Diary. Thursday, 25th December, 1975.

This is the journey my thought-train took this morning:

I have a camera! I HAVE A CAMERA! ->

I wonder what the others got. ->

Sirius probably got a fiancee, haha. Poor bloke. ->

Wait. ->

Sirius is a vain and arrogant, yet loveable, idiot. ->

Sirius will want to see my camera so he can take pictures of himself. ->

James likes being where Sirius is. ->

Peter likes being where James is. ->

Sirius, James and Peter should come to my house!

And this is the way the conversation with Mum went:

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"So much."

"Er."

"What?"

"Do you want something?"

"Can't a boy hug his mother on Christmas morning without having some kind of ulterior motive?"

"No."

"Drat. Foiled."

"What is it?"

Then I asked.

Then she made all sorts of hideously unfair demands. Tidy your room, clear up the mess from the bonfire, fix the wobbly tap, etc.

I agreed.

And so did she!

So all is well, today.

Sirius was the first to arrive. Illegal Apparation, naturally. Remus had stopped being Prefectishly Outraged by it. Nor was he particularly annoyed any more by Sirius's extraordinary ability to Make Doorknockers Sing Moderately Recognisable Bowie.

"Rat-a-tat-tat-ta-tat ta-tat-ta-tat-tat, ra-ta-rat-ta-tat-ta-tat-tat!
Rat-a-tat-tat-ta-tat ta-tat-ta-tat-tat, ta-ta-tat-ta-tat-ta-ta-TAT!
Ra-tat-ta-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
Ra-tat-tat-ta-tat-ta-tat-tat!
Ra-ta-tat-ta-ta-ta-tat, ta-tat-ta-tat-tat,
Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat-ta ta-ta-tat-ta TAT-TAT!"

"You don't have a guitar," Remus yelled through the letterbox. "And you definitely don't sing soprano, and sweet head is not required. Try next door."

"LET ME IN!" Sirius yelled back. "I'm freezing my nuts off out here. How come you've got no hills?"

Remus opened the door. "Bienvenue à Prickwillow. Pays Plus Plat. Try saying that three times quickly. Le Château de Garou..."

"Château? Dream on, mate." Sirius dropped his bags in the hall. "Your accent's shit. Why are you speaking French, anyway?"

"Well, it sounds a bit better than 'Welcome to Our Scabby Old Farm, Please Mind the Stairs, They Have Holes in Them', doesn't it?"

"Not much, no."

Remus let it go. "Come on. Leave your things there. It's a longish walk down to the station, they'll be here fairly soon."

"Got smokes?"

"When do I not have smokes?"

He held them up. Sirius grinned.

"Then let's go."

There and Back Again - A Marauder's Tale, by Remus Lupin

i.

They walked, squinting at the sunset. It hung in the air just ahead, close enough to touch, like something from a fairytale. The fens were creepy like that - it was so easy here, Remus thought, to slip back in time. To imagine the immense marsh the whole place used to be. The stories were still told - legends, really, or myths, or so thought the muggles who told them - of all the men who'd gone to investigate the ghostly lights in the patches of clutching weeds and hadn't returned...

Sirius yelled BOO, and Remus screamed like a girl.

ii.

"I did say sorry," Sirius muttered.

It wasn't fair that Sirius's sulks made people want to forgive him immediately, but Remus's sulks just made Sirius sulk, which made Remus want to forgive him. Apologise, even, like he was at fault. It was horribly, revoltingly unfair.

He caved.

"All right," Remus said. "You're forgiven."

Sirius's eyes lit up like someone had shoved a candle in his ear. He was so astoundingly puppyish at times.

"Can I have one now, then?"

A whole mile without a cigarette, while Remus ignored him and chainsmoked four just because he could.

Remus laughed, and relented.

iii.

Sirius was dragging his feet now.

"You never said we were walking to the station in Edinburgh, you bastard."

"Ely, not Edinburgh. It's only four miles. You're so lazy."

"We aristocrats call it 'simply too important to move'."

"You're lazy. And don't throw it on the path!"

"I'm so sorry, Remus, I didn't see the rubbish bin they conveniently installed here in the BUMHOLE OF NOWHERE for people to dispose of their fags."

"Shut up."

"I think you're lost, anyway. You'll thank me when we're following my trail back to the house. And hey - birds won't eat this one!"

iv.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Are we th-"

"Sirius, would you like me to insert my boot in your arse?"

"Yes, please."

"...Christ. Just shut up."

"Why didn't you bring sustenance? I hope you know I'm apparating back to your place, with James and Pete, and You're Not Invited."

"Oh, the laughter I will enjoy when you splinch your eyes onto the inside of Pete's colon..."

"You're awfully preoccupied with the inner workings of boys' bottoms today."

"LOOK, THE STATION!"

Sirius promptly thanked every god there had ever been, and a few he'd invented for good luck, and he RAN.

v.

