The hard part wasn't writing the lyrics. It wasn't stumbling through notes that didn't flow together, it wasn't finding the perfect rhythm or the perfect beat. Those things, albeit hard, wasn't the difficult part. He could spend all day, all week, all year on one song and feel perfectly at ease.
No, the hardest thing was falling in love.
Lily would've laughed at him for being so poetic, for trying to make his struggles sound like a song without a key yet, but it was how he felt.
It wasn't hard in the sense that it was difficult to do - in practice it was very easy to look out across a stage, into the packed bar that he was singing to, and lock eyes with the girl in the corner who was smiling as she watched and listened to him. That was probably the easiest thing he had ever done in his life, aside from breathing.
The hard part was climbing down from the stage, with the express purpose of using all of that alcohol that was in his system to go and talk to this pretty lady, and finding her gone by the time he looked up.
"Remus?" Lily asked, a look of worry on her face as she looked up from her dinner and eyed her friend worriedly. "I asked you what you've been up to. Are you okay?"
He jerked his head back up and blinked at her. Lily Evans had been Head Girl at Hogwarts, prefect for two years before that, and had decided to begin her rebellious phase by falling in love with notorious prankster James Potter and locking him down before he flitted off to Auror training with his other friend Sirius Black. It was all terribly diabolical of her.
Lily frowned at him, flicking him in the forehead from across the table. "Is this about that Muggle bar girl? Remus. Please. You made eye contact."
"James would understand," he countered with a pout. James understood the profound nature of an inherently romantic soul. Lily and Sirius believed in things outside of soulmates and Destiny with capitalization. Perhaps that's why James loved Lily so much. She was so horribly like his best mate with all of the right sort of genitalia he preferred.
"James would help you hunt the poor girl down so you could serenade her," she rolled her eyes, "I'm talking sense into you. She was probably some bar fly who was looking for a quick shag and found one before you got to her. Also, the probability is very strong that she is a Muggle. We've discussed that -"
"Yes, yes, it would be ever so difficult for me to explain to a Muggle that I turn into a monster once a month and am a magical creature for the rest of the remaining days," it was Remus's turn to roll his eyes. "But Lily, that was before I met her."
"Oh, she's got a title now, has she?" Lily sighed, picking back at her food now. "Thought she'd remain Muggle bar girl and we'd be spared all sorts of trouble. Alas."
Remus sighed and slunk down in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting at Lily over his long finished plate. Lily was a slow eater. It had nothing to do with the fact that he got hungrier the closer it was to the full moon. Totally standalone fact.
"Also, you didn't meet her," Lily insisted around a mouthful of chicken and Caesar salad, where upon receiving she'd made her joke of et tu, Bruté? as she'd speared the meal, "Again. You made eye contact."
"It was love at first sight," he persisted, gesturing wildly, even as he remained slouched. "She was beautiful, Lily. Like Aphrodite and - and Helen of Troy combined."
"You saw her from across a crowded bar! You had stage lights in your eyes!" Lily groaned, dropping her fork and signalling that she was done with her meal as she stood and grabbed her coat. "You saw like two percent of what she really looked like!"
"Let me live," he grumbled back as he stood as well, fixing the hood of his coat as they exited the tiny cafe and began to walk down the street, back towards Remus's place of business.
Ficklewhicks was a village just outside of Diagon Alley, smaller and cozier than the bustling streets and crowded stores. Remus had the lucky position of radio host at all of the awful hours of the day when nobody really wanted to listen to the radio at a "station"/record store called Spinner Station. The owner was a grouchy, cantankerous old wizard who grumbled and puttered about how horrid the new generation was, and Remus wasn't entirely sure why he was hired, especially since it wasn't a secret that he was a werewolf.
Lily, instead of walking with him to drop him off at work, gripped his elbow and dragged him instead to the bookshop.
"It'll be quick," she promised at his amused, slightly reproachful stare. She then sniffed and took off to whichever subject interested her.
Remus sighed and checked his watch, deciding he'd leave in ten minutes if she didn't resurface before then, and took to browsing himself. He'd always loved books, of course, and could spend hours looking through books if left to his own devices.
He was looking through the back cover of Magical Maladies and Medicines, knowing that there would likely be nothing of use to him, when the shopkeeper called down from her ladder.
