serpentqueen13: Written On The Wall (Both Hands) (Draco/Morag, PG-13)
Title: Written On The Wall (Both Hands)
Author: serpentqueen13
Rating: PG-13
Prompt Set: 100.3
Prompt: #28, Final
Word Count: 1,257
Summary: Madam Rosmerta is seldom surprised, but unlike Morag and Draco, she can read the writing on the wall.
Warnings: Het, implied! or non-graphic sex, character death, minor quill-play?
Notes: Also written for hp_100songs Writer's Choice, Ani DiFranco's Both Hands.
Madam Rosmerta knew a lot of things, she saw a lot of things, and most of all she heard a lot of things. It was impossible not to-not when she ran the Three Broomsticks. It was almost impossible to surprise her; she was able to guess things, know more things through observation than the most skilled diviners could boast to have predicted correctly.
Still, sometimes, very rarely, people could take her by surprise. It wasn’t a common thing and so when it happened she couldn’t help but remember. One such event was during the middle of a particularly miserable day. It had been a bitter winter-rainy and cold, the kind of winter that seeps into your bones and leaves you shivering.
The couple had entered quietly, ghostly almost, footfalls silent against the wood of the floor. Their glamours were obvious; only because Rosmerta was accustomed to some of her more unsavoury customers using them. At first, she was cautious, this was wartime after all, but the two obviously cared little about what she thought. They glanced around the empty pub before requesting a room. Rosmerta glanced through her transparent pink curtains, eying the land surrounding Hogsmeade, where she knew a battle would soon take place, before nodding and handing the young man a key, motioning him to the stairs that led to the second floor.
When they had disappeared, the woman clinging to the man’s shoulder awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to the show of affection, the contact, the proprietress carefully stood by a strategically placed airshaft, wondering about the air of despair that seemed to permeate the air around the couple like their very shadows.
They said very little as they looked around the small room, intricate wards and locking charms being placed more out of habit and instinct then any real sense of threat. Glamours dropped to the floor with unnecessary, cumbersome clothing and soft sighs. There was an aura of longing, of finality, of time that was all too quickly gone and couldn’t be retrieved, and despite the fact that neither of them would ever admit it, they both wondered if this would be the last time. For once the silence seemed less than comforting but at the same time any words that could have been uttered seemed cheap.
They fell into each other’s arms with the ease of knowledge and habit, hands running over ridges of bones and soft swells of flesh like so many times before. Everything was slow, deliberate and unhurried, drawing out the experience. As long as possible-the bittersweet note of it bringing tears to the woman’s eyes that the man kissed away.
For once, afterward, they didn’t move away from each other or act as if it meant nothing. They held each other for a long while, until the woman moved away to rifle through the pockets of her robes stopping when she came up with a brilliant red quill. She returned to the bed, pressing the nib of the quill into her thumb for a moment, before beginning to write on her lover’s chest, vivid scarlet words on his skin, an almost sacred kind of graffiti.
“What are you doing, Blood?” Draco asked softly, watching the way her eyes flicked over her writing, her hair almost as red as the ink, spilling over one shoulder carelessly, only to shiver slightly as the quill crossed over sensitive scar tissue, his eyes fluttering shut against the emotions that threatened to explode.
“I’m writing the story of how hard we tried.” Morag whispered in response, kissing his closed eyelids as he had kissed her tears. “Don’t close your eyes, Fire.”
“Why?” Draco asked, forcing his eyes open again, the orbs stormy grey because he knew her reasons, but had to ask anyway.
“Because your bones have been my bed-frame and your flesh has been my pillow, but most of all because our theories can’t explain it all any more.” Morag responded, tears in her voice but not on her face despite the way her eyes were shining with emotion-unshed and unspoken. As his chest finally filled with her words and there was no more space the red words disappeared, leaving his skin bare again as the words appeared on the wall instead, just as she had written them, burnt black onto the ecru paint.
“Blood-you’re recording our history on the wall.” Draco said in shocked admiration as he read the damiliar handwriting on the wall. “Why? They’ll come and paint over it all.”
