“Hector, I want a divorce,” said Jocelyn Freemonte quietly. There were a few seconds of silence. Then Jocelyn shook her head. “No, too abrupt,” she muttered to herself. “All right, er, Hector, I’ve been thinking about us a lot lately. I think we should get a divorce.” She sighed. “That doesn’t flow at all, does it? Hector, I “ I’m practicing this for no reason, I’ll never say it to you!” she growled in frustration.
It was eleven o’clock on Hallowe’en night, and Jocelyn was alone, but after three-and-a-half years of marriage to Hector, she was used to solitude. It had become increasingly rare for him to be home before she went to bed, and he was often gone when she got up. Sometimes he would disappear for days at time without ever telling her where he was, but she never worried. He always turned up again just when she’d start to hope that he wouldn’t. That was the kind of man he was: indestructible, even when everyone wished he wasn’t. Well, if “everyone” constituted his wife, anyway.
The Freemontes’ marriage had been a disaster from the beginning. They had been in love … but not with each other. Hector had always been in love with work, and Jocelyn … well, Jocelyn had never managed to forget her first love: Sirius Black.
She knew, of course, that nothing could ever have happened with Sirius. They so different, yet so similar, and in all the wrong ways. Besides, it wasn’t the thought of Sirius that had caused her to contemplate divorce for months now; it was life with Hector himself. It was passionless, empty, and hollow, and Jocelyn wasn’t sure how much more of it she could bear. Somehow, though, she could never bring herself to mention divorce to Hector. He would never understand. He would brush her off, tell her to reconsider, promise they’d work it out … only they never would. Neither of them was interested enough in the relationship to bother with repairs.
Finally, around midnight, she went to bed, dreading the horror that awaited her in the morning when she would have to face Hector (and her cowardice) one more time.
“Hector, I want a divorce,” she muttered to herself over and over, promising herself, as she did every night, that tomorrow would be day she actually said it to him.
But the first thing she noticed when she woke in the morning was that Hector had never returned. She felt little more than indifference to this; it only meant that she would have to delay the horrible conversation about their relationship a little longer.
As she set about making breakfast, her thoughts wandered to her friends Lily and James Potter. They were the very antithesis of Jocelyn and Hector: happy, sickeningly in love. Jocelyn could hardly bare to visit them, to see them still, after four years of marriage, flirt with each other, to watch them play with their one-year-old son Harry; mostly, to see them with everything she wanted and everything she knew she could never have … at least not with Hector. Still, Lily and James were her only real friends, and they were company “ the only company she could get, really. But she knew she couldn’t visit them. They had gone into hiding about a week before, and Jocelyn wasn’t sure when she’d be able to see them again, though Lily promised it wouldn’t be long.
“We’ll send Dumbledore round within a week or two,” Lily had told her. “He’ll give you the message from the Secret Keeper.”
The Potters had used the Fidelius Charm to hide the information concerning their whereabouts in one of their friends. Jocelyn wasn’t sure whom they had chosen as Secret Keeper, however, because Lily and James had refused to tell her.
“It’s not that we don’t trust you, Joce’,” James had explained, “but it’s safer for you. The less information you have, the less of a target you’ll be for the Death Eaters.”
“But we’ll have the Keeper send you the secret as soon as we can,” Lily had added anxiously. “Probably within the week.”
But it had been eight days, and Jocelyn still hadn’t received a message about Lily and James from anyone.
She sighed as she set her plate of toast on the table. She was facing another day of solitude then. She knew what that meant: first she would clean up the kitchen. Then she would decide to clean the house, only it wasn’t dirty. So she would think about going out into the garden, only to remember that it was too risky to go outside nowadays. And so she would sit, maybe knitting and listening to the wireless, and her thoughts would turn, as always, to Hector and divorce and the words she could never bring herself to say to him and the few words he said to her when they were together at all.
“No time for breakfast, darling.” “Don’t wait up, darling.” “Look, darling, I’m up to my eyes at work, I’ve simply no time!”
And she would sit and try to figure out how to say in the midst of his rushing around, “Hector, I want a divorce.”
Anger coursed through Jocelyn as she thought of this. Her arm abruptly shot out and knocked her plate of toast to the kitchen floor. It shattered gloriously as it hit the tiles, bits of bread and shards of crockery fanning out in all directions.
