bygone days (an interlude)
When Remus Lupin was ten years old, he spent a summer in the Scottish countryside in the company of some family friends, a kindly young couple by the names Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Back home, his two sisters were now greeting a third, an Irish girl of their same age, but Lily was staying with the Fortescues at first, so as not to overwhelm her. Hope and Lyall thought it best to have as little people around as possible while she was settling in, so Mary, the most sociable of the three, was the only one permitted to stay. When the Weasleys offered to take one of the children away with them on their holiday to Scotland, it only made sense.
The Weasleys were kind enough people, warm and friendly hosts for Remus, but still he was terribly lonely the first few days of that summer. He had brought a few books along on the trip, but nothing much to hold him over, and there weren’t any other children around as far as he knew. He missed Lily and Mary something awful, cursing himself for not insisting he stay in Hertfordshire alongside Lily.
He spent his days wandering through the forest that ran up to the edge of the Weasleys' yard, flipping over rocks to look for insects and wading into the shallow parts of the stream to feel the moss between his toes.
After a long, solitary week, Remus came across a boy napping against a tree. He proudly wore a blackened eye and a split lip, and his eyes fluttered open as Remus approached, merely pretending to sleep. He grinned cheekily, springing to his feet as quickly as a cat, and meandered over to Remus, who had no idea what to do. His clothes were fine and carefully tailored — quite unlike Remus’s wardrobe of hand-me-downs — but they were ripped and smeared with mud from a day’s hearty play.
“Hello,” the boy said when he got close enough. Remus smiled back at him, slightly apprehensive. “Hello.”
“The bottom of your trousers are all wet,” the boy commented.
Remus shrugged. “They’ll dry.”
The boy blinked at him. “No, I mean why are they wet?”
Remus felt his lips quirk into a smile. “Oh. I was in the stream. I was looking for merpeople.”
This clearly excited the interest of the other boy. “Oh really?” He raised both eyebrows in disbelief. “Did you find any?”
Remus shook his head. “Not yet.” The boy looked disappointed, and it made Remus feel disappointed all over again. “But we could keep looking?” he tried, and the boy’s face lit up with mischief.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll race you there.” And then he sped away. Laughing, Remus followed him. That was the first day.
—
The rest of the summer passed in much the same way, Remus stealing away to the forest every chance he could, the other boy always eagerly awaiting his arrival. Remus never learned his true name; he merely called himself Padfoot, King of the Forest, and that was good enough for Remus (or Moony, as the boy soon affectionately dubbed him). Such trivialities never seemed very important at that age. All Remus knew of him was his posh clothes and accent, the way he sometimes bore mysterious bruises or injuries Remus never felt inclined to ask about, and all the sorts of marvellous games he liked to play. There never was a moment of boredom between them, the boys alternating ideas each day: they scrambled through the dirt in search of buried treasure, or else they conquered dragons or cast magical spells, or sometimes they liked to pretend they were sailing away to mystical lands together, never caring who played the captain or the first mate, as long as they were together. Remus liked best to find mushrooms or other small plants to churn into potions, while the other boy’s interests lay mainly in finding sticks to wave about like swords, defending the two from imaginary attackers coming to kidnap Remus and force him to use his potions for evil-doing. They never asked each other anything personal, never spoke of their families or outside lives, and so their friendship and that forest retained a misty, dreamlike quality that made the worlds they came up with feel all the more real. A thousand afternoons were lost that way to the roaring bliss of youth.
The boy was much sturdier and more muscular than Remus, so he easily scampered up the many trees and tossed down apples for Remus to catch, which they feasted on every day. Remus taught him how to pluck daisies and weave them into crowns, and the boy spent the majority of the time after that with the pale white flowers tangled in his elegant dark hair. The sight always brought a smile to Remus’s face.
Sometimes they did nothing but lay side-by-side in an open meadow, basking in the warmth of the afternoon sunshine and watching clouds pass overhead. The boy nearly always fell asleep, curling up like a cat in a sunbeam, but Remus preferred to stay awake, watching the gentle rise and fall of the other boy’s chest. He looked so peaceful when he slept, so angelic— The complete opposite of how he looked awake, always wearing the same lazy smirk that showed he was plotting something. Remus passed so many afternoons like that, he began to feel he knew the other boy’s face as well as he knew his own, documenting every gentle curve of his features, every bruise or blemish. His face was round with youth and his knees knobbly and pale, but Remus still thought he was as pretty as a girl, maybe even prettier because of how boyish he still was. He bore a barely-healed gash on his cheek from when he’d fallen into the creek and bashed his head against a rock; his fingernails were bitten-down and dirty; his shoulders were wider than a girl’s; his grin had a sharp, hungry quality to it that Remus was unfamiliar with. It made all the air rush out of his lungs.
