Author's Note: Haven't got too much to say except sorry this has taken so long (I hate writer's block soooooo much!) and FANFICTION.NET IS DRIVING ME F@!#@$ING CRAZY. To get a completely different list if you put the settings on Char1: Draco and Char2: Ron versus Char1:Ron and Char2:Draco is rediculous. At least Char2 is working again, though. Also, I would have had this up a couple of days ago but FF wasn't letting me upload. Words can not express my extreme annoyance at this. Anyway, sorry this chapter is so weird but....hope you like anyway. Appreciate any and all reviews. Would actually really like feedback on this particular writing style as it is something that I am experimenting with in this story.
chapter 14: Cremation - snuffing the light of innocence
So cold. Lying here in this tomb, it's always the cold that I notice first, pricking along my skin and washing me with its chill touch. Then the dirt and pebbles, rough against my bare skin. It's always so dim, too, almost black. It takes what feels like hours for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. By the time they do I already know what I'll see. The walls of a crypt, rough-hewn stone, cracked and uneven. I sense their shape more than really see them.
so dark
But beginnings are always dark. And cold. If nothing else I have learned this: Darkness comes before the light and the warmth of creation comes only when the chill of death has passed on.
welcome
So I lie here, waiting, and let the cold flow into me. The warmth leaves my body and soaks into the earth, into the stone, like a river pouring into the sea, drying up. Staring up into the blackness I feel my body cool. My fingers and toes buzz with cold as though sheathed in ice. My skin takes on the clammy chillness of a corpse and with the loss of heat I feel myself dying, muscle and bone becoming leaden with the cold, weighted with death and stillness.
still blank calm
All that is left now is a tiny spark of heat at my heart, clinging like an abandoned child to any hope of kindness. I feel it flicker...and release. I can almost see a thin wisp of smoke rising from my body as from a smothered candle. It hovers over me, hesitating, before shredding itself in a draft.
goodbye.
The walls of my grave shift then. Soundlessly they recede, dissolve away, and I can see stars, distant and cold as I am. No longer locked away, under the earth, I lie naked on a hilltop. The night and stars overhead are reflected in my eyes, hard, flat, cold as glass. There is grass now beneath me, brittle and dry. It rubs against my limbs, whispers to me in the wind that comes sweeping over the hillside and tangles in my hair.
the Wind breathe
The wind washes over me, through me, sweeping away the last remains of that candle soul and leaving me a husk, empty, cleansed. I feel I could rattle away in the wind, following the grass and weeds as they are swept along. Instead I lie here, flat and still, a stone upon the hillside, waiting patiently as eternity passes. In the beginning, time is meaningless.
be as stone
empty
cold
I feel him near me now. He is like a torch in the night, shining and burning, pitiless as the sun. His arms go round me, lifting me up, cradling me.
I am on fire.
His touch burns me, searing along my side and back and legs where he holds me. My world turns to pain, white hot. A river of fire pours through me, filling my veins with flames, bringing me to life, bringing me awake to here and now.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Awake, alive. He sets me on my feet. The grass burns and leaps into flames that boil around us in a furnace, smothering me with heat. I breathe in fire. When all around us is burned to ash and blackened earth we stand on the smoking hillside and look out. My hair lashes my shoulders, whisper soft, my last halo of fire.
Look.
His arm sweeps out, showing me the world, and with eyes of flame I gaze outward and See. A great wind sweeps over the world and leaves it bare of its illusions, exposing the rot that lies beneath. Like a great festering wound it is, brittle and putrid and smelling of the decay of basic order, the simplicity of clean truth. And them. Cavorting in the shadows, thinking that they dance in the light of righteousness.
I HATE YOU!!!
It must needs be cleansed. All of it. Before the rot spreads too far and there is no longer any hope of redemption. He shows me and this is what I see.
Why? why me
"Because you can set it right." He, that other, my guide and my redeemer, he shows me, he tells me, he takes me and molds me. Bending close, hair like straw brushing my shoulder, hot breath steaming against my cheek and neck, he whispers in my ear the Way. The Way that I can mold myself into the proper form, transform myself into the power that will carry the dark and the light, that will sweep the world clean.
Thank You
I must not falter. I must be strong. Before my burning eyes the world lies wasted and I...
soon Soon now soon
it all falls into place
All it lacks is the seed.
Surfacing from the dream like a swimmer rising to the surface of a lake, I draw in a deep lungfull of air. Sitting up I open my eyes to the warm, dark stillness of the dorm room. Off to my right the other girls are snoring softly, muffled mutterings and sighs in strange harmony with the wind shrieking past my window, the rain sweeping in wet sheets against the glass.
still so quiet, so peaceful
They slumber, oblivious to the visions that haunt my sleep, that nightly remind me of my purpose, my reason for being.
Such melodrama doesn't become me.