“Joce’?”
Jocelyn, who had been watching the plate fragments skid across the floor, looked up.
“Remus!” she exclaimed. She leapt up, flustered. “Sorry, I just “ accidentally “ knocked over “ er “ I mean, come in! It’s good to see you! What’re you doing here?”
Remus Lupin had entered the kitchen. He was one of her oldest friends. At school, he had been in the same group as James, along with Peter Pettigrew and, of course, Sirius Black. The four men were still close friends, but Jocelyn hardly saw any of them now except James, and sometimes Peter. In fact, she hadn’t spoken to Sirius since graduation more than four years before and hadn’t seen Remus in months.
Remus stepped into the light, and for the first time Jocelyn got a proper look at him.
He was a mess. His light brown hair was sticking up everywhere, his already very shabby robes seemed to have more tears than usual, he was covered in ash, and his face was dirty, except for a few clear trails that suggested he’d been crying. At the moment, however, his eyes were dry and void of all emotion. Watching him standing in her tiny kitchen looking like a dead man, Jocelyn had never felt more frightened.
“Remus?” she questioned, fighting to keep the fear out of her voice. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Jocelyn,” he said quietly, and his voice cracked. The next second seemed to drag out for an eternity as they looked at each other and Jocelyn realized that she didn’t really want to know the answer. And then he said it: “Lily and James are dead.”
Everything around Jocelyn was suddenly strangely unreal. She was standing in her kitchen and staring at Remus, but they weren’t anything like the kitchen and Remus she was familiar with. It was as though the bottom of the house had fallen sharply away. She was falling … falling…. Everything was caving in, her world was caving in, collapsing in on itself, its foundation gone. The only constant in her life had just been destroyed in five words: Lily and James are dead.
It could not have happened. Remus had to be mistaken. Lily and James could not have died.
There was a war going on, and people died in war, of course: but they were people disconnected from her, faceless names she read in the newspaper; other people’s sacrifices, other people’s loss. This sort of thing did not happen to her, could not have happened to her. In a moment James was going to walk in and tell her that this was all some horrible sort of joke or a new training method Dumbledore had devised for the Order to see how they reacted to real-life loss. Not that it mattered how she reacted because this sort of thing was never going to happen to her. Lily and James were not going to die.
But the seconds lengthened and James did not appear; and Remus (though the man standing before her really wasn’t anything like Remus) just kept staring at her with that horrible blank emptiness in his eyes; and, unbidden, the thought entered Jocelyn’s mind that it might actually be true. That Lily and James really were…
She felt oddly detached, oddly unreal. It was too horrible. It could not have happened. She wanted to cry, but she felt too unreal to cry. She was standing there going in circles in her mind, and one moment she knew Lily and James were still alive, and the next she was certain they weren’t, and whether Remus had spoken this horror or she had read it in the vast emptiness of his expression, she no longer knew. She thought perhaps she ought to say something concrete, something commonplace and mundane, something that would end this nightmare, but she could think of nothing to say; nothing was certain anymore, and she wasn’t sure if everything had become commonplace or nothing at all.
She abruptly noticed she was shaking (how long had that been going on?), and she wanted more than ever to start crying, but her eyes remained stubbornly dry. She opened her mouth, but no words came, so she closed it, swallowed, tried again, and still nothing happened. And then Remus spoke:
“I know,” he said; and suddenly she was sobbing, and he was taking her in his arms and pressing her face to his chest, and she was clinging to him, and her tears were soaking his shirtfront, and his were dripping into her hair, and she kept shaking, and he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” And there was nothing but she and Remus and tears and emptiness.
Everything after that moment was both fragmented and blurred. There was shock as Remus told her that one-year-old Harry had vanquished Voldemort (Remus either didn’t know the details or didn’t want to tell them), and afterward relief when she realized the war was as good as over.
Night came, and she lay alone in her bed (Hector had never returned), and it felt as though someone had placed a slab of concrete on her chest, and it was difficult to breathe, but the physical pain was nothing to horror that awaited her the next morning, that would await her every morning as she faced a reality that did not involve Lily and James, that would never involve Lily and James again. Life, Remus had assured her, was going to go on, was even going to be good again, but Jocelyn did not know how. How could things ever go back to the way they had once been? How could she ever worry about all of life’s little commonplaces? How could she hold it together, when inside she was falling apart, when she would always be falling apart? She had forgotten about Hector, she had forgotten about divorce; everything had become Lily and James and the void they had left and that could not be filled. And it was strange to think how much things could change in a day, and how much they always remained the same.
