(no subject)
Title: Laudanum
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: G
A/N: Written for the healing challenge at contrelamontre. This is so totally dedicated to rivir, my #1 fan.
It's not right at all.
Those days it wasn't remarkable to wake up inexplicably queasy, ill at ease. It wasn't any different that morning.
Eight o'clock you had toast, showered, and dressed.
The hair tangled in the teeth of your comb was grey and dull brown but mostly grey.
Sirius woke, gave you a smile, and proceeded to be in a foul mood the rest of the day.
Around noon you did five pages of paperwork and accidentally spilled some tea, and the stain looked like a lopsided clover.
You can't remember what year you left Hogwarts but you can give a reasonable summary of every hour that passed on that particular day. You didn't realize you'd kept this catalogue of minutes until afterward, but it was easy enough to see why; you know you remember because that was the day Sirius died.
The few who know say Oh, oh, it must be awful for you, to have seen it.
It's too hard to explain that it doesn't matter.
Sometimes they ask you these crazy crazy things you can't even think about answering but if you started to laugh they wouldn't mind, because people do funny things when they're in mourning. (They know about the Muggle grieving too and wonder if hysterics is one of the five phases, or at least they would if you did, if you laughed, which you don't, but you think about it.)
You do odd things when you're lost. One day you realized you'd been staring for over an hour at a gauzy pack of cinnamon candy canes you'd had on your dresser ever since Christmas (!). You were thinking about how you don't even like candy canes, and for some reason you weren't able to do anything about it. Then you realized the box was fading because the sun was setting and you'd sat there wondering what to do half the afternoon, and then you just ended up throwing the candy away.
That sort of thing happens all the time.
Bellatrix killed Sirius, you think.
Bellatrix killed Sirius.
(No, nothing.)
It seems very important that you should hate her. Harry does. But it's hard to muster the energy to hate someone, even if it's Bellatrix who killed Sirius, or the uncle who bit you, or the now-nameless boy in third year who stole one of the textbooks you couldn't afford in the first place.
Maybe it's delayed. You think you'll wake up from a monochrome dream and see color again, and then you'll hate her. It wouldn't ever happen this way (or would it?) but maybe he would send her after you; she'd track you down a dank alley and the minute you whirled around to face her and saw her hateful, fever-bright eyes, you wouldn't even need your wand. The part of you that was sleeping before would break her neck.
The idea doesn't give you any satisfaction.
Bellatrix killed Sirius doesn't mean much to you. Say it again. After a while the mantra becomes eight broken syllables, belluhtrix killed seer-e-uss, and that doesn't mean anything at all.
You can't stand to see him moving, a weak substitute for a living person. It's not right at all. Lucky that you have a small stack of Muggle snapshots, so you put them in a drawer in case you ever want to look at them and the rest, the photographs full of blinking, smiling, flying Sirius, you seal into a box helpfully labeled "Stuff."
One of the Muggle pictures has a funny pink-and-orange glare blotting out half the face. The pale, teenaged boy in the photo might have been an early friend, one of a couple who were eventually pushed to the sidelines as the Marauders took precedence. The face is familiar. One day you look from a different angle and it could almost, possibly, be Sirius' face. You can't remember such an easy smile an anyone else, but you don't know any more.
You can't remember his voice, either.
They probably wouldn't believe it but one day his name never comes to your mind. That's what happens.
It's crazy. If it hurt enough and if you shouted enough maybe he'd come back and say hello, but it was never that bad because you've had no spectral visitations as far as you can recall. Which is not right, either. Naive but maybe life should be like the cinema.
Some days you can't believe he was ever here at all.
Sirius broke a finger on the Quidditch field once and tried to heal it himself. It was probably still crooked the day he died, only it was hard to tell, he seemed so gaunt and crooked all over. He said it hurt to make a fist, not that there was any reason to ha ha ha.
That's something you still share. And it has to be enough.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Rating: G
A/N: Written for the healing challenge at contrelamontre. This is so totally dedicated to rivir, my #1 fan.
It's not right at all.
Those days it wasn't remarkable to wake up inexplicably queasy, ill at ease. It wasn't any different that morning.
Eight o'clock you had toast, showered, and dressed.
The hair tangled in the teeth of your comb was grey and dull brown but mostly grey.
Sirius woke, gave you a smile, and proceeded to be in a foul mood the rest of the day.
Around noon you did five pages of paperwork and accidentally spilled some tea, and the stain looked like a lopsided clover.
You can't remember what year you left Hogwarts but you can give a reasonable summary of every hour that passed on that particular day. You didn't realize you'd kept this catalogue of minutes until afterward, but it was easy enough to see why; you know you remember because that was the day Sirius died.
The few who know say Oh, oh, it must be awful for you, to have seen it.
It's too hard to explain that it doesn't matter.
Sometimes they ask you these crazy crazy things you can't even think about answering but if you started to laugh they wouldn't mind, because people do funny things when they're in mourning. (They know about the Muggle grieving too and wonder if hysterics is one of the five phases, or at least they would if you did, if you laughed, which you don't, but you think about it.)
You do odd things when you're lost. One day you realized you'd been staring for over an hour at a gauzy pack of cinnamon candy canes you'd had on your dresser ever since Christmas (!). You were thinking about how you don't even like candy canes, and for some reason you weren't able to do anything about it. Then you realized the box was fading because the sun was setting and you'd sat there wondering what to do half the afternoon, and then you just ended up throwing the candy away.
That sort of thing happens all the time.
Bellatrix killed Sirius, you think.
Bellatrix killed Sirius.
(No, nothing.)
It seems very important that you should hate her. Harry does. But it's hard to muster the energy to hate someone, even if it's Bellatrix who killed Sirius, or the uncle who bit you, or the now-nameless boy in third year who stole one of the textbooks you couldn't afford in the first place.
Maybe it's delayed. You think you'll wake up from a monochrome dream and see color again, and then you'll hate her. It wouldn't ever happen this way (or would it?) but maybe he would send her after you; she'd track you down a dank alley and the minute you whirled around to face her and saw her hateful, fever-bright eyes, you wouldn't even need your wand. The part of you that was sleeping before would break her neck.
The idea doesn't give you any satisfaction.
Bellatrix killed Sirius doesn't mean much to you. Say it again. After a while the mantra becomes eight broken syllables, belluhtrix killed seer-e-uss, and that doesn't mean anything at all.
You can't stand to see him moving, a weak substitute for a living person. It's not right at all. Lucky that you have a small stack of Muggle snapshots, so you put them in a drawer in case you ever want to look at them and the rest, the photographs full of blinking, smiling, flying Sirius, you seal into a box helpfully labeled "Stuff."
One of the Muggle pictures has a funny pink-and-orange glare blotting out half the face. The pale, teenaged boy in the photo might have been an early friend, one of a couple who were eventually pushed to the sidelines as the Marauders took precedence. The face is familiar. One day you look from a different angle and it could almost, possibly, be Sirius' face. You can't remember such an easy smile an anyone else, but you don't know any more.
You can't remember his voice, either.
They probably wouldn't believe it but one day his name never comes to your mind. That's what happens.
It's crazy. If it hurt enough and if you shouted enough maybe he'd come back and say hello, but it was never that bad because you've had no spectral visitations as far as you can recall. Which is not right, either. Naive but maybe life should be like the cinema.
Some days you can't believe he was ever here at all.
Sirius broke a finger on the Quidditch field once and tried to heal it himself. It was probably still crooked the day he died, only it was hard to tell, he seemed so gaunt and crooked all over. He said it hurt to make a fist, not that there was any reason to ha ha ha.
That's something you still share. And it has to be enough.