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By his fifth year of Hogwarts, Remus Lupin knows fully well that he is not the artist in his group of friends.
Sirius is the one who can play the violin beautifully and wildly all at once, his bow flying across the strings like flashes of lightning in a thunderstorm. James, surprisingly, has a knack for singing—while no one would say he has the voice of an angel, his baritone is smooth and steady. Peter, always adaptable, is a fan of pottery—the wizarding way, not the Muggle, but he’s slowly accumulated a stack of glazed vases underneath his bed.
Remus? Remus can barely sketch a recognizable stick figure. He’s been resigned to his lack of artistic ability since he was ten and his father asked if a drawing of a hippogriff was a dog with a particularly long neck.
As a result, when Dumbledore announces the addition of a new portrait painting elective to the Hogwarts curriculum—on a limited-time and limited-capacity basis, taught by a visiting artist-in-residence and personal friend of Dumbledore, and only available for fifth years and above, he stresses—Remus barely gives a thought to it. There are far more important things to concentrate on, after all, such as his Ancient Runes grade, the next full moon, and the strange glances he sometimes catches Sirius giving him in the middle of Potions class. There’s no reason for him to even think about some strange elective that he won’t be taking anyway.
That, at least, is how he thinks about it, until that day at lunch, when Sirius, munching on a slice of beef, says, “Remus, you should really consider taking that portrait-what’s-it class.”
“The Mysterious World of Magical Portraits,” Remus corrects automatically. “And why would I take a portrait painting class? I can’t draw.”
“That’s why you should take it!” James chimes in cheerfully. “You can finally learn how to draw.”
“It’s a painting class, not a drawing class.”
“Painting, drawing, same thing,” James dismisses, waving a hand in the air. “You should take it. Maybe you’ll be the next great wizarding artist. I mean, you’ve never taken formal lessons, have you?”
“Why would I? Again, I can’t draw. There’s no reason for me to.”
“The reason,” Sirius says, waving his fork in the air, “is to push boundaries. The reason is to explore new frontiers. The reason—”
“Is to finally help us draw the map,” Peter says, nodding so seriously that he has to be joking. “You’ve got to do your fair share of the work, Remus.”
“I cast the spells!” Remus protests. “I don’t understand why I should be the one taking this.”
“Why shouldn’t you be?” Sirius asks. “One, you’ll finally learn how to draw, two, none of us have free space in our schedules during that time slot, and three, this artist is Dumbledore’s friend, so odds are that it’ll be an easy O anyway. There’s no downsides.”
“The downside is that I’ll lose valuable time.”
“Time that you use to sulk alone in the dorm while we’re in class and read sad poetry,” James says. Remus would protest, except it probably is true that Plath’s poems aren’t exactly uplifting. “Why not give it a try?”
“I might not even be accepted,” Remus replies. “I’m sure there are people who actually enjoy painting who would want to take a class with this artist.”
“Jean-Claude Hollande,” James supplies.
“Professor Hollande. Anyway, there are probably other students who would actually enjoy a portrait painting class. I shouldn’t take away that opportunity from them.”
“You wouldn’t be taking anything away from anyone,” Sirius replies. “Look, how many people in our year even enjoy painting?”
“Ten?” Remus guesses.
"Less. Six, seven at most. Multiply that by three to get the total number of interested people eligible to take this class, and you’ve got a hard cap of twenty-one. Most of those twenty-one people have other electives they’re taking—this art class takes place the same place as both Divination and Muggle Studies—and they’re probably not going to drop them just for a one-year-long class without any established grading criteria. Now, you’re looking at maybe eight or nine students in this entire class. If there isn’t space for you, I’ll eat my wand.”
“Don’t do that,” Remus replies automatically.
“Or what?” Sirius raises an eyebrow. “What’ll you do about it?”
“I’ll report you to Madam Pomfrey,” Remus says, realizing automatically how stupid he sounds.
“Ooh, I’m terrified.” Sirius rolls his eyes. “But seriously, you should consider taking the class. I mean, what do you have to lose?”
What does he have to lose? This has been perhaps the core guiding principle of Remus Lupin’s life for the better part of the last five years, the moment a thin Asian boy wrapped in an elaborate emerald coat he looked far past uncomfortable in extended a hand to Remus, introduced himself as the heir to the House of Black, and then asked Remus what he thought about “triple Exploding Snap,” described succinctly as “Exploding Snap, but with even more explosions.” At this point, the only thing Remus has to lose is an extra two hours of sleep, and God knows he barely uses those hours anyway.
