Disclaimer: Even J. K Rowling and Moffat aren't quite awesome enough to be each other, and I'm not either of them, so therefore I don't own any of this.

Peter's funeral was sparsely attended. There were plenty in the Order who would have liked to commemorate the heroic death of the young man who had dared to confront the traitorous Sirius Black, but even with Voldemort apparently gone the members of the Order knew better than to assemble unless absolutely necessary. There was no sense presenting such an attractive target. The attendees of the funeral were therefore limited to those who had cared about Peter as a person, not for his dying act: Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew, along with a smattering of other Pettigrew relatives; some Hogwarts professors, including Dumbledore; a few clients of the Pettigrew family business; and Remus.

Dumbledore sought Remus out after the ceremony. "How are you?"

Remus almost gave an automatic "Fine" before thinking the matter through and deciding that lying was useless. "Bad."

Dumbledore grimaced sympathetically. "Have you slept since—?"

"Keeled over yesterday, yeah. Which was probably good, if you actually think about it. But it feels kind of wrong, not logically but just feeling. I mean, Peter and James and Lily will never get to sleep again. And I can't stop asking myself how I missed Sirius—I mean, Black—"

"Being too trusting is hardly something to be ashamed of, and plenty of people older and wiser than you missed the signs as well." Dumbledore didn't usually talk with his hands, but now he did, as if straining to make enough of an impression for Remus to believe him.

"But you didn't know him as well as I did. No one knew him as well as I did, not even James once he started dating Lily. I should have seen what he was becoming."

Dumbledore simply peered at Remus until the young man understood that the subject was closed.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Remus asked finally.

"First off, how you're doing. The first time sleeping is always the hardest, so I hope you will get more rest from here on out. Have you been eating?"

Remus glowered. "Yes. It feels like I'm not grieving properly, but the one thing I seem able to do is make bread pudding. Without magic. Something about cooking just feels kind of . . . right. And I eat what I make. The first two days, I threw up afterward, but somehow I kept cooking anyway. Yesterday, when I fell asleep, I woke up on the kitchen floor with a pot of burnt bread on the stove. At least I didn't burn the house down."

Dumbledore smiled faintly. "I am inordinately glad to hear it. The world needs a Marauder."

Remus shuddered. A Maruader.

"Now we come to my main point. Remus, how would you like to teach at Hogwarts?"

A flood of elation and pain and shock threatened to drown him. "What?"

"I am offering you the Defense against the Dark Arts professorship. Will you take it?"

Hurt and surprise and gratitude. "I—I—at Hogwarts?"

"I see you did not anticipate this."

Remus tried to picture it, but as soon as he saw the castle in his mind he knew there was only one possible course of action. "Thank you, Dumbledore. You can't imagine how much it means to me that you would trust me to instruct your students. But I'm afraid I can't."

"If this is because of your condition, Remus, I assure you that between the two of us we could manage everything quite safely."

"Perhaps we could, but I'm afraid the camel's back was already broken before we heaped my lycanthropy on top of it. Hogwarts, to me, is James-and-Sirius-and-Peter-and-me. I couldn't possibly live there again, especially not this soon."

Dumbledore nodded, his eyes much softer than usual. "I see. What will you do?"

"I don't delude myself that there's much of a chance of me getting a job in the wizarding world, and in any event it's hard to look at my wand without remembering how Peter and James and Lily died. And almost all my memories of magic are poisoned by Black. I think it might be best if I live as a Muggle. I've always wondered about being a doctor. It's hardly the first time I've considered that I wouldn't be welcome in the wizarding world—though it is the first time I've thought I would prefer to be a Muggle."

"This is drastic, Remus."

"My life has included plenty of drastic incidents, and they seem to have only become more frequent recently. I don't see why I can't control one such incident myself. In fact, it seems rather natural."

"If you ever change your mind, in a day or a year or a decade, as long as I am headmaster at Hogwarts the Defense against the Dark Arts post will be yours for the taking."

If Remus had not run out of tears days ago, they would have pricked at his eyes now. "Thank you."

He chatted with the other guests at the funeral reception for a while and then Apparated home. James had helped him buy the cottage, and it was impossible to look around the house without remembering his friend's death. As much as keeping the place might have been a tribute to James, he had to move.