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hp_goldenage. I've enjoyed both the reception of my anonymous fic and reading fabulous entries, and there's still more to enjoy: replying to the amazing comments and commenting some more.
Title: A Work of an Advanced Artist
Author:paulamcg
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius, references to Remus/an OC and Remus/CCs
Rating: G
Word Count: 3170
Content: Age difference, ailments, artist Remus Lupin, bisexuality, memories, references to not fully human or not only human creatures
Summary: In 2015, with an another turning point ahead of him, Remus wishes Sirius could understand and share what his life has become.
A/N: Canon-divergent after the end of OotP. The prompt was He’s survived the wars and the years after losing his friends, his lover among them, and perhaps raised alone the child from a marriage he was pushed into (or perhaps led a revolt of persecuted creatures). Now he’s free to pursue a relationship which could become as sweet as his first love. Thank you again, my wonderful betaliseuse!
Read here on AO3
or right here
A Work of an Advanced Artist
“You’ve moved me.” His Sirius’s tone is as nuanced as ever – playful, impatient, tender and suspicious all at once. He’d like to believe that it is. “For a moment I thought I’d just shifted inside my dreams, to dream about my first visit.”
Cherishing the jolt in his heart, Remus chooses to first focus on listening to the voice he’s missed during his absence and for another month of silence, and postpones the bliss of meeting the silvery light in those mesmerising eyes. With an involuntary grunt, he stands up from the stool next to the hearth, where he, too, has been slumbering – only for an hour, mind, and not all through the gloom of the winter – and limps over to the oak table so as to share his beloved sleepyhead’s view towards the front door.
He remembers every moment of that visit vividly, of course. Back then, before sitting down opposite to the guest he’d brought from London, right after entering through the fireplace, he’d sensed the house-elf’s presence and seen his silhouette against the glare of July sun streaming in. Now the door is closed against February cold, but the light has returned to fill the windows, finding its way even under the low eaves of this ancient house.
And the forty years become one heartbeat.
But in that heartbeat Sirius’s hand has left his. When he sits down, his back to the door, he can see the love of his life in the shadows of the far wall, between the bookshelves, above the velvet cushions on the bench which he’s used as his bed after returning from the werewolf village.
Sirius jerks his head, flicking aside the hair that’s hanging over one eye. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“You never asked… except, ‘Fag?’”
“You’re right. And once I was upset, also smoking because of that. When I finally offered you one, you thought about the meaning of the word in American slang, because you’d made friends with that American bloke, another student of Defence against Dark Creatures.”
“You were jealous until that question made me laugh and explain he wasn’t one.” Remus smirks.
And sighs, not only because he’s started to get up, and having forgotten that sitting doesn’t agree with him these days, finds his back stiff again, even though the old elfish magic in his heirloom chairs should adjust them perfectly to his body’s needs. The pain radiates all the way down his left leg.
Approaching the couch slowly, he tries not to limp.
“I hope you’ve just grown old – not hurt yourself at full moon or in a battle.” Now the tone’s definitely both teasing and gentle.
“I’ve done all that at some point, and this is what I am now. Have you grown up to be polite or not?”
No, of course not. This Sirius will never grow up.
Having knelt on his blanket, Remus presses his left palm on that hand which is resting on the balcony railing in the glow of the late October’s sunset. The light’s reflected from the thinning gold and bronze of the birch trees he depicted so painstakingly when waiting for his lover and friend from an Order mission at the time of fear and hope, trust and suspicion.
His memories are still not focused on the moment of connection on that final evening. He can only slowly reach deeper into that magic. But he’s already smelling the smoke.
Now he’s stroking the slender fingers stained by lube – the kind for motorbike chain only – and on muddy paths where these beloved hands have padded in their paw shape, following the stag’s hooves. And he can recall the image – the imagined scene – of those loyal Animagi romping in woods, seeking release from danger and worry.
