Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is Rowling's, the other stuff is me...
Blue by Rockinfaerie
An Introduction at the Old Stone Farmhouse
This is where he was born and raised.
It is in a decrepit state; part of the kitchen roof has fallen in and so the house, always prone to damp, has since accumulated years of rainwater in its warped floorboards. Winds have scattered the contents of the one bookshelf about, and he searches for the leather-bound album. After a few moments of kneeling and standing, he summons it impatiently, and it flies to him from a dark corner of the room.
He sits into a cold armchair to examine its condition; the pages stick together and the photographs throughout have blurred, the images now unfocused impressions of what they once were. He rushes through his schooldays and towards the end, to those of his strangely more distant young adulthood, and pauses for a moment on one photograph.
It was taken at their wedding, and it has blurred substantially; the image is watery, as though the two entwined figures are obscured by a waterfall; their photographic selves, holding each other behind this watery screen, are taking advantage of this semi-privacy, for they are kissing. He holds it sadly for a moment, and then puts it back, and draws out the only untainted one of this section; yes, Lily and James are there, holding each other and in love, but so too, disturbingly, is Black... and they all laugh and smile and wave up at him, and he remembers that it had snowed that day, he remembers the way it crunched beneath his feet as he took that photograph.
And he remembers, his gut acidifying, how he had believed Black's lies and smiles... If he had only realised.
But this is the only clear image. He stares at it, holding it away from him, and for an instant strongly resolves to cut the best man from the picture; because of his presence, everything about the image is unsettling. And yet he feels it again, the stolen happiness of that day, the sheer rebelliousness, even - a day of joy in a time of terrible ruin... and vivid details fly back at him; the small flowers falling from Lily's hair, the odd snowball thrown in the churchyard, the slippery stone steps and the secrecy, the intimacy, the laughter, the loyalty...
Or so they had thought.
His eyelids' hot wet rims press against each other. It seems unfair to exclude young Harry from a world that might have been his, and yet cruel to show him that horrible, disturbing juxtaposition of murderer and murdered. But, he now realises, his mind becoming painfully clear, that Harry, too, may one day have to make decisions of extreme significance, and that perhaps, in being aware of the dangers of placing unquestioning trust in one person alone, he might avoid making the same type of terrible mistake as his father, with all its devastating repercussions...
In an instant he has risen, and, before he can dismiss this notion, he envelopes the photograph along with a few others of their schooldays, quickly tying it to the obedient leg of a hired post-owl, and sends it on its way. Then, as he watches its wide wings flap into the horizon, he begins to wonder if he should have done it at all, or if it would have been best to have left it among the sad watery memories of the past.
Then, as he sits down in the darkening room, he hears (with startling clarity) those young voices of the Gryffindor dorm, the unending conversations and jokes that would pass, deepening and evolving - but never departing - from their origins throughout their years at Hogwarts, and his worry is somewhat placated in believing that perhaps Harry may never have to know the same shattering betrayal that was so soon enacted and endured.
The farmhouse, though it has hosted his childhood, does not hold the same comfort as Hogwarts once did - even now, when the memories of school are shadowed by what had come after. His condition had forged a painful distance between him and his parents, and yet, in spite of a number of surrounding and easily accessed rocky fields he had never been allowed to venture far. With no siblings, he had buried himself in books and the stiff keys of his mother's creaking piano. He spies it now, even more damaged than it had been before, in the musty adjoining room, closed over and deadened in the damp darkness. The lid lifts with a slight and dusty thud, and he softly presses what he knows to be an A. No sound is emitted; the instrument ignores him, resentful of years of unexplained neglect by him... or else it senses, perhaps truthfully, that he is frightened of hearing it sing, after all this time. But as he turns away from it he recklessly jams his hand upon several keys at once, and a discord resounds in the still air, against the faded floral wallpaper...
It lingers in his ear as he locks the back door behind him, standing in the grey empty chicken-yard and once more daring to peer through that gauze of pain and into the other world of youth; wading into the freezing school lake until his fingers turned purple and orange, air leaving his mouth in curling puffs of steam, James leading, almost always blissfully unaware that this activity was past the physical endurance levels of his friends... The way they'd all lie for hours on the cold grass and watch the clouds move and change shape, chased by the winds, and Peter would see shapes in them no-one else saw, and the others would scoff, and then the night would darken and they would watch the millions of stars instead, and look so far up into the night that even they became insignificant.
And as he looks up the winding path, now overgrown with untended grass and tiny blue flowers, he can see that a more specific, more recent memory is suggested; he hesitates on the brink of recollection, and then, the happiness of that distant day tempts him and, for all his fear, he cannot resist...
Once more he sees that wobbly wooden picnic table from which he and his friends stood to greet two approaching figures, one of whom would not arrive at his usual high speed because he held his newborn son firmly to his shoulder. So instead they ran to meet this sudden little family, with embraces and inquiries and exclamations, and as they all ambled back up the path towards the house Remus still thought it extraordinary, though he now saw it with his very own eyes, that these two were parents... And around the picnic table of breadrolls and cucumber and tomatoes in dappled August sunlight, the conversation was anchored to the baby, who was passed - with previously unseen levels of caution on his father's part - between the members of the small party. As the evening drew on talk turned, as it often did on these too-rare occasions, to their not-too-distant schooldays - a safe repository of peaceful memories on which to elaborate with increasing maturity and altering perspectives. A refreshing breeze ruffled the tablecloth, and a smiling Lily cradled the recently placated baby, whom she had retrieved from his round of the table (to which he had begun to reasonably object).
