Fic: Photographic Memory
Title: Photographic Memory
Rating/Warnings: G
Word Count: 1024
Summary: Remus receives a letter.
Author’s Notes: A belated birthday fic for shimotsuki, who gave me the prompt 'photo album' enabling me to finally tackle a plot bunny I've had since I began writing fanfic. I'm afraid it's not very cheerful for a present, lol.
Photographic Memory
The owl arrived on a sunny morning in late May, just as Remus was preparing to leave for the library. It was one of his more prosperous periods, and he had been able to afford the rent on a tiny flat near the centre of Cardiff, a mere twenty minutes walk from the archives of the Welsh Association of Niffler and Dragon Studies.
Sighing at the inconvenience of the bird’s timing, he put down the bag he was filling with books and parchment and opened the window. It was a Hogwarts owl, unless he was very much mistaken, and therefore unusual - he almost never received post from there anymore.
Dear Remus, [said the note, in letters an inch high]
Hope you’ve been keeping well. I’m not too bad, and those baby Thestrels you helped me with a few years ago are breeding now!
Anyway, I’m writing because I’ve got a bit of a favour to ask. Little Harry Potter started here this year, and I’ve had him round for tea a few times, with his friends. He’s his mother’s knack for knowing more than he ought, and James’s talent on a broom. The poor mite don’t remember his parents at all though, and I thought maybe if I could get some photos together and put them in an album for him that might be a nice present.
I only have a couple of pictures though, so if you could send me copies of some of yours that would be handy. I’m contacting a few other people who were in the Order and at school with you lot, but I reckon you must have more photos than anyone else.
Ta very much,
Hagrid
Gosh, Remus thought, letting the note fall to the kitchen table, that made him feel old. Harry must be nearly twelve now, and yet it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d nervously cradled the tiny bundle that Lily had handed him, marvelling at its miniature fingernails and eyelashes and wondering when they had all become grown-ups. Life had felt so full of hope that day. Everything might have been falling apart around them, but here was something really worth fighting for, a new life that deserved a better world to live in than the one he’d been born into.
Remus supposed that had been achieved, to a certain extent. There was no Voldemort, certainly, and a significantly slimmer chance of being murdered every time you left the house, but the wizarding world was still riddled with corruption and prejudice. It was hardly the glittering outcome they’d all envisioned, and often the price seemed rather too high, all considered.
It was Harry, he thought, that had paid, was still paying, the most. However sorry for himself Remus felt about the death of his friends (when he allowed himself to think about them), the loss must be many times worse for Harry, growing up without the love and support of his parents, far away from anyone who would tell him much about who he was or where he came from. Remus, at least, had the dubious comfort of his memories. What did Harry have?
The planned excursion to the library now entirely forgotten, Remus drifted across to the bookshelves and pulled down a cardboard box marked ‘misc.’ in fading ink. Pushing aside assorted correspondence, school reports and complimentary copies of scholarly journals, he fished out a large envelope stuffed with photographs and labelled ‘1972-1981’.
The contents were at once familiar and unfamiliar. There were moments he could remember as if they happened yesterday, with or without the photographic evidence: James looking slightly queasy before his first Quidditch match; Peter gleefully setting fire to his History of Magic notes at the end of O.W.Ls; himself smiling tipsily for the camera on his seventeenth birthday, a pumpkin pasty in one hand and a drink in the other. Others he had had no specific memory of until finding the picture in question: a thirteen-year-old Sirius doing handstands on a low wall near the Hogwarts vegetable patch; the four of them, red-cheeked and windswept on a Hogsmeade weekend, striking ludicrous poses outside the Three Broomsticks; Lily, heavily pregnant and gesturing enthusiastically with a wooden spoon in the kitchen at Godric’s Hollow.
Remus sifted through the photos, taking time to look at them each in turn, letting memories he generally tried to avoid wash over him and finding to his surprise that they were nowhere near as painful as he expected. Yes, he still felt an uncomfortable clench somewhere in his stomach at every sighting of a youthful Sirius, still felt an emptiness in his chest as he gazed at smiling images of James and Lily, but these feelings were accompanied by pleasanter ones. Not only the inevitable nostalgia that came with memories of the past, but also something of the original emotions recorded by the photographs, comforting ghosts of the joy and pleasure depicted there.
But which pictures should he select for Harry? Many of the scenes would mean little to him without someone to tell the stories behind them - something else he had missed out on as a result of the war. Hagrid had said he didn’t remember anything of James and Lily, which was, Remus supposed, fairly unsurprising given how young he had been orphaned. In which case Harry would simply be eager to know what his parents were like, and photographs of significant events and pictures that showed off their personalities would probably be best. Spreading the photos out on the table in front of him, he picked out several from the Potters’ wedding, a few of James in his Quidditch gear and a serendipitously arty shot of Lily reading in a corner of the common room, as well as a picture of James holding a tiny newborn Harry and wearing a slightly dazed expression, and a host others of the pair of them together with and without Harry himself. Sliding the photographs into a fresh envelope, Remus headed back to the kitchen to send off the owl. If he was quick it would arrive in time for the morning post.
