Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters in it.
Back lying heavy against the thickly grooved tree trunk, Remus sits. Sharp shards of hard wood stab him, and a few low hanging branches tickle his head. He is exhausted, and his eyes make repeated attempts to shut themselves without his permission. He tries his hardest to keep them open, wanting to see all he can this day; he wishes to absorb every singular detail and store each permanently in a secure spot in his memory.
Gusts of wind float past, quietly playing with his hair and cooling bare spots of skin. He is thankful for it. The sun is bright and clear in the sky, and he would doubtless be soaked with sweat were it not for the light breeze.
His parents sit together on a chequered mat spread across the grass, joyfully discussing the tribulations of their work life. Remus can faintly hear them, each taking great pleasure in dramatizing the gruesome details. He smiles to himself.
Remus has decided he loves it here, adores the outside. The musky smell of mud beneath the fresh scent of the slightly damp grass, the whooshing and rustling of wind soaring through the trees. He enjoys the sensation of grass crawling through is fingers as he pushes his hands to the ground, the covered dirt sneaking into the thin gaps under his fingernails. Even the slight pain of jagged clumps of wood jabbing his back adds to his happiness. It all makes for this perfection.
This is more beautiful by far, Remus thinks, than simply watching. Watching was his reason for being so very glad for this day out, his ecstasy spurred on by hours of it, watching and watching and watching.
The family's trips from home were exceptionally few, restricted mainly to rare visits for his parents' workmates, some of them muggles, others not. Remus only recalls ever meeting one child of a wizarding family, a slight girl with a disproportionately thick neck, red face and matted mess of thick, white blond hair. She had been excitable and somewhat manic in Remus's opinion, and he remembers her spending vaguely ridiculous amounts of time merrily babbling away about Hogwarts and her anticipation of starting there. He had listened patiently, and made an attempt at attentively, but he found it difficult to keep up when she had begun to repeat herself for the third time. It was not that he did not hold any interest in the school; he did, great interest, in fact. But he found it a terrific challenge to identify with the enthusiasm of attending that the girl had held, because, as his parents had kindly informed him many times on multiple occasions, he was not ever going there. This did not upset him. He had long since accepted it, and found himself treating Hogwarts as though it were a story, a magical and glorious fairy tale that he had often heard as a young child. He was interested in it, but never in preparation. He was as an outside spectator of the school. He did not tell the girl this, as that kind of information invariably led to questions, and those, with equal predictability, led to answers he could not give, by the almighty order of his parents.
A leaf falls gently past Remus's nose, lightly brushing his face as it passes. He is reminded of sitting in his bedroom of home, gazing out of his window as golden brown Autumn leaves flutter past. His bedroom is raised far above the ground, too high to see the pavement that lies outside. He does not see the leaves hit the floor, and he loves to think that they keep falling, forever and forever. This one, coloured in a perfect yellowy gold, lands softly on the ground. Remus pauses to examine it, taking it in his hand and rolling it between his fingers.
It is riddled with brown rimmed holes, he sees, and rips surround its edges. As it falls out of his fingers, it lands in a patch of parched, dying grass. He sighs. He likes his idea that leaves are eternally falling.
He spends awful amounts of time looking out of windows, he thinks. Even when not in his room, he will sit at the dinner table, watching people stroll past, shopping bags grasped in their hands or leads running from then to a sulking pet on the other end. When passing through his kitchen in early morning for his at-home lessons ("We wanted to get you started early, there's fewer of us than there is at school and we don't want you going through life never knowing any magic") he watches muggle children unwillingly plodding to their school, occasionally a grumpy adult accompanying them. He'll watch them later with the workers, on their break for lunch as he slumps on a table eating his own. He really doesn't mind, he's thankful his parents do this at all.
He wonders if that outside is the same as this. Wonderful for the first time you go out, the freedom rushing through you and causing you to shiver with the thrill. And then you look properly, and you find that everything is ridden with dark little holes and uneven tears.
It was, he insists to himself, far better when nature's flaws were invisible to him, when he was simply aware of them and did not have to pay them any mind. The glass makes things better.
He wonders if other people realise this, that if they stopped looking so hard they could feel better about things. He doubts it greatly.
Somehow though, as he sits against the tree, every part of him longs not to go and hide behind the glass once more. He thinks that this makes no sense whatsoever. But imperfection crawls beneath his nails, claws at his back and softly makes a great mess of his hair, and he wishes desperately to remain on this side of the glass, and prays to know if all things hold these glorious mistakes.
Someday, he swears to himself, he will make it his mission to find out.
Author's Note: Yay, pointless drabble! This is staying as a complete story right now, but I guess if at some point I get some Remus Lupin related ideas I might make this into a kind of mini collection.
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