☆ 𝟙𝟞 : the epilogue to an era

sixteen the epilogue to an era

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3rd November, 1981

THIS WAS NOT how she was meant to be spending their birthday. It was meant to be her and her brother, her husband and their daughter, her best friend and his wife with their son and her other best friend in the family cottage passed on to her by her parents-in-law.

It was supposed to be a quiet day where the family they had made could spend another day together, reminiscing over old pranks, making jokes about the responsibilities they had taken on and they'd all fuss over toddler Charlotte, whose accidental magic caused havoc wherever she went. A day of exploding snap championships and Remus' cooking. A day where James and Lily would try and out-do each other in their gift-giving and Peter's unorthodox child-minding antics which would end in a game of pass-the-parcel between the two babies. A day full of Sirius' laughter and Harry's feeble attempts to copy [y/n]'s dance moves to the Beatles' songs on the record player.

Instead, three of them were dead, one was in Azkaban, another sent to the Muggle world and the remaining three were sat in the Burrow as the Order meeting droned on throughout the day. It was difficult with so many children in the house, but Molly Weasley handed the responsibilities on to Bill and Charlie which were ultimately taken on by five-year-old Percy.

    '— with You-Know-Who gone, what next?' Frank asked into the huddle at the Weasleys' large kitchen table.

    'There's still some rounding-up of his greatest fanatics to do, and we'd manage to breed it out of their kids by the time they graduate if Black —' [y/n] rolled at Moody's use of ger maiden name. '— finally made a decision regarding Dumbledore's offer —'

    'I said I'd find the time to consider it when I don't mind being separated from my toddler for so long,' [y/n] interrupted with a heavy sigh, bouncing Charlotte on her knee.

    'Your house is connected to the Floo Network,' Arthur said. 'I'm sure there would be a way to connect your office, too.'

    'Certainly,' Dumbledore agreed with a nod of his head.

    'And Remus can look after Lottie,' Frank suggested.

    'Only because she actually behaves for him,' [y/n] said pointedly to her daughter. Charlotte's innocently wide eyes showed the lack of information she absorbed before she carried on playing with the rubber duck across the table with Arthur.

    'And if you're out working, Remus, you can always bring her here,' Molly offered, buttering slices of bread. 'Fred and George are always happy when she's around. Albeit slightly harder to look after ...'

    'I can make my own decisions in my own ti— Lottie, don't bite the duck, that's not what it's for — and Moony, don't look at me like that —'

    'But I'm just saying it's a good idea,' Remus commented, patting [y/n]'s arm. The woman raised an eyebrow. 'You've been considering it for over a year now and you always get so close to saying yes, but something always makes you say no. Just go for it, love.'

    'Yeah, come on, Lupin,' Frank encouraged with a light laugh. 'Why haven't you made a decision yet?'

    'Because I have slightly bigger things on my mind at the minute,' [y/n] snapped. 'Or have you all forgotten that today I share my birthday with someone that's not here?'

    The discussion at the table came to an abrupt stop as all eyes fell on [y/n]. The woman busied herself with re-buttoning Charlotte's blue cardigan over her tiny dungarees to avoid her colleagues' gazes and to ignore the glances they shared with each other. She clenched her jaw ferociously in a desperate attempt to stop tears forming in her eyes.

    'Well,' Alice cut in over the silence, 'let us know if you need any help with rounding up the left over Death Eaters.' She placed a hand on her husband's before winking, 'Although I'm quite sure [y/n] is quite capable of doing everything herself.'

'Mind you,' Remus added with a smirk, taking a sip of his tea, 'she almost set the house on fire the other day.'

'It's not my fault I don't — sit still — know how to use a stupid Mug— Lottie, sit still — a stupid Muggle — Lottie — toaster,' [y/n] struggled as Charlotte fidgeted on her lap. 'Oh, Molly, where're twins? It'll be the only way to occupy her, she can't stay put for two seconds.'

