I don't think he's dying
“It doesn’t make any sense!”
“I don’t disagree, Remus. Your obsession with a hot guy who died 200 years ago doesn’t make sense.”
“But he didn’t die. See look, there he is again. 1973.”
Remus was hunched over a table in the college library, pointing to the mess of photographs and articles sprawled across the table. He had begun his final project months ago, researching the impact of various rich English families. He knew that the topic was too broad and that he would need to narrow it down to one family eventually. Unfortunately, he had spiralled when he realised that he kept recognising the same face throughout the photographs he found as a part of his research.
“Okay, well they’re the same family like you said so maybe they just look the same?” Lily tried to reason.
“200 years of difference, Lils. These fools were known for their inbreeding but that shouldn’t happen. It’s the same face.”
“It can’t be. It’s not like the bloke just keeps coming back to life.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back to life. I don’t think he’s dying,” Remus explained.
“Remus, sweetie, I know that college is stressful, I do. But babes, people die. They have to. It’s like science, or something. No one stays alive for 200 years, except like vampires which we both know aren’t real,” Lily said. Remus stayed silent.
“We both know vampires aren’t real, right Remus?” she asked, leaning back to look at him.
“It’s just that,” “Oh my God” “His family has a history going back so long it predates the Black Death and normally I wouldn’t jump to vampirism but I swear to God there are mediaeval paintings of this guy's parents,” Remus spat out. The idea first popped into his head a whole week earlier and he had been mulling it over for days. Everytime he had managed to convince himself it was bullshit, he would find another piece of evidence. It wasn’t his fault that vampires made the most sense.
“Walk me through it,” Lily sighed. This is why she’s my best friend, Remus thought.
He told her. Showed her, more accurately. Started with the 1973 photograph showing Richard Sharples and his wife. It had been published in a magazine after his assassination. And right there, among the people in the background, was the face that had been mocking him for a week. The picture itself had caused Remus to lose sleep, but that face haunted him during the day. Those high cheekbones, his eyes seemed to be staring straight through Remus even from the background of a picture taken 50 years ago and his hair hadn’t changed since the 19th century at least. The next photo he showed was from the 1920s. On stage there was a woman in a flapper dress and in the table to her left sat the vampire. He was closer to the camera this time and it was clear he didn’t know his photo was being taken. He was smiling and laughing with the man sitting beside him. Undoubtedly, the same man. The next one was from the 1850s, a simple family portrait. Now it was simple, but then it was a symbol of wealth. In true Victorian fashion, three of the people in the photo had serious looks on their faces, but the vampire was grinning wildly at the camera. Remus could feel his joy at ruining the aristocratic look through the photo and almost 200 years of time.
“The rest are paintings but I still think it's the same guy. As far as I can tell he’s been alive since at least the 1700s,” Remus finished.
“They do look very similar,” Lily admitted.
“You can say they look the same, I don’t think I’m in a position to call someone crazy,” he said.
“Yes, okay, they look the same. Like very the same. I would say they were the same person if there wasn’t several decades between the photos. I’m assuming you did thorough research on all of these? This isn’t just some internet thing?”
“How dare you, Lily! I am a very serious history student! Of course I did thorough research before jumping to vampires. I sourced and sourced and sourced again and all of the originals show the same thing. So I jumped to vampires,” he explained.
“What are you going to do? You can’t do your final project by claiming vampires are real,” Lily asked.
“I’m going to do my final project on his family, obviously. And I’m gonna find out if he’s still around. Ask Professor Moody about it in a totally ‘I-don’t-believe-in-vampires’ type of way. And, you know, find him,” Remus told her.
“Remus Lupin, you are not going vampire hunting,” Lily said, sternly.
“I don’t want to go vampire hunting, Lily. I’m a terrible shot. I’m going to go vampire-discovering, if anything,” he responded.
“You are going to go vampire-being-eaten if you're not careful,” she said.
“That doesn’t even make sense, Lily. Doesn’t follow the pattern,” Remus told her.
“You. Believe. In. Vampires,” she responded. “What’s the name anyway? Your vampire crush?”
“I do not have a crush on the vampire. He’s far too old for me,” Remus joked. “Last names ‘Black’ but I only know that because of the portrait. There are more underground super-rich families. Very sneaky. There’s a whole group of like super secret rich people that go back for years and years but no one really knows about them. The most they ever got brought into the spotlight was when Edward the Eighth abdicated. I’ve been going down a rabbit hole of research. Most of the time this group of weird rich people are called ‘Pure Bloods’ and they are very secretive. Very secretive. Makes you think about what sort of blood sucking secrets they might have,” Remus rambled.
“You sound crazy.”
“I know.”
“But I think you’re onto something. Or on something. Either way, best of luck. Call me if you find anything interesting.”
~~*~~
Remus kept digging. He was a lot of things, but a quitter? Sometimes, but not about this. He handed in his final project for the term weeks ago titled ‘England’s Secret Royals: Pure Blood Families and Their Impact on Society’. Professor Moody said that the research was very well executed but that the timeline didn’t quite add up. He wanted Remus to do further research to try and get to the bottom of the whole thing. Remus’ professor was an odd man who never believed anything he couldn’t research himself. Most of his grading was based on your ability to correctly cite and evaluate your sources so luckily Remus didn’t lose any marks for his messed up timeline. His essay made it very clear that someone had lied somewhere.
And so he kept looking for sources and articles talking about the Pure Bloods.