“Fine,” Remus sighs. “I’ll give it a shot. But don’t be surprised if it’s absolutely terrible.”
Against all odds, Remus finds himself in a makeshift studio converted from an old alchemy classroom two weeks later, standing awkwardly at an easel. (Or, rather, in Sirius’s words, due to the odds, Remus is standing in the classroom. It doesn’t make much of a difference, especially since probability has never been Remus’s strong suit.)
Sure enough, there are only seven other students in the class—two Slytherins, two Hufflepuffs, and three Ravenclaws. Remus is the only Gryffindor, and he’s also the only fifth year. (He’s also probably the only person who can’t even draw.)
It takes nearly a quarter of an hour for Professor Hollande to actually show up. In fact, one Slytherin seems only seconds away from shoving their materials into their bag and making a bolt for it when Hollande walks into the classroom, seemingly unaware of his extraordinary lateness.
The first thing Remus notices about Hollande is that he is extremely French. If Remus were asked to hypothetically imagine a Frenchman, he would probably end up describing someone like Hollande, currently clad in stylish, muted robes, dark circles under his eyes and looking simultaneously as though he just rolled out of bed and woke up before the sun even rose to make the perfect cup of coffee.
His accent, though, is all British—Northern too, and Remus makes a note to tell Lily about the newest step forward for non-London-located professor recognition.
“It seems,” Hollande says, slumping into a chair, “that you all have decided to take this class. For what reason, I can’t imagine, but your headmaster is a good swindler.” Nervous chuckles fill the room, but no sign of levity can be seen on Hollande’s face. “This is not, you must understand, a class simply for those of you who want to be the next Picasso or have your paintings hung in the magical wing of the Louvre. This is not, my friends, an art class.”
Remus waits for Hollande to begin laughing, or perhaps simply explain that he was making an incredibly bad joke. Neither occurs.
Instead, one brave Hufflepuff girl raises her hand, and when Hollande points a finger at her, she asks in a wavering voice, only clearing her throat once or twice, “Sir, I’m sorry, but if this isn’t an art class, then what is it? We’ve got our easles and canvases and paints.”
“This is not, first and foremost, a class about art,” Hollande says. “This is a class about passion. This is a class about all-consuming, blazing, unduplicable love. This is a class for those of you who want to learn to live, not simply dream of, lives of unimaginable passion.”
Again, Remus waits for laughter. None comes.
To his credit, Hollande seems to notice that the entirety of the room has fallen into a stunned silence. “Now, this does not mean that those of you who are here to paint should leave the class,” he says. “I do hope, however, that you reconsider why you are here and if your goals align with mine. Now, your first assignment—a flower. In the next hour, paint me any flower—an imaginary one, a wizarding one, a Muggle one, a disturbing one, an ethereal one. Paint a flower.”
This, finally, seems to spark a flurry of activity from Remus’s classmates. Each one of them begins frantically pulling out their horse-tailed brushes and dipping them in multicolored oil paints, apparently all having already envisioned the platonic ideal of a flower. Remus decides, after a good five minutes of dithering and panicking, decides to paint a daisy, largely because of his excess of bright yellow paint.
As he paints, he quickly realizes that it’s not a very good daisy. The petals are incredibly lopsided, nothing about it looks realistic whatsoever, and to top it all off, the Ravenclaw girl standing next to his easel is painting a daisy as well, a far better one with shadows and highlights and a wonderfully bright green stem.
His nerves also aren’t assuaged by the fact that Hollande keeps slowly strolling around the room, humming contemplatively and peering at canvases. When he reaches Remus’s canvas, he lets out a particularly long, contemplative sigh, and inadvertently, Remus feels his shoulders stiffen.
At the hour mark, Hollande claps his hands stiffly. “Drop your brushes,” he commands. Hee circles around the room once more before stopping at the station of a Hufflepuff girl.
Her painting is, in a word, beautiful. It has a wondrous feel, romantic and elegant, the edges of the flowers smudged so that it both resembles a rose and nothing at all. There is audible, light applause coming from the other side of the room.
Hollande, however, does not look impressed. Indeed, he almost looks disgruntled, or at least dismayed. He hums contemplatively again before simply declaring, “Interesting.” The Hufflepuff looks terrified.
“Thank you?” she ventures, an audible tremor in her voice.
