Firewhiskey Fic: My Friend Liripipe, or A Different Truth
I forgot to post also here about the reveals at Firewhiskeyfic on Dreamwidth.
Check out the other fabulous banners as well as the winners and all the other delightful stories. Firewhiskey and ouzo helped me write my first words of fic since mid-August, and I'm super glad that this fest is where I ended up sharing another odd story with a very minor canon character as the protagonist.
Title: My Friend Liripipe, or A Different Truth
Author: paulamcg
Characters: Cuthbert Binns & Remus Lupin
Prompts used: All the prompts: Nearly Headless Nick, Godric's Hollow, Jack-o'-lantern, Graveyard, Harvest Party, Bewitch
Summary: A week before Halloween 1993, when a colleague appreciates his company, Cuthbert may feel alive, even though he's dead and it's Saturday.
Rating: G
Word count: 2870
Author's Notes (if any): This was written for The Sleepy Hollow Edition of . The original version can be read here in the DW community - together with the wonderful feedback from generously-commenting fellow participants. This time I've added a couple of sentences close to the end, in addition to fixing the typos and a few other errors. Exceptionally, I've also chosen a different title before posting the fic on AO3.
The final version is here on AO3
as well as right here:
A Different Truth
Today I can't help dwelling on the fact that I've passed through the blackboard.
Today, once again - because it's another Saturday. There are no students in my classroom, and I can never make myself lecture to empty halls.
It may look like I don't care if anyone's listening, but it's just that truly connecting with people is too hard for me. Reading aloud and knowing that my voice can be heard makes me feel alive and stop thinking about anything beyond the moment.
I do know that I am dead. Still, when I keep taking care of a class in the way Dumbledore once instructed me to teach History of Magic, it makes no difference.
On Saturdays and Sundays and holidays I hover desolately above my desk and peer out at the skies under which the earth is rotating too slowly. Today also at the deepening autumn colours along the lake shore: the birches acquiring copper shades after golden yellow and gradually balding, but barely growing as transparent as I am.
In this absolute solitude my mind becomes keen enough to traverse my own history, retelling it to me.
I haven't forgotten how my Muggle mum told me that dragons and ghosts didn't exist. I remember even the nursery rhymes. This one especially which she said was new to her, from an American book of rhymes: one flew east, one flew west...
I took the train north, and learnt a different truth.
Hogwarts didn't manage to teach me many skills, though. I struggled with Charms and Transfiguration... and all of it really. Totally lacking in charm, it seemed, I failed to make close friends or to get any pussy - cuckoo's nest they called it, too - and I found it hard to figure out what to do after school.
So I ended up working in a Hogsmeade pub. That's where, eight decades later, the newly-appointed headmaster kept throwing glances at me while describing to his brother what kind of candidates he could consider.
"He must have the proper looks. He, of course. A history professor must be an old white wizard. The more ancient, the better. More convincing. That bartender of yours..." That's when Albus Dumbledore turns fully towards me. "You must join the Hogwarts teaching staff."
"Me?" As if bewitched, I shift my gaze to his twinkling blue eyes, and back to the mesmerising glint of copper and silver in his long curls. "I... didn't do many NEWTs, definitely not one in History of Magic. As far as I can remember."
"No matter. That is not required. No memorisation either. It's enough that you can read."
That I can do, still.
Now that I swirl around to look down at the desk - at the several old tomes, always open on the pages Dumbledore has chosen - I catch a glimpse of a figure at the doorway.
Perhaps someone who'd... "Hear me?"
He leans against the doorframe, swaying a bit, and stroking his hideous moustache with the mouth of a Firewhiskey bottle. “Good mor... ning,” he slurs, “Porfess...sor Bunns!”
Ah, it's this year's Defence teacher.
I'm not the kind of ghost to socialise with other ghosts - or with other teachers either. But this wizard has approached me in a friendly manner before, as if he considered me an equal. The fact that he's now failed to name me correctly encourages me further.
"I wish a pleasant Saturday morning to you, my esteemed colleague," I say. "You can call me Cuddy."
To my disappointment, he doesn't reciprocate, only nods distractedly, and sings to himself, "My travelling companions are ghosts and..." and breaks off, says, “I mean no offence. Truly, I'd value your company.”