She woke the next morning, and though she couldn’t remember ever actually sleeping, everything seemed different and better than when she had lain down the night before. The concrete was still on her chest, but it seemed smaller and less noticeable than before, and she wondered what she would have for breakfast without stopping to ask herself how she could think of something so trivial.
She made her way down to the kitchen and began making herself tea and toast, and it was strange how she could putter along through life’s mundanities without thinking about them, yet also without thinking about the pressure on her chest or the dead weight in the pit of her stomach. And she realized that Remus had been right, for though she did not understand it, life was going on.
She was washing up the dishes (by hand, she needed to keep moving or else she would start thinking) when there was a knock at the door. She hesitated, then called, “Come in!” (It was stupid to be so vulnerable when she knew many of Voldemort’s followers were still at large, but she really had nothing left to lose, and she felt more whole when she ignored her fear.)
“Hello, Joce’.” It was Remus. He looked cleaner than he had yesterday but still tired, and behind the weariness she could see the grief that was probably reflected in her own eyes.
“Hey,” she answered.
“How are you doing?” he asked, and there was something in his tone that she connected with, something that reminded her that he was one of the only people who fully understood how she was feeling.
She shrugged. “Okay. Better.”
He nodded.
“Sit down,” she told him. “Tea? I was just cleaning up, but I’ll make more if you want it.”
Remus shook his head as he sat at the kitchen table, and for the first time Jocelyn noticed he was holding a newspaper.
“No, I’m good, thanks,” he answered. “Er “ why don’t you sit down?”
It was odd, but suddenly it was as though the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened. Everything she’d thought or felt since Remus had come the day before was forgotten; the unreality she’d been living in was gone, and she was no longer analyzing feelings, just facts.
“What’s happened now?” she demanded warily as she sat across from him.
Remus looked uncomfortable. “Look, Joce’ “”
“Remus, just tell me!”
He nodded slowly, closing his eyes as if trying to steady himself for what he had to say. Finally, he looked up. Their eyes locked.
“Sirius has been arrested,” he said, very quietly.
“What?”
Remus nodded grimly.
“For what?” Jocelyn demanded.
“For “ for the murder of Peter Pettigrew,” whispered Remus.
For a moment they looked at each other. Then Jocelyn said in an odd voice, “That’s not funny. That’s not funny at all.”
“Why would I joke about something like that?” Remus snarled. He held out the Daily Prophet. “Read it.”
She took it, frowning. There was a long, horrible silence. Finally she looked up.
“So Sirius was Lily and James’s Secret Keeper.” It was a statement, not a question.
Remus nodded miserably.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she questioned, very quietly.
“It wasn’t my place,” he said evenly. “That was Sirius or Lily or James’s decision.”
“I meant yesterday,” she growled, “when you came to tell me that Lily and James were killed.” It was a stupid question. She certainly wouldn’t have told herself if she were Remus and could avoid it. After all, you could only destroy a person’s world so much at a time.
“I hoped you wouldn’t have to know,” he muttered, avoiding her eyes.
“I don’t want to believe it,” she admitted. “Sirius fall into the Dark Arts…” She shook her head, fingering the ring on her right hand, feeling the inscription. Contre Ceux Toujours Purs. Essentially: against pureblood maniacs. Sirius had given her this ring.
And Sirius was a Death Eater. Sirius had betrayed Lily and James. Sirius had killed Peter and twelve Muggles.
No, it couldn’t be…
“He always hated the Dark Arts,” she said desperately. She couldn’t take this second blow. Her world could not be destroyed this completely.
“He always knew a lot about the Dark Arts,” Remus reminded her.
But even ignoring her desperate desire to keep at least part of her world intact, Jocelyn knew better. She had fought with Sirius as he had battled Death Eaters just four years before.
“He can’t have done it!” she insisted. “I’ll “ I’ll swear it in front of the Ministry!”
Remus smiled grimly.
“He’s not getting a trial,” he said quietly. “Crouch “ he’s the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement “”
“I know,” Jocelyn cut in. She disliked Crouch; he got on too well with Hector.
