I’m the last one. The last Marauder that cares. James died. Sirius died. And Peter betrayed us all. My name is Remus Lupin and this is our story, not only mine, but Sirius’, James’, Lily’s, and Jenna’s too.
At Hogwarts, I met James Potter, troublemaker extraordinaire, Sirius Black, dangerous, yet charming and Peter Pettigrew, who was nothing special and soon, we all became good friends. They didn’t know yet that I was a werewolf and I wanted it keep it that way. Then, in our third year, after being friends with them for two years, they finally realize that my mum wasn’t sick, nor I was needed at home every full moon. They realized that I was a werewolf, in other words. I was worried that they wouldn’t accept me, but I was wrong, although Peter did look at me strangely for a week. In our fifth year, they learned how to become Animagus, so I wouldn’t have go my monthly transformations alone. James became Prongs, a magnificent stag; Sirius became Padfoot, a mischievous dog: and Peter became Wormtail, a small and insignificant rat. Later we found out how literal this actually was. Having my friends there made my transformations less painful. It made it less dangerous during those dreaded full moons.
Our seventh and final year at Hogwarts could definitely not be called uneventful. James finally started dating Lily Evans, who was his crush since his fourth year. Sirius, who was known as a player at Hogwarts, finally started dating a girl named Jenna Parker-Lewis. They even lived in London together for a while. Peter even had someone crushing on him. Her name was Emily Stevens, and not to be rude, but she wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. She couldn’t stand him by the end of the year. Good thing, too. There were several Death Eaters attacks on the school during that year, all which I helped fight against, along with James, Lily, Sirius, and Jenna. Looking back, I think that Peter helped organize some of those attacks. We approached graduation with a wary sense of what was to come. Of course, Lily graduated at the top of our class. She and James, the Head Girl and Boy, gave a beautiful speech about joining the world outside Hogwarts soon. James astounded everyone by proposing to Lily in front of the entire graduating class. She accepted happily.
After graduation, I moved into a small flat in London, near James and Sirius. James and Lily got married soon after we graduated and moved into a house in a nice little suburb. As I said earlier, Jenna and Sirius moved into a flat near mine. We all stay friends through all of the confusion that followed us. A year or so later, Lily and James announced that Lily was pregnant. We were overjoyed. A few months later, we were told of a prophecy that concerned either Lily and James’s unborn child or the Longbottoms’, another young couple that went to Hogwarts with us. We were all scared, but most of all, Lily. Sirius, James, and I were very protective of Lily during that time, barely letting her get out of our sight.
On July 31, 1980, Harry James Potter was born. It was apparent then that Harry was the child the prophecy told of. You see, the prophecy foretold that Harry was supposed to kill Lord Voldemort, the most evil wizard in the history of the wizarding world, or get killed in the process. Lily and James were terrified of Voldemort attacking them and their young son, so they became even more protective of Harry. The Order told us that there was someone who leaking secrets to Voldemort. From that point on, we never told anything to anyone but our closest friends, fearing that they just might be the spy.
Lily and James were marked for death. They went into hiding with Harry when he was about six months old. Only Sirius, Peter, Jennifer, Dumbledore, and I knew where they were. They kept an Unplottable charm on the house. They realized that they would need a Secret-Keeper to keep them safe. James selected Sirius, but Sirius insisted that they use Peter, because he wouldn’t have been the obvious choice for the job. We didn’t realize that this was a bad choice, obviously, or Lily and James would still be alive today. Peter had apparently been working for Lord Voldemort, and when he became their Secret-Keeper, he scurried off to Voldemort’s headquarters and revealed where they were, breaking the charm. Voldemort headed out that night to Godric’s Hollow, the village where Lily and James were hiding. What I heard happened was that James tried to fight Voldemort, giving Lily and James time to escape, but Voldemort killed without remorse. Lily and Harry were up in the nursery, and when Voldemort burst the door open, Lily pleaded with him to kill her instead of her child. Voldemort insisted that Lily didn’t need to die, but when she refused to surrender her child, he killed her, too.
He then turned his wand on Harry. He performed Avada Kedavra on the boy, but then something amazing happened, the very reason that Harry is famous today. Instead of killing Harry, the curse rebounded on Voldemort and killed the dark wizard. Harry was only left with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead.
