DISCLAIMER
The characters, locations and concepts within are the property of JK Rowling, not me. I am in no way affiliated with Ms Rowling, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury, Scholastic or anyone else with rights to the series. No profit is being made.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
This story has been posted as part of an effort to put all my fanfic in once location, for my own piece of mind. Needless to say, if I get a few more reviews out of it, that'd be a bonus too. Cigarettes was written in December 2005, and originally posted at my livejournal, sephielzero.
CIGARETTES
She'd grown to hate the smell of cigarettes; the cloying, bitter smoke that wafted through the bedroom at night. She would wake, alone, and watch him smoke out the window, thin rays of moonlight tracing taut muscles and smooth skin down his back. The heel of his hand pressed to his forehead, elbow on the windowsill, and a cigarette burning between his fingers.
This was happily ever after. An apartment overlooking London – it was neither especially spacious nor too cramped, which was more or less how they liked it. She worked, doing her apprenticeship as a Healer at St Mungo's. He would've liked to, she knew, but it just wasn't possible. Sometimes, he said, he didn't even feel comfortable leaving the apartment anymore. Too much attention, he said.
It grated, being stuck inside. She'd come home and find the couch moved, the kitchen cleaned or fresh scones cooling on the bench, and she'd smile and pretend it was alright. In truth, it worried her – at least, at first. Eventually, it wore into the thoughtless pattern of routine, and she stopped thinking about it.
Some nights, she'd return from her shift and find his desk littered with crumpled parchment, the inkpot overturned, quill lying broken amidst it all. And he'd walk out of the bathroom, naked but for a towel around his waist, hair dripping into his eyes. Showers always calmed him down, or so he said.
"What's this?" she asked the first time.
"Nothing." He shrugged, slightly uncomfortable. She raised an eyebrow, and he grinned. He could be so awkward, sometimes. "Well – I thought I might – er – do some writing."
She grinned back, placing her bag down beside the couch and moving towards him. "Looks more like a mess to me."
He scratched his head, sending droplets of water to the carpet below. "Well – you know what it's like. Can't pick the right words, can't make it sound not-rubbish…" She drew closer, and he put his arms around her. His skin was still wet, but very warm.
"What're you writing?"
He pressed his lips against her neck; damp, warm skin and bristles below her ear. "Memoirs," he whispered.
There was a certain desperation when he made love to her, like a drowning man grasping to life. He came as though he was coming apart, and then they would lie there, bodies twined together like a burial shroud, until the fog of sleep crept through the windows to claim them. There was a sense of the picturesque about it, like an ancient statue watching the Pantheon collapse around it.
During the night, he would wake, and gently move her body from his. He would open the bedside drawer, take the cigarettes and cross to the window. And he would smoke, naked, his head and shoulders lost in the night air outside. Sometimes she would wake, eyelashes fluttering against the linen sheets, and watch him.
In time, this too became routine, and she stopped waking to watch him. And, alone, he would watch the lights of London from his window, cigarette smoke wafting about him in a ghostly halo. Alone with his thoughts.
Some mornings, when she was at work, he would drink. She never found out, and he never saw it as a problem. She came home to less scones and more broken quills, but thought little of it. Routine, after all.
Some nights, she would cry in her sleep. "The war," she would whisper, and he would draw her close. "It's over," he told her gently. "The war is over." Finally, she would drift back to silence, and he would smoke.
He began to write more, and lose his patience less, until he finally produced something of note. Hymnal was published in the autumn. It wasn't his memoir at all; when interviewed by the Daily Prophet, he replied, "I don't think I'm ready to write that yet."
The press had a field day over him: the reclusive hero-turned-novelist. Hymnal was scoured, top to bottom, by experts. Psychologists, historians, tabloids, so-called 'Potterologists' – all had their share of interpretation to offer the public, all of which they billed as fact. As far as the wider world knew, he had no opinion on any of it. Likewise, he only mentioned it to her once.
"It's a circus," he said, smiling faintly.
She was never sure what the wizarding community actually thought of his book. Did the fans like it on its own merits, or because he had written it? Did the detractors hate the book, or the so-called celebrity who had written it?
Over the years, she began to cry less, and he began to smoke more. The two weren't really related at all. His final book, Memoirs of a Stagnant Hero, was published posthumously, nearly forty years after the release of Hymnal.
No heroic death for Harry Potter. He died of a heart attack, like we mere mortals.