Empty Bunks (not for long)
The late afternoon sun is glinting off the Black Lake as Remus sighs and Lily runs through her checklist for what feels like the hundredth time. It’s unseasonably warm for late May and water is tempting Remus as he propels the canoe along with long broad strokes of his oar.
“You know you could, like paddle a bit?” Remus suggests. Lily’s fiery red hair is glowing in the summer sun and her oar is lying at her feet. Remus’s arms are beginning to ache. There aren’t many canoes at his off-season desk job.
“Sorry,” Lily murmurs, still neglecting her paddle. “I just really want things to be perfect. Camp can’t afford for things to go wrong.”
“I’m quite confident that if something goes wrong it will be their fault,” Remus muses.
“Remus, be nice.”
“No promises.” He flashes her a grin.
“I didn’t expect them either, but we have to give them a chance,” Lily sighs. “We need the help.”
Remus groans, “I know, it just sucks.” He'd spent the last few days pondering over the new staff members who are set to arrive shortly. All Remus knows is that they come from very rich, very European families. The kind of families that send their children overseas to cultivate their worldview, or some bullshit like that. Remus doesn’t have much faith that they’ll pull their weight at camp.
“If only things didn’t change, y’know. I mean I just can’t believe that Snape- that he did that to us,” Lily swats at a bug as she talks, a frown set on her face.
“I can,” Remus laughs sourly. Lily shrugs, but returns to her fretting about bunk assignments and care packages. Remus listens and it occurs to him that it's a turning point in Camp Illvernmorny’s history. After almost fifty years of family and friends faithfully staffing, and attending the camp, the actions of a certain greasy-haired bastard ruined everything in just a few weeks. If this summer goes awry, who knows what the camp’s future will be?
In Remus’s mind, Illvermorny has always been a kind of sanctuary for those who felt out of place everywhere else. Snape had just been another one of the campers turned to staff. He’d always be disagreeable but when he was promoted to being the camp’s Recruitment director he burned bridges that couldn’t be repaired. He swiftly made the staff his own by making dangerous allegations about those he didn’t like. Most were false, but a few hit home. Remus lost more than a few good friends. He stays in touch with a few of them, but there’s one bridge he had to burn for himself. Camp leadership caught on too late and more than half the staff left before he was fired. The loss hit the camp hard. Not only were they stretched thin with the remaining staff, but ‘anonymous’ reviews from an ex-employee left a bitter taste in any prospective applicants’ mouths.
Despite his worries about this summer’s staff Remus can’t help but enjoy being back on the Black Lake. Last Summer had been chaotic and painful, and he was grateful for the calm of late spring. The sun had started its slow descent toward the water, basking everything in a golden glow. A loon calls quietly from the far shore and Remus takes a deep, appreciative breath. Soon camp will be loud, and chaotic. It will be wonderful, but still, he enjoys his last bits of calm before the storm.
A chime echoes out from the forest and across the lake, causing a flock of trumpeter swans to erupt out of the water in a squawking mess. The bell signals the pair to head back for dinner. Lily has worked out her plans for the time being and thankfully takes her oar back up as they paddle to shore.
It takes less than ten minutes later for the pair to dock the canoe and make their way to the dining hall. They enter the hall to find their co-workers patiently waiting. Pete can be heard whistling from the kitchen while Molly, Arthur, and Minnie are seated around one of the many round tables.
“I have a good feeling that things will work out,” Arthur is saying. Molly nods in agreement but Minnie just grimaces. Remus feels a familiar surge of appreciation as he takes his seat next to them. The three of them have been around camp for as long as Remus can remember.
Minerva McGonagall, more fondly known as ‘Minnie’ is the head of it all. She’s a stern-looking, older woman but she has a heart of gold. She was promoted to camp director the summer before Remus arrived, and he couldn’t imagine the place without her.
Arthur Weasley is the son of the former director. His whole life has been Illvermorny, and he was practically raised to be a camp counselor. His steady and optimistic personality keeps camp in one piece.
Molly Prewett is without a doubt the scariest woman Remus has ever met, but only when she’s angry. For the most part, she has a warm, maternal presence that draws all the campers to her, and allows her to take attentive care of the camp’s horses.
“Foods ready! Come and get it!” A call rings out from the kitchen. And then there’s Pete. The eager-to-please chef hired three summers ago, and the artist behind the best hamburgers known to man. They’re so good that Remus isn’t sure how he survived the winter without them.
Quiet conversations rumble across the table and echo across the dining hall as they dig into their meal. There’s an underlying sense of anticipation that Remus can feel coiling in his chest. In twelve hours their numbers will be doubled, and in a week they will all be outnumbered by campers. The dining hall that is so quiet now will be bubbling with activity and laughter before long. He gets a certain feeling that comes around at the start of every summer. He knows the people around him understand. It’s the shared understanding of every wonderful thing that has happened and will happen at this cozy little summer camp, he just hopes this summer will hold the same magic.
A few hours later Remus is talked into accompanying Molly on her nightly check at the barn. Country music blares from the truck that is affectionately called Lewis and crickets chirp loudly in the ditches along the old county road. Once the horses have been thoroughly fed, watered, and loved on, Remus and Molly find their way back to base camp and into the quaint, but cozy, staff house. To no one's surprise, Lily is pouring over her carefully crafted care packages while Arthur and Pete play a game of cards. Through the house’s large windows, a soft glow of light emanates from Minerva’s private cabin. Remus flops down onto the sagging brown couch which groans under his weight.
“Are Dorcas and Poppy coming tomorrow?” Lily asks, pulling herself out of her world of t-shirts, bug spray, and swimsuits.
“Yeah, I think they hope to be here before the new staff arrives,” Remus responds, he’s much more excited about their arrival than that of the newcomers.
“I wonder how much calamine and aloe Poppy will need to dole out by the end of tomorrow?” Arthur muses. He earns a laugh from everyone, but the bugs in Northern Minnesota are no joke.
The sun has fully set over the lake and Remus watches the reflection of the moon on the water as he climbs into his bunk. The bunk room is a shared space, just mere feet between one bunk and the next. Some might find this suffocating, but Remus feels more at home here than in his apartment.
Peter is snoring quietly already and Arthur is engrossed in a book on fly fishing. Molly and Lily’s conversation can just barely be heard through the thin wall that separates the men's and women's rooms. The bunk to his left is empty, just a thin cot covers the frame. He wonders about the person who will be filling it tomorrow and tries not to think about the person who once did.
Remus isn’t quite sure how Minerva has convinced these wealthy European twenty-somethings to come to the middle of nowhere Minnesota, and It was hard for Remus to articulate why they bothered him so much. Especially because he didn’t even know them yet, but maybe that's exactly why he was so nervous. Over the years Ilvernmory had become Remus’s escape from the harshness of his peers in his small Northern hometown. He had discovered early on that it wasn’t easy being gay in a conservative high school of 200 people. Coming to camp for the first time was a breath of fresh air. It was a safe space, a place where Remus was wholly himself. The camp was as dependable as the same campers and counselors returned summer after summer. The same people who had accepted him without a second thought. As Snape had burned bridge after bridge, Remus lost friends and role models he’d known forever. He’s not sure he can bear camp changing anymore.