Harry Potter - inkstained fingers (PG)
Title: inkstained fingers
Author: risa
Rating: PG
Characters: Remus, Marauders&Lily on the side
Summary: On post-moon nights, he writes letters to the dead.
He half-thought--always knowing he was wrong--that maybe he shouldn't have gone to Hogwarts at all.
On bitter post-moon nights, Remus Lupin regretted nothing more fervently.
On bitter post-moon nights, Remus Lupin wrapped himself in tattered shreds of comforter and wondered between freezing breaths if he would ever be able to wholly forget his dead, or the shades of a once-lover locked away in Azkaban.
Instead of forgetting, he remembered. Thousands of letters to the dead, written by half-light in a drafty flat by a slouching, disheveled man with inkstained fingers. Someday--he thought--he'd burn them all, lose them in the fire and live again.
But the somedays passed and with each dawn he would open his eyes to grim clouds and not sun, to heavy tired limbs and perpetual frostbite. So the letters continued.
He wrote to Lily most often, almost daily, about books and work and friends and family and hope. He'd write to James, too, on darker days asking about death and survival and how long one can reasonbly be expected to go on living. His letters to Peter were few and far between: brief, melancholy, but reassuring. Come over and I'll treat you, the sweetest chocolate in the world... To Sirius--who might as well have been dead for all the contact that was left--to Sirius who was not dead but so far away, he wrote monthly, in the hour before the full moon. To Sirius he wrote about anger and betrayal and trust and promises and love.
He writes until his fingers cramp and the tearstains sting on his cheeks-- furiously, drawing the quill from ink to parchment and back again in familiar patterns, in familiar questions why, why, why?
In the end he doesn't know. No one knows, save the shadow of a man, half-crazed and locked away forever. Remus leans back in his stiff wooden chair, shivering and so definitively alone, drowning in the inksmell and the silence. It's been no use, he realizes, every time. It's been no use.
Somehow, he had thought the words would keep him warm.
Crossposted here and here.
Author: risa
Rating: PG
Characters: Remus, Marauders&Lily on the side
Summary: On post-moon nights, he writes letters to the dead.
He half-thought--always knowing he was wrong--that maybe he shouldn't have gone to Hogwarts at all.
On bitter post-moon nights, Remus Lupin regretted nothing more fervently.
On bitter post-moon nights, Remus Lupin wrapped himself in tattered shreds of comforter and wondered between freezing breaths if he would ever be able to wholly forget his dead, or the shades of a once-lover locked away in Azkaban.
Instead of forgetting, he remembered. Thousands of letters to the dead, written by half-light in a drafty flat by a slouching, disheveled man with inkstained fingers. Someday--he thought--he'd burn them all, lose them in the fire and live again.
But the somedays passed and with each dawn he would open his eyes to grim clouds and not sun, to heavy tired limbs and perpetual frostbite. So the letters continued.
He wrote to Lily most often, almost daily, about books and work and friends and family and hope. He'd write to James, too, on darker days asking about death and survival and how long one can reasonbly be expected to go on living. His letters to Peter were few and far between: brief, melancholy, but reassuring. Come over and I'll treat you, the sweetest chocolate in the world... To Sirius--who might as well have been dead for all the contact that was left--to Sirius who was not dead but so far away, he wrote monthly, in the hour before the full moon. To Sirius he wrote about anger and betrayal and trust and promises and love.
He writes until his fingers cramp and the tearstains sting on his cheeks-- furiously, drawing the quill from ink to parchment and back again in familiar patterns, in familiar questions why, why, why?
In the end he doesn't know. No one knows, save the shadow of a man, half-crazed and locked away forever. Remus leans back in his stiff wooden chair, shivering and so definitively alone, drowning in the inksmell and the silence. It's been no use, he realizes, every time. It's been no use.
Somehow, he had thought the words would keep him warm.
Crossposted here and here.