A/N: Spoilers for HBP although I've had one heck of a time getting over the uncomfortable new canon but yeah, I'm not over this pairing just yet and don't think I'll ever be. This was written amidst a severe block so forgive me if it's relatively terrible and I didn't have the heart to proofread ten times (it depressed me while I was writing it but that's probably because everything in book 6 depressed me). Read and drop a review.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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Back to her London flat they had walked, hand in hand. It would've been quite nice really, holding hands with someone who cared for you—especially since the last time had about twenty years ago—had they not been returning from Albus Dumbledore's funeral.

"I understand it's a much greater loss for you," she had said. "After all you've known him so much longer and he's done so much for you."

Remus Lupin couldn't really manage any words in return. The loss hadn't even sunk in yet. He still hadn't recovered from the last one, the death of the last friend he had in this world, nor had he finished mourning the two victims of a double murder fifteen years ago which was still fresh in his mind as if it had happened only yesterday.

Mr. and Mrs. Potter. To him they'd always be Evans and Potter, Lily and James. After all this time, he had accepted the fact that he would never see them again but still he could not manage to separate himself from them—from her—the way you were supposed to do with people who had left this world. He couldn't move on.

Even with Tonks there, professing her love for him and being wholly supportive of him and accepting of his flaws, all he could grasp was the cotton-candy pink hair and more than once, he had to stop himself from grimacing at how inappropriate it was for the occasion, for his emotions.

Death, death, all around. It floated in his skull like a child's eerie play-song: one reminding of another, connecting to the next, triggering the previous, resurrecting the forgotten.

Oh but they were far from forgotten, and never would be, never to him. He remembered how after his mother had died, he often needed to look at photographs to stop her image from blurring or fading in his memory. The image of Lily Evans never left him though. He could paint a picture of her from memory. Even after fifteen years…

It wasn't that he never scolded himself for it. Sometimes it was tragic really, and didn't he know it. Even after seeing so much death, over and over again, he couldn't steel himself against it or bring himself to close the old chapters, especially one involving a particular redheaded, green-eyed girl from his past who was likely to haunt him with her kindness and with her love until the end of time.

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He couldn't remember how many more days or weeks he had spent with Tonks after that but there weren't many. One would've expected the company to do him good but to anyone who asked about the brief relationship, he'd claimed dryly that his soul was beyond redemption. Or else he'd say that he had managed so long without the more positive aspects of life that they had stopped appealing to him altogether. He seemed to even believe a bit of it as he said it, along with all those 'too old, too poor, too dangerous' excuses he kept convincing himself with to get rid of the guilt of leaving Nymphadora. After all, there was truth in them too and he had only failed to tell her that he was 'too much into the ghosts of the past for her taste' but it had seemed pointless then. He had tried to put an end to her streak of misery because she really did sound like she was in love with him but also—as always—he had tried to be selfless, and—as always—it had backfired and ended up wounding him more.

That was the way it had always been and that was the way it would always be. Again and again, and how could he ever talk about that? It wasn't so simple, not to mention a little useless, to say that a boy's childish mistake had ruined a man's life—that fifteen year old Moony's decision of letting Lily Evans go wouldhaunt Remus Lupin every waking moment for the rest of his life. What difference would it have made? She was dead and gone either way, and so he had tried to move on and Nymphadora had seemed like the logical answer.

It wasn't at all horrible until Bill Weasley's wedding because almost immediately after, she had started planning his own and he could've sworn that he never remembered proposing to her but didn't say it out loud…until she got carried away, of course, because a man can only hold his tongue for so long and Remus Lupin could only live a charade for so long.

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"And why can't we be together? I thought we got the werewolf thing all cleared up!"

"We did…yes. Listen. It's not that."

"Then what is it? Don't start with all that 'too old, top poor' rubbish…I told you it's not true and even if it was, I wouldn't care!"

"Would you believe me if I said you're been too good to me? It's more than I deserve. Believe me."

"Oh Remus, just tell me…what am I doing wrong?"

"Nothing! It's me! You've been so accepting and tolerant and just everything! Don't ever think there's anything wrong with you! It's just me! I can't do this. We can't get married and it's not because of you! I just couldn't live with it and it would be unfair to you. That's the truth of it," he sighed, exasperated, his soft voice no match for her yelling.

"What's the truth of it? I don't know what you're trying to say, Remus!"

"That I don't want you to live a lie with me."

"Who said--" she started off shouting but stopped herself and taken a deep breath. "How would I be living a lie with you. You're the one I want," and a tear ran down her cheek.

He felt a stinging pang of guilt at her words. She really did love him and he tried to convince himself that the fact only made it more essential that she know the truth. "I would be the lie, Dora," he whispered. "You need someone who's not in pieces, who's whole and in love with you without anything else on his mind. I'm far from that. I'm sorry," and he didn't give her a chance to speak before he went on in that pained, soft-spoken manner of his, the voice and the mind frame that had salvaged some sanity after all that loss, "I'd be betraying you with a memory. I don't want to do that to you forever. You deserve better. Every girl does."

"The memory of Lily Potter? she laughed mirthlessly, "Lovely, isn't it, I'm competing with a dead woman for your heart," she saw the look on his face and sighed. "Never mind. She's won. She'd won it years ago, am I correct? I will not remind you that she's been dead for over fifteen years."

"Or that I'm a madman who can't get over her and forget her and never will. Thank you for reminding me, Tonks. There isn't a day I forget." As always, he had that calm façade on, that mild voice, throughout her raging and screaming—he knew he deserved it—and he had Lily's smile engraved in his mind, keeping him sane, keeping him alive.

It had been cold, scathing, disheartening and everything but pretty but at least he had finally told the truth. The way he saw it, it was the only solution, the only path to peace with himself…or something close to it.

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And that is how he comforts himself as he sits in an empty home, alone and honest, as opposed to living the lie of a loveless marriage. He'd rather have it this way and over the years, he's grown to like it a little. Here, he can be true to himself and not feel guilty thinking about Lily Evans as he stares into the fire and outside, the snow falls and falls.

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fin

A/N: After all, JK did say in an interview that "Lupin was very fond of Lily." So it's not so anti-canon after all :) Call me delusional but R/L is timeless, no matter what.