First Year- Twelve
The last breakfast the twins have as eleven year olds is a nice one, although breakfast is always nice. Remus has a healthy helping (and another, another, etcetera) of French toast, and tops it with cream and strawberries because it's a really special day. Birthdays, Remus thinks, are better than all the holidays combined.
No one but the boys have wished them a happy birthday yet. Yes, Remus knows it's not officially until tomorrow but still, he'd like a few more pre-birthday ‘happy birthday’s. He's surprised that the boys have only started their own just a day before the twins' birthday; he would have expected the whole week to be in their name.
Hope and Lyall's letter comes halfway through breakfast, a beautiful, sleek camera coming with it. It's black, and heavy, and the glass of the lens is shiny as anything, and the buttons are smooth, and Remus is petrified of touching it too much for fear of the precious thing breaking.
‘We know you boys are planning on staying up until all hours of the night,’ reads the letter. ‘Throwing a party for the best boys in the world the second it hits midnight. We want pictures of the lot of you as our birthday presents. Have fun, don't stay up too late, and happy birthday beautiful, beautiful Remus and Romulus.’
How to work the thing, nobody knows, so Frank takes it out of Romulus' clumsy hands and begins to finnick with it a little. He holds it gently, turning it on its side, pressing the buttons. Remus' heart leaps up his throat each time he does, just as petrified to send his next letter home describing the camera's short life span in his possession.
Remus would have hoped that the first picture taken on this fancy schmancy camera would be a decent one, but when there's a digital click! and Frank turns the camera with a shy “Sorry.”
It's handed back to the twins and Remus' hopes fade so incredibly quickly when he sees the terribly zoomed in picture of Romulus halfway through eating his porridge- it's not very flattering.
“Delete that, oh my god!” He cries covering his mouth and straightening his neck, shoving his bowl away from him.
Frank extends his arm. “Yes, here I'll show-”
“No!” Remus manages to plead out through laughter. How Frank managed to capture such a perfect picture not on purpose, Remus cannot say. Frank is really a lot more boisterous than a lot of people know him to be.
“Please don't delete it.” Remus continues, holding the camera above his head and passing it over to James and Sirius across the table. They laugh and Romulus harshly kicks them under the table. He'd make a wreck out of Frank if he could reach.
Deirdre Burbage wishes the twins a happy birthday when they enter their last Muggle Studies class as eleven year olds. Although she says it to them both, Remus can tell she's only saying it to Romulus out of formality- he hasn't raised his hand to speak since last year.
The last lunch the twins have as eleven year olds is a nice one, just as nice as yesterday, yesterday, just as breakfast this morning was as good as the day before too. Remus is starting to think that today really is just another day in the week. He closely watches his peers go about their day, none aware of his reason for excitement because all today is for them is the last stretch until the weekend.
It hits Remus that he's been doing the exact same thing: not realising or thinking about how many people have cause for celebration each day. He wonders about how many people's birthday it will be tomorrow too, looking around to catch a particularly giddy person.
He'll be excited everyday from now on, Remus decides. Guilt spikes him when he thinks of the selfish years previous where he'd only be excited for his birthday, not everyone's.
Happy birthday, Remus wishes the world, sorry for forgetting last year.
The last class of the day comes around and Remus is pleased with himself, having made the last day of his eleventh year a pretty good one.
They've taken about a dozen pictures so far, half being of themselves, half being of teachers not noticing that they're getting their picture taken. Why Remus was expecting McGonagall to not show up in pictures like a vampire, he doesn't know. Maybe because she was dressed in a sleek, black pair of robes today, or simply because she still hasn't wound her scare-factor down.
At dinner (last one!), Remus jots down a quick letter home and sends Pixie on her merry way, knowing they'll be having too much fun tonight for Remus to have time to write one in the dorm.
Now, the twins haven't been told the plan with their surprise party as the plan is mostly just to go with it.
Is it really much of a surprise party if they know about it? If James came up asking them “What do you want for your surprise birthday party?” a week ago?
They'll be sent to just hang around out of the dorm while the whole thing is being set up, Remus knows that much. How long it'll take or where they're supposed to go, Remus does not know but he's sure that it'll be fine. And worth it because you don't put together the creative and eccentric personalities of James Potter, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew, and not have a party planning and executing machine.
They're all chattering amongst themselves behind their hands and into each other's ears. Remus and Romulus hold a little Welsh conversation to seem mysterious too but the sound of both their voices is way too loud for him to even attempt to eavesdrop- Remus wishes they had a quieter way to do so.
He makes out a few words, mostly spoken by Sirius who gets all high pitched when he's got a good idea.
After Remus has asked Romulus for his favourite colour a couple of times and the others have gone back to an understandable volume, they all go back to bouncing off each other; that is until Remus brings up Frank’s picture of Romulus and he gets a face-full of mashed potatoes. The fact that it took them twenty minutes into a meal for the food to be thrown at one of them reassures Remus that today really is special, at least for their little group- it usually takes them ten minutes.
The last teacher to see them as eleven year olds is Professor Rialto who does not wish them a happy birthday, and the last differently-housed student to see them is a Hufflepuff that they've never interacted with before. Peeves is the last ghost to see them and the last person (person?) that Remus wants to punch. A bold claim, he knows, but it's going to be his birthday- it'll be too fun to be getting annoyed at people; people being a certain twin brother of his.
The common room is mostly empty when they arrive in. The people also entering seem to do only that, going straight upstairs to their dorms as opposed to sticking around like how some others do. To make room for a birthday party? Remus just couldn't possibly say definitively.
The boys go up to their own dorm anyway while their first year classmates stay chattering downstairs.
Remus chooses his best clothes for tonight, laying out shirts and pants on his bed and rearranging them into presentable outfits to choose from. If there's going to be pictures taken, he's going to look good for them. He'd hate to be looking back on these one day and see just picture after picture of himself looking like an idiot like how Romulus did at breakfast.
That camera is miraculously still functioning. It's mostly been in the trustworthy possession of Frank all day who has taken about a dozen pictures of the boys already today. They're going to have an absolute ton of pictures for Hope and Lyall to look over by the time tonight is over.
Remus looks over to Romulus and picks the same clothes that he does for the sake of saving time and not having to make a decision because he's tired, okay? It'll be just fine though because Remus is positive that there'll be alcohol at their party and that's sure to wake him up.
They're both half way through putting on their green trousers and striped shirts when James barges in and demands they stop.
“Close your eyes.” He instructs, raising a hand at the twins and pinching his fingers for visual effect.
Remus closes his eyes but leaves enough so that he's just about able to see through a sliver between eyelids. He watches as Peter takes two yellow and red spotted paper cone hats from his trunk and passes one to James who puts it on Romulus' head, and one to Sirius who puts it on Remus'.
“Don't open yet!”
Oh, how Remus loves birthdays.
He does actually close his eyes for this part as the last thing he let himself see was Peter raising his wand to be aimed at his head. Remus prepares for the worst (after, he's unsure as to why he was so doubtful; Peter is a very competent wizard so maybe it's just that the anxiety that floods Remus whenever the other boys pick up their wands has become a second-natured response to any sort of wand-holding) and instinctively closes his eyes. He doesn't feel the spell hit, but there's a pop! and a jingle! and no pain so Remus opens his eyes in time to watch the same spell hit Romulus' hat, for it to make all the same noises and the blue bobble on top to start spinning and sparking like his must be doing too.
More people start wishing the twins a happy birthday when they go downstairs with their spinning and whizzing party hats. It's mostly people coming in and out of the fat lady's portrait, most older students which makes Remus feel exceptional inside just to be noticed.
Remus spots Lily, Mary, Marlene and Alice are playing poker (yes, poker!) on the floor next to the fireplace so takes a seat on the armchair behind Lily. She fans out her cards and shows them to Remus, and he nods like he knows what anything means, what's good and bad. Lily's smiling at him (this could be a ploy; she told him about ‘poker faces’ the first time Remus asked about the game) so he smiles back, assuming what he's being shown is good.
There's neat piles of buttons, matchsticks and knuts to each girl, and another, less neat pile in the middle of their little circle: their currency. Buttons are the worst simply because buttons are boring, matchsticks are in the middle because fire is cool, and knuts are the best, being actual (though not very valuable) money and all. Lily explained all the logistics and rules and strategies and maybe Remus just isn't cut out for high-intensity games.
