FIC for: sapphiretragedy
Title: Entirely Too Subtle
Recipient: sapphiretragedy
Fic or Art: FIC
Rating: PG, because of themes
Characters: Harry Potter
Warnings: Post war
Summary: A fic about old war games, and how you can't really change what you once were.
Notes: There's a note at the end, which you should read after you finish the fic. Thanks to A for beta reading.
I don't suppose there's any point in comparing the dimming light from your new lanterns to the colour of the walls, because when my eyes go soft and my head tilts back, it all blends anyway. It's an amber haze, these late afternoons, and later, I will barely remember them. They all blur together and sifting them apart takes entirely too much effort that I no longer have an abundance of.
I wash the dishes and think of war clichés. I call it a hobby, but only because I don't have any others. My invading presence as company has dictated a rose-pattern sort of mood. If I ask you for an open invitation to your floo, would you give it to me? We've bloomed and briared together, and I'm not entirely sure further pruning with sharp green shears is going to do any sort of difference.
I really don't make sense anymore. Let's pretend I didn't think that at you.
You left your leather journal on the desk. I don't know if you meant to or not, but it was there. ...Yes, I did read it. Curiosity, cats and whatnot.
If I could change into a cat, do you think I would be more like my former professor, or like the Cheshire cat? On one hand, I could have the dots that ring around my eyes, with a jagged bolt that streaked back between my ears. On the other hand, I could vanish away, stealing my body and appearance away from public attention and acclaim. I think I would find it difficult to pull the latter off, though - I don't nearly have enough smiles to leave hanging in trees.
You don't write the dates at the top of your entries, so I can't follow them very well. It steals away from the sense of progression that a journal tends to lend to the reader, and 'today's 'yesterday's and 'tomorrow's are left hanging in a space without reference. Has everyday life become so indistinguishable that without numbers and months it takes on the appearance of a softened block of butter? How disappointing.
I put it back, but upside-down. Did you notice?
I play a game with you when I visit and I don't think you can tell that we're playing. We used to do it all the time, when the lamps were low and the candles were close to being pinched out. We'd stare, and stare, and stare into the gloom, imprinting rooms and maps into the caves of our minds. We'd line the walls with code and secrecy, and deep under the rugs and pulled-up floors we'd mince the translations and spin it into mental paste. It kept things together by telling the real and the fake apart.
Our code, our code was half-things-said. Our code was a game.
Fuck off and stop telling me like I don't know.
No I can't leave you here.
Just do it I don't need you to watch over me.
I don't want to be by myself. Don't make me be by myself.
Whatever you want. We're all alone anyway.
Of course we are. It's why change frightens us. It reminds you that someone else is there. I moved the handles of the teacups last week, before I left. They were in the other direction. Did you notice?
You changed the paint that week, when I was preoccupied by your neglected gardening. It seems like I had finally dealt with the vines across the stone wall, and suddenly the kitchen was a different shade. I noticed. It's like writing on parchment and then suddenly using manila paper. Clever, really, but I did notice.
You rarely respond to my letters anymore. It’s like half the ones I write never make it off my writing desk, let alone out the door. I leave them in the postbox to be picked up, and it's back again the following week. I then pick them up, tie a piece of string around it and bring it to you. Perhaps my postman is defective or secretly returns the letters like the recipient never existed.
Ha - I'm not quite that foolish yet, you know. I’m comprised of habits that I’ve been told that I should have purged long ago. It’s difficult to say that you must give up the very compulsions and instincts that once kept your blood under your skin and your thoughts in your head.
Now I ramble. Have you noticed? When I look at you and you ask why my eyes flicker, it’s because I’m rambling. It’s not the light glimmering on a memory, or a wicked gleam as I tip cream into your tea, no. It’s the words running through my imagined cryptograph, coding my thoughts as I watch you cut the vegetables, or do the dishes, or ask to take my coat. Or do any of those normal things that can hardly be normal when you never did them before.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten, then, like so many things about me that you’ve neglected to remember. Perhaps you’ve started to believe the news in the papers, on how I’ve grown inward and silent. Maybe you’ve gone and purged the instincts of war, and the unpleasant memories attached to them, and now I’m just quiet and thoughtful. Perhaps you rationalize as much as you used to analyze, and that’s what I see when your eyes flicker like that.
Don’t rationalize events for those who follow after us, because people will believe you - they tend not to notice the terrible past. They don’t notice the cracked pictures on the redone walls, or the hidden shelters celebrated as spacious wine cellars. They don’t remember that the house address comes from one person; only that one person seems to continually give the address time after time.
But, if you remember, what happened in the standstill of drawn wands and final moments ripped my speech from my mouth. My sighs became broken, and the easy freedom of expression was taken from me. My words remain, despite this last destruction, in my hands, on this page, and in my eyes.
Perhaps it’s my hobby, but quoting dead generals seem appropriate. "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." -Robert E. Lee
I don’t think I’ll visit anymore. Is it what you’ve wanted? I’m the last reminder of everything you’re trying to bury away, and that’s all I’ll ever have the energy and presence to be. It’s well that I’m an example and reminder, or else we would forget that it ever happened.
I neglected to add a salutation - something that was doubled in usage since we agreed on never using ‘good-bye’. Did you notice?
-Harry
_________
Notes: I didn’t want to put this at the top, because I didn’t want to name the person that Harry was writing to, and I didn’t want to let it out that this fic was actually a letter in disguise. ;9 Anyway, I’m curious to know who you think it is, since I wrote it as being Draco…though it really could be any number of people. ^^ I hope you liked it - it’s not exactly Darkfic, but it plays with your mind. Bwaha.