rosie_rues (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosie_rues) wrote2006-10-26 12:31 pm
rosie_rues) wrote2006-10-26 12:31 pm
Entry tags:
A Twilight Wooing (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
scarvesnhats Day 04)
Title: A Twilight Wooing
Rating: PG
Words: 1179
Prompt: don’t forget I love you
Disclaimer: They belong to JKR. I’m just borrowing them.
Notes: Better late than never, right? Ahem.
Remus couldn’t sleep. The night was warm, and the airless halls of 12 Grimmauld Place seemed to be trying to steal his breath. When he opened the window the air tasted of smog, and the wind grasped at his curtains, a dull, irregular slap. His sheets were gritty, and he could hear the scritch of mouse claws in the ceiling. He’d slept, too many times, in places where that faint scraping would become the tickle and scratch of feet on his sheets, and it always made him uneasy. The wary accommodation he had made with the rodents in the Shack and a hundred grotty bedsits had vanished in the last two years.
He wasn’t going to sleep. Wearily, he crawled out of bed, groping for his slippers. He had taken to hanging them off the end of the bed, since the incident with the opportunistic Boggart last month.
The halls weren’t quite quiet, sonorous with sleep-murmuring portraits. He wondered at nights why no ghosts walked the halls of the Ancient and Noble house. It seemed like the sort of house for ghosts.
He could hear Buckbeak stirring even from here, the shift of splayed wings whispering down the stairwells from the old owl loft. Under the footboards, something squeaked and rushed away.
Perhaps the Blacks were too proud for hauntings. Perhaps they saw no faults in themselves; no reason they should be called back to earth. He thought on the Blacks he had known and could not imagine any of them dying with regrets.
Save Regulus, perhaps, but he suspected that Reggie too had thrown all doubts aside at the end.
He paused outside Sirius’ door, listening to be sure he was still there. He did this every time he wandered at night, and he couldn’t even make himself try to break the habit.
He heard the clink of glass on glass and closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the damp wallpaper. He had been so overjoyed to have Sirius back; he hadn’t expected it to be this hard. Sirius claimed that his memories still existed. The Dementors hadn’t taken them, he said, he’d just hidden them so well neither they nor he could find them. Remus wasn’t sure what the difference that made, though Sirius tried to argue he was drinking to remember.
Remus poured away every bottle he could find, but he knew there were more hidden, and Dung, and Kreacher, damn his vicious, crazy soul, kept bringing more. Remus wanted to smash them all, scream at Sirius, I loved you. Remember that!
But Sirius would not. He would build something from it, desperate to connect as he was, and it would be a lie. After everything, Remus could not bear that lie. He couldn’t do that to Sirius.
“Gone to the dogs,” a parchment-frail voice whispered behind him.
Remus swung round to snarl at the portrait, “He’s still worth a thousand of you!” and continued downstairs.
The house was full of cold spots, places where the warm night suddenly vanished and frost curled up the windows, on the inside of the glass. Sirius walked through them without noticing, and he had looked puzzled when Remus asked about them.
All houses have draughts, Moony, he’d said.
Remus hated this house; hated it more with every day that passed. When Sirius had offered up his house for the Order, Remus had hoped for one desperate moment that he meant their old flat, which was technically still Sirius’. That, however, would have meant involving Andromeda, who was Sirius’ executor, and evicting Nymphadora, who was currently paying her mother a healthy rent for the privilege of not living at home.
Andromeda Tonks had always been a canny operator. Remus knew that Dumbledore’s plans always came full circle, even when they seemed like madness, but he wished that they could have tried again to persuade Andromeda to join them. Her daughter was a valued ally, but Nymphadora didn’t have Andromeda’s politic nature, and this time round they needed that more than ever.
He was at the foot of the back stairs when he heard the distant crash of the front door. Terrified that Sirius had run for it, he bolted through the library, where Kreacher was scrabbling in the hearth.
The old woman’s voice was shrieking invective, and he suddenly heard another female voice join in.
He burst into the hall to find Nymphadora Tonks sprawled across the floor, entangled in umbrellas and hammered by screams.
“-disgrace to my house! Foul, leprous abomination! Slovenly-”
Nymphadora shoved out of the umbrella stand to shriek back, “You think you can talk of disgrace! You drank so much before you died that the ground spit you out again!”
“Half-blood slut!”
“Syphilitic old hag!”
Remus, bewildered, began to creep forward to drag her out of range. What was she doing here?
“Cockatrice!”
“Basilisk’s bawd!”
“Shut up!”” a voice roared above, and Remus turned in time to see Sirius bring his wand down. Remus dived for the floor, dragging Nymphadora with him, and a gout of red light sizzled overhead, striking the portrait so hard it rocked on the wall. The curtains slammed shut and then turned to stone.
Remus sat up again, eyeing Sirius warily. Nymphadora was shaking beside him, and he could feel the pulse in her wrist beating butterfly-fast. Sirius, wearing nothing but a ragged pair of old jeans, began to stroll downstairs.
“Next time,” Remus said, as mildly as he could, “a warning would be appreciated.”
“You always duck in time,” Sirius said. “Alright, Nympho?”
“Tonks!” she said. “Sorry to wake you up.”
“What’s wrong?” Remus said, pulling her up. “You don’t usually let the old hag get to you.”
“Stupid old bitch. I-” She bit her lip, and Remus, who still didn’t understand why the female half of the species saw him as a perfect person to cry on, began to steer her towards the kitchen.
Sirius darted ahead, hitching up his jeans. Nymphadora sighed and murmured sniffily “Y’know, if he was straight, and not related to me-”
“Ssh,” Remus said hurriedly, and tried to stop admiring the view. With every week that passed Sirius got a little less skeletal and the ghost of the heedless boy showed a little more, mixing with the man who had survived Azkaban into someone Remus was finding it harder and harder to resist.
“Sorry. Won’t poach.”
“Sssh!”
Sirius had already got the kettle on and lit a few candles. Remus steered Nymphadora around him and then went to grab a couple of mugs.
“So,” Sirius said, “What’s up?”
“They came out the fire,” she said, and Remus felt himself tense even as Sirius whirled. “I heard the wards go up, and got out – before they saw me, I think, and I triggered everything I’d set up, but – they’re in my flat, and I can’t go back.”
“Who was it?” Sirius demanded. “Malfoy? MacNair?”
She shook her head, lacing her fingers together. “Oh. No - no, it wasn’t the Death Eaters.”
“Who was it, then?” Remus demanded.
She looked up at them, eyes wide and frightened. “The Ministry."
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Isn't it a pretty image to linger on? I have missed writing about Sirius.
Thanks for commenting :) Glad you're enjoying it.
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I'm glad you enjoyed it :) Thanks for commenting.
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Thanks for commenting :)
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And as usual, yours is really well paced, well written, and I can't wait to get more of it!
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Thanks for commenting :) I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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"parchment-frail voice" - what a brilliant expression. And the comment about all women choosing Remus to cry on made me giggle, because it's so true.
Loved the interaction and affinity between Tonks and Remus, too. Tonks sighing after Sirius - very nice moment!
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*grins* Of course women cry on Remus. Poor guy probably doesn't even have a clue why.
I'm glad you enjoyed it :) Thanks for the comment.
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