His eyes, however, are sharp enough still – or again, having gradually more than regained the sight lost not long before his direct confrontation with both Umbridge and Chief Ice-Stare, in the first year of the Revolt. He can’t help seeing the wrinkles, raised veins and scars drawn onto the skin of his hands by the hardships of a long, beautiful life.
The link between these old man’s hands and his young Padfoot is a thin layer of watercolour on the canvas he was once deprived of by… yes, by bloody Dumbledore. The treasure was returned to him by Harry, thanks to the bold autobiographical letters sent to the sixteen-year old from this illegally claimed childhood home and refuge for persecuted creatures.
Remus prefers reminiscing about that year – that turning point. One of its climaxes was getting this Sirius back. He hasn’t wanted to admit any disappointment, and since he won’t get tired of the voice, he mustn’t let Sirius fall back to the silence of dreams.
“You are, of course, a handsome grown-up man,” Remus hastens to say, realising that he’s stayed quiet, hardly looking at the painting, “and I’m happy I can keep you like this.”
“Keep me!” Sirius huffs. He takes a last long drag on his cigarette and turns aside to crush the butt on the railing and to flick it over.
Now Remus is staring at him, quite mesmerised enough, following each movement, savouring the line of the profile, and anticipating the moment when the face will be turned fully towards him again. The smile he captured thirty-four years ago sometimes shines unchanged.
He’s been proud and pleased that this is a work of an advanced artist, not a mature one, but someone who was well on the way to master the Magic of Images and eager to apply it in an innovative way, and worked passionately to achieve a moving portrait against a change of seasons as the background. The only old portrait he had left for Sirius to see after Azkaban, in that last hard but hopeful year, was the charcoal drawing of all four of them – only six months earlier than this painting, but what a difference it made, what a long time it was at their age. In May 1981 the two of them were secure in their love, all the Marauders in their friendship – while he was a beginner as a painter of true, moving images. What he captured back then was a twitch of a smirk, as Sirius called it, declaring his hatred for it, when imprisoned at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and struggling to reach some of his lost happy memories and to build new ones. But that loyally repeating smile – in the only sketch stored between the pages of the photo album and kept safe in the briefcase – had accompanied Remus through his drifting years.
This portrait is unpredictable. Now the careful, loving brush strokes for Sirius’s graceful brows are distorted in a scowl.
“You know I hate staying still. I did it for you, settled against this railing to be your model on that evening – this eternal evening, where I’m trapped now.”
“That’s why I’ve always known you loved me. I mean you loved me on that last day, and that saved me in the years when I thought that you…”
“My drama queen! I can get sentimental, too, and say that you saved me… Or was it James’s son? Did you tell me that bloody Dumbledore lied to you, said that this thing was destroyed among everything in our flat, and kept it rolled up and hidden?” Sirius frowns and shivers, folds his arms. “It didn’t matter to me.”
He’s taken off his leather jacket, and Remus can discern the shape of a pack of Muggle fags under the sleeve of the thin and not exactly white t-shirt. It’s hard not to still feel proud of how well the effect works. Once again Sirius will allow him to see how real the cigarettes are. Only when watching Sirius take the pack out and fumble for another fag, does he realise that his fingers can feel and have felt for a while again only the texture of the canvas.
“Until that day you…” Remus stares at the thin line of the mouth, waiting in vain for the lips to part more than needed for placing the cigarette between them. “Passed away.”
“Through a veil. I know.” Sirius plays with the cigarette as if he’d forgotten what to do with it, then shakes himself like a dog come out of rain, and wriggles his Muggle lighter out of a pocket in his tight jeans. Having lit the fag and let the smoke out straight from his mouth in a small cloud, which Remus breathes in greedily, he leans both elbows back on the railing and stares ahead, somewhere over Remus’s shoulder, and continues in quickening, impatient pace, “But after I first came to my senses here, I found nowhere else to go except the hero king’s army in that moth-eaten tapestry up on your loft. And it was right next to where you kept this canvas even after you gave me the frame. So there was no change of view until you painted those landscapes. Remember that spring day when I managed to shift into the one you’d just finished painting outside, next to the window? Your father’s apple trees in bloom, and… Where are those pictures now?”
