You Make Me Live (Remus Lupin x Reader One-Shots)

The Post War Dream

(This is a very short one based loosely on a personal experience. I am so sorry if this is too much. Let me know and I can absolutely take it down. Uh, again with the alcohol thing, only worse this time, and this one deals pretty strongly with grief and depression so - yeah. If you've read Book Three of ATYD this is nothing but still-)

It was December of 1982, the war was over, Lily and James were dead, and our lives changed forever. We had lost friends, nearly lost each other so many times. I had held up for about as long as I could, keeping busy, hurling myself into work at the Ministry, trying to keep a brave, cheerful face for my family and what was left of my friends. Can you blame me for finally breaking down, over a year later?

Remus found me lying on the couch that night, three in the morning, wearing his sweater and a pair of leggings. I had a half-empty whisky bottle in front of me, and the television was on. Remus recognized this form of self-destruction easily, being one of his choice favorites. He had come down for a glass of water, it seemed, having noticed our bed too was half-empty, and upon seeing me set his glass on the coffee table, sloshing it a little onto the glass surface. I was numb, I was focused entirely on the surface tension holding the spill in perfect irregular polygons with rounded corners. I began questioning why I took a Muggle education over the summers, as I had never felt the need to summon up knowledge on irregular polygons before, rounded edges or no. Remus was kneeling beside me, I knew. I could feel his breath on my cheek and it annoyed me. I then became aware that I was on the verge of tears, holding a rather unbearable and dramatic frown. I tried to straighten it out, soften it, but as my mother warned my face had in fact frozen like that.

"How full was that bottle when you started?" he asked softly, pointing to the Scotch.

"As if you haven't emptied whole bottles of vodka to yourself," I muttered. "Go back to bed."

"Can't do that. You need help."

"The whisky's helping, I'd like to be left alone." I was slurring, and made no effort to hide it.

"You can't do this to yourself, love."

"I can do what I damn well please. And I'm tired of people treating me like I can't."

"What do you mean?"

"Go back to bed! Before I wake up Regulus telling you to." I reached for the bottle to refill my glass. He reached out a hand to stop me, and I smacked it away, hard, sitting up. "What the fuck is your problem? You can hit rock bottom every day of your life, I'm here for five minutes and I've got to pull myself together? Fuck off!"

"You've never let me hit rock bottom, I just want to do the same for you."

I took a swig, admiring my day-old manicure. "How generous," I said, seething. "Now can you let me miss my friends? Can you let me be tired, without making me feel guilty for making you feel guilty that you can't help me? Can you let me feel like a failure for a little while for letting them die? For not having done a damn thing to help werewolves in three years at that damned office? For hardly getting the chance to raise my son because I'm so busy bowing and scraping to Millicent fucking Bagnold? GO TO SLEEP!" I sobbed, holding my drink by the rim and sinking my head between my knees. I continued to cry, and Remus put a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

"Is that really what you need?" He asked, "You promise me? If I go upstairs, that will be the right thing to do?"

"Yes!"

He looked at me for a long few seconds, panting slightly. "Okay," he whispered, "Okay. Can I kiss you goodnight, before I go up? Just on the forehead?" His right hand was on the arm of the couch, the left flat on the coffee table, his arms making a kind of corral around me.

"Alright." Who knows? It might even be nice. He leaned over, warm lips on clammy skin, but it didn't even feel pleasant. That's when I felt scary, when I knew I wasn't right.

"Goodnight," he whispered against my skin, and his voice woke something up for a second. He was respecting me, he was leaving. It felt amazing. He loved me. He loved me enough to let me go and give me space when I needed. Maybe he even loved me enough to let me be my own person and want me to be free. My identity had been wrapped up in him since I was sixteen years old. I chose him then, and I knew I would continue to choose him, I just needed to breathe. I leaned my head against his, breathing with him, before he stood up.

"Goodnight," I said, sounding almost normal and feeling nowhere near it. I watched his back through his thin white t-shirt as he retreated, his legs in his gray sweatpants and his bare feet.

"I think I'm gonna go to the beach, once I've slept this off." I said, swirling my drink in its glass. "Alone."

He stopped on the stairs, one foot on the bottom step and a hand on the banister. Staring deep into my eyes across the room he said, "Okay. Whatever you need." Nodding reassuringly, he ascended.

I knew which beach it had to be, though it broke me to think about it. That summer had been the best time of our adolescent lives. It was freezing, and I was wrapped in a sweater and my leather coat, a quilt rolled under my arm. I spread the blanket on a stretch of clean sand, and stared out at the gentle, steely waves, and listened as they struck the beach one by one. I closed my eyes and laid back on the quilt, and I swore I could feel them, too.

I let myself hurt, I let myself ache and grieve and remember. Their laughter, their joy, right here on this very beach, huddled around bonfires drinking and singing and forgetting their cares for just a few days, knowing that someday those of us who were left could cling to those memories. Little did I know that there would be so few of us left behind to remember them, and to be forced to let them go. I collected stones and piled them while I thought, and when anger struck me I struck back, hurling stones into the sea and screaming every thought that plagued me.

I walked the beach, my hands shoved deep into my pockets and my collar up against the wind. My tears froze when they fell. I enchanted a few stones to heat up in my pockets so I could warm my hands, and when I finally got too cold I wandered my way into town and found the old pub. I laughed at our younger selves who tried to buy alcohol there when we were too young to drink by Muggle laws. Now here I was, twenty-two, buying a cup of tea and a hand pie. James would be so disappointed, I thought jokingly. I hugged my cup tightly between my gloved hands and smiled.