[Fic] Long Memories

[shimotsuki]

Title: Long Memories
Author: shimotsuki
Word count: 2101
Rating: G
Summary: Once Remus finally braves the Hogwarts staffroom, the transition from student to teacher is easier than he expected.
Genre: (Mild) humour
Author's note: This is my grand_national prize fic for ladybracknell, who requested Hogwarts teachers, PoA year.

Comments

[lady_bracknell]

Oh wow, this is so wonderful!

I thought you pegged Remus just right, his slight disbelief that he's in this situation at all, and then the deeper undercurrent that he's over the moon to be in a place where people know exactly what and who he is, and accept him without question. I wonder how often he's had that - and these are people whose good opinion would matter to him, and I thought you conveyed that so well.

I really loved the idea of Remus testing his painful memories, too, seeing, really, how much he can take.

I thought you handeled the supoprting cast of teachers and student incredibly deftly, too. Ernie MacMillan using big words he doesn't know the meaning of, and the Weasley twins charming their own homework and it being a source of delight and amusement from their teachers just seemed so perfectly in character. And I loved Minerva's prank on Remus - the perfect way to make him feel at home, one suspects, and a lovely book end for the story at the begining about him sneaking in to lay the same trap for his unfortunate educators.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, so thank you very, very much for writing it for me :D.

[shimotsuki]

Oh, hooray, I'm really glad to hear that you liked it! And thanks for the comments -- you picked up on a bunch of things that I was going for with this.

Starting and ending with the firework prank was the original plotbunny, and then I thought of having the teachers gossip about various students. But I found I couldn't write about the beginning of Remus's PoA year without addresing the problem of him having to come to terms with his past. This is something I've wondered about for a long time: wouldn't it have been hard for Remus to go back to Hogwarts? I've decided on a backstory where his strategy for the past twelve years has been to try not to think about the Marauders, ever. But obviously he can't keep that up when he's back at the school, so he has to confront his memories. And he finally discovers, after years of avoiding this, that remembering the happy times is not so painful after all. (But he still can't bring himself to think about what happened when it all went wrong.)

I really enjoyed writing this story. Thanks for choosing me for your prize fic, and for giving me such a fun scenario to write.