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starfishstarRAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 10: Samhain Night
I am lonely as a memory
Despite the gathering round the fire
–Lisa Hannigan, Little Bird
Though the air was growing crisper and colder by the day, Remus didn’t realise Halloween was almost upon them, until one morning the pack were gathered in the lean-to eating their ever more meagre breakfast and Ashmita commented, “Samhain tonight. Looks to be lovely clear weather for it.”
Remus nearly choked on his hard, dark bread.
Samhain. In other words, Halloween.
“Samhain!” Joy cheered. “I love Samhain!”
Serena smiled and leaned over to tug gently on one of the tiny plaits that covered Joy’s head in neat rows. “Do you even remember Samhain, Little One? It was a whole year ago.”
“Of course I do! There’s a big, big bonfire, like at Beltane, and we have a feast, and the spirits of everyone we’ve loved come and share it with us. And we have meat and nuts and apples and cider, and you let me try the cider, even though cider is for grown-up werewolves.”
Serena chuckled and shared a glance with the other adults, who looked similarly charmed by Joy’s enthusiasm.
Remus, though, was struggling to stay present there in the chilly lean-to, with a bit of dry bread in his hand. Tonight would be Halloween, the anniversary of James and Lily’s death. The night when Remus had catastrophically failed to keep his friends safe.
He kept his eyes on the bare dirt floor of the lean-to and reminded himself to breathe.
Remus vividly remembered the year before, marking this night with Sirius in the basement kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place, both of them getting quietly, viciously plastered on Firewhisky, both still and forever blaming themselves.
Well. This year’s Halloween was one Sirius wouldn’t have to suffer through. Remus could almost envy him for that.
And yet, despite everything, Remus found he didn’t wish that for himself, not even now, as his body clenched in anticipation of the pain of another Halloween. For better or worse, Remus was still here.
The pack spent the day in a flurry of preparatory activity, happily calling out to each other as they went about the work of preparing for the celebration. Remus performed the tasks assigned to him with grim determination, keeping his attention resolutely fixed on the work of his hands as the hours crawled agonisingly by. And all the while, the sharp thrust of grief was in his chest, pressing in on his lungs, stealing his ability to draw breath.
James and Lily were dead. Sirius was dead. And Remus, for reasons unfathomable, for nothing he had ever done to deserve either the gift or the pain of it, was the last one standing.
No one here could understand the depth of that grief, or share in carrying the crushing weight of Remus’ loss. No one here had known James or Lily or Sirius, or could fathom just how much they had meant the world to Remus.
The sun sank to the horizon, tinting the frost-edged contours of the moor with bloody hues of pink and red. Jack and Ashmita put the finishing touches to an enormous pyre they had laid on the open moor some paces away from the grove of trees, then Brighid bent down close to the kindling at its base and set the bonfire alight. All the pack gathered around, the dancing flames casting eerie shapes and shadows across their faces in the dark. The night air was rich with the tang of wood smoke.
It was a selfish thing to think, here amidst the pack that had been so generous to him in sharing their food and shelter, but Remus would have preferred to spend this terrible night alone. If there was to be no one left who could share his grief, then Remus would rather bear it in solitude. He was good, adept in fact, at getting through life on his own. He was used to that sort of loneliness. But nothing was quite so lonely as to be alone in the middle of a crowd.
But once again, the pack surprised him.
Some small, cynical part of Remus – the part that was sick to death of sleeping on the cold ground, sick of waking up with a perpetually running nose, sick of wondering in what possible world it made sense for a group of otherwise reasonable people to be planning to spend an entire winter outdoors on the moor, exposed to the elements – that part had wondered what could be so special about a Samhain bonfire. After all, they had a fire every night, now that the weather had grown cold. How different would this one really be?
But the sceptical part was now proved wrong.
The bonfire towered above them, shooting sparks high into the night sky. Anna was singing, an ancient incantation that seemed to swell up from somewhere deep in her throat, the melody mournful and strange. The pack swayed as they listened, their bodies attuned to the Mother’s song.
The fire was so large, Remus wondered why no one seemed worried that Muggles even as far away as the nearest village might see the light and come to investigate its source. Then he remembered Anna earlier that day making her way in a large circle around the perimeter of their camp, stoop-shouldered, her steps slow but firm, waving her hands in small, precise motions.
The kinds of magic werewolves could do, given that most of them had never trained in the use of a wand, were few. But they did have magicks of their own, wandless spells that were powerful and ancient, passed down within a pack across the generations.