It looks like he intends to offer me a drink.
"I'd make a wretched drinking buddy."
But he's only weighing the bottle and finding it empty. He manages to set in on the floor and stand up straight again. "Done with that, I'm heading for a walk. And forgot to bring my sketchbook. That's what I usually do. Sketches, I mean. Landscape paintings. Not many people know. They think a professor only reads books."
"I only read. I can't do... those things: landscapes, walks."
"This close to Halloween, only a week to go... I need... I mean, you must be able to go out to the grounds, and as far as the forest, at least."
"Ah, you are right. Around Halloween our sphere of haunting actually reaches all the way to the nearest graveyard. Thank you for..." Reminding me, enticing me.
I haven't cared to resort to this annual freedom, just as I've chosen to move mainly between the rooms designated to me, extremely seldom to pass through the staff room or the Great Hall.
"Let us go then, you and I! The two of us share some interests in common, and a chat can cheer us both up," he says when I still linger close to the blackboard, hesitating. "Have you started reading the book I gave you?"
I reach to swing a pearly finger along the cover of the battered paperback on the corner of my desk, right where he left it. "The title..." Yes, that's the reason I've now thought about the nursery rhyme.
"Oh, stupid of me! I can hold it open for you, and you read while we're taking our walk."
We pass through the corridor and begin to descend the first staircase side by side. I couldn't possibly support him, if he still stumbled. Fortunately he's sobering up.
Perhaps I'm doing something good. These are hard times for him. After a week, a full moon almost exactly coincides with the anniversary of his loss of closest friends. I know well who he is. Attended the compulsory meeting in which Dumbledore made sure the whole staff were aware.
I haven't even forgotten he talked to me when he was a student. It's just that by that time, I'd become unable to memorise new names. It's inevitable that when addressing people, I resort to my old school mates' names: O'Flaherty, Grant, Pennyfeather... Liripipe! That's what I must have called the werewolf - back when he was young and I didn't know he was one, and again right after he introduced himself as the Defence teacher, and I said I did remember him as the exceptional student who used to question the historical facts in the texts I recited. The facts about goblins in particular.
He does look irrevocably sad and acutely anguished, albeit healthier, less gaunt than in early September.
Noticing my glance at his face, he squeezes the book in his hand, and by the time we're crossing the entrance hall, he's started chatting. "I read this novel by Ken Kesey back in the 70s, and just found this cheap copy when I got back to London in August."
"Back from... travelling?"
Without waiting for his answer, I burst right through the heavy door.
What did I expect? To feel some resistance: the press of matter against my... against what I don't possess? In my view, to experience something like that it would be a better Halloween treat for us. It's hard to be grateful for being able to now pass through the outer walls as easily as the inner ones.
But I guess it doesn't... matter! It is a greater joy to actually be - in the way someone like me can actually be - out here in the open air, so close to the wilting grass and the wind-swept trees. And to have someone beside me who's asked for my company.
"Travelling - drifting," he - let's say Liripipe - says when the door has closed behind him, and the word he chooses amuses... both of us.
Do we truly share a genuine smile as we move off?
My friend Liripipe has opened the book to the first page, but he now closes it, and tells me a bit more. "In the late 80s, I ended up in southern Africa. Perhaps that's why I like so much the rhythms in the songs another American made with African musicians. The line I sang to you about travelling companions is from one of those songs.
"And the book?" I'm eager to read aloud, as I'm not so good at finding words of my own to say to him.
"I felt it was somehow fitting. When I was returning to this cuckoo's nest. The term refers to an insane asylum. That's were the story is set. But also..."
He stops and scans the grounds. I listen to the Whomping Willow rustling its last pale leaves, and to the hems of Liripipe's robes flapping in the wind. He's not wearing a cloak.
"Also to the cruelty of our social... structures, institutions," he finally says, walking on. "And I meant returning to wizarding Britain, not just Hogwarts. I haven't reread the book yet, and I'll enjoy listening to your reading."
He's now holding the opened book out, and here it is: just the rhyme.
"... one flew east, one flew west/ One flew over the cuckoo's nest," I recite.
He turns the pages to the beginning of Part I, and I read, and he hears me, and truly listens - if only to stop dwelling on his singular sorrows and fears.
