Chapter Text
“Absolutely not,” Remus groaned into the phone balanced in between his ear and his shoulder, hands full of work binders and four coffees all nestled in a cardboard carrier.
“Yeah…. but like-” Barty begins and Remus breathes in and out long and heavy before answering, dryly.
“Yeah but like no. You cannot reply ‘nah fam’ in your interview tonight. Not now, not ever,” Remus hissed into the phone before hanging up on the ever-whining guy.
Does he even understand the backlash of that? , Remus cursed to himself, no, no of course he doesn’t. Remus paused in the street to adjust his load, placing his phone on his binders to rest.
Remus looked up at the sky and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was still doing this for. Oh yeah, he guessed it was the highlight of his life.
Remus Lupin groaned to himself as he checked an item off his mental list to prepare for the next night of the tour. They’d been nonstop forever, the next show was tomorrow.
Plus there was the album release that Remus had to figure out and schedule. The next album would come out three weeks from now, and despite all the fans thinking it was ready to go, Remus knew for a fact it wasn’t.
Remus would admit to himself that he both loved and hated his job, for many reasons. Remus managed the ever growing more popular rock band The Emeralds.
Consisting of Regulus “Reg” Black, Bartemius “Barty” Crouch Jr, and Evan “Ev” Rosier, Remus had his hands full. It was hard sometimes. (Cue a ‘that's what she said’ joke from resident office fan, Remus himself.)
Remus didn’t even know why he was working this job, well, other than the fact that Regulus had begged him to do so when they were just starting out. It also paid pretty well for a job in entertainment, and considering Remus dropped out of college on a whim, he was good with that.
Actually, many professional managers had approached the band and Remus had given the go-ahead but his boys didn’t want a real manager. They wanted Remus to manage them, and that made Remus just a little happy. But he would never ever admit that. Never.
Remus had been managing the three idiots for the last several years, and had learned many things, of which he could probably compose a book.
Some were more simple, and he’d figured them out near the beginning of his manager journey. For instance, depending on when you secured the hotel rooms, they could charge extra for insured privacy from paparazzi, so you had to book at the right time.
Other things Remus learned through years of working with the trio, from how to help with their specific panic attacks, to dealing with hookup scandals.
Remus had seen everything, from hell and back. And yet, no matter how stressful the situation, Remus almost never thought of quitting his job. Remus hated to admit it, but he loved those boys, they were his best friends.
groupchat: three musketeers & their hoe
11.24 am
evanswhore
gnag what if i skjp out on this inetervuiw
rosieyurrr
so fucking stupid bee u know remy is in this chat
moonzbizz
b, who gives u permiss to go out
evanswhore
uh
idk
u?????
regussy
yes, him, you stupid fucking bitch
evanswhore
DONY IU TRY ME RN KITEEWN
regussy
brb, throwing up
moonzbizz
if u do the interview like a good boy ill bring u chipotle
evanswhore
ill be good 4 u bb
i prommy🥵🥵🤤🤤🤤
csll me a gb agian🙏🙏
regussy
killing myself
rosieyurr
remy why u flirting w my bf
moonzbizz
if preying on his kinks means he’ll listen
ill pick my battles
regussy
i’m
i'm out
moonzbizz
go write smth
be useful reg
regussy
leave me alone :(
Remus had been selected for their manager in high school, when Regulus pestered him to no end about helping his new band.
Regulus and Remus had their own 4-person book club, with their dear best friends, Barty and Evan. The fab four, the school (literally just Barty himself) called them. Four guys who were relatively attractive, and three of them didn’t even know it. One of them did, and proceeded to date half the school, but that was Barty.
In one session of their library adventures, Regulus had brought up the idea. ‘I want to sing,’ he’d told Remus. Remus had chuckled and told Regulus to dream on. Regulus insisted he could, would, do it. He’d succeed, he’d make something of himself.
Remus hadn’t paid much attention when Regulus started talking about it. He’d frankly just wanted to read his book and sleep, so he had agreed to manage Regulus absentmindedly, not thinking much of it.
Remus forgot about it for months after, until Regulus told him that he’d actually created the band, and pleaded with Remus to help them get out there.
Remus was a year from graduating then, and while taking five advanced classes, he was incredibly burnt out, he decided he might as well help them. Gifted-kid burn out and all that jazz. Remus didn’t tell Regulus that in the beginning.
Initially, Remus had told him to buzz off, and that while he was Regulus’s friend, he was no manager. Eventually, the sixteen year old, well-versed in the art of puppy eyes and persuasion, convinced Remus enough to try and help.
Regulus dragged Remus to meet his new bandmates, Barty Crouch Jr. and Evan Rosier, Remus and Regulus’s best friends. They wanted to start a band, and they wanted him to help them.
“We’re the fab four!” Barty tried to convince Remus.
“I can and will strangle you if you ever call us that again,” Remus deadpanned.
Barty barked out a laugh and raised his soda can as if to salute to Remus’s comment. Evan and Regulus looked at him pleadingly. Remus just eyed the trio and rubbed his face in exasperation. Regulus begged Remus to give them and shot and Remus did, helping them book a coffee shop gig through a friend of his who worked there.
From that point, Remus found himself in charge of the newly formed ‘The Emeralds.’
Or as Remus called it, the most stupid of band names he’d ever heard. Probably not the stupidest. But he wasn’t a huge fan. At the least, it was better than ‘Disappointment Central’. Which, believe it or not, was indeed a suggested name. Remus had vetoed it immediately, and refused to even speak to Regulus until they (Barty) decided to scrap it.
