Chapter Text
The weather was fairly temperamental as only Wales could be, but the changeable skies hadn't stopped the crowds from bringing colour to the occasion in their own way. Through the on and off drizzle, Pride festival goers darted between decorated pergolas and stands, hands shielding smiling faces and footsteps muffled by the damp grass and soil underfoot.
Even through the drizzle the earth smelled warm and the grass was fragrant, the mild June weather made the day impossible to feel appropriately dressed but still filled the air with the sound of birds and insects in the park the event was taking place. Earlier in the day as they had set up there had been honest to god mist over the meadow around them and the trees had been heavy with dew but when he looked out the flap of the pergola into the crowds beyond at roughly mid morning, Remus could already spot a hint of blue sky peeking between the watery grey clouds. It promised that soon the sun would win and clear out the rain in time for a gloriously sunny afternoon - just in time for the festivities of the evening.
As far as Remus could see there were people wandering around the event covered in the full spectrum of colours and clothing; from relatively conventional jeans, shorts and skirts with tee-shirts to intricate cosplays, complete with worked leather and tunics, and full furry suits with tails and animal ears as far as the eye could see. There were people about in mesh and leather and all types of interpretations of kink gear appropriate for public daytime wear. There were fashion forward glamazons and young people who looked like they'd gone back in time to the 80s for their pleated trousers and corduroy and some were going for a quiet sort of statement with "normal" clothing with the addition of enamel pronoun pins or earrings. Others had dispensed entirely with anything resembling subtlety and had every colour under the sun in their hair, on their skin, and woven into their jeans and dresses - some simply tying the appropriate flag around their shoulders, cape style, the fabric flittering in the breeze behind them like a proclamation of their pride.
Pride events were always a diverse affair, and that's why Remus loved them. There had never been a pride event he hadn't learned something new at, and he always left them with the most profound sense of well being - one that he otherwise never had in exceptionally crowded public spaces. Solidarity and community could do that for a person; even an old, introverted queer like Remus.
When he was at a Pride event, he didn't have to worry that he was making a spectacle or drawing unwanted attention. At events like today in particular, he didn't even feel awkward for being single. Every year the work Christmas party invitation may have been distributed with an underlying sense of discomfort in the years since his divorce, but at Pride there was no real sense of timeline or arrested development. It didn't matter that Remus's 45th birthday had precipitated a mental breakdown and the subsequent end to his marriage as he finally embraced himself for who he was; at Pride he was one of many with a similar story. Here, you came as you were and met people where they were at in return. He didn't have to spend ages explaining himself to confused acquaintances that treated him as an oddity; he was just a fellow traveller, muddling along and doing his best. And there was room for every feeling he'd ever had here. The guilt, the shame, the panic, the sadness and the fear were as welcome as the joy, the expression, and the love that was the whole experience of being a person. One who just so happened to be queer.
Pride events were a recent addition to Remus's yearly calender; only really featuring in the last five years or so, but ever since his first attendance, he'd known this was an environment he could find a place for himself. Through events like these, he'd found a new kind of support network, reconnected with old friends and made several new ones to boot. At 55, he now had more friends than he'd had in his whole adult life; and it was all down to the community he was able to foster through Pride and queer spaces in general.
It was in that spirit that Remus had joined the booth a few years back. Being a teacher meant he was already aware of the impact a trusted elder could have on a young person, and he was eager to give back. That brought him to today, at that year's village pride event. Volunteering to lend his experience to the queer and questioning youth of the day and put his well meaning and sometimes misplaced need to help and guide into good practice and continue to help make the world a better place in the process.
The Elder Queer's Give Advice Booth he volunteered for was hardly a new concept, but it was the first year that Remus was in charge of it. Remus (He/him, gay) and a small assortment of his friends and collegues; Marlene (She/them, lesbian) Kingsley (He/Him Gay & Demi), Mary (She/They, Ace) and Peter (He/they, Intersex and Pan) had set up the booth with some comfy beanbags and second hand couches, some coffee tables with flasks of tea and coffee and vegan and gluten free biscuits courtesy of Marlene's partner Dorcas (She/ Her, Bisexual). It was all in an effort to encourage young queers to gather and get comfy enough to ask the sort of questions they skirted around at home or school. The idea was to provide a trusted adult to those without a reliable safe place or just the opportunity to talk where no-one would judge them - regardless of the topic. The booth was designed to be the ultimate safe place; as much as a pergola in an open air festival crawling with people could be, anyway.