Hollande doesn’t seem to hear her. “This painting is interesting,” he says, turning out to face the rest of the room. “It is pretty, yes, but it is also, quite unfortunately, derivative. I’ve seen at least ten in the same mold over the last year.” The Hufflepuff looks like she’s about to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“No, no, don’t be sorry,” Hollande says. “You are obviously skilled. It is derivative because you have had training—you have, haven’t you?” The Hufflepuff nods. “Yes, this much is obvious. You have talent, clearly. As a result, however, I’m afraid that I would advise you to drop this class.”
Audibly, the class gasps.
“Why do you want her to drop the class?” one particularly brave Slytherin asks. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“That is precisely why I’m asking her to leave the class,” Hollande says. “This class is not for those who have already been trained. I do not wish to teach those who have already learned how to paint—how to create—a certain way. It is as a Chinese philosopher once said—only some can truly learn how to unlearn, and it is far more difficult to teach those who are already learned to unlearn than those who are not yet learned.”
“I’m sorry,” the Hufflepuff says softly.
“Don’t be,” Hollande says. “It isn’t your fault, really.” Then, without a second glance, he leaves her canvas, and walks up to—oh God—Remus’s easel.
He braces himself for cutting criticism. After all, his daisy more resembles a pile of tissue paper than a flower, and if that was the criticism the Hufflepuff girl got for her far superior creation—well, he doesn’t want to know what Hollande thinks of his.
Instead, though, Hollande actually begins clapping. For a moment, Remus wonders if he’s being mocked—it’d be just his luck to actually be made fun of by a professor. Looking at his face, though, Hollande seems sincere.
“This is what I want,” Hollande proclaims, and Remus wonders if he’s gone insane. “I want raw talent. I want those who are unafraid to explore in their art. I want those who are unafraid to make mistakes.”
“Um,” Remus says, feeling incredibly dumbfounded.
“You cannot, under any circumstances, stop painting,” says Hollande. “You—there is great potential in you.”
Remus is now certain that Hollande is mad, but he’s also not exactly sure how he can correct Hollande. Actually, I’m terrible at painting doesn’t seem like an appropriate thing to say, especially not when Hollande has a gleam in his eyes that’s almost crazed. As a result, all he does is nod.
A moment later, he realizes that this means he can’t leave the class without disappointing Hollande, perhaps irredeemably so, and gulps.
By the next class, there are only four students. At the third, the number has trickled down to three, and it stays that way for two months. After a while, Remus settles into a pattern—yes, Hollande is eccentric, and yes, his ideas are a bit strange, but he’s never too strange, and Remus can see the improvement in his own work.
One day, Hollande comes into the classroom with an unfamiliar expression on his face. With a start, Remus realizes that he looks excited, a realization confirmed when Hollande says, in a strange, chipper tone, “Today, we’re going to be painting portraits.”
Portraits. Remus grimaces. He might be a lot better at the mechanics of painting now, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to create anything that remotely resembles a face.
Hollande, for his part, is rummaging inside a storage closet. After some rifling, he pulls out a strikingly beautiful portrait of a woman—red-haired, brown-eyed, and staring straight at the observer with a strong gaze, she looks like she could kill with a smile. It takes a second for Remus to see that she’s actually a moving portrait, not a still one, as she waves shyly to the class.
“Who is that?” one girl asks, reaching out a hand as if to touch the portrait.
“Someone I knew once. Someone I loved once,” Hollande says curtly, snatching the portrait away. “Nothing for you to concern yourself about.” With a start, Remus realizes that this is the first time he’s ever seen a work created by Hollande. His artwork is beautiful, the strokes controlled yet wild at once, and the colors blend into each other seamlessly. And, of course, it’s absolutely lifelike—it seems as though the woman could walk out of the frame at any second.
“Today, I ask you to paint someone you love too,” Hollande says. “I want you to fill your canvas with passion. I want to be able to feel the love you feel.”
Instantly, Remus thinks of his mother. He can see the shape of her face clearly: her greying brown hair, her warm eyes, her slightly slanted chin. He dabs a thin brush into his paints, hoping that he can actually create something recognizable.
What he puts on the canvas, though, is different—the hair is too dark, the eyes too lively, too mischievous, the mouth too wide and laughing. It’s Sirius, he realizes, Sirius as Remus sees him every day. And, he realizes, there’s a sinking pit in his stomach, a sinking pit as he begins to understand what this means—or, at least, what his subconscious wants.
