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The golden sun peeked from the low dusted windows of the Lupin attic. The wooden floor creaked under every step taken and Angela tried to be as quiet as possible while looking around. She had that peculiar shining wonder in her eyes, typical and exclusive of children. Every little spider web and every paper on the ground became an endless miracle that only she could see.
On top of the child wonder, Angela recently developed a burning passion for pirates and adventures. Her father always tells her with a fond smile that it’s genetics, even though she can’t understand what that means yet. This passion for adventures brought her to her grandfather’s attic that day, and even though she was perfectly allowed to go anywhere she wanted, she still felt a thrill in being there alone, among boxes over boxes of precious memories. Her grandfather loved telling her stories about his life, and she loved to listen. That’s one of the reasons why, when she came across a framed picture with the words ‘ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, 1982’ on it, she took it and ran to her grandpa, ready for another great tale of youth, laughter, and joy.
Remus John Lupin, now eighty-five, was set on his favorite armchair by the window. Even in his old age and with his tired lungs he was still never able to quit smoking, and that’s what he was doing when Angela came running down the stairs with something in her hands. He smiled softly at her while she walked towards him, her brown curls softly bouncing and his chest ached a little seeing what once was his own hair color so perfectly recreated on her.
She handed him the picture and without needing to say a word she sat at his feet, crossing his legs, knowing that Remus already knew what she was asking. A story.
As soon as he looked down at the picture in his hands, a reflexive smile overcame his lips, seeing the faces of all the people that once meant the whole world. The picture was taken right after their last show of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, all of them gathered on the stage.
His twenty-two years old self, young and foolish but as happy as he could get, was looking back at him with shining eyes. On his right there was James, who turned out a little blurred in the picture as he always did due to his inability to stand still. He was smiling so bright that Remus knew it was him who lightened up the whole room and photo, which would have looked so incredibly dull without him there. On James’ own right there was a much less blurred man, a little bit shorter than him, that wasn’t looking at the camera. Remus felt his eyes burn a little as he remembered the man quoting the play they just finished upon being asked why he was, once again, looking at Remus instead of the camera: “The odds is gone / And there is nothing left remarkable / Beneath the visiting moon.”
Remus looked away, seeing Angela still sitting at his feet, still waiting, and he returned to the present.
So, he began his story without needing to look at the rest of the faces in the picture, all of them burned deep forever in his memory. Strong Marlene, sharp-witted Dorcas always by her side, beautiful Mary that never needed to stand in the front to shine brightest, quiet and calculating Peter and dearest to Remus Lily, always holding her husband’s hand behind Sirius’ back in pictures.
“Angela dear, I don’t think I ever told you, but when I was young me and my classmates founded a Theater company, The Order Of The Phoenix. We always thought we’d end up like Lord Chamberlain’s Men, written forever in history with our name passed down to future generations, just like folk songs.”
Angela, immediately deep in concentration, trying to understand everything Remus was saying, observed him share with her a private smile. She was convinced that sometimes he forgot that she was only ten, so she always had to concentrate extra hard to understand all the difficult words he used.
When Remus noticed his grandchild staring at him with a quizzical look for a bit too long he huffed a laugh, mumbling “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying.
That seemed to be hilarious in Angela’s child mind, that started giggling, before asking
“Why have you never told me you had your own company?”
He gave her another bright smile before replying “The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it”
She smiled back, and this time she was pretty sure she actually understood what he said. Since she kept silent, he went on with his story.
“We all studied theater together in this beautiful palace that was our university, and please believe me when I tell you that we weren’t always that well behaved.” He let out a small laugh with a glint of mischief in his eyes that she was sure was once a permanent trait of his. “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.
In this picture you found we had just played Antony and Cleopatra.” He bent down a little so that she could see the picture better. He pointed at each person in it as he talked. “I was Cleopatra, I was taller than the rafters” A small laugh escaped both of them as they watched Younger Remus being the obviously tallest in the group, “He played Antony. We were often the leads.”
Angela’s eyes then shined with recognition. “Is he Sirius? And, wait, is this uncle Harry’s dad?”
“Yes to both. And this is Harry’s mom” He said, pointing at the beautiful redhead girl that Angela immediately liked at first sight. Her smile was so gentle that she felt welcomed even through decades and a picture separating them.
Remus already told her hundreds of stories and adventures about his little friend group during their time in school, and while looking at the man’s scarred face Angela privately decided that they were all secret pirates instead of actors. She smiled a little wider at her newly found conviction, which now seemed too obvious and true, that she felt a little dumb for not thinking about it earlier. She shuffled closer to her dear, cool, pirate grandpa, and came back to reality when he started speaking again.
“When there wasn’t a party, when the other students were all half a mile away at the Hall, it was just us - the eight of us and the trees and the sky and the lake and the moon and, of course, Shakespeare. He lived with us like a tenth housemate, an older, wiser friend, perpetually out of sight but never out of mind, as if he had just left the room.”
“What happened with everyone? Why is there only this one picture of all of you?” Angela wanted this question answered since she first saw the image, but waited to build up the courage, also hoping that Remus understood the real question behind her words: What happened with Sirius?
