Disclaimer: See first chapter

A/N: Quick word here about how weird it is that I sort of celebrate this chap's birthday. Thing is, I write gushing dedications to Earhart in the summer so I think I'm entitled to talk about Remus here. (And for once, I'm using "Remus".) I have been a worrier all my life. I have been the mother hen of my friendship group. I have been sardonic and often a bit mopey since the year dot. I am also a little shit. None of these things are traits of which I was proud. Not until I read The Prisoner of Azkaban. Not until I "met" Remus Lupin. Because the guy who thought like me, talked like me, worried like me, was a BAMF. Happy 55th birthday, Remus.

28: Birthday

1971

The minor chord sequence comes to an abrupt and discordant end as he walks through the front door. John Lupin has barely set down his briefcase before his wife leaps up from the piano stool, grinning like a lunatic. It is the first time he has seen her smile since she was informed that her boy, her beloved, her raison d'être, had been accepted into the school at which he had been enrolled since birth and would be living over four hundred miles away.

"What?" He can't help but grin back at her. Everything about her happiness is utterly infectious. Her laughter is deep and throaty, her smile wide and flashing long white canines.

She beckons, holding out her hand. "I've bought Remus' birthday present. I saw it in the market when I went into town and I just had to have it for him. It'll be perfect for school. I think you ought to give it to him."

John raises an eyebrow. "If it's his books, I'm buying those for him anyway. He's not getting school things for his eleventh birthday. I'll take on overtime."

Emma clicks her tongue. "Where on earth would I have bought his school things on the quay? No, come and look."

She could bring it downstairs. He's not due back from school for another half an hour and John knows that as soon as he comes home, his son will be busy climbing the oak tree on the edge of the property because he expressly forbade him to only this morning.

She takes his hand, her fingers still cool from the ivory keys of the ancient piano, and squeezes, leading him upstairs almost at a run. His face is obscured in a haze of cloudy black curls and her perfume, the scent of summer peaches, tickles the back of his throat as he breathes it in.

"It's no good, I'm afraid," he tells her, wrapping one arm around her waist even as she is moving and deftly pulling her to him. She fits neatly into the space between his shoulder and the crook of his elbow. "I've just got to have you."

"John, he's going to be home in a minute!"

"Twenty minutes. More than enough time."

"Yeah, for you." She gently flicks her forefinger against the tip of his nose, laughing as he jumps back in surprise. "Serves you right, you dirty pervert."

"Pervert? For wanting to make love to my own wife? Oh, lock me up and throw away the key. I don't deserve to see the sunlight."

Emma only rolls both her eyes and her hips, spinning slightly as she dodges his embrace. "Now I know he's not shown any real interest in it," she says, throwing open their bedroom door and making for her husband's former school trunk positioned at the end of their bed. "I just thought it would be nice. I mean, not for landscapes, though I'm sure there are so many beautiful scenes, but for friends and things. Memories." She hands him a large, as yet unwrapped, box and bites her lip, waiting for approval. "I can always use it myself if you don't think he'd like it."

The device inside is black and boxy and marked Kodak Retina IIa.

"It looks like a camera," he says, gently running his finger around the lens. "But not like any camera I've ever used."

"It is a camera," says Emma. "I thought he might like to take photographs of his friends and all those things I've never seen. But if I give it to him, he's going to think I want him to send them home and write to me every day and generally smother him. So I thought if you gave it to him, he might just get the hint."

John's soft smile that tugs at the left side of his mouth says far more than any of his soothing words. He nods, accepting the box by holding it closer to his chest. "Where's the wrapping paper?"

"Oh I'll wrap it. You're not getting your over-sized mitts on my wrapping paper. You always use half the bloody roll."

Lowering his voice to a gruff whisper, he leans in, some vital organ or other dropping to the pit of his stomach at the sound of the catch in her breath, the sight of her eyelids fluttering closed in anticipation of his kiss. His lips graze hers as he mutters, "That's the plan."

"Fuck you," she calls after him, only half-jokingly, as she hears the creak of the stairs.

He grins up at her through the stair rods. "You had your chance."


"Happy birthday."

Lupin nods. The box is heavy in his hands and he is frightened that he'll drop it. "Thank you."

"I wanted to get you something to take to school."

His father beams down at him, nodding. Lupin sets the box on the kitchen table, not wanting to admit that he is terrified of going to Hogwarts, that he's grateful for his father's efforts, but really he would be much happier at home.

"Thanks."

"Go on then. Open it."

He thinks it might be his textbooks, but his mother usually gives him books or several other small things she's sure he'll enjoy. His father's guilt makes him somewhat overzealous. He's always buying gifts he could present to the crown prince of some exotic locale.

"Your mum says there's a newer model on the market, but I thought this one looked a bit nicer."

His son says nothing, staring at the camera.

"If you don't like it, Remus-"

Lupin shakes his head. "No, I do. I love it."

"I don't have many photographs of my friends and I don't see some of them so much these days. I was very young when we had you. One minute they were all telling me your mother was quite a catch and the next they treated fatherhood like a contagious infection. Eventually, you're all going to go your separate ways and I want you to have more than memories. I want you to have some physical thing that you can hold in your hands and know that it happened."

Lupin stares up at him, open-mouthed.

"Unless, of course, you have a shit time at school. In which case, reminiscing when you're thirty-five probably won't have the same rose-coloured tint." Seeing the horror of recognition flash in his son's eyes, remembering him trudging up the path with a split lip, John hurriedly backtracks. "But you won't have a shit time at school. It's going to be great. Come on. Come and see my things. I've kept them all in the attic. Your mother wanted to put the spare bedclothes in my school trunk."