Remus nicked a wooden board from the back of the Weasleys' barn and the boy brought a bit of old rope; Together they built a small swing and took turns soaring through the air. Remus felt as though he could see all the way over the tops of the trees, maybe even all the way back home. He imagined the boy there, at their duck pond, in Longbourn’s breakfast parlour, lounging by Remus’s bedroom window and smiling slyly out at the grounds like he belonged there. Remus wondered if he did. Remus was only ten, not yet burdened with the concepts of eternity or any time much further than to-morrow, but the thought made him feel so light and airy it was as if he really was flying. The boy would tease him for his collection of books and easily make himself comfortable; Mary would take a liking to him immediately and Lily would soon come around. They’d sneak into the backyard after curfew and name all the stars overhead, any name they wanted, and then huddle together against the cold and Remus would never, ever feel lonely again. He would learn what the boy was like outside of the forest, in classes and at home and in the market and the theatre when they could afford it, and Remus would patch all his bruises and he’d learn to be less clumsy before long. It was almost too good to think about. The idea made Remus feel dizzy.
As dearly as he held this dream, nothing perfect could last forever. Remus’s stay in Scotland came to a close, and he was to return home to his family shortly. An existence outside of the forest had almost grown impossible to reconcile with the hazy blur of summer. He ventured through the trees a final time the morning he was due to leave and found the boy soon enough, hanging upside-down from the sturdy limb of an oak tree. He was grinning at Remus like he always was, but Remus felt too melancholy to reciprocate.
“Excellent!” the boy cried, still hanging with his knees hooked over the branch. “You’re finally here! I came across the most intriguing boulder this morning, somewhere in that direction, and I thought we could—”
He fell silent when he caught the look on Remus’s face, reaching out a bony finger to poke him in the cheek.
“Merlin, you look as though someone’s kicked it. What’s the matter?”
Remus nervously fidgeted with the sleeve of his jumper, refusing to make eye contact. “The thing is… I’m going home. I’m only here on holiday, and—”
The boy came crashing to the ground, skinning his knees badly on the rough soil beneath him. He hardly seemed to notice the injury at all, getting to his feet immediately and gazing at Remus with wide, despairing eyes.
“You’re going? Already?” he asked, crestfallen. Remus glanced around uncomfortably.
“’Fraid so.”
“Do you have to?” the boy continued desperately. “I mean, are you ever coming back? I’m only on holiday too, but maybe next summer—”
Remus shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Deep down, he knew the chances of him ever returning were slim, but it seemed too cruel to say it now.
In the spur of the moment, Remus reached out and grabbed the other boy’s hands, bringing his attention back to Remus from where it had drifted sorrowfully to his feet. He didn’t even look very surprised. Remus thought he understood.
“Just—” Remus sniffed a little, tears suddenly prickling into his eyes. He didn’t have very many friends back home. Actually, besides Mary, Lily, and possibly Alice from next door, he had none.
“Just don’t forget me, okay?” he said. “Promise you’ll remember.”
The other boy also looked close to tears, but he nodded firmly. “I won’t forget,” he declared. “I promise.”
And then, quick as lightning, the boy leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks. Just a fleeting press of lips, as innocent as could be, over before Remus even knew what was happening. As he was pulling away, making to leave, a swell of anxiety swept over Remus and he quickly clasped the back of the other boy’s neck with clumsy fingers. He held him there for just a few more seconds, foreheads pressed together, eyes burning fiercely into one another’s, expressions set, and then he let him go.
The other boy rubbed roughly at an eye with his whole hand, determined to not let the tears fall. Remus smiled at him, heart swelling with an impossible rush of fondness. “Goodbye, Mystery Boy from the Woods,” he said. “I hope to see you again one day.”
And then he left. The boy just stood there, watching him, until Remus was out of sight.
—
For the first year or so, Remus looked for him everywhere. Around every street corner, every new arrival to the village, every neighbour’s distant relative. He tried to remember every minute detail about the other boy: the way the afternoon sunshine glanced off his hair, the shape of his smile, the games they played. He never told anyone about him, preferring to leave it all in that magical summer, but that meant the memories grew hazier and hazier as time went on, as memories are so prone to do. As much as he promised, as much as he longed to remember, the days spent in that forest slipped through his fingers, and it wasn’t long until he hardly remembered anything about it at all. Maybe it was too good to be true. Maybe it never happened, just a childhood fancy of a playmate during those long, lonely days. Entirely imaginary. Yes, that must be it.
Unbeknownst to Remus, a few miles away in an estate called Pemberley sat another boy, one engaged in nearly identical thoughts as his own. The boy he met in the woods that day, the one with the rough hands and all the freckles and the most brilliant ideas for make-believe and the softest threadbare jumpers, the one who made him feel so happy and light it was like he was floating on air… He must’ve been dreaming. No such boy could exist.
They must leave such childish ideas behind them. They were too old for playing in the woods now. That boy they knew that blissful summer was no less fiction than the dragons Sirius wrestled or the kingdoms Remus ruled. They must be proper boys now. And proper boys must never let themselves get carried away like that.