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Golden Sparks: Alive and Free [Harry Potter]
Title: Golden Sparks: Alive and Free
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: Remus sees sparks. Once, they signal he is alive. The second time, they signal that he is free.
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, mild and angsty Remus/Tonks.
Rating: PG-13 for canon character death.
Genre: angst, ficlet
Word Count: 423
Golden Sparks: Alive and Free
The car roared down pavement, top down. No one had told James Potter which lane to drive in, and in fact he had never paid enough attention to muggles to know that lanes was what those stripes were for, so it was a good thing the roadways were empty for a hundred miles around. Sirius hung over the passenger seat door nearly to his waist, howling and wooing and apparently not minding the moths and other buggy creatures that must have been hitting him along with the cold wind. Next to Remus in the backseat, Peter looked carsick. Behind the wheel, James was hollering such an off-tune version of The Hexers' "Six Months Inside Azkaban" that he sounded rather like a Dementor himself.
Remus smiled. So this is what it was to have friends. James got to the chorus and threw up his wand, sending a shower of gold sparks into the night air above them.
With the fading after-images of those bright sparks on the backs of Remus' eyes, his reservations about the midnight stolen-car joy ride also faded. They'd return the car in tip-top shape well before dawn. This was, as Sirius was yelling to the wind and world and anything that would listen-- this was being alive.
*****
Remus had not thought a curse would be so beautiful, especially not such a deadly curse. It was not the Killing Curse, but a heart arrest curse, not always fatal, and not even often very accurate. He saw it coming, and should have thought to move out of the way. If he had had that thought, it would have been in vain. Curses do not move at the speed of light; far from it. But Remus was tired and his reflexes were dulled. The golden shower of sparks hit him in the chest.
Instead, his thought was of wand-made fireworks. In the embattled hillside of Hogwarts he saw in his mind's eye the bright flare along a swiftly-moving Scottish country road. After-images flashed in his eyes as his heart raced. A wind seemed to move across the earth. He could not speak, but if he had, he might have said that this: the promise of death and of reunion, was at the end what being alive was about.
He never saw Tonks too nearby. He never heard her shouting over the wind and tumult of battle. But he did fancy he could hear Sirius yelling to the wind and the world and anything that would listen that this was being free.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: Remus sees sparks. Once, they signal he is alive. The second time, they signal that he is free.
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, mild and angsty Remus/Tonks.
Rating: PG-13 for canon character death.
Genre: angst, ficlet
Word Count: 423
Golden Sparks: Alive and Free
The car roared down pavement, top down. No one had told James Potter which lane to drive in, and in fact he had never paid enough attention to muggles to know that lanes was what those stripes were for, so it was a good thing the roadways were empty for a hundred miles around. Sirius hung over the passenger seat door nearly to his waist, howling and wooing and apparently not minding the moths and other buggy creatures that must have been hitting him along with the cold wind. Next to Remus in the backseat, Peter looked carsick. Behind the wheel, James was hollering such an off-tune version of The Hexers' "Six Months Inside Azkaban" that he sounded rather like a Dementor himself.
Remus smiled. So this is what it was to have friends. James got to the chorus and threw up his wand, sending a shower of gold sparks into the night air above them.
With the fading after-images of those bright sparks on the backs of Remus' eyes, his reservations about the midnight stolen-car joy ride also faded. They'd return the car in tip-top shape well before dawn. This was, as Sirius was yelling to the wind and world and anything that would listen-- this was being alive.
*****
Remus had not thought a curse would be so beautiful, especially not such a deadly curse. It was not the Killing Curse, but a heart arrest curse, not always fatal, and not even often very accurate. He saw it coming, and should have thought to move out of the way. If he had had that thought, it would have been in vain. Curses do not move at the speed of light; far from it. But Remus was tired and his reflexes were dulled. The golden shower of sparks hit him in the chest.
Instead, his thought was of wand-made fireworks. In the embattled hillside of Hogwarts he saw in his mind's eye the bright flare along a swiftly-moving Scottish country road. After-images flashed in his eyes as his heart raced. A wind seemed to move across the earth. He could not speak, but if he had, he might have said that this: the promise of death and of reunion, was at the end what being alive was about.
He never saw Tonks too nearby. He never heard her shouting over the wind and tumult of battle. But he did fancy he could hear Sirius yelling to the wind and the world and anything that would listen that this was being free.