Title: You Just Can't Stay Higher Than the Stars
Fandom: HP, Deathly Hallow spoilers
Length: 516 words, [1/possible 5]
Disclaimer: Don't own HP universe-slash-characters. This is merely mental exercise.
Notes: First chapter's pretty short. I don't know how long this fic will pan out, possibly five chapters. I just needed to get it out: we'll see where and how it goes.
14.
(On how to deal with last rebellions and the social fallout of the prodigal son: nothing. Pretend nothing happened and you won't have to deal with it. Life goes on.)
They're lying on his bed, still young enough to sneak away from the dizzy whirling parties downstairs but old enough to know better. Her golden hair spread out on evergreen covers in a rich display of autumnal offing, the crisp white pillows strewn haphazardly around like starched clouds or snow; this stark contrast between seasons, the sharp either-or between the name Black and the pureness they still radiate.
He's speaking with words that become increasingly halting, a sort of external display of the turmoil he surely must be feeling inside, he surely cannot explain. "Maybe I should have seen this coming. I guess it was always bound to happen, but you know that feeling, where… Where you can see it so clearly, but, but you just stand back and- But I just don't- Do you think he… blamed… do you think he blamed me when he ran away? But… but who's to say- Who's to say that we're to blame? Cissy, what kind of world is this, anyway?"
(What kind of world is this, where brother is pitted against brother, and only one can be right and the other must be wrong? Do we keep believing in it, or is there a final judgment to tell us that both can be grey, and neither must be black nor white? What kind of world is this, where to not question its rules only brings out the doubts within us?)
She's not looking at him and her eyes are closed. Maybe she's thinking about a sister she is no longer allowed to claim as her own, or maybe she's thinking about what the future holds, all the ethereal dress robes floating and light like faery dust, and the golden threads interwoven between all the lives they're still allowed to acknowledge the existence of, all the golden threads delicate and intricate on expensive clothes and rising up like steam from elf-made champagne and settling on the shoulders of a certain Lucius Malfoy who produces strange and beating emotions in her, rising unbearably in her chest, emotions she's never experienced and cannot explain.
But then she opens her eyes and stares at her little cousin and suddenly the future is so very far away and the dirt of the past smothers them both. The party downstairs is loud with a falsitude only the very rich can produce. The rich and Most Ancient and Noble House of-
She smiles tremulously. Her eyes are painfully bright.
"Reggie," she whispers, "Reggie, it's not your fault."
For a long time he doesn't answer. Then he says, very quietly so that she has to strain to hear, and even then, even now, she has no way of knowing how much she heard correctly. "But someone has to take the fall. Sanctuary."
(Or perhaps he said: "It's everybody's fault. Because we're family." They're complicated creatures, and they all have different ways of dealing with things.)