#40. I could swallow the seas to wash down all this pride
Title: For Change and Loss and Star-Crossed Love and Lies (Part III)
Series: Harry Potter
Spoilers: Through all seven books! You heard me, so consider yourself duly warned!
Characters: Starring Emmeline Vance, Death Eater Avery (the eldest brother) and Remus Lupin in that order. Guest appearances listed alphabetically rather than in their order of appearances include the Avery family (unnamed Father, Mother, Middle Brother and Youngest Brother), Sirius Black, Edgar Bones, Antonin Dolohov, Lily Evans/Potter, Peter Pettigrew, James Potter, Fabian Prewett, Gideon Prewett, Severus Snape, Nymphadora Tonks.
Pairing(s): Avery x Emmeline and Remus x Emmeline, and if I mention anymore there would be spoilers.
Author Notes: This damned overly ambitious piece has taken me more than a year to write (I do admit I fell into a writer's funk when I accidentally deleted portions of my writing). And I also have to call this a ficmix (again), and I apologize that there is no music attached. I always used to see these and swear I wouldn't write them and what do I do but write not one, but two. If you happened to read Day Late Friends (which also features this hapless triangle, though with a lesser focus on Avery) please note that it is not quite a continuation or expansion on that story. This is taking that theme and twisting the characters a quarter in another direction to see where they would wander. I also want to apologize for the bastardization of the sub-characters as I'm not comfortable nor accustomed to writing them, especially when dialogue is involved. And speaking of dialogue, I must admit there is way more talking in this than I anticipated.
In regards to the style, spoken speech is generally indicated through italics and with my usual queer aversion to names, though they do drop in occasionally.
Also feel it worth mentioning I am LIVID that I exceeded the word count and that I have to break this fic up into... who knows how many parts yet. For now, consider this part three!
Prompt: I realize I'm way past my due date (and what I failure I was!) but I still think it's fun to tag the prompts to these. So here we go with #40. I could swallow the seas to wash down all this pride. Check out this link to see what remains to be taken.
The Mix
Part I | Part II | Part III
. . . . . . . . .
She wonders if this is how last thoughts go. If they are always frantic and flurried images and half-formed notions that get pushed away as another flits in to take the former's place.
She wonders if there comes a time in every woman's life where they wonder how did I end up here, why did my life come to this? Did she take the boys and men she loved for granted? She was always pretty in youth, marked for her cleverness, her wit, her intelligence... but now? Where did those charms, those graces lead her now?
Because now, right now damp tendrils of hair are sticking to her forehead.
Right now she is crashing her way across a dark street, heels catching on the cobblestones and uneven pavement and though she trips often she does not fall. Not yet.
She wishes athleticism had been a part of her repertoire but she never thought she would find herself running, dodging, slipping, sliding, tripping through the streets of London-and here a park, the very cover she is hoping for because that's all her frantic mind can reach, can grasp at this moment.
Or maybe a lawn is what she wants, an open space, no, cover of the trees, and is this really how last thoughts are supposed to go?
Bent on survival, not on loved ones faces, but instead distracted by the shadowy pursuers who creep like one in the dark. All she can hear are her footfalls as she twists, as she flings herself down the stone stairs, heels clattering as she hurries her way down, her cloak swishing out behind her, yes she can hear it flutter, and why is that all she can hear?
She glances over her shoulder in time to see the flash of light and to think, this can't be how-
. . . . . . . . .
When they arrive at the Avery family home the officers in charge of the routine raid fan out, entering shrouded rooms at random, coughing in the explosions of dust when they yank the black draping off long-slumbering paintings and clouded mirrors, grimacing as they peer into musty closets and cupboards and all the while failing to find the man they are looking for.
They find him later, when the youngest recruit, a youth barely out of school, finds his way to the upstairs parlor and where he remains, riveted, in the doorway.
For strewn across every available stretch of floorboard and carpet are newspapers discarded, some cut into quite savagely while still others appear to have been dropped, page after page, as though the culprit were looking for a mention, an article, a specific piece of news unfound.
But it is not these forgotten chronicles of the times that command his attention.
It is what hangs suspended in center of the room that keeps him spellbound in the doorway; it is the spectacle strung on silvery wires that shiver with a russet red promise taken, with arms and legs bent at odd angles and the dark head thrown back and beyond his scrutiny, as though this broken marionette has found a man-sized web to fall in.
This youth stares and stares, scarcely daring to breath until his superior pushes his way into the scene, cursing beneath his breath and calling for the others to help him get the body down.
