Classes that week passed quickly. James and Sirius did not turn in all of their homework, predictably, which Remus found strange; after all, it often took them about a quarter of the time that it took Remus to do it (when they actually did it). There was no logical reason that they would leave it off. Were they really that lazy? No, they probably just wanted to see the teachers get heated about it. Those boys thrived on creating chaos.
Finally, Saturday arrived, and James woke up in surprisingly high spirits. It was the morning of the first Quidditch match. James seemed to be more excited about taking Remus to his first-ever Quidditch game than watching it himself.
"You've really never seen a Quidditch game?" he asked Remus rather incredulously about fifteen times every day leading up to the game. "Never?"
"Never," Remus always affirmed. "Never ever."
"Is it 'cos you're poor?" he had asked once, and Remus had blinked.
"Er, I suppose. Quidditch is a rather expensive sport to follow—it's not worth it if you're not that interested to begin with."
"You're not interested in Quidditch?" James' voice was getting more incredulous by the minute. "I thought all wizards liked Quidditch!"
"I don't know... it's just not important, is it? Doesn't matter who wins; it's not like it's a matter of life and death." Remus knew matters of life and death very well, and he saw no reason to be concerned over who won a match of Quidditch.
James, however, was not satisfied with that answer. "You mean you don't know who the current Quidditch champs are?"
"No."
"That's just common knowledge! It's a cultural thing! Liking Quidditch is just what wizards do! It's like... knowing what year it is, or knowing English. It's a good conversation starter, it helps people connect with other people, and it's fun!"
"Fun? To watch people fly around on broomsticks throwing balls at each other in the freezing cold? Why can't I just... I dunno, ask you who won and not suffer through the weather out there?"
"Come on, Remus," said Sirius. "We weather the weather whatever the weather and whether we like it or not!"
"Ugh."
Despite Remus' protests, James had convinced Remus to go with the other Marauders. It didn't take much convincing; Remus was actually rather excited to see his first Quidditch game with his friends. It was part of the Hogwarts experience, and Remus was determined to experience Hogwarts to the fullest before he had to leave. And now here he was, eating breakfast with the other Marauders directly before the first Quidditch game of the year. James had arranged the food on his own plate into the shape of a Quidditch pitch (for luck, he had said). Remus thought that was stupid, but he didn't say anything about it.
As Remus tried not to roll his eyes at James' creation, an owl came for him, carrying the Daily Prophet and—unexpectedly—a very lumpy parcel.
"What on earth is that?" asked James whilst arranging his eggs into goal-posts.
Remus took the parcel carefully from the owl and turned it over in his hands. "I'm not sure."
"Well, open it," instructed Sirius.
Remus was slightly hesitant to open it in front of his friends—after all, what if it had something to do with werewolves? It was light and fluffy, very squishy, and smelled of... yarn.
Remus knew what this was.
He grinned and opened it up as carefully as possible, trying to save the wrapping for future use. A red-and-gold spider with far too many legs fell out, and Peter shrieked.
Remus picked it up and tried to find which way was up. It wasn't as awful as his mother had described; just a little stringy—the stitching was far too loose. It did slightly resemble a scarf, though. Remus flung it around his neck and wrapped it twice. It was ugly. It was very badly made. But it was perfect.
"It's a scarf," he said proudly. "My dad made it for me."
"Your dad's not very good at knitting," said James, not at all trying to conceal his laughter. "You look ridiculous."
"I don't care. It's perfect," said Remus stubbornly. He pulled something else out of the bag—a hat. The hat was simply a red-and-gold... amoeba, from the looks of it. Remus struggled with it for a few seconds, but he couldn't figure out how to put it on. He tucked it in his bag. "This, on the other hand, is garbage."
Peter snickered, and Remus pulled out a note.
Dear Remus,
I've finished the scarf and hat—I was saving them for Christmas, but I heard that your first Quidditch match is today. If you're feeling better...
Remus flipped over the note with a snap, praying that no one had seen it.
"Did you finish reading it already?" complained Sirius, who had been peering over Remus' shoulder.
"Yes," said Remus. He didn't know what else to say. "I'm a fast reader. I've had loads of practice." He stuffed the note in his bag. "I'm definitely wearing this scarf to the match."
"Now that's good luck," said James, finishing off his toast. "Or bad luck, actually. It's a very ugly scarf. I s'pose we'll find out. Oh, there's Bluebottle! Sirius, it's your present!" Sirius looked up and caught a rather heavy parcel just as Bluebottle dropped it. "I got him the best birthday present ever," James explained smugly. "But it didn't come on time for his birthday, even though we paid extra money to get it delivered early. Go on, then, Sirius, open it up."
