Here comes the angst. This takes place in present day, so their birth dates are changed. This will be a multi-chapter.

Suggested Listening: "Delilah" by Florence and the Machine.

For the "Every Wolf Deserves A Star, Wolfstar Competition" on the HPFC forum.

Prompts: Throne (word), Deaf!Remus (condition), Flute (word)

Bonus Prompts: Raindrops (word), Zebra (word), Wipe (action), Thunder (word).

Beta: rhead-a-holyc. Thank you!

June 20th, 2015

I brace myself, gripping the steering wheel tightly between my sweating palms.

If I imagine hard enough, I can almost feel Remus' cooled fingers resting quietly, lightly, on my arm, giving me reassurance. The problem with that is, since I'm driving, the thought brings tears to my gray eyes and I can hardly see the road.

I take a shuddering breath, the feel of it cooling my insides, rattling my ribcage and sending a rush through my system.

I blink to clear my eyes and feel them like raindrops on my skin: cold, harsh, and unrelenting. I choke back a sob and tighten my hands on the wheel, moving my foot to the brake to yield to the red light ahead of me. It is a blur in the night, reflecting off my windshield and nearly unrecognizable in the face of the water in my eyes and on my face. It is dangerous, driving this way, and I can almost see the disapproving glare Remus would give me if he knew.

The light changes to green and I press lightly on the gas, the car moving under my guidance, surrounding me like a prison. I can remember the first time driving, and the feeling of the car around me had scared me shitless. It's like second nature now.

I flick on the blinker and move into the right lane, not bothering to look over my shoulder since it's nearing one am and I'm the only one crazy enough to be out here. With shaking fingers, I turn it off again, and reach up to wipe the tears from my face and my eyes. More quickly fill their place and I unwittingly feel a catch in my breath and a hiccough, that closely resembles a cry, leaves my lips. I press my hand to my mouth and look around, even though I know no one can see me.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. If anyone saw me and knew, they would understand.

Driving down the road, I know immediately when to turn. Unthinkingly, I make a right turn into the subdivision, and my heart seizes in my chest. I think of turning back but my body does not obey my wishes, instead keeping the wheel centered and my foot on the gas. I make a small left turn onto another side street and then turn into the driveway of the third house.

The garden is overgrown now.

One thing Remus always made time for was the garden. He loved the bushes and the flowers and the small fountain in the front. He kept everything trimmed to perfection and the stone shining in the sunlight. It had always been a magnificent sight, like walking to the Queen's garden.

Looking at it now, what was left of my heart shatters and the pieces shred themselves further into thousands of pieces. I turn off the car and the headlights go off, so that I don't have to look at it anymore.

I take a moment to collect myself. Taking the key from the ignition with a trembling hand, I clutch it tightly in my fist as soon as I have it. I lean forward and rest my forehead on the wheel while the key presses into the delicate skin of my palm, probably indenting its shape into my skin. I bite my lip for a second before I release it, grinding my teeth instead. It stops my jaw from shaking and any sound from escaping, at least.

I breathe deeply through my nose and then lean back in the seat again, my eyes adjusting to the dark and highlighting the shadows of the garden. I run my left hand over my face and release a breath, blinking rapidly. Even without the air conditioning from my car, the air feels cold on my tongue and sharp in my lungs. I open the door and step out of the car.

I lock the car behind me and keep my head down as I walk away from the only escape, the only place of safety from this seemingly endless nightmare I'm trapped in. My boots click on the concrete driveway and then on the stone path up to the front door. It echoes in the silence and sounds awfully ominous, like I'm walking to my death sentence. I suppose, in a morbid way, that's not untrue. I try desperately to ignore the brush of leaves and branches from the bushes that hit my legs as I walk. If Remus could still tend to this garden, those branches would be gone.

I stuff my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, pulling Remus' set of house keys from the right side. I leave my car key in their place. Stepping onto the front porch, it takes a moment to locate the correct key in the darkness, but I identify it successfully after several increasingly agitated moments. I don't want to drag this out any more than necessary, and not being able to see the damn key is only adding to my alarmingly high stress levels.

Finally inserting the key into the lock, it takes a second and some muscle to get the door open since the lock has never worked properly and Remus never got around to changing it out. It swings open suddenly, making me stumble into the foyer as it gives in to my weight and the key. Not the first time I've done that, but certainly the first time it's happened without Remus not poking fun at me for falling over.

Sighing in exasperation, I turn around and shut the door behind me, the fingers on my right hand brushing over the light switch next to the door. The hallway illuminates behind me, and I have to take another deep breath. I turn around.

