Remus
Halloween sneaks up on Remus like it does every year. Living month-to-month, the only passage of time Remus takes any note of are the cycles of the moon and the changing of the seasons. It gets colder, and the leaves turn red, and Remus strengthens the warming charms on his threadbare coat. But then, on their third meeting at the local library, while Remus is explaining that they can’t use any resources at the Ministry and so will probably have to go through the Muggle adoption process, Sirius interrupts.
“Tomorrow’s Halloween,” he says, in that way he does when he’s been thinking about how to say something for so long it just comes tumbling out of his mouth without a filter.
Remus freezes at the words. Halloween.
Last Halloween, he had spent the night sobbing into a lover’s arms, pain and love and anguish pouring out of his mouth as he told her about James and Lily and Harry and Sirius and death and love and how could I not know, I should’ve known. And then Estee…
Had that been when she thought of it, Remus wonders, had that been when she thought he’d take his life with her if she asked him to?
“…Remus?” Sirius says, and Remus realises he’s been talking.
“Sorry… Tomorrow… yes—Halloween.” His hands are shaking. He places them in his lap.
“I was thinking… Well, I wanted to… see them. Their graves.”
Their graves. Remus closes his eyes. He’s only ever seen their graves once, over a month after their deaths, having missed the funeral but unable to stay away. It seemed like it couldn’t be real until he’d seen those headstones, still filled with so many flowers you could barely see their names. Seeing them made it real, and true, and that’s when Remus had gone numb. He stayed numb that whole year, sometimes with the aid of drugs or drinks or sex, and when Halloween came around Remus thought about visiting again but couldn’t, could only let all the hurt and pain and fury wash over him until he was unconscious.
He doesn’t want to go to their graves, doesn’t know if he can go, but Sirius wants to go and he will want Remus to go with him, Remus knows.
“It might be good, to see them,” he says quietly.
“I hope… I hope it will help me mourn, to see them at rest.”
It didn’t help me, Remus doesn’t say.
“Would you… I don’t know if you were planning on going, but… Would you go with me?”
I can’t. Remus’ throat moves around the words, but his mouth won’t open. It would destroy me, he tries next.
“I just… don’t know if I can go alone, that’s all. I think… it will help, to have you there.”
“It might help… to have you there, too.” These words come out, soft and scared and uncertain, but Remus meets Sirius’ eyes and sees the relief and gratefulness in them.
Remus reaches out and places his hand carefully on Sirius’. His hand twitches underneath his, but he doesn’t move it. For a moment they stay like that, touching nowhere but their overlapping hands, letting the grief wash over them. Remus feels their absence, James and Lily and Harry and even Peter, there in the space between him and Sirius, but he doesn’t feel numb or empty. Maybe, he thinks, maybe tomorrow will be good for me.
The next day, they apparate to the town square in Godric’s Hollow. There’s an apparition point just off it, since there’s such a sizeable wizarding community, and although part of Remus just wants to apparate straight into the graveyard, even he knows better than to actually suggest it. Plus, they had both spent a good amount of time in Godric’s Hollow, and the Potter’s, so the walk might do them some good. Remus wonders, as they walk past the fountain, if Sirius will want to see the house.
Beside him, Sirius gasps and halts. Remus turns to him, eyebrow raised, but then he sees it too. The fountain, which had been the regular fountain Remus remembers from his visits pre-1981, had changed as they passed, instead depicting James and Lily and baby Harry, there in Lily’s arms. Remus feels a pang of sadness, looking at their young faces. Twenty one. It had seemed so old, back then, and James and Lily so mature—married with a baby—but now that he’s looking at their youthful faces, Remus can’t help but think of them as children. Teenagers, barely out of school.
Sirius moves and grasps Remus’ hand, tears in his eyes. He’s staring at the statue of James, a sort of blankness over his face, even as his hands shake.
“We got that made a few years ago,” someone says from the other side of Sirius. They turn to look at her. The speaker is a middle-aged woman bundled up in a brown fall coat and red scarf. She smiles at them sadly. “You’re Sirius Black, James’ best friend, right?”
“Practically his brother,” Sirius manages.
“Well, we put up this statue to commemorate the Potters and the Boy Who Lived; preserved the house, too, in memory. We here at Godric’s Hollow will never forget what that family did for the wizarding world. Their bravery will be remembered.”
Sirius’ hand tightens in Remus’. He blinks at the woman, opens his mouth a couple times, then turns and walks away. Remus, a bit but actually not at all surprised by Sirius’ rudeness, thanks the woman quietly as they continue on their way.
“They preserved the house?” Sirius mutters angrily when they’re out of earshot. “As a memorial?”
“They mean well, Padfoot,” Remus murmurs placatingly. He assumes Sirius does not want to see the house now.
“It’s not their house! It’s… It’s Harry’s house, the place he was born and was loved and had all his firsts and—it’s been in the Potter family for generations! James was raised there, and his father before him, and now—now it’s a memorial! Preserved in the worst moment possible.”
“Well, what with the… worst moment… well, it’s not really a place many would want to live in, is it?”
Sirius takes a shuddering breath and wipes angrily at his eyes. “Whatever. I don’t need to go there. I see that place enough in my sleep. If those wankers want to go there and celebrate their noble deaths at the place they were murdered then they can go fuck themselves. I’m never going back there.”
Sirius’ hand is squeezing Remus’ so tight it’s starting to hurt, but the pain is welcoming, in a way, so Remus says nothing, only follows Sirius as they enter the graveyard.
“Right.” Sirius pauses just inside the gate. “Where are they buried, then?” His hand tightens impossibly.
“This way. Beside James’ parents.” Remus leads the way this time, and Sirius stumbles after, hesitating.
