this has pretty much become a remus appreciation blog

• 05 / The strength of Remus J. Lupin is an incalculable thing. There were times in the past when Sirius wondered at his silences, when James thought he might just be too quiet and too reserved a boy, when Peter could never understand his place with two of the rowdiest, wildest boys Gryffindor had to offer. There were times when it seemed he was made up of books and dust in the library and little fraying sweaters and clothes he didn't quite fit into, an uneven posture and the incline of his head as he worried at his right thumbnail. After they learned his secret, they began to translate these oddities into what they really meant, in Remus language, and discovered how strong his hands were: to know just how much to give, and just when to stop.
• "I'm very cold," the muffled Remus voice states, from the heap of Remus on the floor. "Can someone get me -- some clothes would be nice."
• 06 / Sirius careens down the hall in a jingling half-jog, filled to bursting with that peculiar overwhelming Christmas joy: some combination of cinnamon and pine-smells, and lights, and music with bells in, and the strains of choirs. He loves it. Sometimes he wakes up in October full of music thinking about it.
• One of them I went into and I swear it was the Moony Room, there were all these books in there and records and jumpers and things. / And what good is a room full of jumpers? It was all right for me since all I wanted was to sort of curl up and not be...I dunno, anyway it was all right for me but I can't think what most people would do with a room like that.
• 07 / Remus gives him an unreadable smile, quirky at the corners of his mouth, and thoroughly evil. Should Dumbledore ever retire as Headmaster of Hogwarts, Sirius thinks, they should consider Remus for the position. He certainly has that twitchy, unfathomable smile. And, of course, the evil.
• 08 / "You skipped two lines and messed up the rest and you totally destroyed that stanza," Evans says. "How can I go to Hogsmeade with a boy who destroys stanzas?"
• 11 / "I am no one's cabbage before ten in the morning," James says, trying to decipher through the haze of sleep which way is up and which way is escape.
• "I like to remember everything," Remus says, very quietly, so as not to wake him. "As it was. Because moments by themselves aren't enough; they're just -- they're like photographs. They move a little, they wave, but they aren't everything. You can look back on a moment and say 'In that moment I was happy' or, more often than not, 'In that moment I was uncomfortable' or 'In that moment I was sad' or 'In that moment we were all berks' but you can look back on everything and you think, 'That was good.' Because when all the moments come together, when all the songs meet up with one another, you get something whole and complete and wonderful, people you loved and people you hated and a fondness for them you may not be able to recapture but everything you remember about them being somehow more than they really were, because that's what remembering everything does. When I'm old, I think, I'll look back on this and I won't remember 'That time Sirius thought, if he lit a fart on fire, he could make a star come out of his arse' but I'll probably remember the stars themselves. I won't think 'He nearly choked me when he grabbed onto my tie' but I will think about the stupid doggy noises you're making, even right now, even while you're sleeping. It probably means remembering everything and not jumping from moment to moment like life is a game of leap-frog and should be taken experience to experience like lily-pads is foolish, because I won't remember you're often a berk and James is often a berk and Peter can be impressively inane and I am such a wet-blanket with such a large nose it's a miracle you don't hate me. I'll just remember that I talked for five minutes to a friend who was already sleeping and I was happy anyway." Remus pauses, sighs, and thumbs the side of Sirius' jaw, not noticing the path of his fingers. "You're not going to remember any of this. Which is probably good since this, my friend, is definitely babble. I hate Gillyweed. It makes you think everything is profound when, in reality, you're talking to yourself and no one else can translate the language that is You."