Because he can’t like Sirius—not in that way, at least. Because sometimes, being around Sirius is like being sucked into a whirlpool, and Remus isn’t willing to dedicate his life to the seas. And Sirius wouldn’t ever like Remus back anyway, not when there are so many people who spend their days sighing over him, laughing at all his jokes, even the bad ones. And besides, there’s their friendship to think of; if Remus ever told him anything, if Remus even hinted that he might feel something for Sirius that isn’t entirely platonic, who knows what would happen.
Yet despite that—despite all of that—he finds himself finishing the painting, carefully painting in Sirius’s features. Surprising even himself, it actually ends up resembling Sirius fairly well. Sure, the mouth is a little bit wonky, but it looks enough like him, at least from a distance.
“You care about him very much,” Hollande says softly from over Remus’s shoulder, and it takes every bone in Remus’s body to not jump, slightly, out of surprise. “There is love here.”
“Er, maybe,” Remus says, chuckling awkwardly.
“Yes, there is love here,” Hollande says again. “It is clear. And if you wish to—the spell to bring a portrait to life is simple. Just say ‘amare, vivere’ and it should be as though he is right here with you.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be needing that,” Remus replies. If anything, Sirius is too present—so present, it seems, that Remus has had the terrible luck to fall for him.
Hollande shrugs. “You never know,” he says. He looks again at Remus’s painting. “I think this would be a good present, no?”
“Maybe.” In truth, Remus has no intention of ever even letting Sirius see this painting, let alone gifting it to him. But perhaps he shouldn’t tell that to Hollande.
Remus ends up sliding the painting below his bed, leaving it to decay amongst dust bunnies and old candy bar wrappers. He nearly forgets about it, in fact—the next week, they paint cityscapes, and after that, abstractions of musical sounds, which are still more difficult than portraits.
It comes as a shock, then, when he walks into their dormitory one day to find Sirius sitting on the floor, gazing at Remus’s painting. Remus has to suppress the urge to drop his books and run out of the room screaming.
“Is this me?” Sirius asks, holding up the painting. In response, all Remus can do is nod stiffly. Sirius stares at Remus, something unreadable in his dark eyes. “Is this—is this how you see me?”
“What do you mean?” Remus manages to croak out.
“I look so happy,” Sirius says softly. “I look like I’ve never worried about anything at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Remus says. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean for you to find this.”
“Why would you be sorry?”
Because it’s weird, Remus doesn’t say. Because it’s weird to paint your best friend, and it’s weird to paint them with so much care, and it’s especially weird to paint them when the assignment is to paint someone you love, and Remus doesn’t—can’t—love Sirius. Instead, he says, “I—I don’t know. But I’m sorry.”
Sirius stands up, dusting off his pants, and for a moment, Remus wonders if Sirius is going to hex him. Instead, though, Sirius steps closer, so close that their heads are nearly touching.
“Is this okay?” Sirius asks, a hint of what sounds like fear in his voice. Remus doesn’t really know what he’d be saying okay to, but he nods anyway.
And then Sirius leans in, and their lips meet, and Remus—Remus doesn’t feel fireworks, and he doesn’t feel as though his entire world has turned upside down, but he does feel warm, and he does feel safe, and he does feel so, so loved.
Moments later, they break apart, and Sirius smiles, a soft, small smile. “Thank you for painting this,” he says. “Thank you.”
For the next three days, Remus feels like he’s floating on air. He and Sirius haven’t entirely defined what they are yet, but they’ve kissed, and they’ve spent evenings leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, and sometimes, they do homework together with the fingertips of their hands barely touching. And soon, they’ll tell James, and they’ll tell Peter, and maybe things will be a little bit fucked up for a while, but they’ll probably get better eventually.
First, though, he needs to thank Hollande for conceiving of the portrait assignment, as awkward as he knows doing that will be—after all, how do you tell you professor, “Your classwork got me a boyfriend?” Nevertheless, he decides to head to class around a half hour early that day, a thank you note in hand.
When he steps into the classroom, Hollande is nowhere in sight—strange, since he’s usually setting up some assignment before class, or at least tidying up the canvases, but perhaps Remus is too early. He decides to knock on the door to Hollande’s office, once, and then twice.
No answer comes, though, not even after Remus begins knocking so loudly on the glass that he’s certain the whole school, even the Slytherins down in the dungeons, can hear him, so after a few more seconds of futilely knocking, Remus turns open the knob to the door.
Inside is Hollande. He is slumped over a stack of books, drool coming from his mouth. His head is lolled unhealthily to the side. Slanted on the wall, nearly in front of him, is the painting of the mysterious, beloved red-headed woman. His shoulders are stuck at a strange angle. He looks as though he is dead.
