his hands kept shaking. Remus put the tea down on the table beside his chair and placed his hands on his knobbly knees. He sighed heavily, before leaning back into the chair, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.

Peter…why did you have to be so stupid? Remus wondered. You knew Sirius was stronger than you, more powerful than you, better than you.

Remus wiped the tears from his face when he remembered Peter. He remembered laughter and an ease with which he fit in with Peter. There was no need for competition, no need to prove who was better, it just was. It was a simple friendship; not the kind he had with James, or with Sirius. With James, there was aggression and a need to dominate. Remus’ relationship with Sirius was much like James, but it was more than aggression, there was tenderness and caring, but never love.

‘Boys don’t love one another,’ Sirius had said, pressing kisses to Remus’ jaw.

‘I know,’ Remus replied, closing his eyes and sighing against the wet heat of Sirius’ mouth.

‘So, I like you, a lot,’ Sirius murmured, ‘but I don’t love you, okay, Moony?’

Remus nodded and refrained from mentioning the fact that Sirius always murmured his name in his sleep and if the way that they kiss—lazily, with tongues curled around each other, in the sleepy haze of morning—didn’t define love, what did?

Sirius had twelve freckles on his left shoulder and sixteen on his right; Remus had plotted constellations on his skin with fingers, lips, and tongue. But now that Sirius was locked away in Azkaban (a lover turned traitor leaves a bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue), Remus no longer had a body to wake up to, or freckles to count, because Sirius always got new freckles during the summer when he sat half-naked in the garden and his skin warmed beneath the faint glow of the unyielding sun.

Remus said that he would have killed Sirius, but he’s not sure now if he could have done it. Remus told himself that Sirius was guilty—a street full of Muggles saw it happen—but inside, he’s not so sure and doubt began to fill the space between his ribs so that it hurt when he breathed.

When it got so that his tea was too cold to even attempt to drink, Remus got up to dump it, and he passed the table of photographs again. He put his mug down, looked at the photos, and smiled. He picked out certain ones that reminded him of something funny, or something memorable, and laughed to himself.

He picked up another picture of Lily and James together, during Christmas, when Lily first agreed to date James. It was a funny picture because Lily was drenched in butterbeer and James had his head buried in his hands in embarrassment. Sirius had taken the photo to blackmail James later on when he was moping about his failed date. But Lily was kind and allowed James a second chance. Remus wondered what would have happened if she didn’t laugh off the incident because James was so nervous and given him a second chance. Would they have gotten to this point; betrayed by the one person they trusted the most, and dead, leaving an orphaned child? Moody had told Remus that morning that Harry was delivered safely to his Muggle relatives in Surrey.

At least he’s still alive, Remus thought. And the boy who defeated the most powerful dark wizard we’ve ever seen. His parents have a right to Harry’s fame too; they were martyrs who died to save the wizarding world, parents who died to save their precious son.

Remus placed their photograph back down onto the table and picked up a picture of Sirius, his favourite picture. It wasn’t a happy picture but Sirius was Sirius in this picture; no façades, or faked smiles. He was sitting, slumped in a common room armchair, with his dark hair falling into his eyes. Irritably, the hair was brushed out of his face and pulled behind his ear. His eyes were dark and wild in the firelight, and yet, he still held that unnatural beauty. He was everything that Remus knew him to be in this photograph; a cruel boy who ruled over a kingdom of dark secrets.

Remus placed the frame glass-down on the table so that he could no longer see the face of the man he loved and did the same for all the pictures that held a hint of his relationship with this crazed man who killed his best mates and a street full of Muggles. Remus wished that Sirius had died too because the pain in his heart might not be so unbearable. As long as Sirius was alive, his heart would beat with a painful rhythm; one that beat in time with Sirius'.

And then there was a photograph that made Remus’ hands shake again and the lump in his throat returned. It was an ordinary photo, one that shouldn’t have such an effect on him, but it did. It was a picture of the five of them, together, under the beech tree by the lake. They looked happy then and Remus wished that things could go back to the way they used to be. Remus couldn’t remember who took the photograph, but he remembered the day quite clearly.

‘C’mon Moony,’ Sirius whispered in his ear, ‘it’s just a picture.’

‘I hate pictures,’ Remus said, his nose buried in a book.

