Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: I really don't know what to think about this. I've been juggling the idea around for a while, before finally deciding to write it over the course of a week or so. It turned out quite a bit longer than I expected, and I'm not really sure about the middle part. I've been needing to write some Marauders for a while, though. I hope you enjoy it!

glass heart

We could see it, really, from the day we met him. There were secrets in his smile and his voice and his laugh, but one thing that all of us noticed was that Remus Lupin's eyes screamed brittle. So, naturally, I made myself a promise to protect him.

Have you ever tried to protect someone without them knowing? It's tiring, you know. You can end up feeling almost personally responsible for every single scratch they sustain and every single tear they shed. And we noticed fairly quickly that Remus sustained quite a few scratches, and that although he hardly ever cried his life was far from happy.

I was the one who found out. You had laughed at Peter when his contribution to our research was a third-year DADA textbook, but in a fit of frustration I picked it up and started leafing through it. All the clues added up: Remus was a werewolf. Now, when I think about it, I can't help but smile inside at our tolerance. None of us were scared. None of us believed that he would hurt us. We were young and unprejudiced and we didn't understand that the rest of the world wasn't quite as accepting as us.

He knew, though. He had seen what cruelty was. He was haunted by the memory of a full-moon night when a little boy ventured a bit too far out into the garden, and of the way the hospital workers' lips curled in disgust when they looked at him. He was scared of us – do you remember the way he went perfectly still, and we could hear his fragile heart thumping when he stared at us through big, big eyes?

When we told him that we didn't care, the weight of the world seemed to fall off his shoulders and I swear his smile could have lit up the night. You and Peter realised, then: this boy needed protecting. The world had been harsh to him, and as his friends it was our job to stop that from happening any more.

He wasn't weak, not at all. I'm fairly sure that he's the strongest of all four of us, if only because he could have so easily become bitter, but he never did. We could sense the fact that he was innately kind and good, and maybe our protecting was simple an attempt to preserve that. To keep his glass heart clear. I admired him for the way that despite everything that had happened to him he still believed in humanity; I didn't yet know that a heart like his, clear and pure and undefended, comes at a price.

Becoming Animagi was your idea – I give you full credit for it. I remember the way Remus looked at us when we told him of the plan: confused, horrified and delighted beyond belief that we cared enough to do this for him. And he told us not to do it. He knew how much it would help him, but still he couldn't risk us hurting ourselves. I loved him for that.

Of course, we weren't quite as worried about ourselves as he was – we managed to complete the project in less than three years. (I managed it first.) Our first full moon together was brilliant and awful at the same time; I don't think we'd ever quite realised what he went through until we saw it first-hand. The plan worked, though. He didn't hurt himself.

I see those years – second, third, fourth, and the first half of our fifth – as golden. They were full of the joy of shared secrets, and not yet tainted by war and betrayal. We could almost feel Remus's glass heart strengthening, and perhaps if we had left it long enough it could have become unbreakable.

It was your fault that it changed. I always think of what you did as the start of my adulthood, the moment when I realised that there are some times when you just can't trust anyone.

You were angry. Angry and bored, and your dangerously rebellious streak was a little too close to the surface one evening shortly before the full moon rose. I tried to pass it all off as a series of unfortunate coincidences – it could have been someone other than Snape that you met, and it could have not been a full-moon night, and you could have thought of some other way of having a 'laugh' – but nonetheless, what you did changed everything.

I didn't do it for Snape. It was not him that I was worried about. No; I did it for Remus, Remus's trust in his friends and Remus's fear of infecting or killing someone else and Remus's fragile glass heart. I did not want to find out what would happen to that heart if someone hurt him.

We didn't let you see him, Peter and I. Later Lily told me that perhaps if we had, that nightmare week and a half would never have happened. But we were both too angry, and we thought we should tell him what you had done without you there to complicate things.

It broke him. I told him how you had betrayed him and I could practically hear his heart snap clean in two. He trusted you with his secret and you took advantage of it, and even today I can't quite forgive you for that – because we promised that we would never let him shatter, didn't we?

Astounded is the best word to describe how I felt when you told us a few days later that he'd forgiven you. Then I thought that I really shouldn't be surprised; this was Remus, after all, and Remus never was able to hold grudges. He picked up the two broken pieces of his heart and glued them back together; you could still see the scar, but it would have to do.

Events blinked past with such speed that sometimes I wondered if I was just watching my life on quick-front,as I think the Muggles call it. I dared to hope that we would get out of it all in one piece. But Voldemort wasn't going away, and we were Gryffindors. Was there even a chance that we wouldn't fight?