“Someone has to see it to paint over it.” Morag reasoned in her own almost-rational manner. “Someone has to understand-even if we don’t.” Then she would say no more, could say no more, all of her eloquence and emotion going into the scenes she was lovingly transcribing on the pale plane of his skin, while he read her story-their story-as it slowly appeared on the walls.
As afternoon slowly melted into the evening hours Madam Rosmerta listened to them pull themselves together again, and say words they obviously weren’t accustomed to, words of warning of caution, as if they needed to be said but were trying to sound as if they didn’t care.
“Be careful, Fire.” Morag murmured as she put her glamours back on her voice quiet. “I know you’ve given them information, but I don’t trust the Order not to take a shot at your back, and for Rowena’s sake, avoid your father at all costs.”
“You too, Blood.” Draco said in return, confident in his own work. “Hide yourself, use glamours, I know you like people to know you’re killing them, but be cautious.” Then they came downstairs and left in the same silent way they had come, leaving more than what was needed for the room for a week.
It was a day or so later, as people came in celebrating the outcome of the final battle, that Rosmerta went up to the room the couple had used, and found her eyes drawn to the walls. She sat on the bed and read the story-and that was where a worried employee found her during the evening rush, crying into her hands.
“What’s the matter, Rosmerta?” The well-intentioned girl asked, rushing to her employer’s side. “This is a happy day!”
“They never understood.” Rosmerta said through her tears, gesturing to the walls. “They never realised they were in love.” She drew the young woman over and made her read the walls, and soon she wasn’t the only one in tears. Morag’s words never left those walls, no one ever painted over the story, and every year a few members of the Order would come and marvel at how wrong they had been, and then the anniversary celebrations of the end of the second war never seemed quite as happy, because the end of the story made them pause, because even though many lives had been lost in that battle it somehow seemed worse for the two people who hid their goodness even from themselves should die without ever knowing, realising, what their story meant, like so many others did.
Madam Rosmerta knew a lot of things and she heard a lot of things, but one of the most important things to her she neither knew nor heard-she hoped. She hoped that the ill-fated couple realised what their story meant in some kind of afterlife, and what they meant to each other, and every time she looked through her transparent pink curtains, she remembered, and she hoped.
Author: serpentqueen13
Rating: PG-13
Prompt Set: 100.3
Prompt: #28, Final
Word Count: 1,257
Summary: Madam Rosmerta is seldom surprised, but unlike Morag and Draco, she can read the writing on the wall.
Warnings: Het, implied! or non-graphic sex, character death, minor quill-play?
Notes: Also written for hp_100songs Writer's Choice, Ani DiFranco's Both Hands.
Madam Rosmerta knew a lot of things, she saw a lot of things, and most of all she heard a lot of things. It was impossible not to-not when she ran the Three Broomsticks. It was almost impossible to surprise her; she was able to guess things, know more things through observation than the most skilled diviners could boast to have predicted correctly.
Still, sometimes, very rarely, people could take her by surprise. It wasn’t a common thing and so when it happened she couldn’t help but remember. One such event was during the middle of a particularly miserable day. It had been a bitter winter-rainy and cold, the kind of winter that seeps into your bones and leaves you shivering.
The couple had entered quietly, ghostly almost, footfalls silent against the wood of the floor. Their glamours were obvious; only because Rosmerta was accustomed to some of her more unsavoury customers using them. At first, she was cautious, this was wartime after all, but the two obviously cared little about what she thought. They glanced around the empty pub before requesting a room. Rosmerta glanced through her transparent pink curtains, eying the land surrounding Hogsmeade, where she knew a battle would soon take place, before nodding and handing the young man a key, motioning him to the stairs that led to the second floor.
When they had disappeared, the woman clinging to the man’s shoulder awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to the show of affection, the contact, the proprietress carefully stood by a strategically placed airshaft, wondering about the air of despair that seemed to permeate the air around the couple like their very shadows.
They said very little as they looked around the small room, intricate wards and locking charms being placed more out of habit and instinct then any real sense of threat. Glamours dropped to the floor with unnecessary, cumbersome clothing and soft sighs. There was an aura of longing, of finality, of time that was all too quickly gone and couldn’t be retrieved, and despite the fact that neither of them would ever admit it, they both wondered if this would be the last time. For once the silence seemed less than comforting but at the same time any words that could have been uttered seemed cheap.
