AUTHORS NOTES: This story is muchly angsty. It is also slightly censored. IF, and only IF, you are old enough, I'd love you to visit the story at :
www . livejournal . com / users / spikeyboots / 7608 . html
(obviously without all the spaces)
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Now, please enjoy.
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"They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth."
Excerpt from Clouds by Rupert Brooke, 1913
The light is silver, refracted through navy blue clouds that promise afternoon rain. A high window in the library lets in just enough of the light to allow a corner, behind two bookshelves, a deep ocean-like illumination. Two figures sit beneath the shadows and windows and walls of books.
'You know, sometimes I forget, just for a few minutes, and that's when - I think that's the worst. The guilt, you know.'
He can hear her voice is tired, hear where scratches at the back of her throat.
'Or those mornings where you wake up, and expect them to be there. God, I love when you have them in your dreams, and for that tiny instant, before sleep washes away, you can't be sure that the dream wasn't true.'
With every other person she is silent, hazel eyes warning them to back away from her razor-raw pain. But with him she cannot stop herself. It is like she spills over with words and the lingering of essence of those that are gone, until they are both completely drenched.
Hermione picks at her nails, bringing one to her lip and tearing at the ragged edge, hand shaking as if she has had too much coffee.
Probably has, Remus thought, she looks like she hasn't slept in a week. What he remembered as her pale, moonlike skin was now dull, and her eyes were sunken, darkened by too many waking nights and the smudge of mascara.
He stared up at the window from where they sat on the floor, her legs tucked neatly to her side, his back against a bookshelf. Steel skies sail no ships, he thought idly. His father, a naval captain, had been fond of saying that.
He can't think why she likes to talk to him. He can think of nothing to help her anymore than he can think of a way to help himself. But it was enough, he supposed, for him to listen.
'Sometimes I hear them, Professor.'
Often she slips into calling him that, even though she graduated over three years ago, and had fought alongside him for five.
Her eyes look past him, focusing on particles of dust that drift around them both. Dust made from old chaffed book covers, worn carpet and what once were humans.
'All the time. When I'm alone, sometimes when I'm surrounded by people. Even now I wonder if I just listen a little harder I might hear them telling me…' she shrugs, '…something.'
His head has begun to ache dully. He reached out to place a hand on her thigh, paused for a moment, hand hovering, but then gingerly placed his palm upon her skirt. The wool was scratchy and it prickled beneath his palm. Beneath that he could feel her warmth.
'Why do you listen Hermione?'
'I don't know,' she shook her head a little, the weak winter light catching in the loose fuzzy strands of hair. It made her look like a Waterhouse sketch.
'Because it's worse not listening. Thinking I'm missing something they want me to know. Because if I don't know…' her voice dropped away and her eyes stared deadly into his own.
Remus rubbed the crease between his brows, so deep now it almost looked like a scar. He felt the heavy air push inside his lungs and he almost told Hermione every inch of pain that lay written, a holy text, beneath his skin. He knew she would have read it, consumed it, memorised, and catalogued every piece. In some ways he longed to share all his pain with this girl. Well, not really a girl anymore, is she Remus? He longed to see her absorb it all within her just like she would some textbook, worthy of her study. Instead, he held himself still, and solid, like he had done for much of his adult life and kept himself hidden.
'That's the worst thing; not knowing.' His voice was harsher than he had meant it to be. 'And yet knowing just enough to run through your mind every damn possibility of what went wrong, or right, or should never have happened at all. A million times over. But you still never know. You simply learn to…move through life without parts of your soul. I don't know how. But you do.'
Hermione shuddered, almost imperceptibly, but Remus felt it where his fingertips still rested lightly upon her thigh. That feeling when a light bulb blows at dusk.
Three days later, they were back, settled into what had now become well learned-poses on the library floor. Sometimes, if Remus tried hard enough, he could convince himself he was back at Hogwarts, and it was Sirius who sat across from him, black hair gleaming, eyes dancing, barking that laugh that made him feel so inexplicably happy –
'Do you still remember what Sirius tasted like?' she said, off hand, as if it were the most simple question in the world.