Remus steps closer to him, panic rising in his throat. He touches a hand to Hollande’s wrist, feeling around for a pulse. Try as he might, he can’t feel any motion—any sign of life—at all.
Hollande, it seems, is dead.
Remus, for lack of any better options, screams.
The mysterious death of Hollande is the talk of Hogwarts for months. In less than a day, the whole of the school knows that Remus was the unfortunate individual to find the body. If not for Sirius, James, and Peter, who form a protective phalanx around Remus in the halls, away from prying eyes and whispers, he’s sure that he would be constantly hounded with questions about the situation.
Even so, rumors quickly spread concerning Hollande’s death. The popular theory for a few weeks is that he was poisoned, perhaps by an artistic rival, out of jealousy, until Madam Pomfrey makes it clear that no traces of arsenic or rat poison were found in his system. Dumbledore announces that an investigation will be undertaken by the Ministry, and for weeks, Aurors stalk the halls, seemingly doing less investigating than strutting around ominously in their long capes and cloaks.
Weeks pass, and there are still no clear answers. One Auror posits that Hollande was trying out a new cleaning spell that backfired horribly; another insists that it was the work of an unfortunate bout of visible symptom-less dragon pox. Eventually, a consensus grows that something was wrong with the paints Hollande used—tainted with lead, one Muggleborn Auror says, rifling through her long stack of notes—and every student in Hollande’s class, including Remus, is rigorously tested for traces of lead poisoning.
The intrigue around Hollande’s death trickles to a slow stop by the time O.W.L.S. rolls around, largely due to exam panic overtaking lead poisoning panic. The long stretches of time over the summer would likely have caused the mystery to vamp up again, but in July, Voldemort makes his most brazen move yet, attacking Muggleborns in broad daylight.
In August, Sirius shows up on James’s doorstep, his eyes laden with fear. When asked what happened, he only shakes his head, closing his eyes in worry. It becomes clear very quickly that war is imminent—not only on the horizon, it has already begun to rise.
By the time September rolls around, Hollande’s death has become more folk mystery than imminent threat. Remus only bothers to consider it more deeply when it turns out that he still can’t see the thestrals.
“Well, you didn’t really see him die, did you?” James reasons, which is as good an explanation as any other. Remus nods, and resolves to put the mystery, despite its disturbing nature, out of mind for at least a bit. Otherwise, he’s almost certain that he would have a full-fledged breakdown.
The rest, of course, is known. By 1982, Remus is alone, the only one left of his group of friends. By 1982, Remus barely paints—sometimes, if the light hits his windows right, he’ll sketch a view of the buildings from his apartment, or he’ll do a quick doodle of a bridge, but he’s far more concerned with making ends meet than anything else.
It’s not until 1995, once he and Sirius are settled in Grimmauld Place, in all its terrible Victorian glory, that he begins painting again. He begins by sketching Sirius—his first real muse—and then, one afternoon, when Sirius looks particularly stifled and downtrodden, Remus decides that he will paint another portrait of Sirius, this time, one that he actually enchants.
“Are you sure you want to memorialize this?” Sirius asks wryly, raising his eyebrows and underrating his own beauty by incredible amounts.
“I do,” Remus replies seriously. “It will probably take some time—”
“Oh, I’ve got all the time in the world now,” Sirius says dismissively. “If you really want to paint me, I won’t stop you.”
“I really, really want to paint you,” Remus says firmly. In return, Sirius gives him a soft smile—rare, these days, and presses a kiss to his cheek.
Painting the portrait is an incredibly slow process—given that Remus will actually be enchanting this one, he wants to make sure that it’s as precise and accurate as possible, which means that there are a good amount of false stops and starts—but Sirius is remarkably patient throughout a process, in a way that he certainly wouldn’t have been even a year ago. Remus wants to capture all of Sirius—his smiles, his laughs, his tears, his shouts—with just one palette and a brush.
He finally manages to finish and enchant the portrait near the end of May. Sirius has grown increasingly on edge, and truth be told, Remus feels that familiar anxiety rising in his own bones as well, but he tries to push it down. It will do no good if they are both terrified of what will come next, after all.
When he shows the portrait to Sirius, surprisingly, he laughs. “I’m not that beautiful,” he says, rolling his eyes. “This is blatant misrepresentation. Besides, no portrait can ever fully embody me, Remus. I swear, Remus, if I ever die, and the only thing left of me is a portrait, I’m going to come back and make sure everyone knows what I was really like.”