There follows a struggle, for the wires snap and sing as they are cut, whipping out at the unsuspecting officers before recoiling back into the grand piano from which they came. The ivory keys drop and the remaining piano cords thrum; it is an eerie sound, this disjointed melody emanating from the dusty grand piano in the corner and the youth cannot stand it anymore, he crosses into the room just as the body falls, at last, making the singular and surprisingly solid sound that is followed by silence.
The officers’ stare at the half-mast, dark eyes but never at the hair-thin crimson lines that cord the neck, obscured at last by the red neck cloth. They stare instead at the mouth ajar and it is the youth, who points out in a shaking voice that there appears to be a paper in the dead man’s mouth.
There is indeed a note upon a swollen tongue stained mostly black with ink, it is a note penned in a bold, steady hand that reads, it is done, Death Eaters, I am done, may death swallow me whole.
It isn’t until much later, weeks into the war and after the autopsies are completed, that the young officer discovers, much by accident, the reason for the missing articles in the newspapers savagely cut. It seems, he overhears, that the deceased had systematically swallowed every article mentioning a certain woman’s death and that, if the piano wires hadn’t killed him, the ink was likely to be responsible for finishing to job.
It is then, with his hat in his hand and eyes downcast, that this youth silently laments the loss of his estranged uncle.
. . . . . . . . .
Black ink blurs before his eyes, though the paper remains solid beneath his calloused fingertips and he wonders how a woman’s life can be summed up into so very few lines.
Yes, it is the Monday morning newspaper that brings him the news. A heart attack, the journalist muses. No foul play, the afternoon paper proclaims.
Never mind that her body was found in a park, never mind the time of death points to the early morning hours.
Remus is the one who identifies her, if only to prove to himself that he has lost the last tether to his youth, to the better days and memories. He sees what the police do not; the eyes open but not wide with shock or fear but surprise-perhaps even recognition. Her lips are slack, parted, perhaps she spoke a spell to defend herself or maybe the name of her attacker fell from her tongue.
He will never know.
And Emmeline will never know how he feels.
He is reaching a point where the death anniversaries far outweigh any birthday celebrations he can think of.
This only furthers his sense of self-loathing.
The more she loves him, the more he hates himself-what did he do to this child? Misleading her into thinking she is in love with him, and what had he done to foster such feelings? He does not believe he awarded her any special attention and his words (often labeled “kind” and “considerate”) bare no special import, no hidden meanings. They were a façade-a means to the end, a method of softening the blow of his condition.
And she says she does not care. She is too young to care-she does not understand what it is-she is too full of her own silly, romantic notions.
And he is so sick of wearing black.
. . . . . . . . .
One mistake.
Yes, a mistake; perhaps the biggest mistake of his life and he considers how his friends, likely the whole lot of them, are rolling in their graves and archways at the thought of what he-shy, responsible Remus J. Lupin-has done.
One night of weakness, one night desiring comfort and the promise of oblivion; one last chance to pretend that the neck he buries his face against is that of the woman he lost, all the while believing that he will be able to let go after that. That he can move on.
But mornings dispel dreaming and he finds he is left with nothing again, nothing save a woman who desperately loves him, a girl who can never fill the gaping hole in his heart. He feels guilty for this night of weakness, for encouraging her when he ought to have not.
(He wonders if this is how Emmeline awoke beside him.)
And then resentful, when she announces the news.
(He wonders if Emmeline awoke full of regret and misgivings about the nights they spent together).
He explains he has very little funds-certainly not enough for three but she assures him that she makes enough-she can support them all and he wonders if he is nothing more than an accessory, reduced further to a dog tethered to her leash.
(He wonders fleetingly if he was nothing more than an accessory to Emmeline but he can see no merit in that. Remus is not a catch--even if he did manage to catch her eye).
His deluded bride mistakes practicality for sentimentality-she thinks they are in love.
(He wonders if this is how Emmeline felt, conflicted and disillusioned, knowing that there is a right thing to do but not having the strength to bring an end to it).
So he finds himself with a ring on his finger and a young bride with her belly rounded with child and he wonders what it is that he is doing with his life because his bride is not Emmeline Vance, his bride is a girl he barely knows beyond the cause that they fight for.
(He wonders if the cause meant more to Emmeline than he ever did).
And maybe he is tired, tired of the war-mongering, friend-losing hopelessness.
(And his mind still reels with ever-present thought of Emmeline Vance).
Tired he may be but watching his wife's (he shudders at the word, every time she says it, every time tears fill her eyes) belly grow is certainly not what he is meant for.
He knows now.
He lost everything in war.
So it is to war he must go to find the answers.
. . . . . . . . .
On the day he dies he shouts her name to anyone who will listen.
