Jily

Chapter 20

Remus' POV

This week was an absolute mess. The passing of James' parents left a number of people who had cared deeply for them in an abundance of grief and it left the rest of us scrambling to help protect and comfort them.

Obviously, James was hurting the most. They were his parents they loved him so much and he loved them. The entire time that we had known James, we had never once heard him say a single negative comment about his parents. They treated him fairly and he respected them. They all had lived so happily. And then all of a sudden they disappeared from his life forever, leaving him feeling more dejected and depressed than ever before. He was so deeply affected by his loss, anybody would be, that we knew he would never be quite the same James that we had always known. He would be in there somewhere just never shine all the way, always be covered by the wounds he suffered. 

Luckily, James had Lily. She was absolutely wonderful for him. She was constantly empathetic and willing to give comfort at any given time, no matter how inconvenient it was for her. She really cared about James and she only wanted his hurt to go away. She knew that it would take time, though, so in the meantime she vowed that she would do absolutely everything that she could to make James feel better. 

James was hurting, but so was Sirius. When Sirius was rejected by his own family, he found refuge with James'. The Potters had seamlessly accepted Sirius Black as one of their own. To him, Mr. and Mrs. Potter were more than his best mate's parents. They were basically his second parents. They offered him a home, a safe, comfortable place to be where he was not constantly anxious about his own biological parents' malevolent and occasionally violent behavior toward him.

Like James, Sirius had Marlene to help him through this hard time. The pain that Sirius beared was too great to carry alone. The despair that Sirius endured brought Marlene closer to him. She helped him through his time of grief, unknowingly helping herself as well.

Marlene had known the Potters since she was a small child. Growing up, she always considered James her cousin and his parents her aunt and uncle. They were just that close together. She had grown up knowing them. She saw them during Christmas and Easter. Marlene felt the same grief that Sirius felt. In a way, the two of them bonded of their shared pain. They felt as if the other was the only person that could understand. They both understood what it felt like to be taken in by the Potters.

The loss of the Potters, though greatly depressing, did not affect and Peter nearly as much as it did the rest of our friends. Neither of us had known the Potters very well on a personal level. They had accepted me into their son's life with open arms. The two were always very kind and generous people. They were the kind of people that you wanted to get to know.

I had stayed at James' house for a weekend over the Summer a couple years back and they were incredibly nice to me. I had become accustomed to a certain amount of coldness from my father and was appalled by how close together the Potter family was, how much love they effortlessly shared. At the time, I had felt envious of the small, tightknit, happy family of my close friend. Now, I feel like an awful human being for ever even considering being covetous of James.

If there is one thing that I have learned from the grieving process that I have watched my closest friends suffer through, it is that nobody deserves any of it. Nobody deserves the pain of the loss, the emptiness, or the emotional pain that constantly wracks through you. More importantly, nobody deserves to lose their life at all. James' parents did not deserve to die. Not at all. So why did they?