chasing fortune and fame

Remus Lupin loved to write. He always had. He remembered that when he was four, he would tell stories and force whatever family member was around him to write them down. He still had that notebook. It had some boy band on the cover, and he had planned his first book in that journal. 

But that was when it had been easy to write. The times when he could sit in his bed with a cup of tea and just come up with characters and a plot. When he would be in school, an idea so brilliant would come that he just had to pull out his phone and write it down. Of course, his teachers hadn’t loved it, but they typically let it slide if he apologized sincerely enough. 

Truly, the only part of writing that had been any fraction of difficult was coming up with a title. Not that writing the actual book itself wasn’t hard, but to him, that had just been hard work. It had taken a while, but it wasn’t difficult if he just took it five hundred words at a time. Coming up with titles hadn’t been his strength. It had taken him three years to title his first book, and once he sold it to a publisher, they changed the name. 

He missed writing so freely. This wasn’t just writer’s block. This was a writer’s war. There were walls everywhere and, like a dangerous game of Jenga, he could not find one block he could pull without the entire thing crumbling around him. He couldn’t even come up with a period the book would be set in. 

History had always been Remus’ favorite subject. English class had annoyed him far more than it should have. Every time he said that he didn’t enjoy his English class, people seemed to be so shocked. But how was he to analyze some other author’s purpose when he couldn’t even come up with his own? Eventually, he graduated high school with respectable grades and a contract, which was the only reason he got into Columbia. 

Since then, he has put out around five books, most of which had somehow ended up on many bestseller lists. He had been in the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. He had hit Publishers Weekly’s list at number one and done the same for USA Today’s list. Really, if you named any list, he had been on it. People often pointed this out and talked about how his writing had changed their lives. He didn’t believe any of it.

If you forced him to read his debut novel, he would tell you how much of a dumpster fire it was. He couldn’t even manage to believe it, even years after an agent had signed with him, that he could write slightly better than the average adult. 

Still, he would have preferred a dumpster fire in the middle of a flood, about to float into a tornado, over an empty document with that pulsing black line mocking him. He might have thrown his laptop through the window of the coffee shop he sat in, but it would have ended up with a broken piece of technology and the coffee shop’s owner breathing down his neck to pay for the shattered glass. 

Lily Evans burst through the door with her tote bag slipping on her arm and strands of her flame-like red hair escaping her bun. Her eyes flitted around the shop, and when they lay upon him, he could have sworn that his admittedly violent fantasies were slightly calmed. He gently lowered the screen of his laptop until the light went out, and the weight was lifted off his chest. 

She took off her large coat, dropped her tote bag and backpack on the ground, and set her phone on the table. Lily let out a deep sigh and took a second of silence, like it was the only peace in her day, and smiled up at him. 

“Sorry, hon. I got caught up writing in bed. I swear sometimes the hours just disappear, and I end up with like three words,” she joked, but he already knew this. 

Every time she showed up to their writing get-togethers late and with her hair in a bun, she had been writing before. He envied it, but he was happy that at least one of them managed to get writing done. 

He shook his head lightly. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and he meant it. 

She nodded her head, accepting his response, and glanced back at the counter where a barista waited for a customer, looking rather bored. “Let me order. Then we can start.”

Lily wrote the only romance books Remus would read in his life. He understood why people liked the genre. It was easy to read and made you feel happy inside. He read her romance books, which were critically acclaimed as the best in the industry, because she wrote them and for no other reason. Lily’s books always had a happy ending, even if they made you cry somewhere along the way, and they were good. Her novels typically took place on vacations, beaches, or the occasional high school, coming-of-age book. 

Remus was the exact opposite. His historical fiction books tended to end on a bittersweet note, where he focused more on the bitter. If the characters didn’t die, then they were destroyed in some other way. He had heard reviews of his readers begging him to pay for their therapy, and they typically gave him a good laugh. Call him a monster, but he enjoyed making his readers cry. He didn’t know why he was the way he was, but he loved a good tragedy. 

Lily came back a few minutes later and pulled out her computer from her tote bag. It was filled with stickers of every sort. She had memes from her favorite books, a lesbian pride flag, body positivity quotes, and more than a few cats that resembled her two cats. He had always thought it looked a bit like one of those drinks from Starbucks that had enough sugar in them to give you diabetes in one go, but she swore they helped her write. 

“So, no luck?” she asked, studying the crease between his eyebrows that never left these days and the dark rings under his eyes. 

He placed his hands on the table a little too forcefully. The table shook, and he immediately pulled away, slightly more annoyed. “It’s like I’ve used all of my ideas. I can’t find one thing that I’m passionate about anymore. My publisher and agent are breathing down my neck for the newest book, but I have nothing. I’ve run dry,” he ranted, knowing she understood. Every writer faced bouts of dry patches, but this had gone on for months. There was not one idea in his head. 