Remus blinked fast, eyelashes fluttering.
'Well,' she said, rummaging through her bag and pulling out a crumpled cigarette packet, 'do you?'
Remus thought she sounded quite calm, imperious even, but her hand still shook incredibly as she tried to get the lighter to catch and throw it's little spark. Why she didn't just use magic he wasn't sure. Hell, he wasn't even sure when she had started smoking.
'I still remember what they tasted like. Almost more than what they looked like. It's a more personal thing, I think, knowing somebody's taste.'
He was quiet for a minute, plucking at the piles on her skirt, then said softly, 'How did you know about Sirius and I?'
She gave him the saddest smile and blew smoke up, out of the corner of her mouth where it whirled like translucent cotton candy above her head.
'Rather obvious sub-text I'm afraid.'
'Oh,' Remus felt his cheeks flush, 'right.'
'Ron was my first kiss, you know. Took him long enough.'
She waved the cigarette around, its' glowing tip painting patterns before Remus' eyes.
'It was after Transfiguration, sixth year. He'd just been sucking on a sugar quill, and from then on, every time I kissed him I fancied I could taste it still. And Harry,' she sighed and took a long drag of her cigarette, 'Harry always tasted a little like red wine, and a little like saffron. I suppose… if kisses were colours, then Harry's was crimson and Ron's gold.'
'Sirius kissed indigo.' Remus felt the muscles in his jaw tightening, fighting to keep the information locked within him, as if sharing it would somehow diminish it, destroy what only he had kept sacred all these years. But something was undoing him. 'He tasted like blackberries in the winter, mulberries in the summer, and sometimes like firewhiskey, depending on how much he'd drunk,' he said, smiling but not letting it reach his eyes.
He watched as she let the cigarette dangle lazily from her lips and was reminded of how Sirius used to do the same. Funny, he thought, how they never really talked about themselves. He knew more about Harry and Ron than he ever had done when they'd been alive, and subtext aside, he knew she hoarded the information about Sirius and the other Marauders she learnt from him.
They were little more than reflections of the dead. He knew she knew that, too. He saw it play across her face every time he looked at her.
The library was quiet but outside the heavens had opened and poured their tears upon the cool gray world.
He looked at his watch. It was after three, but seemed later because of the storm clouds.
'Are you going to go back to work?' He knew she worked somewhere in the ministry. He wasn't sure of the specifics.
She shook her head.
'Not today,' she said, stubbing the cigarette out on the carpet, leaving a little smouldering mark. 'Do you have to be anywhere?'
'No,' he answered truthfully, aware of her gaze resting somewhere near his left temple.
Her eyes sought his from under darkened lids. 'Come back to mine?'
Remus just nodded. And she laughed, if you could call it that, for no reason at all. But it was a harsh, broken sound that seemed all the more foreign among the walls of books.
Remus had only been to her house a few times before. Twice when Harry and Ron were still alive (all three had decided to move in together after Hogwarts) and once, for the wake. That was three months ago now.
Apparating onto her front doorstep (she had put shielding charms within the house itself) Remus waited, enjoying the feeling of the thick drizzle on his face, as Hermione struggled with the keys.
The door swung open and revealed a far different house to what he remembered. The two-storey town house had been all white walls, scrubbed wooden floors, crowded with quaint second hand furniture and colourful prints done by Hermione's favourite muggle artists. Now, the house was grimmer, as if someone had purposefully leached all the colour from it. Much of the furniture was gone, and all the paintings. The curtains hung ragged and half closed over grubby windows. It smelled like damp, and burnt coffee.
Hermione had already moved into the kitchen, discarded her jacket, and was making tea. He leant against the doorframe, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm and watched as she searched through a cupboard. She pulled out two rather dusty cups and saucers that clattered noisily in her shaking hands. Remus grabbed them, and put them down on top of the table, which was covered in newpaper clippings. He couldn't read the headlines at a glance, but he could guess.
'They always shake these days,' she said by way of explanation, holding up her hands in the grey light so he could see dark blue veins marking the near translucent skin.