“I’ll paint new, better ones if you want them.” The soothing words come out halfhearted, as Remus focuses on the fag between the stained thumb and forefinger. Back then, he took it and stealthily caressed Sirius’s knuckles, didn’t he? “I thought you didn’t care to move to other canvases any longer. And I sold those paintings because I needed…”
“Still so poor? I think you’ve told me that you’re a leader now, the headmaster of a school here, and the head of a company, Creature Power or something. A famous, respected figure.”
Maybe it’s not so bad that Sirius seldom talks about anything but the old days. When he shows any interest in current affairs, he’s more arrogant and rude. Back in the day he was most discreet about Remus’s financial situation. Too discreet, making it impossible for Remus to reveal even the least embarrassing details of his poverty, let alone its depth after he’d lost his parents.
As Sirius found it so difficult to remember their youth in the last years of his life, it’s been lovely to share those memories with this Sirius who’s experienced nothing beyond. But for two decades now they’ve gone through them too many times, explaining everything, or not quite. Remus is tired of returning to incidents behind which there were his first experiences of hunger and other hardships, hidden due to his pride and struggle for independence.
“Respected by some, perhaps.” He sighs. “But a controversial figure.”
He wishes Sirius could understand and share what his life has become, but it’s impossible. His hand passes over Sirius’s, and senses some warmth – of the burning tobacco, or of the young skin, he wonders – when he repeats patiently, “Nobody pays me a salary. This estate produces enough to feed me and the members of this brotherhood, but sometimes we’ve needed more cash than what we get from selling a part of the crops.”
Sirius is hardly listening. “I’m glad you’ve moved me down here anyway. And you’ve got something on your easel. What’s that? Not finished enough for me to get in there. Show me!”
Remus has been sitting on his heels, and he gets down from the bench clumsily. The few steps to the easel must look easy enough, though. He’s been standing to paint, with the oil palette on the table, and with the work facing the windows, of course.
Turning the easel around, for Sirius to see the almost finished double portrait, he can’t conceal the pride and joy when declaring, “That’s my daughter, with Luna’s other child.”
“Oh.” Sirius frowns.
“They stayed here for a couple of weeks, and slept on the loft. That’s why I moved your portrait.” Since Sirius says nothing, Remus continues, “Amy’s going to Hogwarts in September, and Sunny’s old enough, too, so that I wasn’t afraid he’d fall from the ladder. Young enough, so that he was excited about the climbing.”
Five years old, this boy’s taking bold leaps in the direction of a future of health and prosperity. In the painting he’s trying to turn a page, while his big sister clasps his wrist and continues to point at the lines she’s reading under a picture of a crumple-horned snorkack. Remus is happy with how he’s caught these movements as well as the orange-red undertones in his russet skin against Amy’s paleness. They’re sitting cross-legged on the hearthrug, and the flickering flames give some warmth to her hands and face, and colour her limp hair tawny, almost as golden brown as mother’s or…
“She looks like you,” Sirius blurts out, “when I first saw you.”
And Gumby says Sunny reminds him of Remus – or the child he was at the time just before their secret connection emerged, based on elvish magic, due to wizards starting to persecute one of their own, one of the family this elf had chosen to serve. They all share nostalgia. But even Remus’s secret brother, in the disguise of a simple house-elf, can’t share how he sees himself, because he hardly remembers anything of who he was before Swift-Tail turned him into what was considered a Dark Creature – while, as Remus found out decades later, intending to present him with the gift of change.
For Sunny’s first parents the bite became anything close to a blessing too late. By the time the werewolf village had welcomed them and they felt secure enough to risk having a child, they were too worn out due to their hard lives. But their son’s got a new mother, now a pair of mothers, who will grow old together, supporting each other and Remus’s child, too.
All’s well, and Remus hasn’t sacrificed or lost everything. He’s been fortunate to know romantic love again, and again. And once more. This last time will perhaps be the hardest for his Sirius to accept without jealousy.
