Title: Breathe, Grimmauld
Author name: Daria
Category: Drama
Sub-Category: Tragedy
Rating: K
Spoilers: Eh, the Harry
Potter series!
Summary: A dark house for
a Dark creature, Remus Lupin supposes.
Disclaimer: This story is
based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling,
various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books,
Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money
is being made from this, and no copyright infringements were
intended.
Breathe, Grimmauld
Houses breathe. They inhale when some enter and exhale when others leave, and each open window allows in more oxygen for both the inhabitants and the habitat itself. Particular floors may wheeze or rasp, even, and staircases have been known to pant, at times, but it is a certain fact that houses breathe - just as people do. Just as werewolves, and witches and wizards do. Number Twelve is an exception.
The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black holds its breath, or doesn't breathe at all. Open windows allow little relief, and open doors are simply unheard of. One cannot "air out" a room of Number Twelve, and it is rather like a prison in that the suffocating atmosphere in every room is perpetual.
Every footfall on the weary boards causes a sigh, the stairs groan instead of pant, and the walls seem to whisper secret miseries to each other when one leaves a room. Number Twelve wishes not to be lived in, and will just as soon asphyxiate than become habitable, even for its lone dweller. And yet, something about it pleases the lone guest now, more than ever before.
A dark house for a dark creature, Remus Lupin supposes. He doesn't mind that it is a stubborn house, an apathetic house, sometimes. He is just as bad. Holding his breath for reasons neither he nor the house care to place. And they make a good team that way; he is careful not to step on the especially creaky floorboards, and Lupin's silence is respected.
He leaves the room to their secrets, doesn't bother to open the windows and allow unwanted breezes in. His exercise in cleaning the place would warrant a smile from the now-deceased Kreacher, and doesn't mind that the water from the faucets is rust-hued sometimes. His quiet presence in the house would suggest that he isn't even living there, let alone breathing.
They get on well this way; the werewolf moving, wraith-like, through the halls, and the house with its apathy. And they will readily hold their breaths so long as they please, knowing full well that he whom is dearest to them will never return. Houses breathe, but they don't need to. People only breathe because they have to.