He pulls a coffee table drawer so, taking out a chess set and shaking it in Peter's direction. It's rumble asks his question for him and Peter is scraping his own armchair along, far enough for his armrest to go against Remus'; this is where they balance the black and white board.
Peter is very exact in the way his chess boards are set up. Remus doesn't mind this as it usually means he doesn't have to do much at the start apart from sitting through a quick telling-off for putting the King and the Queen in the wrong places (he can just never remember) before Peter's setting it all up by himself; big egos and perfectionists go brilliantly together.
The board is set and Romulus dives onto Peter's chair from behind, landing on his back and causing the pieces to move.
“Whoops, sorry.”
Peter hums and launches right back into the precise centering of the pieces.
They play like that: Romulus on Peter's back, leaning over his shoulder and telling him what to do like a little devil, and Remus by himself playing against the two.
Romulus only likes chess a little. He loves every board game on the planet but chess, though he still tolerates a good game every once in a while. Peter is much the same with reading: enjoying a novel from time to time while not particularly enjoying having his nose too deep in the pages (school, thinks Remus. School has ruined reading, making it compulsory and all of that). Both of these fatal flaws, Remus uses to his discreet advantage.
How To Beat Anyone At Chess might just be one of Remus' favourite reads. Given to him as a secret Christmas present by Granny Sophie to use against his dad, Remus has memorised that book. Mostly at night so that Peter won't notice his research being done and get the same ideas. All this late night thinking about pawns and their subtle purpose has scored Remus a couple of odd, chess-themed dreams to contemplate when he wakes.
Page 1 delves right into the offence and Remus opens the game, following the tutorial in his head until Peter and Romulus are beaten in ten moves.
Pages 27 through 33 describes one long kill which is executed in their second game.
“Let us be white this time!”
That's fine because half the book covers winning against white and that Remus does. After half an hour, he's won ten times. Peter is exasperated and shocked, Romulus is disappointed, and Remus is happy with his little birthday present that he gave himself. He'll hold back from now on, let Peter win until the twins' next birthday.
Lily seems to be on a roll as well (Remus will make sure to have to look around for poker books too) as she cheers and whoops much more than the other girls do. Her piles of buttons, matches and knuts have greatly risen from when Remus first sat down, and the smile on Lily's face has only gotten bigger; a little more cocky too.
As she brings in another pile of miscellaneous bets from the centre, she turns to Remus.
“You're doing well.” Remus states.
She nods in the direction of a bewildered and overwhelmed Peter. “You seem to be too.”
The girls, Peter and Romulus all roll their eyes at the pair of them. James is on the big couch with his back where his bum goes, and his bum where his back goes, head hanging upside down off the edge. His face is a little red and his hair is sure to be even messier once he's sat back up. Sirius is stretched out along the couch, his legs crossed and resting on James' stomach so that he won't slide down and hit his head on the floor.
“Evan's coming tonight, isn't he?” Asks Lily.
Remus nods. “Of course.”
“Can I invite Sev? Severus?”
Severus Snape. Remus has thought about him before, maybe looked in his general direction. Snape is the closest friend that Lily's got, Remus knows that. He's just a little… a lot like the groan one makes when the teacher mentions homework for the weekend. And his name! Remus feels like it's more fitting for a knife-and-sharp-things summoning charm rather than a name for a boy. Sev is an alright nickname- a little obvious, a little unimaginative, a little lazy because all it really is is the first syllable of the unfortunate guy's name.
“Um- yeah sure, Lily, I don't mind. What about you, Rom?”
Romulus and Peter have snatched away the chess board and are attempting to recreate Remus' mastermind moves. Peter seems to remember a lot of them, getting most to a tee in the first or so tries. Romulus simply looks confused and if he didn't love chess before, he certainly doesn't now; he has no problem with looking away from the wooden board and pieces to utter a quick, “That's fine.” to Lily.
James- ever the contortionist- sits up. He reaches to hold onto the backrest of the couch and Sirius' legs on his stomach bare down so that gravity doesn't make him tumble backwards.
“Excuse me,” He scoffs, shoving Sirius' legs off of himself and turning around to face everyone. “No, it is not fine.”
Lily scoffs. Remus knows she's too smart to not realise that James is just trying to get under her skin and responding isn't going to do anything. Maybe she's trying to sharpen her debate skills or something.
“Too bad, Potter.” She says. Oh, James hates when Lily of all people calls him ‘Potter’. “It's not even your party, you can't just dictate who is and isn't invited.”
“It's my common room,” Weak defence as Lily- surprisingly enough- is also in Gryffindor and owns the common room, so to speak. “And I can have a say in who comes in dragging their slimy feet all over the place.”
“Sev is not slimy!” Lily gasps, shocked. Remus doesn't know for sure if he can agree with her fully on that one. “Don't be horrible!”
“I'm sorry I don't want him here. He freaks me out.”
“You've never met him; hell, you've never even talked to him.”
For the record, neither has Remus.
“I stand by what I've said.” James says. He and Sirius have switched places with Sirius now dangling off the edge of the couch. Still he manages to contribute, “And Slytherins in the Gryffindor common room- bit iffy, don't you think?” He catches Remus' I’m-about-to-correct-you look and corrects himself first, saying, “Excluding Evan, obviously.”
“Why is Evan the exception?” Lily asks.
“Maybe because we're friends with him?” James points out matter-of-factly. Remus is glad that the birthday special treatment is starting already- he doesn't even have to win his own arguments!
“Well, Remus and Romulus said it's okay to bring him and it's their birthday.”
“Well, I'm their best friend.”
Romulus buh-buh-buhs him. “Remus is my best friend.” He clarifies, pointing for effect.
Remus looks at James and points at his brother too. “And vice versa.”
James rolls his eyes. “Second best friend then.”
Remus doesn't like to rank his friends. Everyone below Romulus is on the same level of friendship to him so he feels guilty when he changes his finger to point at a turning-red Sirius who smiles at him. Frowns, technically, from his upended position. Romulus points at Peter next.
“Third?” James presses, dejected though they're only messing.
“McGonagall.” Says Romulus so casually. Remus has to beg himself not to laugh and ruin the joke just yet.
“The giant squid.” He says. Out of the corner of his eye, Remus sees Lily cross her arms.
“Um…”
She mouths wow and rolls her eyes, turning a little to give the girls all a look.
“Lily! Lily, I mean, is next. Then the squid.”
The rest of the girls in the circle give him a look too. Remus suddenly doesn't like this game anymore.
“You're a load of jerks,” Declares James. “I can't believe I put all this effort into your stupid party.”
Romulus buh-buh-buhs James again. “Don't talk to your elders with disrespect like that!”
James gasps and raises his hands like he's surrendering. He scoffs and laughs at the same time, making him cough chestily. He raises his legs for a split second but it's long enough for Sirius to slip and for the crown of his head to thud! on the hard ground.
“My birthday’s in two weeks!”
Romulus scoffs at him.
“You're not older than me! I'm not a kid!”
“Fetch me my vitamins, wee Potter.” Remus says, and Romulus bursts out laughing at the spot-on impression of their grandmother.
“Don't call me wee!”
Heh- wee.
James isn't heard over the laughter for a minute: an incredibly common occurrence Remus has found.
“Look at you! You've got knobbly knees like an old man: you're breaking into character already!”
Remus covers his mouth and leans over the armrest in silent hysteria and Romulus does the same, and they snicker and go bright red together. Absolutely no one else knows what's so funny so when they resurface for air after a minute, everybody is giving them looks.
“Okay, both of you can get out now.” James says, walking over and holding out his hands for the twins to take to be helped up too. But Remus jumps up and grins at the lot of them.
“Are you going to set up our amazing party now?” He asks, a cheeky grin spread across his face. Oh, he cannot wait! Cake, and presents (unlike Christmas, Remus believes birthdays are all about presents. Why shouldn't he be gifted and praised for being born?) and a lot of cake.
James scoffs again; Lily has really wound him up. “Yes, and I expect the exact same treatment in two weeks.”
