Work Text:
( Remus / Sirius / James / Lily )
2:28 pm: Hey! So we have a lot of boxes in the basement that we need to sort through. There are a lot of boxes of pictures and I was wondering if everyone could come help me?
2:29 pm: I’ll be down in a moment, love.
2:29 pm: Give me a couple of minutes.
2:31 pm: Rem?
2:32 pm: Do you need me there? It’s just photos, right?
2:33 pm: It’s photos that I’ve been given, yes. Mrs Potter gave me boxes of Sirius and James, my parents gave me my boxes of photos and I have some from my parents of you. I don’t want to throw any out that anyone wants to keep. Are you free?
2:35 pm: I’ll be over in 10 minutes.
2:36 pm: And sleepover?!
2:37 pm: Fuck yes!
2:38 pm: What are we? Do we even matter?
2:39 pm: We are chopped liver, James. That’s what we are.
2:40 pm: Yes. You’ve got the right idea, Sirius.
2:40 pm: You hit the nail on the head. Also, I live with you two. You don’t count because you are always at the house.
2:41 pm: My heart, Little Red and Moony! My heart…
2:41 pm: Ouch.
By 3:00 pm, the Marauders were sitting amongst piles of boxes with pictures littered across the floor. They had piles for keeping, duplicates, maybe’s and to be thrown away. The group laughed at the pictures and shared stories about what was going on in the pictures, what happened leading up to the photo being taken and what happened after.
“Rem!” Lily laughed as she passed a photo of her and Remus towards him. “This was the day where we realized that we could crawl through the tree to each other’s windows!”
Remus picked up the picture and laughed at his and Lily’s faces in the photo. They both were wearing looks of shock and excitement as Lily was standing in her room and Remus was halfway through the window. A fond smile fell on Remus’ lips as he stared at the photo. It was taken before he was ever in Scout’s and before his life fell apart. He liked seeing these photos, he looked like a kid and the photos of the years following reminded him of everything that happened when he would look at his face. The small spark of child-like wonder and excitement faded and eventually failed to exist even though he was still a child.
“I like his photo,” he whispered. “Are there and duplicates of this one?”
“I don’t think so...” Lily trailed off as she looked around on the floor. “We can make one though?”
“That sounds good,” Remus replied as he started a new pile.
“Oh gosh,” James groaned as he pulled a picture out of a box. “Pads, do you remember this day?”
“Oh no,” Sirius laughed loudly. “Wasn’t that the day where you called Minnie ‘mum’ and then accidentally called her ‘dad’ when you tried to correct yourself?”
“Yep,” James nodded with a pained look on his face. “That was the day...”
“How many times did you call Minerva ‘mum’ throughout high school?” Remus asked with a smirk. “I vividly remember, like, four times.”
“It didn’t happen a lot!”
“You’re full of shit, Prongs,” Sirius laughed. “You called her ‘mum’ so many times!”
“On accident!”
“But it still happened,” Remus laughed.
The laughter slowly died down and the group continued to sort through photos and tell stories. No one noticed the photo that Sirius put in his back pocket before continuing with sorting photos. Questions were asked about different photos and laughter would fill the basement.
“Remus?” Lily asked in confusion as she stared at a photo in her hands.
“What’s up?” Remus replied, not thinking too much about what photo she was looking at.
“I don’t remember when these three were taken,” she continued. “When was this?”
Remus held out one hand as he kept looking at the photos in front of him. When the pictures Lily was asking about were placed in his hand, Remus brought them to his face and fought to keep his face neutral and his breathing normal.
I thought I had gotten rid of all of these pictures, he thought. None of these should be left.
“Moony?” James asked when they realized that Remus wasn’t answering the question but was staring at the three photos. “You okay?”
“Uh… yeah,” Remus whispered.
I looked so happy… I didn’t know what was going to happen.
“Do you remember when these were taken?” Lily asked.
“Yeah,” Remus breathed out as he placed them in his pocket. “They aren’t important though.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Lily. Can we drop it now?” Remus asked in a tight voice as he turned his attention back to the photos he was looking at before.
You can burn them later, he thought. Just finish the photos.
“When was-”
“Slime it,” Remus said coldly as he gave his sister a stern look.
“Good that,” she hesitantly responded, connecting the dots about when the photo was approximately taken.
James and Sirius shared a confused look but refrained from asking their questions at the look Lily shot them.
“Wasn’t this the day that we went to the zoo together for the first time as the four of us?” James asked as he held up a photo to start a new topic.
“Yes,” Remus laughed as he rummaged through the pile of pictures he just sorted. “I had one taken after that somewhere here… Ah! Here it is!”
“Moony!” James and Sirius exclaimed in embarrassment as Lily and Remus laughed loudly.
“You took a selfie while Prongs and I were being chased by the peacocks?!”
“What else were we supposed to do, Padfoot?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sirius sarcastically replied. “Maybe helped us?!”
“Nah,” Lily said with a shake of her head. “That wouldn’t be as fun. Look at the photo! You can see the joy in our eyes!”
“And the fear in ours!” James exclaimed in retaliation. “That photo needs to be lost forever!”
“Or,” Remus smirked. “We could bring it to the store and make some framed photos. I know one would look good at my apartment.”
“Oooh, yes,” Lily agreed in excitement. “And we can have one in the living room here and maybe one at The Order so customers can see who runs the place!”
“No!” James and Sirius yelled together. “Please… let us forget that photo exists...”
“Never in a million years, Sirius,” Remus laughed. “That’s my favourite photo.”