Sirius did, a huge smile gracing his face. Inside the wrappings lay a wizarding camera. It looked very expensive. "JAMES," said Sirius in all capital letters. "I LOVE YOU."
James ran a hand through his hair. "So you like it?"
Sirius did, indeed, like it—he took about a billion pictures of himself and the other Marauders before breakfast. He duplicated the film beforehand a few dozen times, and soon had around thirty photographs. "Save some for the game," James ordered, and Sirius obliged. It looked as if it were painful for him to put the camera down.
Remus wondered if Sirius had ever gotten a present like that before—one with thought behind it that he actually enjoyed. The look on his face was priceless, and Remus couldn't resist nicking the camera and taking a photo when he wasn't looking.
"Oi!" laughed Sirius. Remus put the photo in his pocket. "I probably looked ridiculous."
"You always look ridiculous," said Remus, and Sirius took a photo of him in response. Peter tried to take the camera from him, but he ended up sticking his elbow in the marmalade.
After they had finished breakfast, they marched out to the Quidditch stands about an hour early; James had wanted to watch the teams warm up. "Just to scope out the competition," he'd told a disgruntled Remus, who was not looking forward to spending an extra hour in the cold weather.
It wasn't quite as boring as Remus had predicted, though. James and Sirius told enough jokes that Remus was duly entertained, and Peter was practically bouncing out of his chair in excitement. "Oh my oh my oh my," he said over and over again, sounding rather like a little girl. Sirius told him this in a quite tactless way, but Peter didn't seem to mind one bit.
Sirius took plenty of photos of the Marauders in the stands, and they even posed formally for one—although Sirius' arms weren't quite long enough, Peter's left cheek was slightly cut out of the picture, and James nicked Remus' scarf halfway through. The stands slowly filled up, and James was knocked into the camera at one point by the bustling crowds while Sirius was taking a photo. That made for a very humorous photo.
After what seemed like forever, the Quidditch match was almost ready to begin; the Marauders huddled together in an effort to keep warm. Remus was shivering something awful, but James was radiating with heat (probably because he was so excited that he seemed fit to burst). "Quidditch," he lectured Remus, "is a game full of intricacies. It is not simply a game; no, it is an art. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the sport. It is glorious; unmatched. There is a reason that wizards only have one sport, and that is because the one sport that we do have has absolutely everything. Dexterity. Aim. Precision. Strength. Hand-eye coordination. A keen eye. It all depends on what position you play, and there's something for everybody. It truly is the perfect game."
"Even though the Snitch is worth a ridiculous amount of points?" Remus said.
"Oh, Remus. You know nothing. The Seeker wins the game, but the Chasers score the points. So the Seeker is important for winning, yeah, but if you don't have good Chasers then you could win every single game and still lose your shot at the Cup. The Seeker is the pivot point, but no point can pivot without an outside force. The Chasers are the outside force. The Seeker may finish the race, but it's the Chasers who make the race worth running."
"So... the Seeker is the important one, and all the rest are just for show and extra points."
"Yeah, basically," said Sirius before James could respond.
"Okay, maybe," James conceded. "But what's the point of a match if nothing interesting is happening? No one would come. So the Chasers also make the money, really. It's like... it's like a metaphor for real life, or something. The Seekers are like professors, Aurors, the Ministry. They keep the world running. The rest are like singers and entertainers. They're important too, and often make more money and get much more glory."
"I see. But don't the Seekers usually get most of the glory...?" Before Remus could flesh out that thought, James shushed him harshly.
"It's starting!" James whispered, utterly enthralled. Madam Hooch threw the balls up in the air, blew her whistle, and the match began.
It only took about five minutes before Remus decided that he liked Quidditch.
There was just something about it. Remus couldn't care less about the match. Gryffindor wasn't even playing—it was Slytherin against Hufflepuff. His friends, of course, were rooting for Hufflepuff, so Remus did the same. He couldn't see what was going on very well, and it was difficult to follow the game when there were so many different things going on. "James," he asked (though his voice could hardly be heard over the screaming fans), "who am I supposed to watch? The Seekers or the Chasers or the Beaters? Or the Keepers? I'm confused."