Oh God, what is Remus going to do for James' birthday? It was grand with Sirius back in November when he just wanted a bunch of sweets and a good laugh. Now that James has said he wants something extravagant like the twins’ party that he's been talking up for weeks, Remus is at a stand still. He locks eyes with Romulus for a second and they share a worrisome expression on their face.
James doesn't catch this glance between them and ushers them towards the painting. The girls and boys wave at them both as they turn the corner into the short corridor and it hits Remus that he won't see anyone here until he's twelve. It's a little daunting, if he's being honest with himself but Remus thinks that in James’ case, he's more than alright with not seeing him until he's at least thirty- y’know: old.
“Now, go away and don't come back until midnight.” Instructs the young Potter. He pushes the twins through the swung-open painting with a hand between their shoulder blades, and talks to them from the common room side of the opening. “Are we waiting an extra half an hour for Romulus to be born, or are we doing the cakes all at once?”
Cake! Cake, cake, cake! Remus has been dropping hints about wanting a chocolate cake (Romulus wants bloody lemon drizzle) for weeks. Up until now, it's been cheeky little hints right back like, “well see what the sixth years are willing to whip up for us”. Remus can't wait to learn the Cake Spell.
“You managed to get more than one?” Remus delights, wishing for the two hours to just go already.
“All at once!” Romulus says, answering James’ question. Remus hits him.
“Em, no. We are waiting, you can't just be born earlier because you want to be, Romulus. That's not how it works.” And it's never worked that way. Never has, never will.
Romulus hits him back. “So I'm just going to be sitting there without cake for half a bloody hour in front of all our friends just because you felt like showing off and coming first?”
Remus thinks for a second because that's all the thought he needs (possibly even too much thought) before coming to his educated opinion.
“Yes! It's only half an hour. You can have a bit of my cake while you're waiting, you just can't blow out the candles of yours.”
Romulus knows this. Remus can see how he maybe thought things would be different as they've never had a birthday away from home yet. While this is true, he hardly thinks it's necessary to break tradition, especially if the only argument for it is Romulus' same old one.
In comes Lily, turning to the side to get around James and bounds onto the landing where the twins stand. She's looking very excited too.
“I can invite Sev then?” She asks, blindsiding James.
Remus and Romulus nod and she's skipping off again, calling, “Thank you!” over her shoulder. They all watch as she glides down the stairs, her hair bouncing when she jumps the last two steps of every flight. Remus likes how it bounces, how it waves like she's underwater. He'd love hair like that.
“Be here at five to midnight and one of us will come bring you in when it's time.” James lays out and the painting is shut and the twins are alone in the corridor.
Already, it's feeling a little unorganised, a little not brilliantly thought through. See, curfew is at ten. Right now, it's twenty past ten. Remus loves a good sneaking around when he's not supposed to but just is a little different. He's not overly happy with the fact that they've been put outside like bad dogs, in danger of being caught by a patrolling teacher or prefect, but he's hardly going to insist on staying inside to watch his surprise party be set up. Plus, should they be caught, it is their birthday- that's a pretty decent defence.
Sneaking out without really wanting to sneak out isn't great. Remus hadn't thought about this bit and hadn't come up with anything to do. If it was an adventure with the boys, he'd suggest a crude word be written on one or two walls.
Remus would like to go to the library now that he's not in the mood for mischief but the library is not the epicentre of evening-craze so obviously, it's closed. And it's far; too many opportunities to be caught.
Greenhouses- boring, too far. Dungeons- boring, too scary. Everything's too boring and Remus curses the fools that made this school so bloody uninteresting and severely lacking in just about everything Remus wants right in this very moment. True, Remus isn't too sure what he wants though, again, cake is a good option.
Lily can't be too far already, they might be able to catch up but that would entail going to the ruled-out dungeons to pick up someone he doesn't know to bring to his own birthday party. Why Remus agreed to a stranger coming, he doesn't know. That's Lily's trick though, isn't it? Charming, talkative Lily, using these traits to get what she wants so easily. The way Remus just said, ‘yes of course absolutely’ so quickly, even after thinking on it for a bit. Now that he's thinking about it, he's actually quite impressed.
He misses his mom and dad.
No, he doesn't. He's twelve now-
Yes, he does. He’s twelve years old and he misses his mom and dad, okay? Alright?
Though he's sure that whatever cake (yes, he knows he's dwelling and thinking about cake too much) they'll be presented with tonight will be lovely, he'll miss Hope’s messy little from-scratch one. With the sponge being as light and fluffy as the cats and the icing adding such lovely smooth textures to the decadent thing. And the sprinkles that Hope lets the boys put on themselves- Remus misses that.
What is it? Seven years in school? Six more birthdays to be spent away from home? He loves school and his friends and all, but Remus also misses how Lyall shoves sonograms in their faces each year, and makes the same jokes of, ‘how old are you now? Twenty, twenty one?’.
‘Can we drink beer then, Dad?’ one of them will always ask but not this year. Or the next. Not until they graduate but Remus will be moving into a big, big mansion when he graduates, so not even then. Oh no, Remus doesn't like this, not at all. How was he supposed to know he was supposed to savour Lyall's stupid jokes? And how was he ever going to be able to savour Hope's cakes when all he can think of when eating them is the next bite, or just shoving it all in his mouth at once because it's so good.
Now that nobody is with him but Romulus, Remus takes off his interactive party hat and holds it up. Sparks are still flying off it but it has slowed down. Remus spins the hat around his finger a few times and that seems to do it: reverse-engineer, reverse-psychology or whatever to make it cancel out and calm down. Romulus does the same and sighs.
“What are we gonna do?”
Remus can only shrug. “Just linger around, I suppose.”
He looks around like something's going to pop up out of nowhere. Looking up is just looking at more staircases and floors, likewise with looking down. To their sides are a few corridors that Remus is sure will yield something. They haven't beek exploring very well as Remus comes across a new corridor or new classroom that he swears just pop up out of nowhere.
Romulus is looking back at the painting to get into the common room. Remus thinks he's about to tell the fat lady the password to get back in so soon but instead he greets her with a polite, “Hello.”
She looks immediately taken aback and Romulus looks a little embarrassed, maybe a little guilty. Remus doesn't like her already: making his brother feel all bad on his special day. He wants to tell her to watch her expression more carefully, but she greets Romulus politely back before he can.
“Hello.” She greets back but it sounds uncertain, said almost like a question: ‘hello’ but what she really means is, ‘did I say that right? Am I doing this right?’. Remus can't imagine that paintings engage in small talk with students too much. He also can't imagine that when they do, it's never instigated by the students.
Romulus clearly isn't bothered by this culture, just as he isn’t bothered by a lot of things.
“How are you?” He asks. Clearly he's also bloody dumb because brush strokes can't have feelings. Remus doesn’t think that because the fat lady says she’s, “Perfectly grand.”, his point should be discredited because no matter what, everybody says something along those lines when asked how they are.
The fat lady smiles awkwardly and it's silent. Romulus rocks back and forth on his heels for a second.
“What-” He starts.
“Um-” She says at the same time and Remus is taken back to the painful-to-watch interaction between Marlene and Peter just the other day.
Romulus speaks first. “What's your name? Calling you ‘the fat lady’ seems a little dehumanising, doesn't it?”
Remus scoffs and nudges his brother. “She's a painting, Rom.”
“So?” Romulus looks back to the fat lady and nods his head for her cue to answer.
She smooths down her flowy dress and straightens her posture. “My name is Diana, young man, thank you. No one has asked me that in a very long time.” Her smile is genuine and appreciative when she looks down at Romulus looking up.
Remus wonders about Diana, Romulus' personification of her actually working pretty well. Has she always been the Gryffindor common room keeper? When was she painted? Did she have children of her own perhaps? He doesn't doubt that ever-so charismatic Romulus will find all of this out in no time.
Diana's gaze adverts to Remus and it hardens into something a little more begrudging. “It is dehumanising, I'll have you know. How would you like to only be known as ‘the scrawny kid’?”
The fact that Remus is instantly offended proves that yes, maybe it's a little dehumanising and mean for that to be Diana's only alias. He apologises meekly.
“I may be a painting,” Diana continues. Dear lord, what has Romulus started? “But that doesn't mean I can't feel the real Diana's feelings, does it? I may be a painting, but I'm one of a human, just like you, yes? The real Diana was a respected, talented woman; I'm a reflection of her, am I not? I'd like to be treated as such, even if I am not walking around like she once did.”
