Disclaimer: If it was mine, I wouldn't be here…
A/N: Perhaps, you might recognise this photograph soon.
June 1992
He stared into Black's eyes, the eyes of a killer, the eyes of a traitor, the eyes of his one-time best friend. They crinkled as he laughed and the light danced in them. They were no longer silver, they were diamonds.
They all looked so happy there. In eleven years, Lupin had not failed to look at this photograph and wish that he could relive this moment in James' garden. In eleven years, not a day had gone by that he didn't miss friendship. In eleven years, not a day had gone by when he hadn't wished that he had not dismissed his suspicions as paranoia.
He couldn't remember what had been said and somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if Black could. He supposed he must remember because it had made him laugh so hard that tears had formed.
Peter. Peter had danced on the roof of the extension and very nearly fallen. Surely that should have been the first sign of a sadistic temperament. Still, if Black's laughter made him sadistic then they all were. Even Peter was laughing about it although, if his memory served him, Peter had laughed all night even at things that weren't funny.
He wished desperately that he could laugh like that again. He wished he could laugh like Peter; about nothing much at all other than the fact that he was happy and mildly drunk and surrounded by people who loved him.
Peter would later die so cruelly and in so much pain. It was odd to see his laughter and know that he would never hear it again. He could not even bring himself to look at James, Black's arm draped around him. How could anyone betray that trust? Looking at the picture, at first glance they could have been brothers.
Lupin smiled fondly. He had felt like something of a third wheel at first. Looking at himself in the photograph, he wondered where he had got that idea. He, James and Sirius seemed like family. They stood together in a line, laughing and occasionally swigging from a bottle that they passed around, arms round one another's shoulders. If anyone was an outsider, it was Peter; Peter who had died so nobly for friends who did not value him as they should have. He sat in the background and tittered to himself all night.
He heard his mother's footsteps across the landing and barely dared to breathe. It wouldn't do to be caught staring at pictures again. His Muggle mother still didn't really understand where Sirius was. He didn't dare tell her what Azkaban was like. He told her that he had betrayed James and Lily and that they had died. She had thought it a shame and urged him to continue with his life, but he couldn't. His life was his photography and he had taken his last photograph just moments after Lily and James died. He had not even touched the camera since.
He was thirty-two and living with his mother. She was right; he needed a life. Black had taken it from him. He had killed two of his friends and the other might as well be dead. Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, Lupin hoped he would rot there. He grabbed a pen from his desk and scribbled out Sirius' face, unaware of his tears as he scrawled TRAITOR along Sirius' shirt. He threw the pen down and stared at the ruined photograph. There was something wrong with him and he wasn't going to get any better unless this stopped. He took a deep breath and picked up the letter he had received the week previously asking for pictures of Lily and James to make up an album as a present for Harry.
Lupin had been reluctant to hand any of them over. He would never see them again and the thought filled him with dread. Growing a spine and deciding to take action, he collected several of his favourites (being careful to avoid pictures he was the focus of) and shoved them in an envelope. He hoped Harry wouldn't develop a complex.
He threw the desecrated picture back into the box and closed the lid, sliding it under his desk and forgetting about it. It was not a memory he wished to relive but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away. He would not go looking for it again.
Black's face had been erased from the picture but not from memory. Lupin shivered. Those twinkling eyes still haunted him.