With more time and under less tense circumstances, Remus would have loved to conduct proper research on werewolves’ magic. These spells that got passed down through generations of a werewolf pack, were they intrinsically tied to the nature of being a Dark creature? Or might normal witches and wizards be able to perform these ancient spells too, if they hadn’t allowed the more traditional forms of magic to slip out of cultural memory as wizarding society modernised? These types of magic were studied so infrequently, because of humans’ prejudice and fear.
Anna’s song ended and the energy of the group shifted, from reverential to celebratory. The younger ones dragged over stumps and sections of log and arranged them around the fire to provide everyone with a place to sit. Meanwhile, the adults laid out a feast on a large, flattish log to form a bizarre outdoor buffet.
There was heavy, dark bread that Ashmita and Jack had baked themselves, having gained one-time overnight access to a bakery in one of the villages through some sort of bartered deal, the details of which Remus grasped only vaguely.
There were fresh, crisp apples, fragrant herbs, roasted potatoes, carrots, nuts, and a vast quantity of smoked meat. For days, the younger members of the pack – including Eirwen, who Remus was glad to see now being accepted among the young ones when they worked together on group tasks like these – had done nothing but hunt the small game that lived on the moor, sometimes not returning until late at night. The older members of the pack had stayed equally busy back at the camp, smoking and preserving what the younger ones caught.
Now Remus understood why the pack had been in such a frenzy of food-gathering in recent days. They were carrying out crucial preparations for the coming winter, certainly. But they were also making it possible, for one night, to enjoy a glorious feast.
At one end of the makeshift banquet table, there was even a small, wooden cask of ale, procured from Merlin knew where. That came as a particular surprise, since Remus had yet to see any of the pack drink.
No one was touching the food yet, though. They stayed gathered around the bonfire, each face luminous in the light of the flames. Brighid was speaking now, in such a low, conversational tone that it took Remus a few moments to realise she was addressing the pack as a whole.
“…the turning of the season to darkness, to winter,” Brighid was saying. “This is the dying of the year, the last of the harvest, as the days rush towards their shortest length.
“On this night, alone among all nights of the year, the veils between the worlds grow thin, and those who have left us are free to walk among us once more. On other nights, we spare and save, making do with as little as we can, because we know how scarce are the riches within our reach.
“But tonight, we feast. Tonight, we invite those who have left us, those whom we have loved, to join us at our humble banquet, so that we may break bread together.”
Brighid paused, and the fire popped and crackled loudly in the sudden stillness. Then she said, very softly, “You may invite your dead.”
Heads bowed all around the circle and Remus heard the others speaking quietly, each of them whispering names aloud.
He stared, humbled at the sight of the heads bent all around him. How had he failed to consider that everyone here had surely lost loved ones, too? As werewolves, they had all seen more than their share of hardship. Anna, symbolic mother of them all, appeared to have outlived an entire generation. The Alpha, too, must have suffered his share of loss on the long path to becoming leader of this pack. Serena had lost a sister. And little Joy had lost her mother in the same vicious attack that had transformed her overnight from a normal little girl into an outcast who would likely live her whole life in the wilderness, far removed from any society but that of the pack. And those were only the stories he knew; Remus knew next to nothing of the other pack members’ lives.
He had been so wrapped up in his own tragedy, he’d forgotten he was not the only one here carrying the scars of loss. Everyone here understood grief, in one form or another.
So Remus, too, bowed his head and thought, James, Lily. Sirius. Mum and Dad? Are you there?
The fire crackled but no one around it stirred, all their heads remaining bent and reverent. Remus shut his eyes and cast inside himself for the presence of the people he had loved and lost. He’d lived with their ghosts in his memory for so long, it took no effort to conjure up the sounds of their voices.
Lily’s voice so often spoke the part of Remus that said things weren’t as bad as they seemed, or that he could do with taking himself a little less seriously. James was the voice that gave him courage and laughter, found humour in situations where Remus would have sworn there was none to be found. Remus’ father was often the voice of whimsy in Remus’ mind, offering up his quiet appreciation of the little details that sparkled out of everyday life like dewdrops on the grass. And Remus’ mother’s voice was the steady one that arrived when he most needed it, to tell him he could and would go on. Sometimes the memory of her voice brought with it the sensation of a gentle hand resting at the back of his neck, her gesture of calm and reassurance.
