i remembering thinking i had you

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/29868858.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: Major Character Death
Fandom: All the Young Dudes - Fandom
Relationship: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Remus Lupin/Grant Chapman
Character: Grant Chapman, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black
Additional Tags: All The Young Dudes Compliant, august by taylor swift is a grant
chapman anthem
Stats: Published: 2021-03-05 Words: 1438

i remembering thinking i had you

by crappyfriday

Summary

It's been twenty-five years and Grant isn't expecting a Taylor Swift song to feel so damn
relevant to the toughest years of his life.

Notes

honestly? sorry about this, but i was like. Grant is definitely alive to hear this song and then
ran with it. i've only read atyd once because it truly is all that i can handle, so little things
might be incorrect sorry.

based off all the young dudes by mskingbean89 super meta to be writing a fanfic about a an
oc listening to a taylor swift song about a fanfic written by taylor...meta

See the end of the work for more notes

August 3rd 2020

Grant can go days without thinking about Remus - weeks even. It’s been twenty-five years since he
saw Remus last. In that little flat they called home for all those years, but he never felt like more
than a passing figure. None of Sirius’s belongings were out, he knew they were in the boxes in that
garage, along with the motorbike that Remus refused to go to. Yet, he felt Sirius everywhere. It felt
like a haunting in there, and Grant resigned himself to knowing that Sirius was Remus’s great love
and no one could get over a betrayal like that. Hindsight, he supposes, when they found out Sirius’s
innocence.

It’s been twenty-five years and he allows himself some time to crawl under his bed to retrieve a
box that he goes long periods without thinking about. He locks the door so none of the kids can
barge it and tunes the radio to a pop station, hoping that it might balance the somber mood. Grant
doesn’t know when Remus died, just when the letters stopped coming in 1998. The last one he has
from Remus is no longer than a few lines to tell him about the birth of his son. To think that
Remus’s son has had to live a life without Remus in it and the absolute devastation of it all. At
least, he thinks, his son has a mother.

He sets the last letter down and begins to thumb through the rest. He traces his fingers over
Remus’s slanted cursive and squeezes his eyes shut. Oh, Remus, he thinks, why did it have to end
like this? Why did you have to go?

Even though the years have passed and Grant has truly made a life for himself that he loves that he
wouldn’t give up for anything, sometimes when it gets dark and he sees the moon, he thinks,
maybe he would trade it for a few more years with Remus. The brightest light in his youth. The
first person to genuinely care about him. He thinks about Remus finding him in that basement in
summer ‘77, Sirius in tow. To be loved by Remus, to be cared for. Even if for most of the years
they were together, Grant did most of the caring, he couldn’t forget Remus believing in the best of
him.

He stares at the polaroid of himself and Remus taken at a party or wherever. Gods, they were so
young. Children. It’s hard to believe that the Remus in this photo is no longer with him. Grant
couldn’t keep too in touch. They shared letters, back and forth correspondence, but never face to
face. Not after Sirius’s return. It was too painful. Looking back on it, he wishes he had seen Remus
again. When he was happy. When the effect of Sirius’s return was felt fully. When he could see
Remus in love again. But, he supposes, in the end, that happiness was not felt long.

He holds the letter from 1996. The one that sent him into a full body sob that lasted hours. Days
went by when he first received it, where he would stare wistfully ahead, never focusing on
anything much.

Sirius no longer with us. Gone.

Just like that. It was never the same after that. Remus was deep into a war that would never make
much sense to Grant, but he saw the inexplicable attacks and he knew. It was hard, he remembers,
to be so connected to a phenomenon but so disconnected. No one to talk to. No one to explain the
tightness in his chest to. No one to explain why the full moon makes him so forlorn. Is this how
Remus felt, he asks, to have been in the human world with no one to talk to about being a
werewolf? No one to commiserate with? Every letter he received from Remus didn't feel like it was
just to talk to Grant, but rather just to let him know that Remus was still alive.

The song on the radio changes. Grant has barely paid much attention to the changing songs. It’s a
Taylor Swift song, he recognizes, but no more than that. The girls are big fans, he remembers
taking them to a concert when she toured here those years ago. No touring now. He doesn’t expect
a Taylor Swift song to remind him so much of his time with Remus. With just some words and a
melody, he’s back in summer 1975 asking Remus to call him, but he receives the letters instead. At
first, he thought it was down to Remus attending a weird, posh school. Now he knows how much
better isolation works when forcing children to grow up faster than they ought to.

But I can see us lost in the memory

August slipped away into a moment in time
'Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August slipped away like a bottle of wine
'Cause you were never mine
 He grips the stacks of parchment he’s holding so hard they crinkle. Grant worries the bent lines
with his fingers, urging them to flatten. He misses Remus so dearly, so fully. He knows he wouldn't
admit to giving up his life as it is now, to get more with Remus. But the miserable part of Grant
wonders how much Remus would have traded his time with Grant for time with Sirius. After the
Christening, gods, what he said out loud. What he verbalized after years of living in what felt like
Sirius’s shadow.

“You’re still acting like I don’t matter as much as he did.”

And Remus did deny it. He denied it until he was blue in the face. But secretly they both knew it to
be true. Grant didn’t go to the Christening because of the whole religious building, but he also
didn’t go because Mary knew Remus and Sirius. She knew them together. By that point, they were
together eight years and they loved each other very much. But it was different, he thinks, because
he wasn’t in their world. And in that period, Remus wanted nothing to do with that world. And so
they stayed away and Grant met none of Remus’s friends who remained alive.

Maybe it was easier that way. For who, Grant hasn’t the faintest idea.

He flips through the last remaining photographs. One is a wizard photo of Sirius and Remus just
after Sirius’s return. Sirius was still a bit ragged, but he was still the handsome fellow that Grant
remembered from before. And Remus. Upon Sirius’s return, things were tough and there was a lot
of tension. But something in Remus transformed when Sirius came back. Grant saw the face of the
boy he fell in love with who was already in love with someone else. It was hard for Grant to stay
after that. They needed time and Grant needed to leave. He just wished it lasted longer than a few
years. Didn’t Remus deserve that? After all that, didn’t he deserve a life with Sirius? After all that
had been stolen from them? Their childhoods, their friends, and their family. All gone, and in the
end, they only had a year together, before Remus was, once again, left.

Grant doesn’t understand how a war he never experienced, never saw, could have taken so much.
How could he understand and feel so affected, but be so isolated from it? If anything, it’s a
testament to the person Remus was. A young boy who really thought himself nothing, who was
able to touch so many lives for the better. It all ended in tragedy, he thinks, but knowing Remus
was everything. Grant just hopes that Remus didn’t die thinking he didn’t matter. Without Sirius,
he’s not sure how confident he is in that thought. He hopes that there are people still living today,
that still remember Remus. Grant wishes there was a grave he could visit. Somewhere he could sit
with Remus. The land where the boys home used to be is now a co-working space. It’s not the
same. When it feels like too much, Grant gathers all the letters and photographs into the box and
shoves it back under the bed.

For the hope of it all, he muses after the song finishes. What a letdown hope is sometimes. Remus
is still gone. It’s been twenty-five years, and Grant can go days or weeks without thinking of
Remus, but when he does, the hurt is still the same. The void that he can’t quite fill or explain.

End Notes

hope u liked it, sorry if it hurt lol

never thought i would write a hp fan fic i dont even like the original source material
 (obligatory fuck u to joanne) but atyd fucked me uppppp

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