Parallel Reflections "The Past"
Title: The Past
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,279
Notes/Warnings: pre-HBP, severe angst
Summary: If you leave the unknown unexplored, you free yourself to imagine what you may in a place where disappointment doesn’t exist.
This is a companion fic to Consequence and Redemption, but it can be read as a stand-alone piece. I don't own HP in any way, shape, or form.
The past is desperate energy, live, in electric field. It chooses a single moment, a chance so domestic we don’t know we’ve missed it, a moment that crashes into us from behind and changes all that follows.
- Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
She was half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.
- JKR, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The Past
~*Spring 1997*~
It was the moment our paths crossed for the first time. I like to imagine this is when some divine being gathered the separate and far-flung threads of our lives and began weaving them into a single strand. Of course, I didn’t sense any sort of great cosmic shift or hear a choir of angels break into song; rather, I marked this momentous occasion by hardly noticing it at all.
It was one of the most significant moments in my life, but I didn’t pause. Like a warm breeze sweeping past your face in the middle of a screaming hurricane, it’s completely overwhelmed by the enormity of a greater circumstance. It’s brushed aside, but its presence just curious enough to remember. It tugs on your conscious gently and persistently, only to disappear as you focus on it, leaving only wisps of what you want the past to be.
She was half laughing…
Her laughter is what I miss most. Those wry smiles, the determined set of her jaw, the tilt of her head, the challenge blazing on her face. That private half-grin that would appear before she’d run off to do something we’d never find out about if it weren’t for Hermione. Then she’d come back smiling with triumph in her eyes. She’d feign innocence and pretend not to know what we were asking her about. Of course, it was all part of her game. The one she only seemed to know the rules to. The game I failed at every time. The one that made me first notice her.
…half crying…
Words aren’t enough to absorb the tears, for time has passed beyond the comforting reach of apologies. And really, are words ever enough? Can the ripped edges made ragged by the collision of circumstance and wrong choices ever be made smooth and joined up again? Can the scars of time itself ever be mended?
If I’d known, maybe I could’ve stopped it. Then the tears might’ve been different. Joyful. Warm. Sliding down her cheeks to touch her smile instead of lips clenched tight in effort. I wish I could go back and redirect the course of time, revert us onto a different path. They say time can be overcome. I would do it if I could. I think she would, too.
…running to keep up…
She was always there even if she was a few steps behind, running. She was always there even if I didn’t notice, watching. She was always there even when I didn’t want her to be, waiting. She was there even when I told her that she couldn’t follow. Even when I had tried to banish her from waking thought. Even when I told myself that it was because I cared for her. She was there while I tried to purge myself of the emotions that would swallow me whole. I tried for her and for me and for Ron and Hermione and Sirius and everyone I loved. But love alone wasn’t enough. At least not for me. Not this time around.
…then she fell back…
She fell….
.…and fell….
….and fell.
I still see her laying there, a smudge of vibrant red against a grey canvas of cold stone. The Chamber was the beginning of the end. It was there that the future - mine, hers, ours, his - was made, where it began to condense until it grew solid. I didn’t notice then, but rarely did I notice when significant events of my life swept past. I was only twelve and scared senseless. But I’m no longer twelve and I’m not scared. I know what to look for. Time has a way of revealing its intentions long before it acts. Time can march backwards. Now I understand that the end always comes first.
…and waved.
Her hand was a blur hovering in the air above her head as the train carrying me to my future sped forward. That I remember with clarity just like the feeling of her fingers around mine, her reassuring squeeze infused with vitality and a sureness that always made me believe. She squeezed the doubt right out of me. Always.
That wave from the edge of the train tracks was from a time when the world glowed with promise and adventure. A time when I believed that nothing could be more terrible than what I was leaving behind. I thought it was the beginning. But now I’m unsure. I wonder if she was waving hello or if she was bidding me goodbye.
But now that the moment of our meeting has passed, all I can do is curse myself for not paying more attention, or grabbing onto it before it was swept away.
A secret part of me doesn’t want to remember that moment perfectly despite the other part of me that wishes to revisit it to memorize the details: her face, her tears, her laughter, her hand waving. But even as I let the darkness in, my thoughts wander back to what I think I can remember from that fleeting instant. And, as always, I imagine a different detail.
But that is the beauty of not really remembering. It leaves the door of possibility cracked open. Half of a memory is like the light thrown from a candle flickering in a dark room - it illuminates everywhere but the darkened corners. You wonder if you should venture forward, hands outstretched, so that whatever lies behind the light can condense into your consciousness. Or you hesitate, afraid that the corners are empty, and wonder if it would be wiser to linger in the light and let mystery claim them forever. Because if you leave the unknown unexplored, you free yourself to imagine what you may in a place where disappointment doesn’t exist.
Just don’t turn on the light.
Let the darkness come.
It’s amazing how you can become lost in a single moment and, if you look hard enough, a lifetime of memory can be found. Peeling back the crumpled edges of remembrance reveals a kaleidoscope of hidden threads of memory curled and twisted between in the tissue-paper thin layers of time. All it takes is the patience to untie the knots and the fortitude to examine the small gifts as they reveal themselves. Appreciate them for what they are. Accept what time has made of you. Be thankful for what you have, like the lint in corners of your empty pockets, or the fact that if you feel pain, then it means you’re still alive. Perhaps.
I drink in what I can see in the wavering and flickering light as the candle burns down, wax dripping like tears as memory grows ragged with time. The dust of the past grows thick. Images begin to fray at the edges, unraveling thread by thread until they are unrecognizable and irreconcilable strands made strangers by your own hand.
