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The morning after their collision, Grant Chapman sat by his bedside window, and found his mind drifting back towards the strange Mr. Lupin. He sipped on his coffee, and reminisced. The gentle roughness of a man, and the softness of a body beside his, even for the shortest of moments. The bitter taste of his drink mixed with the aftermath of the cigarette that the stranger had lit before leaving. He sighed, and pulled himself back into reality.
Josie, his wife, was scrambling eggs in the kitchen, no doubt blabbering on about someone or other, who had said something about someone else, and that other someone had reacted in the most humorous of ways. Alas, Mr. Chapman could not bare to face Mrs. Chapman just yet. He found himself sulking off to his Darkroom, flipping a switch and shrouding himself in a comforting red hue, following the steps he knew by heart – enlarge, expose, develop, stop, fix, and rinse. One after another, the black and white photographs from the night before found themselves hanging from the ceiling around Mr. Chapman.
He watched the photographs dry, sipping on his slowly lukewarming coffee. Mr. Snape and Mr. Malfoy sitting beside one another in a candid way, Mr. Malfoy in a fairly comfortable looking armchair, and Mr. Snape perched on the armrest, one hand cradling contraband and the other rested at an only-just acceptable distance from the latter’s back. The two were engrossed in conversation, the many guests crammed into the tiny apartment laughing and bustling about in between the photographer and the subject of the photo. And then the next one – a cackling group of women, bent in half and half-crying from the sheer comedy of what they had just heard. One of the ladies, a tall and slender thing with wild black hair, was cradling a kitten, orange and grumpy. And then the next – that stranger, Mr. Lupin, at the bar, with eyes widened with a strange sort of surprise as he leaned against the apartment’s makeshift bar, a glass of firewhiskey in hand, his sweater and collared shirt laughably displaced in that sea of tuxedos.
Mr. Chapman approached the images and turned to the next one, a candid shot of the same subject. Mr. Lupin had not noticed him taking this one, and to Mr. Chapman, that was the entire point of photography. In it, Mr. Lupin was standing by an open window, glancing up at the moon with a strange mix of longing and loathing, and Mr. Chapman wondered what it could mean, for this man to hate and love the moon quite so much. He took the sufficiently dry image in hand, and left the Darkroom, wanting to inspect it closer under the sun’s glare.
Mr. Lupin certainly had a strange sort of mystery to him, Mr. Chapman decided. The stranger’s posture was reminiscent to that of a longing poet, peering out and hoping for the night sky to transport him elsewhere, anywhere but where his flesh had found itself to be. And in those eyes, half turned to the moon… A sadness. One undiscovered, but real nonetheless. Mr. Lupin was a lonely man, Mr. Chapman decided. A lonely man who was looking for something, but neither could quite say what that could possibly be. He wondered if perhaps, when they laid together, had he not seen in those eyes that same longing. Whether that flicker of recognition and care hadn’t been misplaced, led aside by some minute detail in his appearance.
Mr. Chapman could not, of course, hold it against the other, even if his theories were proven to be true. Men of their sort were constantly running from something and towards something else. He placed the photograph by the window, and tenderly approached the kitchen, cold coffee in hand.
Mrs. Chapman tutted at the state of the beverage in his hand. “Honestly, dear. Drinking coffee before it gets cold is no difficult feat, you know.”
Mr. Chapman chuckled. “Well, Jo, you know me. Always lost in some thought or other.”
She nodded disapprovingly. “Yes, yes. You and your great philosophies. Shall you join me for a somewhat still fresh breakfast, or does that have to wait as well?”
Mr. Chapman sat down at the table opposite his wife. “No darling. This doesn’t have to wait.”
“Oh, Grant dear, who was that fellow that came back with you from the party last night?” She chirped, spreading a generous layer of butter onto a toasted bun.
Mr. Chapman shrugged. “Some stranger that I encountered at the Snapes’ last night.”
“Really? I swear, if I could only remember where I saw his face, perhaps I would know why the memory of it plagues me so.”
“I doubt that you and Mr. Lupin have crossed paths before, love.”
Her eyes lit up at the name. “Oh, that was the young Mr. Lupin, of course! I was certain I had seen his face before.”
Mr. Chapman tilted his head, an unspoken question soon answered as his wife handed him the daily paper. “Young Lord Solus Vayle spotted in The Village alongside new business partner, Remus Lupin.” Adorning the front page was a blurred photograph of the two, headed no doubt towards some bar or club, Mr. Lupin looking somewhat displaced in an ill-fitted tuxedo, and Mr. Vayle glamorous as ever in his lavish dress robes, a charming smile flashing at the insufficiently disguised paparazzi. And there it was again, Mr. Chapman noticed with some surprise – that longing in Mr. Lupin’s eyes. But for once, it seemed softer, his frame comfortably relaxed as he stepped beside Mr. Vayle.
And in that moment, Mr. Chapman came to an epiphany of sorts. And he could not help his mind from lingering towards concern – but he calmed it, and wishfully spoke into the universe: “I should only hope that Mr. Vayle’s reputation isn’t quite all it’s cut out to be,” before he turned back to his scrambled eggs, and thought of the strange Mr. Lupin no more.