And from then on, fame skyrocketed. Suddenly, the music they were writing was getting attention, coffee shops turned into concert halls, self-publishing turned into record labels, and Remus had a full-time job.
Remus dropped out of college to manage them, and much to all their parents’ fury, the boys refused to even apply to college. Musicians, they called themselves, as their parents threw fits and tried to throw money at the issue.
Regulus, Barty and Evan came from wealthy families. Regulus descended from a long line of inbred snobs, originally French, and Remus made fun of him for it all the time. He also made Regulus help him in his French courses, but the two practices were not mutually exclusive.
The youngest of two brothers, Regulus had been spoiled in his childhood. At least, he was until his older brother ran away and left the family in shambles. Regulus hadn’t fully lived with his parents since he was fourteen, he found that with his brother gone, the house was a living hell.
Regulus stayed with Remus a lot, crashing on his couch. Remus’ father was hardly home anyway, so he barely noticed an extra kid in the house. Remus took the place of Regulus’s brother in a way, not a replacement per se, but a stand-in. The older, best friend who made sure Regulus ate, even if Remus forgot to eat himself.
Barty and Evan were German and French respectively, and neither of them even spoke enough to get by in the countries. Both were only children, and yet their upbringings couldn’t have been more different.
Barty’s father, who he was named for, was a politician. The man’s only cares were so deeply rooted in politics that he hardly noticed when his wife died, leaving his kid all alone.
Barty grew up lonely, so when he met Evan and Regulus, he latched on expertly. He did his best to sink his claws into them, to try and stop them from leaving like everyone he’d ever known did. When Barty realized that they didn’t plan on leaving, he began to retract his attached claws, and try his best to live. Remus could tell that Barty still feared he’d be abandoned, but was working his best to try and play it off as causal.
Remus knew how Barty felt. With a dead mother and an absentee father, Remus could relate to Barty’s situation and to his trauma.
At first, Barty had felt so proud of himself, playing everything off as a cruel joke. But Remus began to see the cracks in the mask Barty wore, the facade hiding his childhood trauma and the fear of getting too attached. Remus learned to navigate Barty’s mind, and they became close, dealing with their trauma together.
And by dealing with it, Remus meant, misery loved company.
As for Evan, he’d arguably had the best childhood of the four. His parents, while they didn’t truly love each other, did love Evan.
Evan still grew up lonely, struggling to make friends, with severe social anxiety. It was truly a wonder he could do such a fear-inducing thing as performing, or giving interviews, for the band. Remus helped Evan a lot, talking through his problems and his emotions regarding social situations.
Evan’s parents didn’t necessarily approve of his skipping college, but saw that their son was getting less anxious the more he worked with the band. In the end, they decided that if they could not stop it, they might as well encourage it. Not in front of polite company of course, when talking in those circumstances, they spoke of how their son was just experimenting, that he’d come home and go to Oxford one of these days.
Of course, Evan was a Rosier, he could never do the unexpected.
The three were sheltered, rich boys through and through, and yet, even they knew that the band had little chance to succeed. They ran on pure faith in their music and a desperate need to surpass their parents’ expectations.
And also coffee, naturally, they also ran on coffee.
As for Remus, his mother, Hope, had died when he was in middle school, leaving him quite alone. He had had only a couple friends as a kid. He’d been a lonely child, spending all his time reading, dreaming of worlds beyond his. Worlds where he could go on a quest to bring his mother back to life, worlds where Remus’s family was nice and perfect, worlds where Remus was happy. Daydreaming realities that could never be.
Remus had had a childhood best friend. Lily Evans, Remus’s closest friend until she went off to a private boarding school at thirteen and left him all alone again.
As children, they’d spent countless afternoons, laying in poppy fields, dreaming of ice cream and sunsets. They’d been attached at the hip, one scraggly, brunette boy and one chipper, ginger girl.
Remus was there when Lily chipped her front tooth, and Lily was there when Remus fell from a tree and broke his arm. She was his first kiss, thirteen year olds locked in Lily’s bedroom.
But Lily wasn’t there when Remus’s mother died, when Remus found out he was bisexual, when he first kissed a boy.
Lily’s mother and Remus’s had been best friends since they were teens, and had been close all their adulthood. At least, until his mother died. Mrs. Evans had been by Hope’s side for all of the diagnosis.
From helping her through treatments, to watching over Remus, Mrs. Evans was there.
But Lily wasn’t. She found new friends at her boarding school, and she was busy doing stuff without Remus when she came home for Christmas. He’d loved her, not that he would have admitted it, but he did. And he never was sure if he loved her more than friends.
They spent summers together, from summer five to summer thirteen. But after she made friends at boarding school, she left him behind. Remus understood of course, Lily had changed. Remus didn’t care anymore.
Remus’s father, Lyall Lupin, was absent for most of his life. Busy working, Remus thought as a kid. ‘He’s working to provide for me because he loves me’.
But when Remus got older, he understood why his father was never home. Lyall wasn’t “working”, he was out drinking at bars. Remus had been out with Regulus and Barty, with fake IDs, when they slipped into a bar. Lyall had told Remus he was working late, so the seventeen year old went out with his friends. He found his father wasted at the bar, passed out on the counter, surrounded by almost a dozen empty drink glasses.
Lyall wasn’t busy working, he was drinking himself to death. After he lost Hope, instead of taking care of Remus, he just got pissed and waited around to die.
While Lyall was probably disappointed in Remus dropping out of college, Remus didn’t care. He hardly spoke to his father anyway. Lyall had little say in his son’s lifestyle, especially considering the man used all his money to buy alcohol and drink himself to death.
So Remus dropped out of college, used the money he’d saved to buy himself a flat, and entered the world of entertainment.