'They should be just in the other room,' Molly replied as she fed two-month-old Ginny. 'Why don't we stop for lunch? It's been a long morning.'

    'Ahhh, wonderful suggestion, Molly,' Dumbledore agreed.

'Come on then, you little tyke,' [y/n] cooed, placing Charlotte on her hip whilst everyone else rose from the table. 'Let's take you to your buddies.'

'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!' Charlotte called in her toddler panic, leaning dangerously close to falling from her mother's grasp as she stuck her arms out desperately to Remus.

'Yes, Daddy's coming too,' [y/n] answered sweetly, turning to Remus with a sigh. 'Honestly, Moony, we were best friends until four months ago, since when did you become her favourite?'

    'Because I'm a cool dad,' Remus grinned, strutting over and taking Charlotte into his arms, laughing when she squealed as he raised her above his head. [y/n] snorted. 'Either that or, y'know ...' Remus continued apprehensively. 'Well, it's this age they get their wolfey-senses, so maybe she's picking it up with me.'

'Moony, there's no need to worry,' [y/n] whispered gently, checking the room to make sure no one was within earshot. 'Our child is not a werewolf.'

    The couple wandered to the living room of the Burrow where, in the little playpen, Ronald and Neville shared their building blocks gleefully. They seemed almost unaware that their other best friend was missing from their presence.

    In the middle of the room, [y/n] and Remus found Fred and George doing some ... Well, technically it was painting, because they were using paints, but it was questionable whether Molly would have actually given the twins access to such a messy material considering the risks involved. Percy was curled into the armchair closet to the fireplace and reading a storybook, observing his little brothers carefully over the pages and telling them off every so often if they became too boisterous.

Percy absolutely adored Charlotte. As Remus placed the girl onto the floor to play with the three-year-old twins, the boy immediately joined her side, abandoning his book on the armchair he just vacated. Charlotte seemed completely unaware that Percy was the one who passed her the paintbrush she was now holding, mainly because she was so determined to cover George (or was it Fred that Molly dressed in green today?) with bright blue paint. She coated her tiny dungarees in splatters of azure, which Percy immediately set to work on cleaning up. Fred (or maybe George was the smaller one?) toddled across the floor and grabbed hold of Ron's discarded teddy bear, dunking its head into the pot of dirty water. Percy pulled Charlotte into his lap to guard her from the spiral of water that came from the teddy bear as the twins took turns to thrash it onto the paper the trio were working on.

    'We've got to do something, Moony,' [y/n] exhaled, dropping her head to Remus' shoulder. 'Anything.'

    Remus shook his head and rubbed his face with his hands. [y/n] watched Charlotte and looked at Remus from the corner of her eye. He seemed nervous about something.

    'Remus, don't you dare start doubting —'

    'I'm not doubting!' Remus exclaimed. 'I just ... I don't know what to think, Paws. Even if it wasn't him, he definitely knew something was up. Merlin, he thought I was the traitor.'

    'Oi, Lupin!' Alice shouted from the kitchen. Both [y/n] and Remus snapped their heads. 'Come get your lunch before I have it — it's so bloody good!'

    'I'm not hungry.'

    'C'mon, love,' Remus sighed, standing up and taking her hand. 'You have to eat someth—'

    'It's not like you're eating anything either,' [y/n] snapped back. 'You haven't touched food for days.'

    Remus frowned. 'Let's do it for Lottie, then. We still have to look after her.'

    [y/n] turned to Charlotte with a vacant smile. The little girl was already a copy of her father, with her sandy blonde hair and deep chocolate eyes. She was obviously destined to be a bookworm like him, as well, especially as she loved cuddling on the sofa with her parents as Remus read her to sleep every night. How ironic that she was best friends with a duo of trouble-making twins, too.

    'She won't get to meet them properly, Moony,' [y/n] cried, tears threatening to spill as the two made their way back to the bustling kitchen table. 'Do you think she'll remember them?'

    'Maybe,' Remus said.