Now, with his head bowed before the werewolves’ Samhain bonfire, for the first time Remus heard Sirius’ voice joining the others, as clearly as if it came straight from the heart of the fire in front of him.
Moony, you nutter, he seemed to hear Sirius say, a familiar bark of a laugh in his voice. Winter outside on the moor with a bunch werewolves, seriously? You daft or what?
Apparently, in Remus’ personal pantheon of lost friends, Sirius’ voice was going to be the one that made fun of him. And that was a thought that allowed Remus to smile a small, wry smile, even on this most terrible of days.
Yes, Sirius, he thought, it’s a rather daft idea, I’ll concede that. But be that as it may, I’m going to see it through. Remus had come this far in making a life with the pack and he wasn’t going to give up now.
He squeezed his eyes more tightly closed and cast deeper into his memories, picturing in sharp detail the faces of the friends he’d lost. I don’t know that I believe the dead really walk among us at Halloween, Remus thought. But if you’re out there – James, Lily, Sirius, Mum, Dad – then I invite you. Come and feast with us.
The fire crackled and spit, and Remus shivered as cool night air swished soothingly across the nape of his neck. He opened his eyes with the sensation that yes, in some intangible way, the people he had loved, the ones he carried inside himself silently all the days of the year, were here with him tonight.
One by one, the members of the pack raised their heads and began to talk quietly amongst themselves. Brighid declared the meal begun and they all crowded around the log where the food was laid out, to eat and drink their fill. It was only now, filling his belly to contentment, that Remus was able to admit to himself that an edge of hunger had lurked at the periphery of his awareness for months, never so acute as to be painful, but never entirely banished. Looking around in the light of the bonfire, he could see the others felt the same.
Late into the night, the pack sat around the fire and told stories and jokes. Later still, a number of them raised their voices in song. It was a surprisingly merry gathering, for a night that celebrated the dead. And throughout it all, the fire crackled warmly, and in its mutterings Remus heard echoes – Lily’s bright laugh, James’ snort of amusement, Sirius’ dark chuckle. His mother and father, whispering confidences to each other. Remus drifted in and out of awareness of the pack’s conversations that were taking place around him, and all the while nursed his grief and gratitude as a tender thing held close against his chest.
Joy drifted off in Serena’s lap, sleepily protesting “One more story…” to the last. In the wee hours of the night, as the large group devolved into smaller, quieter conversations in clusters of two or three, Remus slipped away to the lean-to and his bed.
The grief was still there, held tight and close. It would always be there. But he had survived another Halloween. And that was the most Remus had ever dared to ask of this day.
As Remus was wrapping his piece of canvas around him, in his sleeping spot up against one wall of the lean-to, Serena ducked in under the low-hanging roof, leading a stumbling, drowsy Joy by the hand, coaxing her towards their own sleeping corner.
“Now, my little rippling River,” Remus heard Serena say quietly, as the two of them passed by his sleeping spot, “we say good night to our dead, and we wish them well until we see them again next year. Who would you like to say good night to?”
“Good night, Mummy,” Joy murmured, her voice soft with sleep.
They had passed Remus now and were on the other side of the lean-to, so Remus just barely heard Serena add quietly, “Good night, Irena.”
For once, Remus’ heart was breaking on Halloween night and it was for a tragedy not his own.
Chapter End Notes:
Samhain (pronounced, roughly, "sow-in" or "sah-win") is the Gaelic festival that preceded modern Halloween; the practices described here are roughly based on real Samhain traditions.
This chapter, about Remus on Halloween of the HBP year, of course bears close ties to what I've written about him during the previous year (marking Halloween of OotP with Sirius in Chapter 5 of "Be the Light in my Lantern") and the year after this (during DH with Tonks, in a stand-alone story called "Yahrzeit").
This theme of the remembered voices of Remus' lost friends accompanying him throughout his life has, quite by accident, become quite a thing with me. Other stories in which that theme plays a role are:
Cast Your Soul to the Sea
What I Have Taken Long Before
and Yahrzeit
And while I'm at it, I'll also mention for anyone who doesn't already know, that those little quotes at the start of each chapter do have relevance... I spent hours and hours (seriously, you can't imagine!) over the course of writing this story picking just the right song to accompany each chapter; you can listen to the playlists of those songs HERE. The song for this chapter feels particularly fitting.