Sirius rolled his eyes. ‘Moony, the picture won’t be the same without you, mate.’

Remus could never say no to Sirius. He’d tried, but he couldn’t. So he nodded reluctantly and Sirius happily dragged him over to where James, Lily, and Peter were sitting. Sirius and Remus sat down beside them, and Sirius’ wrapped arm about Remus’ shoulders, while James had his arm around Lily’s waist. Peter sat alone, but quite content to sit beside his mates, and smiled brilliantly.

After the photo, Sirius pulled Remus away from the group and pinned him to a tree. Between kisses, he murmured his thanks. ‘The picture really wouldn’t be the same without you,’ he said.

‘Why? Because you wouldn’t get to see me with my big, hideous scars?’

‘They’re not hideous,’ Sirius said, and to prove his point, he began to kiss the long, jagged scar that ran across Remus’ face. ‘I love your scars.’

‘Do you love me?’ Remus asked.

Sirius stopped his assault on Remus’ scars and looked at him. ‘Now, Moony, you remember what I said about boys…’

‘Of course I remember!’ Remus snapped. ‘But this is different. We’re not talking about boys, we’re talking about us.’

Sirius bit his lip, hard, and looked surprised when he tasted blood on his tongue.

‘I can’t love you the way you want me to, Moony,’ Sirius said, almost sadly.

Remus nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said, simple as that, and then pushed himself off the tree and walked back to the castle.

Not loving him didn’t stop Sirius from coming to Remus’ bed every night with a whispered ‘Moony’ before curtains were drawn back and a warm body pressed in against his. Sirius never understood that he was saying I love you with his body and mouth and, every time he pressed a kiss to the curve of Remus’ neck, Remus knew. Fumbling hands and muttered reassurances were not enough. It would not make Remus happy until Sirius had admitted he loved him.

Remus sighed and walked to the kitchen, forgetting the mug of tea on the table, and rummaged through the cupboard above the sink. After he shifted aside some glasses, he found what he was looking for: a bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey.

Remus found that there wasn’t much left to live for. His best mates were dead and his lover was in Azkaban where the Dementors will break him. And Remus laughed because he knew that even in Azkaban, despite his wreckage, Sirius would still be beautiful, more beautiful than he could ever be.

Remus spent the night in his kitchen getting pissed, and by the time 8:28 A.M. rolled around on November 2, 1981, Sirius Black was sentenced to life in Azkaban prison. And at 8:32, the roll call for the dead began.

November 4, 1981
10:15 A.M.

Remus hadn’t slept in his bed for four days. The imprint of Sirius’ body was still there and Remus didn’t have the energy to wash the sheets. He needed to though, if he wanted to sleep in a bed without it constantly smelling like Sirius, like betrayal, and death, and pain.

In four days, Remus had gone through three bottles of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey and six different jumpers because he couldn’t stop himself from vomiting from time to time. He couldn’t figure out if it was because of the alcohol or because of the fact that he would never see his mates again. He figured it to be a mixture of both because he had hardly ever vomited when he got drunk.

Some of the Order members had knocked on the door to his flat every few hours the past couple of days. They wanted to talk, to comfort. But Remus didn’t want to talk, didn’t need the comfort because he was strong; he could take it and move the fuck on. It didn’t hurt, he’d convinced himself. And he didn’t need their pity. They were dead, Sirius was as good as dead, and what was he? The last one standing. The last one…

And Remus found that he couldn’t stand his flat anymore because every photograph reminded him of the ghosts of his past (his past? he laughed. It had only been four days and yet they’re already gone…). He stumbled into his room, grabbed his old, worn, and tattered suitcase from the shelf of his closet, and haphazardly threw some clothes into it. He was certain some of the clothes were Sirius’ but when he got to where he was headed, he’d just burn them. He’d burn the smell of sweat and sex clinging to wool and cotton, burn the smell of Sirius; darkness, cigarettes, and leather.

Remus closed his suitcase and locked it. He would go away for a while, get away from London and the wizarding world, and get away from the ghosts he was seeing in the mirrors of his flat. Yes, I’ll leave all this behind, leave you all behind, he said to the photographs and the indistinct images that floated in the spaces between his bed and his couch and the hollow places of his heart. He shut the door of his flat behind him and closed what was left of his past away.