    'You have photos,' Sturgis Podmore interrupted, pointing his fork at them. 'Although I think it'd be best to keep the ones with the traitor out of the album.'

    [y/n] clenched her jaw and if looks could kill, Remus certainly didn't need his wand as a deadly weapon.

'I don't get it,' [y/n] said, raising her voice so the whole table could hear her. 'If everyone knew Sirius was the Secret Keeper, then why would he do it? He was brash but not stupid.'

'It doesn't make any sense to me,' Remus added, arms folded.

'Like, what did we do when we wanted to pull-off a prank?'

'We'd create a distraction,' Remus responded, explaining [y/n]'s thought process to the remaining Order members.

'Exactly,' [y/n] said firmly, folding her arms and sitting back in her chair.

'Miss Black —'

'It's Mrs Lupin.'

'Forgive me,' said Dumbledore, bowing his head slightly. 'Mrs Lupin, you must understand that under such circumstances —'

[y/n] wasn't having any of it. 'But —' she started, before letting out a frustrated huff. She turned to Remus, delicately placing a hand on his knee. 'Remember in third year? When we wanted to set up a prank in Flitwick's classroom for his birthday?'

'I do,' Remus recalled, 'but we were worried we couldn't do it because he was always in there.'

'So what did we plan to do?' [y/n] prompted with innocently wide eyes in her husband's direction.

Remus paused for thought before saying, 'We would send me in to tell Flitwick that Prongs — James — was up to something somewhere else, so I could set it up.'

'Which worked because ..?'

'Because no one would suspect me, whereas James being up to something was a believable story,' Remus answered immediately.

'Making him the decoy,' [y/n] continued. 'Sirius wasn't the Secret Keeper — he was a decoy. Everyone knew that he'd want to protect James and Lily and Harry, including the Death Eaters, so if they went to him, even tortured him to get the answer, Merlin, if they used Veritaserum, he couldn't tell them because he wouldn't know.'

'[y/n], don't you think —?'

'Someone else was the Secret Keeper, Arthur,' [y/n] cut in. 'Someone that nobody would suspect but was devious enough to pull it off. I'm sure of it.'

'[y/n],' Alice said gently, reaching across the table to run a thumb across her hand. '[y/n], don't you think it's a bit suspicious?'

[y/n] rose to her feet and slapped her hands onto the table. 'He didn't do it!' she yelled through her tears before repeating it quietly as she dropped back into her seat, 'He wouldn't do it. Not my Dog-Star ...'

'I'm sorry, [y/n], but the evidence is undeniable,' Dumbledore said. 'He was their Secret Keeper, and Voldemort would only be able to find the Potters if he revealed their location.'

'No!' [y/n] cried. 'There must be someone else!'

'I'm afraid there is no one else to blame,' Dumbledore said in a calm tone [y/n] found almost obnoxious. 'After all, the ... majority of the Black family are known to be avid supporters of Voldemort.'

Remus sent daggers in Dumbledore's direction and grabbed [y/n]'s hand under the table decisively.

'He didn't,' [y/n] hiccoughed. Beside her, Remus' leg started twitching up and down. 'He couldn't ... You can't blame him.'

'I have no reason to believe —'

'How can you blame him?' Remus suddenly exploded, banging his hands on the table and leaning forward aggressively. Behind them, the children's noises of glee ceased. 'How can you blame him? You're being absolutely ridiculous! You're basing this all on what family he comes from which, might I remind you, my wife is also a part of, and who is sat in front of you as part of your force against evil! I can't believe you! Like, his family? Oh, you mean the family he ran away from at the age of sixteen because he couldn't stand living with them anymore? The family that disowned him? The family that burned his picture from their family tree? You think this man, who thought of the Potters as his real family, who lived with them and thought of James as a brother, who mourned at James' parents' funerals because he loved them, who was named the Godfather of James and Lily's child, actually betrayed his only real family and got his brother killed? You're unbelievable,' Remus shook his head before spitting, 'Sir.'