And there in the booth, Remus looked around proudly, thrilled with what they'd put together for that year. Beyond the little name tags he'd made for all the volunteers, complete with orientation and pronouns, they had baskets of pamphlets and internal and external condoms at every station, and little goodie bags to give away with more biscuits, some branded stationary and stickers, hygiene and menstrual products and yup - more condoms, and the guests had begun to filter through almost as soon as the event opened.
Remus had already had couple of kids through, shyly asking for condoms and starting them off with some of their greatest hits played year after year.
"I think I'm gay… how did you know?"
"I'm scared my friends will hate me when I come out…"
"I'm in love with my best friend, what do I do?"
As well as a few that made Remus's heart squeeze, no matter how often he heard them…
"My church says that gay people need to fast and pray it away, but if God made me in his image, then aren't I fearfully and wonderfully made this way?"
"My mother won't talk to me since she caught me and my girlfriend kissing in my room…"
"Am I broken if I don't feel butterflies for anyone?"
All that and more and there was still half the day to go.
All of them volunteering were experienced in their own ways; each uniquely equipped to handle different issues. Mary was a deacon at the local chapel who usually took the religious crises, Kingsley was ex police and a current social worker that could help people deal with dangerous social scenarios at home or at school, and Peter was an intersex advocate, campaigning for the rights of gender diverse people in their activism. He usually took the questions pertaining to anxiety toward political backsliding and how to best get involved as a baby activist. Marlene and Remus were more broadly experienced with teens and kids, both being parents, and both being teachers.
"Check it out," Marlene said to his side during a quiet moment. She handed him a mug of tea which he took gratefully as she gestured out into the cleared centre of the half circle of tents; a sort of picnic space for the food tents directly across from them. His eyes scanned over the clusters and quickly found what Marlene was pointing to. Two teens or near enough lying side by side on a blanket in the drizzle, pointing up at the sky as if pointing out shapes in the leaking clouds.
"Cute," he said with a smile, noting the way their hands were linked between them as they talked and gestured.
"Young love," she sighed. "Feeling nostalgic yet?"
He shrugged, a little self conscious. "My PDA's were a bit more private when I was their age," he admitted. They nodded in understanding.
"Dorcas and I were comparing notes the other day. Stories we used to tell ourselves, you know?"
"Stories?" he asked, turning slightly toward her in interest.
"Yeah - you know; all the excuses we made for ourselves? Justifying our feelings for someone or the lack there-of?"
"I'm afraid I don't follow," he laughed. Marlene rolled their eyes fondly.
"The guy who came out at 45 didn't tell himself a few fibs to get through a 15 year marriage with a woman?"
He snorted hard at that and had to concede the point with a chuckle. "I guess there was a lot of hoping it would all start to feel "normal" at some point? Like if I kept going through the motions I'd feel the way I was supposed to for women... eventually."
Marlene patted his shoulder in amused sympathy. "I used to grieve the end of friendships like they were divorces," she shared, "When I was 13 I gave my best girl friend one of those "yes/no" letters asking if I was her best friend ever and went into a depression when she said no."
He gave them a look from the corner of his eye, "Oof, that's some lesbian intensity for you…"
"Watch it, you old queen," she teased good naturedly, "I was around for that fling you had when things ended with Tonks…"
He snorted, but said nothing to that. It was true that his first relationship out of the closet had been messy, intense and undefined; toxic in the way that most people got out the way when they were teens but he'd had to unpack in his mid forties. It had been ugly and they'd both lost a few friends over it. Thankfully not Marlene, though. She'd been on his side even back when he was making a dick of himself.
"Dorcas didn't have anything to add other than that she just… never had boyfriends because she kept chickening out when things started to get real," Marlene gave after a moment.