"That one's rubbish," she announced as she made her way down, a stack of books that towered above her head in one arm as she stepped down.
And poor, poor Remus could only gape at her, because the gods were smiling down upon him and there was Muggle bar girl, digging through the stack she had and presenting him with a different book and a smile.
"Oh!" she blinked upon looking at his face, and his heart began to sink into his stomach as he thought about his scars, but she smiled wider. "You sang at the bar last Friday! It was so good, tell me, did you write that or is it off of the radio that I haven't paid enough attention to?"
"Oh, I - uh - well, I wrote it," he admitted, finally taking the book out of her outstretched hand.
"It was very good," she insisted, still smiling as she tucked pieces of chestnut colored curls that had escaped her updo back behind her ear. "Can't wait to hear you on the radio."
"Thank you," he smiled back. "You actually can hear me on the radio now. Spinner Station?"
"Remus! Should I get the book about magical plant uses, or is that too on the nose with my name?" Lily asked before the girl could respond, bounding up and taking his arm as she paid no attention to his previous conversation.
"Lily, she listened to me at the bar on Friday," he said, looking at her and trying to convey that this was her.
Lily, however, was bright as could be and blinked at the girl. "Oh! I'm so sorry, I was so rude, my fiancé, James, he tells me I need to be better about stepping in to conversations. I'm Lily!" She took her arm off of Remus to shake the other girl's hand, before grimacing and retracting it quickly as she tried to shift the books better.
"I'll be proper later, I promise," she laughed, resettling all of the books she carried across both arms.
"Hermione! Come man the other till, will you?" The owner of the bookshop called, and the girl - Hermione - nodded before waving her wand and distributing the books quickly.
"It was nice meeting you both, Lily, Remus!" She said as she passed by, turning to smile and wave, "Hope to see you again soon!"
"Bye!" Lily waved back before clutching Remus's arm again, digging her nails into his coat. "She's not Muggle!"
"Her name is Hermione," Remus murmured, a dopey grin on his face as he looked around a shelf to watch her for a few seconds before his face dropped. "Oh, fuck she's not Muggle."
"What's the problem?" Lily inquired, setting her book down on an end table and walking outside with him. "It's good she's not Muggle, it won't be a huge debacle now!"
"She knows what werewolves are, she probably already knows I am one, if she works on this street," he huffed as he mourned the loss of every hope he had of being with her.
"Don't be so negative, Sirius would smack you if he could hear you right now," Lily glared as they walked back down the street to Spinner Station. "She seemed nice and friendly enough, you never know. I think you could have a real shot with this girl, Remus."
"Thank you, Lily," he said, hugging her before departing to go to work.
"Who's that?" Mister Macgillicuddy questioned as soon as Remus opened the door into the shop.
"James Potter's fiancé, Lily Evans," he answered, just as he did every time Lily walked him to work.
Mister Macgillicuddy peered out the windows before harrumphing loudly and setting large crates of records on top of the desk where Remus sat for hours, playing different songs and speaking to mostly himself into the wee hours of the morning.
"This can't all be for tonight, can it?" Remus blinked, shrugging his coat into his chair.
"No, I want you to cast fireproofing charms on all of the records," he stated, missing Remus's quiet groan to the heavens. "Tilly's done all but these."
Portillia Dumond was a short, rather chubby woman who was covering every spare inch of her skin in tattoos, and was rather put out with her mother's choice in naming. She insisted that nobody ever wanted to hear her brothers' names, and so the entire lot of them stayed out of trouble for fear of getting their full name yelled out. She was the only other worker, and would come in usually for the mornings several hours after Remus had left. They rarely saw one another, except when they would have to switch shifts due to Remus's "furry little problem." She stated that she was alright with him so long as he was alright with the "lesbian thing," and they'd gotten along swimmingly since.
"Why bother fireproofing?" He questioned as he peered into the first crate. "Ficklewhicks hasn't seen a fire in well over a century."
"You can never be too cautious nowadays, boy," he insisted gravely, and Remus grimaced as he thought about all of the Dark Marks hanging above business in other villages.
"Right," he agreed, and grabbed the list of songs they were to be playing just as the last song for the preset list started. "I'll do that then."