At times I glance up from the text and let my eyes wander along the edge of the forest ahead of us, and then among the trees, up their trunks to their highest branches and to the clouds above. I drift through it all effortlessly, but for once I'm not too sad about the loss of touch. Paradoxically, I feel I'm fully connected to every birch and rowan and scrub and bolder of stone.
My friend Liripipe, in turn, needs to pick his way and focus on not tripping on roots. He sometimes fails to reach his arm out for me to see the page easily. I don't mind taking small breaks so as to savour my surroundings and my companion's presence.
But in the end, I can't help committing the impoliteness of drifting partly over him. This happens when I've read five pages, reached the end of a section, and become engrossed with its powerful last lines, and I want to examine them closely.
...even if it didn't happen.
I can see my mistake in how my friend Liripipe shudders.
"I apologise."
"Oh, it's all right," he says lightly.
But he's still shivering, and he closes the book, presses it against his chest, and does his best to cover his hands by pulling at the sleeves of the cardigan he's wearing under the robes. He evidently doesn't enjoy being cold.
Instead, I catch myself revelling in the effect I can have on a wizard. I wish he wanted more of that kind of interaction.
He must prefer discussing what I've read. Perhaps I can now come up with something to say that stops him from regretting he chose my company.
"You know, what Dumbledore makes me teach is the opposite to this story: not the truth even if it did happen."
"You said it!" He gives me a grim smile. "He's always got an agenda of his own, and another, an even more hidden one. Perhaps he's used the monotonous classes for ingraining the official truths in the young minds. And for detecting those few students who are a potential threat to the establishment. The ones most inclined towards serious rebellion..."
"You who insist on engaging even a teacher like me in a debate. About the goblin rebellions..."
"And you must have been ordered to report to him. When you recited the texts about the goblins' cruel nature, I couldn't resist protesting. You helped me realise that history could show or hide how equally inhumane some acts of humans have been. How they can be even more cruel than crimes committed by those who are still denied equal rights. Dumbledore must have learnt he needed to keep me in check, and the other Marauders as well - I mean, my..."
He suddenly falls on his knees. Bur when he lifts his head, there's a warmer smile on his face.
"Look! Chanterelles!" There are bright yellow mushrooms on his palms. "We can have a harvest party. A wild harvest party!"
"I guess we could both do with some wild partying," I say, grinning.
"Maybe you can find some wild berries while I light a campfire. You know, I'll like one better than any jack-o'-lantern."
He starts by summoning dry pieces of birch bark, then uses his wand to raise small branches into a teepee around that tinder. It is a pleasure to spot the deep read of cowberries when I take a swirl around, but since I can't possibly pick any, I prefer watching him.
He goes on, "And I trust there's something you can enjoy with me: the smoke..."
Now he crouches and lights the tinder - not with wand magic, but in the goblin way: simply bends his fingers over the nail of his left thumb.
I could ask him how and when he's learnt that bit of wandless magic. Or I could point out that I won't smell the smoke, just as I won't taste the chanterelles, or ever consume any food or drink. But he knows, and he must remember, and there's no point in whining.
When he's pierced the chanterelles with a stick and keeps levitating it not too close to the smoking wood, he looks up at me. "I'd love watching you dance with the smoke, if you find it fun... wild enough."
"Watching me?"
"Yes." He squints. "You know, in this daylight I can barely discern you, and that's beautiful. This shimmer of you."
So as not to feel too self-conscious, I say nothing. I just start swirling above his campfire, and we keep watching each other.
"This is one of the things I've wanted to do this Halloween," he says quietly. "But also to travel to Godric's Hollow. I can't. Because of the moon, and the Wolfsbane Potion, which is supposed to be a blessing, but makes me more ill, unable to Apparate even now, a week before. You know, I wanted to visit that graveyard. Not just to see the graves. To see if perhaps those two friends of mine... they might have remained as..."
Now I need to interrupt him. "No. Why would James and Lily Potter have chosen to stay as ghosts! Their lives ended too early, but they lived well, until the end, and they certainly had the courage to go from this life."
"You must be right. Thank you, Cuddy! I guess I'm also trying to forget that my duty is to seek another... the living ghost of..." He shakes his head.