“Well, I want to at least try,” Remus says. “I want to try.” Once this war ends, he wants to paint every portrait of Sirius that he can with the time he has, he wants to become a Renaissance artist and make Sirius a true muse, make a series of studies of Sirius, Sirius in blue, Sirius in red, Sirius incandescent—
And then Sirius goes through the Veil, and Remus is only left with this one portrait. This one talking, enchanted portrait in a frame, and no real Sirius at all.
Is it any wonder, then, that by the middle of the summer, Remus finds himself holding occasional conversations with the portrait?
Obviously, he knows that the portrait isn’t Sirius. The portrait, after all, can’t really venture beyond the confines of its frame, especially once Remus leaves Grimmauld Place and brings the portrait back to his small cottage in Yorkshire, placing it in a place of honor on his small kitchen table. The portrait, for all its beauty, still can’t hold a candle to the beauty of the real Sirius. The portrait isn’t a person.
But the portrait is charming, and the portrait is witty, and the portrait is still a portrait of Sirius, and by God, Remus misses Sirius. He misses Sirius like a limb, misses the way he would smile lazily in the morning, misses the way he would curl up around Remus in their bed, as though he never wanted to, never could let go.
So he talks to the portrait. Sometimes, the conversations are casual—they’ll reminisce about a particularly spectacular prank they pulled, or a mission that went fantastically. Sometimes, they’ll talk about more serious matters, maybe even try to talk about the way they feel, and if Remus can feel anything for a painting at all.
And today, it seems, Portrait Sirius wants to talk about Harry. Or, more accurately, he wants to talk about the way he died.
“I shouldn’t have left Grimmauld Place,” Portrait Sirius says. “I shouldn’t have gone to the Ministry. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have taunted Bellatrix. The moment I began falling through the Veil, I knew just how terrible of a mistake I’d made.”
“I know,” Remus replies, when what he really wants to say is that he doesn’t want to talk about this at all. He doesn’t want to be reminded that the real Sirius is somewhere beyond a mysterious veil, his soul departed from his body. He wants Sirius to still be here with him.
“I’m so sorry,” Portrait Sirius continues. “It’s just—I couldn’t stay in Grimmauld Place anymore. I just couldn’t.”
“I know.”
“You can’t understand what it was like to grow up there. It was like I was forced back into the worst parts of my life, and I just couldn’t leave, you know? Every day, I felt like I was getting worse and worse and worse, and I needed to get out. I needed to, or else I would just disappear.”
“I know,” Remus sighs. He knows all too well how Sirius must have felt in those last few days. “I just wish—I really wish you hadn’t gone. Harry needs you. I—I need you.”
“I know,” Sirius—Portrait Sirius—replies softly. “I know.”
And then, they are silent for a very long time, and Remus begins to understand that even if Portrait Sirius isn’t really Sirius, he feels enough like him for Remus to never want to stop talking to him—so he starts talking again, this time about something incredibly stupid, maybe some terrible dish that Remus screwed up, but Portrait Sirius laughs, and Portrait Sirius replies, and Sirius loves him—
“Remus? Remus?”
Remus feels as though he has just woken up in the middle of a hurricane. His head is pounding, and he can barely open his eyes.
“Remus!”
Blearily, he forces his eyes open. Standing over him is Tonks, who is—shaking him by the shoulders?
“What happened?” Remus asks, belatedly realizing that he’s lying on the floor. Or, rather, he’s lying on the floor, and a chair has fallen over him. Sirius’s portrait is still propped up perfectly on the kitchen table.
“I don’t know! Why don’t you tell me?” Tonks sounds strangely terrified, confusing Remus even further.
“I fell asleep?” Remus tries, cracking a smile, but Tonks doesn’t show any signs of amusement at all.
“Remus, it’s October,” she says simply. “You missed the last two Order meetings, and we’ve been searching for you for a week.”
“And you only came here now?” He tries his best not to panic at the revelation that he seems to have lost an entire month of time, and he doesn’t have the faintest idea of where it went.
“Well, for one thing, I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to actually live at your last known address during a fucking war,” Tonks snaps. “We all thought you were on another mission to the werewolves, but then Dumbledore told us you weren’t, and we all collectively realized that you’d disappeared off the face of the fucking Earth. God, Remus, what the fuck happened?”
“I really have no idea,” Remus replies truthfully. “One moment I was fine, and the next—well, the next, I was here on this floor.”
