A.N: Written for the Hunger Games Challenge by isaacswolfbane, incorporating the quote: "I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever. The poem is Demeter by Carol Ann Duffy.
oOo
i
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
To break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
Winter was always colder at Hogwarts. The winds seemed harsher; the snow was whiter than the purest ivory; breathing in just one icy breath seemed to send a chill right to your very soul. Winter was also a quiet time. Even though the days were shorter, the night never seemed as dark as it should be. The night sky was always thick and dark and heavy, threatening clouds looming over the towers and promising yet more snow.
Winter was beautiful, but I longed for spring.
Even though our proud school was now bustling with young witches and wizards, my heart felt lonelier than ever. Without my beautiful daughter, who had long since left the school and was travelling the world, but also without one of our own. Salazar had abandoned the school after the disagreement about only allowing wizards and witches of pure blood into our arms, but his permanent rift was with Godric. Our strong-minded foursome had since become a threesome, with an empty gap in our hearts where Salazar used to reside.
I had longed for Salazar in the nights, especially when Helena left Hogwarts. Salazar never knew of Helena, and he still took up a part of my bulging heart. We had long ago shared passion in the darkest nights, and the coldest winters. I knew when he pledged his pure-blood notion to the rest of us; he was looking mostly to me. We could reside above Hogwarts together; kings and queens of a notorious pure-blood establishment.
I couldn't be that person. So I let him leave, and I bore my first child alone. I never told her of her true father. I let her grow up into a beautiful, fragrant woman, while I dissolved, became old, undesirable.
I miss her every winter.
I miss her so.
ii
She came from a long, long way,
But I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved.
When Helena returns to me, the snow thaws, the vast black lake melts back into its rippling reservoir, and daisies and daffodils spring to life around her feet. She brings the colour back into my life, with her shining brown hair and bright, glimmering eyes. My pasty, wrinkled skin pinks and smooths; my greying hair darkens and glows. I take my beautiful girl into my arms and embrace her for all I am worth.
My daughter; my girl; my spring.
Salazar is a distant memory when I look at her, and whisper. "I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever."
She laughs; tossing her curls over her shoulder, and kisses me.
We enter the castle, where we will spend the summer, and I smile to the pale blue sky.
The blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
oOo