Summary: Clammy fingers of whimsical dreams fail to retain her, the crash of reality cold and unforgiving against her deathly pale skin.
Disclaimer: My idea, JK Rowling's characters and bones of the HP series' plot.
A Mother's Wish
a harry potter ficlet
ϗ Ꭶ φ ϖ
The ghost wanders, idly, through the churchyard that houses her corpse and the capricious whispers of nothing and lonely abandonment. It makes a step towards one of the broken windows of the barren stone structure, and sees. Sees wisps of dirty, tangled black strands of hair hiding a part of the horrid masterpiece her face displays. A deathly pale hand reaches up to trace an outline of her uneven eyes down to her cracked, blue lips, and a wretched gasp breaks out from her throat.
A trail of a tear is hurriedly followed by another, and then another, and her face is all of a sudden streaks of blurred lines and twisted angles, and she could feel no more. Her ugliness is distorted and her view is hazy and there is no more reason for her tears to fall. Is there?
But, a flicker of a memory flashes up her forethoughts, and she wails, her shrieks of sorrow and misery like that of the worst banshee. She remembers the faux-passionate kisses of the prince charming of her dreams. Faux, as in false and fake and nonexistent. She remembers—of bottles of terribly made potions of fixed and obsessive love that somehow worked, and she remembers the globe of her womb and the feeling of isolation and cold winter and life less of love.
She recalls foolishly thinking of a love developed out of nothing except witchcraft and petty maybes. If not for her, then for the life she carries. She remembers throwing the vials of luminescent liquid one by one down the drain, stems of hope and a sense of finally filling up her chest. She opens the faucet for water to run after the potion of dreams, an ultimatum she brought upon herself. She cannot make another one, with her weakness into seven months of pregnancy, the fumes of the potion surely harmful to her and to her child, and her lack of will to weave another blanket of lies into her husband's heart. Besides, she once murmured, placating her uncertainty, he loves me. I am his wife, and I carry his unborn child.
The ghost growls and lashes at the broken reflection of a failure, angry and consumed by self-pity and hatred. She does not know if it was more for the muggle man or for herself. She does not know.
All she has knowledge of—and love and longing and uselesspiteousdeplorable apologies for—is her son in an orphanage, somewhere out where she can no longer reach him. No longer have the chance to love him and cherish him to her bosom and sing him lullabies—although she knows of none, she would have tried—to his sleep. No longer have the chance to tuck his hair behind his ear and tidy up his clothes and kiss his hurts and worries away.
She moans for her loss; the loss of her unreachable child as an estranged mother more than the loss of her prince as a foolish dreamer—widow, or was she ever? She hates herself, loathes her very existence and weaknesses and errors in her short miserable life. She wishes for another chance with her lovely child. Not for a man who left them both out cold in the streets smothering in its despair and deprivation and poverty, when he could have taken them both in—maybe even only his son, yes, yes she could accept that—warm and comfortable in the confines of his riches. But no.
The ghost knows of her foolishness, and resents herself for that. She was blinded by daydreams and starved of love, and when she finally made way to freedom, she thought she was secured. Both she and her child of dreams. It was only a matter of measly time to cruelly bring reality crashing down her battered heels, and death soon had her clutched in his bony hands of end.
She only whispers of a wish, hoping that even if her wells of other aspirations had gone unheard, this would be one exception.
Her Tom, her lovely child—she wishes that all her wrongs in life (and his father's, as well) may not be deemed by Lady Fate to be repented by a boy who was innocent of any peccadillo transgressed before his time. That he may lead a good life full of laughter and love, so unlike hers. To be the opposite of her weakness and be the strongest wizard—he is magical; this, she is sure of—he can be, and carry out the line of her family proudly and resolutely. A mother's wish, and she puts all of her prayers and the strength of her concentrated will behind it. She turns away from the glass, and floats away.
The ghost wanders slowly through the streets, desolate and empty. But a tendril of hope was beginning to stem from her chest. The hope of a mother for her child.
ᵜ ℰnd ᵜ
I feel a little sorry for this Merope. Her wish, unfortunately, cannot be granted by canon. Although, it can be through fanfiction.
Review? :)