And as he starts munching on a mushroom but also scanning the woods around as if he'd suddenly remembered that he might spot the escaped prisoner right here, in bright daylight... I drift a bit higher.
But soon I can hear him sing, "Losing love is like a window in your heart/ Everybody sees you're blown apart/ Everybody sees the wind blow."
It's so sad and beautiful, but he stops and laughs a little. His moods are truly all over the place.
"Even I," I say, taking a swirl precariously close to his bare hands, which he's managed to warm with the fire, "without a body, can see the wind blow and hear the wind blow, although I can't feel it. Thanks to you, I've seen and heard today more than for a long time, if ever."
"I think... in a way, you feel a lot, too."
"Love, you mean?" I've listened to so much - even though he hasn't spelled out that he loved Sirius Black - that I dare ask, "Do you think there's any living wizard who would find it pleasant... I mean, the effect of my... intimate closeness."
"Severus," he answers without hesitation. "Seriously. He's aroused by such a feeling - what you made me feel."
"All right. I can try getting close with him. I can't be very picky. Although his hair..."
He shivers, which may or may not be related to what I'm saying.
He's finished the mushrooms, and the fire has burnt out.
"Let's start back before you get too cold," I hurry to say. "On our way, if you don't mind, I could tell you a bit of my own history."
"Please do!"
"Why I remained... Because of Albus Dumbledore. He must have bewitched me. I loved him. His gorgeous hair. He wanted me to continue to serve him. Who could be a worse history teacher - a better one for his purposes - than a dead white man? He enticed me to remain by giving me false hopes... regarding another handsome wizard with long curls. A dead one. None other than your House's Sir Nicholas."
"Oh. Thank you for sharing..."
A gust of wind blows leaves across our path and right through me. They glow warm amber like Liripipe's eyes, brightening the day further, and I doubt my facial expressions are visible at all.
"May I also give you a piece of advice? Let your hair grow." I trust he can hear the affectionate playfulness in my voice. "And get rid of that moustache!"
Notes: The song Remus sings is Graceland by Paul Simon.
The book Cutbert reads is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and the sentence he modifies is: But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.
Let us go then you and I is that line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot which my Remus is most fond of abusing.
Check out the other fabulous banners as well as the winners and all the other delightful stories. Firewhiskey and ouzo helped me write my first words of fic since mid-August, and I'm super glad that this fest is where I ended up sharing another odd story with a very minor canon character as the protagonist.
Title: My Friend Liripipe, or A Different Truth
Author: paulamcg
Characters: Cuthbert Binns & Remus Lupin
Prompts used: All the prompts: Nearly Headless Nick, Godric's Hollow, Jack-o'-lantern, Graveyard, Harvest Party, Bewitch
Summary: A week before Halloween 1993, when a colleague appreciates his company, Cuthbert may feel alive, even though he's dead and it's Saturday.
Rating: G
Word count: 2870
Author's Notes (if any): This was written for The Sleepy Hollow Edition of . The original version can be read here in the DW community - together with the wonderful feedback from generously-commenting fellow participants. This time I've added a couple of sentences close to the end, in addition to fixing the typos and a few other errors. Exceptionally, I've also chosen a different title before posting the fic on AO3.
The final version is here on AO3
as well as right here:
A Different Truth
Today I can't help dwelling on the fact that I've passed through the blackboard.
Today, once again - because it's another Saturday. There are no students in my classroom, and I can never make myself lecture to empty halls.
It may look like I don't care if anyone's listening, but it's just that truly connecting with people is too hard for me. Reading aloud and knowing that my voice can be heard makes me feel alive and stop thinking about anything beyond the moment.
I do know that I am dead. Still, when I keep taking care of a class in the way Dumbledore once instructed me to teach History of Magic, it makes no difference.
On Saturdays and Sundays and holidays I hover desolately above my desk and peer out at the skies under which the earth is rotating too slowly. Today also at the deepening autumn colours along the lake shore: the birches acquiring copper shades after golden yellow and gradually balding, but barely growing as transparent as I am.
In this absolute solitude my mind becomes keen enough to traverse my own history, retelling it to me.