This seems to be a bit of a touchy topic for her. She must have rakes of time on her hands to think about a lot, Remus can't blame her for having her well-played arguments on the tip of her tongue.
She smooths her dress again and Remus looks at Romulus. He doesn't look awkward anymore- more intrigued. He's got his head tilted and the cogs in his head are so obviously turning that Remus can practically hear them.
“Talents?” He presses, only acknowledging the monologue with a sad little smile that sat on his face for all of three seconds.
Diana chuckles. “I like to- to sing.” She shyly admits. Romulus perks up and Remus sighs; now if this was a painting of The Doors, or Glen Campbell, he would be elated.
When he's older and smarter, Remus vows to have a portrait of all the greats up on his wall, to have them all talking to him like little old Remus Lupin is their best friend. Imagine talking to Neil Diamond about his worries and woes. Imagine having the whole Royal Family as his audience for his shameful lip-syncing, air-guitar concerts he holds when everyone is out of the room.
Romulus gasps at the fat- at Diana and steps closer to her. “You can sing?” He echoes like that was the most shocking thing he's heard in years. “Can you show us?”
Diana shakes her head shyly and looks down at her lap. She clears her throat and had she not looked so self-conscious, Remus would have thought she was about to break out in song.
Romulus tries to convince her. “Not even a happy birthday song?” He tries, toying with his cone hat. He's got that higher-pitched voice like he's teasing, and that hopeful stance on his tip-toes: the perfect duo for a perfect guilt-trip. Diana finds a way to deny it though.
“Happy birthday, young man,”
Young man? Singular? Only Romulus is deserving of a happy birthday, is that it? All because Remus misspoke once? He has officially, officially decided that he does not like Diana.
“But I can’t sing for you, I haven't practised or prepared at all.”
It’s pretty obvious that she's just embarrassed.
“We could close our eyes if that'd be better?” Remus suggests. That's what the twins used to make their parents do when back in their performance phase when they were eight. Remus can kind of tell now that Hope and Lyall were in fact peeking.
Romulus nudges Remus’ arm and nods at Diana. She shakes her head again and Romulus does not press any further.
“Where are you?” He now asks, pointing at Diana’s fore and background.
Months and months ago, Remus pointed out the building behind the fat lady (as she was known back then). It's white and pillared and therefore most definitely, absolutely, positively Roman, Remus had concluded and insisted upon his brother. Though, like everything Roman, Romulus could not have cared less, only now it's interesting because it involves someone else. For this very reason, Remus has decided that the day after tomorrow, the day after their birthday, is the day that he begins never speaking to his twin again.
“Rome.” Says Diana. She turns to look behind her at the building. It's really the most beautiful post of the painting. Remus wonders if the artist ever did just landscapes, if this building or others like it are featured in any of their other works. He wonders how to find such paintings, if they're for sale, how to travel back in time.
Romulus nudges Remus' arm and gives him an amused grin while Diana is turned. Remus does not grin back.
“Do you live there?” He instead asks, calling the woman back from her longing gaze towards the building. He knows she doesn't live there as one: her accent is far too posh-British and two: that building is not at all what houses looked like back in the day. He asks out of friendly formality and because Romulus shouldn't get to talk about such wonderful things.
Diana shakes her head once more. “No. I'm not too sure what that building was used for,” Prayer, actually. “But no, I've never been closer to it than this. Diana lived in England, and was only visiting Rome for work.”
“What work?”
“Singing. Opera. She never performed though, only was meant to. The stage fright was too great.”
Romulus sighs, a little disappointed. “You won't give us even a little concert? Two people is a lot less than one big, scary audience.”
“I can't.”
“Would you come in and sing happy birthday with all of us later then? Baby baby steps?”
There's a pattering of feet on floor from behind and the twins turn to see Pandora and Evan rushing up the stairs. Pandora carries a cardboard box that jingles when she skips the steps and jumps onto the landing. Evan doesn't carry anything but he looks mightily stressed out, his expression not softening by much when he sees Remus and Romulus.
“Have they started setting up already?” He asks, panting. He takes Pandora's box off her hands and walks forward, kneeling down to set the thing down against the wall as they all talk. Diana stays silent and organises her belongings as she usually does while waiting for students to need to get into the common room.
Romulus nods. “Yes, but it's only been about five minutes or so.” And Evan nods too.
Pandora steps forward and pinches the ends of her elegant dress and sways. “Do you like my dress?” She fishes from the boys though she's looking at Remus only.
It's a very lovely dress. It's red and it's got layers of mesh and regular fabric. It's one solid colour all around with Jacquard florals in the skirt, and wide sleeves that makes Remus certain that it's as comfortable as anything.
On one of the first days that Remus and Pandora became friends, they told each other their favourite colours. Remus told Pandora that Romulus' favourite was red before lying and saying his was too for the sake of keeping up identicality (his real favourite colour is blue, though that's besides the point).
“I do. It's very red.” He says and just can't help thinking that Pandora's choice in colour palette is deeper than showing, “Gryffindor spirit- you know how it is.” As she so perfectly put.
Remus doesn't think red is a particularly bad colour, just a bit much. Now that he's seen how Pandora so effortlessly pulled the vibrant colour off though, he thinks it might actually be his favourite colour, or at least only for tonight. That, or he just likes Pandora and her quirks. It's probably the latter.
“I like your hair.” Romulus nervously adds. Remus would have gotten in there to say it first had he not been admiring the dress.
Pandora's hair is long, (lighter than usual?), and decorated with small silver rings. It's in a half-up-do and a few thin braids by her temples frame her lit-up face. The near-whiteness of her hair, and the clear brown of her skin, and the dazzling red of her outfit is really a sight to behold.
She smiles so wide at Romulus that her eyes look shut. “Thank you! I like yours too.”
Romulus' hair, for the record, is absolutely nowhere near as nice as Pandora's. You'd think he'd just been freefalling for a few hours, geared up with everything but a helmet to stop his hair from going everywhere. And to protect his head or whatever.
He smiles anyway and thanks Pandora for the fairly obvious this-is-a-formality compliment.
Evan has his foot on the lid of the box which makes Remus think fireworks! Or other things in need of containment like a flock of birds, or a wind up jack-in-the-box except it's a cake that flies at you. Remus is really excited for cake so he pretends not to have caught onto Evan's attempt at subtlety.
“They can head in, can't they?” He asks Diana and she darts her head up, not even asking for the password before her frame swings to the side and the doorway is revealed.
There's laughter from inside and Remus catches a glimpse of Sirius with a pointed face of concentration and buntings being magicked up to the high ceiling.
Pandora runs into the doorframe and stretches her arms up high. She slowly brings her hands down, keeping the twins' attentions on her by clicking her fingers like they're dogs in training.
“Absolutely no peeking!” She insists. “No peeking of your presents, no peeking of your party, and no Peking of any ducks- do you hear me?”
Nods all around.
Pandora beckons Evan to take her place which he does after he picks up the box again. She waves the birthday boys off and runs into the common room. They all laugh when all stops and there's a chorus of, “Pandora!” from inside the common room.
Evan walks in too and despite the closing of the entrance with Diana's portrait also cancels any noise from inside seeping out, Remus knows that Evan is greeted in the same manner.
That same silence from when they were first locked out falls upon them again but Romulus doesn't let it last long. He asks of Diana's other hobbies- if she has any more- to which she looks pleasantly surprised that he's decided to keep the conversation going.
“I like to cook. Person-Diana used to love to make bread; now I can only watch it being done in the kitchens.”
The kitchens are still a mystery. It must be some sort of unspoken rule amongst the older students to let the first years discover things on their own in due time, and to not tell them the location of anything (including classes and bathrooms). Everyone so far that the boys have asked for directions to the kitchens have turned them away. Remus can't say he wouldn't do the same when he's in second year and is no longer the youngest in the school, can't say he wouldn't love to be let in on the secret and mess with the first years; what he can say is that he's feeling a little cheated, a little betrayed that that nice group of fourth years will give him a high five but not the location of the kitchens.
Up until now, he's figured that being told such a thing is sort of an initiation into second year, but he sees a chance now to get to know it early.