“I’m getting a bit sick of looking at Nazi propaganda, to be honest,” he said to Lily, one day. “Like, I know what to expect when I type ‘pure bloods’ into my search bar several times a day, I just don’t wanna get put on a list somewhere.”
“I know what you mean. If Andrew Garfield ever goes missing, I’m going to be suspect number one,” she responded as they walked across the lawn.
“I still don’t have a name, you know,” he told her.
“No name for vampire guy? Still? It’s been months. People don’t just disappear from history.”
“Normal people don’t disappear, but I can’t really gain access to birth records for 1800 back to God knows when. Do you know how many ‘Black’s there are in this country?”
“A shit tonne?”
“Exactly.”
“What about for now?” she asked him.
“What?” he turned to look at her.
“Well, like, these people are rich, yeah? So they’d need a bank account to hord all their wealth. You need a Birth Cert to gain access to an account, even if it’s a family one. And I don’t think Barclays accepts birth certs from the 1800s. So they’d need new ones,” Lily explained.
“They probably just got them forged or something,” he said.
“Or maybe, they used their fuck-tonne of money to pay for the real deal. If they have as much power and money as we think,” she said, excitedly. “Honestly, Remus, sometimes you’re so focused on the past you don’t even think about the present.”
“Is that, like, inspirational?”
“Are you, like, inspired?”
“A little.”
“Then yes.”
“I don’t think we should look at birth records, though. I think we should look at death records. There’s a database.”
“I worry about you, Remus,” she said. He shrugged.
~~*~~
“I fear that we may have overlooked a few things, Lily,” Remus said.
“Oh, I’d say so,” she responded.
They were staring at the General Register Office website trying to figure out what to enter.
“We don’t actually know a whole lot, do we?” she asked him.
“No but I think we can narrow this down, you’re a computer science student so let’s computer science,” he said.
“You want me to hack this?” she raised an eyebrow. “This is a government website. I am not going to jail where the vampires will get me.”
“No, Jesus. Okay, so if we get everyone with the last name Black can you cut it down from that? Not hack just like, make the list smaller? Eliminate suspects?” he asked.
“Yeah, I can but I don’t know what we need to get rid of,” she told him.
“That’s fine, I’ll tell you that,” he waited for her to open up something on the computer.
“Okay, Remus, let’s look for some vampires.”
Together they narrowed down the list. Left people who died in the posher parts of the country. People who died of illnesses that primarily affected poorer communities were gone. Occupations helped narrow it down a lot. Gender alone got rid of half the group. All in all they were left with 240 names.
“Adam Black?”
“No.”
“Stephen Black?”
“Be real, Lily.”
“I don’t really know what we’re doing to be honest,” she asked.
“I’ve been staring at this man’s face for months. I think I’ll know his name when I hear it,” he said.
“All this work and we’re relying on you vibe checking a name?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Alex?”
“No.”
“Arthur Black?”
“No.”
“Sirius Black?”
Remus sat up in his seat.
“What did you say?”
“Sirius Black? I know it’s pretentious but I think that’s kind of the vibe, no?”
“When did he die?” Remus demanded as his eyes scanned the screen.
“Oh, emm, that’s weird. 1974. A year after that photo was published,” she said.
“What does it say about him, please, Lily?” Remus could feel it. This was the man that had stared him down night and day daring him to find him.
“It says ‘Sirius Black, aged 43,’ forty-three? He looked about 25.”
“I guess they want to keep these people alive as long as they can so they just say they’ve got a killer skincare routine. He probably does wear a shit tonne of sunscreen, in fairness,” Remus replied.
“Anyway ‘Sirius Black, aged 43, died of a sudden brain aneurysm on Thursday the fourth of May 1974. He will be missed by family and friends.’” she finished.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s all there is,” Lily said.
“Does it say who sent it in?”
“Yes actually. A friend of the deceased. James Potter.”
“Lily, thank you so much for all your help. It’s been great but can you do two more teeny tiny things please?” he asked.
“We’ve named the vampire Remus. I’m not stopping here. What do you need?”
“Could you check any other birth and death records for Sirius Black?”
“I can check for more in this database but it only goes to the mid-nineteenth century. Any further back and you have to look at parish records, and I don’t think vampires can go into churches,” she said, already typing on the computer.
“Lily Evans, I love you,” he told her earnestly, kissing the top of her head.
“I love you too, Remus,” she responded.
Lily found eight more Sirius Blacks. Every few decades a Sirius Black was born, two decades after the birth of one Sirius Black a different Sirius Black would die of sudden illness or injury. It seemed that a Sirius Black was created and the real Sirius Black would assume his identity around 20 years into his existence. Then the previous Sirius Black would die. There was always around a 10 year period where there was only one Sirius Black wandering around, until another would pop up.
“Now what do we do?” Lily asked him. “You’ve convinced me that vampires are real. Like up till now I was like ‘hahaha vampires’ but now I’m like ‘wait, vampires?’ We’ve dug up some real shit here, Remus.”
“Well, I want to find him,” Remus said. He was shocked, he couldn’t believe he had a name.
“You want to find this vampire?”
“I mean, he’s gorgeous, the man definitely has an Instagram.”
“So you do have a crush on the vampire?” Lily accused.
“Yes, okay, fine. I have a bit of a crush on the vampire. It’s purely aesthetics though. I’m not in love with Sirius Black.”
“Why don’t I believe you, Remus?"