Remus wished he'd brought his camera, but he'd not yet worked up the courage to move it out of the house.

(It was so much like Dad's favourite, the one they'd had to sell after he died and the rent started piling up, but older, more battered, and cheaper. Didn't matter. Thoughts counted more than cash, after all. Memories. "That scratch. Like the one Dad's had. Remember, he dropped it that time in Hunstanton?" And so on. That made it priceless, but he wished with everything he had left to wish with that they'd not had to sell the original.)

vi.

Things fell quickly into the usual pattern. Sirius walked with James, Peter with Remus. Conversations were thrown ahead or called back over shoulders. Pete stuck valiantly with his cigarette, even through the unavoidable spluttery coughing fit James had dubbed The Rat-Bark - a name Peter carried with apparent pride. Sirius complained that his feet hurt. James suggested they hitchhike.

Of course, Sirius suddenly felt much more alive.

Of course, things went steadily downhill from then on.

An impressive feat in the fens, one might think, where the only hills are riverbanks.

Please. These are the Marauders. They can do anything.

vii.

"There is shit on the back of this vehicle, Remus. A big steaming Everest of shit."

Remus gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry," he said quietly to the driver. "My friend's from London."

"Yeh, can see tha'..."

"James. James, you utter simpleton, you've got us a lift with a man who doesn't even speak rudimentary English."

A tacklepounce, an opening door, and a heavy landing on the verge.

Sirius glared at Remus, then at the dwindling lights.

"I should have brought some money with me. That man needs some charity. He could buy some soap, and perhaps a couple of consonants."

viii.

James and Peter settled in the living room. Remus went upstairs to bed. The only time he spoke to Sirius was when Sirius asked where he was sleeping and Remus snapped, "You can get in the bath and knock yourself unconscious on the taps, for all I care."

His door creaked open, sometime in the night.

"I'm sorry for being a right royal wankspurt."

Silence.

And, suddenly: "Remember that time I told you I..."

Remus turned to look at him, then, but Sirius was already out the door, cursing.

He didn't sleep much that night. Couldn't quite work out why.

The End.
(the beginning?)

things drifted back to normal, as things tend to do-

(but then there was that time he just felt bad. warm winter morning, singing birds, sunshine beating on the windows, slipping through the boards and laying lighter than air on his face. he was in a bad mood. a really bad mood, but not angry. he was just sad. so sad. like he was being wrapped up in a huge thick itchy woolly blanket of pure and absolute sadness. and he woke up crying, in the shack. not just crying. crying like the world was ending. like he'd only cried once before. and he felt worse. there was nothing wrong. not like then, when dad died.

- three-hundred-and-sixty-five days -

and peter sat on his left, james sat on his right, sirius pulled up a broken chair beside the bed and held his hand. you're a mess, james said, oh moony. peter said don't cry. and sirius said, cry. held his hand so tight and said, remus. it's okay. cry. cry til you can't breathe.

- freak out in a moonage daydream -

turned it into something understandable about shattered bones, tearing skin, damn monthlies

- who wouldn't cry? -

and held his hand. that was a good day. strange.)

One week later.

Something was happening, Remus realised.

To put a name to it: he was falling in love. Or he'd done it already. Or he was on his way there.

He felt surprisingly okay about it.

"Falling in love," he said out loud.

Sirius stopped playing with his hair and reached for his hand instead. Twisted their fingers together and held them up so he could inspect his ragged bitten painted nails against Remus's neat-but-inky ones. Wouldn't look at his face.

"What about it?" he asked.

"It's happening."

Quiet. "With...? Well, are you sure?"

"Yes. Unless I've been poisoned..."

Sirius started laughing.

("When did you start biting your nails?"

"When you stopped biting yours."

"Oh.")

(Of course, they didn't talk any more about it. Not for days. That's what boys do, even the lovely clever quiet ones all the girls' mums wish their daughters would bring home, like Remus. But not talking about maybe-possibly-perhaps being in love didn't mean they didn't show it. Sirius catching Remus in a hug as he was running to Arithmancy, a quiet tentative hug that seemed to be trying to yell something without sound. Remus going on moving his fingers through Sirius's hair even when he'd pulled all the bits of grass out. It was love - just without saying so.)

this is how it happens...

"Party," Sirius whispers. "Our dorm. Bring alcohol and girls. Don't tell the fourthies and under, they're not invited. Pass it on!"

Peter runs away to pass it on, and Remus hides his face in a cushion and groans.

"Let me have a peaceful birthday. Sirius. Please. Just once. No party, no alcohol, no girls. Can't I just read my book?"