“The kitchens?” He suggests, faux timidness lacing his voice. “You know where they are?”
Oh, finding it out and telling the boys would be like Remus' birthday present to them. Romulus must think so too.
“Can you tell us where they are?” He asks, his eyebrow innocent and curiously raised.
She gives the boys reams of directions, lots of lefts and rights and zigzags through halls and corridors, shown visually with her hands snaking through imaginary blueprints. Remus gets maybe the first five instructions which max out his mental capacity at the minute and the rest is lost. Diana spends a while repeating, “there's a left, then a right. Right, then a left.” and by the end of it, Remus has forgotten the order of his original five points and comes out of the conversation with nothing.
“There'll be a painting there, one of a bowl of fruit. You tickle the pear a little and it'll swing open to the kitchen behind it.” Diana concludes with a puff. Romulus doesn't catch Remus' eye when he tries to deduce whether or not he's alone in thinking that that was impossible to follow.
“Thanks a lot, Diana, that's brilliant.” He tells the woman. “Will you come in for the party later then?”
“I will.”
The boys politely smile at Diana before tugging each other down the landing and through hallway after hallway. There's a little corridor the boys all go to at night when they want to seem cool. It's narrow enough for them to sit with their legs extended, though their toes can't be more than a foot away from the opposite wall. The corridor has a dead end, a rickety little closet that Remus doesn't think anyone has remembered about for a couple of decades. It actually reminds Remus of one of those scary-looking alleys that Hope and Lyall warn the boys to stay away from when on a day trip to Cardiff or something.
They sit on the floor near the closet, in their little designated spot where the dust has cleared from their previous visits. Remus instantly slumps down so that his feet just touch the opposite walk and save him from sliding down too much and so that his shoulders and neck hurt. He sits back up after a few seconds.
“Did you get much of the last bit? Of what she said?” Romulus asks once Remus has straightened himself out. He lights the tip of his wand and Remus does the same so that they can actually see, this corridor/alley being so dark and secluded and all.
There aren't any paintings in this corridor so he feels more comfortable speaking his mind. “Absolutely not. You?”
A shrug. “I got a few bits and pieces. Painting of a fruit bowl she said at the end, didn't she?”
“And to tickle the pickle or something, I forget.”
Romulus thwacks Remus' arm and laughs. Tickle the pear, nitwit- why would a pickle be in the fruit bowl?”
Well-
“A cucumber could be in the fruit bowl,” Remus points out. “We just don't know yet.” He doesn't think he's even going to suggest trying to find the kitchens without the others.
Romulus laughs again. “That's completely different, that's a cucumber.”
Remus looks at his brother as if to say ‘are you serious right now?’. He's got such a soft and happy face even when he's looking at Remus as if to say ‘are you serious right now?’.
“They're the same as pickles.” Remus says slowly, stated like a question as if to suss out whether or not Romulus is actually being serious.
“No they're not.” Romulus says just as slowly.
“Cucumbers are pickles, Romulus.”
He shushes him. “Cucumbers are cucumbers; pickles are pickles. There's a difference.”
“Pickles are pickled cucumbers.”
“Pickle isn't a verb, nor is it a bloody cucumber, Remus. Don't be daft.”
Daft? Daft! Remus could go on for hours about how un-daft he is. He wishes he could just run up to Hope and Lyall and ask for their adult wisdom to determine who's the winner. Not that he needs adult wisdom right now because he knows he's right, as he does in a lot of these situations.
“Cucumbers aren't fruits anyway,” Romulus continues, wrong again. “Why would one be in a fruit bowl?”
Remus shakes his head. “Well, I don't know, maybe because cucumbers are fruits? And pickles are cucumbers and-”
“I don't want to fight about bloody fruit, Remus.” Romulus announces (likely because he's deduced just how wrong he is) and that's the end of it.
They sit quietly for a moment. Remus wonders if they look really cool as they do, thinking all they need now is a cigarette to complete the edgy-teenagers look. Except they're not smoking the cigarettes and they're not even lit because Remus hates the smell. And they're not teenagers although they are a year closer to it now.
He's not exactly sure as to what he'll get by turning thirteen. Nothing really apart from the odd sense of authority from having -teen at the end of his age. The next big milestone after that is turning eighteen, then twenty one, then life may as well be over because there's no big things really to celebrate. Maybe turning fifty or something.
Well, by the time he's thirteen, he'll be in third year which is when he's allowed out to Hogsmeade with the rest of the year group. Technically speaking, he'll still be twelve for a little bit in the year (maybe not the academic year but the calender year) he'll be going into third year, so technically speaking: he should just be allowed out to Hogsmeade the second the clock strikes midnight tonight.
Lyall always comes up with technicalities like that. He says that birthdays shouldn't be celebrated until midday when guaranteed every time zone in the world has come into the day. This is why Lyalls birthday is always celebrated by the family at twelve o'clock on the dot each year, while the rest of the Lupins celebrate like normal people. Remus sure as heck is not going to start that malarkey up this year.
He needs to remind himself to take pictures for his parents tonight. That, or he can just hand the camera back to Frank as he seemed so comfortable with it all day, taking unsolicited pictures of anything and everything whenever he got his hands on the stupid thing today.
When Remus rocks his head back against the wall is when he realises it: he actually misses home. Since when is the gap between holidays so long?
“What do you think Mum and Dad are doing right now?” He asks Romulus. There's a distinct thunk! and Romulus seems to have killed his head back to look up at the ceiling too. He wasn't trying to be cool but it just comes so easy now so he's got no choice but to take it as yet another win.
“Kissing, probably.” Romulus responds and there goes the homesickness, replaced with regular sickness.
“Ew!”
A beat of silence.
“Actually though- what do you think they're doing?”
Romulus hums in thought. “Probably going to bed or something, I don't know.”
No, thinks Remus. They'd be staying up too, wouldn't they? Sure, Lyall doesn't believe in it, but they'd stay up late until midnight to at least acknowledge that their sons are a year older. Who is Hope going to make fun of Lyall's little meltdown in the delivery room to? And who is Lyall going to tell the same old story of Hope breaking two of his fingers to? Who's he going to show off his perfectly fine hand to? And wince at the slightest touch as if there wasn't a team of doctors and nurses next to him to fix the break almost immediately?
“It's a bit…” He starts, trailing off in the hopes that Romulus catches his drift fast enough so that he doesn't have to say he misses home.
“A bit weird being away from them on our birthday for the first time?” Oh God, ‘first time’ sounds so morbid.
“Yeah.”
“They're lucky both their birthdays are in summer-” Says Romulus. Both their parents are June babies. “We're all together for that.”
Personally, Remus believes that his and Romulus' birthday should be a nationally recognised three week holiday.
“I hate March.” He says, making a reminder to pitch this idea to his brother a little later when they've got a decent drawing board and a committee of smart and semi-smart peers for ideas. “It's the last, sad little stretch until Easter and nothing even fun happens.”
“Saint Patrick's Day happens.” Offers Romulus.
“And what do we do on Saint Patrick's Day?”
“Remember all the pubs being all packed?”
Remus scoffs. “We're not allowed in pubs, so what else can we do on Saint Patrick's Day?”
This isn't completely true. They are allowed in pubs: they were in one a few years ago for great-uncle Patrick's last birthday, for some good food, and for Lyall to pretend he isn't infinitely fascinated by the Muggle sports on the television.
Romulus nods, accepting defeat (Remus is on a roll tonight). “You're right. About March too: it's the worst.” He hums dreamily. “Easter has got me thinking about chocolate now.”
Oh chocolate.
“They better have gotten some for the party or else I am not going to be attending.” Remus declares and Romulus thwacks him again although pretending he doesn't utterly agree is a hard sell.
“You asked for chocolate cake, didn't you?” He asks.
“And you asked for bloody lemon drizzle, you tosser. What if we get stuck with that?”
The thing is, both Remus and Romulus like chocolate cake (why oh why is it such a hot debate all the time then?), but only Romulus likes lemon drizzle. Like ‘you can soup pee but not pea soup’ or whatever the joke Peter made the other day was.
