Disclaimer: I hardly refer at all to the wizarding world, or any of J.K. Rowling, as this is one of those instances when the point was writing and not writing fan fiction. But still, you know, I don't own Harry Potter or the contents of it's universe. The headings in italics and the title (which is shared with the Henry James novel) are from the T.S. Eliot poem, which heavily inspired the whole thing though is taken out of context in certain places to make a fit. You can find this poem in online at www.bartelby.com The mention of April being the cruelest month is also from T.S. Eliot.
Author's Note: I wrote this thinking Snape and a love who is most definitely now Lily Potter. But now I've decided this has got to be Remus.
He doesn't believe anyone ever saw, when he thinks about it now. She treated him like she treated the world and he doesn't see how anyone could tell, or would remember. To be sure, he knows he never said it out loud- and whispered in her ear does not count, because the words never reached the air, and therefore were never real. But they were there, hanging in his mind were he was sure she could read, frosted and ice like winter.
An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb…The remains of their December afternoons are still – barely - present inside there, and if he lets himself remember he can see their ruins slowly crumbling, giving way to time and folly, as he supposes such things always do. But there against the cold stone she sat once, with her voice wafting like her violins, and her music warming him in places he didn't realize had been cold. She spoke of friends, and him, and when she used them in the same breath he sat at her feet like a child listening to God.
And all the while her fingers drummed a simple tune in his head, setting a march in his pulse.
How clever you are. How clever you are. How clever you are, my darling.
Slowly twisting the lilac stalks…When he visited her in April – truly the cruelest month, he knew now - she went on about the world as if she herself was finished, and he smiled as he could only do for her. Because she was silly to act as though she knew what it meant in her whispered praise, embarrassing and charmingly foolish to give compliments when they were not hers to give. Instead he wished she'd give him a bit of her charming foolishness, but perhaps, he considers as he recalls, this, also, was not hers to give.
In the end the sun faded and the smell of spring was in the air and her chatter was old and pleasant, so he tried to stop sinning against her in his heart and listen, because no one else was there to hear and it meant all the world, even if she was feeding him pretty little lies like cake.
How brave you are. How brave you are. How brave you are, my darling.
Afternoon gray and smoky, evening yellow and rose…
When she found that he was going, she called him to her room with a card and a bitter smile that only he saw. Something in his stomach was telling him not to go, or maybe to go faster, he still isn't sure. He was ten years old and she was a hundred as he stood there. From the first moment she treated him as an inevitability and an absolute, but in that room she looked at him with a bit of regret, and a bit of confusion, and a bit of nothing. He didn't dare utter a word when she paused in something he had never heard before, because it was insane to try to tell her, he decided- though it was also insane to pack all your belongings into a steamer truck and try to escape you past and make your fortune at once as he was doing. He was much too young to be fleeing from his demons, and he wondered if perhaps some people were just born with demons and that was the problem. He remembers her skin was gold and her eyes were blue and his sighs were gray.
So he left her, with a contemplative curiosity, as though the silences that reigned had truly been nothing, as though it had never been anything.
How sad you are. How sad you are. How sad you are, my darling.