Simply Dangling- Prompt 5
Title: Simply Dangling
Author: Devonwood
Format & Word Count: Fic; 1,674
Rating: PG/ K+
Prompt: Prompt 5 (Margaret Atwood poem)
Warning: Gets a little cheesy at the end. You might want to bring some crackers.
Summary: “Y’know, for the entire day of December 31st, I always feel as if I’m dangling.”
Author's Note: I decided to use the prompt as more of setting cues, rather than deciphering the true meaning of it. Because while I am good at deciphering poetry, it is Friday. :D This takes place during the New Years of book 7.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read the “letter a day” thing before as I’m not brilliant enough to have come up with something like that, so if you know of another existing fic where that occurs, just comment and tell me. Credit where credit is due. :D
“I want to share something with you” was all she had written on a note that was carefully left on Remus’s ratty old dresser, save for the “Meet me at the Cliffside; you know where.” which was scrawled underneath it. So when Remus arrived at the Cliffside, waves crashing against the rocks below him, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Surely he wasn’t expecting Tonks, dressed in warm wizard wear clothing, sitting on the edge of the cliff with her bare feet dangling over, her dragon hide boots and leggings a few inches away from her right hand. A shoebox was sitting next to her shoes which, given their proximity, he would have assumed that they belonged together, if he hadn’t ever seen her wear those boots before. But since they were her favorite, and he recalled tripping over them once or twice as they sat in the entryway to his flat, he wasn’t quite sure what the shoebox was doing there at all.
He tried to walk up to her slowly and softly, to gauge what she was doing without actually asking her, but a small pebble was upturned by his loafers, and the bright haired young witch craned her neck around, not constantly vigilant in the least.
“Wotcher.” Tonks greeted, her normally twinkling voice sounded hollow and somber. It stopped Remus in his tracks for the briefest moment, before he sat down on her left. She immediately snuggled into his shoulder, the stars above her illuminating her face so that he could see each tiny laugh-line and wrinkle. The waves below were creating a rhythm that Remus, though he had only been there for less than five minutes, was already beginning to sway back and forth to as he subconsciously rubbed her arm.
Things were silent; the perfect music for the last day of the year, Remus noted. He was perched like a drunken vulture over the edge of the cliff, his legs reaching farther down the cliff face than Tonks’s were. The wind swirled gently, making the hair on his arms stand up as he shivered.
“Y’know,” Tonks broke the silence, not even looking at Remus. Her eyes were downcast at the waves, watching the moonlight bounce off of the water. “For the entire day of December 31st, I always feel as if I’m dangling.”
Remus’s brow scrunched together, although the rest of his face didn’t change. “Dangling?”
She nodded. “I mean, we are right between two years. It’s almost as if I’m sitting on a hair's breath of a distance between the Omega and the Alpha. In some parts of the world, it is already 1997, and I can’t help wondering what the future will bring while I’m stuck in the past. I’m dangling.”
Tonks began swinging her feet back and forth. She leaned back on her hands, getting tiny indents in her palms from the gravel, and looked up to the stars.
“My father and I used to come here without fail every New Years. He was a strong optimist, I guess you would have to be if you married into the strongest wizarding family after the Malfoys, and he always believed that the New Year was a time to get rid of the unhappy memories from our past so that we would have a clean slate for the upcoming year.”
Remus nodded for her to continue, and her eyes flicked down to the box beside her for a moment before returning to the stars.
“I haven’t been here for awhile, not since I became an Auror, but I figured that there were things this year that I really want to let go of.”
Remus paled a bit, but he relaxed his muscles when she sat up and grabbed his hand, running her thumb over his fingers.
“And that wasn’t code for ‘I’m breaking up with you’. I just didn’t want to be alone on this...holiday.”
“Neither did I” Remus replied, bringing her palm to his lips and placing the slightest touch of a kiss on her wrist.
Tonks blushed, and she busied herself in her box, taking a few long moments just to get the lid open. When she finally succeeded, doing a small head shake of victory, she pulled out the first item.
A wisp of mousey brown hair was sealed tightly in a leftover bag. Remus nearly choked at the memory of her hair going limp along with the rest of her body. She glanced up at him.