The covers feel a stifling weight and I fling them off, exposing my feet and legs to the soothing cool of the night. I need to get away, need to be alone, to stand in the dark and stillness and let it calm me, let my thoughts find their ordered place. Neglecting my slippers I pad across the bare, cold stones to the door. A whispered creak and I'm out, moving down the stairs, cold and reassuring under the soles of my feet. My fingers drag along the wall, remembering the path in breaks of stone and tapestry. Dim light filters in from the dying fire in the common room. I pause on the threshold.
No!
He is there! My enemy. Why must it be him standing there in the shadows? Why not some other demon come to test me? He stands just beyond the fire. The room is almost breathing it is so still. Stray bits of firelight catch in his hair and in his eyes as they flicker upward at my entrance. My tread, so light, still caught his attention.
I must step softly now. I must be wary.
Such careful innocence seems to shine from his eyes, such unveiled simplicity and grace. In them I see the path to my downfall. He sighs and looks away, his fingers playing absently with the pilling on the back of a chair. When he looks up again his eyes are filled with a wordless sorrow and I find myself moving forward without conscious thought.
oh
I slip my arms around his warm form and his come round me, hugging me fiercely to him. He seems to draw strength in my presence. He smells of old dust and rain. In the darkness and the night we clutch each other, the bonds of family grasping and wrapping us tight. All the blackness of the abyss between us.
brother mine what have you done
Ron was the first to draw out of the embrace. Stepping back to look down at his sister, he was surprised to see the dampness on his cheeks also mirrored in two straight tracks of tears running down her face. In the firelight Ginny looked pale and small. Her big, dark eyes, set against such white skin, gave her a haunted look, offset by the fire playing in her hair.
"What are you doing up?" Ron asked softly, hoping to distract from a similar question directed at himself.
Ginny ignored this, asking a question of her own. "Do you fear him?" For a moment Ron pondered this, turning over his different feelings on the matter. In the end he could only come up with one answer.
"No."
"You're a fool, then." The bitterness in Ginny's voice was unexpected, as was the cold frown twisting her brow. "He'll kill you sooner or later. He's too much like his father not to."
Ron knew that in the past such musings would have sent him into a panic, the fear leaving him weak and shuddering. But at the moment, standing in the dark and the calm, he felt strangely at peace. It reminded him of that first night when his father had charmed him into sedation and he had watched the events of the night unfold, not judging, merely watching, remembering. "Yes, he may. But what can I do about it? What should I do about it?"
Ginny merely compressed her lips into a thin line and stared moodily into the dying fire. For a while the room was still but for the sound of shallow breathing. "Why are you always so passive, Ron? Why don't you fight?" she finally asked before turning away and heading back up the stairs without a backwards glance. Ron didn't answer, merely followed her example and headed for his own bed and, hopefully, a dreamless sleep.
chapter 14: Cremation - snuffing the light of innocence
So cold. Lying here in this tomb, it's always the cold that I notice first, pricking along my skin and washing me with its chill touch. Then the dirt and pebbles, rough against my bare skin. It's always so dim, too, almost black. It takes what feels like hours for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. By the time they do I already know what I'll see. The walls of a crypt, rough-hewn stone, cracked and uneven. I sense their shape more than really see them.
so dark
But beginnings are always dark. And cold. If nothing else I have learned this: Darkness comes before the light and the warmth of creation comes only when the chill of death has passed on.
welcome
So I lie here, waiting, and let the cold flow into me. The warmth leaves my body and soaks into the earth, into the stone, like a river pouring into the sea, drying up. Staring up into the blackness I feel my body cool. My fingers and toes buzz with cold as though sheathed in ice. My skin takes on the clammy chillness of a corpse and with the loss of heat I feel myself dying, muscle and bone becoming leaden with the cold, weighted with death and stillness.
still blank calm
All that is left now is a tiny spark of heat at my heart, clinging like an abandoned child to any hope of kindness. I feel it flicker...and release. I can almost see a thin wisp of smoke rising from my body as from a smothered candle. It hovers over me, hesitating, before shredding itself in a draft.
goodbye.
The walls of my grave shift then. Soundlessly they recede, dissolve away, and I can see stars, distant and cold as I am. No longer locked away, under the earth, I lie naked on a hilltop. The night and stars overhead are reflected in my eyes, hard, flat, cold as glass. There is grass now beneath me, brittle and dry. It rubs against my limbs, whispers to me in the wind that comes sweeping over the hillside and tangles in my hair.
the Wind breathe
The wind washes over me, through me, sweeping away the last remains of that candle soul and leaving me a husk, empty, cleansed. I feel I could rattle away in the wind, following the grass and weeds as they are swept along. Instead I lie here, flat and still, a stone upon the hillside, waiting patiently as eternity passes. In the beginning, time is meaningless.
be as stone
empty
cold
I feel him near me now. He is like a torch in the night, shining and burning, pitiless as the sun. His arms go round me, lifting me up, cradling me.