Nothing has changed, and I'm surprised. I think some part of me had wanted something to have changed, even though it's only been a month. I wanted something to have been different, like it would release me from my personal hell. Like it would make this less real than I know it to be. I take a few steps forward into the hall and leave the entrance to the kitchen and the living room on my left alone. I keep my shoes on, because I'll only be a moment, even though Remus hated the dirt from my shoes to be tracked through the house. He was kind of a clean freak that way.

As I walk, I look at the familiar walls, at the pictures and paintings I've seen a thousand times but never really looked at more than once. Towards the front of the house, there are pictures of Remus and of his family, of his mother, his father, and his brother, all of them dead now. Crossing the middle of the hallway, I ignore the closed door on the right, seeing as it's only a bathroom, and instead run my fingers lightly over the mahogany wood of the thin table against the wall. I raise my fingers and see the dust particles. I'm disappointed even though I know the whole house would have at least a thin layer of dust.

I look up from my dusty fingertips to the pictures nearing the bedroom, and my throat closes as my eyes blur wetly. Framed photos of my friends, Remus, and I line the hall on either side, reminding me of the good days that really weren't all that long ago but feel like they were another lifetime. On the left, Remus is sitting on a throne while James is kneeling in front of him, head bowed. Remus has a haughty expression on his face, like he was the king of the world; with his legs crossed at the knee and his hand resting on his knee while a fake crown sits crookedly over his dirty blond hair. I can still remember how we laughed over the photo because of how ridiculous it was. I smile faintly at it and move on.

In another picture Marlene is dressed in a zebra suit while Lily is dressed as a lion and Emmeline is like a tiger. That was Halloween of last year, I recall. They're grinning like idiots. Another picture has Remus, James, Lily, Alice, and Frank standing in a line in front of a river, posed like superheroes. James is staring at the camera in a different picture with a wicked smile on his face while he has a sharpie marker in his hand and his other is pointing at me, passed out on the couch. He had, like a twelve year old, drawn a dick on my face, much to my horror and everyone else's amusement. It hadn't come off for three days. In another photograph, Remus has Harry on his shoulders and James and I on either side of him, smiling cheerfully in the summer sunlight.

The final picture, nearest to Remus' old bedroom, is a picture I don't remember having been taken. He and I are standing in front of the movie theatre, our hair plastered to our foreheads, necks, and cheeks from the rain. I have my hands on his jaw and am kissing him with abandon, while his fingers are curled weakly around my wrists. We're drenched and cold and I can remember exchanging those precious three words a few moments before. James or Lily must have snapped a picture without me noticing.

The tears come hard and fast and I am powerless to stop them. I lean on the wall as my shoulders shake and I release quiet breaths between my clenched teeth. My knees give way beneath me and I sink to the floor, but in this moment I do not care. The leather of my jacket squeaks uncomfortably loud in the otherwise silent house, and the reminder of why the house is so quiet sends me into another round of sobbing. I clench my fist and press it to my lips, trying in vain to stop. I normally never cry, not even as a child, and in the past month I've cried more than I have in my entire life. It would be embarrassing if my friends- family, now- didn't understand.

This time it takes much longer to stop than it did when I was in the car. I manage eventually, but my eyes are swollen and I feel numb. Taking deep breaths is hard and it hurts, but I take a few anyway before I pull myself up from the floor and face Remus' bedroom door. It's closed and has been for a month and a half, since he had been staying with me for two weeks before-. I take a breath. Opening it now feels like disturbing something sacred, but I've put this off long enough.

The room is exactly how he left it. The bed isn't made, because he didn't have time that morning. He woke up late that morning for whatever reason and rushed out the door. I remember him texting it to me late that evening, but the exact reasoning escapes me. I trail my eyes over the abandoned nightclothes on the floor, and the open closet with the ragged clothing inside. I look at the window on the opposite wall from the door and see that the blinds are closed- further proof that he had woken late. The bamboo plant on the nightstand is dead, having gone a month and a half without water, even though it only needed water once a week. His mother's flute from her days in the band had been knocked to the floor, probably in his rush and he, of course, had not heard it fall.

I swallow heavily and move slowly into the room, flicking on the light of the lamp and dropping to my knees beside the queen sized bed. I feel around underneath it and find the duffel bag I was looking for. I stand and lay it on the bed, unzipping it as I sit down on the creaky mattress. Impassively, I pull out a few sets of his clothes and toss them on the bed, followed by a set of nightclothes and a pair of dance shoes. I smile faintly at the sight of them and push them aside.

Bag empty, I move around the room and start to fill it. I take his mother's flute and slide it into an empty inside pocket, and a few of his personal effects. I take his lucky necklace, -a full moon charm on a thick, leather chord- his brother's ring, his father's pocket watch. I find Remus' wallet on the nightstand, which explains a lot, and take out the five hundred pounds he had in there and stuff the notes into my pocket. I move to the closet and locate a few of my shirts- Remus had taken to stealing a few to sleep in- and put them into the bag. I take the framed picture of us from the nightstand as well and the other one of us he had on the wall.