"Shout if you need anything," Mister Macgillicuddy said as he moved upstairs to his flat, waving behind his shoulder as Remus affirmed that he would if he did.
"Good evening from Spinner Station, bringing you all of the Wizarding and Muggle hits of today," he announced into the microphone just as the last song was fading off. "It's just after four thirty in the evening, as I'm sure you're all aware. Most of you are getting ready to go home, and we're here to help you get the rest of the way there. Starting off is a Muggle band called Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO for short, with their song Don't Bring Me Down." He put the record on, turned the microphone off, and laid his face in his hands to groan.
He fireproofed the records and the cases as he worked, going so far as to even get all of the sleeves as well, he got the entire radio station set up, and was bored enough to get the till and all of the important papers that Macgillicuddy probably hadn't looked at in over a decade. All within the hour since he'd got there until he locked up the store.
He was left to sit through the songs with his feet propped up on the desk, trying to stay awake long enough to get through his shift. Normally this is where he would write songs, or doodle on his pages, or figure out some numbers for his boss, or plan out his grocery list for the week. Sadly, however, he'd forgotten to bring anything to really write with, unless he was desperate enough to use Tilly's discarded lipstick as a writing utensil.
It was a few hours alone before there was a knock on the shop's door, and Remus stopped trying to balance the records like a house of cards and perked up, wondering who could be stopping by this late.
Remus pulled back the curtain with his wand, nearly falling over himself to open the door once he saw it was Hermione with a wrapped package.
"Hi!" He said, a bit too exuberantly, but she smiled back at him anyway. "Hermione, right?"
"Yes, and you're Remus," she stated matter-of-factly, stepping inside the shop and shutting the door behind her. "Mister Morren wanted me to drop this off on my way home, he said Mister Macgillicuddy would give me something for him that I could bring in tomorrow."
"Ahh, I think I know what that is, hold on," he said before skidding back to the station to begin another spiel, something about enjoying the evening and staying safe, and here's that classic Wizarding song by Clarice Cloverfield called Draught of Sleepless Soul to wind down the night with.
"I listened to you when I was closing the shop," she admitted casually as she perused the records still settled out front, completely missing Remus hit his head on the underside of the til counter. "I wasn't aware any Wizarding radio stations would play Muggle songs."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" He asked, searching for a note he knew had to be here somewhere, indicating what he was supposed to give to Mister Morren.
"Oh, very good!" she insisted, "My mother was a Muggle, and I was raised the same."
Remus was about to pick a question to ask before she cut him off and kept going, leaning against a table as she did so.
"My brother, Harry, was raised with me, our father was a wizard and he and our mother got into an epic row and they were divorced. They wound up patching things up when Mum discovered we were both magical, and Dad homeschooled us."
"Oh wow, sometimes I wish I was homeschooled," he insisted before she wrinkled her nose adorably and he smiled. "What? No?"
"Imagine only ever having your stubborn, reckless brother for company," she chuckled. "I may love Harry, but we're extremely different."
"Oh wait 'til you meet James and Sirius," he barked a laugh, finding the note and making his way to the coat closet where the specific box was stored. "Love them like brothers, don't get me wrong, but they're...well, I think they'd get along with Harry."
"James and Sirius…" she echoed before her eyebrows arched, "Are your friends in Auror training, by any chance?"
"Yes…?" He squinted at her before she began to laugh.
"Harry wrote to me the other day about his brand new friends, James Potter and Sirius Black," she chuckled, Remus laughing as soon as he realized the joke. "They're having fun, if you were curious."
"I'm not surprised," he grinned, lifting the box and about to settle it in her arms before he cast a featherweight charm and shrunk it down for her.
"Oh, thank you," she smiled, taking the tiny box from his hand and settling it in her coat pocket. "I'll quit bothering you and let you get back to work, I guess."
"You're hardly a bother," he insisted, "I hope to see you more often, actually."
"I would like that," she agreed with a grin, waving as she left and shut the door behind her, Remus watching her walk down the path to an Apparation point.
After a few more hours at work, which he spent with a silly grin on his face and a spring in his step, he collapsed onto his mattress in his tiny house in the middle of the woods. He breathed in deep, relishing in the quietness of his home and the woods surrounding him, and tried to remember how she'd smiled back at him as he fell asleep.