“I still can’t believe it!” Sirius turns away and, gripping the railing, leans over as if he were trying to see some people – perhaps James and Lily with their baby boy – standing in front of his building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “You got a child. And the mother was almost a child, too.”
“Yes. No. Luna was a child, twelve, when I first met her. She was twenty-three when we had Amy.” And he was twenty-three years older.
He waves to the siblings and limps over to the bench. Tentatively, still hesitating to touch Sirius’s back, he reaches out his left hand.
“Don’t tell me that for ten years you just waited for her to get old enough for marriage,” Sirius says over his shoulder, “and for your age difference to become relatively small enough, and acceptable.”
Remus places his left palm on the wing bone, and perhaps just imagines how flimsy the almost transparent fabric feels between their skins. “Of course not. I got you back and wanted no one else.”
“And after I…” Sirius leans against his touch but looks out at the trees. “After me you wanted half-humans.”
The magic is slipping out of reach again, as that word rouses indignation, bringing back memories of how Sirius has managed to ignore – as hardly a man – the kindest, most selfless person who was Remus’s most loyal supporter and tender lover in the dark and difficult years of the revolt. “You used to call people like me more than human. I learnt it from you. Prospero is more than a human and more than a goblin.”
“I’ve been jealous.” Sirius opens up his grin, suddenly facing Remus – but distancing himself to the time before the picture was painted. “Ever since we left Hogwarts and you…”
Remus manages to chortle. “Yes, how did I dare make new friends!”
They’ve laughed about that for almost twenty years. And Remus has kept buried the thought of unfairness in how Sirius dared be jealous when a fellow student had shown kindness and offered much-needed Knuts for a caricature as well as some advice on where to sell others. Now perhaps the jealousy will become serious again.
“I’m getting married.” Remus has tried his best to make his tone gentle but grave.
But Sirius continues to chuckle. “You’re going to take a wife again?”
“No. For almost a year now it’s been possible for two men to marry legally. Kingsley’s proposed, and I’ve said yes.”
Sirius whistles. But Remus can see and hear the breathing quicken, and he longs to feel the heartbeat against his own. As if after all these years the two of them could be alive only together.
He can go on and live fully what the rest of his years will offer only when he’s honestly done his best to share it with Sirius. “Kingsley is as much my partner as you have been. We’ve been allies for almost twenty years, close friends for ten, lovers for five. Just as I want him, he wants me at his side, and he’s convinced me that for him I won’t be a burden even when the changes have all but undone my body. He’s got his top salary and his investments. He can afford healers to nurse me. And now I can accept such help. Perhaps because I accept what I am. Besides, I’ve got to think about my loved ones.”
On his knees, and holding onto the frame of the portrait, Remus is leaning forward, watching the flutter of Sirius’s eyelashes, fearing that the closest connection has faded out. “He’ll support my daughter, too. And my painting. I’ll allow him to provide me with what I need for that. In his mansion I’ll have real portraits of all those who agree… And landscapes. Perhaps I’ve still got time to travel to see again and paint places I’ve loved. Paris, Thessaloniki, Barcelona, Crete…”
“Why not Beachy Head?” Only now, possibly after not quite following, has Sirius interrupted him.
“Of course. That’s where I’m going first – where you took me right after buying your motorbike. And then where we had our holiday, James’s stag do in 1979.”
“The island shaped like an oyster. Mer…”
“Don’t say it!” Without stopping to consider it, Remus has pressed his forefinger on the youthful mouth. “It was our island without name. Like in the song,” he manages to add in a trembling voice. “It is.”
The lips, smooth and moist, are parting under his touch.
