JILY CHALLENGE | @arianatwycross v @constancezin
romance theme + prompt “It’s not like I've thought about kissing you, or anything…”
and a big round of applause to @constancezin for her beautiful artwork that accompanies this fic 🌼
Happy Valentines Day everyone! 💘
I wonder if I’m ever on her mind like she’s on mine.
She’s sitting next to me again, hair in a ponytail, her red curls hitting her parchment as she writes. We’re not allowed to sit in the library anymore - I say ‘we’ as in I'm not allowed to sit next to Lily and study while in the library anymore. Madam Pince hisses at me every time I walk through the large arch doors now, apparently, my quiet voice is not very quiet.
So we’re sitting in the common room. The perks of being head girl and boy offer us the ability to sit wherever we choose, the other seventh years like to make fun of us when second years scurry away when we ask if we can use the large wooden table in the corner. Lily probably would have told me to get lost if it wasn’t for her severe compulsiveness to have O’s in every subject. She doesn't even require Transfiguration to win her Potions Mastery position, but I'm complaining. If it means she's required to sit with me twice a week to go over our Transfiguration coursework - well I welcome her stubbornness.
She’s reading a passage from my textbook, she claims that my textbook is better than hers - Sirius says she just wants to sit closer to me - I say it’s because I leave notes in the margins.
A/N: I’m making my own rules for how secret keepers work because fuck canon, I don't understand half of Jkr’s rules! I know more about Dumbledore's sex life than I do about secret keepers, okay I’ll shut up, please enjoy part 1!!
Word Count: 2.5k I Masterlist /
Warnings: None, aside from mention of death? But that’s sort of a given.
The church bells rang loudly filling the silent room. Tears fell numbly down the girl’s face and she squeezed her hands together to keep herself calm, though everyone around her probably felt the exact same way.
She spared a glance up at the two caskets, their bodies lying inside but she couldn't bear to look at them. In a weird sort of backwards totally unlucky luck, they were killed by the killing curse which leaves no visible marks on the body. This was somehow worse, they probably looked like they were sleeping, looked like they were completely okay.
If she walked up to the caskets and looked at them it wouldn't look much different from when they fell asleep on the couch on movie nights, or what they looked like in the early hours of the morning when Harry was first born and she would go over to visit them to find they had been sleeping on the couch all night, in each other's lazy embrace.
“The Potters are survived by their son Harry Potter, who could not be here today, as well as their cousin Y/n Potter and many friends who have gathered here today to remember them.” A man spoke at the front of the room, Y/n winced at the mention of her name, she didn’t want any attention brought on her.
Lily and Y/n had connected so fast, and she and James had always been close, they were each other’s only cousins after all. With James’ parents and her parents long dead she was his only family member in attendance, this made her feel even more alone.
There was one other person in attendance that might feel as lonely as she did, but perhaps even more heartbroken.
The story was everywhere, Y/n had heard it from whispers in the street and in news headlines. James and Lily were killed by Voldemort, they were in hiding which she was aware of, but Harry had survived. The worst part was that their friend Sirius, Harry’s godfather who she had met on occasion, was their secret keeper. This meant it must have been him who gave them away to the Dark Lord, she had heard things about the Black family so she wasn't at all surprised.
After giving away their secret he went and killed another one of their close friends, Peter Pettigrew. She couldn't finish reading the news article that explained how gruesome it was. This left their other friend Remus, who was currently sat one row behind her, alone.
She couldn't imagine how that would feel. He had no one, he had lost so many people at once and just the thought of it broke her heart. She had heard that many of their other somewhat close friends had died recently too, that girl Marlene who was always super friendly to her when she was around and made her feel welcome. She had heard what had happened to Alice and Frank, the cute couple who had a baby Harry’s age, she wondered what would happen to their son now, after what terrible torture they had been put through.
She kept staring at the wall to her left, avoiding looking at the front of the room and avoiding looking behind her. Remus was sat with his back hunched over like usual, trying to hide from the peering eyes. The eyes of people who knew, they knew every detail of his current life, they felt bad for him, they hugged him tight even though they barely knew him, they shook his hand, directed their empty apologies at him.
