Web Animation / Requiem For the Living

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Requiem For the Living | A Marauders Animation is a 2024 Potter Verse animatic illustrated by Ginger-ish and set to the tune of Clem Turner's cover of "Exit Music (For a Film)".

It captures the aftermath of Voldemort's murder of the Potters, exploring how the remaining Marauders react to the news. Other than shipping Wolfstar, it strictly adheres to the canon: Sirius dashes to Godric Hollow, finds the newly-orphaned Harry, delivers him to Hagrid, and then goes to hunt down Peter, who frames him. Ginger-ish's creativity can be seen in Remus's turning to alcohol to cope and the little interactions during Sirius and Peter's confrontation. The metaphorical curtains close with Sirius's shock-induced crazy laugh, remixed directly from Light Yagami's dying moments.

Tropes:

• Broken Tears: Like in canon, Sirius Black breaks down Laughing Mad after confirming his former friend Peter Pettigrew was the traitor who sold James and Lily Potter, and then blows up a Muggle street to incriminate him and both fake his own death. In this animatic, the bloodied guy also cries as he laughs because his whole world getting upended finally catches up to him. Not only is the guilt unbearable, but we know he didn't give himself the time to grieve his friends.
• Cathartic Crying: Sirius rushes on his motorcycle to the Potters' residence at Godric Hollow after Voldemort's attack. On arriving, he's faced with James's corpse, and the grief hits him until he's kneeling. Still, the only thing that brings tears to his eyes is his relief at learning little Harry is alive, against all odds. He's too shocked for anything else.
• Energy Binders: In the closing scene, an Auror casts a binding spell over the shell-shocked Sirius that restrains his arms with magical, blue ropes—this happens right after Pettigrew makes the whole street explode to fake his death.
• Half-Empty Two-Shot: After the tragedy of his boyfriend Sirius's betrayal and the murder of the rest of his three closest friends, Lupin takes to drowning his sorrows in alcohol. In two of the frames, he's despondently lying against a wooden wall, holding a bottle, and surrounded by newspaper clips of the war. The first shot pushes said scene to the leftmost side of the screen, leaving the right half entirely black. Rather than horror, the purpose is to represent his loneliness and mourning.
• Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Played for Drama. Like many animatics, Requiem for the Living doesn't feature any dialogue clipped and remixed from the canon material or other sources. Instead, it's set to the tune of Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)". The animation is synced with the song's slow cadence and building crescendos. The song's first stanza is slowly paced, so most of it is Remus coping (badly) with the news, which is full of agonizing reminiscence moments. In terms of lyric significance, some instances are ironic, such as Sirius tenderly closing Lily's lifeless eyes during the "Breathe, keep breathing" vibrato. Others, it's a straight match—the scene of Remus crying at the Potters' funeral, burning the paper with the news of Sirius's imprisonment, is set during the phrase "We hope that you choke".
• Monkey Morality Pose: The thumbnail depicts the three surviving Marauders posing like this. Peter, the traitor, is shown with red spectral hands obscuring his eyes—he hides away so he doesn't have to see the evil and devastation he's brought (orphaning Harry, framing Sirius). Remus, by contrast, holds his red-stained, werewolf hands over his ears, a sign that he'd rather not hear the news of Sirius betraying the Potters and murdering Peter. Lastly, Sirius's mouth is gagged by red spectral hands, signifying how he hasn't been given the chance to speak his truth.
• Painful Transformation: Remus's werewolf transformation is depicted as agonizing—the flesh on his backbone tears open as his bones reshape and bend. There's no shortage of blood either. In a sense, it's meant to mirror the intense suffering brought by the murder of his three closest friends (Lily, James, and Peter) and the fourth's betrayal.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Like many Marauders Era fan works, this Fan Animation goes with the interpretation that Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were a gay couple. We see flashbacks of the two sharing the bed, waking up naked, and tenderly kissing. Back in the present, Remus can't help but miss those little gestures and romantic escapades, even as his heart burns with hatred at Sirius's apparent treasonous acts.
• Recap by Audit: The animatic never shows Voldemort's intrusion on the Potters' residence. Instead, we learn how the fateful confrontation went as Sirius enters the house looking for Survivors. James lies by the front door and has a bloodied face, his family's first line of defense. Lily is sprawled by little Harry's crib, her arms abreast as if shielding her son with her own body. Lily and James died with their eyes wide open, indicating that Voldemort murdered them both with the Killing Curse. Harry is in his crib, teary-eyed but otherwise unharmed. The fact that his scar is not bleeding might indicate either its magical nature or that he's been alone for a while. The nursery's roof is blown up from the Killing Curse's violent rebound.
• Titled After the Song: Requiem For the Living is titled after Dan Forrest's classic music composition, a melancholic piece intended to be played at Requiem, i.e., the Catholic church's mass for the deceased. Interestingly enough, it doesn't provide musical accompaniment for the animatic.