Tilting his head closer, but resisting for a moment the temptation to slip his tongue in, he caresses Sirius’s jawline, cheekbone, line of an eyebrow, and unblemished skin, and whispers, “You’ll take me there one day, shifting with me across to that seascape. Because before our age difference becomes unacceptable, I’ll paint a self-portrait and ask another artist to help finalise this magic in the image. Magic that’ll make me as alive as you are.”
hp_goldenage. I've enjoyed both the reception of my anonymous fic and reading fabulous entries, and there's still more to enjoy: replying to the amazing comments and commenting some more. Title: A Work of an Advanced Artist
Author:
paulamcgCharacters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius, references to Remus/an OC and Remus/CCs
Rating: G
Word Count: 3170
Content: Age difference, ailments, artist Remus Lupin, bisexuality, memories, references to not fully human or not only human creatures
Summary: In 2015, with an another turning point ahead of him, Remus wishes Sirius could understand and share what his life has become.
A/N: Canon-divergent after the end of OotP. The prompt was He’s survived the wars and the years after losing his friends, his lover among them, and perhaps raised alone the child from a marriage he was pushed into (or perhaps led a revolt of persecuted creatures). Now he’s free to pursue a relationship which could become as sweet as his first love. Thank you again, my wonderful beta
liseuse!Read here on AO3
or right here
A Work of an Advanced Artist
“You’ve moved me.” His Sirius’s tone is as nuanced as ever – playful, impatient, tender and suspicious all at once. He’d like to believe that it is. “For a moment I thought I’d just shifted inside my dreams, to dream about my first visit.”
Cherishing the jolt in his heart, Remus chooses to first focus on listening to the voice he’s missed during his absence and for another month of silence, and postpones the bliss of meeting the silvery light in those mesmerising eyes. With an involuntary grunt, he stands up from the stool next to the hearth, where he, too, has been slumbering – only for an hour, mind, and not all through the gloom of the winter – and limps over to the oak table so as to share his beloved sleepyhead’s view towards the front door.
He remembers every moment of that visit vividly, of course. Back then, before sitting down opposite to the guest he’d brought from London, right after entering through the fireplace, he’d sensed the house-elf’s presence and seen his silhouette against the glare of July sun streaming in. Now the door is closed against February cold, but the light has returned to fill the windows, finding its way even under the low eaves of this ancient house.
And the forty years become one heartbeat.
But in that heartbeat Sirius’s hand has left his. When he sits down, his back to the door, he can see the love of his life in the shadows of the far wall, between the bookshelves, above the velvet cushions on the bench which he’s used as his bed after returning from the werewolf village.
Sirius jerks his head, flicking aside the hair that’s hanging over one eye. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“You never asked… except, ‘Fag?’”
“You’re right. And once I was upset, also smoking because of that. When I finally offered you one, you thought about the meaning of the word in American slang, because you’d made friends with that American bloke, another student of Defence against Dark Creatures.”
“You were jealous until that question made me laugh and explain he wasn’t one.” Remus smirks.
And sighs, not only because he’s started to get up, and having forgotten that sitting doesn’t agree with him these days, finds his back stiff again, even though the old elfish magic in his heirloom chairs should adjust them perfectly to his body’s needs. The pain radiates all the way down his left leg.
Approaching the couch slowly, he tries not to limp.
“I hope you’ve just grown old – not hurt yourself at full moon or in a battle.” Now the tone’s definitely both teasing and gentle.
“I’ve done all that at some point, and this is what I am now. Have you grown up to be polite or not?”
No, of course not. This Sirius will never grow up.
Having knelt on his blanket, Remus presses his left palm on that hand which is resting on the balcony railing in the glow of the late October’s sunset. The light’s reflected from the thinning gold and bronze of the birch trees he depicted so painstakingly when waiting for his lover and friend from an Order mission at the time of fear and hope, trust and suspicion.
His memories are still not focused on the moment of connection on that final evening. He can only slowly reach deeper into that magic. But he’s already smelling the smoke.
Now he’s stroking the slender fingers stained by lube – the kind for motorbike chain only – and on muddy paths where these beloved hands have padded in their paw shape, following the stag’s hooves. And he can recall the image – the imagined scene – of those loyal Animagi romping in woods, seeking release from danger and worry.