He got a weird amount of attention at the funeral, so did she. The two of them served as the only close friends or family members who showed up. Lily's parents were dead and her sister, who had gotten custody of Harry, didn't bother to show up, meaning Harry wasn't there to get any of the doting attention either. It was like a spotlight had been cast on her and Remus as the people for everyone to pass their condolences onto, it was unfair and really too much to handle for either of them at this point.
After the ceremony there was a small gathering, food and beverages were served and people stood around talking, sharing memories. Y/n wasn't even sure who had organized this whole thing, she didn't bother to even think about it. After a few too many people came up to her, hugging and apologizing, she decided to make her way over to stand beside Remus, she tried to be as normal as possible though she barely knew this person aside from seeing him at Lily and James’ house or passing him in the hallways at Hogwarts.
“I guess it's better I stand next to you, save people the work of having to find us separately.” She tried to joke but it didn't come out as a joke and didn't feel like one.
“What?” Remus asked as he clearly zoned back in from wherever his mind was at.
“I'm just saying, people seem to have deemed us as the mourners, they keep hugging both of us and telling us all this gushy “I'm so sorry for your loss” stuff, it's just easier for us to endure it at one time, together.”
“Oh, I guess you're right, I honestly haven't even been paying much attention to anything happening, people just hug me and I let them, and I hate hugs.”
She wanted to bring up that the last time she had seen Remus he had baby Harry on his back with his tiny arms trying to wrap themselves around Remus’ broad yet slouched shoulders, he didn't seem to mind that type of hug. But it wasn't a proper thing to bring up, she could tell he was already upset enough. She decided to just change the subject instead.
“Do you know who organized this? Because I sure as hell didn’t.” Y/n declared as she took a sip from the obnoxiously bubbly drink in her hand, putting it down on a table with a disgusted frown.
“I'm pretty sure it was Dumbledore, though I think Hagrid was in charge of the food.”
“Really? I didn't see any rock cakes out for dessert.”
Remus didn't laugh, he more of exhaled through his nose, amused by her joke but too numb to actually let it distract him, to make him actually laugh.
“So what are you up to now?” She tried to ask, unsure of what Remus’ life was like at all.
“Now? Do you mean after all my friends have been murdered or imprisoned? Nothing. They took care of me for the most part, I'm useless on my own. The only people I have left are people who know me enough to judge me for not having a job or money but don't know me well enough to actually care or help me. Honestly, I've been debating just packing up and leaving.” Remus’ confessions were tough, honest and brutal. She was sure that if he wasn't so broken and so weak at this moment that he wouldn’t have said a word of that to her.
“Runaway?” She asked, prodding him for more of an explanation.
“In simpler terms, yes.” They both halted the conversation as some people they half recognized from Hogwarts came to greet them both. Giving her a moment to think over what he had confessed, she had to be honest, she had sort of thought the same thing, the reason she had asked him what he was doing was because she had no clue what to do with her life, how to move on after the war.
“Honestly that doesn't sound like a bad idea, I'm considering it now too. Want a travelling companion?”
“You can't be serious,” he furrowed his brows like he was trying to figure out if she was just mocking him, “you would leave everything behind?”
“Everything? I can't seem to get a job, not one that I won't absolutely hate anyways. Not to mention I have nothing tying me down here. When the war was going on I had something to do, I was always helping Lily with Harry and now they won't even let me be a part of his life since I have no legal rights to him. Everything I look at reminds me of them, they were my only family, I never had any real friends. There's nothing holding me here either.”
“Okay,” he replied flatly.
“Okay? Okay, what?” She asked wondering how that was a sensible response to what she had just said.
“If you want to come, you can.” Remus wasn't sure what brought him to say yes, maybe it was because if he truly tried to do it by himself it would never happen, he would never do it but if he had her there to push him to do it then maybe he could leave.
Maybe it was the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness and the scary feeling of simultaneously feeling nothing at all that allowed him to say yes to let her come. Y/n was really all he had left that connected to James and Lily, maybe he wanted to hold onto that too, or maybe it was just because she was the only person who could possibly relate to how he felt and wasn’t going to treat him like a damn widow.
Remus was also in a weird place mentally, he wasn't the same person he was around his friends, maybe losing them spiralled him into this state of mind, this state of being. He felt sadness and loneliness but he also felt nothing. He was very closed off emotionally and he had been ever since he had to watch his mother die slowly and painfully of sickness, he felt no love or attraction to anyone, no need to fall in love or build relationships with people. The ones he did have he just lost, so there would be no worry about travelling with her. He wouldn’t fall in love with her because he didn't feel love, he didn't feel anything.