-x/X\x-
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,279
Notes/Warnings: pre-HBP, severe angst
Summary: If you leave the unknown unexplored, you free yourself to imagine what you may in a place where disappointment doesn’t exist.
This is a companion fic to Consequence and Redemption, but it can be read as a stand-alone piece. I don't own HP in any way, shape, or form.
The past is desperate energy, live, in electric field. It chooses a single moment, a chance so domestic we don’t know we’ve missed it, a moment that crashes into us from behind and changes all that follows.
- Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
She was half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.
- JKR, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The Past
~*Spring 1997*~
It was the moment our paths crossed for the first time. I like to imagine this is when some divine being gathered the separate and far-flung threads of our lives and began weaving them into a single strand. Of course, I didn’t sense any sort of great cosmic shift or hear a choir of angels break into song; rather, I marked this momentous occasion by hardly noticing it at all.
It was one of the most significant moments in my life, but I didn’t pause. Like a warm breeze sweeping past your face in the middle of a screaming hurricane, it’s completely overwhelmed by the enormity of a greater circumstance. It’s brushed aside, but its presence just curious enough to remember. It tugs on your conscious gently and persistently, only to disappear as you focus on it, leaving only wisps of what you want the past to be.
She was half laughing…
Her laughter is what I miss most. Those wry smiles, the determined set of her jaw, the tilt of her head, the challenge blazing on her face. That private half-grin that would appear before she’d run off to do something we’d never find out about if it weren’t for Hermione. Then she’d come back smiling with triumph in her eyes. She’d feign innocence and pretend not to know what we were asking her about. Of course, it was all part of her game. The one she only seemed to know the rules to. The game I failed at every time. The one that made me first notice her.
…half crying…
Words aren’t enough to absorb the tears, for time has passed beyond the comforting reach of apologies. And really, are words ever enough? Can the ripped edges made ragged by the collision of circumstance and wrong choices ever be made smooth and joined up again? Can the scars of time itself ever be mended?
If I’d known, maybe I could’ve stopped it. Then the tears might’ve been different. Joyful. Warm. Sliding down her cheeks to touch her smile instead of lips clenched tight in effort. I wish I could go back and redirect the course of time, revert us onto a different path. They say time can be overcome. I would do it if I could. I think she would, too.
…running to keep up…
She was always there even if she was a few steps behind, running. She was always there even if I didn’t notice, watching. She was always there even when I didn’t want her to be, waiting. She was there even when I told her that she couldn’t follow. Even when I had tried to banish her from waking thought. Even when I told myself that it was because I cared for her. She was there while I tried to purge myself of the emotions that would swallow me whole. I tried for her and for me and for Ron and Hermione and Sirius and everyone I loved. But love alone wasn’t enough. At least not for me. Not this time around.
…then she fell back…
She fell….
.…and fell….
….and fell.
I still see her laying there, a smudge of vibrant red against a grey canvas of cold stone. The Chamber was the beginning of the end. It was there that the future - mine, hers, ours, his - was made, where it began to condense until it grew solid. I didn’t notice then, but rarely did I notice when significant events of my life swept past. I was only twelve and scared senseless. But I’m no longer twelve and I’m not scared. I know what to look for. Time has a way of revealing its intentions long before it acts. Time can march backwards. Now I understand that the end always comes first.
…and waved.
Her hand was a blur hovering in the air above her head as the train carrying me to my future sped forward. That I remember with clarity just like the feeling of her fingers around mine, her reassuring squeeze infused with vitality and a sureness that always made me believe. She squeezed the doubt right out of me. Always.
That wave from the edge of the train tracks was from a time when the world glowed with promise and adventure. A time when I believed that nothing could be more terrible than what I was leaving behind. I thought it was the beginning. But now I’m unsure. I wonder if she was waving hello or if she was bidding me goodbye.
But now that the moment of our meeting has passed, all I can do is curse myself for not paying more attention, or grabbing onto it before it was swept away.
A secret part of me doesn’t want to remember that moment perfectly despite the other part of me that wishes to revisit it to memorize the details: her face, her tears, her laughter, her hand waving. But even as I let the darkness in, my thoughts wander back to what I think I can remember from that fleeting instant. And, as always, I imagine a different detail.
But that is the beauty of not really remembering. It leaves the door of possibility cracked open. Half of a memory is like the light thrown from a candle flickering in a dark room - it illuminates everywhere but the darkened corners. You wonder if you should venture forward, hands outstretched, so that whatever lies behind the light can condense into your consciousness. Or you hesitate, afraid that the corners are empty, and wonder if it would be wiser to linger in the light and let mystery claim them forever. Because if you leave the unknown unexplored, you free yourself to imagine what you may in a place where disappointment doesn’t exist.
Just don’t turn on the light.
Let the darkness come.
It’s amazing how you can become lost in a single moment and, if you look hard enough, a lifetime of memory can be found. Peeling back the crumpled edges of remembrance reveals a kaleidoscope of hidden threads of memory curled and twisted between in the tissue-paper thin layers of time. All it takes is the patience to untie the knots and the fortitude to examine the small gifts as they reveal themselves. Appreciate them for what they are. Accept what time has made of you. Be thankful for what you have, like the lint in corners of your empty pockets, or the fact that if you feel pain, then it means you’re still alive. Perhaps.
I drink in what I can see in the wavering and flickering light as the candle burns down, wax dripping like tears as memory grows ragged with time. The dust of the past grows thick. Images begin to fray at the edges, unraveling thread by thread until they are unrecognizable and irreconcilable strands made strangers by your own hand.
-x/X\x-