“Well, what were you doing before you ended up on the floor?”
Remus hesitates. On one hand, if he says that he was holding a conversation with a portrait, he’ll sound insane. On the other hand, Tonks probably thinks that Remus is insane already, so it isn’t like he has much to lose.
“I was talking to Sirius’s portrait,” he admits, sighing.
To Tonks’s credit, she barely flinches. “This portrait?” Tonks asks instead, walking over to it. Sirius’s portrait waves openly to Tonks. She does not return the wave. Instead, she casts a quick diagnostic spell, frowning. “Okay, uh, Remus? Has this portrait been hexed or cursed?”
“I don’t think so? I was the one who painted it,” he says. “It hasn’t left my side for months.”
“Well, that makes things difficult, since there’s an awful lot of, uh, signs of super dark magic coming from it, and I really don’t think that you intended to cast a spell to suck out your life force or anything,” Tonks says bluntly.
“What?”
“Yeah.” Tonks conjures a quick curtain, drapes it over the portrait, and then pockets her wand. “Okay, I think we need to go see a painting doctor.”
“A painting doctor?”
“Painting diagnoser, whatever. We need someone to tell us what the fuck is going on here.”
Visiting a painting doctor, it turns out, means going to Central London to see a magical art gallery ostensibly run by one of Wizarding Britain’s finest curators. According to Tonks, this curator will have the answers to the question of “what is wrong with this portrait Remus painted,” which will possibly lead them to the answer to the question of “what the fuck happened to Remus.”
When they arrive at the gallery, though, there’s no curator to be found—at least, no curator by the description Tonks gave, which essentially boils down to “super old Italian dude.” Instead, they’re greeted by a frazzled-looking Asian girl who introduces herself as Amy and shakes her head wearily when they ask where the curator is.
“No idea,” she says, sounding apologetic. “He sometimes disappears for long stretches of time—he’s a very busy man, you know. He’s always trying to expand our collection.”
“Well, would you happen to know anything about art?” Tonks asks.
At this, Amy laughs, almost bitterly. “Know anything about art? I work at an art gallery. Of course I know things about art. I read Art History at Oxford, you know.” Then, under her breath, she adds, “Not like anyone treats me like I do.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Tonks replies, sounding chastened. “Would you happen to know anything about enchantment spells then? Uh, specifically enchantment spells that bring wizarding portraits to life.”
“There are lots of enchantment spells,” Amy says, shrugging. “I’d need to know which one you used specifically to give you more information.”
“Oh, come on—”
“It was ‘amare, vivere,’ I think,” Remus interjects. “That was the spell I used.”
“Amare, vivere,” Amy repeats. “That sounds familiar—if I only—wait, oh my God.”
“Oh my God?”
“It’s a very old spell,” Amy says. “Really, it fell out of vogue in the late seventeenth century. It was used usually by artists with a personal connection to their subject. It makes the subject so incredibly lifelike, so idealized, so perfect because they’re created from the artist’s memories of the subject themselves. Usually, wizarding portraits come to life because the subjects feed their memories to them, not the artists. I mean, it definitely does the trick. After all, of those we love—we never fail to remember them as brighter than they are.”
“Oh.” For a moment, Remus feels as though he’s been betrayed. Of course he got along so well with Portrait Sirius—it really was Sirius, or at least Sirius as Remus remembered him.
“But it’s a dangerous spell,” Amy continues. “If the artist spends too much time with the portrait, they’ll begin to lose their strength—and time—as the spell goes on. The spell—and the portrait—will try to take more from the artist, more memories, more emotions, until the artist is basically robbed of everything they’ve ever felt or believed. And then they’ll usually die.” She looks critically at Remus. “Where on Earth did you even learn this? I mean, it’s not an illegal spell by any means, but it is—or at least it should be—pretty heavily restricted.”
“Oh my God.” That, then, is how Hollande must have died—the portrait of the woman must have drawn away all of his strength, all of his capabilities, all of his ability to live. It must have wasted him away, all as he fell ever deeper in love. And the portrait of Sirius—
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Remus says slowly. “Because the portrait knew things that I didn’t. It knew things about how Sirius felt when he died, and I couldn’t know that.”
Amy shrugs. “That I don’t know. Maybe the spell filled in the gaps or something. But my advice to you would be the same regardless of if the portrait had all of your memories or not—get rid of the portrait immediately, and never use that spell again.”
“We will,” Tonks replies immediately. “We’ll get rid of it.”