From the look on Sirius's face, anybody who's watching and not listening would assume Remus is saying something TRULY TRULY HORRID along the lines of, "Splendid, a party! I know a really fabulous game. We split the group into pairs, and one of each pair goes out and gathers babies while everyone else collects brooms and sharpens the ends. Then the pairs get back together, and player one throws the babies in the air and player two has to spear as many babies as possible. The pair with the most babies on their spear at the end of the game gets the honour of lighting the fire for the subsequent celebratory spitroast!"

"No, Remus," he finally says. "You can't just read your book, you great nancy. It's your birthday. You will come to your party and you will like it."

Flash forward in time six hours. The fifth year dorm has never looked quite like this before. Peter is covered in lipstick (literally covered - his shirt is unbuttoned and there are hot pink greasy smudges running from his navel to the top of his trousers and he's being annoyingly secretive about whose they are), and Sirius is teaching a pack of third-year girls how to turn cartwheels (yeah, the little ones filtered in, so BY GOD they're going to provide the entertainment), and James is dancing on a table, dressed in Peony Johnson's school uniform with her frilly pink knickers stretched over his head in the place of his glasses, singing a fairly impressive Bohemian Rhapsody through the cotton.

Remus is getting everything on film. He's already through three rolls. He's loading the fourth right now.

And he is indeed liking his birthday party.

Click, flash, giggle.

"Scaramouche, scaramouche!" sings James. "I will do the fandango!"

"Remus!" Sirius yells. He's barely audible over James's shrieking. "Are you having a good birthday?"

"Best birthday of my life."

"You've not had any birthday kisses yet."

The picture Remus captures next, Sirius realising what he's said, is the most brilliant thing ever.

The whole house has detention the next day. No lost points, though - somewhat surprising, considering the number of people there'd been crammed into the dorm when McGonagall came in past midnight to investigate the shouting and suspicious thuds. She'd taken one look at James Potter, who'd moved on to The Collected Works of the Bay City Rollers and had found a tartan miniskirt to better get into the spirit of things, and spewed forth such a roaring torrent of laugher that taking points seemed a bit, well, silly.

"I'm disappointed in you," she says to Remus after breakfast. He tries to look contrite, but she's got a wicked glint in her eye and he's finding it extremely difficult.

"I'm sorry, Professor," he says. "It won't happen again."

"I should hope not." A pause. "Potter does not have the legs for a kilt."

Sirius laughs when this is retold, then winces.

"Headache."

"Serves you right. How's James?"

"Dying," James whimpers from his bed. "Amnesia."

"Remus has pictures," Sirius says, helpfully.

James narrows his bloodshot eyes. "Of what, exactly?"

"You."

Remus starts backing away.

"With knickers on your face. Wearing a dress."

James's howl of rage is heard in the dungeons.

And so begins the Great Gryffindor Civil War.

So Peter calls it, anyway. He gives up when it becomes apparent that nobody else shares his enthusiasm for melodrama. "Besides," Sirius says, "it's not exactly civil, is it? Or haven't you been listening to Jamesie's shocking language?" James gives him a dead arm.

The Great Gryffindor Civil War becomes simply Potter's Vendetta Against Lupin's Camera.

"It must die," he's heard to mutter at least once an hour, even in his sleep. "Drop it down a well, Spellotape it to a Bludger, fire it from a cannon, make Remus eat it, it must die, it must die!"

It's starting to annoy Remus, truth be told. He's thinking, "It's okay for you, in your big house with your rich mum and your dad's brilliant job and all the nice things you ask for, but when do I ever get something? And if you so much as touch my camera, you selfish fuckface, I will break every last bone in your whining body." But he doesn't say it.

It's not his fault Evans saw the pictures, anyway. He's only shown them to Sirius. That they were soon pinned to every noticeboard was entirely accidental.

"Here's what we do," Sirius suggests, that Saturday afternoon. "We take a picture of you doing something completely shameful and unRemuslike. Flicking bogeys at Dumbledore. Chewing with your mouth open. Reading dirty magazines hidden in the cover of your History book. Anything. You do it, we take pictures of it, and we give them to the girl you intend to marry, and then James can't possibly carry on this bollocksy sulk he's decided to drown himself in, because the two of you'll be even. Good plan?"

"Oh, Sirius." He looks so earnest. Of course, he's joking. At least, Remus thinks he's joking. But he looks so absolutely sincere, and it doesn't matter that he's acting - a very little part of Remus's heart seems to explode anyway. "It's an excellent plan, and a really lovely thought."

"But...?"

"But, there's just one small problem with it."

"What's that, then?"

Remus smiles, a bit, and carefully extracts himself from the too-casual-to-be-casual tangle they've got themselves into on the sofa.

"See if you can't work it out. I have to go to the library."

"You forgot your camera!" Sirius calls after him, as he leaves the common room.

"Look after it for me."

When Sirius gets to the library five minutes after Remus, he's breathless and flushed. He's obviously run all the way from the tower. And, "I know what the problem is," he says, before he's even said hello, and he leans against a chair with one hand while he catches his breath. The other hand is clutching Remus's camera.