The attic smells musty and ancient, like old books. The windows haven't been cleaned and as the sun streams through them, Lupin can make out the dust particles hovering in the air. He coughs quietly and vows to save his breath. His father is on his knees, shuffling from box to box until he comes upon a large, heavy blanket box. He lifts the lid and hands Lupin his school robe.

"That must have been my last year by the look of it," he says, smiling wistfully.

It's long and black with a flash of royal blue inside the hood. It's heavy in his hands and Lupin throws it over his arm, running the smooth fabric between his thumb and forefinger.

"You'll have one just like this. A lot smaller, of course. And when you grow a bit, you can have this one. That'll save us a bit of money. And when you get your letter, you'll get your reading list. I've still got books. You never know when you might need to find something."

Lupin accepts the books and carries them downstairs to his bedroom. These, he thinks, are a far better gift.


2009

"What are we getting him for his birthday?"

The lights are out and his bed is warm. This is the last night of the Easter holidays that he will be spending at home until his son's eleventh birthday in ten days. Lupin lets out a small disgruntled noise into his pillow. Discussions that go on once the lights are out can go on all night if they disagree.

"I thought I might get him something small – something from me."

Tonks rolls over, one eye closed in her exhaustion. "Well you always get him something small from you."

Lupin smiles softly. "Something big from me."

Tonks sits up, pushing her pillow against the headboard and, too tired to find her wand, turns on the bedside lamp. "When you say something big, are we talking size or price tag?"

Lupin slowly runs the tip of his tongue across the upper row of his teeth. "Neither."

Tonks raises an eyebrow, the image of her mother without having to do any doctoring of her appearance. "Mmm?"

"Well, it's…" Lupin yawns dramatically, but she doesn't abandon her inquisition.

"Well it's what?"

"It's got sentimental value. Don't ask me too much about it; I might change my mind yet."

Her arms have been folded too long and Tonks releases them, letting her hands hit the covers a little too hard causing a deep crevice between her knees. Lupin pulls at the edge of the duvet, reclaiming lost territory.

"All right, it's my camera."

Tonks slides down the mattress, wriggling until her head rests in the crook of his arm. "Not your camera, Remus. Get him a new one. One of his own."

"I think I'd like to give him mine." He can't quite meet her eyes and instead addresses the ceiling. "If anyone's getting a new camera, it's me."

"Oh, but, Remus, your dad-"

"He'd approve. Really. My dad loved nothing like he loved recycling beloved personal effects."

Tonks hums her response, her fingers flitting through the hairs on his chest. "Only if you're sure."

"I'm sure." He waits for her breathing to slow before he mutters, "No, I'm not."


"Happy birthday, dear Teddy. Happy birthday to you!" It is a rousing, but not altogether tuneful, chorus that has Macbeth howling along. His grandmother has long abandoned her attempt at harmonising and sits at one head of the table wearing a pained expression.

"I've got something for you."

Teddy grins. "Yeah?"

Lupin nods. "Come and see."

It's waiting for him upstairs in his father's old bedroom, in a neatly wrapped box. Teddy wanted his bedroom painted blue so his father's shade of Gryffindor red that had been there for decades was stripped off. His photographs had to be taken down and they sit now in a shoe box at the bottom of the wardrobe, somewhere he won't find them if he doesn't go looking for them, somewhere the grief cannot creep up on him unawares.

The camera is a Kodak, but it's not the Retina IIa. He's not sure he can ever part with it.

"Ted, my friends are no longer with me and we parted when I was very young. And that'll happen to you one day too. Hopefully not in the same way, but eventually, you're all going to go your separate ways and I want you to have more than memories. I want you to have some physical thing that you can hold in your hands and know that it happened."

Lupin aches for him to use it and enjoy it. There's a photograph of him and his father, both in matching red anoraks even though they're sixteen and thirty-six respectively. The only real differences in their appearance are the colours of their eyes. They flash smiles for the camera, but they're rather busy, walking the cliffs even in the rain, and neither of them graces the picture very often but it's still his favourite.

When he worries that Teddy won't have pictures of his friends, he thinks, perhaps he is worrying that Teddy won't have pictures of him.

Despite his fears, despite his enjoyment of his father's second-hand schoolbooks, the Kodak Retina IIa, perched neatly atop his box of photographs is perhaps the greatest birthday present he has ever received. With it, he has recorded every minute detail of his life. James, Sirius, and Peter. The Order. His parents. His classroom. The Order. The hell-raiser he would never have dreamed would one day be his wife. More of her. Yet more of her. Sirius. More Tonks. Thirteen photographs of Buckbeak in the same position. Himself and Sirius. Himself, Sirius, and Buckbeak, still barely moving in the background and casting almost judgmental glances in the direction of the lens. And finally, his children. There are approximately forty photographs of Teddy as a baby, all practically identical. He winces. His friends must have seen him approaching with a bulging wallet of photographs and hoped he hadn't seen them.

Teddy says nothing, staring at the Polaroid camera in his hands, stroking its sides, weighing it, sizing it up.

"If you don't like it, Ted-"

Teddy shakes his head. "No, I do. I love it." His smile slowly becomes a broad grin. "Emma's never going to get away with anything ever again."

Torn between 'It's not nice to snitch' and 'I'm so bloody relieved you like it, it has kept me up for weeks', Lupin only smiles elusively.

"Thanks, Dad."

As Teddy rushes downstairs to open the presents from the rest of his family, Lupin can't help but think that the reaction is more than he deserves. His own response to a camera for his eleventh birthday had been cool and nonplussed. Though his father is not around to hear it, he whispers it anyway.

"Thanks, Dad."