On the day Sirius Black murders Peter Pettigrew:

This is the moment when the gods expect me/To beg for help but I won't even try/I want nothing in this world but myself to protect me/But I won't lie down, roll over and die

Remus Lupin is shocked, horrified and betrayed beyond all reason. In the space of a few hours, he has lost everything. His lover, his livelihood. His two best friends and a woman who was like a sister to him. Everything is gone from him...even Harry. He has nothing in the world but himself and while a part of him would fall to his knees and cry to the heavens for help, he won’t. He is stoic in the face of this pain, this horror.

He can not even begin to admit this...tragedy.

Dumbledore tells him he must be strong in the face of losing all the people who ever meant anything to him. He is given condolences and sympathies from other Order members, split between those who truly know him, knew them–these are heartfelt apologies and offers to stop by for dinner whenever he wants–and those wizards and witches who think they have an idea but can’t truly begin to fathom. Those are the ones who say they’re sorry, but secretly pity him while thinking he’s an idiot.

Which he’s not. He knows those people, at best, think he was caught in to something far above his head. Those are the ones who pity him. The ones who think he’s an idiot are those who can’t understand how didn’t see the signs that Sirius was a traitor.

Sometimes, the urge to kill them overcomes the urge to kill himself.

One Month Later:

All I have to do is to forget how much I love him/All I have to do is put my longing to one side/Tell myself that love's an ever-changing situation/Passion would have cooled and all the magic would have died It's easy, it's easy

He is going to swim to Azkaban if he has to.

Sirius is innocent and he has to be gotten out of prison. He wasn’t even granted a trial. Remus knows that if Sirius would just have the chance to explain himself, to let the world know what really happened, that he would be let free. Sirius couldn’t have killed James and Lily. Peter. Sirius did not betray them, betray them all. He couldn’t have. Anyone who knew Sirius would know that as well. Trouble is...the Ministry is not listening to those who knew Sirius.
Most importantly, they aren’t listening to Remus.

The things he could tell them....

Professor Dumbledore tells him, in one of the rare moments they meet since Voldemort was vanquished, that he must stop entertaining these ideas. No one has ever escaped from Azkaban in all of its existence. The chances of a group of wizards breaking into the place and getting out alive with a prisoner are less than none.

“Put it aside,� Dumbledore says, his eyes deep and knowing behind the half-moon glasses.

He tries. He tries as he’s never tried to do anything before in his life. The effort that he is putting into trying to convince himself that it never could have lasted, that they would have grown apart, that something, anything could have happened when, in actuality, something has, is staggering.

Trying to convince himself that he can live without Sirius consumes him as much as living with Sirius did.

But then, there is the doubt....

Sixth Months later:

All I have to do is to pretend I never knew him/On those very rare occasions when he steals into my heart/Better to have lost him when the ties were barely binding/Better the contempt of the familiar cannot start/It's easy, It's easy

He pretends to himself that it’s getting better. He tells himself that it’s not as hard. That the betrayal has not hit as hard as he knows in his dreams that it has. He tells himself that it’s better this way, better to have discovered now what the papers have brought undeniable truths to support. Better now, when they were young, when there was still time for him to recover and heal.

And he manages to convince himself of this lie. He can go for days, weeks even, nearly content. Until.

Until Sirius pops into his head as he’s walking down the street to comment on something. Until Sirius reminds him of something that happened in school. That happened while they were fighting for the Order. Until he stops to watch something, listen to something and he wonders: what would Sirius think? Do? How would he react?

And it is all Remus can do when these memories surface not to fall to the ground and weep. It would have been better if Sirius had died that day. Better because he could have accepted the fact, accepted his death as payment for the betrayal. But knowing that Sirius is alive, imprisoned on a rock in the middle of the sea and behind bars, still alive to ask, to beg for an explanation–it keeps him from forgiving himself.

He tries. God knows he tries to push Sirius out of himself when he steals in during these moments. But whenever Sirius does, he finds himself begging for an answer instead. He attempts to find reasons, excuses, anything to help him understand why Sirius would do this. Would allow this to be done to him. Because the truth is...Remus knows that Sirius didn’t do it. There is no doubt in his mind that Sirius is as innocent as Harry was that night. That he retains that innocence today.

The betrayal that kills Remus, then? The fact that Sirius didn’t come to him first. That Sirius didn’t allow Remus the chance to kill Peter together with him.

And now Peter is dead and Sirius is behind bars and Remus will never have the revenge that consumes him.

One Year later:

Until I think about him as he was when I last touched him/And how he would have been were I to be with him today/Those very rare occasions don't let up they keep on coming/All I ever wanted and I'm throwing it away/ It's easy, it's easy as life

A year later sees Remus adjusted to living life on his own. Not that he’s happy about it, mind you.

He lives a life of dreams, of memories. Moments when he jerks awake, able to feel the breath of Sirius’s body beside him. Over and over he relives their last night together. The touches, the feelings, the words. Of having his entire body and being concentrated on this man, this body. This...person who knew him and knows him. Who is sitting in a dark and unhappy cell for a crime he could not have committed.

He tries to imagine what it would be like, to have Sirius with him now. If somehow, somehow they could have proven his innocence and he would have remained free. Would Sirius have become responsible, faced with the duty of raising Harry? Would they have raised Harry together, the both of them, crying together until the pain of James and Lily’s death had left them, laughing when the happy memories returned? How would they have raised him? Lived with him? Loved him?

Loved each other?

Remus’s heart spasms within his chest.

Eighteen Months Later:

But then I see the faces of a worn , defeated people/A father and a nation who won't let a coward run/is this how the gods reward the faithful through the ages?/Forcing us to prove the hardest things we've done/Are easy/So easy

His eyes follow witches and wizards through the course of their lives. He doesn’t have anything better to do, does he? It is these witches and wizards who told him he has no place in their world, a half-blood half-breed. He is shunned and ignored.

His eyes follow these witches and wizards, people who are alive, in all theory, because of him, because of his friends. Because of the deaths of two unassuming people who had a dream for the world they lived in. Because of the deaths of hundreds the lives of thousands were saved.

No one knows what he’s done, the missions he went on. The danger he put his life in. They watch him, scared and wary. The shopkeepers don’t trust him. Prospective employers are afraid. It makes him want to transform into the beast and howl with rage, with anger, at the unbelievable and horrible unfairness of it.

He is thankful, for the first time in his life, for the curse. When he was younger, he hated it, hated it for taking him away from those he loved and cared about. He is grateful for it now, now that it takes him away from the memories of them....

Twelve Years Later:

And though I'll think about him 'til the earth draws in around me/And though I choose to leave him for another kind of love/This is no denial, no betrayal but redemption/Redeemed in my own eyes and in the pantheon above/It's easy/It's easy as life/It's easy as life/It's easy as life

He is sitting in his office, his head between his hands, the weight of life on his shoulders.

He sighs heavily, fingers the parchment that is before him and, with shaking hands, taps it with his wand, muttering seven words long forgotten.

It unfurls, the air in the room creaking with old magic. It seeps into his bones, warming him, easing him, lifting him up a little higher.

It’s been a long time, far too long a time and he resists the
urge to wave at the map, an old friend he hasn’t seen in years, protector of his fifteen year old self.

Inked by an invisible quill, the castle appears, names and faces and places. His eyes cover it slowly and he notes, fondly, the names that are still there and, curious, the ones that have changed. McGonagall, still in her office, Hagrid, still in his hut. And there, just beside the Whomping Willow, the names Potter and Bla–

No.