It was snowing in Godric’s Hollow. White flakes gilded the roof-tops of the honey-coloured cottages on either side of a winding cobbled street, sparkling on leaves and crunching softly underfoot. Through frosted windows panes, lights of multicoloured Christmas trees glowed warmly, and animated chatter could be heard from within. Strings of brightly lit stars illuminated the street down into the main square, which was silent and empty, save for the strains of laughter emitting from the nearby pub. It was Christmas Day.
Remus Lupin bowed his head against the snow, pushing his hands deeper into the pockets of his shabby overcoat and pulling his scarf higher to cover his exposed throat against the chill. His footsteps disturbed the newly laid snow, making a lonely track through the middle of the village as he walked with long, purposeful strides. Just a little further to go.
Remus was only 31, but his brown hair was already scattered with silver and his face was lined and taut. A long scar ran across one side of his face, across a pair of hazel eyes flecked with green and down a chin covered with brown stubble. Those eyes had once twinkled with amusement, darkened with rage, glistened with tender feeling. Now, they were shadowed and empty. His gaze was fixed on the path ahead, taking in neither the villages’ beauty, nor festive cheer, winding his way towards the little kissing gate at the end of the road.
The gate creaked as he pushed it open, pausing to brush off the snow that had settled on his eyelashes and nose. The graveyard was dark and deserted. Graves rose out of the gloom, crowned with snow, some with bunches of holly or mistletoe laid beneath their marble encasings. Remus did not pause to look; his feet were already treading a familiar path without conscious thought, leading him to the grave he sought as if drawn by some powerful enchantment. After a few minutes, he stopped. He had found them.
Lily and James’s grave shone pearly white through the gathering dusk. It had been 10 long years since they had been placed under the snow; laid to rest side by side, as if sleeping. Remus had insisted that they were buried holding hands; he knew their longing for closeness would extend to the afterlife. Behind him, in the little church, he could hear the strains of carols drifting across the graves. He closed his eyes, and allowed the memories to flicker across his mind once more.
‘Come on Moony, sing the carols with us!’
James had always insisted on it, as they sat in the Potter’s drawing room, listening to Sirius playing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs’ on the piano. Remus had tried to resist; despite his Welsh blood, he had no voice at all.
‘I’ll sing too!’ James pleaded.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of’.
James had everything a singer needed, confidence, a love of attention and enthusiasm. Everything except the ability to hold a tune. Yet every year without fail, he would belt out the carols at the top of his voice, ignoring both Remus’ reluctance to participate, and Sirius’s smirks as he joined in with his own deep and melodious voice. Peter, of course, had sung with James without question. James loved Christmas. He filled their dormitory with decorations from the 1st of December, bought them all matching Christmas jumpers and insisted they wore them in public, and gifted everyone lavish presents. The last Christmas they had all spent together had been one of the happiest days of Remus’s life.
Perhaps that was why he had chosen to return here, every Christmas Day, to visit them both. He could still see them now; Lily, wearing tinsel in her long red hair, pulling a cracker with James and kissing him, cradling baby Harry in her arms. James, setting off fireworks at the table and accidentally setting the turkey alight, beaming at them as he made his traditional, slightly drunken Christmas speech, in which he thanked everyone, from his best friends to Merlin’s pants, for his ‘wonderful, fantastic life’. Before Remus had left, he had looked back at the happy couple, glowing with love, oblivious to their best friends as they gazed at each other. That was how he wanted to remember them. Young, whole, alive. Not as he had seen them last, frozen in death, with looks of fear and horror on their cold faces.
Unbidden, hot tears began to trickle down his scarred face. The last 10 years had passed as swiftly and silently as wind through a deserted meadow. He lived day by day, hour by hour, struggling against the suffocating emptiness they had left behind. They had all gone where he could not reach them; James, Lily and Peter all dead, and Sirius dead to him. He had been left with nothing except tainted memories of a former life that he could never recover. The first years had passed in a blur of pain, alcohol and silence. He was sober now, and older. His youth and joy had died with his friends.
‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’.
Remus looked down at those hollow words, feeling his tears freezing painfully upon his cheeks. How like Dumbledore to choose a phrase both deeply profound, and cold. Words for the greater good, not the greatness of their goodness. He wondered if Harry would ever visit his parents grave, whether he would understand the meaning of these final words. Harry would be 11 now, at Hogwarts. He wondered if he would ever be allowed to meet him.
Remus drew out his wand. Circling it gracefully through the air, he conjured a bunch of red and gold lilies, and placed them at the foot of the grave. On second thought, he added a sprig of holly and mistletoe. James would have insisted on it. He knelt down by the grave, and placed a hand on their names, wondering if they could feel the intensity of his love radiating through his frozen fingers.
‘Merry Christmas, Prongs and Evans’.
Then he stood up, turned his back on the grave and walked away, before disapparrating into the suffocating darkness with a loud crack.