I haven't forgotten how my Muggle mum told me that dragons and ghosts didn't exist. I remember even the nursery rhymes. This one especially which she said was new to her, from an American book of rhymes: one flew east, one flew west...
I took the train north, and learnt a different truth.
Hogwarts didn't manage to teach me many skills, though. I struggled with Charms and Transfiguration... and all of it really. Totally lacking in charm, it seemed, I failed to make close friends or to get any pussy - cuckoo's nest they called it, too - and I found it hard to figure out what to do after school.
So I ended up working in a Hogsmeade pub. That's where, eight decades later, the newly-appointed headmaster kept throwing glances at me while describing to his brother what kind of candidates he could consider.
"He must have the proper looks. He, of course. A history professor must be an old white wizard. The more ancient, the better. More convincing. That bartender of yours..." That's when Albus Dumbledore turns fully towards me. "You must join the Hogwarts teaching staff."
"Me?" As if bewitched, I shift my gaze to his twinkling blue eyes, and back to the mesmerising glint of copper and silver in his long curls. "I... didn't do many NEWTs, definitely not one in History of Magic. As far as I can remember."
"No matter. That is not required. No memorisation either. It's enough that you can read."
That I can do, still.
Now that I swirl around to look down at the desk - at the several old tomes, always open on the pages Dumbledore has chosen - I catch a glimpse of a figure at the doorway.
Perhaps someone who'd... "Hear me?"
He leans against the doorframe, swaying a bit, and stroking his hideous moustache with the mouth of a Firewhiskey bottle. “Good mor... ning,” he slurs, “Porfess...sor Bunns!”
Ah, it's this year's Defence teacher.
I'm not the kind of ghost to socialise with other ghosts - or with other teachers either. But this wizard has approached me in a friendly manner before, as if he considered me an equal. The fact that he's now failed to name me correctly encourages me further.
"I wish a pleasant Saturday morning to you, my esteemed colleague," I say. "You can call me Cuddy."
To my disappointment, he doesn't reciprocate, only nods distractedly, and sings to himself, "My travelling companions are ghosts and..." and breaks off, says, “I mean no offence. Truly, I'd value your company.”
It looks like he intends to offer me a drink.
"I'd make a wretched drinking buddy."
But he's only weighing the bottle and finding it empty. He manages to set in on the floor and stand up straight again. "Done with that, I'm heading for a walk. And forgot to bring my sketchbook. That's what I usually do. Sketches, I mean. Landscape paintings. Not many people know. They think a professor only reads books."
"I only read. I can't do... those things: landscapes, walks."
"This close to Halloween, only a week to go... I need... I mean, you must be able to go out to the grounds, and as far as the forest, at least."
"Ah, you are right. Around Halloween our sphere of haunting actually reaches all the way to the nearest graveyard. Thank you for..." Reminding me, enticing me.
I haven't cared to resort to this annual freedom, just as I've chosen to move mainly between the rooms designated to me, extremely seldom to pass through the staff room or the Great Hall.
"Let us go then, you and I! The two of us share some interests in common, and a chat can cheer us both up," he says when I still linger close to the blackboard, hesitating. "Have you started reading the book I gave you?"
I reach to swing a pearly finger along the cover of the battered paperback on the corner of my desk, right where he left it. "The title..." Yes, that's the reason I've now thought about the nursery rhyme.
"Oh, stupid of me! I can hold it open for you, and you read while we're taking our walk."
We pass through the corridor and begin to descend the first staircase side by side. I couldn't possibly support him, if he still stumbled. Fortunately he's sobering up.
Perhaps I'm doing something good. These are hard times for him. After a week, a full moon almost exactly coincides with the anniversary of his loss of closest friends. I know well who he is. Attended the compulsory meeting in which Dumbledore made sure the whole staff were aware.
I haven't even forgotten he talked to me when he was a student. It's just that by that time, I'd become unable to memorise new names. It's inevitable that when addressing people, I resort to my old school mates' names: O'Flaherty, Grant, Pennyfeather... Liripipe! That's what I must have called the werewolf - back when he was young and I didn't know he was one, and again right after he introduced himself as the Defence teacher, and I said I did remember him as the exceptional student who used to question the historical facts in the texts I recited. The facts about goblins in particular.
He does look irrevocably sad and acutely anguished, albeit healthier, less gaunt than in early September.