As night fell, moths fluttered low over the ignited candles, their distorted shadows looming large across the empty white plates, wings flitting against the half-filled wine glasses. A blue fire was conjured to launch warmth into the increasingly cool air, and Remus rose to get teacups from the kitchen. There, the relaxed voices drifting through the window, he found Lily seated in the armchair, and turned away with awkwardness and apologies on realising that she was feeding the baby. But she laughed at what she deemed to be an overreaction, and her efforts to dispel his obvious embarrassment proved effective enough to continue his progress towards the dresser and take down five mismatching mugs. On finally turning, he saw that she had finished, and she looked up from the now-sleeping face of her son with a grin.
"Would'you like to hold him?" she asked brightly. "You didn't get a chance earlier on."
"Oh - I wouldn't want to wake him..." he immediately began; she narrowed her eyes in smiling refusal to accept his response. "And you know, I don't have any experience with..." He nodded towards the baby.
"Neither did I until three-and-a-half weeks ago," she replied logically, and slowly got up from her seat, shifting her son carefully in her arms. "Now, you sit there, and I'll give him to you - don't worry, I think you might fare a bit better with him than Wormy did!"
Nervous, but curious, Remus complied, and when he was seated in the squashy cushions she passed the baby to him.
"Mind the head."
He nodded and was relieved to see that the baby didn't wake; it continued in its slumber, pillowed in the crook of Remus' elbow, and his minuteness rendered everything about Remus - the span of his hands, the length of his finger - enormous. And still the baby was this alien entity, wrinkled and pink and so different to themselves. The hood of his pale blue baby-robes had slipped down to reveal a little bit of fine dark hair on his scalp, which Remus acknowledged with a chuckle.
"His hair's sticking up!"
She laughed knowingly, sitting on the arm of the chair and reaching down to take her son's hand around her finger, which he gripped reflexively in his sleep. "Yeah... he'll never be able to tame it." James' cheerful voice issued through the thin windowpanes, followed by a burst of mirth from the two others in the garden. "People have been saying that he looks like me, but I see a lot of his dad in him."
"Well, right now he's definitely very like you... though I suppose he'll change quite a bit over the next few months."
Lily murmured her assent. Up close, she was tired and for an instant seemed, though perhaps he imagined it, anxious. But her face brightened before he could fully register what he thought he saw. "He hasn't figured out how to smile yet," she said, turning to Remus with a grin. "But that's supposed to happen soon. For now all he can do is cry and sleep and look around... it must be quite frustrating, being a baby."
"He seems very happy, though," Remus observed sincerely. "He looks so calm and content."
"I think he feels secure there," she said, gently prising her hand away from the baby's astonishingly strong grip and looking back at Remus. Instantly he feared that he would move too suddenly and cause her to retract her comment, but still the baby slept, sometimes twitching his tiny fingers as though to confirm to himself that they were free to move through and grasp at the air.
Moths flew at the window with soft thumps and they talked of other things, as they had done at school and since; their conversation flowed and meandered, slowed and accelerated, jumping between topics or gradually evolving from one to another, often completing the other's sentences or breaking into laughter at a reference implied by their choice of words. All of their conversations seemed to continue from where they had last paused; there rarely seemed enough to say, and yet they would always close abruptly and inexplicably on an unresolved cadence.
When silence fell, Remus looked back at the baby, and once more thought of the absurdity that its very presence constituted. Perhaps his face expressed this idea, or else she had been thinking it herself, for after a moment Lily voiced it quietly.
"It's a bit bizarre, isn't it...?"
He silently expressed agreement, hoping that he wouldn't offend her by doing so.
"We're still in shock," she elaborated amusedly, casting her eyes to her reflection in the darkened window, beyond which her husband and the two others were jesting audibly between themselves. "Before..." she added in a softer voice, "I was scared. You knew I was. We're the kids of the Order. And... there was so much stuff happening and I didn't think it was right to..." she drifted off, her brow furrowing slightly as she concentrated on the baby in Remus' arms. "But now it's..." she lifted a hand to her hair and looked about the kitchen and sighed, before shaking her head. "I can't actually describe it."
He couldn't see her expression as she left the arm of the chair to go to the dresser, and picked up the five mugs Remus had intended to bring outside.
"I'll make the tea, will I?" she then asked without turning around, and he shifted slightly in the chair with the baby and offered to do it instead, but she had already pointed her wand at the kettle and had located the teabags in a jar to the left of the sink. The bubbling and rattling of the kettle caused the baby's eyes to flicker momentarily before they closed shut again. It was astounding, Remus thought as he looked at his little tranquil face, to think of the difference one year had made to their young lives.
Within minutes, a tray was furnished with a full teapot, the mugs, spoons, a sugar bowl and small horizontally-striped jug of milk.
"I'll take that out," he insisted, moving towards the edge of the seat but unsure of how to stand while holding the baby.
Seeing and understanding his predicament, she bent down to gently transfer the sleeping newborn into her arms. "Well, that didn't go so badly after all, did it?" she asked warmly, looking up at Remus.
"No," he conceded, laughing, "it was surprisingly all right!"
"Good to get a bit of practice in before you have kids yourself," she said with a wink, standing up and settling her son against her shoulder. "Now, let's see what schemes those boys outside are coming up with for this one's upbringing!"
He lifted up the tray and followed her out into the dark air, into this balmy August night of moths and fireflies and a familiar ceiling of pinpricked stars, bemused and yet touched by her unimaginable suggestion. Their arrival at the picnic table led to the lengthy conclusion of what was to be the last night of that sort, the last night of innocent schoolboy rowdiness and united contemplation of the arrival of something so new and untainted into that troubled world.
And now he sees the path grown wild and the tumbling brick walls, the broken slates, the kitchen filled with rainwater. There is no warmth in this place. All that laughter, all that joy... are mere echoes in his mind.
But perhaps he will return.
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