I am on fire.
His touch burns me, searing along my side and back and legs where he holds me. My world turns to pain, white hot. A river of fire pours through me, filling my veins with flames, bringing me to life, bringing me awake to here and now.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Awake, alive. He sets me on my feet. The grass burns and leaps into flames that boil around us in a furnace, smothering me with heat. I breathe in fire. When all around us is burned to ash and blackened earth we stand on the smoking hillside and look out. My hair lashes my shoulders, whisper soft, my last halo of fire.
Look.
His arm sweeps out, showing me the world, and with eyes of flame I gaze outward and See. A great wind sweeps over the world and leaves it bare of its illusions, exposing the rot that lies beneath. Like a great festering wound it is, brittle and putrid and smelling of the decay of basic order, the simplicity of clean truth. And them. Cavorting in the shadows, thinking that they dance in the light of righteousness.
I HATE YOU!!!
It must needs be cleansed. All of it. Before the rot spreads too far and there is no longer any hope of redemption. He shows me and this is what I see.
Why? why me
"Because you can set it right." He, that other, my guide and my redeemer, he shows me, he tells me, he takes me and molds me. Bending close, hair like straw brushing my shoulder, hot breath steaming against my cheek and neck, he whispers in my ear the Way. The Way that I can mold myself into the proper form, transform myself into the power that will carry the dark and the light, that will sweep the world clean.
Thank You
I must not falter. I must be strong. Before my burning eyes the world lies wasted and I...
soon Soon now soon
it all falls into place
All it lacks is the seed.
Surfacing from the dream like a swimmer rising to the surface of a lake, I draw in a deep lungfull of air. Sitting up I open my eyes to the warm, dark stillness of the dorm room. Off to my right the other girls are snoring softly, muffled mutterings and sighs in strange harmony with the wind shrieking past my window, the rain sweeping in wet sheets against the glass.
still so quiet, so peaceful
They slumber, oblivious to the visions that haunt my sleep, that nightly remind me of my purpose, my reason for being.
Such melodrama doesn't become me.
The covers feel a stifling weight and I fling them off, exposing my feet and legs to the soothing cool of the night. I need to get away, need to be alone, to stand in the dark and stillness and let it calm me, let my thoughts find their ordered place. Neglecting my slippers I pad across the bare, cold stones to the door. A whispered creak and I'm out, moving down the stairs, cold and reassuring under the soles of my feet. My fingers drag along the wall, remembering the path in breaks of stone and tapestry. Dim light filters in from the dying fire in the common room. I pause on the threshold.
No!
He is there! My enemy. Why must it be him standing there in the shadows? Why not some other demon come to test me? He stands just beyond the fire. The room is almost breathing it is so still. Stray bits of firelight catch in his hair and in his eyes as they flicker upward at my entrance. My tread, so light, still caught his attention.
I must step softly now. I must be wary.
Such careful innocence seems to shine from his eyes, such unveiled simplicity and grace. In them I see the path to my downfall. He sighs and looks away, his fingers playing absently with the pilling on the back of a chair. When he looks up again his eyes are filled with a wordless sorrow and I find myself moving forward without conscious thought.
oh
I slip my arms around his warm form and his come round me, hugging me fiercely to him. He seems to draw strength in my presence. He smells of old dust and rain. In the darkness and the night we clutch each other, the bonds of family grasping and wrapping us tight. All the blackness of the abyss between us.
brother mine what have you done
Ron was the first to draw out of the embrace. Stepping back to look down at his sister, he was surprised to see the dampness on his cheeks also mirrored in two straight tracks of tears running down her face. In the firelight Ginny looked pale and small. Her big, dark eyes, set against such white skin, gave her a haunted look, offset by the fire playing in her hair.
"What are you doing up?" Ron asked softly, hoping to distract from a similar question directed at himself.
Ginny ignored this, asking a question of her own. "Do you fear him?" For a moment Ron pondered this, turning over his different feelings on the matter. In the end he could only come up with one answer.
"No."
"You're a fool, then." The bitterness in Ginny's voice was unexpected, as was the cold frown twisting her brow. "He'll kill you sooner or later. He's too much like his father not to."
Ron knew that in the past such musings would have sent him into a panic, the fear leaving him weak and shuddering. But at the moment, standing in the dark and the calm, he felt strangely at peace. It reminded him of that first night when his father had charmed him into sedation and he had watched the events of the night unfold, not judging, merely watching, remembering. "Yes, he may. But what can I do about it? What should I do about it?"
Ginny merely compressed her lips into a thin line and stared moodily into the dying fire. For a while the room was still but for the sound of shallow breathing. "Why are you always so passive, Ron? Why don't you fight?" she finally asked before turning away and heading back up the stairs without a backwards glance. Ron didn't answer, merely followed her example and headed for his own bed and, hopefully, a dreamless sleep.
