A/N : At long last, the finale.
DISCLAIMER: All characters and any pre-existing events, situations, timelines or plots referenced to are the sole property of the ingenious JK Rowling and whoever else she's given the go-ahead to over the years, not me. My only editorial comment: Bummer.
And now, on with the show:
~ Chapter 5 : Dawn and Twilight ~
The light of dawn and crackle of activity in the street below took hours to slowly wake them, confusingly filed as a single person in the bedsheets. She awoke to find him holding her as he had when she had first fallen asleep, only filled with the genuine relaxation he had been attempting to replicate.
She looked up at him to find his eyes already open, and half-asked "So it wasn't a dream?"
"No."
He gazed at her for a moment, then intoned with infinite resolve "I love you."
They resettled against each other and she sighed, curling her head to his chest in full intention of drifting back into slumber, but then came his sudden realization -
"Hadn't we ought to be getting you to graduation?"
Her eyes sprang open and she raced to dress, quickly separating their respective sets of clothing from the items strewn on the immediate floor and through the bed itself. He joined her in the task, not quite so rushed or precise in his carrying out of it, and taking advantage of numerous opportunities to tickle her in bared areas of weakness as they went about it, earning him a bat to the temple with her underskirt.
As they walked out of the inn and down the street toward the apperation depot together, just as they had the week and month before - or perhaps a millimeter closer, she was none the wiser of the thirty galleons worth of smashed and tearstained furniture in the next battered room that had delivered him to her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
8 months later
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
His thoughts journeyed back to that fateful night she had revealed her true life story to him as he stood at the forbidden sink, painfully fingering the emblem of a snake on the faucet, mind too wrapped in the freshness of his loss to hear Myrtle's echoing sobs as he hissed the command to open.
As his feet crunched through the parched skeletons of a thousand years' casualties to the horror that had once waited within the cavern for all, robes slick with the slime of a slide down the stony chute, he could think only of what had awaited him personally during his first descent. He could hear his own foolishly naive voice in his head as he crawled through the tunnel in the forgotten avalanche, struggling to pull a now much larger self though the opening.
It was on the opposite side that he doubted himself, but was steeled by the memory of her face when she had sunk in front of him after the only slap that her hand had ever dreamed of bestowing him in her all too short life. It must be had for her pyre - the ring lost to looters, it was the only evidence of events without which the woman he called his wife would never have truly existed. It was instrumental in her soul's construction; it was only right for it to have its place in her body's destruction. Even now, he found it difficult to imagine; the image was impossible to picture, but he knew that did not change its truth, nor the justice.
His reaction when she had told him, his fury and pain while she slept that night, crying for her and because of her before seeing her sleeping so peacefully and being washed over with l-ove that had to be fulfilled before it overwhelmed him completely raced through his mind as he advanced to the chamber. As soon as he entered, though, his thoughts turned to his own memories of the events that evening of his second May in the castle, feeling the blush of his blindness to the truth. For some reason, now that she was gone and the living memory was quieted, he had to see for himself. To put his hands on some reminder of the true meaning of the affair, of his wife's first love.
He approached the base of the statue, heading not for the enshrinement itself, but the pillar of reptilian hate just before it which had revealed his adversary so long ago. He slowly ventured behind the column and instantly discovered what he was both desperately awaiting and dreading. Tucked away in the envelope of shadows sat a large stone bowl, settled in its hiding place on the floor, encrusted with the mold and filth of six years' uninterrupted stagnation of half its fill of water. The rag was equally repugnant, hardened across the lip of the vessel, unchanged, as if frozen in time.
He scooped up the relic, feeling in it's weight a sort of resolution. For the first time, he could see the caring scene playing out in his head, enabled by the metaphysical fingerprint of the instrument. He stood in respect of the moment as he thanked whatever force responsible that she had told him while she could, that he found her before she left. That if even for only those few months, he truly *knew* his wife. That he had heard the confessions of an heiress.
~*~ Fin ~*~
A/N: Nicole suggested the title "The Girl Who Loved a Book", but I liked mine better : ) .
The R-rated and vocabulary infused version is also posted on the site, and is an R because you hear more about the happenings in the chamber and corridor.
Thanks to Lisa, without whom's enthusiasm and merciless beta-ing I wouldn't have gotten the thing off of the ground. Many thanks also go to Serene Chaos for "Schoolgirl", which seeded the concept of some remotely if not entirely willing bond and the necessity of sexual energy in the matter of Tom's re-animation, and provided the lens through which I saw the above dynamics played out in the movie. Not to mention Bonnie Wright and Christian Coulson for their respectively sophisticated and utterly magnetic performances, which under the influence of my having just read "Schoolgirl" spurned the core story.