“It'll be a brilliant birthday party that I most definitely will be attending”
Romulus summons a deck of cards with his wand and it takes a minute for them to reach the boys. They've all gotten pretty good at summoning charms though there's lots to work on, made evident when in comes a tattered old card packet from around the corner, its spell died off just metres away from the boys and falling. Cards fly and scatter everywhere around the boys like they're standing at the seashore and the last wisps of waves wash over their feet.
Remus tries a charm now. Clearly, he must not have read the pronunciation very well because following one slightly-overdramatic wave of his wand and botched incantation, Remus manages to summon a small tornado. It spins with such speed and generates a wind in the corridor and the second before panic sets in, Remus is actually quite proud of himself because chances are his fellow first years aren't able to truthfully say that they've created a weather disaster all by themselves.
Romulus jumps into the tornado. It looks mighty strong but it threatens his equilibrium only a little. He stomps at the touchdown point of the twister and waves his hands around the cloud of dust and cards for a few seconds before it's forced to dissipate into the now colder open air. The cards revert back to their past state of a scattered mess on the ground.
“Are those paper cuts?” Remus asks his brother when he extends his hand to pass over a few cards; manual labour, how dreadful. They both kneel on the floor, one half of the cards to gather and pile up each. Romulus has about ten shallow, thin cuts on the back of each of his hands which he takes a look at after Remus speaks.
“Oh yeah.” He says, mildly surprised. “From the cards I suppose. They don't hurt.”
Remus picks up the pace so he can help gather Romulus' half of the cards too.
They sit back down, wands tucked in their waistbands so as to not tempt either of them. Remus shuffles and deals the cards, picks one up from the pile between him and Romulus whenever needed, regardless of whether or not it's his turn to.
“My hands still work, y’know.”
They play Old Maid, Kings in the Corner, and War for close to forty minutes. Spit is also played but only for half a round as Remus deems it too fast paced.
“You're just scared I'll beat you.” Romulus taunts, flexing his fingers to sell the laughable idea that his injuries aren't all that serious.
“If I were scared,” Remus explains slowly. “I'd be scared of you using your hands too much and those cuts getting blood everywhere and all over me. That's pretty rational, I think.”
“No, it's not.”
“You can only be scared of rational things-”
“-Nope.”
“Hence why I'm not scared of you beating me. That's so irrational that it's actually hilarious, and I can't possibly be rolling over laughing at something while still being scared.”
Romulus snorts. “Why aren't you rolling over laughing then?”
Remus sneers. “Because you're not funny and I hate you.”
He remembers Hope interrupting them in their room one day. It was lucky that she did as Remus was close to passing out, dangling off the edge of his bed in an absolute fit of laughter. He had to be taken out of the room and away from Romulus, the damned source of humour, for a few minutes. Regain his breath and all that.
He remembers them both getting talked to about knowing when to pause the messing to make sure one of them doesn't die. Remus wasn't overly convinced that one could die from laughing but he did like the sound of that specification on his gravestone: ‘here lies Remus Lupin. It was Romulus' fault- he wouldn't stop cracking jokes about Mrs. Stack (Mrs. Whack!) from primary school.’
Remus actually forgot about that woman though he'll be sure to bring her up another time when the other that he's trying to make isn't that Romulus is not funny.
“Excuse you!” The appalled boy snaps. “I am very funny.”
“No you're not.” Remus insists, digging his fingernails into his palm to refrain from laughing about poor old Mrs. Julia Whack.
“Yes I am.”
“No you're not.”
“Well then, you're not funny.”
Remus gasps loudly. “Yes I am!”
“Doesn't feel so good, does it? And no you're not.”
“I am!”
“Are not!”
“I am!”
“You don't know the time, do you?”
Remus shoves Romulus' side, disrupting him in the middle of shuffling. The deck is set down so that Romulus can shove Remus back.
“Why would I have the time?” Remus mocks. “Do you see a watch?” And he holds up his wrist to Romulus' nose for effect, who jumps in fright when the tip of his nose is accidentally bumped.
“I was only asking.” He whines. “We should go find a classroom- that'll have a clock. And I don't like sitting on the floor.”
Remus downplays how offensive he finds that.
“You don't like our spot?” He pretends to joke, the sarcasm in his voice dreadfully forced.
“I don't like the disgusting floor of our spot. We should set up some chairs, maybe a table.”
“Should we wheel in a telly while we're at it?”
As a matter of fact, yes, Remus would like to wheel in a telly. And a couple of chairs, a couch maybe, a few blankets and get all cozied up for a nice movie night like it's any other year of birthday treats back home. He'd love to bring the boys out here and for them all to pile on top of each other and spend the whole time arguing over what to watch. And he wants a little bit of music going too, wants some snacks, some refreshments, and wants even a fireplace or at least a radiator going to keep them warm. Remus realises that really, he's just picturing the common room.
March is cold, this corridor is colder and Remus leads Romulus towards the nearest classroom because if he has to wait another minute to get back into the common room, he might just collapse.
There hasn't been any teacher scares just yet- it seems like they've all taken the night off in the name of Remus and Romulus. They can't be blamed, really.
The unlocked classroom they come across first is obviously empty, though it looks like it's been that way for an exceptional amount of time. There's dust on most- if not all- surfaces and there's a noticeable stuffy atmosphere in the space like the air in the space has gone stale. There just must not be any use for this particular room anymore and Remus doubts many want to use it anyway, or want to bother sprucing it up a little for public use again. He wonders for a second how many classrooms like that are in Hogwarts- uninhabited by anything and forgotten- and feels bad for the rooms. He reasons that it's not the rooms’ fault that they're in an obscure and/or hidden location, or the student body got too big for the need of a classroom that only comfortably fits fifteen heads. He then orders himself to snap out of it: feeling bad for bloody rooms. Romulus' ‘feel guilty about everything’ tendencies make good haste when passing along to others.
“I think Diana's nice.” Romulus tells Remus. They each swipe away the dust and sit on a desk, too cool for a chair now. There is in fact a clock on the wall and provided that it's not as ancient and decrepit as the rest of this room and still works, they've got ten minutes until they're to be back at the common room entrance. They've also got ten minutes left of being eleven but Remus thinks counting down the minutes until a bound to be great party kicks off is just a tiny little bit more fun.
Remus doesn't like the emphasis and insinuation in Romulus' voice. “You think?” He echoes. “I also think she's nice, actually. Who said I didn't?” Absolutely nobody, that's who.
“Nobody, nobody, calm down.” Romulus tuts. He swings his legs back and forth and uses his fingers to tap the wood beneath him and Remus copies him. “She's just really nice, that's all. It'd be lovely if she wasn't just a painting, wouldn't it?”
Remus can't imagine what use a too-shy opera singer would have in a school, or that Romulus would want to go near or even talk to her if she had any. He still doesn't talk all that much in classes, except maybe Herbology and Kettleburn’s hour long rambles. He doesn't chat like Remus does though, or make small talk like Sirius does when he needs to stall for James to finish his homework (Sirius is brilliant at this, the master of sly charm and wit he is). But sure, yes, Remus supposes that it'd be really nice and totally normal if the fat lady was back walking around and Romulus, a freshly twelve year old boy, would be best friends with her like he so clearly wants. Remus would just like to remind his brother just who he shares a birthday with.
“You heard her, didn't you?” Romulus continues. “She said nobody had asked her for her name in ages- that must be dreadful.”
Remus scoffs and raises a sceptical eyebrow at his brother. “When was the last time someone asked for your name?”
“You know what I mean. She operates the entrance of our whole house: surely she deserves a little more recognition and respect.”
Romulus' posture is straight and his brows are furrowed like he's got one emotionally-motivated thing after the other to be said all stored up in his little head.
“She's a painting of a woman that was then charmed to act like her.” Remus says, cognet. “It's not like she's the real thing, cursed to be trapped in there. She's just there and she always has been.”
Romulus gestures to Remus from slightly across the room where he sits from him, his arm darting forward at him as if Remus just proved his point for him. “She's always there. It's her job to stay at the entrance. Do you think she's being paid?”
Remus makes an identical gesture, laced more with exasperated disbelief than gratitude. “How would you pay a painting?”
Now, Remus thinks again about how the social network of paintings works. Is there even money? Is there law, government, police? He decides he'll let Romulus talk with Diana for a few hours about it and give him the briefest of summaries when it's over. Seems recently fair.