Did you kill her?, he demands of anyone he faces; it becomes a mantra that beats out behind his eyes, pulses inside his head to the point where he will not even wait to hear the answer to his question.
Yes, this is for every person he ever loved and lost, and oh, how many they number.
This is nothing more than revenge, gasps his trapper, aghast eyes visible briefly beneath her kaleidoscope hair. This is wrong, this isn't like you---
You don't even know who I am, he bellows, feeling a flash, a sensation fleeting of being a teenager again. The minute it crosses his mind is the very minute when he realizes, no, he was never this way, not quiet, sensitive, amiable, cowardly Remus.
This is who I am.
The change is now and here to stay, the metamorphosis sparked by a single news article proclaiming her death, and he can remember twisting the pages in his hands as though he could wring the words from them, the traitorous, torturous words.
But here lies the irony that he burns here, now, in this hopeless battle.
He burns knowing that he can feel this alive without her, and oh how he can feel.
Here the sensations tumble, one minute rebellious and livid, the next desperate, desolate and lost. But there they are, knotting so tightly in his chest he can barely breathe beneath them and he thinks maybe, maybe this is the accumulation of everything he repressed beneath his cordial apathy. Maybe this is the sum of all of those years that are checking in like books overdue, like floodgates turning to silt and dust in the face of a typhoon.
And if these sensations can keep her alive, if he can keep her in the forefront of his mind, he determines that he will find the last, lost link.
He will find the one who killed her.
Did you kill her?
Did you kill HER?
Didyoukillherdidyoukillherdidyoukillher--Did you? until his voice is raw from the asking, the shouting.
And then he receives an answer, one he almost does not hear because it comes from somewhere behind him. He whips around and already his mode of attack is kill first, ask questions later, so the spell is said before he sees whom he hit.
And she falls, eyes wide as her short hair fades back to brown and he stares and stares and stares before he registers the chuckle, before he looks up to see the face of the man standing beyond the body of the woman he never wanted, though he never wanted this.
Clever you, says the man with the Cheshire grin. I never realized it could be so easy.
He is breathing so hard he can barely grind out the words, Did you kill her?
I could have, replies the man as he glances at his nails. But it doesn't matter to you either way, does it?
Agony is wordless, he realizes and he cannot articulate any longer how he feels now that he is answered. The mantra beats black behind his mind's eye though the picture of her never fades. He raises his arm and he thinks of how he burns---
Series: Harry Potter
Spoilers: Through all seven books! You heard me, so consider yourself duly warned!
Characters: Starring Emmeline Vance, Death Eater Avery (the eldest brother) and Remus Lupin in that order. Guest appearances listed alphabetically rather than in their order of appearances include the Avery family (unnamed Father, Mother, Middle Brother and Youngest Brother), Sirius Black, Edgar Bones, Antonin Dolohov, Lily Evans/Potter, Peter Pettigrew, James Potter, Fabian Prewett, Gideon Prewett, Severus Snape, Nymphadora Tonks.
Pairing(s): Avery x Emmeline and Remus x Emmeline, and if I mention anymore there would be spoilers.
Author Notes: This damned overly ambitious piece has taken me more than a year to write (I do admit I fell into a writer's funk when I accidentally deleted portions of my writing). And I also have to call this a ficmix (again), and I apologize that there is no music attached. I always used to see these and swear I wouldn't write them and what do I do but write not one, but two. If you happened to read Day Late Friends (which also features this hapless triangle, though with a lesser focus on Avery) please note that it is not quite a continuation or expansion on that story. This is taking that theme and twisting the characters a quarter in another direction to see where they would wander. I also want to apologize for the bastardization of the sub-characters as I'm not comfortable nor accustomed to writing them, especially when dialogue is involved. And speaking of dialogue, I must admit there is way more talking in this than I anticipated.
In regards to the style, spoken speech is generally indicated through italics and with my usual queer aversion to names, though they do drop in occasionally.
Also feel it worth mentioning I am LIVID that I exceeded the word count and that I have to break this fic up into... who knows how many parts yet. For now, consider this part three!
Prompt: I realize I'm way past my due date (and what I failure I was!) but I still think it's fun to tag the prompts to these. So here we go with #40. I could swallow the seas to wash down all this pride. Check out this link to see what remains to be taken.
The Mix
Part I | Part II | Part III
. . . . . . . . .
She wonders if this is how last thoughts go. If they are always frantic and flurried images and half-formed notions that get pushed away as another flits in to take the former's place.
She wonders if there comes a time in every woman's life where they wonder how did I end up here, why did my life come to this? Did she take the boys and men she loved for granted? She was always pretty in youth, marked for her cleverness, her wit, her intelligence... but now? Where did those charms, those graces lead her now?
