A/N: Um, hi. It's been a while. Lord knows if anyone will ever reach this chapter, since the writing quality of the first seven isn't great, and I doubt anyone's following this anymore, but, hi.

I've been spending quarantine becoming re-obsessed with Harry Potter and I was just gripped to combine all of my little plot bunnies into one goodbye chapter. That's why there's some fully-fleshed scenes and then just some little things. But I wanted to complete this story, since I promised I would. So, here we are. Enjoy.

On the eighth, the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Jr. are sentenced to Azkaban.

On the ninth, he goes to work with a ridiculously fake cough, and lies to Tom about the small tickle in the back of his throat.

On the tenth, he checks all the charms on his basement, which he's only used a couple times to transform in. One of the chains is loose, and he finds it oddly satisfying to go to a Muggle store and reattach the bolts manually.

On the eleventh, he calls out sick, and is in horrible, horrible pain.

On the twelfth, he owls Angela to apologize for missing Peter's Order of Merlin ceremony, but he'd come down with a horrible cold and he would have hacked up his lungs all through the ceremony. He gets a respectful reply, but not much else.

On the thirteenth, the Aurors officially close the case.

On the fourteenth, James and Lily's will is read. There's not much to it, and he's the only on there. Moody personally asks him to go through both the Potters and Sirius' remaining belongings and put them away. He tries to say no, but the look Moody gives him makes it clear he doesn't have a choice.

He spends all his free time from the fifteenth until the twentieth in either Godric's Hollow or Sirius' flat in Tinworth. He hadn't realized so much of their belongings had survived the explosion. He finds years' worth of letters and photographs, books and newspapers, even James' pin-ups of the Holyhead Harpies they did to raise money for St. Mungo's back in '76, which makes him snort. He even finds Lily's journals that she's kept since her mum died, but he doesn't do more than give them a cursory glance and makes sure they're packed away just as carefully as the letters and photos. Harry might like them, some day, but Remus isn't going to send them to him now.

On the seventeenth, he thinks about when he will see Harry again. Dumbledore made it clear that the Dursleys are what is best for him and will keep him safe, and Petunia told him not to come back. Maybe once he got his life together again, he would reach out. That sounded smart.

On the twentieth, once everything is packed and put away in a secondary Potter vault, Alastor asks him about the house. Remus just sort of gapes at him. He supposes that it defaults to the Potter estate, that one of the house elves who had worked at Potter Manor could take care of it for Harry, but he certainly couldn't afford it, and what child wants a house? Sirius' flat can just be sold, the lease bought out, though Remus isn't sure how, exactly, he will do that.

On the twenty-first, he's given an estimate on how much it would cost to repair the house, and Remus can't afford it, so he agrees to leave it as a monument to their sacrifice. He even hears talk of a statue.

On the twenty-second, he receives an owl from Andromeda Tonks (née Black), Sirius' cousin whom he'd only ever spoken of with fondness. She says that she will use part of her inheritance to buy out the flat. He owls her back asking how she knew, and apparently Alastor had stepped in.

On the twenty-third, he works the closing shift at the Leaky for the first time. Once everyone who isn't boarding clears out, he finds the quiet restful.

On his return from the back room an hour past last call, he jumps.

"Em, what are you doing?" He hadn't expected to see Emmeline at all, since she'd left at lunch, but here she is, sitting at the counter. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are swollen and puffy, and she's holding a bottle of firewhiskey in each hand. One is still full, but the other only has a few drops left. "Emmeline?"

"Getting drunk," she announces, shooting back the last few drops of the bottle before throwing it on the ground. Remus winces when the glass falls on the floor, shattering. He does a quick spell to clean it up and in the process misses his chance to snag the other bottle before she gets it open and starts chugging.

"Why?"

"Why not?" she says, slamming the bottle down on the counter and hiccuping. "What, you going to send your Patronus to Peter, tell him to come get me? You can't, you know why?"

"Why?" he says, rhetorically, knowing what she's about to say.

"He's dead," Emmeline says with a biting ferocity he barely remembers coloring her Welsh accent. "I loved him. At least, I think I did."

"I know," Remus tells her, trying to reach for the bottle but she picks it up before he can reach it. "I did, too. Not the way you do, or did, that is, of course, but still."

"Did you know I thought I was pregnant?" Remus's eyes widen. "I'm not, of course, but there was a moment where I thought I was. And started to think that Marlene and Lily would know what to do, and Alice, too. But they're all dead, even Alice."

"Alice is still alive," he says, stubbornly.

"You're dead yourself if you think she and Frank are living," Emmeline tells him, taking another swig. "I told Augusta, I told her, 'Just give them the Kedavra and end it. They're not going to recover. Just let them die.'" She hiccups again.

"Emmeline, I think you've had enough," he says. Out of all of them, Emmeline's always been the one who goes a little too hard, doesn't know when to stop, and he's already seen her do this to herself this month, and he refuses to watch it happen again.

"Why? Maybe I should die, too," Emmeline replies. He stares at her. How could she even say that? "They're all gone, Remus. It's just us. We don't even get Harry or Neville or Marlene's kids. Though maybe it's best we don't have Marlene's kids. They'd probably be traitors, too, or idiots. We were all idiots when it came to him, Marlene most of all. She loved him from that very first day, did you know that? She saw past everything. She saw past his big traitor signs."

"We all did," Remus says, slowly, painfully.

"She let him in her bed. The idiot."

"Emmeline, that's enough."

She looks at him and brings her arm around his head and slams her lips to his. He pulls away quickly, looking at her like she's lost her mind. Maybe she has.

"I need to shag someone without it meaning a thing. You've never done it before, have you, Remus?"

