after all the dancing and spilling beer all over the place
While weeding out the dead fic I found this, which though not terribly polished is indeed finished and it seems to have been sitting in this state for at least a year. The tone of this feels very much like days gone by to me. I think my writing has changed a bit since I wrote it.
The Sound of Silence
Draco’s eyes are drawn to him when he first enters the cafe, an unwelcomely familiar figure hunched over a table in the corner, black and white and alone against the too cheery colors of impending Christmas. He wonders idly what Lupin is doing here before he remembers that he doesn’t care.
Even now - with the changes in Ministry law allowing his kind to work freely - Draco can see that Lupin still remains tattered and shabby. His whole being shifting toward grey along with his too often washed robes. He is steeped in a grey like faded moonlight; a half-light that lends everything almost colour, but not quite. As if colour is a ghost that fades in an out from time to time. Lupin seems to be in a perpetual state of fade.
Draco flashes Lupin his best sneer as he passes and is startled to find that Lupin sneers back; a flicker of untamed beast passing across gentle features.
Lupin is in the cafe again the next day, a continuing blot on Draco’s well ordered daily routine, depriving him of his privacy. The locals all know to leave him well enough alone, don’t ask questions, don’t ask if he wants more coffee, don’t even think about making small talk. But Lupin has the look about him of someone who will try to make conversation if given the chance. He is lonely. Draco can see it written on Lupin’s face, same as he can see it in the mirror. But two lonely souls do not make a right.
After a solid week of the same grey figure haunting the same table. A week of subtlely different sneers and glares and sharp looks mirrored over the heads of oblivious caffeine addicts. A week of nights in which Draco wakes in the hazy indeterminate hour between too early and too late, everything so still that he wonders if time has somehow stopped - the Manor grounds in dark and shadow, the light bluish dim, quarter moon on snow, the landscape tinted silverblue - a week of the grounds, turned ghostly, calling him out of the warmth of silk and down to crunch across months old snow. The crackling of frozen branches too loud and too quiet, ice-coated and sparkling in the brittle air. Until the bite of cold on bare ankles, neck, hands, brings him back to reality. And back inside.
A week in which he invariably finds himself, just before dawn, sitting at the kitchen table (used by only house elves and servants until very recently) knowing that he will not be getting back to sleep.
After a week Draco has had enough. He musters his finest air of entitlement and sits down in the chair opposite Remus, who gazes back at him as if he’s been expecting this all along, and he probably has, stupid half-animal intuition.
“You miss him. Don’t you?” Lupin’s voice is so kind, too kind, and gentle that Draco instinctively stiffens against it even more than he does against the incredible invasiveness of the question itself.
Miss who? His father? Crabbe? Goyle? Zabini? The pieces of himself that were lost somewhere amongst decisions that should never have had to be made. Why should he miss anything? The Manor is huge and cold and lonely but he has all the galleons he needs. He can have everything he could possibly want.
This is what he tells himself in the middle of the night when it feels like he is the only person left alive, and the air scorches his throat with a biting stinging cold as if it were smoke.
Draco says none of this and instead looks Lupin straight in the eyes and replies: “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lupin had, apparently, been talking about Potter. And Draco assures him that he has never done anything of the kind.
“I believe you are projecting old man.”
Lupin’s eyes search his face - with too kind eyes that seem to look into him, not at him - and murmurs, “That is possible.”
“Why is it that you persist in showing up here every morning?”
Remus surveys Draco over the mug he is warming his hands on, tatty fingerless gloves wrap it like a blanket amber eyes about to say more, but thinking better of it and settling on, “The coffee is excellent.”
Draco sighs. “Indeed, it is.”
The Sound of Silence
Draco’s eyes are drawn to him when he first enters the cafe, an unwelcomely familiar figure hunched over a table in the corner, black and white and alone against the too cheery colors of impending Christmas. He wonders idly what Lupin is doing here before he remembers that he doesn’t care.
Even now - with the changes in Ministry law allowing his kind to work freely - Draco can see that Lupin still remains tattered and shabby. His whole being shifting toward grey along with his too often washed robes. He is steeped in a grey like faded moonlight; a half-light that lends everything almost colour, but not quite. As if colour is a ghost that fades in an out from time to time. Lupin seems to be in a perpetual state of fade.
Draco flashes Lupin his best sneer as he passes and is startled to find that Lupin sneers back; a flicker of untamed beast passing across gentle features.
Lupin is in the cafe again the next day, a continuing blot on Draco’s well ordered daily routine, depriving him of his privacy. The locals all know to leave him well enough alone, don’t ask questions, don’t ask if he wants more coffee, don’t even think about making small talk. But Lupin has the look about him of someone who will try to make conversation if given the chance. He is lonely. Draco can see it written on Lupin’s face, same as he can see it in the mirror. But two lonely souls do not make a right.
After a solid week of the same grey figure haunting the same table. A week of subtlely different sneers and glares and sharp looks mirrored over the heads of oblivious caffeine addicts. A week of nights in which Draco wakes in the hazy indeterminate hour between too early and too late, everything so still that he wonders if time has somehow stopped - the Manor grounds in dark and shadow, the light bluish dim, quarter moon on snow, the landscape tinted silverblue - a week of the grounds, turned ghostly, calling him out of the warmth of silk and down to crunch across months old snow. The crackling of frozen branches too loud and too quiet, ice-coated and sparkling in the brittle air. Until the bite of cold on bare ankles, neck, hands, brings him back to reality. And back inside.
A week in which he invariably finds himself, just before dawn, sitting at the kitchen table (used by only house elves and servants until very recently) knowing that he will not be getting back to sleep.
After a week Draco has had enough. He musters his finest air of entitlement and sits down in the chair opposite Remus, who gazes back at him as if he’s been expecting this all along, and he probably has, stupid half-animal intuition.
“You miss him. Don’t you?” Lupin’s voice is so kind, too kind, and gentle that Draco instinctively stiffens against it even more than he does against the incredible invasiveness of the question itself.
Miss who? His father? Crabbe? Goyle? Zabini? The pieces of himself that were lost somewhere amongst decisions that should never have had to be made. Why should he miss anything? The Manor is huge and cold and lonely but he has all the galleons he needs. He can have everything he could possibly want.
This is what he tells himself in the middle of the night when it feels like he is the only person left alive, and the air scorches his throat with a biting stinging cold as if it were smoke.
Draco says none of this and instead looks Lupin straight in the eyes and replies: “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lupin had, apparently, been talking about Potter. And Draco assures him that he has never done anything of the kind.
“I believe you are projecting old man.”
Lupin’s eyes search his face - with too kind eyes that seem to look into him, not at him - and murmurs, “That is possible.”
“Why is it that you persist in showing up here every morning?”
Remus surveys Draco over the mug he is warming his hands on, tatty fingerless gloves wrap it like a blanket amber eyes about to say more, but thinking better of it and settling on, “The coffee is excellent.”
Draco sighs. “Indeed, it is.”