'Doesn't matter much at work, all I do is read. Always dropping scrolls and things though,' she smiled wanly, 'people either think I'm a nervous wreck or very uncoordinated.'
Carefully, as if dealing with some frightened animal, he covered her trembling hands with his own. She looked up at him and briefly an image flashed of her as he'd first seen her, nearly thirteen, in that carriage on the Hogwarts Express. Then the years sped by, nauseating, like someone was spinning a time turner, and that innocent clever girl was standing before him now, crushed, disfigured, a scrap of what she should have been. He dropped her hands. He felt like throwing up.
Get a fucking grip Remus, he thought.
The kettle boiled, and she made the tea. Strong and milky. They sat at the table covered in newspapers (Hogwarts Duo: Death & Doom, The Boy Who Lived – Almost, etc., etc.) and he listened as she talked quietly on about how the house was too big for her, how she was sure there were doxies in the curtains, how Ron had wanted to renovate the study, how she had forgotten to reconnect it to the Floo Network, how Ginny Weasley never visited anymore.
Their cups were empty and the light was all but gone, yet it still rained outside, a constant, steady drumming.
She stood up slowly, he heard a joint crack, and she looked at him as though she were looking from across a crowded room, although they were less than a metre apart. Slowly she lifted one hand to her chest and undid the top button of her starched blue shirt. Her sunken brown eyes never left his. She undid another. And another. Remus swallowed hard. He could see the rise of her breasts, the pale lace of her bra.
'Hermione, don't,' he said, finding his voice ragged and deep.
Another button.
'Hermione – please – you don't want this.'
Last button. The blouse hung limply off her shoulders, and Remus was struck by how thin she had become. Her collarbones stuck out like setsquares, her rib cage rippling under her skin as she took each breath. There was a soft swish as the shirt slid down the length of her arms, and pooled onto the dirty floor.
Remus stood up slowly and found half of him wanted to flee, the other half, the wolf stirring within, wanted to push her up against the nearest cupboard and fuck her so hard her teeth would chatter.
He crossed the small distance between them, breath pinching in his chest. Up close she was slightly blurred, and he noticed the tears at the edge of her eyes. He pushed his hands into her hair, feeling it tangle, pull and snap around his fingers. Her temples pulsed against the skin of his palms. Pain, anger and desire all shooting through his veins, he leaned forward.
And, as he kissed her, he knew that was how he would always remember her, tasting of tea and tobacco and dust. If kisses were colours Hermione's was the palest dawn grey.
She murmured against his mouth, a million things, a million things she didn't need to tell and he didn't need to hear. He pushed her back against the sink, sending dishes clattering to the floor, delicate flower-patterned plates, splintering and bursting apart. Her face was streaked with tears, but he recognised a determination that reminded him of how forceful she used to be.
'Please, Remus --'
He pressed his mouth against her own, desperately trying to push every thought out of her mind as well as his own. There were sparks behind his eyes and then a break, as he fought for air.
Gingerly he sank to the floor, back pressed to the kitchen cupboards for support. She gazed at him, kneeling now, surrounded by porcelain shards and newspaper clippings, covered salt tears and red marks from his mouth.
This time when he kissed her it was softly, closing the space between them. He shut his eyes and saw them all. Each one standing silent, and solemn, only half-there in the prickles of light left imprinted in his eyelids, but there all the same.
And each one he could taste on her tongue, and she on his.
They were receptacles, it seemed to Remus, for the people they had loved, and lost. The people they had tasted and taken within them.
Her lips soft against his, both of their eyes clamped shut as they looked around at Lily, James, Sirius, Harry, Ron.
Remus felt he never wanted to open his eyes, break contact with her mouth, let the absolute anguish that he carried everyday wash back in from where it was momentarily suspended, like the tide pulled from the beach, by the press of Hermione's lips.
The break came; however, cool air flooding between them and Remus opened his eyes to the dim light of the kitchen. It was empty, save for Hermione and himself.
Yet somehow, and Remus wasn't sure exactly how, almost as if by magic, he thought idly, that very sorrow, that emptiness they both were drowning beneath, no longer seemed quite as heavy as it had but one moment ago.
FINITE INCANTATUM