(continue to CHAPTER 11: Midwinter Nights)
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 10: Samhain Night
I am lonely as a memory
Despite the gathering round the fire
–Lisa Hannigan, Little Bird
Though the air was growing crisper and colder by the day, Remus didn’t realise Halloween was almost upon them, until one morning the pack were gathered in the lean-to eating their ever more meagre breakfast and Ashmita commented, “Samhain tonight. Looks to be lovely clear weather for it.”
Remus nearly choked on his hard, dark bread.
Samhain. In other words, Halloween.
“Samhain!” Joy cheered. “I love Samhain!”
Serena smiled and leaned over to tug gently on one of the tiny plaits that covered Joy’s head in neat rows. “Do you even remember Samhain, Little One? It was a whole year ago.”
“Of course I do! There’s a big, big bonfire, like at Beltane, and we have a feast, and the spirits of everyone we’ve loved come and share it with us. And we have meat and nuts and apples and cider, and you let me try the cider, even though cider is for grown-up werewolves.”
Serena chuckled and shared a glance with the other adults, who looked similarly charmed by Joy’s enthusiasm.
Remus, though, was struggling to stay present there in the chilly lean-to, with a bit of dry bread in his hand. Tonight would be Halloween, the anniversary of James and Lily’s death. The night when Remus had catastrophically failed to keep his friends safe.
He kept his eyes on the bare dirt floor of the lean-to and reminded himself to breathe.
Remus vividly remembered the year before, marking this night with Sirius in the basement kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place, both of them getting quietly, viciously plastered on Firewhisky, both still and forever blaming themselves.
Well. This year’s Halloween was one Sirius wouldn’t have to suffer through. Remus could almost envy him for that.
And yet, despite everything, Remus found he didn’t wish that for himself, not even now, as his body clenched in anticipation of the pain of another Halloween. For better or worse, Remus was still here.
The pack spent the day in a flurry of preparatory activity, happily calling out to each other as they went about the work of preparing for the celebration. Remus performed the tasks assigned to him with grim determination, keeping his attention resolutely fixed on the work of his hands as the hours crawled agonisingly by. And all the while, the sharp thrust of grief was in his chest, pressing in on his lungs, stealing his ability to draw breath.
James and Lily were dead. Sirius was dead. And Remus, for reasons unfathomable, for nothing he had ever done to deserve either the gift or the pain of it, was the last one standing.
No one here could understand the depth of that grief, or share in carrying the crushing weight of Remus’ loss. No one here had known James or Lily or Sirius, or could fathom just how much they had meant the world to Remus.
The sun sank to the horizon, tinting the frost-edged contours of the moor with bloody hues of pink and red. Jack and Ashmita put the finishing touches to an enormous pyre they had laid on the open moor some paces away from the grove of trees, then Brighid bent down close to the kindling at its base and set the bonfire alight. All the pack gathered around, the dancing flames casting eerie shapes and shadows across their faces in the dark. The night air was rich with the tang of wood smoke.
It was a selfish thing to think, here amidst the pack that had been so generous to him in sharing their food and shelter, but Remus would have preferred to spend this terrible night alone. If there was to be no one left who could share his grief, then Remus would rather bear it in solitude. He was good, adept in fact, at getting through life on his own. He was used to that sort of loneliness. But nothing was quite so lonely as to be alone in the middle of a crowd.
But once again, the pack surprised him.
Some small, cynical part of Remus – the part that was sick to death of sleeping on the cold ground, sick of waking up with a perpetually running nose, sick of wondering in what possible world it made sense for a group of otherwise reasonable people to be planning to spend an entire winter outdoors on the moor, exposed to the elements – that part had wondered what could be so special about a Samhain bonfire. After all, they had a fire every night, now that the weather had grown cold. How different would this one really be?
But the sceptical part was now proved wrong.
The bonfire towered above them, shooting sparks high into the night sky. Anna was singing, an ancient incantation that seemed to swell up from somewhere deep in her throat, the melody mournful and strange. The pack swayed as they listened, their bodies attuned to the Mother’s song.
The fire was so large, Remus wondered why no one seemed worried that Muggles even as far away as the nearest village might see the light and come to investigate its source. Then he remembered Anna earlier that day making her way in a large circle around the perimeter of their camp, stoop-shouldered, her steps slow but firm, waving her hands in small, precise motions.
The kinds of magic werewolves could do, given that most of them had never trained in the use of a wand, were few. But they did have magicks of their own, wandless spells that were powerful and ancient, passed down within a pack across the generations.