“Really? I didn't think you'd say yes, okay so you have a car right? Let's embrace our muggle halves, let’s just road trip, drive until we run out of road.” She said, moving her hand like she was looking at a vast open road instead of a stuffy small church hall.
“Wait what about money, what about-” he started but she interrupted him, halting his worries.
“No thinking, just doing!”
“Okay do you wanna leave right when this is over?” He asked as he looked around.
“No, let's leave right now, fuck them they don't need us here, they are only being so nice to us to make themselves feel better, it sure as hell isn't making me feel better and I know you hate it so let's go.” Y/n exclaimed and started walking right for the door, Remus watched her walk out, watched her leave out the door and quickly stumbled over himself to follow her.
When Remus met Y/n outside she didn't wait for him to talk, she just grabbed his hand and took her wand out, apparating away. She brought him to her house, landing in the living room. Her house was small, old looking, he wondered how she afforded it on her own though.
“This was my parent's house.” She explained like she could read his thoughts.
Remus walked to look out the window recognizing a familiar street, “is this?”
“Yeah, I live two houses down from them, or I did at least.”
“I never knew that.”
“Yeah, I wasn't home, when it happened. If I was I like to think I would have heard it, I could have-”
“You'd be dead Y/n. None of this is your fault, they didn't make you their secret keeper, they didn't make you Harry’s godparent and that was their fault, you had no control over their decisions.” Remus explained calmly like he had spent the last few days blaming himself as well, like this was a familiar thought for him.
“Thanks,” she muttered and he shrugged it off, “you can understand why I want to leave then?”
He nodded in response, not really wanting to say anything further. Secret keepers and Fidelus charms were tricky magic, complicated. Although Sirius would have been the only one to know that the Potters were hiding there, she would have known that that was “The Potter's” house, he didn't understand how the secret would have worked for her so when she came downstairs with a small packed bag of stuff he asked. “So how did it work, the secret. They were hiding right next to you, or did Sirius let you in on the secret?”
“It's hard to really define, it’s like I knew in my mind when I looked at the house that it was my cousin's house, like I knew that my aunt and uncle used to live there too. Since Lily and James had been living there for a while without the charm I used to go there all the time and then I just stopped and I didn't know why. It was like I would look at their house and think to myself “they aren't there or they aren't home right now” and then I wouldn't think anything further of it. But when I came home later that night I saw everything and it was like the secret had been revealed but not at the same time. It’s like I didn't know they were there that whole time until I saw them being removed from the property, then it all clicked. They were right in front of me the whole time, there was a whole week I didn't see them because of the charm, because Sirius never told me the location himself like he was supposed to. I felt like they were so far away but they were right there. Now I look out my window and it feels similar to that but worse, because now I don't think they might be there, I know that they aren't.”
Remus stared out the window, stared at the house that would never look the same to him, thinking over how she must have felt looking at it, “We should go,” he almost whispered before grabbing her arm and apparating away.
They arrived in a very small looking house, smaller than Y/n’s and much more run down. It was messy, dusty and very unorganized but she couldn’t blame him. She thought she maybe saw scratch marks in the walls but decided not to ask him about it.
Remus was ashamed to show her where he lived but he was very clear with her at the funeral that he had nothing, and he clearly meant it. It didn't take him long to grab his things, he grabbed a few sweaters, he dumped out a jar that held a mix of change and opened his cupboards only managing to find a few scarce bars of chocolate. He shook the keys in his hand in front of her face and she tried to make it seem like she wasn’t just watching his every move.
Madam La Cuerta, the saint, shrouded Broadway
And in awe before towers,
Gripped my palm,
“Young man,
You should already be dead.”
And I paid in full, but failed to pass on.
Sifu, Liu Rongxi, cradled beard, cupped pipe,
And atop the mountain named “song,”
Coaxed birdie and cards,
“Young man,
You should already be dead.”
And I paid in full, but failed to pass on.
So summoned within circles –
Wrought glass, his (was my) shadow,
The yesterdays and tomorrows she’d promised,
“We bring life,
When we’re already dead.”