Remus looks up at Sirius and raises his eyebrows in question. But instead of answering, Sirius raises the camera to his eye.

"Let me take your picture," he says, and Remus refuses violently and covers his head with his arms moments before the flash goes off.

Sirius seems to find this very funny.

"Why can't I take your picture?" he asks.

"I just don't like it, that's why. I'm much better on one side of the camera than the other, and it happens to be opposite the one I'm on now."

"Pft. I could look at you all day, if you'd let me."

Remus is still hiding, but he's smiling now as well. A really STUPID smile, he knows. Don't need photographs to know that.

"No pictures of me. Absolutely not. None."

"Well," Sirius says. "You'd better start running, then, hadn't you?"

Of course he shouldn't be running through the school corridors shrieking an unmanly amount of breathless laughter and scaring a group of first-years. Of course he shouldn't. He's a prefect, for one. He's supposed to be saving strength for Tuesday's moon, for two. It's just ridiculous, pathetic (unRemuslike) behaviour, for three, and he can't tolerate it when some of the girls have their little crises or victories and feel the overwhelming urge to behave the same way. There's a time and a place for losing control, he thinks, and 'Saturday lunchtime' and 'in public' aren't on the list of acceptables.

It feels good, though. There's a delicious feeling in the pit of his stomach about all this. He knows what Sirius is thinking. Sirius knows what he's thinking. He doesn't know why neither of them has done anything about it yet. Fear of rejection? Can't be, they both know. Of rules? Please. One's a werewolf and one's an unregistered Animagus. Rules don't apply.

So he really doesn't know, but it really doesn't matter. They're running, up and down stairs and through halls and empty classrooms, past confused students and a disapproving Flitwick, laughing and laughing and laughing and it's glorious.

"Stand still!" Sirius is shouting, between giggles. "Just one picture, please!"

Remus can't even manage his 'sod off!' because he's laughing too hard.

He jumps over the banister of a rickety staircase, races across the entire castle, west wing to east, and up a curling turret to the - sixth floor? Seventh? He's lost track of where he is, except that he's with Sirius and he's so happy he could burst at the seams.

A sudden sharp left - into the girls' bathroom, as it turns out. Stupid, really. There's just the one door, which Sirius instantly slams shut and stands against with a smugly triumphant, "Ha!" One hand's readying the camera, the other fumbling down to turn the big golden key.

Trapped. Bugger.

"Oh, hell," Remus splutters, and folds his arms and tries hard not to look amused, because he's determined to ruin the stupid bloody picture, only he can't turn the happy down any farther than 'big dopey grin', so he has to settle for that. "Just take the damn thing, quick."

Click, flash. "Done! Merlin's nads, do you have to be so difficult?"

"Are you going to talk all day or are you going to kiss me?"

"I'm going to kiss you," Sirius immediately says, and he comes to stand in front of Remus.

There's no nervousness, and nothing's awkward. Sirius lifts his hand to push back a bit of gold-brown hair. Remus smiles at him and catches his hand when he's done.

"No poison?" he asks, and everything's so light and comfortable and wonderful and perfect.

"There was never any poison," Sirius says. "I'm just an idiot. But I've loved you forever."

"Isn't it a bit early to talk about forever?" Remus steps in closer. The lens of the camera's digging into his chest. He drops Sirius's hand just long enough to lift the strap over his head and set the camera on the tiles by their feet, and then he's kissing him before his brain's told him he's stood back up, and Sirius's arms are around his waist and he's kissing him back and it doesn't matter that they both still taste of lunch because they both still taste of lunch and that makes it okay.

"Forever's a good thing," Sirius says. He pulls Remus closer and smiles against his mouth and kisses him again. "Isn't it?"

"I don't want forever. I just want now."

...just like that.

Forever doesn't matter, even if it's there.

Forever's too abstract a concept, and far too far away.

It's like breathing, almost. One isn't awestruck and overwhelmed every time one takes breath. It's just there. Always has been and always will be. There's no need to analyse.

Remus said so one night. Sixth year. Sirius had been talking about love, and forever.

I don't want forever, Remus said, just NOW. I don't want to do things later. I don't know what I'm doing when I leave school, never mind the REST of forever. I don't have choices like you do. I want everything now, because I'm scared of no longer having it.

And: "Do you love me?" Sirius asked, suddenly and sleepily.

"Love that I make you happy," Remus said. "I do, don't I? I think I do. I love that I get to know you a bit better every day, and I love that you're not boring yet and I love being able to stay up all hours of the night talking about nothing, and of course I love you, you daft sod, and of course it's forever."

Sirius was already asleep on his shoulder, and Remus watched him breathe.

(the end)

Credits:
Sweet Head - David Bowie
Moonage Daydream - David Bowie
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen