Hey everyone! This story was brought to you by Divination: Aeromancy assignment, Insane Prompt List, Hogwarts Bingo Party, Take a Prompt - Leave a Prompt, Wacky Wandmakers, and Supernatural Fanclub Merfolk on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Divination: Aeromancy assignment: Task 2 - Write about a message from someone/something important.
Insane Prompt List: 747. (AU) Tattoo Artist
Hogwarts Bingo Party: I2 Remus/Dorcas
Take a Prompt - Leave a Prompt: Quick Quotes Quill
Wacky Wandmakers: Willow Wood Wand (genre) tragedy and Veela Hair Core (trait) sensitive
Supernatural Fanclub Merfolks: Cleo (dialogue) "You're making it worse."
Warning for Muggle!AU, Tattoo Artist!AU, mentions of character death, terrorism, and child hospitalization. Word count is 1,106 words. I hope you all enjoy Do Better.
"You're making it worse," the voice of the young woman sitting in Remus's chair broke through his thoughts. "Just sitting there and staring at her words like that."
"They are very beautiful," Remus said, tracing his finger over the words on the paper. "Your friend must have been a pretty awesome person?"
The girl, who'd introduced herself as Dorcas when she approached him, nodded vehemently. Tears shining in her eyes, threatening to fall at any minute.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said. "If you want to take a moment to yourself I can go and prepare the ink and stuff for your tattoo?"
The sandy-haired woman nodded at him as the big wet droplets of water started cascading down her face. Remus hated to admit it but she was very pretty when she cried. The way the tears left a trail of sorrow down her face, it was almost magical in a way. Not that Remus usually enjoyed seeing people cry. He usually tried to comfort them.
"What do you have here, Remus?" Sirius asked, leaning over his shoulder to read the words written on the piece of paper. Their friend James's wife, Lily's, last words ever to be recorded.
"That doesn't sound like Lily," Sirius said with a scoff.
"But it makes her feel better so who are we to try to talk her out of it?" Remus replied with a shrug as he began to mix the colors for the tattoo.
Remus had been surprised when Dorcas had chosen him to apply her tattoo. Most people tended to steer clear of him because of the big angry looking red scars gashed across his face. Not that he wasn't a very good artist. He was one of the best artists in the shop but most of the clients, especially the pretty ladies, usually preferred going to James, or Sirius, or even Peter for their tattoos.
"Give my love to Harry," Remus called as Sirius left early. He really felt bad for his dark-haired friend. After the "accident" that killed Lily and James, Sirius had been given custody of baby Harry. The poor child had been protected from the horrifying ramifications of the "accident" by his carseat.
"Is he going to visit Harry in the hospital again?" Dorcas's voice still choked with tears asked from across the room.
"He's Harry's guardian now. He has to be there in case any decision have to be made in Harry's care."
"The sister couldn't have made some of those decisions?"
Remus could hear the coldness behind the word sister. They all knew that Lily's sister, Petunia, wasn't getting along with her younger sister towards the end. But she wouldn't put that on Harry would she?
"You don't really like Lily's sister, do you?" Remus asked, walking back over to his station, colored inks in hand. "Why is that, Dorcas?"
"It's just the way that she speaks….spoke to Lily towards the end there. Like what Lily was doing was wrong. Petunia has to understand that Lily was right to stand up for what she believed in."
"Sometimes that's not so easy for other people to do, Dorcas. I don't think that Petunia was trying to be horrible to Lily. She was just saying the things she did out of fear. Fear makes people do the most horrible things to the people they love without even thinking about it." He gently pressed the marker to her arm. The black ink marking porcelain white skin as it went across effortlessly.
Dorcas's brown eyes tracked the movement of the marker that marked her tattoo. She seemed to be paying attention to every detail of the moment. Every line, every loop, every curl. It was almost too much for Remus to bare and then she spoke. "I suppose that you are right," she said, finally. "It's just far easier to be angry at someone whose present and not the most evilest terrorist in the known world, you know?"
Remus nodded his head. He could feel the anger in her as much he felt the anger when he'd been told that James and Lily were dead himself. He knew that he wasn't the only angry about their deaths.
"I have to ask, how did you come up with the quote for your tattoo?" Remus chuckled as he watched Dorcas's eyes cast around her in anxiousness.
"I know it's stupid and I should have written down what Lily said by hand but I used one James's latest inventions," she said, digging through her purse with her free hand and coming up with what looked like a mechanized pen. Across the base was the huge red and gold label read Quick Quotes Quill.
Remus burst out laughing. He just couldn't help it. Leave to James to have invented something that would twist someone's words and make them seem like something they wouldn't have said in the first place.
"Do you still want to use it?" Remus asked, trying to keep from laughing yet again. It wasn't a funny situation to be honest but he couldn't help it. If he didn't start laughing he'd end up crying his eyes out and that wasn't exactly the sort of thing you wanted to see your tattoo artist do.
Dorcas thought for a moment. Her eyes taking on a faraway look to them. Maybe a memory of Lily and herself during grade school? "Yeah," she said, smiling. "I do. They may not have been Lily's actual words but I'm pretty sure they were the meaning behind them. Wouldn't you agree, Remus?"
Remus nodded. Setting the first of many ink cartridges into the tattoo gun and getting down to work.
What seemed like a few minutes of tattooing and easy conversation, but was actually hours upon hours on end, the tattoo was finally finished. Remus smiled down at his work. He did his best because it was Lily's words and Dorcas's arm.
"What do you think?" he asked, moving Dorcas so she could see the tattoo on her in the nearby mirror.
The tattoo was a simple set of words. More a message to everyone else around her than to Dorcas herself. In all of Lily Evans Potter's favorite colors were the words, "Do better.". A simple message from one of their most important friends in the most difficult and trying times in their lives.
"It's wonderful, Remus," she said, launching into his arms and kissing. "It's no wonder I love you so much."
"I love you too," Remus murmured as he closed down the shop for the night. Dorcas was his last customer of the evening. "Let's go home."
I hope you all enjoyed Do Better as much as I enjoyed writing it.