“I want to put my emotional appearance behind me, and move on with doing the best I can to keep my spirits raised during the war.”
Tonks took a large breath and threw the bag over the cliff. It floated gently down on a breeze, landing on the top of the water and floating out a bit, where Remus imagined it to be played with by the fish.
Rustling brought him back to reality as he looked over Tonks’s next item. A miniature painting of a black rose was between her fingers, and she ran them over the surface carefully.
“I found this outside the door to my flat one morning, with black ribbon tied around my door handle. It was from one of my relatives, I’m not sure who, as the symbol of Black women is a black rose. I had to find a new flat in the spring. They don’t want me to forget my heritage”, she finished with a mumble. The tiny piece of paper flew off of her finger, lost in the night sky within seconds. Remus attempted to follow its decent, but he could not keep track of it for long.
Tonks sat still for a moment in reflection before she pulled out the third item, a red rose. The petals were wilted, and it looked as though it had been a bookmark for many months.
“You sent me this rose last January, and I got my hopes up because the color is red like love, y’know? I actually managed to change my eye color that day; blue, I remember. But the next time I saw you, you had the same mantra as always. I continued to keep this rose as a symbol of hope, but I don’t need it anymore.” She buried her face in his shoulder, the tips of her spiky hair running along the underside of his chin.
“I have you now.”
Remus had never felt so alive as he did right at that moment. Tonks pulled the petals apart one by one, sending a shower of copper down to the ocean below. With her head still resting on his shoulder, she pulled out the next item.
“A picture of Dumbledore from the Daily Prophet?”
She nodded. “His death really took a toll on me. He was one of my mentors, and to have been there when he died...I held on to it for awhile. As you know. The grief is just something that I need to get rid of now, so that I can continue to fight this war.”
Blowing gently, Tonks sent the paper out to sea. It soaked up water immediately on contact, and the paper broke apart in the sea.
Tonks looked down in the shoebox. “Just one more item.”
Remus attempted to crane around her shoulders to see it, but he couldn’t make it out until she thrust it right under his nose.
It was a stack of letters. A rather large stack of letters, if he was being truly honest.
Tonks gulped, and when she began speaking, it was in barely more than an inaudible whisper.
“I wrote to you every day while you were underground, and gave them weekly to Dumbledore, in order for you to read them. I just hoped- I mean, I believed that you would like to read them. It was the only thing that kept me from going insane for days. The Order, my job; things just got hectic. On the day before he died,” her breath hitched, “he called me into his office and gave me this stack of letters, all accounted for. He told me that he couldn’t mail them to you, for fear of your safety, and that I should understand. He was just looking out for you, but I got so angry- I yelled at him. It was the last time we spoke, and I yelled at him.” Her eyes glistened a bit. “I wish...I wish I had said something different. Thanked him, or something, for all he had done. I knew deep down that it wasn’t his fault, but I was looking for someone to blame other than myself.”
She trailed off at the end, playing with the clip that held all of the envelopes together. Not being able to think of anything else to do, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, planting light butterfly kisses to her neck.
“You didn’t know he was about to die, Nymphadora. It wasn’t your fault.”
She sniffed. “I know. But...I’d just like to get rid of all of those feelings.”
Remus nodded, placing another delicate kiss at the junction of her shoulder. “ I would like to read those, you know,” he said, running the smooth exterior of an envelope through his fingers.
Tonks emitted a wet chuckle. “It’s rather like the journal of a stroppy teenaged girl.”
“My favorite kind of letters.” Remus said joyfully, kissing the top of her head.
She smiled and rolled her eyes briefly, the latter he assumed was from the Nymphadora that she let slip by earlier. Tonks held out the letters to him and he gripped the other side.
As the clock tower to the church on the hill began to chime midnight, ringing in the New Year, they threw the bundle into the ocean. It sank swiftly to the bottom, creating bubbles where it first entered the water.
“Happy New Year, Tonks.” He said, his voice accompanied by the melody of the bells. Tonks smiled warmly, snuggling up to the warmth beside her.