Remus sat on the bed in the guest bedroom in the Potter-Black household. He could hear James and Lily cleaning up in the kitchen and he could hear Sirius getting ready for bed in the room next to him but nothing phased him. He sat on the bed and stared at the three photos in his hands.
How did these get into a box?
I made sure to get rid of all of these photos the moment I was packing to move out… Who has seen these?
The thing was, the pictures weren’t bad. In all three, Remus had the biggest kid-smile on his face and he looked extremely happy. Even his eyes were happy, they were filled with joy, wonder and excitement. It wasn’t because Remus hated seeing a happy smile on his face and that’s why he tried to get rid of all these pictures. The reason was rather because of what happened later that day. These were the last photos taken of Remus before he fell apart and life turned its back on him. These photos were taken less than 24 hours before Remus’ life took an unexpected turn that changed him for the rest of his life.
“Moons?...”
Remus’ head quickly shot up at the sound of someone in the room. Look towards the source of the sound, he saw Sirius standing in the room with a look of worry and confusion.
“I’m fine,” Remus whispered, trying to sound like he was actually fine.
“Can I come sit?”
After a second of consideration, Remus slowly nodded his head and watched Sirius close the door and make his way towards the bed. Sirius sat down slowly next to Remus and gave his friend a sad smile.
“The tears on your cheeks say otherwise, Moony,” he quietly stated as he wiped his friend’s tears away.
“I didn’t even notice I was crying,” Remus pitifully and quietly laughed. “Would you have believed me if there weren’t tears on my face?”
“If I didn’t know you then yes,” Sirius said with a nod. Pulling out the photo from his back pocket, Sirius handed it to Remus to look at.
“You look happy,” Remus commented as he looked at the photo.
“I did,” Sirius responded. “For about an hour until I got home.”
“Sirius?”
“This was taken the day my cousin Andy ran away,” Sirius began as he stared at the picture. “James and I played by the river most of the day and that’s when his mum took this photo.”
The two friends stared at the photo together. Sirius had a big smile on his face as he held his stomach in laughter. James, on the other hand, had a giant pout on his face with a handprint of mud on his cheek. Even through the scowl, it was easy to tell that both kids were having the time of their lives.
“What happened?” Remus finally asked.
“When I got home, something was off,” Sirius continued. “I didn’t know what it was but I knew the moment I stepped through the door that something bad had happened. When I reached the living room… that’s when things went downhill. Before I had a second to process who was all in the room, I was pushed to the ground by my father. He beat me for almost an hour while my family watched. They thought I knew where Andy was and, to be honest, I didn’t even know she was gone. They were trying to get me to tell them where she was but I obviously didn't know. I only found out that night when Kreacher, the butler, brought me a glass of water and I asked him to explain what was going on.”
“I’m sorry,” Remus whispered. “Your father’s a dick.”
“He is,” Sirius lightly laughed. “I saw this photo in one of the boxes and no one saw me take it out. Whenever I see this photo, my mind automatically goes to Andy leaving and not the day I spent with my real family.”
“I get that,” Remus nodded as he handed Sirius the three photos in his hands. “The first one was taken in the morning. I was eating breakfast with Lily and we were laughing so hard that milk came out of our noses. The second one,” Remus continued as he waited for Sirius to look at the next picture, “was taken when we got home. We didn’t see Mr Evans in the kitchen window while we were climbing up the tree. I remember that we were talking about possibly hanging out that weekend while we were sitting on the branches. The next picture was taken right after we said our goodnight.”
“You’re both smiling really big,” Sirius commented in confusion.
“We were,” Remus agreed with a sad smile. “We were talking about Severus and how much we liked having him in our friend group. I know you and James never got to know him how we did, but he was a good guy and he just…”
“Fell in with the wrong crowd?”
“Exactly. We were talking about how no matter what happened in our friend group that Lily and I would always be together, side-by-side.”
“What happened?” Sirius finally asked after a minute of silence.
“The date was January 7,” Remus explained, leaning his head onto Sirius’ shoulder, relaxing into the arm Sirius placed over his shoulders in response. “I was nine and this… this was the day Greyback raped me for the first time.” Remus let out a sigh when he felt Sirius tighten his hold on him in a comforting way. “I remember having to lay there… I was just crying and I was so confused. I didn’t know what was happening. Actually, fun fact- no, really really sad fact, I didn’t know that I was being sexually abused until I was 12. Do you remember that sex ed assembly in grade six?”
“I do,” Sirius nodded.
“I was the one who asked the question about what it meant if there was no consent. That’s how I found out that what was happening to me was illegal, three years later. I burnt all of the copies of these pictures when I was 18, I didn’t know how these photos got into the box but they threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting to see them.”
“I’m so sorry, Moons...”
“I remember being so confused for almost a week and then it happened again. It happened every Thursday night after Scout’s and it would happen on the weekends when we went on camping trips. These… these were the last photos before everything changed. I hate looking at them because I was so oblivious.”
“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered. “Greyback is a dick.”
Remus let out a small laugh and shook his head in slight amusement.
“We’re really messed up, Padfoot...”
“That we are, Moony. Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” Remus immediately said. “Can you… can we just hang out for a bit? I’m not ready to go to bed yet.”
“Of course,” Sirius smiled. “Mario Kart in my room?”
“I’d love that,” Remus breathed out, making no effort to move his head from Sirius’ shoulder.
“Take your time,” Sirius whispered sincerely as he ran his fingers through his friend’s hair. “We’ve got all night.”
“Thank you for listening.”
“And thank you for listening. You’ll always have me.”
“And you’ll always have me.”