“They could at least try.” Presses Romulus. “They could paint a picture of a big money vault and give it to her.”
“And what would she spend it on? She's just a painting, Romulus, nobody is going to try because nobody cares.”
Remus softens his tone when he sees Romulus' face fall. “She's nice and she's got more to her than people think,” He clarifies. “But unless everyone starts talking to her like you did, they're just not going to care.”
“They should care.”
There's a chalkboard and a few eroded sticks of chalk left. Naturally, the boys take the opportunity and Romulus draws his little money bank, and Remus draws… that thing Sirius drew on a paper aeroplane that almost landed him in detention tonight. They leave giggling behind their hands at their masterpiece that they're going to forget about in about five minutes.
Remus doesn't want to point out how little time they've got left until midnight, how they're doing so many last things without even realising it. He's been saying things like that all day already though so he decides not to annoy everyone by repeating himself, even if it is the last time they'll run back in a silent hurry to the common room when they're out past curfew.
Diana is still in her frame, humming a tune to herself which she promptly stops once she sees the boys, and brushing her hair idly which she does not stop.
Remus can't trust Romulus to not spread news of his newfound painting union to the poor woman so he speaks first. “Have you had any look inside? Does it look good?”
Diana gives him a gentle smile. “I have had a look but if I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?”
“It's not a surprise anyway: we know about it!”
“It's the principle of the matter, young man.”
Being without a clock means that Remus doesn't know for certain what time it is, if it's actually past midnight yet. He's decided that he's in a Schrödinger's cat sort of situation, and that being eleven and twelve at the same time still means he's technically twelve.
He's the same two weeks older than James than he always is, and the same five (and a half) months older than Peter. It just matters now that he's officially a different age to his friends. Sirius- the oldest, unfortunately- never said how powerful it'd feel.
Remus jumps when Diana's frame is swung once again to the side and Sirius is revealed, smiling. Remus thinks for a second that Sirius must have heard Remus' internal monologue but settles on the fact that brilliant entrances must be a bonus of being dreadfully dramatic.
“I'd like to point out now,” Sirius carefully explains. He leans cooly against the wall and smirks at the twins from his slightly elevated position on the common room side. And of course he'll look cool because he's part of the bloody twelve gang. Remus hopes he's got the etiquette nailed down by the time it's James' turn. “That I'm the first one to wish you both happy birthday on your actual birthday: happy birthday.”
“It's midnight?” Romulus gasps. Sirius raises his eyebrows and nods with a smile stretched across his face.
The twins turn to each other. Remus considers a hug to sort of solidify the advancement, and thinks it's a pretty good way to do it. He then remembers that big, sappy hugs are the least-cool thing someone can do; it'd be like reuniting with their parents at the platform all over again. Romulus clearly is thinking the same things as his face conveys, ‘Remus Lupin if you hug me right now-’ from the way his lips are slightly pursed and eyes slightly squinting. This is why when Remus changes his mind, he is quick about bringing in his brother so that there's no time for him to push him or jump out of the way.
There's a weak struggle in the beginning but then there's a pair of arms hugging him back tightly around his ribs after just a few seconds.
Then the proud back-away is executed by both of them, each trying to convince themselves that they hated every second of that hug. Because they did.
Sirius is still grinning ear to ear when they look back at him.
“Party hats! Where are your party hats?” He fusses, wagging a finger at the boys' bare heads.
Remus rolls his eyes but reveals his party hat anyway. It's beyond flattened now that it's been in his back pocket since he took it off over an hour ago. He presses the cardboard in on its creases to sort it out and figures the job is more or less done. He then looks at Romulus who is fixing a similarly flattened hat on his head and it looks simply bent and ridiculous and Remus wonders if he looks just as stupid, like his head is too gigantic to fit into his own hat.
Next, Sirius takes a step back and gestures his head to tell the boys to follow him in. Romulus goes first and Remus takes just a moment to watch Diana brisk past the border of her frame and out of sight from her portrait, likely going inside the common room to sit in with a friend for the party.
It's unusually quiet as Sirius leads the birthday boys through the short hallway and into the common room. Remus can hear breathing the closer they get to the mouth of the hallway and the anticipation and giddiness builds and builds until a wall out noise hits him dead on: the perfect way- in Remus' opinion anyway- to celebrate people as brilliant as himself and his brother.
“SURPRISE!”
It's got to be a Gryffindor student’s birthday every single day, the amount of people in the house, but Remus doesn't see a party like this everyday. Sorry bunch they all must be to not have friends like he does; it's got him feeling very special.
There’s about six different ‘happy birthday’ buntings hung up around the place so that at least one can be read regardless of where one is standing in the common room. They’re each a different colour palette from each other but all the letters are a glistening gold with bright sparks playing from them, only dissipating away just above the heads of the crowd. Its comprised mostly of first years, some of whom Remus has only had surface level conversation with out of necessity in classes. He's actually quite surprised that so many have shown up for them both. Everyones got on party hats too, though theirs are all purple as opposed to the twins’.
The main guys (James, Peter, the likes of) are all at the front of the crowd of about thirty-forty, closest to the twins and most easily seen. They're all grinning at them, practically shaking on the spot. Pandora looks the giddiest while Lily’s odd friend looks the most uncomfortable and looks like he'd agree with Remus in thinking that he shouldn’t be up at the front like this, despite a radiant Lily by his side.
Everyone seems to have swapped clothes in the time Remus and Romulus have been gone. The girls have all put on warm-coloured dresses and the boys have whacked on their formal t-shirts.
The outburst in celebration is followed with round upon round of applause and the silence implying music is filled with just that. Remus hears The Doors past the noise and for a second, Remus wants to shriek at his friends, asking how in the name of Dumbledore they managed to get Lyall here.
James claps his hands as loud as he can, but only about half of the group hears him and joins in on his rendition of He’s A Jolly Good Fellow, or They're Both Jolly Good Fellows more like. The rest of the people join in too and for a minute, it's a little scattered though they all manage to get themselves sorted by the time “and so say all of us” is sung.
“Happy birthday, best buds.” Peter says, walking up to them both.
“Ah, well,” Remus butts in. “Romulus technically hasn't been born yet.”
Romulus groans. “You do know that you haven’t been born either, don't you?”
The rest of their friends come up before Remus can retort with a classic “well actually…”.
By the time the hugs are up, and the giggles and more hugs have finished too, it's twenty past midnight and close enough for Romulus to have some cake too. It's a slow, dramatic reveal of two perfect cakes: one iced with rich, glossy chocolate icing whose scent carries and fills out in the air around it, and one lemon loaf which Remus supposes looks nice.
He takes a little less than a quarter of the five-layer cake for himself before turning around and discreetly lobbing off a bit into an empty plate. It looks like an absolute dream but Remus doesn't fancy carting around a plate of cake he can't finish and a bloated belly around all night.
James and Sirius are messing around once the tedious formalities like making sure everyone's fed are over and done with (who entrusted them with a knife to cut the cakes by the way?). They run off and jump and dance on a few tables and chairs the first chance they get. It's funny until James comes close to regurgitating his lemon slice over his would-be crowd surfers.
Remus mingles with the slightly less manic people to eat, a group of about fifteen all stood huddled together in their own little conversations. While Romulus talks to an audience of four (Frank being one, Diana being another) about his newfound initiative towards paintings’ rights, his desire for all paintings to be content in their place in the school. Remus eavesdrops in and takes a minute to come up with SAPS: Students Against Paintings' Sadness. And all of a sudden, he is positively ecstatic about Romulus' theorised activist group, and the opportunity to call his brother a sap and get away with it. Maybe he should be put on the marketing team.
He talks with Peter who leans on the back of the nearest couch.
“Are you having fun?” Asks Peter.
“Am I having fun?” Remus echoes aghast because it really is the most obvious thing ever. “Of course I'm having fun, blimey Pete.”
Peter smiles and looks down at his feet for a second in relief. “Good, that’s good.”
“It's brilliant, Pete, really. It's bigger than any party I've ever been to, I haven't got a clue as to how you all pulled it off, it's just perfect.”
Peter meets Remus' eye again. “I'd have killed you if you said you didn't like it.” He states, voice calm and a little creepy though Remus is inclined to agree with his friend.