”I love you, too.”
Author: Devonwood
Format & Word Count: Fic; 1,674
Rating: PG/ K+
Prompt: Prompt 5 (Margaret Atwood poem)
Warning: Gets a little cheesy at the end. You might want to bring some crackers.
Summary: “Y’know, for the entire day of December 31st, I always feel as if I’m dangling.”
Author's Note: I decided to use the prompt as more of setting cues, rather than deciphering the true meaning of it. Because while I am good at deciphering poetry, it is Friday. :D This takes place during the New Years of book 7.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read the “letter a day” thing before as I’m not brilliant enough to have come up with something like that, so if you know of another existing fic where that occurs, just comment and tell me. Credit where credit is due. :D
“I want to share something with you” was all she had written on a note that was carefully left on Remus’s ratty old dresser, save for the “Meet me at the Cliffside; you know where.” which was scrawled underneath it. So when Remus arrived at the Cliffside, waves crashing against the rocks below him, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Surely he wasn’t expecting Tonks, dressed in warm wizard wear clothing, sitting on the edge of the cliff with her bare feet dangling over, her dragon hide boots and leggings a few inches away from her right hand. A shoebox was sitting next to her shoes which, given their proximity, he would have assumed that they belonged together, if he hadn’t ever seen her wear those boots before. But since they were her favorite, and he recalled tripping over them once or twice as they sat in the entryway to his flat, he wasn’t quite sure what the shoebox was doing there at all.
He tried to walk up to her slowly and softly, to gauge what she was doing without actually asking her, but a small pebble was upturned by his loafers, and the bright haired young witch craned her neck around, not constantly vigilant in the least.
“Wotcher.” Tonks greeted, her normally twinkling voice sounded hollow and somber. It stopped Remus in his tracks for the briefest moment, before he sat down on her left. She immediately snuggled into his shoulder, the stars above her illuminating her face so that he could see each tiny laugh-line and wrinkle. The waves below were creating a rhythm that Remus, though he had only been there for less than five minutes, was already beginning to sway back and forth to as he subconsciously rubbed her arm.
Things were silent; the perfect music for the last day of the year, Remus noted. He was perched like a drunken vulture over the edge of the cliff, his legs reaching farther down the cliff face than Tonks’s were. The wind swirled gently, making the hair on his arms stand up as he shivered.
“Y’know,” Tonks broke the silence, not even looking at Remus. Her eyes were downcast at the waves, watching the moonlight bounce off of the water. “For the entire day of December 31st, I always feel as if I’m dangling.”
Remus’s brow scrunched together, although the rest of his face didn’t change. “Dangling?”
She nodded. “I mean, we are right between two years. It’s almost as if I’m sitting on a hair's breath of a distance between the Omega and the Alpha. In some parts of the world, it is already 1997, and I can’t help wondering what the future will bring while I’m stuck in the past. I’m dangling.”
Tonks began swinging her feet back and forth. She leaned back on her hands, getting tiny indents in her palms from the gravel, and looked up to the stars.
“My father and I used to come here without fail every New Years. He was a strong optimist, I guess you would have to be if you married into the strongest wizarding family after the Malfoys, and he always believed that the New Year was a time to get rid of the unhappy memories from our past so that we would have a clean slate for the upcoming year.”
Remus nodded for her to continue, and her eyes flicked down to the box beside her for a moment before returning to the stars.
“I haven’t been here for awhile, not since I became an Auror, but I figured that there were things this year that I really want to let go of.”
Remus paled a bit, but he relaxed his muscles when she sat up and grabbed his hand, running her thumb over his fingers.
“And that wasn’t code for ‘I’m breaking up with you’. I just didn’t want to be alone on this...holiday.”
“Neither did I” Remus replied, bringing her palm to his lips and placing the slightest touch of a kiss on her wrist.
Tonks blushed, and she busied herself in her box, taking a few long moments just to get the lid open. When she finally succeeded, doing a small head shake of victory, she pulled out the first item.
A wisp of mousey brown hair was sealed tightly in a leftover bag. Remus nearly choked at the memory of her hair going limp along with the rest of her body. She glanced up at him.