Because now, right now damp tendrils of hair are sticking to her forehead.
Right now she is crashing her way across a dark street, heels catching on the cobblestones and uneven pavement and though she trips often she does not fall. Not yet.
She wishes athleticism had been a part of her repertoire but she never thought she would find herself running, dodging, slipping, sliding, tripping through the streets of London-and here a park, the very cover she is hoping for because that's all her frantic mind can reach, can grasp at this moment.
Or maybe a lawn is what she wants, an open space, no, cover of the trees, and is this really how last thoughts are supposed to go?
Bent on survival, not on loved ones faces, but instead distracted by the shadowy pursuers who creep like one in the dark. All she can hear are her footfalls as she twists, as she flings herself down the stone stairs, heels clattering as she hurries her way down, her cloak swishing out behind her, yes she can hear it flutter, and why is that all she can hear?
She glances over her shoulder in time to see the flash of light and to think, this can't be how-
. . . . . . . . .
When they arrive at the Avery family home the officers in charge of the routine raid fan out, entering shrouded rooms at random, coughing in the explosions of dust when they yank the black draping off long-slumbering paintings and clouded mirrors, grimacing as they peer into musty closets and cupboards and all the while failing to find the man they are looking for.
They find him later, when the youngest recruit, a youth barely out of school, finds his way to the upstairs parlor and where he remains, riveted, in the doorway.
For strewn across every available stretch of floorboard and carpet are newspapers discarded, some cut into quite savagely while still others appear to have been dropped, page after page, as though the culprit were looking for a mention, an article, a specific piece of news unfound.
But it is not these forgotten chronicles of the times that command his attention.
It is what hangs suspended in center of the room that keeps him spellbound in the doorway; it is the spectacle strung on silvery wires that shiver with a russet red promise taken, with arms and legs bent at odd angles and the dark head thrown back and beyond his scrutiny, as though this broken marionette has found a man-sized web to fall in.
This youth stares and stares, scarcely daring to breath until his superior pushes his way into the scene, cursing beneath his breath and calling for the others to help him get the body down.
There follows a struggle, for the wires snap and sing as they are cut, whipping out at the unsuspecting officers before recoiling back into the grand piano from which they came. The ivory keys drop and the remaining piano cords thrum; it is an eerie sound, this disjointed melody emanating from the dusty grand piano in the corner and the youth cannot stand it anymore, he crosses into the room just as the body falls, at last, making the singular and surprisingly solid sound that is followed by silence.
The officers’ stare at the half-mast, dark eyes but never at the hair-thin crimson lines that cord the neck, obscured at last by the red neck cloth. They stare instead at the mouth ajar and it is the youth, who points out in a shaking voice that there appears to be a paper in the dead man’s mouth.
There is indeed a note upon a swollen tongue stained mostly black with ink, it is a note penned in a bold, steady hand that reads, it is done, Death Eaters, I am done, may death swallow me whole.
It isn’t until much later, weeks into the war and after the autopsies are completed, that the young officer discovers, much by accident, the reason for the missing articles in the newspapers savagely cut. It seems, he overhears, that the deceased had systematically swallowed every article mentioning a certain woman’s death and that, if the piano wires hadn’t killed him, the ink was likely to be responsible for finishing to job.
It is then, with his hat in his hand and eyes downcast, that this youth silently laments the loss of his estranged uncle.
. . . . . . . . .
Black ink blurs before his eyes, though the paper remains solid beneath his calloused fingertips and he wonders how a woman’s life can be summed up into so very few lines.
Yes, it is the Monday morning newspaper that brings him the news. A heart attack, the journalist muses. No foul play, the afternoon paper proclaims.
Never mind that her body was found in a park, never mind the time of death points to the early morning hours.
Remus is the one who identifies her, if only to prove to himself that he has lost the last tether to his youth, to the better days and memories. He sees what the police do not; the eyes open but not wide with shock or fear but surprise-perhaps even recognition. Her lips are slack, parted, perhaps she spoke a spell to defend herself or maybe the name of her attacker fell from her tongue.
He will never know.
And Emmeline will never know how he feels.
He is reaching a point where the death anniversaries far outweigh any birthday celebrations he can think of.
This only furthers his sense of self-loathing.
The more she loves him, the more he hates himself-what did he do to this child? Misleading her into thinking she is in love with him, and what had he done to foster such feelings? He does not believe he awarded her any special attention and his words (often labeled “kind” and “considerate”) bare no special import, no hidden meanings. They were a façade-a means to the end, a method of softening the blow of his condition.