“And I'd have let you.” He snorts. “That's the least of what I’d deserve for saying such nonsense.” And he shovels a fork of cake in his mouth. Peter has his plate balanced on top of the couches pillows. It looks like he made the mistake Remus avoided, gotten James to cut him too big of a slice that now he can't finish. Peter exasperates this for Remus by choosing the tiniest of corners off his plate and nibbling on that for the time being.
“Do you know how long it took me to get those bloody buntings to stop catching on fire?” He asks.
Remus looks up at the closest bunting that's still shooting off sparks. “Don't tell me, mate, you're going to make me feel bad about Sirius’ party last year,” He shakes his head, adding, “Or lack of.”
Peter gives him a sort of “won't you drop this?” look.
“You know he said that he didn't care for one.”
“I do know, but I still feel bad.”
Sirius' birthday was way back in November when he was still scared of when his name was called on the roll. Attention was still an absolute must but this drama with his family and Slytherin and Gryffindor must have been getting to him, and the idea of a big happy birthday song must have been a bit off putting.
“But we can do a different version!” The boys had tried to bargain but all they managed to get Sirius to agree too was for just them boys (this being pre Rosier twins and pre properly befriending Lily) and a bunch of sweets in their dorm until about one in the morning and a good lie in the next day.
“We probably could have tried to force him a little harder.” Remus continues though he knows he wouldn't have dared to do something like that back then for fear of damaging a still-new friendship. He'll be sure to not care about all that stuff next year.
“Wouldn't have been much fun for him then, would it?” Peter points out.
“Fair. You'd think he'd love a big party, the amount of attention he wants and gets.”
“Fair. Y’know his family? I bet it's them: they probably don't celebrate birthdays or something ridiculous.”
And it hits Remus that this is beginning to sound a little mean. A little like they're talking behind Sirius' back and it doesn't feel very nice.
He wants to say something about what he's heard from all around- about the Death Eaters and all that stuff with Sirius' family. He hasn't wanted to believe anything and he still doesn't because Sirius is lovely. Sure, his family sounds a little mad, but whose family isn't sometimes? James' family sounds hectic if anything- why isn't he the topic of all these rumours?
Sometimes there'll be a family friend that comes up to Sirius though they never look or act very friendly. It makes Remus wonder, that's all he'll say.
Which is why rather than feeding anymore into the ridiculousness of it all, Remus laughs it off by saying, “The French, am I right?”, nudges Peter's arm and laughs again. That seems about right, or at least a little bit better.
This is one of those moments where Remus is curious and a little bit nervous in regards to Sirius Black, but his train of thought is derailed at the sight of the boy levitating James with one eye closed and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.
Remus and Peter walk around to take a seat on the couch. Peter leans over and slides his plate in the tiny space between about a million other plates on one of the little tables before he sits. After, he and Remus are both jolted by a touch on their shoulders from behind: Romulus.
“Frank's taking pictures, guys, smile!” He beams, pointing dead ahead at Frank who is getting the camera pointed at the three of them.
Peter yells at him to stop what he's doing and he and Remus profusely begin to straighten themselves out before they find themselves in a situation where they've got ugly pictures of them being used as blackmail as Remus surely will be committing with Romulus' stupid photo from earlier this morning.
Frank fiddles around with the camera for a second before snapping a picture once everyone is ready: Peter mid-blink, Remus on his left with an awkward smile, and Romulus behind and between them both, a genuine grin spread from ear to ear.
Clickflash! Clickflash! Clickflash! And Frank leans away from the camera, admiring his hard work in its little screen.
“You'll get in a picture too, won't you Frank?” Remus asks, running his hand through his hair again in case of a yes which he, of course, gets from the timid little boy behind the lens he's adopted as a part of himself at this point.
At Frank's approval of a picture, Remus begins to look around for the next most responsible and trustworthy person to operate the camera: Lily.
She's in a corner with Severus and upon spotting them, Remus decides that officially, he does not like that boy. Lily Evans is not a corner girl, she's a centre-stage girl and won't be reduced to any less just because her weird friend came to a party that he's not even going to attempt to socialise in. Remus does not like this boy one bit, nor does he like admitting that James was right about bringing him along earlier.
Remus strides over, his eyes angrily squinted at Snape until he's spotted. Then his expression turns pleasant and he approaches kindly with a calm voice. He loves every single person in this room.
“Hello.” He says.
Snape responds, “Hi.” in the grittiest of voices while Lily doesn't have to say anything to get her message across via dazzling smile.
“Will you take our picture, Lily?” Remus almost shyly asks of her. He didn't quite expect her eyebrow to raise in a sense of offence.
“I'm taking the picture?”
“Yes?”
“Am I not allowed to be in it? Is this only for boys or something? Am I only good for pressing a button to capture you and your mates’ essence in film forever? Only good to commemorate you boys?”
This. This is how Lyall feels when Hope is right in an argument.
“No!” Remus sputters out. “No, you can get in the picture, we don't mind. I'm sorry.”
His heart skips about a dozen beats when Lily's features soften again. “And I'm messing.” She clarifies with a proud chuckle. Snape makes a little noise too and Remus wants to slap him.
Even when he's the one who asked in the first place, Remus finds himself being led by Lily back to the boys on the couch with Snape in tow also.
Frank is sitting on the couch now looking mighty stressed out as Peter rotates the camera around to get a good look at it.
Romulus climbs over the back of the sofa once he sees that Remus- who also takes a seat- is back.
Peter hands off the camera to Lily and Frank looks a little relieved. He shuffles back to sit in line with the other three boys on the couch who each have their best smiles on. Lily takes another second to get everything right and clickflash! again; Lily emerges from behind the lens with a satisfied look on her face.
She sets the camera down and pinches Snape's sleeve to bring him over to the couch too. Remus isn't going to verbally oppose him being in a picture though he will be getting mad later that he can't read minds and leave by himself. The only person- if even- hearing his internal rampage is Pandora.
“We should get everyone else in too.” Remus tells the group, looking around for people again. He stands up again and takes a step out and away from the couch to get in James and Sirius' line of sight, beckoning them both to come over despite James being terribly horizontal about a metre off the ground.
When he turns around, Remus sees Marlene, Mary, and Alice coming over too at Lily's behest with her gesturing arm.
“I’m Alice.” Remus hears the girl with the short and messy brown hair say to Frank. He stutters terribly on the F of his name in response but she doesn't laugh like others do.
“A lot of people for one picture, isn't it?” Remus suggests but he cuts himself off when he sees James and Sirius walking over with Evan and Pandora too. Four more.
“One more!” Romulus shouts over the chatter, pointing at Diana in a frame across the room where there's more space for the lot of them to fit.
They make their way to stand beneath Diana's borrowed frame, one once belonging to a lousy librarian with a constant scowl.
All being as small as they are, nobody is running the risk of obstructing the high hung frame but both sets of twins are sent to the front to crouch a little so that everyone fits in frame. A kid that tennis doesn't know the name of is given the camera and Frank shows her quickly how the Muggle trinket works, tells her to be careful with it and then hurries back into position.
Remus knows that a few people are probably mid-blink, or mid-yawn. Or someone's hair is a mess and they've got something in their teeth or on their face. Remus knows this picture is aesthetically going to look like crud, but he can't think of a better way to capture the atmosphere of a night. It must tell a hundred stories in one frame alone, and Remus can imagine them all celebrating a hundred years of age with wilted brains and trembling hands looking through Frank's pictures from today with perfect memory.
The sugar rush lasts through another two albums on vinyl played in full. As it wears down, everyone collectively seems to turn into a zombie to some degree.
Everyone's clearing up a bit of the mess when Remus collapses himself on an armchair, unable to tell if this was the cake’s fault, or his for staying up as dreadfully late as he has.
But even as he fades away into a new realm of tiredness, even as he's growing ever more certain that he won't make it to thirteen (thirteen next year! Yay!) Remus thinks these two and a half hours of being twelve will go unmatched throughout the year. Even if 1972 brings him everything that he's ever dreamed of, and ‘73 even more, Remus is always going to remember picking his legs up on the coffee table to let a second year pick up a few wrappers from under the birthday boy’s feet as the best moment of his life. So far, at least.