With more time and under less tense circumstances, Remus would have loved to conduct proper research on werewolves’ magic. These spells that got passed down through generations of a werewolf pack, were they intrinsically tied to the nature of being a Dark creature? Or might normal witches and wizards be able to perform these ancient spells too, if they hadn’t allowed the more traditional forms of magic to slip out of cultural memory as wizarding society modernised? These types of magic were studied so infrequently, because of humans’ prejudice and fear.
Anna’s song ended and the energy of the group shifted, from reverential to celebratory. The younger ones dragged over stumps and sections of log and arranged them around the fire to provide everyone with a place to sit. Meanwhile, the adults laid out a feast on a large, flattish log to form a bizarre outdoor buffet.
There was heavy, dark bread that Ashmita and Jack had baked themselves, having gained one-time overnight access to a bakery in one of the villages through some sort of bartered deal, the details of which Remus grasped only vaguely.
There were fresh, crisp apples, fragrant herbs, roasted potatoes, carrots, nuts, and a vast quantity of smoked meat. For days, the younger members of the pack – including Eirwen, who Remus was glad to see now being accepted among the young ones when they worked together on group tasks like these – had done nothing but hunt the small game that lived on the moor, sometimes not returning until late at night. The older members of the pack had stayed equally busy back at the camp, smoking and preserving what the younger ones caught.
Now Remus understood why the pack had been in such a frenzy of food-gathering in recent days. They were carrying out crucial preparations for the coming winter, certainly. But they were also making it possible, for one night, to enjoy a glorious feast.
At one end of the makeshift banquet table, there was even a small, wooden cask of ale, procured from Merlin knew where. That came as a particular surprise, since Remus had yet to see any of the pack drink.
No one was touching the food yet, though. They stayed gathered around the bonfire, each face luminous in the light of the flames. Brighid was speaking now, in such a low, conversational tone that it took Remus a few moments to realise she was addressing the pack as a whole.
“…the turning of the season to darkness, to winter,” Brighid was saying. “This is the dying of the year, the last of the harvest, as the days rush towards their shortest length.
“On this night, alone among all nights of the year, the veils between the worlds grow thin, and those who have left us are free to walk among us once more. On other nights, we spare and save, making do with as little as we can, because we know how scarce are the riches within our reach.
“But tonight, we feast. Tonight, we invite those who have left us, those whom we have loved, to join us at our humble banquet, so that we may break bread together.”
Brighid paused, and the fire popped and crackled loudly in the sudden stillness. Then she said, very softly, “You may invite your dead.”
Heads bowed all around the circle and Remus heard the others speaking quietly, each of them whispering names aloud.
He stared, humbled at the sight of the heads bent all around him. How had he failed to consider that everyone here had surely lost loved ones, too? As werewolves, they had all seen more than their share of hardship. Anna, symbolic mother of them all, appeared to have outlived an entire generation. The Alpha, too, must have suffered his share of loss on the long path to becoming leader of this pack. Serena had lost a sister. And little Joy had lost her mother in the same vicious attack that had transformed her overnight from a normal little girl into an outcast who would likely live her whole life in the wilderness, far removed from any society but that of the pack. And those were only the stories he knew; Remus knew next to nothing of the other pack members’ lives.
He had been so wrapped up in his own tragedy, he’d forgotten he was not the only one here carrying the scars of loss. Everyone here understood grief, in one form or another.
So Remus, too, bowed his head and thought, James, Lily. Sirius. Mum and Dad? Are you there?
The fire crackled but no one around it stirred, all their heads remaining bent and reverent. Remus shut his eyes and cast inside himself for the presence of the people he had loved and lost. He’d lived with their ghosts in his memory for so long, it took no effort to conjure up the sounds of their voices.
Lily’s voice so often spoke the part of Remus that said things weren’t as bad as they seemed, or that he could do with taking himself a little less seriously. James was the voice that gave him courage and laughter, found humour in situations where Remus would have sworn there was none to be found. Remus’ father was often the voice of whimsy in Remus’ mind, offering up his quiet appreciation of the little details that sparkled out of everyday life like dewdrops on the grass. And Remus’ mother’s voice was the steady one that arrived when he most needed it, to tell him he could and would go on. Sometimes the memory of her voice brought with it the sensation of a gentle hand resting at the back of his neck, her gesture of calm and reassurance.