"Emmeline, I don't think-"

"Don't think what? 'That's wise?' How very Ravenclaw of you, Remus! You sure are smart! How's that working out for you? Got all your friends? A girlfriend? Boyfriend?Everyone thinks you were in love with Sirius. Or me, or Dorcas. And suffered in silence. Most people don't know why. I do. It's because of the wolf thing. You think you're not good enough. Maybe you're right. None of us are good enough. We should all be dead. You and me and Frank and Alice, we should be with them. We promised we would always have each other's backs. That worked out well, huh?"

Remus didn't want her to keep talking, and started to reach for the bottle again, but she was on a roll, and continued, "Marlene fell in love with and got impregnated by a mass murderer who betrayed her, resulting in the deaths of her entire family, including her parents, her brothers, and their significant others. Dorcas was killed by him personally because she was such a threat. Mary, sweet innocent Mary who said, 'I'll leave the fighting to you; I don't think I could do it!' Wrong place, wrong time, and so burned by Fiendfyre that she could barely be identified. Every single one of our friends is dead and they shouldn't be. If anyone deserves to die, it's me." She takes another long sip of the firewhiskey, hiccuping as she pulls the bottle away.

"No one deserves to die, Emmeline," he says finally.

"But how do we live like this?"

On the twenty-fourth, he wakes up naked in his bed with Emmeline's perfume still on his pillow.

On the twenty-fifth, they vow to never speak of it again.

On the twenty-sixth, Remus attends his last meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. Barely anyone is there. Dumbledore thanks them all for their service. Alastor tells them to be prepared to fight again, and wait to remove the wardings on their homes.

On the twenty-seventh, Remus stands in Sirius' flat for the last time, with Andromeda by his side. There had been a couple of things he thought she might want, furniture and such, but she wound up passing on everything except a necklace he remembers seeing Marlene wear, and the stuffed wolf that had belonged to Harry. It is, Remus realizes, the one thing from his nursery to survive. While he hadn't dared cross into the room due to structural damage, he'd Accioed as much as he could out of the room, only to find it broken beyond repair or burned to a crisp. It hadn't been his favourite stuffed animal out of the Marauders' set that Peter had bought for him, but it probably got left here, or was stolen.

On the twenty-eighth, he gets a letter from Hagrid asking about the motorbike. He tells him to keep it.

On the twenty-ninth, he goes a full day without thinking of his dead friends thanks to a double shift at the Leaky and an awkward dinner with his father, who pointedly doesn't ask the questions Remus had expected.

On the thirtieth, in a surge of bravery, he finally opens the letter that Alastor found in their vault.

Dear Moony,

We hope you never actually have to read this, but here it is. Our final goodbye. We went through stages of writing this, from straight up practical to down right sentimental, but decided to do a healthy mixture of both.

Harry gets everything in the vault. It's what Mum and Dad wanted for me, and what Lily and I want for him. It should keep him afloat, and you, too, if you need anything. Sirius isn't always too responsible with money, so keep an eye on that for us, will you? We don't need the Potter fortune going to the Quaffle's head.

We want him raised in this house. You remember how depressing it looked when we bought it; it deserves some light, plus the girl around the corner has totally been checking you out, Moon, and you should at least have the opportunity to test the waters. (That and it's already paid for, so might as well, right?) Lily thinks he should go to Muggle primary school to learn his numbers and writing and stuff. She also says that you'd be an amazing teacher, though, so I guess it really depends on how much the three of you want to spend every second with him.

When he asks about us, please tell him how much we loved him. Tell him that we weren't perfect or martyrs or whatever I'm sure we'll be painted as. Tell him I was a toerag and Lily was a stuck-up know-it-all. Tell him that we grew up, but we still made mistakes. I'm reckless and stubborn and I've hurt plenty of people, accidentally and intentionally. Lily's self-confessed selfish, equally stubborn, and bottles all of her feelings up until they explode. Let us be people to him, but please, more than anything, tell him we don't regret anything. If we're gone, we did it for him. Hopefully, someday he'll understand.

Anything that we leave behind, make use of, or box it up and add it to the vault. Harry can take what he wants when the day comes, and so can you. Be there as best you can for him, Moony. He loves you just as much as we do. I mean, really, he wouldn't be here if you hadn't locked us in that broom closet together during the Halloween Feast in Seventh Year and made us talk to each other.

But most importantly, Moony, please live your life. Fall in love, have kids, find a job that you love and surround yourself with joy. It's all we've ever wanted for you, so don't let us down.

All our love,

James and Lily

He cries freely over the parchment, doing his best to avoid smudging the ink. Once his sobs progress to nothing more than hiccups, he files the letter away, along with some of the mementos he stole from the flat and the house. He'd told himself he would give them to Harry one day, but he doesn't know when that will be.

Tomorrow, he has the opening shift at the Leaky. He still has some time before the next full moon. No one is suspicious- yet. Emmeline has finally, finally, returned to her normal levels of both cheer and alcohol consumption, which he is eternally grateful for. She even brought him chocolate yesterday as an apology, since she knows as well as anyone that chocolate is an automatic into his heart.

For them, he will live. And while it takes him a little while, years, to really do so, on the night Teddy is born, sitting in the rocking chair in his nursery while Tonks snores down the hall, he understands why they all did it, and knows that, when the time comes, he's not afraid to make the same decision. For now, he holds his son close, and tells him stories of a boy who was loved so fiercely by so many people despite all his mistakes, and that he hopes Teddy gets to live the same life, experience the incredible highs and the darkest lows that make the highs so much more incredible. But until then, he'll do what he's always done, and take it one day at a time. It's served him well this far.

A/N: Hit me with a review if you're still here! Stay safe, stay sane, and I wish you & your loved ones all the best.