Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK.
This is the original Echo. I liked it though so wanted to post it. I thought it was lovely.
Pansies
Can you hear it? Can you
The whispers of your past?
The delicate voice of a love long ago?
Can you hear the screams?
You don't meet her in a bright place. It is a bar, just a left turn before Knockturn Alley where the tattered drapes sway without wind and shadows are the only thing that sit at your old, wooden table.
It is half-past eight and she is late. She always used to be late. Somehow, it disappoints you that that hasn't changed. You were hoping for thing to be different, a defiant change, but you still sit at a table fringed in darkness waiting, infinitely waiting, until she walks through the door.
And then she does, a bright light walking towards you signifying that a lifetime has past in three short years. A smile, bright and free of sarcasm, so different when she would face you with a sardonic eye roll. But, it is the slight differences, the sway in her step and the glint in her eyes, that you are blind to. To you, she is still that girl, your girl, walking through the doors at Hogs Head as soon as she could escape her friends without taking notice.
"Hey, Kid," you whisper as her arms go around you with a small giggle. You nose falls into her hair and you smell the scent of pansies. It is a flower that sends you down memory lane and you suddenly can see that day, long ago, when she was crowned with a circlet of those very flowers. Ironically, it was her wedding day and the very last time you saw her as she stared into her new husband's eyes as if he were her entire world.
She pulls away from you and you give her a small peck on the mouth. You know she can taste the whiskey on your lips and you can feel her flinch out of your embrace.
That hurts you somehow.
You didn't know what to expect, seeing her again tonight. Maybe, you hope, she too can feel that old pull of yesterday. Maybe she sees you as that awkward boy on the brink of manhood, who she loved for all of his pain. The way you see her.
Secretly, you wish for it.
Outwardly, you doubt it.
"How are you?" She says as she slips out of her jacket and slides into the seat across from you.
Surviving, you want to say. Barely, you would add. Barely surviving without you.
But you stare at her, smile with a painful knot in her stomach as you tell her that you have been okay.
"I've missed you, though." You allow that small pleasantry to pass through your lips, one that could be taken from one friend to another, and you try not to hurt when she replies, nonchalantly, that she has missed you, too.
"It's been years, hasn't it," she says as her gaze slides passed you and to the window where crooked, wizard hats are walking by. She looks back at you, smiling for a moment like when she was sixteen and promised to bring bell bottoms and tie dye to Hogwarts.
"Peace and love," she used to say at the lake as her braided hair flowed to the current of the wind. "That's what this world needs."
"A lifetime," you say quietly as you lift the last bit of whiskey to your lips.
She laughs, "Another round?"
"And what does the Lady drink nowadays?"
"The Lady," she says with pursed lips, "doesn't drink."
Outside, the wind howls for the first time and blows through the open window.
"Really? And what brought on this change of heart?"
She laughs again, "You really can't have expected me to wear braids in my hair forever. You can't have expected me to walk through that door, time unchanged, passing out fliers for a protest in the Potion's Dungeon."
The thing is, you did. You had half expected her to walk through that door, throw her arms around you, and tell you that she would love you forevermore. You half expected this night to be some sort of end to your saga together.
"Maybe, you should," you try to say lightly. "There is a war, you know."
"Think the barkeep would be adverse to a sit in?"
"Not if you flash him first," you say as you bring your new whiskey glass to your lips.
She slaps you. "That was one time!" Her cheeks turn red, her hands cover her face, and it is a few moments before you can glimpse her brilliant eyes again.
"Well," she says with a wiggle of her eyebrows, "there's no night like tonight." There's no moment like one you have yet to live.
Too bad your moments have long since been squandered on the carelessness of pain. For you two, there's nothing left.
"How's life?" you ask slightly cringing there she is here, in front of you, and that is all you can think to say.
She smiles, and you know she no longer sees you across from her anymore, but that your hair look slighter tousled and your eyes have brightened to a golden hazel.
He's your replacement, you know. An old friend you have sworn on your soul to be happy for. But that doesn't make the fact that she chose him any better. That doesn't make loving her any easier.
"Tell me you miss me," you say as you grab her hand.
"I already…" she begins, confused.
"Tell me you love me still," you say to her hoping, with your last ounce of innocence, that she could just walk away from the last three years of her life, E\everything she has known, and just be with you. "Tell me you can't live without me."
She looks away from you, "I can't do that."
"Why? You don't just forget love for someone! It doesn't just disappear!"
"I'm pregnant," she tells you. "I'm pregnant and in love with my husband."
She goes on to tell you that what you shared, although real and tragically beautiful, was years ago. She says that she had loved you, once, but so much has happened since then. So much has changed.
"We're different people now," she says gently as her hand falls atop your own.
You want to tell her to stop it. That of course you know how long it's been. Of course times have changed. Of course she loves him.
But that's not so true, is it?
Instead, you tell her to forget it with a small smile on your face. "I don't believe much in fairytales," you say as you drink the last bit of whiskey in your glass.
Happily Ever Afters, you know, are never the ending. They're just the beginning, and you lived yours long ago.
You look at her, at the eyes entreating you to understand that she had to move on. She had to live again.
"I'm sorry I broke your heart that one time," you tell her as you place some money on the table. "I didn't mean it."
And then you walk away, the scent of pansies following you through the door.
END
A/N: I envisioned this as a Lily/Remus, but it could really be any couple.