Now, with his head bowed before the werewolves’ Samhain bonfire, for the first time Remus heard Sirius’ voice joining the others, as clearly as if it came straight from the heart of the fire in front of him.
Moony, you nutter, he seemed to hear Sirius say, a familiar bark of a laugh in his voice. Winter outside on the moor with a bunch werewolves, seriously? You daft or what?
Apparently, in Remus’ personal pantheon of lost friends, Sirius’ voice was going to be the one that made fun of him. And that was a thought that allowed Remus to smile a small, wry smile, even on this most terrible of days.
Yes, Sirius, he thought, it’s a rather daft idea, I’ll concede that. But be that as it may, I’m going to see it through. Remus had come this far in making a life with the pack and he wasn’t going to give up now.
He squeezed his eyes more tightly closed and cast deeper into his memories, picturing in sharp detail the faces of the friends he’d lost. I don’t know that I believe the dead really walk among us at Halloween, Remus thought. But if you’re out there – James, Lily, Sirius, Mum, Dad – then I invite you. Come and feast with us.
The fire crackled and spit, and Remus shivered as cool night air swished soothingly across the nape of his neck. He opened his eyes with the sensation that yes, in some intangible way, the people he had loved, the ones he carried inside himself silently all the days of the year, were here with him tonight.
One by one, the members of the pack raised their heads and began to talk quietly amongst themselves. Brighid declared the meal begun and they all crowded around the log where the food was laid out, to eat and drink their fill. It was only now, filling his belly to contentment, that Remus was able to admit to himself that an edge of hunger had lurked at the periphery of his awareness for months, never so acute as to be painful, but never entirely banished. Looking around in the light of the bonfire, he could see the others felt the same.
Late into the night, the pack sat around the fire and told stories and jokes. Later still, a number of them raised their voices in song. It was a surprisingly merry gathering, for a night that celebrated the dead. And throughout it all, the fire crackled warmly, and in its mutterings Remus heard echoes – Lily’s bright laugh, James’ snort of amusement, Sirius’ dark chuckle. His mother and father, whispering confidences to each other. Remus drifted in and out of awareness of the pack’s conversations that were taking place around him, and all the while nursed his grief and gratitude as a tender thing held close against his chest.
Joy drifted off in Serena’s lap, sleepily protesting “One more story…” to the last. In the wee hours of the night, as the large group devolved into smaller, quieter conversations in clusters of two or three, Remus slipped away to the lean-to and his bed.
The grief was still there, held tight and close. It would always be there. But he had survived another Halloween. And that was the most Remus had ever dared to ask of this day.
As Remus was wrapping his piece of canvas around him, in his sleeping spot up against one wall of the lean-to, Serena ducked in under the low-hanging roof, leading a stumbling, drowsy Joy by the hand, coaxing her towards their own sleeping corner.
“Now, my little rippling River,” Remus heard Serena say quietly, as the two of them passed by his sleeping spot, “we say good night to our dead, and we wish them well until we see them again next year. Who would you like to say good night to?”
“Good night, Mummy,” Joy murmured, her voice soft with sleep.
They had passed Remus now and were on the other side of the lean-to, so Remus just barely heard Serena add quietly, “Good night, Irena.”
For once, Remus’ heart was breaking on Halloween night and it was for a tragedy not his own.
Chapter End Notes:
Samhain (pronounced, roughly, "sow-in" or "sah-win") is the Gaelic festival that preceded modern Halloween; the practices described here are roughly based on real Samhain traditions.
This chapter, about Remus on Halloween of the HBP year, of course bears close ties to what I've written about him during the previous year (marking Halloween of OotP with Sirius in Chapter 5 of "Be the Light in my Lantern") and the year after this (during DH with Tonks, in a stand-alone story called "Yahrzeit").
This theme of the remembered voices of Remus' lost friends accompanying him throughout his life has, quite by accident, become quite a thing with me. Other stories in which that theme plays a role are:
Cast Your Soul to the Sea
What I Have Taken Long Before
and Yahrzeit
And while I'm at it, I'll also mention for anyone who doesn't already know, that those little quotes at the start of each chapter do have relevance... I spent hours and hours (seriously, you can't imagine!) over the course of writing this story picking just the right song to accompany each chapter; you can listen to the playlists of those songs HERE. The song for this chapter feels particularly fitting.
(continue to CHAPTER 11: Midwinter Nights)