"Oh yes, the oh shit, I have to follow through of it all?" Remus gave knowingly.
"Something like that," they said with a chuckle. They were quiet for a moment and watched a couple with a trans flag draped over both their shoulders walking by, arms around each others' waists.
"Did Teddy decide to come today in the end?" he heard Marlene query.
She'd located a biscuit tin and was offering him one. He took a chocolate digestive and bit into it before answering.
"He said he had a lot to do for uni, but he might pop in with his mum later, yeah."
She smiled and patted him on the shoulder again before reaching past him to grab the water jug to fill their bottle. Marlene and their beverages.
"He still seeing the French girl?"
"Victoire?" Remus asked. She nodded with a knowing look. "Honestly, I think he spends more time in her dorm than he does his own…"
Marlene snorted hard and they exchanged a wry smile, each remembering their own youths and the time they'd shared - platonically- in post grad. By then they'd both outgrown the undergrad crazies, of course, but they each watched the underclass men and women they taught tear it up and make truly questionable choices from their lofty but under paid and over caffeinated positions in the grad room. And of course, they had both reminisced about their own roaring late teens and early 20's plenty. Remus may have been a queer late bloomer, but he'd by no means been a monk before that.
He knew it wasn't his business to feel one way or the other about Teddy's choice of companion beyond his health and safety (physically and emotionally), but he was secretly rooting for his and Victoire's connection to go the distance. He'd never seen Teddy so happy or so validated or treasured outside their family unit. He was proud as anything that Teddy was living his life to the fullest; doing decently at uni and having fun doing it. He knew, though, how quickly those sorts of connections could come under fire when faced with the real world. He knew the drip drip drip of time and how it eroded even the strongest of attachments. Not for everyone, obviously, and he hoped Teddy would number among those lucky individuals, but many others would not bring their youthful loves into the realities of true adulthood and grown up responsibilities. Life had a way of unstitching those attachments over time.
That had certainly been how it happened for Remus.
Long ago; before the disaster fling and long before he'd known the reason for his sense of discomfort and outside-ness in so many of the spaces he occupied - back in the 90s when it had been way harder to know anything for sure, frankly, Remus had had his own lightning flash of love. It had been unrefined and confusing and blinding and disorienting, and at the time, he'd called it friendship - much like Marlene - but decades later he had a better idea of what it really was. The problem was he had no vocabulary for it back then. All he'd known was his heart rending out of devotion and thought it simple loyalty. And when it had fizzled out; school ending and uni starting and lives diverging for good, it had felt like a gradual erosion. Like the trickling of time was carving out a space in his heart for something he knew he'd never have again, purely because it had been so new. Other loves would come, but that void was the standard they were measured against. It was really no wonder that no one had ever truly come close.
Sometimes Remus felt like his heart was littered with little cemeteries for lost joys and loves over his life time. He liked to wonder down the pathways sometimes when he had a spare moment, each bend in the road overgrown with daffodils and crocus flowers with every grave marking a part of himself he'd said goodbye to over the years. In the last decade or so, he'd made an effort to dig up the ghosts of the things he'd thought long dead, confronting the things he'd discarded to see if they were really gone, and to his surprise, he'd come away with more than one resurrection. Other headstones still stood, undisturbed and moss ridden - lonely along that little road with only Remus's fingers left to trail over them as a reminder they had ever been. It was there that Remus had buried that first love.
Even now, the nostalgia for those early years was a heavy, pleasantly fragranced fog around the memories of the people he credited with some of the best times of his early life. The memories were softened with time, but still made his heart ache and his belly flip to remember the way it had been. He usually tried to be as in the moment as a romantic old coot could be, but being at Pride and seeing all the young lovers and families and friends out in the world, loving despite all the forces stood against them made that nostalgia, and the reality of the years between then and now take on a sort of aching quality.
He'd lived a life since those days, but in many ways he was still the same boy. Still too introverted for his own good. Still slouching. Still yearning for a connection with a boy he had no way of articulating his feelings for. There was regret there. But also joy.
