a / n; written for challenge four of the forum-wide competition over at the HPFC forum, repping slytherin house. I was given remus lupin (gryffindor) and I chose to pair him with charity burbage (hufflepuff). I guess I should say that her house is entirely speculation on my part. As for the story itself, I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this, however, this is by no means all that I've written on the two- - the original piece is several thousand words longer and contains much of the background information for their "relationship". It is so much longer, though, that I wasn't able to entirely hash out everything that I needed to within the deadline and be able to fit in the word limit. So, if they don't seem quite believable in this, that's why. I'll probably post the full piece later. Oh, and the title is stolen from T. S. Eliot's poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.
et al
til human voices wake us, and we drown
: - :
His condition is no small secret among the staff, and for the most part, they are quite accommodating, Severus especially, though a small part of him is still a little hesitant to acknowledge this. Yes, they are quite accommodating, and it is almost enough and almost more than he deserves, but he can't help but notice the way their shoulders tense around him, the way their words become stiff and their eyes shift nervously.
She, however, is the exception, and it is so very Hufflepuff of her, and so very endearing, and not for the first time the defense teacher wonders at what kind of woman she is. Beautiful, he thinks, perfect—the sort of woman who brings him coffee those mornings beforehand, when the bags beneath his eyes are the deepest and he has almost lost himself entirely; the sort of woman who is undeterred by his occasional shortness, who is entirely unafraid of his lycanthropy, who is curious of it, even.
"What's it like," she asks one Sunday afterwards (and it's a little dismal, he thinks, the way everything is divided into before and after—and during, of course, but he doesn't like to think of that), "being a werewolf?"
And he very much wants to tell her the truth, wants her to understand. He wants to say it's like dying to yourself and waking up again, only you can't ever be sure that you're really awake because you feel more weighed down and corpse-like than before. He wants to tell her it's agony—feeling your bones break and shift and rearrange, feeling hair pierce through your skin like a million needles. He would like to say it's horrible—the sharpness of your senses, the way you feel when you're being wrestled from your own mind by something completely other, the way you sometimes enjoy it: the metallic taste of blood, the power, the freedom. He wants to explain how it's always with you, like a shadow in your subconscious singing anarchy to your nervous system. He wants to tell her how you feel all the other days—like bits of yourself are missing, like you're some sort of ticking time bomb. He wants to tell her about the delineation of days and how none of it matters, anyway.
"It's like going to sleep," he says, thinly, "like dreaming, only you can't quite remember what the dream was about, but you're certain you've dreamed something."
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