*trips and drops ☹ *
☹ ; list - visit to death bed grave.
JAMES POTTER
LILY EVANS
“He’s well, you know. The boy.” That is Remus’ start. His beginning and his end. Four words alone hold so much to him. He’s survived the battle. He is well. He is alive. “He’s turned out to like Quidditch and Weasleys and he doesn’t mind the smell of firewhiskey.—- -” Steady your breath, steady your liquid fire eyes, steady your hand—— -
He can’t.
He couldn’t.
“I can’t breathe sometimes.” The words are choked now. This is his beginning, his end. He swallows the calm and it’s as if all HELL has broken loose. “The bones I live in are no longer my bones. I see words, and they’re not words. And I know what’s happening to me. This is death, James.”
He stands there for hours, a man late in his life with nothing to hold to but a broken and tattered suitcase on the evening of his birthday. The bottle of liquid love in his hand is a clear sign of his wavering conscience.
"Tell me stories, James.
About the boys who were kings.
I’m tired of telling it myself.”
He’s angry now, angry at himself and at Dumbledore who had been trusted. At Severus who stowed them away for his selfish love, because it was he who deserved to be selfish. Was it not? Has he not done everything he was supposed to?
“A war, James. I went through war, for you, for SIrius and Peter.” Who am I supposed to live for now. “For the light that was supposed to give me good and joy and happiness. I’ve done everything right, I’ve hurt no one.
Have I not?”
—— - Remus tries to breath, but he can’t.
He see’s words on the stone, but they’re not words. —— -
"I read the paper every Sunday when I take my wolfsbane, I pray to a god I hope is there, I teach myself to love the sun as much as it hates me when I drench in it’s rays after the full moon, I smile at Madam Pomfrey when she pities my scars and my skin. I have done everything, I have done things to the perfect point, where I can’t tell who I am sometimes; the werewolf, the man, or the sadist. I have done everything. HAVE. I. NOT.” Unrequited response.
“Answer me, James!”
Remus is breathing raggedly, his arms raised in an accusing stance as the bottle he holds is dangerously slipping.
Remus is yelling at a grave on the night of his 39th birthday, the holes in his well worn mask showing the madman that slept. Finally, the flesh reflects the madness within.
Remus is closing his eyes, basking in the winter wind and the flakes of snow that cross his eyelashes.
He is quiet now.
He can only stand to resign, “have I not?”
