Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

17 November, 1981 - Remember

*

Remus couldn't decide whether or not this was all a bad dream. Even days later, it still didn't feel real. How could it be? James and Lily and Peter... and Sirius. Sirius had betrayed them. And that was quite possibly the worst part of this whole nightmarish week.

Since they'd all been in hiding for a few months now, it was almost easy to pretend that the others were alive, that he just hadn't had a chance to see them for a little while. That somewhere, they were all holed up, staying safe. Staying alive. And even if it hurt like hell when reality came crashing in, it was possible, at least, to pretend for just a little while. To ease the pain. If only for a moment.

But Sirius... his absence weighed on the entire house, the air thick with it, every meal punctuated by it, every moment of the day reminding them that Sirius was gone. Sirius had lied. Sirius had betrayed them.

Remus hated the thought. Hated that it was true. Hated that he believed it. With difficulty, yes, but at the end of the day.... The evidence lined up. And he didn't have another explanation, however much he wanted one.

He had tried only once to bring it up to Lavinia. It had been on the very day that they'd gotten the news and he'd been half hoping that she could offer some other alternative. That she could explain it all away, but... But she had broken him off with a finality that had hurt to hear, with a deadness in her voice that had killed him. He hadn't bothered to say anything about Sirius since. He was half afraid that the mere sound of the name might break Lavinia. And she did seem so very fragile these days, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.

She walked around the house as though she were in a trance, her face blank and her eyes dull. He knew she hadn't been sleeping. Occasionally he would roll over late at night and see a thin band of light beneath his door and know she was still sitting or reading in the living room. Other times he had woken up in the morning, to find her on the couch, her hair a mess and the clothes she'd worn the previous day now rumpled from a restless night on the couch. Dark circles had begun forming beneath her eyes seemingly from the moment Emmeline had come with such awful news and they were getting worse by the day, though if Lavinia noticed them, she clearly didn't care. Actually, she didn't seem to care about much of anything at all these days.

It was worse, somehow, this cold, dead grief. Worse than if she'd been screaming and sobbing and feeling. But instead, she was simply... existing. Surviving. Seeming like that alone was a battle and not one she was entirely sure she wanted to fight.

He kept remembering how she had looked in those days in their seventh year at Hogwarts, just before Christmas break. Like she was a living ghost. She looked like that now and it scared him near senseless. Every time he glanced at her, something stabbed in his chest because all he could think was that he was losing yet another friend and he didn't know how to stop it.

And that... that was by far the worst part. That he didn't know how to help. She barely spoke to him, barely ate, no matter how hard he tried to convince she needed to. She seemed to be balancing on a knife's edge and Remus didn't know how to get her safely off.

Of course, all too often, helping her was simply too difficult, too much. Too often, getting out of bed took all the energy he had and there was little left to offer her. His own grief kept knocking the air from his lungs, kept trying to drown him beneath its waves and suffocate him with its pressure. They had, after all, been his friends for ten years. Ten years of laughing together, ten years of loving them, ten years of unwavering support. And in one night, it had all fallen apart. In the space of a few hours, the world had decided that ten years was all they would get. A period at the end of the sentence. An ending, painful and final.