Sirius had came by the house about twenty minutes later, to bring candy to Harry, making sure that the toddler had plenty, and to drink butterbeers with James. However, when he got there, the house was completely destroyed. He instantly knew that Peter had betrayed them. He ran up to the house, where in the foyer, he saw our best friend, James Potter, sprawled out on the floor dead.
Sirius ran upstairs to check the conditions of Harry and Lily. He got as far as the nursery door when he saw Lily lying in almost the same position as her husband, the life knocked out of her. He looked wildly around for Harry, who was fussing in a corner. Sirius scooped his godson up, and ran out of the house past the boy’s dead parents, past his ruined home, and into the street. Sirius later told me that Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper came to collect Harry and bring him to Dumbledore. Sirius pleaded with him, asking if Harry come stay with him since he was his godfather. Hagrid insisted that Harry needed to come with him and Sirius grudgingly consented. He gave Hagrid his prized possession, his motorcycle, to drive Harry there, deciding that he didn’t need it anymore. After all, he was on the trail of a rat.
Sirius cornered Peter shortly after he had left the Potter’s house. Peter started to make a scene, to frame Sirius for what he had done. Sirius had lunged towards him, but it was too late. Peter blew up the street, killing thirteen people and cutting off his own finger, escaped to the gutters to avoid imprisonment. The Aurors automatically thought that Sirius had committed the horrible crime, as he was laughing as a result of a mixture of his anger and shock. He was then carted off to Azkaban, without a trial or chance to prove his innocence.
I was as sure of his as the rest of the wizarding world that he was guilty, but I was shocked that he would help kill his best friend. I know that he would rather die than do anything to hurt his friends. The arrest was too much for his fiancée, Jenna. She was found in her apartment by Emily with a letter opener in her hand and a suicide note by her side, dead. She, too, knew that it was impossible to imagine Sirius betraying them, but she, unlike myself, truly believed that he was innocent.
I held a series of odd jobs for more than a decade, none lasting long due to my unique condition, until Albus Dumbledore, the best headmaster Hogwarts ever had, hired me as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. My excitement soon turned to fear when Sirius broke out of prison. I knew that he would go after Harry to finish the attacks on his family. My mission was to go to Hogwarts and protect Harry as much as I possibly could
I first met Harry on the Hogwarts Express, which I rode as I had no other way to get to the school. I was asleep for the beginning of the journey but woke up when the train stopped suddenly. Dementors had boarded the train and were looking for the fugitive. They especially affected Harry, who told me later that he saw his mother being murdered when they were around. I performed the Patronus charm to repel the creatures and then gave all the people in the compartment a piece of chocolate to soothe their nerves. I, then, left to the engine to ask why Dumbledore had let them on the train.
Once at Hogwarts, I kept a close eye on Harry. He looked exactly like his father, but with his mother’s eyes. He also seemed to have a bit of James’ troublemaking streak. He proved to be a more than able wizard, making mincemeat of the work in my class. He approached me about a week after a Quidditch match, where Dementors were present and caused him to fall off of his broom, imploring to teach him how to repel Dementors. I helped him learn the Patronus charm so he could defend himself from the voices that followed him when the Dementors were around.
One evening, near the end of the term, I was looking at the Marauder’s Map, which I had borrowed from Harry when I realized that he had it. I watched Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, walk to Hagrid’s cabin. The groundskeeper was depressed because of the impending execution of one of his hippogriffs that evening, and I assumed that they had gone to comfort him. They were headed back up to the castle, but they were joined by someone else; Peter Pettigrew, who I had assumed dead, was with them.
The next thing I knew, Sirius was there. There were no jerky, rash movements from Harry, so I figured that he was in his dog disguise. Sirius suddenly went down the Whomping Willow passage to the Shrieking Shack with Ron and Peter. Harry and Hermione soon followed.
I rushed down the stairs to the Great Hall, with only my wand in my hand and confusion in my head. The tree had not stay frozen for long and I grabbed a long tree branch to freeze it again. The old tunnel was much the same when I crawled in and followed the familiar path. It ended at what seemed like a dead end, but I pushed open the trapdoor above me. Noises floated from one of the bedrooms and so I raced there, where I saw Harry with his wand pointed toward Sirius. The boy seemed intent on killing Sirius. He yelled to me, asking me to help him and I did the opposite and disarmed him.