The moment they step outside of the gallery, Remus turns to Tonks, utter betrayal written on his face. “We can’t just get rid of it.”
“Why not? Look, if you don’t get rid of it, it’ll kill you,” Tonks replies. “You heard what Amy said.
“It’s the only wizarding painting I ever made of Sirius,” Remus says. “If we get rid of it, we’ll never hear his voice again.”
“And if we don’t get rid of it, we’ll also never hear your voice again,” Tonks says, so loudly that Remus has to suppress the urge to shush her. “Because you’ll be dead.”
“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the portrait,” Remus tries desperately. “It knew things that I didn’t. What if—what if Sirius is trapped inside the portrait? Sirius from inside the Veil? What if this is the only way he can communicate still?”
“Sirius is not trapped inside the portrait, because Sirius is dead,” Tonks shouts, sounding more frustrated than ever. “What about that is so hard for you to understand?”
Remus tries to reply, but the next moment, he finds himself bursting into tears. He tries desparately to stop himself from full-on sobbing, but he can’t, and soon enough, he’s bent over on the street, crying into the gutter as Tonks tries to steady him. “I’m sorry,” he says, between gulps of tears and shudders. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“I know,” Tonks says softly, seemingly deflated. “You don’t want to let him go. I know. Look, maybe we can get rid of the portrait in a special way? I mean, I know you don’t want to get rid of it at all, but what if—what if we sent it up in a bonfire or something? Or what if we spread the ashes of the portrait over the Hogwarts grounds?”
“Maybe.”
“And he’ll always be with us, you know? He’ll be in the memories of everyone who ever loved him. You’ll still remember him without the portrait. I’ll remember him. Harry will remember him.”
“I know.”
“Or!” Tonks snaps her fingers, apparently struck by inspiration. “We can send the portrait through the Veil. It’ll go the same way, you know? Parallels and all that.”
“Seems kind of morbid,” Remus replies, but he can feel his stomach—and head—begin to settle.
Tonks shrugs. “Maybe it’s morbid, or maybe it’s fitting. I feel like Sirius would appreciate it.”
“Yeah. He probably would.” It’s just his sense of humor—a bit dark, and always shifting. “Okay. Okay, we’ll do that.” They’ll send the portrait through the Veil, and Remus—Remus will do his best to go on alone.
They head into the Department of Mysteries on a Friday. Tonks had asked Harry and his friends if they wanted to come, and they’d responded in the affirmative, of course, though by the uncomfortable looks on Ron and Hermione’s faces, it’s all a bit too morbid to them.
Harry seems to be more wistful than anything else, though. “I wish I’d gotten to speak more to the portrait, y’know?” he says, sounding contemplative. “But I’spose that if it’s as dangerous as you said it is, Professor Lupin, we’d better get rid of it. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Right.” Remus swallows a lump in his throat. He straightens the curtain over the portrait—it’s a new one, in Gryffindor-red velvet. Sirius would like it.
He steps closer to the dais holding the Veil. It looks almost unassuming today, like Remus could thrust a hand into it and it would come out clean. It likely doesn’t work that way, of course, but in no way does it resemble a tool of death. In no way does it appear to be the object that dealt Sirius his final fate.
But it was, because Remus has grown to understand that there are things in life that are simply nonsensical, like the death of the man he loved most in the world and a spell that steals memories and a professor who perished because of his own emotions. The Veil is nonsensical, perhaps, but so is Remus’s life.
He smoothes the velvet curtain once more, and then, quickly, before he can change his mind, he thrusts the portrait through the Veil. The curtain flaps once, then twice, before the portrait disappears into its depths, and Remus feels a familiar lump begin to rise in his throat.
And then the Veil begins to churn—or rather, the winds behind the Veil begin to churn. Harry begins to move closer, but Ron and Hermione shield him. Remus has no such qualms. He steps closer, a bit closer—
And then, suddenly, he finds himself with an armful of Sirius—the real, live, breathing Sirius Black, looking just as he did on the day he went through the Veil. His skin is a bit colder, perhaps, but it has a pulse, and he is unquestionably alive. His hair is rumpled, and his clothes look worn, and there are dark circles underneath his eyes, but he is far more beautiful than the portrait of him, more beautiful than Remus even remembered him, because he is here, and he is alive, and he is looking up at Remus with gratitude and love in his eyes.
“Told you that I wouldn’t let a portrait be the only thing ever left of me,” Sirius says, smiling, and all Remus can do is laugh, a clear, relieved laugh that makes him feel lighter than he ever has felt before.