DISCLAIMER: All characters and any pre-existing events, situations, timelines or plots referenced to are the sole property of the ingenious JK Rowling and whoever else she's given the go-ahead to over the years, not me. My only editorial comment: Bummer.
And now, on with the show:
~ Chapter 5 : Dawn and Twilight ~
The light of dawn and crackle of activity in the street below took hours to slowly wake them, confusingly filed as a single person in the bedsheets. She awoke to find him holding her as he had when she had first fallen asleep, only filled with the genuine relaxation he had been attempting to replicate.
She looked up at him to find his eyes already open, and half-asked "So it wasn't a dream?"
"No."
He gazed at her for a moment, then intoned with infinite resolve "I love you."
They resettled against each other and she sighed, curling her head to his chest in full intention of drifting back into slumber, but then came his sudden realization -
"Hadn't we ought to be getting you to graduation?"
Her eyes sprang open and she raced to dress, quickly separating their respective sets of clothing from the items strewn on the immediate floor and through the bed itself. He joined her in the task, not quite so rushed or precise in his carrying out of it, and taking advantage of numerous opportunities to tickle her in bared areas of weakness as they went about it, earning him a bat to the temple with her underskirt.
As they walked out of the inn and down the street toward the apperation depot together, just as they had the week and month before - or perhaps a millimeter closer, she was none the wiser of the thirty galleons worth of smashed and tearstained furniture in the next battered room that had delivered him to her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
8 months later
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
His thoughts journeyed back to that fateful night she had revealed her true life story to him as he stood at the forbidden sink, painfully fingering the emblem of a snake on the faucet, mind too wrapped in the freshness of his loss to hear Myrtle's echoing sobs as he hissed the command to open.
As his feet crunched through the parched skeletons of a thousand years' casualties to the horror that had once waited within the cavern for all, robes slick with the slime of a slide down the stony chute, he could think only of what had awaited him personally during his first descent. He could hear his own foolishly naive voice in his head as he crawled through the tunnel in the forgotten avalanche, struggling to pull a now much larger self though the opening.
It was on the opposite side that he doubted himself, but was steeled by the memory of her face when she had sunk in front of him after the only slap that her hand had ever dreamed of bestowing him in her all too short life. It must be had for her pyre - the ring lost to looters, it was the only evidence of events without which the woman he called his wife would never have truly existed. It was instrumental in her soul's construction; it was only right for it to have its place in her body's destruction. Even now, he found it difficult to imagine; the image was impossible to picture, but he knew that did not change its truth, nor the justice.
His reaction when she had told him, his fury and pain while she slept that night, crying for her and because of her before seeing her sleeping so peacefully and being washed over with l-ove that had to be fulfilled before it overwhelmed him completely raced through his mind as he advanced to the chamber. As soon as he entered, though, his thoughts turned to his own memories of the events that evening of his second May in the castle, feeling the blush of his blindness to the truth. For some reason, now that she was gone and the living memory was quieted, he had to see for himself. To put his hands on some reminder of the true meaning of the affair, of his wife's first love.
He approached the base of the statue, heading not for the enshrinement itself, but the pillar of reptilian hate just before it which had revealed his adversary so long ago. He slowly ventured behind the column and instantly discovered what he was both desperately awaiting and dreading. Tucked away in the envelope of shadows sat a large stone bowl, settled in its hiding place on the floor, encrusted with the mold and filth of six years' uninterrupted stagnation of half its fill of water. The rag was equally repugnant, hardened across the lip of the vessel, unchanged, as if frozen in time.
He scooped up the relic, feeling in it's weight a sort of resolution. For the first time, he could see the caring scene playing out in his head, enabled by the metaphysical fingerprint of the instrument. He stood in respect of the moment as he thanked whatever force responsible that she had told him while she could, that he found her before she left. That if even for only those few months, he truly *knew* his wife. That he had heard the confessions of an heiress.
~*~ Fin ~*~
A/N: Nicole suggested the title "The Girl Who Loved a Book", but I liked mine better : ) .
The R-rated and vocabulary infused version is also posted on the site, and is an R because you hear more about the happenings in the chamber and corridor.
Thanks to Lisa, without whom's enthusiasm and merciless beta-ing I wouldn't have gotten the thing off of the ground. Many thanks also go to Serene Chaos for "Schoolgirl", which seeded the concept of some remotely if not entirely willing bond and the necessity of sexual energy in the matter of Tom's re-animation, and provided the lens through which I saw the above dynamics played out in the movie. Not to mention Bonnie Wright and Christian Coulson for their respectively sophisticated and utterly magnetic performances, which under the influence of my having just read "Schoolgirl" spurned the core story.