Hey everyone! It's been a while, hasn't it?
-Mssr T&C
The floorboards creaked under Remus' shoes. He paused, fingers hovering just above the surface of the dusty railing leading up to a trapdoor overhead. The smell of damp earth and very old wood cut through his senses like a hot blade.
He wasn't sure why he had come. What had possessed him to think that this was a place that he needed to visit, but the late-night wander through the castle had brought him here. Brought him through a decade and a half of forgotten and broken memories.
Remus placed his fingers against the railing. The dust instantly clung to his skin in a thick layer and he felt his heart speed up. He traced a long line up the rail as he took the steps to the door, the splintery wood attempting to bite into him. Above him, the trapdoor sat warped on its hinges with the old lock straining against the awkward bend of the wood. Remus didn't remember it looking quite so gnarled and bent. He reached up and tugged at the lock. Rust had sealed it firmly against his fingers, forcing him to take his wand to it.
Once the lock had been pulled back from its clasp, Remus paused, wand held between his fingers, eyes fixed on the memories behind the door. Nothing here had been disturbed since he had last set foot here. Since they had last stood together on the ruined floorboards saying goodbye to their childhood. He reached out and pushed the door open.
Dim moonlight filtered in through the glass panes of the dusty windows. It tracked up the impossibly dirty floor. Remus stepped through the doorway, the floor protesting under his weight. On the frame four tiny footprints had been etched into the wood with a pocketknife. Stag, Dog, Wolf and Rat. Remus pressed his palm against the wood, closing his eyes.
They had talked about coming back together one day, after the war had ended and they had a chance to reflect on the childhood was robbed prematurely from them. They had imagined showing this place to their one day children, sharing a world from decades before with a whole new era of marauders.
Now, what was once a haven was nothing more than a graveyard of the times before. A coffin buried deep in the mud and dirt of time and grief.
Remus opened his eyes and scanned the room. The teetering stairs that led from the bottom floor to the single tiny bedroom. The hair on his arms stood on end as he started up them. The landing coughed a cloud of dust onto the edges of his robes, but his attention was locked entirely on the room before him. An ancient four poster bed, the mattress little more than rotten cloth clinging over the filling that had started to seep to the scratched floorboards below. Window drapes hung in filmy tatters over panes.
Remus walked to the bed. On the floor, forgotten, lay an old Gryffindor house sweater. The fabric was faded on the side not hidden under the bed-frame. Remus bent, his fingers closing on the sweater. He shook it, creating a thick cloud that made him cough. From the sweater pocket something escaped, fluttering down to the wretched bedspread. Remus looked at it. The white back of an old Polaroid. His heart twisted as he scooped he photo and turned it over.
The photo was remarkably untouched by the time that had scoured the old shack. The vibrant color of a 1978 springtime caught Remus by surprise. A pair of boys peered at him through the frame of the photo. One with dark shaggy hair and a smile that was as devious as it was handsome. Kind grey eyes that, when they fell on the other boy were so full of tenderness that Remus' eyes instantly went hot with tears. The other boy, an innocent, unbroken version of himself that Remus had forgotten ever existed sat against the backdrop of the shack's windows and four-poster.
"Remus, c'mon just sit still-" Sirius laughed, his voice bright with amusement. He had the camera angled to capture their faces.
"I don't even know where you managed to find that-" Remus protested as Sirius caught him around the shoulders, pulling him into his side.
"Just smile! This is one for the books!" Sirius cackled, and snapped the photo. Remus couldn't help the amused little smile that pulled at his lips.
The polaroid fell from the camera and Sirius picked it up, shaking the photo as it developed. "This is just for us. Our own special goodbye to this place."
Remus caught Sirius' gaze then, surprised at the sentiment. Sirius was always nostalgic, maybe in a different way than Remus, but just as intensely. The emotion in Sirius' unguarded gaze was raw with a sadness that Remus hadn't ever seen their before.
"I'm going to miss this place." Sirius said quietly. "I'm going to miss the…the easiness of just being here."
Remus paused. He had never thought that the shack would ever be anything other than a prison, but it had in fact become a sanctuary over the years. It was home to some of his best memories. Some of his most intimate first times.
Remus cupped Sirius' cheek, holding his gaze.
"I'm going to miss it too." He said quietly. Sirius slid the photo into the pocket of his sweater and ran his fingers up Remus' arms.
As Sirius moved in to kiss Remus, he wished for this to be his forever. He wished with everything he had that he would never stop feeling the world spin madly out of control every time Sirius pulled them together. He wished that this would be his world for the rest of forever, and that they would come back here for years to come and share in the intimate little secrets the shack held for them.
"I love you, Remus Lupin." Sirius murmured tenderly.
"I love you too." Remus whispered back.
The moonlight fell perfectly over their faces on the Polaroid. Sirius had spent a frantic three days looking for this picture before they had left the school as graduates. It had been here the whole time.
Remus sank down slowly into the spot on the bed he had occupied that same day fifteen years before. His hands shook as he cradled the old photo. Cradled his broken dreams and shattered heart.
How on earth could those eyes, so filled with warmth and tenderness, be those of a future murderer?
He just couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe the accusations despite what proof there had been. Those eyes had been the same that had said goodbye that fateful night. Those eyes had been the ones that had promised to come home, that it would only be a moment. Those eyes that had never come home and haunted him from the headlines of newspapers for months to come.
That again peered up at him from papers on the breakfast tables in the Great Hall.
The tears tracked down his dust smeared cheeks and Remus held the photo to his chest to protect it, his shoulders shaking.
He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes here, to fall back through time and wake up on the Shack floor next to his old friends, next to Sirius, and just spend one last day in a world where all that mattered was Butterbeer, and not being late to Charms.
What he would give to know that life, just one last time.