His eyes, however, are sharp enough still – or again, having gradually more than regained the sight lost not long before his direct confrontation with both Umbridge and Chief Ice-Stare, in the first year of the Revolt. He can’t help seeing the wrinkles, raised veins and scars drawn onto the skin of his hands by the hardships of a long, beautiful life.
The link between these old man’s hands and his young Padfoot is a thin layer of watercolour on the canvas he was once deprived of by… yes, by bloody Dumbledore. The treasure was returned to him by Harry, thanks to the bold autobiographical letters sent to the sixteen-year old from this illegally claimed childhood home and refuge for persecuted creatures.
Remus prefers reminiscing about that year – that turning point. One of its climaxes was getting this Sirius back. He hasn’t wanted to admit any disappointment, and since he won’t get tired of the voice, he mustn’t let Sirius fall back to the silence of dreams.
“You are, of course, a handsome grown-up man,” Remus hastens to say, realising that he’s stayed quiet, hardly looking at the painting, “and I’m happy I can keep you like this.”
“Keep me!” Sirius huffs. He takes a last long drag on his cigarette and turns aside to crush the butt on the railing and to flick it over.
Now Remus is staring at him, quite mesmerised enough, following each movement, savouring the line of the profile, and anticipating the moment when the face will be turned fully towards him again. The smile he captured thirty-four years ago sometimes shines unchanged.
He’s been proud and pleased that this is a work of an advanced artist, not a mature one, but someone who was well on the way to master the Magic of Images and eager to apply it in an innovative way, and worked passionately to achieve a moving portrait against a change of seasons as the background. The only old portrait he had left for Sirius to see after Azkaban, in that last hard but hopeful year, was the charcoal drawing of all four of them – only six months earlier than this painting, but what a difference it made, what a long time it was at their age. In May 1981 the two of them were secure in their love, all the Marauders in their friendship – while he was a beginner as a painter of true, moving images. What he captured back then was a twitch of a smirk, as Sirius called it, declaring his hatred for it, when imprisoned at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and struggling to reach some of his lost happy memories and to build new ones. But that loyally repeating smile – in the only sketch stored between the pages of the photo album and kept safe in the briefcase – had accompanied Remus through his drifting years.
This portrait is unpredictable. Now the careful, loving brush strokes for Sirius’s graceful brows are distorted in a scowl.
“You know I hate staying still. I did it for you, settled against this railing to be your model on that evening – this eternal evening, where I’m trapped now.”
“That’s why I’ve always known you loved me. I mean you loved me on that last day, and that saved me in the years when I thought that you…”
“My drama queen! I can get sentimental, too, and say that you saved me… Or was it James’s son? Did you tell me that bloody Dumbledore lied to you, said that this thing was destroyed among everything in our flat, and kept it rolled up and hidden?” Sirius frowns and shivers, folds his arms. “It didn’t matter to me.”
He’s taken off his leather jacket, and Remus can discern the shape of a pack of Muggle fags under the sleeve of the thin and not exactly white t-shirt. It’s hard not to still feel proud of how well the effect works. Once again Sirius will allow him to see how real the cigarettes are. Only when watching Sirius take the pack out and fumble for another fag, does he realise that his fingers can feel and have felt for a while again only the texture of the canvas.
“Until that day you…” Remus stares at the thin line of the mouth, waiting in vain for the lips to part more than needed for placing the cigarette between them. “Passed away.”
“Through a veil. I know.” Sirius plays with the cigarette as if he’d forgotten what to do with it, then shakes himself like a dog come out of rain, and wriggles his Muggle lighter out of a pocket in his tight jeans. Having lit the fag and let the smoke out straight from his mouth in a small cloud, which Remus breathes in greedily, he leans both elbows back on the railing and stares ahead, somewhere over Remus’s shoulder, and continues in quickening, impatient pace, “But after I first came to my senses here, I found nowhere else to go except the hero king’s army in that moth-eaten tapestry up on your loft. And it was right next to where you kept this canvas even after you gave me the frame. So there was no change of view until you painted those landscapes. Remember that spring day when I managed to shift into the one you’d just finished painting outside, next to the window? Your father’s apple trees in bloom, and… Where are those pictures now?”