And she says she does not care. She is too young to care-she does not understand what it is-she is too full of her own silly, romantic notions.
And he is so sick of wearing black.
. . . . . . . . .
One mistake.
Yes, a mistake; perhaps the biggest mistake of his life and he considers how his friends, likely the whole lot of them, are rolling in their graves and archways at the thought of what he-shy, responsible Remus J. Lupin-has done.
One night of weakness, one night desiring comfort and the promise of oblivion; one last chance to pretend that the neck he buries his face against is that of the woman he lost, all the while believing that he will be able to let go after that. That he can move on.
But mornings dispel dreaming and he finds he is left with nothing again, nothing save a woman who desperately loves him, a girl who can never fill the gaping hole in his heart. He feels guilty for this night of weakness, for encouraging her when he ought to have not.
(He wonders if this is how Emmeline awoke beside him.)
And then resentful, when she announces the news.
(He wonders if Emmeline awoke full of regret and misgivings about the nights they spent together).
He explains he has very little funds-certainly not enough for three but she assures him that she makes enough-she can support them all and he wonders if he is nothing more than an accessory, reduced further to a dog tethered to her leash.
(He wonders fleetingly if he was nothing more than an accessory to Emmeline but he can see no merit in that. Remus is not a catch--even if he did manage to catch her eye).
His deluded bride mistakes practicality for sentimentality-she thinks they are in love.
(He wonders if this is how Emmeline felt, conflicted and disillusioned, knowing that there is a right thing to do but not having the strength to bring an end to it).
So he finds himself with a ring on his finger and a young bride with her belly rounded with child and he wonders what it is that he is doing with his life because his bride is not Emmeline Vance, his bride is a girl he barely knows beyond the cause that they fight for.
(He wonders if the cause meant more to Emmeline than he ever did).
And maybe he is tired, tired of the war-mongering, friend-losing hopelessness.
(And his mind still reels with ever-present thought of Emmeline Vance).
Tired he may be but watching his wife's (he shudders at the word, every time she says it, every time tears fill her eyes) belly grow is certainly not what he is meant for.
He knows now.
He lost everything in war.
So it is to war he must go to find the answers.
. . . . . . . . .
On the day he dies he shouts her name to anyone who will listen.
Did you kill her?, he demands of anyone he faces; it becomes a mantra that beats out behind his eyes, pulses inside his head to the point where he will not even wait to hear the answer to his question.
Yes, this is for every person he ever loved and lost, and oh, how many they number.
This is nothing more than revenge, gasps his trapper, aghast eyes visible briefly beneath her kaleidoscope hair. This is wrong, this isn't like you---
You don't even know who I am, he bellows, feeling a flash, a sensation fleeting of being a teenager again. The minute it crosses his mind is the very minute when he realizes, no, he was never this way, not quiet, sensitive, amiable, cowardly Remus.
This is who I am.
The change is now and here to stay, the metamorphosis sparked by a single news article proclaiming her death, and he can remember twisting the pages in his hands as though he could wring the words from them, the traitorous, torturous words.
But here lies the irony that he burns here, now, in this hopeless battle.
He burns knowing that he can feel this alive without her, and oh how he can feel.
Here the sensations tumble, one minute rebellious and livid, the next desperate, desolate and lost. But there they are, knotting so tightly in his chest he can barely breathe beneath them and he thinks maybe, maybe this is the accumulation of everything he repressed beneath his cordial apathy. Maybe this is the sum of all of those years that are checking in like books overdue, like floodgates turning to silt and dust in the face of a typhoon.
And if these sensations can keep her alive, if he can keep her in the forefront of his mind, he determines that he will find the last, lost link.
He will find the one who killed her.
Did you kill her?
Did you kill HER?
Didyoukillherdidyoukillherdidyoukillher--Did you? until his voice is raw from the asking, the shouting.
And then he receives an answer, one he almost does not hear because it comes from somewhere behind him. He whips around and already his mode of attack is kill first, ask questions later, so the spell is said before he sees whom he hit.
And she falls, eyes wide as her short hair fades back to brown and he stares and stares and stares before he registers the chuckle, before he looks up to see the face of the man standing beyond the body of the woman he never wanted, though he never wanted this.
Clever you, says the man with the Cheshire grin. I never realized it could be so easy.
He is breathing so hard he can barely grind out the words, Did you kill her?
I could have, replies the man as he glances at his nails. But it doesn't matter to you either way, does it?
Agony is wordless, he realizes and he cannot articulate any longer how he feels now that he is answered. The mantra beats black behind his mind's eye though the picture of her never fades. He raises his arm and he thinks of how he burns---