We were fighting and our friends were dying and we must have thought we were invincible, because despite everything we were happy. Lily and I married and you had left your family far behind and even Peter, who was always in the shadows, had a chance to shine.

We really were stupid. I was trapped in my little golden bubble of joy – my unborn child was in danger and Lily and I had been rushed into hiding, but she was perfect and wonderful and I loved her so much. In fact, it was probably just me who was stupid. You were too clever and too suspicious, and you started seeing danger where there wasn't any to see.

To this day, I don't know exactly why you thought it was Remus. It is one of the things we don't talk about now, and so I will never have it explained to me, but I have my suspicions. Peter knew you were rash and bold, and I suppose he thought that whispering in your ear would be easy enough. What did he say – that it was for my safety, Lily's safety, Harry's safety? That you can never trust a werewolf?

Remus didn't know. I'm fairly sure that he suspected you a little bit as well, but he never knew the extent of your mistrust and paranoia. It is one of the things that I thank Merlin daily for.

None of us even suspected Peter. You stared at Remus through shadowed eyes, Remus became more and more withdrawn every moon as Dumbledore sent him on delicate spying missions (he wasn't allowed to tell us about them, but you didn't stop to wonder about that possibility) and I hid my face in Lily's hair. We didn't notice that Peter was always a little late to Order meetings or that he never met our eyes anymore. We didn't think.

I don't know how you managed to persuade me to switch Secret-Keepers without telling Remus. I would have preferred to have him, but you insisted that Peter was the least obvious choice. At last I consented, and I held my little son and wondered how anyone could ever want to destroy something as innocent and perfect as he was.

When I saw Voldemort at my door, a thousand thoughts and feelings ran through my head: fear for my family, stupidity for trusting Peter, worry at what you would do at my death and sorrow for Remus. Maybe people close to their death are always blessed with prophetic powers, or maybe I just knew all three of my friends well enough to realise exactly what was going to unfold.

Or not exactly: I was expecting you to kill Peter and be imprisoned before you could tell everyone the truth. But he double-crossed you again, framed you for his murder and ran away like a rat. I watched as he hid and you laughed and Remus's heart shattered into glittering dust all around his feet.

Everyone he cared about, lost… I honestly thought that it would kill him. But I had underestimated him once again. Somehow, he managed to pick up the million tiny pieces of his smashed heart and painstakingly put them back together. It took him years, and that was part of the problem. If he had just managed to fix himself sooner, perhaps he would have had the time to build up some protection around himself and harden the glass to something stronger. But nearly twelve years after my death Remus's heart was still crystal-clear and fragile.

I was watching Harry when you escaped, as it happened. My non-existent blood was boiling with rage at my sister-in-law when Lily ran over to me, changing the view of the pool I was watching through to that of cold, stormy waters and a black dog's head struggling to keep above them. I laughed.

When Remus found out, he didn't laugh. The newspaper slipped from his hands just the way it did twelve years ago, and his eyes widened in horror. I'm not quite sure what was going through his head: worry for my son, perhaps, or anger at the fact that you never could stay where you were told to. I could hear the steely determination in his voice when he accepted the job Dumbledore offered him, and somehow I doubted that anyone – you, Remus, Harry – was going to have an easy year of it.

You broke into Hogwarts twice. I watched you slip easily out as the dog when the alarms were sounded, but the rest of the world didn't and watching the frantic searches around the castle would have been comical if I hadn't seen Remus. He was so angry. Angry at you for chipping splinters off his heart, angry at the world for always leaving him alone and angry at me, I think, for dying.

You'll excuse me for not keeping an eye on Remus when he found out – in my defence, you were being extremely creepy and seemingly threatening my son. All three of us had something humming at the back of our minds, but I was terrified for Harry and you were hungry for Peter's blood and Remus just wanted the truth. The moment when he saw you, the moment when he knew, was the moment when I was sure that the cracks in his heart would heal again.

But then the full moon rose and he succumbed to his curse as he always had to. If I had had a heart, it would have been in my throat as I watched everything unfold at a frightening speed. Harry was a hero that night. He didn't fix everything, but you were safe and free and no-one's soul had been lost.

Nobody noticed that Remus's heart had broken again, that he was drowning in self-loathing and guilt in the way he's apt to doing. I wanted to shake him; it wasn't his fault that Peter escaped. It wasn't.

You and I – they called us brothers once, and with good reason. When you met Remus again a year later (after a shade of me had been summoned through Priori Incantatem and Voldemort had risen again and oh my god, Harry), you put your arms around him and told him everything I couldn't. He smiled again, then: perhaps the first completely unburdened smile he had smiled since my death.