“I’ll paint new, better ones if you want them.” The soothing words come out halfhearted, as Remus focuses on the fag between the stained thumb and forefinger. Back then, he took it and stealthily caressed Sirius’s knuckles, didn’t he? “I thought you didn’t care to move to other canvases any longer. And I sold those paintings because I needed…”
“Still so poor? I think you’ve told me that you’re a leader now, the headmaster of a school here, and the head of a company, Creature Power or something. A famous, respected figure.”
Maybe it’s not so bad that Sirius seldom talks about anything but the old days. When he shows any interest in current affairs, he’s more arrogant and rude. Back in the day he was most discreet about Remus’s financial situation. Too discreet, making it impossible for Remus to reveal even the least embarrassing details of his poverty, let alone its depth after he’d lost his parents.
As Sirius found it so difficult to remember their youth in the last years of his life, it’s been lovely to share those memories with this Sirius who’s experienced nothing beyond. But for two decades now they’ve gone through them too many times, explaining everything, or not quite. Remus is tired of returning to incidents behind which there were his first experiences of hunger and other hardships, hidden due to his pride and struggle for independence.
“Respected by some, perhaps.” He sighs. “But a controversial figure.”
He wishes Sirius could understand and share what his life has become, but it’s impossible. His hand passes over Sirius’s, and senses some warmth – of the burning tobacco, or of the young skin, he wonders – when he repeats patiently, “Nobody pays me a salary. This estate produces enough to feed me and the members of this brotherhood, but sometimes we’ve needed more cash than what we get from selling a part of the crops.”
Sirius is hardly listening. “I’m glad you’ve moved me down here anyway. And you’ve got something on your easel. What’s that? Not finished enough for me to get in there. Show me!”
Remus has been sitting on his heels, and he gets down from the bench clumsily. The few steps to the easel must look easy enough, though. He’s been standing to paint, with the oil palette on the table, and with the work facing the windows, of course.
Turning the easel around, for Sirius to see the almost finished double portrait, he can’t conceal the pride and joy when declaring, “That’s my daughter, with Luna’s other child.”
“Oh.” Sirius frowns.
“They stayed here for a couple of weeks, and slept on the loft. That’s why I moved your portrait.” Since Sirius says nothing, Remus continues, “Amy’s going to Hogwarts in September, and Sunny’s old enough, too, so that I wasn’t afraid he’d fall from the ladder. Young enough, so that he was excited about the climbing.”
Five years old, this boy’s taking bold leaps in the direction of a future of health and prosperity. In the painting he’s trying to turn a page, while his big sister clasps his wrist and continues to point at the lines she’s reading under a picture of a crumple-horned snorkack. Remus is happy with how he’s caught these movements as well as the orange-red undertones in his russet skin against Amy’s paleness. They’re sitting cross-legged on the hearthrug, and the flickering flames give some warmth to her hands and face, and colour her limp hair tawny, almost as golden brown as mother’s or…
“She looks like you,” Sirius blurts out, “when I first saw you.”
And Gumby says Sunny reminds him of Remus – or the child he was at the time just before their secret connection emerged, based on elvish magic, due to wizards starting to persecute one of their own, one of the family this elf had chosen to serve. They all share nostalgia. But even Remus’s secret brother, in the disguise of a simple house-elf, can’t share how he sees himself, because he hardly remembers anything of who he was before Swift-Tail turned him into what was considered a Dark Creature – while, as Remus found out decades later, intending to present him with the gift of change.
For Sunny’s first parents the bite became anything close to a blessing too late. By the time the werewolf village had welcomed them and they felt secure enough to risk having a child, they were too worn out due to their hard lives. But their son’s got a new mother, now a pair of mothers, who will grow old together, supporting each other and Remus’s child, too.
All’s well, and Remus hasn’t sacrificed or lost everything. He’s been fortunate to know romantic love again, and again. And once more. This last time will perhaps be the hardest for his Sirius to accept without jealousy.