Rating/Warnings: G
Word Count: 1024
Summary: Remus receives a letter.
Author’s Notes: A belated birthday fic for shimotsuki, who gave me the prompt 'photo album' enabling me to finally tackle a plot bunny I've had since I began writing fanfic. I'm afraid it's not very cheerful for a present, lol.
Photographic Memory
The owl arrived on a sunny morning in late May, just as Remus was preparing to leave for the library. It was one of his more prosperous periods, and he had been able to afford the rent on a tiny flat near the centre of Cardiff, a mere twenty minutes walk from the archives of the Welsh Association of Niffler and Dragon Studies.
Sighing at the inconvenience of the bird’s timing, he put down the bag he was filling with books and parchment and opened the window. It was a Hogwarts owl, unless he was very much mistaken, and therefore unusual - he almost never received post from there anymore.
Dear Remus, [said the note, in letters an inch high]
Hope you’ve been keeping well. I’m not too bad, and those baby Thestrels you helped me with a few years ago are breeding now!
Anyway, I’m writing because I’ve got a bit of a favour to ask. Little Harry Potter started here this year, and I’ve had him round for tea a few times, with his friends. He’s his mother’s knack for knowing more than he ought, and James’s talent on a broom. The poor mite don’t remember his parents at all though, and I thought maybe if I could get some photos together and put them in an album for him that might be a nice present.
I only have a couple of pictures though, so if you could send me copies of some of yours that would be handy. I’m contacting a few other people who were in the Order and at school with you lot, but I reckon you must have more photos than anyone else.
Ta very much,
Hagrid
Gosh, Remus thought, letting the note fall to the kitchen table, that made him feel old. Harry must be nearly twelve now, and yet it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d nervously cradled the tiny bundle that Lily had handed him, marvelling at its miniature fingernails and eyelashes and wondering when they had all become grown-ups. Life had felt so full of hope that day. Everything might have been falling apart around them, but here was something really worth fighting for, a new life that deserved a better world to live in than the one he’d been born into.
Remus supposed that had been achieved, to a certain extent. There was no Voldemort, certainly, and a significantly slimmer chance of being murdered every time you left the house, but the wizarding world was still riddled with corruption and prejudice. It was hardly the glittering outcome they’d all envisioned, and often the price seemed rather too high, all considered.
It was Harry, he thought, that had paid, was still paying, the most. However sorry for himself Remus felt about the death of his friends (when he allowed himself to think about them), the loss must be many times worse for Harry, growing up without the love and support of his parents, far away from anyone who would tell him much about who he was or where he came from. Remus, at least, had the dubious comfort of his memories. What did Harry have?
The planned excursion to the library now entirely forgotten, Remus drifted across to the bookshelves and pulled down a cardboard box marked ‘misc.’ in fading ink. Pushing aside assorted correspondence, school reports and complimentary copies of scholarly journals, he fished out a large envelope stuffed with photographs and labelled ‘1972-1981’.
The contents were at once familiar and unfamiliar. There were moments he could remember as if they happened yesterday, with or without the photographic evidence: James looking slightly queasy before his first Quidditch match; Peter gleefully setting fire to his History of Magic notes at the end of O.W.Ls; himself smiling tipsily for the camera on his seventeenth birthday, a pumpkin pasty in one hand and a drink in the other. Others he had had no specific memory of until finding the picture in question: a thirteen-year-old Sirius doing handstands on a low wall near the Hogwarts vegetable patch; the four of them, red-cheeked and windswept on a Hogsmeade weekend, striking ludicrous poses outside the Three Broomsticks; Lily, heavily pregnant and gesturing enthusiastically with a wooden spoon in the kitchen at Godric’s Hollow.
Remus sifted through the photos, taking time to look at them each in turn, letting memories he generally tried to avoid wash over him and finding to his surprise that they were nowhere near as painful as he expected. Yes, he still felt an uncomfortable clench somewhere in his stomach at every sighting of a youthful Sirius, still felt an emptiness in his chest as he gazed at smiling images of James and Lily, but these feelings were accompanied by pleasanter ones. Not only the inevitable nostalgia that came with memories of the past, but also something of the original emotions recorded by the photographs, comforting ghosts of the joy and pleasure depicted there.
But which pictures should he select for Harry? Many of the scenes would mean little to him without someone to tell the stories behind them - something else he had missed out on as a result of the war. Hagrid had said he didn’t remember anything of James and Lily, which was, Remus supposed, fairly unsurprising given how young he had been orphaned. In which case Harry would simply be eager to know what his parents were like, and photographs of significant events and pictures that showed off their personalities would probably be best. Spreading the photos out on the table in front of him, he picked out several from the Potters’ wedding, a few of James in his Quidditch gear and a serendipitously arty shot of Lily reading in a corner of the common room, as well as a picture of James holding a tiny newborn Harry and wearing a slightly dazed expression, and a host others of the pair of them together with and without Harry himself. Sliding the photographs into a fresh envelope, Remus headed back to the kitchen to send off the owl. If he was quick it would arrive in time for the morning post.