“Yes, well,” Remus continued, “he ordered Sirius sent directly to Azkaban.”
Jocelyn was horrified.
“They can’t do that!”
“Yes,” said Remus, with a rather twisted smile, “they can. Dumbledore’s already given evidence that Sirius was Lily and James’s Secret Keeper; Lily and James’s deaths are proof of his betrayal; and a street-full of Muggles saw Sirius blast Peter to pieces. What’s the point of a trial when you have all that?”
“But, Remus, it doesn’t make any sense! Why would Sirius murder Peter? What was the point?”
“Peter found him, just after he’d gone on the run,” Remus explained. “Well of course it’s obvious what Peter intended. He wanted to avenge Lily and James.”
“You mean Peter was going to “ to kill Sirius?”
Remus nodded, and his expression was suddenly menacing.
“I could have killed him,” he whispered, more to himself than to Jocelyn. “If Peter and the Ministry hadn’t got there first … I would have killed him.”
Jocelyn stared at him fearfully. Remus abruptly seemed to come to himself. He gave a short, humourless laugh.
“Poor Peter. He never stood a chance.”
They were silent for a few minutes.
“What did Hector have to say about all this?” Remus asked finally. It seemed as though he was trying to find something concrete to say.
“Dunno,” Jocelyn answered. “I haven’t seen him in two days.”
“He hasn’t contacted you?” asked Remus sharply, and Jocelyn knew he was thinking of Death Eater attacks. She shook her head, smiling wryly.
“He doesn’t bother anymore,” she shrugged. “You know, yesterday, when you found me after I’d broken the plate … I’d just been trying to find the best way to tell him I want a divorce.”
“A divorce?” Remus looked surprised. “Are things really so bad?”
She considered this for a moment.
“It’s necessarily that it’s bad,” she said slowly. “It’s just that … I’m tired, Remus. I’m tired of just existing. I want to live again. And,” she sighed, “it’ll never happen if I’m with Hector.”
Remus reached across the table and placed his hand over hers.
“Oh, Joce’,” he murmured. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Jocelyn felt tears sting her eyes, but immediately blinked them away. She couldn’t break down again, not over this.
“Yeah, well,” she muttered, taking her hand off the table and avoiding Remus’s eyes. “It’s stupid now.”
“It’s not stupid, Jocelyn,” he said quietly.
She gave a small laugh.
“Maybe not, but …” She looked up at him. “Remus, is life ever going to be the same? Is it ever going to be worth living?”
He smiled wryly at her.
“I’ve made it this far as a werewolf, haven’t I?”
She nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” she agreed, smiling sardonically back at him. “Yeah, you have.”
There was another long silence.
“I should go,” Remus said finally, rising. “Will you be all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” she answered, standing as well. “But come by tomorrow?”
“Of course.” He gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. “See you, then.”
“Right, see you.”
She shut the door behind him and returned to cleaning the dishes. She was just putting the last of them away when there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” she called.
“Ministry of Magic,” answered a male voice.
Frowning, Jocelyn opened the door.
“Frank!” she exclaimed in some surprise.
Frank Longbottom, a Ministry Auror, stood on her doorstep looking haggard.
“Jocelyn,” he said quietly, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. “How are you?”
She smiled grimly. “I’ve been better.”
“Haven’t we all,” he agreed. “Look, Jocelyn, this isn’t easy…”
“Frank, I know about Sirius,” she sighed. “Remus already told me.”
Frank shook his head.
“It’s not about Sirius,” he told her. “It’s about “” He paused, took a breath, and began again. “Look, I was sent to tell you that Death Eaters “ er “ attacked several Ministry officials last night.”
He paused, apparently letting the words sink in, but Jocelyn could not make a connection between this event and herself.
“Oh,” she said finally. “I’m, er, sorry, Frank. Is everyone all right?”
“No, Jocelyn, everyone’s not all right,” he answered quietly. “Hector’s in critical condition in St. Mungo’s. They don’t know how long he’s going to last.”
Jocelyn stared at him, trying to comprehend this new information.
“Hector?” she muttered. “In St. Mungo’s?”
Frank nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
Jocelyn looked at Frank as the true meaning of his statement and everything it entailed finally processed itself in her mind. She felt inexplicably calm.
“Don’t be,” she whispered.
Fin.