“I still can’t believe it!” Sirius turns away and, gripping the railing, leans over as if he were trying to see some people – perhaps James and Lily with their baby boy – standing in front of his building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “You got a child. And the mother was almost a child, too.”
“Yes. No. Luna was a child, twelve, when I first met her. She was twenty-three when we had Amy.” And he was twenty-three years older.
He waves to the siblings and limps over to the bench. Tentatively, still hesitating to touch Sirius’s back, he reaches out his left hand.
“Don’t tell me that for ten years you just waited for her to get old enough for marriage,” Sirius says over his shoulder, “and for your age difference to become relatively small enough, and acceptable.”
Remus places his left palm on the wing bone, and perhaps just imagines how flimsy the almost transparent fabric feels between their skins. “Of course not. I got you back and wanted no one else.”
“And after I…” Sirius leans against his touch but looks out at the trees. “After me you wanted half-humans.”
The magic is slipping out of reach again, as that word rouses indignation, bringing back memories of how Sirius has managed to ignore – as hardly a man – the kindest, most selfless person who was Remus’s most loyal supporter and tender lover in the dark and difficult years of the revolt. “You used to call people like me more than human. I learnt it from you. Prospero is more than a human and more than a goblin.”
“I’ve been jealous.” Sirius opens up his grin, suddenly facing Remus – but distancing himself to the time before the picture was painted. “Ever since we left Hogwarts and you…”
Remus manages to chortle. “Yes, how did I dare make new friends!”
They’ve laughed about that for almost twenty years. And Remus has kept buried the thought of unfairness in how Sirius dared be jealous when a fellow student had shown kindness and offered much-needed Knuts for a caricature as well as some advice on where to sell others. Now perhaps the jealousy will become serious again.
“I’m getting married.” Remus has tried his best to make his tone gentle but grave.
But Sirius continues to chuckle. “You’re going to take a wife again?”
“No. For almost a year now it’s been possible for two men to marry legally. Kingsley’s proposed, and I’ve said yes.”
Sirius whistles. But Remus can see and hear the breathing quicken, and he longs to feel the heartbeat against his own. As if after all these years the two of them could be alive only together.
He can go on and live fully what the rest of his years will offer only when he’s honestly done his best to share it with Sirius. “Kingsley is as much my partner as you have been. We’ve been allies for almost twenty years, close friends for ten, lovers for five. Just as I want him, he wants me at his side, and he’s convinced me that for him I won’t be a burden even when the changes have all but undone my body. He’s got his top salary and his investments. He can afford healers to nurse me. And now I can accept such help. Perhaps because I accept what I am. Besides, I’ve got to think about my loved ones.”
On his knees, and holding onto the frame of the portrait, Remus is leaning forward, watching the flutter of Sirius’s eyelashes, fearing that the closest connection has faded out. “He’ll support my daughter, too. And my painting. I’ll allow him to provide me with what I need for that. In his mansion I’ll have real portraits of all those who agree… And landscapes. Perhaps I’ve still got time to travel to see again and paint places I’ve loved. Paris, Thessaloniki, Barcelona, Crete…”
“Why not Beachy Head?” Only now, possibly after not quite following, has Sirius interrupted him.
“Of course. That’s where I’m going first – where you took me right after buying your motorbike. And then where we had our holiday, James’s stag do in 1979.”
“The island shaped like an oyster. Mer…”
“Don’t say it!” Without stopping to consider it, Remus has pressed his forefinger on the youthful mouth. “It was our island without name. Like in the song,” he manages to add in a trembling voice. “It is.”
The lips, smooth and moist, are parting under his touch.
Tilting his head closer, but resisting for a moment the temptation to slip his tongue in, he caresses Sirius’s jawline, cheekbone, line of an eyebrow, and unblemished skin, and whispers, “You’ll take me there one day, shifting with me across to that seascape. Because before our age difference becomes unacceptable, I’ll paint a self-portrait and ask another artist to help finalise this magic in the image. Magic that’ll make me as alive as you are.”