“I want to put my emotional appearance behind me, and move on with doing the best I can to keep my spirits raised during the war.”
Tonks took a large breath and threw the bag over the cliff. It floated gently down on a breeze, landing on the top of the water and floating out a bit, where Remus imagined it to be played with by the fish.
Rustling brought him back to reality as he looked over Tonks’s next item. A miniature painting of a black rose was between her fingers, and she ran them over the surface carefully.
“I found this outside the door to my flat one morning, with black ribbon tied around my door handle. It was from one of my relatives, I’m not sure who, as the symbol of Black women is a black rose. I had to find a new flat in the spring. They don’t want me to forget my heritage”, she finished with a mumble. The tiny piece of paper flew off of her finger, lost in the night sky within seconds. Remus attempted to follow its decent, but he could not keep track of it for long.
Tonks sat still for a moment in reflection before she pulled out the third item, a red rose. The petals were wilted, and it looked as though it had been a bookmark for many months.
“You sent me this rose last January, and I got my hopes up because the color is red like love, y’know? I actually managed to change my eye color that day; blue, I remember. But the next time I saw you, you had the same mantra as always. I continued to keep this rose as a symbol of hope, but I don’t need it anymore.” She buried her face in his shoulder, the tips of her spiky hair running along the underside of his chin.
“I have you now.”
Remus had never felt so alive as he did right at that moment. Tonks pulled the petals apart one by one, sending a shower of copper down to the ocean below. With her head still resting on his shoulder, she pulled out the next item.
“A picture of Dumbledore from the Daily Prophet?”
She nodded. “His death really took a toll on me. He was one of my mentors, and to have been there when he died...I held on to it for awhile. As you know. The grief is just something that I need to get rid of now, so that I can continue to fight this war.”
Blowing gently, Tonks sent the paper out to sea. It soaked up water immediately on contact, and the paper broke apart in the sea.
Tonks looked down in the shoebox. “Just one more item.”
Remus attempted to crane around her shoulders to see it, but he couldn’t make it out until she thrust it right under his nose.
It was a stack of letters. A rather large stack of letters, if he was being truly honest.
Tonks gulped, and when she began speaking, it was in barely more than an inaudible whisper.
“I wrote to you every day while you were underground, and gave them weekly to Dumbledore, in order for you to read them. I just hoped- I mean, I believed that you would like to read them. It was the only thing that kept me from going insane for days. The Order, my job; things just got hectic. On the day before he died,” her breath hitched, “he called me into his office and gave me this stack of letters, all accounted for. He told me that he couldn’t mail them to you, for fear of your safety, and that I should understand. He was just looking out for you, but I got so angry- I yelled at him. It was the last time we spoke, and I yelled at him.” Her eyes glistened a bit. “I wish...I wish I had said something different. Thanked him, or something, for all he had done. I knew deep down that it wasn’t his fault, but I was looking for someone to blame other than myself.”
She trailed off at the end, playing with the clip that held all of the envelopes together. Not being able to think of anything else to do, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, planting light butterfly kisses to her neck.
“You didn’t know he was about to die, Nymphadora. It wasn’t your fault.”
She sniffed. “I know. But...I’d just like to get rid of all of those feelings.”
Remus nodded, placing another delicate kiss at the junction of her shoulder. “ I would like to read those, you know,” he said, running the smooth exterior of an envelope through his fingers.
Tonks emitted a wet chuckle. “It’s rather like the journal of a stroppy teenaged girl.”
“My favorite kind of letters.” Remus said joyfully, kissing the top of her head.
She smiled and rolled her eyes briefly, the latter he assumed was from the Nymphadora that she let slip by earlier. Tonks held out the letters to him and he gripped the other side.
As the clock tower to the church on the hill began to chime midnight, ringing in the New Year, they threw the bundle into the ocean. It sank swiftly to the bottom, creating bubbles where it first entered the water.
“Happy New Year, Tonks.” He said, his voice accompanied by the melody of the bells. Tonks smiled warmly, snuggling up to the warmth beside her.
”I love you, too.”