Drabble: December (Harry Potter fandom)
Title: December
Pairing & fandom: Remus/Tonks (Harry Potter)
Rating & Warnings: PG-13
Prompt: Everlasting Icicles
Format & Word Count: Drabble, 500 words
Summary: After Christmas at the Burrow, where else would Remus go? Set during HBP.
Author's Notes: If anyone's looking for a heavy dose of angst, then look no further. ;) Originally written for the Christmas Cracker Advent at metamorfic_moon, December 2009.
December
A moonless night, which should be his favourite kind (but serves only to remind that all time is fleeting), and a bitterly cold one at that. When the smallest of sounds turn to thunder in the hush and the shadows, and where everything is stiller and slower and means so much more.
Only the meaning of things has been clear for a long while now: they dwelt in dreams and possibilities that could never have been. Nothing much to argue about there, except how much she should hate him for it. Though she does argue - and she will now if he knocks at her door - because she’s Dora, and because she’s pale and sensitive and made of steel, and because she fiercely believes in a world that will let them be. Or she’ll shake it, to make it that way, and he’ll have to stand there and watch it break her. Though, somehow, this way, it feels as if he’s breaking her first.
A Patronus change is for life, Lupin, not just for Christmas. You know this is true.
What he also knows is he shouldn’t have come. Being here, standing only yards from her window - it’s unfair and self-indulgent. Not to mention a risk.
Or is the real risk to him?
Whichever it is, it cannot be. He shivers, and he’s glad, because he wants to be cold. He wants to be chilled to the bone. Misty breath floats into the air and disappears, like the memories of her smile and her touch and her skin. Ice doesn’t feel. Ice doesn’t bend. Ice seals up pain and grief, and it holds fast a man who hates his body and distrusts his soul and needs only to think of the job in hand. Ice has served him well before and it will do the same again. If he'll just let it.
So the cold, rational answer is to walk away before one day she makes him go.
Only that’s always been his answer, hasn’t it?
There’s a beckoning glow from the lantern outside the door. Fairy lights dance through the frosted window, promising warmth and a home within.
Not his home, though. Not his life.
Because he’s used to the cold now, accustomed to bitter. To the inner freeze of dislocation, resisting any cracks that appeared when sharing the comforting fire at the Burrow these past few days. And in hardening his heart against Molly’s kindly, worried face, he’d thought it was set fast now against Dora too. The girl who was far too good for him, and also not much good to him.
There was once a different night with a red-gold moon, and a dawning, a realization that came with it. She makes him dream, she makes him laugh, and when they stop laughing he wants to tell her everything.
It has to end.
But it’s so hard to move when you’re made of ice. And when the lights still dance on so brightly within arm’s reach.
Pairing & fandom: Remus/Tonks (Harry Potter)
Rating & Warnings: PG-13
Prompt: Everlasting Icicles
Format & Word Count: Drabble, 500 words
Summary: After Christmas at the Burrow, where else would Remus go? Set during HBP.
Author's Notes: If anyone's looking for a heavy dose of angst, then look no further. ;) Originally written for the Christmas Cracker Advent at metamorfic_moon, December 2009.
December
A moonless night, which should be his favourite kind (but serves only to remind that all time is fleeting), and a bitterly cold one at that. When the smallest of sounds turn to thunder in the hush and the shadows, and where everything is stiller and slower and means so much more.
Only the meaning of things has been clear for a long while now: they dwelt in dreams and possibilities that could never have been. Nothing much to argue about there, except how much she should hate him for it. Though she does argue - and she will now if he knocks at her door - because she’s Dora, and because she’s pale and sensitive and made of steel, and because she fiercely believes in a world that will let them be. Or she’ll shake it, to make it that way, and he’ll have to stand there and watch it break her. Though, somehow, this way, it feels as if he’s breaking her first.
A Patronus change is for life, Lupin, not just for Christmas. You know this is true.
What he also knows is he shouldn’t have come. Being here, standing only yards from her window - it’s unfair and self-indulgent. Not to mention a risk.
Or is the real risk to him?
Whichever it is, it cannot be. He shivers, and he’s glad, because he wants to be cold. He wants to be chilled to the bone. Misty breath floats into the air and disappears, like the memories of her smile and her touch and her skin. Ice doesn’t feel. Ice doesn’t bend. Ice seals up pain and grief, and it holds fast a man who hates his body and distrusts his soul and needs only to think of the job in hand. Ice has served him well before and it will do the same again. If he'll just let it.
So the cold, rational answer is to walk away before one day she makes him go.
Only that’s always been his answer, hasn’t it?
There’s a beckoning glow from the lantern outside the door. Fairy lights dance through the frosted window, promising warmth and a home within.
Not his home, though. Not his life.
Because he’s used to the cold now, accustomed to bitter. To the inner freeze of dislocation, resisting any cracks that appeared when sharing the comforting fire at the Burrow these past few days. And in hardening his heart against Molly’s kindly, worried face, he’d thought it was set fast now against Dora too. The girl who was far too good for him, and also not much good to him.
There was once a different night with a red-gold moon, and a dawning, a realization that came with it. She makes him dream, she makes him laugh, and when they stop laughing he wants to tell her everything.
It has to end.
But it’s so hard to move when you’re made of ice. And when the lights still dance on so brightly within arm’s reach.