"Pick one," James crowed. "Quidditch is all about choice! Who's your favorite? We'll talk about the game afterwards and fill each other in on what we missed. Oh! I've got an idea! There are four of us and four positions! So when nothing much is going on, we can all watch different people! Sirius, you watch the Beaters, Remus can watch the Seekers, Peter can watch the Keepers, and I'll watch the Chasers! Then we won't miss a second!"
Remus rather thought that that defeated the purpose of the game, but he obliged anyway and set his sight on the yellow- and green-clad Seekers. They didn't seem to be doing anything interesting—just floating around and scanning the air for the Snitch. Remus actually ended up watching his friends' faces instead. Sirius was smiling like mad; Peter had his hands over his mouth, perhaps to keep himself from screaming in excitement; and James was... well, this was James' happy place.
It was particularly difficult to pay attention when someone scored—James, Sirius, and Peter were shouting very close to Remus' ear and his over-sensitive hearing was setting his every nerve on fire. So he covered his ears and shouted with them. That wasn't helping his hearing, but it was sort of fun.
Remus was trying to figure out what made the match so wonderful. It wasn't the actual match, no; that was boring him to death. It certainly wasn't the noise, and it was not the deathly cold that was plaguing his bones. No, it was... the feeling of camaraderie—being close to his friends—with a scarf that still smelled of his father around his neck—and a photograph of Sirius in his right pocket. It was Sirius, who sneaked a photo of his friends and the game every now and then, absolutely enraptured with both the match and the fancy wizarding camera. It was James, who was shouting and whooping and looked happier than Remus had ever seen him. It was Peter, who looked at home, included, and fully contented. It was the pure excitement radiating off of every student and teacher who attended the match.
It was magical, Remus decided. And not the kind of magic that one performed with a wand. No, this was a different type of magic entirely, and levitating a feather could not even compare.
Well, maybe it could. Remus loved magic. But that wasn't the point.
He turned his attention back to the match, took his hands off of his ears (even though it made his ears hurt terribly), and let himself become absorbed in the mess of students who were letting go of all of their worries and becoming absorbed in a thrilling, albeit stupid, sport.
Right now, he was not a werewolf. He was a werewolf yesterday. He would be a werewolf tomorrow. But right now he was not a werewolf, and he was not Remus Lupin... he was not an individual at all. He was a Marauder and a Gryffindor and a Hogwarts student. He was a small part of a whole; only a tiny statistic in the grand scheme of things. He was unimportant. That wasn't usually a happy thought, but it was today. Remus was not on the Quidditch team itself, but he felt such a sense of team watching together and cheering with one voice that it was almost unbearable.
He could see why James loved Quidditch so much.
Well, actually, Remus couldn't. As much as he enjoyed watching the match, he genuinely did not know why James was so obsessed with the sport. Remus liked Quidditch now, sure, but he wasn't about to find out who'd won the last Cup and follow the teams' scores in the Prophet religiously. But James was pretty weird, anyhow, and Remus liked him for it.
"So who won?" Remus asked James as they walked back to the castle. James looked at him incredulously.
"Hufflepuff! Weren't you there?"
Remus smiled. "Yeah, I know. I was just joking." The Hufflepuff team had dashed off of the field, screaming and shouting, and they'd lifted the Seeker into the air as he held the Snitch in his fist and pumped his arms. Everyone in the Hufflepuff stands had flooded out and shouted and whooped. The Slytherins had looked horribly disgruntled as the Hufflepuff Seeker led everyone in a chant ("Hufflepuff rules"). James had called the Hufflepuff Seeker an "attention-seeking idiot", but the Seeker had rather reminded Remus of James. Remus didn't dare tell James this.
"Did you like your first match, then?" asked James. "It was brilliant, wasn't it?"
Remus nodded fervently. "Brilliant," he echoed. "Really brilliant."
"I knew it!" James hugged Remus suddenly, surprising him so much that he nearly fell over. "We'll make you into a Quidditch fan yet!"
"Yeah, sure," said Remus. "I still don't get the scoring system. The Seeker is literally the only one who matters."
James let go of him and pushed him playfully. "Look, Remus. The Chasers only need to be fifteen goals ahead to tie with the other team, even if the other team catches the Snitch. If your team has good Chasers, you could still win! Think of it this way. Hufflepuff and Slytherin just played this first match; and it ended 170-60. Hufflepuff only scored two goals, and Slytherin scored six. So Hufflepuff won by a margin of 110 points. If Hufflepuff plays their next match (which is against Ravenclaw) and wins by 90 points—that would mean that Ravenclaw would have to make eight goals—but Ravenclaw lost their last match by 10 points and wins their next two matches by at least 200 points each, then..." James rambled until they reached the castle, detailing exactly how the matches could happen. Sirius cut in a couple of times, and Peter looked on, awestruck.