By now, Alice was clutching [y/n]'s hand so tightly in reassurance that her knuckles grew white.

'Even if it wasn't Black, he killed Peter Pettigrew!' Sturgis Podmore cried. 'There are witnesses; he murdered in cold blood!'

[y/n] sunk into her chair defeatedly and clenched her jaw in order to hold back her tears. The hopelessness that, even if she did prove Sirius' innocence in the sequence of events that lead to the murder of her best friends, there was nothing that could be done to save her brother from the clutches of Azkaban's dementors.

    'Perhaps, Remus, yourself and [y/n] could go and do what we discussed,' Dumbledore suggested, looking at Remus down his half-moon glasses. 'I understand that this conversation may be lot for the two of you to take in, circumstances considered.'

    Remus' furious face softened as he turned to [y/n] and asked, 'Would you be happy to do that?'

    'Yeah, sure,' [y/n] replied absent-mindedly, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks. 'Yeah, let's go.'

    'Molly, Arthur,' Remus called as the two left the table, 'would it be all right to leave Lottie here for a while?'

    'Of course, of course,' Molly busied. 'Don't you two worry, we have everything under control.'

    [y/n] glanced to the living room where Bill, Charlie and Percy were desperately trying to stop Fred, George and Charlotte from throwing paint into the fire. Ron had started crying after witnessing the fate of his teddy bear, and Neville joined him in his bawling, seemingly just because he could. Ginny threw back up her food all over her high chair.

Under control ... right.

    'What are we going to do about James and Lily's house?' Alice asked quietly, to no one in particular. 'We can't just leave it there to rot ...'

    [y/n] shivered at the thought of the scene she saw on Hallowe'en. The baby's crying that pierced through the night, the wandless man limp at the front door, the fearful woman sprawled at the foot of the cot, the inhuman mass slumped by the window of the room.

'That's where we're going,' Remus explained gently as he helped his wife with her [y/f/c] trench coat. [y/n] saw her memories reflected in Remus' dark eyes. 'Maybe we can get some heirlooms and photos for when Harry's older ...'

'You know Harry,' [y/n] said, stony-faced and glaring at Dumbledore directly. 'The child you wouldn't let us look after? Our best friends' son who we vowed to protect if anything ever happened to them?'

Dumbledore stayed silent, but he didn't look away.

'We'll keep Charlotte for as long as you need,' Molly offered, stepping through [y/n]'s eye-line to break the tension. 'Even if it's overnight.'

'Thank you, Molly,' Remus replied, placing a hand on [y/n]'s back and guiding her out the front door. 'Come on, love. Let's go.'

    [y/n] hated Apparating with every fibre of her being, especially after she got splinched that time she was running from a solo mission where she almost got caught. Holding Remus' hand, however, made the thought of the journey slightly more pleasant and, as they arrived outside the house in Godric's Hollow, his stable arms kept her from stumbling off her feet. Keeping a tight grip on each other's hands, they precariously pushed their way through the warped garden gate, down the twisted path and into the building via the shattered front door.

    The two walked around the silent house, careful not to disturb anything as they tread. [y/n] felt sick in her mouth after spotting the smudged blood stain on the corner of the wall in the front room and tried her best not to think back to that night, when she'd burst into the crumbling home to find her best friend lifeless on the floor in front of her. She shuddered.

As Remus wandered into the living room, [y/n] made a brave move towards the stairs. She placed her hand on the banister, brushing her fingers along the two Gryffindor scarves hanging limply from the wood. Tentatively, she made her way up the rickety stairs, made unstable from the explosion that tore the house apart.

    [y/n] didn't dare to look at the door to Harry's bedroom, refusing to acknowledge that she even passed it as she crossed the threshold into the spare room. She knew there was a box of old photographs from both James and Lily's childhoods that perhaps Harry would pour over when he was old enough to understand what happened on Hallowe'en.

