Mary didn’t hear about Remus’ death until after the battle. She had broken down, all the pieces of herself that had cracked as she watched each of her friends die that she had done so much to keep together lay on the floor, broken and messy. She was the last one. She had never thought she'd be last.
She remembered when she was younger, in those morbid hours of the night, thinking that it might be Lily, with her brilliant mind and heart of fire that would outlast the rest of them. “Whoever could go near enough to hurt her without being burned” she had thought. Later, after that night of halloween, she thought maybe it would be Remus, with his careful smiles and his thoughts that he hid behind a mask of “im fines” and forced smiles.
But it had been her.
She lay on the floor, sobbing, knowing she would be the last one who would know of the way James would look at Lilly, or the way Sirius and Remus would whisper secrets to each other at night, or the wild parties, or the bowie records that would never stop.
She would be the last one who remember the way remus looked at sirius after the prank, or how they had all thought that remus was the traitor because they were shortsighted and bigoted, or how sirius looked on the fatal day in their 6th year when he was disowned by the black family.
She would be the last to remember the madraudas.
This was the first year she had never gone to see Lily and James’s grave. Every year she had gone, and layed a bundle of lilies on the grave. She hadn’t gone this year, Reg had thought it would be too dangerous, and if there was one thing she didn't want, it was more children orphaned by the goddamn war. But now that voldemort was gone, she knew she had to go back, she had to say goodbye, one last time.
“Hi” she said, approaching the tombstone, engraved with their names and the quote underneath - the last thing to be destroyed is death. Dumbledore had chosen it - they had no other family who would be interested, and Remus couldn't even go to the grave, let alone find a quote for the gravestone
She broke down crying. “God, I wish you were here” she said, her voice breaking from the angry sobs “I can't do this alone. I can't be the last one”. Only silence rang back.
She picked herself up, drying the last tears that her body could produce. She went home, to find Reg and her young children sitting at the front door, waiting for her. She never went back to the gravestone. She left behind an locket, with the picture of them on their final summer together. That was her last goodbye, to her long-forgotten life, to her dead friends, and to the memories she had of them. She finally, after all these years, allowed herself to move on.