This story stemmed from Skinner. I still can't decide which I like better, which has the stronger impact, which is better writing--so I give you both.

Remus is broken. He knows it, knows it is irreversible. The edges have been softened by the sheer enormity of his grief, but he is grieving still. Life goes on around him and he dares not join it--cannot; will not; does not.

Sometimes he imagines life if James had lived, if Sirius. That way lies madness.

Sometimes he pictures Harry sitting by the Mirror, eyes drinking in the reflection of a dead girl. He has a mirror too, but it is always dark.

Sometimes he presses fingers into Harry's shoulder, Harry's letters. Sometimes he dreams, but he always forgets come morning.

He writes, every day, to people who will never read his words. He spends sickles he cannot afford on ink no eyes will see except his own.

When Sirius was in prison, he wrote long missives filled with bile and hatred and never mailed them. He burned them all the morning he left Hogwarts. Now he writes to Peter. Sometimes he is angry, sometimes mournful, often confused. Always is is the same:

Why?

He has yet to get beyond that question. He thinks if he could answer it, if he could understand, if he could only *know*... He thinks too much.

Molly and Tonks have taken to whispering about him when he isn't there. Molly fixes trays and trays of food, looks anxiously at him when she leaves for hom at night. He makes Kreacher eat them as penance, and pretends the joy in Molly's face come morning is based on something true.

There is only one truth in his life: people die.

Remus is used to death.

That is not entirely accurate--Remus is used to loss, killing, other people dying. To living on: the great irony of his life. Or perhaps it is that werewolves have half the life-span of a Muggle, and yet he has outlived all the wizards he called home.

Or it is just him.

Monthly he wants to refuse the Wolfsbane, lose his mind for a few precious hours; monthly he thinks of he people who live in this house, where Sirius slowly died; monthly he gags, swallows, manages to stay sane.

Remus is used to death.

Harry asks him one night, "How do you do it?"

He doesn't know what to say.

For starters, he has never been Harry's family, not since the world blew apart. And even before, he was suspect, he was kept at arm's length, he was never quite. trusted.

Dumbledore trusted him, of course, but Sirius. James.

He wants to tell Harry it will get easier. He wants to say that the pain will fade, grow livable, that Harry won't spend the rest of his life walking around with a great big hole in him. He wants to say a lot of things.

He looks at Harry and remembers pranks and mischief and the only friends he ever knew. He looks at Harry and remembers James growing away from them, reaching for Lily. He looks at Harry and remembers Sirius sending him wary glances, Lily holding the baby a little too tight, Peter--

He looks at Harry.

"I don't know," he says, and squeezes Harry's shoulder. "I don't know."

Harry trembles, Lily's eyes and James' face and oh, it's Harry now, and he whispers, "me neither," and Remus knows him better than anyone, and wishes he didn't.

"Me neither," and he's crying, and he's 16 so it's big, ugly sobs he wants to hide, and splotchy cheeks and shaking body and Remus wraps an arm around him, and that's all that Harry needs to burrow closer, to lay his pain at Remus' door.

Remus has always been good at shouldering other people's burdens.

"Shh."

Harry doesn't, of course, he keeps trembling, crying, sobbing, shaking, burrowing closer and closer and all that Remus can do is hold him closer still.

Remus has learned a lot of things in his life, but he never learned this. He never learned how to love a grieving boy, only how to be one.

Finally Harry stops, exhausted.

"Have some chocolate," Remus says. "And a sleeping draught."

"I don't want to."

"Do it anyway. You'll feel better in the morning."

"Will I," Harry says. He is small in Remus' arms, too small. He is drifting away like everyone.

Remus tells him, "No. But if you keep repeating it, maybe it'll come true."

"Worked so well for you."

"If you won't take chocolate, Molly's left a stew on the stove. Come wrest it from Kreacher with me."

"You'll eat it with me?"

Harry looks so hopeful. (Lily's eyes) Harry's eyes shine up at Remus like he can make the whole world better, like eating day-old stew with Harry with change the course of existence.

"I--"

"Come on, Moony," he says, though he's never called him even Remus before, always Professor Lupin. "Please?" he says, and Remus' breath catches in his throat.

He is James, and Lily, and Sirius, and he is Harry, he is--he is.

"Alright," Remus says.

He walks downstairs, one arm over his shoulder, listening to talk about Quidditch and Hogwarts and Ron and Hermione. A tirade against Draco Malfoy, who is safe for Harry to hate because Harry can always hit him. No mention of Sirius, of Cedric, of death.

Remus is broken, irrevocably, impossibly. He knows this truth as well as he knows that more people will leave him before this war is over, as well as he knows that he too may have to die.

Remus is broken, but he is needed all the same.

Everyone that Harry called home has died.

Remus, as always, remains.