Noticing my glance at his face, he squeezes the book in his hand, and by the time we're crossing the entrance hall, he's started chatting. "I read this novel by Ken Kesey back in the 70s, and just found this cheap copy when I got back to London in August."
"Back from... travelling?"
Without waiting for his answer, I burst right through the heavy door.
What did I expect? To feel some resistance: the press of matter against my... against what I don't possess? In my view, to experience something like that it would be a better Halloween treat for us. It's hard to be grateful for being able to now pass through the outer walls as easily as the inner ones.
But I guess it doesn't... matter! It is a greater joy to actually be - in the way someone like me can actually be - out here in the open air, so close to the wilting grass and the wind-swept trees. And to have someone beside me who's asked for my company.
"Travelling - drifting," he - let's say Liripipe - says when the door has closed behind him, and the word he chooses amuses... both of us.
Do we truly share a genuine smile as we move off?
My friend Liripipe has opened the book to the first page, but he now closes it, and tells me a bit more. "In the late 80s, I ended up in southern Africa. Perhaps that's why I like so much the rhythms in the songs another American made with African musicians. The line I sang to you about travelling companions is from one of those songs.
"And the book?" I'm eager to read aloud, as I'm not so good at finding words of my own to say to him.
"I felt it was somehow fitting. When I was returning to this cuckoo's nest. The term refers to an insane asylum. That's were the story is set. But also..."
He stops and scans the grounds. I listen to the Whomping Willow rustling its last pale leaves, and to the hems of Liripipe's robes flapping in the wind. He's not wearing a cloak.
"Also to the cruelty of our social... structures, institutions," he finally says, walking on. "And I meant returning to wizarding Britain, not just Hogwarts. I haven't reread the book yet, and I'll enjoy listening to your reading."
He's now holding the opened book out, and here it is: just the rhyme.
"... one flew east, one flew west/ One flew over the cuckoo's nest," I recite.
He turns the pages to the beginning of Part I, and I read, and he hears me, and truly listens - if only to stop dwelling on his singular sorrows and fears.
At times I glance up from the text and let my eyes wander along the edge of the forest ahead of us, and then among the trees, up their trunks to their highest branches and to the clouds above. I drift through it all effortlessly, but for once I'm not too sad about the loss of touch. Paradoxically, I feel I'm fully connected to every birch and rowan and scrub and bolder of stone.
My friend Liripipe, in turn, needs to pick his way and focus on not tripping on roots. He sometimes fails to reach his arm out for me to see the page easily. I don't mind taking small breaks so as to savour my surroundings and my companion's presence.
But in the end, I can't help committing the impoliteness of drifting partly over him. This happens when I've read five pages, reached the end of a section, and become engrossed with its powerful last lines, and I want to examine them closely.
...even if it didn't happen.
I can see my mistake in how my friend Liripipe shudders.
"I apologise."
"Oh, it's all right," he says lightly.
But he's still shivering, and he closes the book, presses it against his chest, and does his best to cover his hands by pulling at the sleeves of the cardigan he's wearing under the robes. He evidently doesn't enjoy being cold.
Instead, I catch myself revelling in the effect I can have on a wizard. I wish he wanted more of that kind of interaction.
He must prefer discussing what I've read. Perhaps I can now come up with something to say that stops him from regretting he chose my company.
"You know, what Dumbledore makes me teach is the opposite to this story: not the truth even if it did happen."
"You said it!" He gives me a grim smile. "He's always got an agenda of his own, and another, an even more hidden one. Perhaps he's used the monotonous classes for ingraining the official truths in the young minds. And for detecting those few students who are a potential threat to the establishment. The ones most inclined towards serious rebellion..."
"You who insist on engaging even a teacher like me in a debate. About the goblin rebellions..."
"And you must have been ordered to report to him. When you recited the texts about the goblins' cruel nature, I couldn't resist protesting. You helped me realise that history could show or hide how equally inhumane some acts of humans have been. How they can be even more cruel than crimes committed by those who are still denied equal rights. Dumbledore must have learnt he needed to keep me in check, and the other Marauders as well - I mean, my..."
He suddenly falls on his knees. Bur when he lifts his head, there's a warmer smile on his face.