And that was what Pride was for Remus. A memory. A Promise. If not for himself then for the generations to come. He'd made peace with the duality of life; that in every joy there was sadness at its inevitable loss and in every loss the remembered happiness of love in the moment. His happily ever after floated around in the ocean of time; bound together with his son and his career and the memories he held most dear.
And he got to be there to witness the young love blooming around him. There was no greater joy than getting to see the celebration of the day in all its forms. The families and friend groups and couples and even the individuals wondering the event by themselves.
He looked to his side to see Marlene similarly people watching. He wondered if they were thinking about her and Dorcas's wedding. They'd eloped together not long after meeting. Remus had been witness for Marlene and Dorcas had Pete. That was how they had all become friends. Remus and Marlene had studied together, Dorcas had brought Peter into the circle when she'd arrived, and Pete had brought Kingsley and Mary.
Remus was broken from his revery when his eye caught on Marlene waving at someone approaching the booth. He turned to look in that direction at her signal and stood up straighter.
The young man couldn't have been older than 20 or 21. Only a few years older than Teddy. He was tall and slender in a way that suggested he did some form of athletics, but what really struck Remus was his hair.
His hair was black and messy; like at one point there had been a fight to the death with a comb and the comb had conceded in humiliation. It was the sort of hair that sent mums and school principles alike into an absolute tailspin. Totally un-manageable. Remus had always been partial to such hair as a teacher because he'd once known someone who suffered many a detention and passive-aggressive note home to complain of such sentient locks. He felt a lump forming in his throat that took a moment to explain, and that was before he'd even made eye contact with the youngster. That was when he realised.
All at once it was like someone had pressed rewind on his field of vision. One moment he was in the present day, surrounded by people with their faces buried in their smart phones, and the next he was 15, looking into the eyes of someone he'd last seen almost 30 years ago.
The young man's eyes were the sharp apple green that spoke of long, late summer days in Remus's youth spent reading and gossiping and studying. Sweet like childhood and friendship. Sharp like intuition and instinct. And they could only have been inherited from one source. After a moment of gawping and trying to connect the dots, it came to him.
The lad could only be the child of James Potter and Lily Evans - two people that Remus hadn't thought he'd ever see again. The recognition was a punch in the gut and tug on his heart. Nostalgia and longing and the length of years since he'd seen them; so long that he'd missed the apparent fruit of their union, rushed through him like a current that threatened to bowl him over.
He realised he was staring when the young man cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Uhm… is now a good time?" He asked sheepishly, looking from Marlene to Remus like he might make a run for it. Remus schooled his expression immediately, squared his shoulders and put on what he hoped was a neutrally pleasant expression.
"Of course," he hurried to say, "Please, come and sit!"
He caught Marlene's curious look as he led the young man to a set of mismatched arm chairs and tried to convey that he really wasn't having a stroke, before sitting himself.
"You want a cuppa?" he asked the young man before getting too settled. The youngster declined politely and Remus nodded, leaning back in what he hoped looked like a relaxed posture.
"So, how can we help?" he asked, going for at ease elder in his vibe rather than that of a-distant-friend-of-your-father-having-an-active-existential-crisis. The man's expression went from curiously looking around them to immediately self conscious at the question.
"Well," he started taking a deep breath. "You guys give advice here? For anyone?"
"Of course," Remus gave reassuringly, "We don't judge. No matter what you want to talk about we're here to listen or give advice - we're a safe place, I promise."
The young man nodded before blurting; "I'm bisexual."
Remus kept his expression carefully neutral. "Well, hi bisexual, my name is Remus!"
It did the trick. The young man groaned and dissolved into sniggers, letting his face drop into his hands as he laughed and Remus privately congratulated himself on breaking the ice.
"Seriously, though," Remus continued with a smile, "thank you for telling me, you don't have tell me your name and pronouns if you you'd prefer not to, but we try to normalise that kind of introduction here, so I'll let you know I go by he/him." They were on his name tag but he made a habit of articulating them anyway in case any of their visitors wanted to clarify theirs.
The young man looked up, green eyes dancing with mirth.
"No, no, it's only fair," he conceded, "My name is Harry. He/him as well."
