A/N: Written for the Second Competition That Must Not Be Named
He falls like autumn leaves,
wildly drifting along
on the whims of the breeze,
then gradually going
down,
down,
down;
down through the open abyss,
down to an abandoned corner of the yard,
down to the cold, hard ground,
where light reaches him not.
Lead astray, then left to decay,
his colours fade and his edges fray
until he's a rumpled and torn skeleton
with only bits of his past vitality still clinging to his bones.
He becomes like winter,
dull and barren and locked inside,
curling in on himself in bleak despair
as snow turns familiar paths cold;
while others seek warmth in friends and blankets
designed to chase their demons away,
he lingers and self-flagellates,
refusing to keep the bitterness at bay.
But then she's like spring;
she's fresh and full of newfound life,
like a blossom flourishing, against all odds,
in a wasteland of squalor and destitution.
He used to get hay fever in her presence,
as if his body were reflexively reminding him
of her pitiful background
and her contemptuous blood status
and how very out of place she was,
but something has changed;
she's there, but he's not sneezing.
Instead, she pulls him out of his depression
and removes the dust that coats his mind,
cleaning out its cracks and crevices
until everything looks new,
and he feels clean
for the first time
in years.
And, together, they're summer,
blisteringly hot and satisfied,
and both, for once,
careless
and
free.
But they're seasonal;
they wax and wane
like the moon and tides.
Neither wants to verbalise
how far they've come,
why it works, or – even –
that they've fallen in love,
so they fall together and then they fall apart
before coming back for more love and heartache,
and the cycle spirals on like a raging cyclone,
entrapping them within in its circling winds
and flinging their agency away
until they all they can do is circle one another
like two wizards afore a fight,
so all they can do is revisit the same – old – problems
over and over again.
That is, until she gets flung out, too.
Bruised and broken from the fall,
she picks herself up and looks for him,
but he's nowhere to be found.
Time drags on as the cyclone rages,
and she's forced to accept it;
he's dead, or they're dead;
either way, there's no future there.
She jumps headfirst into life
and is promptly washed away
by the rapid current.
It pounds and distracts
and eventually cleanses,
and then it tips her out
into a calm, shallow pond.
Wiser and stronger,
she walks on alone.
Meanwhile,
the cyclone subsides
to reveal him,
still hunkered down
in family's secret bunker;
when he saw her get ripped away,
he Apparated to safety,
where he hid for the year
while she travelled and fought.
Melancholy dissolves those enforced walls
until he has to reckon with it all.
He tries to follow her, but he can't;
she left no tracks or clues,
only bittersweet memories that linger like old caramel
stuck to the teeth of his mind.
A decade later, they meet again;
it's an unfortunate accident, really,
but their eyes lock like a door
as her oldest and his youngest
meet on the first day of school
and they both finally acknowledge
that their time together is,
truly,
past.
Their eyes meet.
Their brains freeze.
Their hearts hurt.
Their fists clench.
Their lips smile.