There are quite a few others in the graveyard as well, what with it being Hallow’s eve and coming up to the best time to communicate with the dead. Remus feels as though all eyes are upon them, though, as they make their way to the Potter’s graves. When they reach the area most of the Potters have been buried, Sirius starts murmuring under his breath, repeating the things James would say when visiting his deceased family—prayers, well-wishes, little phrases or nicknames passed down from generation to generation. Sirius spends a bit longer at James’ parents grave, clearing away fallen leaves and conjuring up some flowers to rest against their headstone. Remus lets him, still holding his hand, that numbness from before spreading through him in preparation for what is to come.
Finally, Sirius takes a deep breath, raises his head, and nods at Remus. He nods back, and they move a few steps over to a grave already sporting quite a few flowers for people whose only living relatives were a child living who-knows-where and the man currently conjuring up more flowers and a few candles.
They stand there for a bit, candles flickering in the cold wind, hands clasped over the wide gap between them. Remus stares at the headstone, at the names of his friends and the dates they spent living and the flowers leaning below that, and thinks about how little it captured their essences. How even that statue in the square barely captured their likeness, only showed their physical traits and none of James’ warmth, or Lily’s kindness, his laugh or her hugs. It had shown none of their life, which they had so much of Remus sometimes thought of James as the sun and Lily a light spring rain, giving everyone around them the life they had in excess.
Remus wishes it weren’t too late to try and give that life back. Beside him, Sirius is crying softly. Remus glances at him when he whimpers, and that’s when the numbness breaks. It falls away, and Remus is hit with the pain and suffering and loss on Sirius’ face, the grief and the guilt Remus has spent years fucking or drinking or smoking away. And Remus hurts, and his hand tightens around Sirius’, their bones cracking together, and he knows that everything he is feeling—the emotions in his belly confusing even the beast inside him—are mirrored in Sirius.
No one had known how Remus felt, before. That was a fact of being a queer werewolf whose only friends either died or was their killer, and even when Dumbledore, or his mother, or a stray Order member tried to commiserate, Remus had known no one knew what was happening inside him, could not understand his emotions in all their complexity. But Sirius, Sirius understands, because he is feeling it too. Sirius is standing beside him, crying, grieving, hurting, and Remus holds his hand and lets his own tears fall.
“Would you… We should say a few words,” Sirius croaks an eternity later.
“Words…?” Remus can’t think straight, can’t do anything but feel right now.
“To Prongs and Lilyflower.”
“I don’t… I don’t know what I’d say,” Remus admits.
“…Me neither.” Sirius lets out a quiet huff, “well no, I’d say so much, but I don’t… Don’t know where to start. I’m sorry,” Sirius whispers after a pause. “It’s all my fault you’re gone and I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be them,” Remus says, just as quietly, “they were supposed to live. I was supposed to die.”
“We were both supposed to die before them.”
“They were never supposed to die at all. They were supposed to live forever.”
Sirius sniffles. “Are there words on their headstone?” He asks, voice still small.
“What?” Remus squints, and Sirius points.
“There, underneath the flowers.” He moves forward—still not letting go of Remus, whose arm extends across the space—and re-arranges the objects against the grave. “‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’” Sirius reads aloud.
“The last enemy…” Remus repeats.
Sirius turns to look at Remus, confusion on his face, but then something catches his eye behind him, turning his expression stony. Remus looks cautiously over his shoulder and blinks at the small cluster of people standing just outside the Potter family plots, watching them.
“What are they all doing?” Remus asks Sirius quietly, but his friend only scowls.
“What do you think? Watching us make a spectacle of ourselves.” Sirius glowers. “There better not be any press here.” Then, dropping Remus’ hand—Remus tries to not reel at the sudden cold emptiness—Sirius marches over to the small crowd. Remus follows him, because even though it has been years, Remus has long since honed his sixth-sense for when Sirius is about to do something impulsive and reckless.
“Oi! What are you lot doing, watching us like that?” Sirius demands, “have you got no respect?”
“We wanted to pay—“
“I am visiting the grave of my dear brother and his wife, for the first time, mind you, only to find you lot staring at me like I’m some piece of entertainment!”
Remus catches up to him, “Sirius—“
“We care greatly for the Potters,” someone says, “and wanted to pay them respects.”
“You wanted to celebrate their deaths and their sacrifice is what you wanted,” Sirius snarls, “how many of you knew James and Lily? Knew what they were like when they were alive, the hopes and dreams and plans they had they never got to do because Voldemort decided to target them? How many of you would have come to pay their respects to them if they had died of something else—or better yet, if their deaths hadn’t led to the end of the war? If they had just been another casualty of war you wouldn’t be here, because you don’t care about them, you care about what they did for you. Well guess what? They didn’t do it for you! They did it for their son, for their loved ones, and he’s the one who deserves to be here paying his respects. We, their friends, who lived with them and laughed with them and loved them, we have the right to be here and mourn them. And you need to leave and let the living grieve.”
Properly chastised, the people begin to disperse, muttering to themselves and each other. Remus catches a few people throwing him a curious glance—and at the hand he still has wrapped around Sirius’ bicep, a failed attempt to stop and calm him. Thankfully, none of the people around seem to have cameras on them, and none appear to be press; Remus is fairly certain everyone here had good intentions in coming, at least, although he feels uncomfortable at the thought of these strangers seeing him break down earlier.
Finally, once everyone in front of them has gone, Sirius sighs and shrugs Remus’ hand off. He glances back at the graves almost disappointedly, then turns away with a frown.
“C’mon, let’s go,” he mutters, “I don’t think I can stay here anymore.”