Harry Potter, Remus supplied internally, and then kicked himself for not defaulting to Evans-Potter.
"It's great to meet you Harry," Remus gave with an amused smile, extending his hand for him to shake. "Pardon the dad-joke, it helps put people at ease usually…"
"No! You're so okay," Harry said with a fond sort of laugh as he shook, "it's the kind of joke my dad or my uncle would make. It definitely helped me loosen up."
He began to talk, and Remus was transported to a very different time in his life. He saw in his mind's eye an earlier version of the lad - Harry - before him. Maybe a little stockier and with eyes as brown as a doe's; James Potter had once been the closest thing to a brother Remus had ever had. They'd grown up together; them and… And Sirius. Years of childhood hijinx and school-yard dramas and pranks flittered through Remus's mind's eye as if someone had pressed play on a tape he didn't know he'd loaded until then. In Harry he saw the same confidence of James as well as the shrewd and perceptive eyes of Lily. And there was even something of Sirius in the way he crossed his leg over his knee as he spoke dramatically with his hands - was Sirius still in the Potters' lives? The idea made him dizzy.
And all the while Harry talked - much less restrained now and Remus was so busy trying to remember if either James or Lily had a brother that he almost missed the beginning of Harry's reason for attending the booth.
"-It's not that I think they'll be unsupportive - they know I'm queer-"
Remus zoned in just like that, listening carefully.
"-It's just that, it feels a bit embarrassing to ask your uncle to erm… help you with some of the finer points of intimacy with another bloke if you haven't done it before, you know? Like I have the internet, but I have… delicate questions and I don't want him to tease me…"
Remus nodded automatically, rolling his lip into his mouth thoughtfully. He had some follow up questions to ask but before he did, he decided it would only be fair to even the playing field between them a little.
"Before I ask you some follow up questions - which we can certainly help with, by the way - "but… you don't be any chance… know James Potter?"
The young man looked visibly taken aback at the question. "Er…" he started, looking suddenly suspicious, "Yes… he's my father."
Remus laughed in disbelief. Christ. James Potter a father. He'd known of course, with the product of said fatherhood before him, but now he knew and it was both marvellous and awkward to realise he knew a lot of this boy's family history without ever having spoken to him before that day.
"I'm so sorry to ask," Remus said when he pulled himself together, "but I figured it's only fair you should know, I went to school with your dad! Is he here?"
"He isn't," Harry admitted with a thoughtful expression, "he's pawned me off to my uncle for the day so he can take my mum out."
"Your mum?" Remus asked, delighted, "Not-"
"Lily…" Harry gave with a fond eye roll that was exactly Lily, "Yes, I know I have her eyes…"
"You do!" he laughed, pressing his hands over his mouth as he leaned forward on his knees. Utterly flustered and overwhelmed. He had a moment of wonder at the knowledge that Lily and James had gone the distance after all. It gave him absurd sort of hope; to know it was possible. After a second he pulled himself together, ready to be a professional again.
"Look," he said finally, "the reason I asked is because I wanted to make sure you knew I knew your parents back in the day before you talk to me - I won't discuss anything you say with them, but it's only fair we're on the same wave length. I wanted you to have the opportunity to talk to someone totally neutral."
"I appreciate that," Harry said wryly, though he didn't seem upset, "especially since the whole reason I'm here is to avoid awkward conversations with well meaning but nosey friends of my parents to begin with," he said before letting something catch his eye on the outside of the booth, "-speaking of nosey…." He waved with fond resignation and Remus followed the direction he was looking…
Only to be rendered speechless again. Double punch.
The man making his way to Harry was slightly shorter than Harry and slight but sturdy looking in a pair of ripped jeans, worn Doc Martens, and a T-shirt that said "Free dad hugs". Remus almost lost his ability to breathe, transported back in time for the second time that day.
He was exactly the way Remus might have imagined him all these years later, and he definitely had. 28 years had treated him well. Remarkably well preserved with the same thick black hair, albeit streaked with grey now. He had dark stubble on his cheeks and nose piercings and Remus could not take his eyes off him, heart thumping in some combination of shock and something that went far further back than 30 years.
Sirius Black.