    In the back corner of the room, [y/n] knew there was a box full to bursting of battered journals. They were stuffed with masterminded pranks, intricate booby-traps and detailed explanations of unique spells. It was everything that reminded her of James' joy — and Lily's reluctant disdain — and she clasped the oldest of the books, dating back ten years, close to her heart. James' handwriting scrawled THE F̶A̶M̶O̶U̶S̶ ̶F̶I̶V̶E̶ ̶M̶E̶D̶D̶L̶E̶R̶S̶ ̶M̶I̶S̶F̶I̶T̶S̶ MARAUDERS' GREAT BOOK OF PRANKING MASTERPLANS in his usual messy capitals. MARADUERS was circled several times with big black arrows pointing towards it. [y/n] smiled tearfully and let out a hiccoughing sob.

    She placed the book back and replaced the lid on the box before taking it down the stairs and positioning it at the front door. She joined Remus in the living room just a moment later, having returned upstairs to retrieve the stack of cardboard boxes the Potters had used when they first moved into the house at Godric's Hollow.

    Remus looked up from his spot on the sofa and closed his eyes when they met [y/n]'s, holding back the tears that threatened to disobey their place inside his head. He held his wand in his clasped hands, almost fearful to shine a light on the devastation the room found itself in.

    [y/n] reached out a hand and he took it gratefully, rising to his feet and finally encouraging himself to approach the fireplace where many a laugh had been shared.

    'Lumos!' Remus whispered, holding his light up to the dusty photos on the mantlepiece.

    A wedding reception, from just two years previous, where they all gathered around the redhead and spectacled as the newlyweds signed the registry; a Hallowe'en costume line-up when the friends had gone dressed as the Scooby-Doo gang the year before; a baby being helped by his dad to take his first steps across that very living room floor; a summer memory taken by a stranger from when the young Gryffindors were just sixteen, but then, that was only five years ago ...

    [y/n] held Remus in her arms as the man stroked a thumb across the laughing faces of the best friends on a Hogsmeade trip in their seventh year. Remus placed the framed photograph into one of the boxes [y/n] had brought into the room, the pair wordlessly agreeing that pictures were the most important things to pack first.

    They worked silently as they gathered things James and Lily had always regarded as precious into the cardboard boxes, careful not to disturb their peace. Certificates and trophies, school pin-badges and seventies records, pieces of jewellery and books — they all told the story of two people who fell in love and began growing a life together; scattered memories which littered every conversation or blank space in a hall now being organised and boxed away before time forgot them and the world wore them down to nothing.

Lily, clever as she was, spoke her first words at just seven months, and James, a very different sort of clever, had learnt to talk back as early as one. Lily learnt to swim — without armbands, mind you — before her fourth birthday, and James was on a broom before he could even walk. When she was five, Lily Evans received her first award for academic excellence; the very same year that James Potter triumphantly broke his first bone climbing the oak tree in his back garden. She had mastered the entire fourth-year Charms syllabus before the age of thirteen, and he had scored more goals on the Quidditch pitch than any second-year in recorded history. In their fifth year, Lily was made Prefect, and James Captain. In their seventh, they were Head Boy and Girl. He fell in love at fifteen, she at seventeen, and the two were married — quickly for her, finally for him — at just nineteen. It was no surprise then that at only twenty years of age, Lily gave birth to their first child; a beautiful baby boy with his hair and her eyes.

James and Lily Potter did everything young.

And so, in spite of everything they had done, and everything they could have been, it only made sense that death would come for them young, too.

'I can't do this.'

    [y/n] broke down sobbing and Remus joined her as she collapsed to the floor.

'We don't have to do it now,' Remus said with a shaky voice, holding [y/n] tight. 'We can come back. Come on, let's get Lottie and go home — I think we're all a bit tired — I'm here, I'm here — we don't have to do it today — it's all right, we can come back. We can always come back.'

They never did go back. It was too much grief to bear.

🧣 the end 🧣