Leaving his room, I start to move frantically around the house, taking down pictures and putting them in the bag. I stop in the living room, biting back more tears as I stare at a photo of Remus and Lily. I place it in the duffel bag and then put the bag on the couch and walk into the kitchen.

Easily locating the glass cups in the cabinet, I fill it at the refrigerator and start taking long, slow drinks from it in an attempt to calm myself. I refill it every time I empty it, and by the time I'm done, I've drunk five full cups of water. I'll regret it later, I'm sure, but for now I wash it slowly in the sink with soap and tap water. With heavy eyelids, I put the cup back in the cabinet where it was before, even though it's completely unnecessary.

I walk back to the duffel bag and pick it up, swinging it over my shoulder, mindful of the picture frames inside. I walk into the foyer and open the door, uncaring of the light rain and distant thunder that greets me outside. I step onto the porch and turn around, locking the house up. I take a moment to just stand there, heart heavy in my chest, before I drop the keys into the bush next to the door and turn around to walk back to my car.

The rest of his belongings will be cleared away tomorrow morning, and I will never see it again. The thought stings, but I have what matters most.

…

Even with Lily waiting for me, my apartment on the other side of the city seems empty and dead without Remus. It's like the life has been sapped away with him. I rest the duffel bag on my mattress in the corner of the living room- I have a rather sullen two-room apartment in the poorest part of London- while she watches wordlessly from the ratty, torn flower-patterned couch that doesn't match anything else. Remus had a lot more money than I do, and it showed in our living styles, but he did not seem to care very much. He loved me anyway.

"Honey," Lily says when I drop onto the edge of the mattress with dead eyes and a vacant mind, "let me help you."

It takes a moment for the words to register, but when they do, I turn to her slowly. "How? How do you plan on helping me, when the love of my life is dead and there is nothing to be done about it?" I demand, sizing her up. She's in one of her new dresses, the soft swell of her baby bump prominent through the fabric. It kills me to know that Remus will never meet the fourth member of the Potter family, the child that was supposed to be his godchild. Her fiery red hair is tied back into a messy bun, and her emerald green eyes are tired and sympathetic as she looks at me.

She sighs, but doesn't make any movement towards me, even though I know she would like to. Instead, she gestures helplessly with thin, tired hands. "Have you been to see him?" she questions.

I wince. Of course I haven't been to see him. I didn't even go to the funeral last week, instead spending the entire day on this mattress with his blanket wrapped around my shoulders and staring at the last picture I took of him on my phone, crying. Lily knows this, of course, so she sighs again and stands up slowly. "Come on, then," she commands, and after hesitating while she gathers her coat, purse, and car keys from my two-seater kitchen table, I stand up to follow.

We make it to the parking lot soundlessly, and she walks up to my car and gets into the passenger seat, even though I had assumed we'd take hers. Shrugging inwardly, I get into the driver's seat and start the engine.

The drive to the graveyard is quiet, disturbed only by droplets of rain on the windshield, and the rolling of the tires on the paved roads. Lily stares out the window, her usual twinkle absent from her eyes. I know the baby is exhausting and that this pregnancy is worse than her first, plus the stress of Remus-

I bite my lip and turn into the graveyard, parking in the closest spot but not moving. Lily doesn't try to make me leave the car, instead watching me with quiet eyes.

After several minutes, I get out of the car and make my way around to the passenger's side, opening the door for her and helping her out. She smiles thinly at me and pulls her coat closely around her while I allow myself to get rained on.

She shakes her head when she notices and begins to walk into the graveyard. This is the last place I want to be right now, but I follow her anyway, knowing that James would likely kill me if he ever finds out I contemplated just leaving her here and going home.

We don't speak. The stone isn't far into the graveyard, just at the start of a new row, and Lily rests her fingers on it while I stare at it.

Remus John Lupin

March 10, 1986 – May 2, 2015

Seen, Heard, Remembered

I would very much like to kill whoever came up with that catchphrase, thinking it clever to reference the fact that Remus couldn't hear anything, but for the moment all I can do is stare at the engravings. My entire being feels hollow, numb, broken, and disconnected.

Right here, right now, I decide to never come here again. Those three words can hardly sum up his life, and they make me want to scream. The thought of what all of this means is like being stabbed over and over again. I simply cannot stand it.

Lily comes forward and rests her hand on my shoulder for a moment, before she starts walking away. I press my fingertips to my lips before I lower them to the top of the stone, then turn around and walk to catch up with Lily, the silent words I love you, I miss you, always, etched on my lips.