They both knew that Angela understood her grandpa wasn’t telling her the whole story about him.
She already knew her family was a little out of the ordinary, even though it took her other children looking at her a bit weird for her to realize since this ‘out of the ordinary' was her ordinary. Her grandma Tonks was happily married to a woman, whose name was Ophelia, and both of her grandparents had this inside joke Angela never really understood of telling each other ‘The only gifts from my Lord were a birth and a divorce’.
Remus smiled at her, a prideful smile. He was so happy with his grandchild’s cleverness, even when it meant she would ask painful questions.
“Eternity was in our lips and in our eyes. We thought we’d last forever. And in a sense I guess we did, a day doesn’t go by without having something reminding me of them all.” As he said this, though, his eyes were fixated on the black-haired man only. He took a deep breath, and there he decided it was time to tell her.
“The last time we played all together, it was Romeo and Juliet. There was this scene where we all had to attend a masquerade ball. Not only did we have masks to cover our faces, but we also had the characters to play that hid our souls and at the same time made them shine the most. A man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. I could not have been more masked than I was then, and at the same time I have never been truer to myself and anyone than when I declared my undying love to my Juliet.” He paused at this, lost in memories that no one but him could ever truly understand as deeply. At that moment, with his gaze lost in grey eyes that only he could see, Remus looked both like the oldest and the youngest man to ever exist.
Carefully, somehow sensing the incredible weight of the moment, Angela finally asked.
“So were you in love with him?”
With the simplicity that only a man of hundreds of words could achieve, he replied
“Yes.”
There was nothing much to add, except for everything . The secrets of the universe were hidden in his love, concepts so complicated and infinite that they could do nothing but find their perfection in the simplicity of a single word. Yes . Even though only Remus’ heart knows the whole truth.
The whole truth is, he’s in love with him still.
“I was twenty-five when we last played this Romeo and Juliet,” he resumed with a new weight in his voice, “it wasn’t supposed to be the last - we lived through it as if a million other plays had to be played, with the faith and recklessness that only twenty-something years olds have - but it was. A week later, and a day before our next show, my father died. As you know, my mum, Hope, already died when I was younger due to a terrible illness. For some reason, that young Remus after his mum’s death decided that since he already lost his mother, his father would never leave him. And for years it was true, but I still lived in that illusion of eternity of my twenties, so when he died I felt as if all of my plans for the future were gone. That faux stability I created for myself was gone, my sense of eternity with it.
The day of the funeral, with my father in a casket, right outside of the church after we buried him, Sirius asked me to marry him.”
There was a pause after this, both to let the information sink in for Angela, and for Remus to breathe.
He lit another cigarette with slightly shaking hands.
“With the sadness of my father’s death and the fact he decided to ask me on that day specifically instead of any other, I could not bring myself to reply at all.
The next morning when I woke up, James told me that Sirius had left town suddenly and no one knew when he’d be back. That day I felt my heart harden, and a weight sank on my shoulders.
I wrote him letters in the months that followed, but I never saw him again and he never replied.
A year later James received a letter in which Sirius’ brother informed him that Srius Orion Black had died during a storm while he was out at sea.”
Angela gasped a little at this. She knew that James and Lily had died when she was just five. She remembered the doctors told Harry it was a strange mystery because they died in their bed together on the same night, they were found with their hands still intertwined and little smiles on their faces as if they knew. No one ever told her anything about Sirius before, and a strange sadness overcame her hearing her grandfather’s words for the first time. She was always a clever child, and the depth of Remus’ eyes as he spoke was enough for a young soul like hers to understand the weight of losing love like this without needing to ever feel it.
A lonely, slow tear ran down Remus’ cheek as he said in barely more than a whisper “Damn your husband, I would’ve been your mistress just to have you around. But I was late for that, late for the love of my life.” He was no longer speaking with her, staring out the window at his side, the memory of a face he once knew better than his own, clear in front of his mind’s eyes.
Later that night, after Teddy picked up Angela to go back home, and the nurse they hired to be with Remus for the night helped him back to the guest room - he now slept there to avoid having to take the stairs. Just a bed and a bathroom - he laid down with the window open, as he always requested it to be on warm nights, and looked at the stars. At His star.
The weight of his long life, made heavier by loss and later so much lighter by the gifts of his son and his granddaughter, got less intense as a profound sense of peace overcame him.
With lips and mind as feathery as they never were in the bloom of his existence he whispered soft words that for the first time came to him without the need of a plan.
“To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
He smiled softly, closing his eyes, taking one last deep breath, tasting the smell of roses, smelling the taste of the sky already at his fingertips.
He opened his eyes again to look one last time at His star, whispering ever so gently
“I won’t be late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life. When I die, when I die alone I’ll be on time.”
---
Throw yourself into the unknown
With peace and a fury defiant
Clothe yourself in beauty untold
And see life as a means to a triumph
Today of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you'll rise above
Crowned by an overture bold and beyond
It's more courageous to overcome