They fell into each other’s arms with the ease of knowledge and habit, hands running over ridges of bones and soft swells of flesh like so many times before. Everything was slow, deliberate and unhurried, drawing out the experience. As long as possible-the bittersweet note of it bringing tears to the woman’s eyes that the man kissed away.
For once, afterward, they didn’t move away from each other or act as if it meant nothing. They held each other for a long while, until the woman moved away to rifle through the pockets of her robes stopping when she came up with a brilliant red quill. She returned to the bed, pressing the nib of the quill into her thumb for a moment, before beginning to write on her lover’s chest, vivid scarlet words on his skin, an almost sacred kind of graffiti.
“What are you doing, Blood?” Draco asked softly, watching the way her eyes flicked over her writing, her hair almost as red as the ink, spilling over one shoulder carelessly, only to shiver slightly as the quill crossed over sensitive scar tissue, his eyes fluttering shut against the emotions that threatened to explode.
“I’m writing the story of how hard we tried.” Morag whispered in response, kissing his closed eyelids as he had kissed her tears. “Don’t close your eyes, Fire.”
“Why?” Draco asked, forcing his eyes open again, the orbs stormy grey because he knew her reasons, but had to ask anyway.
“Because your bones have been my bed-frame and your flesh has been my pillow, but most of all because our theories can’t explain it all any more.” Morag responded, tears in her voice but not on her face despite the way her eyes were shining with emotion-unshed and unspoken. As his chest finally filled with her words and there was no more space the red words disappeared, leaving his skin bare again as the words appeared on the wall instead, just as she had written them, burnt black onto the ecru paint.
“Blood-you’re recording our history on the wall.” Draco said in shocked admiration as he read the damiliar handwriting on the wall. “Why? They’ll come and paint over it all.”
“Someone has to see it to paint over it.” Morag reasoned in her own almost-rational manner. “Someone has to understand-even if we don’t.” Then she would say no more, could say no more, all of her eloquence and emotion going into the scenes she was lovingly transcribing on the pale plane of his skin, while he read her story-their story-as it slowly appeared on the walls.
As afternoon slowly melted into the evening hours Madam Rosmerta listened to them pull themselves together again, and say words they obviously weren’t accustomed to, words of warning of caution, as if they needed to be said but were trying to sound as if they didn’t care.
“Be careful, Fire.” Morag murmured as she put her glamours back on her voice quiet. “I know you’ve given them information, but I don’t trust the Order not to take a shot at your back, and for Rowena’s sake, avoid your father at all costs.”
“You too, Blood.” Draco said in return, confident in his own work. “Hide yourself, use glamours, I know you like people to know you’re killing them, but be cautious.” Then they came downstairs and left in the same silent way they had come, leaving more than what was needed for the room for a week.
It was a day or so later, as people came in celebrating the outcome of the final battle, that Rosmerta went up to the room the couple had used, and found her eyes drawn to the walls. She sat on the bed and read the story-and that was where a worried employee found her during the evening rush, crying into her hands.
“What’s the matter, Rosmerta?” The well-intentioned girl asked, rushing to her employer’s side. “This is a happy day!”
“They never understood.” Rosmerta said through her tears, gesturing to the walls. “They never realised they were in love.” She drew the young woman over and made her read the walls, and soon she wasn’t the only one in tears. Morag’s words never left those walls, no one ever painted over the story, and every year a few members of the Order would come and marvel at how wrong they had been, and then the anniversary celebrations of the end of the second war never seemed quite as happy, because the end of the story made them pause, because even though many lives had been lost in that battle it somehow seemed worse for the two people who hid their goodness even from themselves should die without ever knowing, realising, what their story meant, like so many others did.
Madam Rosmerta knew a lot of things and she heard a lot of things, but one of the most important things to her she neither knew nor heard-she hoped. She hoped that the ill-fated couple realised what their story meant in some kind of afterlife, and what they meant to each other, and every time she looked through her transparent pink curtains, she remembered, and she hoped.