She leaned back in her chair, her arms folded against the t-shirt of some artist. It was a tour shirt, and its fadedness gave away how old it was. “Maybe you just need to try something else. Stop trying to force it. You’ll get nowhere; trust me, I know. I don’t think I ever told you, but I actually tried writing sci-fi at first. I got through the first half of that book and realized it wasn’t for me. You just need to give writing some space until something inspires you,” she advised in a way that made you feel like she knew everything. It made you want to listen to her. 

“And what should I do? Writing is literally my entire life, Lily.” He used to love that fact, but now it sounded sad. 

She shrugged. “Explore other art.” 

He could have laughed. “What? Should I go to a museum?” Lily was very aware of Remus’ distaste for painting. It wasn’t that he hated it, but his mother had loved to paint, and Hope had left scars he preferred to forget rather than process. 

“There are other types of art, Remus.” She rolled her eyes. “You could… go to the theatre.” 

“No.” 

“Perhaps the ballet.” He raised his eyebrows as if to ask if she was being serious. “Fine, how about… music?” 

Remus stopped at that. “Do you mean songwriting?” 

She shook her head, chuckling. “No, don’t write. Just feel the music. Listen to the words. Maybe it’ll inspire you again. It’s the most living, breathing art form one can get.” 

A few months ago, he would have pushed off her suggestion and continued to stare at the white on his computer, but this wasn’t a few months ago, and he was desperate now. He would have tried anything, even the ballet. 

“What music?” he asked, knowing she would have suggestions. 

Lily Evans had always been a musical enthusiast. She was the type to listen to a song on repeat to ensure its energy would seep into her words. To be fair, it typically did. She loved good lyrics and a good beat. He was fully sure that she could have been a songwriter if she had wanted to. 

She tilted her head, thinking deeply. “A good starter would be Sirius Black. Listen to his bigger hits; they’re good, but go deeper into his albums. There are hidden gems and his lyrics; well, he might just be the lyricist of the generation.” It was very high praise coming from Lily. 

Remus had heard Sirius Black’s name in passing. He wasn’t one to listen to mainstream music. He stuck to the 70s rock songs. He had always had a fascination with the past, and it showed through his listening habits as well. But he trusted Lily with his life, so he would give it a try. 

“Alright. Now, do you have some pages for me to edit?” He had promised Lily to look over the pages of her newest novel because he still wanted to keep his skills sharp, even if they were currently stabbing him more in the back than they were actually being skillful. 

She opened her laptop and hit a few keys before responding. “I sent you the newest pages. If they’re a complete disaster, tell me.” They never were. 

He laughed lightheartedly. “Lily, I would rip them to shreds if they were shit. You know me. Have more confidence in yourself.” 

Giving him a knowing look, she rested her chin on her propped-up hands. “Do you want to go the ‘I don’t deserve the praise I get’ route, Mr. Gets Red in the Face Every Time He Gets Complimented?”

“I’d rather not,” Remus replied, defeatedly. He had good advice; he just often didn’t take it himself. 

“That’s what I thought.” She dropped her hands to her keyboard, and the steady sound of keys being pressed filled Remus’s ears.

He opened his laptop and began to look over the pages Lily had emailed him. Just as he thought, they were brilliant. Even he, an anti-romantic, could admit it. 

They stayed like that for the next few hours, completely silent, just going over Lily’s words. It was around the time that the sun began to fall, as it did too early in the evening during the winter, that Lily had to leave for some meeting she had with her agent. He sent over her revisions, and, a few minutes after she left, he realized he had nothing to do. 

Well, he had things to do but no way of doing them. He may have stared at his untouched document for a couple of seconds more before he closed his laptop and put it in his backpack. He pulled on the winter coat that stopped at his knees. It had been a gift from his father after he had signed with his first agent. 

Lyall Lupin had told him that every real writer moved to New York City, and he would need a jacket when he got there. Of course, there was no requirement to live in New York to be a real writer, but Remus was a part of the stereotype, even if he had only moved to the city to go to college. 

Remus put his headphones on and searched for Sirius Black on Spotify. He scrolled through the artist’s albums until he reached the end of a very long discography. He clicked on Sirius' debut album and hit play. 

The sound of very loud drums hit his ears as he stepped onto the sidewalk and toward the subway. He didn’t know where he would go, but he was sure he would find a place on the way. As he sat on the subway, crammed between an old man and a teenage girl, he opened his Spotify app to look at the lyrics of the song he was currently listening to. 

Lily hadn’t lied about Sirius’ lyrics. The Moon was a more mellow song than the first few on the album, and the first love song, too. Remus didn’t know what compelled him to get off at the next stop, but he began to make his way to an apartment he knew like the back of his hand. 

If college had brought him one good thing, it was the people he met. Besides, he didn’t have anything else to do. He supposed it had been a week since he had seen his closest friend. He owed Regulus Black a visit.