You didn't make that year easy for him, you know. Yes, I know that you were cooped up and unhappy; but there was no need to snap at him when he tried to help you. Despite what you put him through, though, he remained patient and kind. It is more than I would have been able to do, because I can never tolerate you in that sort of mood.

Even though your friendship was irreparably scarred, it was still strong. I never doubted that. Nor did I doubt that when you died, Remus shattered all over again, and you could see the broken glass in his eyes and hear it in his voice.

Oh, I was beyond happy to see you again: but for what it did to those you left behind, I would rather that you had stayed with them.

When your cousin made her dramatic declaration of love to him, I'm not sure who I was angrier with: Remus or her. Yes, Remus should have stopped running himself down so much that he ended up breaking a woman's heart, but Tonks should have been more sensitive. Couldn't she see that Remus was grieving, that he was in no state to be thinking about a relationship when his best friend was dead? (Don't give me that self-satisfied smirk. I'm serious – don't say it.)

It was like a game of hide-and-seek, the next year. Tonks walked into a room and Remus ducked out. They both poured their woes out to different confidantes, and as each became unhappier they tried their best to hide from their feelings. Your family really is ridiculously stubborn. So is Remus.

It took Dumbledore's death for Remus to accept the fact that Tonks loved him. I wished you had been there – we always promised each other that when he FINALLY got a girl we would have to be there to tease him. Fate isn't that kind, though.

She healed him: picked up the still-broken pieces of his heart and put them back together again. I watched as the light came back into his eyes once more and his laugh was free and loving again. He would always be a little scarred and a little incomplete, but he had her and he was happy.

But they were in the middle of a war and nothing could be easy. Theirs was a whirlwind romance; within a few weeks of Dumbledore's death they had married. Then the next few weeks were a blur of battles and flying and weddings; the numbers of the dead must have doubled. I barely had time to blink before Tonks had announced that she was pregnant.

Remus's face drained of colour. His heart did not exactly break this time – rather, it lost some of the protection that he had managed to build up around it. I could see the wonder in his eyes, and it was something that only he and I can share; he was responsible for bringing a life into this world.

But this was Remus, and he could never accept what made him happy. He stayed for a week, trying his best to suffer in silence, before it became too much and he left. Beside me, you shouted and swore, but I don't think I was angry with him. Just… sad. Disappointed. Because it wasn't fair that just one condition, one thing that happened when he was five, should affect every decision of his so completely and make him believe that he was unworthy of living a normal life.

But Harry did what we couldn't, shouted himself hoarse upon seeing Remus and then proceeded to show an uncanny ability to tell what I was thinking. I know his friends disapproved of what he said, but Remus needed it. And if he went back to his family, it didn't matter, did it?

That year was awful. My son was in constant danger, the whole of Britain was ready to hand him to the Death Eaters and half the Order was on the run. Remus and Tonks, however, stayed safe and hidden in their little cottage, trapped in a golden bubble of joy, and every now and then I could see what was going to happen.

Because in a war, happiness can never last.

The child was born in April. His hair was turquoise within a few hours of his birth, and his eyes were golden-brown like Remus's. I wonder who he will grow up to be – his mother, clumsy and enthusiastic; or sweet, serious Remus?

Or maybe, like Harry, he will be a perfect mixture of his parents despite the fact that he will never know them.

The Order was called to Hogwarts earlier today. They all crowded into the Room of Requirement prepared to say goodbye, and I couldn't shake the feeling that the kiss Remus gave Tonks was going to be their last.

It wasn't, though. She ran after him as the Room of Hidden Things burned and found him in a deserted corridor, wrapped her arms around him and told him that he would not leave her again. He didn't argue with her, but I caught sight of his eyes and wondered if he was thinking what I was.

It's seven against two. Your dear cousin Bellatrix is there, and that creep Antonin Dolohov, too. Perhaps, just maybe, they stood a chance.

But then Remus just narrowly dodged a curse and Tonks turned to scream his name; she'll never see the flash of light that killed her. Now Remus has cast a powerful Shield Charm and kneels beside her body – I can hear the tinkle of broken glass.

He jerks his head up towards the ceiling, towards us, and for a moment my eyes meet his. I'm coming, he mouths, and we won't stop him. Not this time, Sirius.

After all, there's only so many times that one can shatter.

A/N: Well, did you like it? Was Remus lovable or annoying? Did I get James right? (In case you can't tell, I'm very insecure about this.) I apologise for the lack of Peter, and assure everyone that I definitely don't hate him. Anyway, now I'm going to stop rambling and beg you to review!

~Butterfly