We found that Peter had hidden as his Animagus form and had become Ron’s rat. I implored that he give up the traitorous beast as Hermione implored him not to, telling him my secret in the process. WE eventually got the rat and forced him back to his original state, but not before Snape burst in. He was easily taken care by Hermione, Ron, and Harry, whose combined Disarming spell knocked him out. Harry stopped Sirius and I from killing him, telling us to take him up to the castle and leave him to the Dementors.
Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Snape, Peter, and I slowly went back through the tunnel. Unfortunately, that night was a full moon. Peter escaped while I transformed. Sirius kept me occupied, giving time for Harry, Hermione, and Ron to get back to the castle. A noise eventually deterred me from Sirius, giving him an opportunity to catch Peter.
I don’t really know what happened next. Only Harry and Hermione do. Apparently, they rescued the hippogriff condemned to death, which was called Buckbeak, and gave it to Sirius to escape on. Snape told the Slytherins about my condition and it spread around the school. I had to leave before Dumbledore’s sanity was questioned.
Dumbledore could see that Voldemort and his followers were steadily getting stronger, so he restarted the Order of the Phoenix. I was one of the first to join. Sirius, who had been running and hiding from the Ministry for the last six months, came back to London and offered his family home, 12 Grimmauld Place as headquarters. I moved in there with him so he would have some company other than Kreacher, his senile house elf, and his mother’s portrait, who insulted everyone.
I kept myself busy the next year by helping the Order. I helped guard the Department of Mysteries, and recruit other people to join the Order. One person I convinced was Sirius’s second cousin, Nymphadora Tonks. She is extremely crucial to the Order as she can change her features using her mind. She is also quite pretty, I must say, in the state she is usually in. I also listened to Sirius read aloud the letters that Harry would send him. He was involved in the dangerous Triwizard Tournament, so any news from him was welcome.
That June, Lord Voldemort returned and vowed to be even worse than before. The Ministry didn’t believe Harry and Dumbledore’ s claims that he was back and worked hard to tatter both Harry and Dumbledore’s once proud reputations. They took away many of the honors that Dumbledore had received and made a farce of Harry in the Daily Prophet almost daily. Any one who was even remotely connected to Dumbledore was told to clean out their desks at the Ministry.
The next summer, Harry came with a lot of bitterness towards anyone who crossed his path. I watched him, yelling at anyone for talking to him or even thought about him. Harry went to trial over a under aged charm he used in a Dementor attack where he lived, but got off with a warning. Sirius seemed to harbor many of the same feelings that Harry had after this, wanting his godson to stay with him. Harry, however, went back to Hogwarts and started a secret Defense Against the Dark Arts club to make up for the unsatisfactory classes they were having.
Harry, who had been having vivid, realistic dreams of Sirius dying, felt that his godfather was in danger and needed to go to the Department of Mysteries. Death Eaters soon arrived looking for a prophecy about Harry and Voldemort. The Order, I included, went just as the dueling that they had started, intensified. The few students that had come with Harry were injured and struggled to keep back the evil adults. We came to their aid, but it might have been too late.
Everything that happened next happened so fast, the only I can be sure of is that Sirius died. He had been dueling and taunting his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, and the insults were finally getting to her. She had screamed some kind of spell and Sirius fell, ever so slowly, into The Veil of Judgment. Harry screamed and ran towards it to get the man that he loved and respect so much, out. I had to catch him before he himself died.
Now I am the last of us. Sirius, Jenna, Lily, and James are dead. Harry is still here, so maybe I’m not the last one. He’s felt pain deeper than I could probably ever imagine and he still has to save the entire Wizarding World from Voldemort, knowing fully well that he could get killed in the process. Maybe the Marauders aren’t dead after all, because part of them still lives in me and Harry both.
AN: Thanks to my beta, **EnglishMuffin**, at the hpff forums.
Loony Moony by Ginny Weasley 12
Chapter Notes: Disclaimer: All I really own is a shed prone cat, Jennifer and Emily. Extra review points if you find the song reference.