For mew-tsubaki, with the prompt "missing". Also for the Hufflepuff February contest, even though it's probably too late, with the prompts mint green and gut-wrenching pain.
Feel, forget
The door gives a familiar tinkle as Charlie pushes it open. It still amazes him that some things never change.
It is a quiet night. A few patrons sit at tables, talking quietly, and others line the bar. Rosmerta is uncharacteristically silent as she wipes glasses; she seems lost in her own thoughts.
He finds an empty space at the bar and sits down. "Could I get a glass of mead?" he asks when Rosmerta looks up at him.
The mead duly appears and he takes a grateful sip. You could never get mead quite like Rosmerta's.
"Thanks, Rosmerta. You're a saint."
He looks up at these words and sees a young woman taking a sip of her drink, her short hair highlighting her pixie-like features. He can't help but feel as though he knows her from somewhere.
He watches from the corner of his eye for a while. She traces her finger absentmindedly on the bar, then makes an odd movement with her head, as if to toss long hair over her shoulder. A delicate hand reaches up to tangle in her short locks.
Eventually she looks over and catches him staring. He tries to avert his gaze but not before he sees her raised eyebrows, her furrowed brow.
"You're Charlie, aren't you?"
He looks up, trying to look appropriately abashed. "Er—yes. I'm Charlie."
"I'm Susan," she says, and right away he remembers her: a girl in pyjamas, her wand flashing, her long plait flying behind her. Afterwards, Ron or somebody had pointed her out as Amelia Bones' niece.
"It's nice to meet you," he says.
"You too."
Now she's the one staring at him, and he can't make out what she's thinking. Her empty glass catches his eye and he asks what she's having. Rosmerta delivers two more meads, which they drink in companionable silence.
Charlie doesn't know what to say. It's not a feeling he's used to when it comes to women, but then most women he talks to don't have this huge thing in common with him. He can't get that image out of his head: a girl, barely of age, fighting for those she loved and those she lost. It's the kind of shared experience that makes small talk irrelevant.
She's not a girl anymore. It's not just the plait that is gone: there's a mature kind of confidence about her now, and she drinks with a demeanour of experience. And yet, there's a hint of schoolgirl in her still, in the anxious energy that manifests in fidgeting and constantly reaching up to touch her hair.
"You must think I'm crazy," she says as she catches herself with her fingers in her tresses yet again. "I just had it cut, you see. It feels ..."
"Strange?"
"I suppose. I was going to say free."
She drains her glass and turns around to look at him. "Did you ever have a time in your life where you just wanted to start again? To forget everything and be someone else?"
"Sure," says Charlie. "I moved to Romania."
"Exactly," says Susan. "Maybe I should go abroad. I mean, cutting off my hair is not exactly a lifestyle change, you know?"
"I don't think my mother would agree with you."
She laughs at that, and it's almost scary. The sound is reckless, almost dangerous, and her eyes shine with it. "I want to do things, Charlie. Things I don't normally do. Things that make me feel alive."
Suddenly she doesn't fit with the image he remembers of her. She's not defending herself anymore. She's on the attack.
"What kind of things?" he asks, uncertain where this is heading. She was in Ron's year. How old does that make her? Eighteen? Nineteen?
"Well ..." She looks around. "I've never had firewhiskey before."
Charlie grins, almost with relief. "We'll have to fix that," he says. "Rosmerta! Two firewhiskeys."
For a novice, she handles the burn well, although her eyes water. "That was amazing," she says. "I can feel it in my whole body."
He knows the feeling. It's warm and tingly and gives you a buzz. She's taken her feet out of her shoes to wriggle her toes, relishing in the sensation, and the sight of her bare feet is oddly intimate. Charlie swallows hard.
She looks up and that reckless glint in her eye is still there. "Do you know what else I've never done?"
He's about to say no, but she swallows the word with her mouth on his, one hand on his thigh and the other in his hair. It overloads his senses and the only thing he can see or taste or smell is her. His body responds of its own volition, raising a hand to her neck to pull her closer, opening his mouth to her.
After what seems like hours (or was it a nanosecond?) she pulls away, and they're both short of breath.
"You see, yesterday I would have apologised for that," she says. "But not today. I'm not going to say sorry for something that feels good. And you enjoyed it too, didn't you?"
He can't seem to make his voice work, but his heavy breathing, his flushed skin and tented jeans answer for him. Fuck. What am I doing?
He doesn't listen to the little voice in his head. He can't. Her impetuosity is contagious and for once he forgets to think and just feels. When he finds himself in her flat, tugging at her clothes, he can hardly remember how they got there.
Her underwear is mint green. It's such an unexpected colour, so innocent and plain, that it shakes him from his stupor. "Susan?"
She's kissing down his chest as she undoes each button. He can't believe he's about to stop her. "Susan?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
She looks up at him, and suddenly she's not a confident, reckless woman. She's exposed, naked, figuratively if not quite literally; her eyes lose that impulsive glint and all he sees is that vulnerable schoolgirl again. Next thing he knows she's huddled on the floor, tears leaking between her fingers, and he's shocked at the change in her.
"You're right," she sobs, and the sound is so pitiful he wants to cover his ears. "I can't."
There's a hand-knitted blanket on the bed and he wraps it around her shoulders. He wants to tell her that it's okay, that he understands how she feels, but the words won't come.
Neither of them knows how long they sit there, silent, filled up with each other's grief. Then, in deadened voices, they tell their stories. Those they lost. The pieces of themselves that they can never regain. The pain, sometimes aching, sometimes gut-wrenching, that never quite fades away.
The sun has risen when he leaves. People stare at him as he walks the cold London streets, in his wrinkled clothes and mussed hair, but he hardly notices; something has changed in him, and he knows that he will never be able to feel as much as he did with her. The realisation is like a block of ice in his chest.