Quarantine Prompt #8 from Anonymous: For prompts (if you're still taking them) maybe one where you tell James and Lily's relationship at Hogwarts through the eyes of younger students especially some of them hearing about their deaths? I feel like I may have read something similar to this but I'd love to hear your interpretation
A/N: I took the liberty of rewriting a scene and quote often used to for jily from POA after getting this prompt because Remus, I felt, was written poorly.
The photographs lined the hall, going all the way back to when Hogwarts was first founded. Harry hadn't even been looking for it, not really. He'd stumbled on the hallway while looking for divination. Ron hadn't noticed Harry's falter in step as he raced through the hall without a second glance at the faces in the portraits.
It was their faces, Harry knew he saw them.
Harry had to wait for the end of the classes to retrace his steps. He might've been in his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry but he still hadn't seen every dark hallway or explored every dusty crevice. The hall below the divination chambers was no exception. With it's flickering candles and wooden framed portraits of student faces, it almost felt like he was entering another dimension.
He found them, settled between the years 1977 and 1979. He examined the girl first, leaning on the boys arm and looking up at him like he was the night sky. Her dark hair almost looked brown until light from Harry's wand casted over the shadowed frame. Red and gold strands lit up in the dark like fire and her eyes, green as a bottle, turned their attention on him.
"Mum?" he whispered, eyes fluttering to the boy at her side wearing a Head Boy badge and grinning triumphantly, "Dad?"
It was almost worse than looking into the Mirror of Erised when he was eleven. Then, the mirrored images showed them older and more war bent. The two in the frame were children, like him. Lily Evans' face was rounder than Harry had ever seen it. James Potter's hair was the messiest pile of curls that Harry hadn't even imagined his hair could get too.
They both wore Hogwarts clothes, their Gryffindor scarves wrapped around their necks. Whoever had taken the photograph, had taken it outside amongst a snowy backdrop. Harry watched as his father bent down to grab a handful of snow and shove it into his mothers face. This portrait was a flash of the past and Harry heard his mums laugh for the first time.
The magic on the portrait wasn't strong, so all Harry could hear were echos. It was like little bursts of laughter and teasing from the frame. Harry realized he laughed like his dad. Loud, boisterous and full of love. Lily's laugh was hyena like as she returned the favor, shoving snow in James' face. Harry gave a soft chuckle, earning the portrait's attention again.
James Potter wiped snow from his glasses before the pair resumed their normal positions, side by side. Her hair was falling over one shoulder and he had an arm tossed around his shoulders.
"Harry, what are you doing down here alone?"
Harry's face shot away from the portrait of his parents to find Professor Lupin walking slowly towards him. Professor Lupin's eyes grew dark when he saw what Harry had been staring at. The two people in the portrait waved at the older Professor, as if they knew him. Professor Lupin turned away from the portrait to face Harry.
"Would you like to go on a walk?" Professor Lupin asked.
Harry looked back at his parents, dead in real life, but living in the photograph. Professor Lupin placed a strong hand on Harry's shoulder and Harry finally turned away from the photograph. They walked side-by-side down the dark hallway, Professor Lupin leading the way back down to the main castle floors. They walked out onto the grounds, still damp from that morning's rainstorm. Harry wished he were in Hogsmede with everyone else but, Professor Lupin was okay company.
"I used to walk this same route every morning with my best mate." Lupin pointed down the path they'd started outside, "he loved the morning, spent most of it flying before classes."
Lupin told several stories on their walk, as if he could tell Harry had other things on his mind. Harry occasionally glanced over at his Professor, working up the courage to ask why Lupin never let Harry participate with the boggart in class last week. It wasn't as if Lupin knew that Harry had been inside, staring at a photograph of his parents. Lupin probably assumed Harry was upset about the Boggart.
"Professor, can I ask you something?"
Lupin drew his hands behind his back as they stepped up onto the bridge that led back into the castle, "You want to know why I stopped you fighting the boggart that other day? I would have thought that was obvious. I assumed that if you faced the boggart, it would assume the shape of Lord Voldemort."
Harry sighed and leaned against the railing overlooking the drop down into the gulch that fed the Great Lake. That hadn't been exactly what Harry was going to ask but it was a question he'd been pondering since it happened so he glanced at the other wizard expectantly.
"I did think of him at first. But then I remembered that night on the train. I thought of those dementors." Harry heard his mothers piercing scream again, a opposite reaction to life from the woman laughing in the photograph inside the castle.
Lupin knotted his hands together on the railing and overlooked the gorge too, "I'm impressed, Harry. That suggests that what you fear most of all...is fear. Very wise."
"Before I passed out on the train, I mean-I heard something." Harry swallowed, "A woman. Screaming."
Something flickered in Lupin's light eyes, "Dementors force us to uh, relive, our worst memories."
"Why?" Harry furrowed his brow.
Lupin paled as he said, "our fear becomes their power."
Harry once again thought of the laughing and smiling woman in the photograph. He thought of how happy she'd been, not knowing the future was set in stone for her to be...a martyr.
Harry turned his bottle-green eyes on Lupin, "I think it was my mother, the night she was murdered."
Lupin's jaw twitched and his fingers curled into fists on the post. He leaned up and off the wood, as if reliving some of his own worst memories, whatever they might be. Lupin drew out his wand and started fiddling with it, quietly, before he finally answered Harry.
"You know the very first time I saw you Harry, I recognized you immediately-no-" he added when he saw Harry flatten his curls over his scar, "not the scar. Your eyes. They're your mother, Lily's."
Harry's eyes shot up to find Lupin looking at him considerably forlorn. Lupin's expression looked torn between sadness and fondness. Questions poured into Harry's mind as Lupin sighed and leaned against the bannister, looking much older than he had before.
"Yes," he answered Harry's silent question, "I knew her. She was fearless, and cheeky when it came to your father. She stood up for muggleborns and outcasts alike. Exactly as you'd imagine her to be. She was...an uncommonly kind woman."
Harry felt his mouth flicker up as he thought of the photograph of them in the hallway, a forgotten time capsule of his parents. Lupin seemed to be remembering them fondly because he didn't speak again for another minute.
"She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves." Lupin muttered, "Your father, James, however, had a certain, shall we say, talent for trouble. A talent, rumor has it, he passed onto you...along with his hair. He'd be so happy to know you look like him and followed in his footsteps with quidditch."
Harry thought of the boy tossing snow with the girl in the pictures and how they'd waved at Lupin when he fell to Harry's side in the hallway, "is that why that portrait of them waved at you? You were their friend?"
"They were two of my very best friends." Remus admitted, water staining his cheek, "I was there the day that photo was taken, you know." he gave a bitter sort of laugh, "they'd both gotten Head Boy and Girl, respectively. McGonagall took the photo while we-I mean I made fun of them in the background."
Harry wondered if he'd make Head Boy, like his father. He wondered if he'd grow to be as fondly remembered as his mother. Harry took a deep breath, just remembering them both as they were in the painting: young and carefree. He wanted to remember them like that, always, for whenever the dementors came around again. Lupin touched his shoulder to wake him up from his inner monologue.
"Your father was there for me at a time when no one else was, and your mother was one of my dearest and oldest friends." Lupin's eyes were soft and kind, "You're more like them then you know, Harry. In time you'll come to see just how much."