"Look! Chanterelles!" There are bright yellow mushrooms on his palms. "We can have a harvest party. A wild harvest party!"
"I guess we could both do with some wild partying," I say, grinning.
"Maybe you can find some wild berries while I light a campfire. You know, I'll like one better than any jack-o'-lantern."
He starts by summoning dry pieces of birch bark, then uses his wand to raise small branches into a teepee around that tinder. It is a pleasure to spot the deep read of cowberries when I take a swirl around, but since I can't possibly pick any, I prefer watching him.
He goes on, "And I trust there's something you can enjoy with me: the smoke..."
Now he crouches and lights the tinder - not with wand magic, but in the goblin way: simply bends his fingers over the nail of his left thumb.
I could ask him how and when he's learnt that bit of wandless magic. Or I could point out that I won't smell the smoke, just as I won't taste the chanterelles, or ever consume any food or drink. But he knows, and he must remember, and there's no point in whining.
When he's pierced the chanterelles with a stick and keeps levitating it not too close to the smoking wood, he looks up at me. "I'd love watching you dance with the smoke, if you find it fun... wild enough."
"Watching me?"
"Yes." He squints. "You know, in this daylight I can barely discern you, and that's beautiful. This shimmer of you."
So as not to feel too self-conscious, I say nothing. I just start swirling above his campfire, and we keep watching each other.
"This is one of the things I've wanted to do this Halloween," he says quietly. "But also to travel to Godric's Hollow. I can't. Because of the moon, and the Wolfsbane Potion, which is supposed to be a blessing, but makes me more ill, unable to Apparate even now, a week before. You know, I wanted to visit that graveyard. Not just to see the graves. To see if perhaps those two friends of mine... they might have remained as..."
Now I need to interrupt him. "No. Why would James and Lily Potter have chosen to stay as ghosts! Their lives ended too early, but they lived well, until the end, and they certainly had the courage to go from this life."
"You must be right. Thank you, Cuddy! I guess I'm also trying to forget that my duty is to seek another... the living ghost of..." He shakes his head.
And as he starts munching on a mushroom but also scanning the woods around as if he'd suddenly remembered that he might spot the escaped prisoner right here, in bright daylight... I drift a bit higher.
But soon I can hear him sing, "Losing love is like a window in your heart/ Everybody sees you're blown apart/ Everybody sees the wind blow."
It's so sad and beautiful, but he stops and laughs a little. His moods are truly all over the place.
"Even I," I say, taking a swirl precariously close to his bare hands, which he's managed to warm with the fire, "without a body, can see the wind blow and hear the wind blow, although I can't feel it. Thanks to you, I've seen and heard today more than for a long time, if ever."
"I think... in a way, you feel a lot, too."
"Love, you mean?" I've listened to so much - even though he hasn't spelled out that he loved Sirius Black - that I dare ask, "Do you think there's any living wizard who would find it pleasant... I mean, the effect of my... intimate closeness."
"Severus," he answers without hesitation. "Seriously. He's aroused by such a feeling - what you made me feel."
"All right. I can try getting close with him. I can't be very picky. Although his hair..."
He shivers, which may or may not be related to what I'm saying.
He's finished the mushrooms, and the fire has burnt out.
"Let's start back before you get too cold," I hurry to say. "On our way, if you don't mind, I could tell you a bit of my own history."
"Please do!"
"Why I remained... Because of Albus Dumbledore. He must have bewitched me. I loved him. His gorgeous hair. He wanted me to continue to serve him. Who could be a worse history teacher - a better one for his purposes - than a dead white man? He enticed me to remain by giving me false hopes... regarding another handsome wizard with long curls. A dead one. None other than your House's Sir Nicholas."
"Oh. Thank you for sharing..."
A gust of wind blows leaves across our path and right through me. They glow warm amber like Liripipe's eyes, brightening the day further, and I doubt my facial expressions are visible at all.
"May I also give you a piece of advice? Let your hair grow." I trust he can hear the affectionate playfulness in my voice. "And get rid of that moustache!"
Notes: The song Remus sings is Graceland by Paul Simon.
The book Cutbert reads is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and the sentence he modifies is: But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.
Let us go then you and I is that line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot which my Remus is most fond of abusing.