Chapter Text
One week after the funerals
Nobody came.
Not at first.
The world had collapsed in on itself, and nobody had dug through the wreckage to check if Remus Lupin was still breathing. Not that he expected them to. The part of him that belonged to others was buried.
Sirius had betrayed them. James, Peter, and Lily were dead. The rest of the Order were scattered – surviving, somehow. Moving on. But Remus had been left behind. Just a shell.
Who was he now?
He had barely moved. Even breathing was hard to do. He had left his house on one occasion, to stock up on tinned food once the pangs in his stomach became too excruciating to bear. It had felt wrong to be back in the world again, especially one that was rejoicing in its freedom. He felt like he would never belong in it again.
He tried desperately to sleep to pass the time, to escape the nightmare that life had become. But he would lie wide awake, seeing the ghosts of their faces, his heart aching. On the rare occasion that he drifted off, he’d wake up with his heart racing and the sheets drenched in sweat, vivid images of what he imagined Peter’s remains might have looked like etched into his mind. And so, most nights, he simply sat - staring, but not seeing. And he would curse the sun as it rose, because how could it, now that his friends were gone?
A week after the funerals - funerals that he hadn’t attended, it was too much to bear - someone knocked on the door. He thought about not answering. He didn't, at first. But the second knock was louder, more insistent.
He rose to his feet, joints aching from weeks of malnutrition, inertia, and insomnia. He felt faint as he made his way over to the door.
He opened the door to find Minerva McGonagall on his doorstep, standing in the rain in her teaching robes, her usual sharpness softened by something he recognised all too well: loss.
She didn’t ask if she could come in. She simply stepped past him and fixed him with a look that was as close to maternal as he had ever seen in her. She took in the stubble on his face, the way his clothes hung from his frame, loose and shapeless, the way they do when someone has lost too much, too fast.
“You look dreadful,” she said.
“I feel worse,” he replied, voice rough from disuse.
He returned to his sofa, too weak to remain standing.
He saw her eyes scan his surroundings - the crumpled clothes on the floor, the tins, untouched dishes stacked high in the sink. The feel of silence that crept into your bones and made you forget what a voice sounded like.
Minerva moved into his kitchen as if she’d done it a hundred times before. He heard the kettle begin to boil and then the quiet sound of washing up charms. The gentle clinking of dishes. The rustle of fabric as she vanished the clothes from the floor with a flick of her wand.
He didn't say anything. He didn’t have the strength to argue. And besides, watching her move through his house, to fix what had been left to decay, felt like the closest thing to safety he had.
A few minutes later, she returned with two cups of tea. As if tea could put the world back to how it was.
She placed the warm cup directly into his hands, almost insistent, before she sat opposite him with her hands wrapped around her own cup.
“I should have come sooner.”
Remus blinked. “Why?”
Minerva frowned, as if the question was absurd. “Because you’re alone.”
“I’m used to it,” he breathed, staring into his tea.
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t mean that you should be.”
He paused, as if weighing the cost of saying it aloud. His voice, when it came, was hoarse.
“I look in the mirror and I don’t recognise myself. They were... who I was. Without them, I’m just... I don’t know. I’m no one.”
Minerva didn’t flinch. She set her cup down carefully, and when she spoke, her voice was firm, not unkind.
“Then you’d better decide who you’re going to be now.”
Remus stared at her.
“Because if you let grief hollow you out, it wins twice. Once for taking them. And again for taking you.”
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
“You want to disappear. I understand that, Remus. But if you vanish now, who will remember them the way you do? Who will remember the sound of their laughter?”
She leaned forward slightly.
“You think you’re what’s left behind. But you’re not the aftermath. You’re the witness.”
Remus hadn’t cried. Not when he heard the news. Not when he looked at their wedding photo and tried to pretend he was still in that moment. Not even when he tortured himself with the thought that he should have known.
But now, as Minerva sat across from him in his dim, cold, lifeless house, looking at him with sharp eyes softened with kindness, something inside him cracked. His chest tightened.
He felt it rising. He covered his face with his hands. Tried to hold it with sheer force of will. But the flood broke, the grief too heavy. The pain in his heart was too much to bear. And the weight of it crushed him all at once. The teacup slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor.
A ragged sob tore from him before he could stop it. His shoulders shook, his breath came out in short, broken gasps. He hunched over, arms wrapped around his head, and wept.
Minerva rose quickly and scurried around the table. “Oh, Remus,” her voice cracked as she pulled him into an embrace, nestling him into the crook of her neck and wrapping her arms around him.
He clung to her like he was drowning. He hadn’t been held since the last time he had said goodbye to Lily and James, not knowing it would be the last time. He sobbed and shuddered. He wept with such force that it drowned out everything else - any thought, every shred of restraint - until all that was left was the howling ache in his chest.
Minerva held him tightly, one hand on the back of his neck, the other rubbing his back gently, holding him together as he fell apart.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I - I didn’t even go to their funerals, I-”
“My dear boy,” she said. “You have nothing to feel sorry for.”
“I-” he gasped, still breathless. “I feel like I’m fading. Like I’m disappearing.”
“You’re still here, Remus,” she murmured. “You’re still here.”
She held him through it, the wreckage of his grief, through the loneliness and loss which demanded to be felt.
And when his sobs dissolved into shaky, unsteady breaths, she didn’t move away, she simply rested a hand on his shoulder.
“You’re not alone,” she said, looking him firmly in the eye.
He didn’t know how to believe that. But he nodded anyway, pressing a shaking hand to his face, trying to pull himself together.
She gave his shoulder one last, steady squeeze.
Outside, the rain kept falling. But inside, something had shifted.
For the first time, he didn’t feel quite so invisible.