The Furry Little Problem - Marauders Era

An Eternal Reunion ~ Epilogue

"Bless him, ol' Remus has a family now." Sirius beckoned Anne to stand by him before the grand picture window. She settled her teacup and, in carefully paced steps, approached him, her eyes hungrily peering through the glass to see Remus Lupin and his new bride share the wonderful news with their friends and loved ones.

"I suppose this means you two are official in-laws," Anne teased, her elbow digging into Sirius' side. "I'm glad at least one of us got a happy ending. He deserves it what with all he's been through."

Anne Harris had spent a chunk of her afterlife alone with only the window into the mortal world to keep her posted on the lives of her friends and society. It wasn't until six years after her death that she was reunited with James and Lily, and then an additional fourteen years later for Sirius to join the party. Each arrival was met with a tender hug, a shower of kisses, and a slap to the head.

"Are you kidding me? That's who you made your Secret Keeper? I ought to have marched out of this place and haunted your arses until either one of you got some sense knocked into your heads." Anne scolded, slapping James and Lily with a rolled-up copy of an old magazine from the 1960s.

She could not, for the death of her, understand why there was a window for her to occasionally peer into the mortal world. But as time went on, Anne realized that the hardest thing to do was absolutely nothing. She wanted to break into the window to fight Voldemort before he could reach the Godric's Hollow. She craved nothing more than to beat Bellatrix Lestrange into a bloody coma when she showed her face in the Ministry of Magic.

Alas, this was and is her punishment. It was the afterlife's way of teaching her a lesson to not let hatred rule over your life, to know when to pick your battles. It was the one thing she lacked when she was alive, and for that, she had to spend her entire ghostly existence coming to terms with her ability to do only nothing.

When Sirius had joined their group, she was the first to greet him since James and Lily had fallen asleep in the garden. Anne saw a familiar silhouette standing in their front yard, his back was facing the house, his hands lodged deep into the pockets of his trousers as he scanned the vastness of the ocean before him. He was as Anne had remembered him in their youth, his dark hair long and in curls that swayed with the ocean breeze, his tall stature that simply exuded charm and confidence – he was the same as Anne had left him.

And when she had finally mustered the courage to welcome him to his new life, her heart swelled with joy to see that his years in Azkaban had left him entirely. Anne watched over him in his time in prison, cried for him and with him as he wasted away twelve years of his life in a cell. He grew up to be a handsome man which was no surprise to her, but the bitterness of Azkaban had left a mark on his youth.

Perhaps one of the many beauties of living in the land of the dead was that you can appear as old or young as you wish to be. Although it had a few technicalities. Since Anne had died when she was only fifteen, she could only appear as her teenage self or younger but never any older. James and Lily, on the other hand, chose to maintain their appearance as twenty-one-year-old adults. They didn't look that far from when Anne left, but they did grow taller, their facial structures a touch more prominent and matured.

"Hey, old man," Anne yelled from the front door of her house, calling her friend's attention. Sirius turned around and made her heart drop to the floor. She was set on just letting him come to her, but at the spur of the moment, they each ran towards each other in rejoice of their reunion. Sirius had caught her in his arms, enveloping her into a sweet embrace before either one of them could take a grasp on the situation.

Sirius was only half a foot taller than Anne, however, when he had lifted her in his arms, it made Anne feel like she was the tallest woman in the world. When the time had caught up with them, they slowly let each other go and for the longest moment, stared intently into each other's eyes, still in disbelief that they had finally reached this point.