"So Gryffindor could, theoretically, only win one match and still be in the running for the Cup!" finished Sirius as they reached the Gryffindor common room. "So it's not winning that matters, really."
The Marauders stepped into the common room; Gryffindor was having a post-match party inside. "Why are they celebrating?" Peter asked. "Gryffindor wasn't even playing."
"Duh." James rolled his eyes. "Slytherin has better Chasers than Hufflepuff, so now Gryffindor has more of a chance for the Cup. And also, no one likes Slytherins."
Remus thought of Questus. He liked Professor Questus, but he didn't tell James this, either.
"Wanna see the photographs?" asked Sirius, pulling fistfuls of photographs out of his robes. James laughed, and the Marauders sat on the couch together and looked through Sirius' pictures.
Remus' family had a bit of a complicated relationship with photographs. Remus' mum didn't often take photographs—only his father. Muggle photos were a lot more boring than wizarding ones. She had a modest album of Remus' younger years; one of Remus at the beach, Remus climbing a tree, two-year-old Remus playing tug-of-war with a boy in his neighborhood, baby Remus with his father—all still and frozen in time. Remus' father, in contrast, had seven photo albums. He was the type of person to record everything. There were about fifty pictures of Remus as a baby, about a hundred of Remus as a toddler. There were only a couple of Remus at five years old, but then the frequency of the pictures slowly increased. Pictures of Remus with Garrison, pictures of Remus with Bufo, pictures of Remus reading and Remus resting on the couch and Remus sleeping. Remus' father had been the stay-at-home parent for a while, and he'd occasionally done spontaneous photoshoots with a young, bored, homebound Remus. There were many photos of Remus.
But even though Remus had fond memories of taking ridiculous pictures with his father as a child, he hated flipping through the photo albums—he always looked so tired and sad in all of the pictures. The Remus in Sirius' photos, however, was happy: full of color and life, wearing a stupid scarf and smiling, and joking with his friends. Remus couldn't stop staring. He had never seen himself like that.
There was one of Peter laughing; his hands over his mouth and his eyes bright. He was saying something to James, who wasn't listening because he was so enraptured with the match. There was one of Sirius—the camera was held far too close to his face and Remus could see his nose hairs. There was one of Remus eating his breakfast and rolling his eyes at Sirius. Peter was laughing in the background. There was one of James leaning close to the Quidditch players, trying to get the best view and shouting at Sirius. There was one of Remus, James, and Peter, huddled together like sardines in a can. Remus' hands were over his ears, but he was smiling like mad. Remus wondered how often he smiled like that. He resolved to smile more often.
There was one of just Remus—his hands still over his ears, his cheeks flushed with excitement and cold, his eyes more child-like and spirited than Remus had ever seen them. He was still smiling. His scarf was draped around his neck and fluttering slightly in the chilly wind. He didn't look like a werewolf. He looked, for the first time ever, like he was an eleven-year-old Hogwarts student without a care in the world.
And then there was Remus' favorite. This was the one that they had posed for—Peter was, indeed, slightly cut out of the photo, but you could see most of his face. They were all smiling, and James was waving at the camera. He moved his hand closer to Remus and snagged his scarf, and Remus looked at him with playful scorn. James laughed and put the scarf on Remus' head. Peter was looking on with excitement, and Sirius was smiling at the camera like it was the most glorious thing that he had ever seen in his life. He was obsessed with that thing.
Remus pulled the photo that he had taken of Sirius out of his pocket. Sirius was wearing the exact same expression, and his tie was covered in jam. Suddenly, the Sirius in the photo said something and then reached out to take the camera back, still grinning. "That one's not too bad," said Sirius, looking over Remus' shoulder. "May I have it?"
"Sure," said Remus. He wondered if Sirius' parents often took pictures, and concluded that they did not.
Sirius plucked the photo out of Remus' hand and replaced it with the photo of the four of them. "Geminio," he said, tapping the photo with his wand and making an exact copy. "There. You can send that one to your mum. And I'll put this one in the Marauder photo album that we're making!"
Remus smiled and tucked the photo in his bag. For the first time ever, he liked having his picture taken.
And he also liked Quidditch.
What was the world coming to?
AN: I had a friend like this once. She owns far too many candid photographs of me. It's a little creepy, if I'm being totally honest.