"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." --JM Barrie
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Six pictures. After everything, that's all I have left of her. Lily of the dancing eyes, the flaming hair, reduced to a handful of wildly waving photographs and a whiff of perfume that I could swear still lingers in my flat, eleven years after she last visited. She was the brightest witch of her age, with such a vitality and a presence… and now there is scarcely any proof that she even existed.
There's nothing left of James. I know; I looked. I went through all my photos, after… after. He was so handsome, even with those funny glasses and that God-awful, demon possessed hair. Prongs lit up the room. We all saw it; we were drawn to him like moths to a flame. And then there was Sirius: dark hair, crystalline blue eyes, and brilliant smile, burning like a torch in every damn photograph. He looked so alive-- his arm wrapped around his best friend, grinning like a madman, and laughing as though he'd just been hit with rictusempra.
They say he was laughing when they took him away to Azkaban. That was what convinced me. If he had been sad, or angry, or anything, I would have chalked it up to the Imperius and welcomed him back with open arms, forgiving everything. But he was laughing. Sirius was happy to sell out his best friends; was thrilled to be the murderer of the kindest, gentlest boy to ever raise his wand against the darkness and not be shaken. Merlin. Peter. I regret his death most of all-- James and Lily were Aurors; they knew the risks. But poor Peter never hurt anyone.
So the night after we buried Peter (or what was left of him), I burned every last photograph I had of Sirius. Cast incendio until there was nothing left of that smile but a few quickly cooling ashes that glowed blue and red and orange and grey as they swiftly sifted out into the wind. It was only then that I realized I'd lost James too-- there wasn't a single photo of him that didn't have Sirius in it, not one that I hadn't destroyed. Lily joked that when she married James, it was like marrying Sirius too. And sure enough, there he was in the wedding pictures, the beaming best man standing proudly by his best friend and his wife. Padfoot and Prongs-- heavens, did they give the professors fits. They were inseparable; when one had detention, the other did too. Quidditch practice, pranks, the Animagi transformations-- where James went, so did Sirius. And when Sirius went down, he took James with him.
And now all that's left are a few pictures of Peter and me… and half a dozen of Lily. Harry can have those; he probably doesn't even remember his parents. I'm luckier; their entire beings are burned into my brain for the rest of my life. I suppose I have my lycanthropy to thank for that. That's the trade, you see. Heightened senses, super strength, and a memory that records not only the faces and voices of your loved ones, but the way they smell and move and breathe as well. All that, for a scant night a month as a monster and a life expectancy just half that of a Muggle's. I was just a boy when I was bitten; back then, the prospect of a life shortened by more than two-thirds paled in comparison to the agony of the now. But today is my thirty-second birthday, and, if the books I've read are correct, I probably won't live to see forty. I'll never suffer from dementia; my body will fail far before my mind. No, Harry can have the photos. I'll have my memories…. perfect roses that never fade.