Hello again, my wonderful readers! This storyline popped into my head suddenly after glancing at a bookshelf and spotting one of my personal favorite romantic/suspense books of the 20th century, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.
This fanfic will be very-tightly based upon the book, but I will add my own twists and looks upon the story to better serve my readers. This version will be completely AU from the books... Hogwarts did exist, however, Voldemort did not, thus turning the events in the books void.
This will be my first attempt at a full-length Harry Potter story- I usually tend to lean toward one-shots only.
DISCLAIMER: The characters recognizable are property of Jo Rowling's Harry Potter books and the basic storyline is given credit to Daphne Du Maurier in the 1938 edition of Rebecca.
Feedback would be lovely... it's very encouraging to write when you know someone's appreciating it! No flames please.
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Late last night, I dreamed that I went to Varykino again.
I just stood by the large iron swinging doors leading to the house, and for a long while, although I was in a dream- I could not enter the actual house itself. I called loudly to the housekeeper to let me in and even to the security guards that always were posted inside of the doors, but it seemed like they could not actually hear me.
Peering through the rusted gates of the lakehouse, I saw no people inside the house. Before I could allow myself to wonder why the house was inhibited, a sudden dream-like gust of air swished me thorugh the thin bars and saw me floating toward the house like I was flying. I looked down- I had no broomstick.
Flying slowly and surely down the drive toward the house in my dream, I saw the unkept flowers and weeds that had grown over to replace the once-kept and neat lawn I once knew. Beginning to feel my happiness spread slowly away from me, I could tell that this Varykino was not like I once knew it- and it would most likely never be again.
I saw white, naked limbs of once-beautiful tree branches leaning close to one another, looking as if they were on their last breath of life. There were other types of trees too, such as oakes and even some that I did not recognize, that seemed to be making their way down the drive, trying to cover what was still left of what I remembered of the beautiful home that once housed myself and my husband.
Nature, as well as time, had aged the house non-gracefully, giving it the staggering appearence of an old moss-covered shrub. The paved drive was almost completely covered with soot and grass, gnarled branches that looked like dead animal claws, that had never been there in my days, looked like they had been there for far too long.
For a long while in my dream, all I could see was the once-graceful pathway that was our drive. Fianlly, after what seemed like hours upon hours of gracefully floating toward the house, I came upon it, looking at it with a sinking heart.
There was Varykino, our Varykino, secretive and silent as it always had been. Even time and Mother Nature could not age the perfectly-symmetrical building and home terrece. Time and Mother Nature could not take away from the jewel that was Varykino itself. The house stretched out to the fields, and the unkept fields stretched out to the sea, where many of my fondest memories would always remain.
Moonlight, even in the precious stillness of dreams, can play evil and deadly tricks on ones' mind forever. As I stood there, completely hushed and still, I could have sworn that the house was not an empty shell vacant of people, but a house that lived and breathed as it once did.
These little things were forever permanent in my mind, they could not be dissolved. They were memories that could not, and would not, hurt me. All this I resolved in my dream, where clouds lay across the face of the moon that was Varykino, for most sleepers that I knew also dreamed of the once-heavenly place.
In reality, I lay many thousand miles away in an alien land to me, and would wake in a matter of very few seconds, in a little and cold hotel room in an unknown city in Scotland. I would quickly sigh and stretch my muscles, only to turn toward the window to find not the crisp moonlight that became accustomed to in my dreams, but the bittersweet edge of the sun that was glittering down upon my husband's face.
The day, I already knew, would be fraught with stillness and silence that used to not be, before all of our lives were taken away from us forever in an instant.
We would not talk of Varykino, because it was a forbidden subject ; nor would we talk of my enchanting dream, because it was also forbidden in his eyes of piercing blue.
Because Varykino, as it once was, was ours no longer. Varykino, former home to Remus and Hermione Lupin, was no more.
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We can never go back again to Varykino, that much is certain. the past is still too close to catch up with us. The things we have tried and tried to put behind us would simply stir back up again, and that sense of unrest would make itself known yet again.
He is surprisingly patient and never once complains about our living arrangments, not even when he remembers what once was.... which happens, I believe, more often than he would like me to know.
I can tell by the way he will look lost and puzzled suddenly, all good expression drying off his face to make him seem like a bitter child not happy with his toys. He falls to smoking cigarette after cigarette, not even bothering to put them out, and watch as they wither like dying animals on the concrete floor.
He will talk quickly and almost monotone, to erase the sudden hurt and pain he feels from the near past. He, however, is not alone in his distress and confusion.
We both have known fear and loneliness, and very much of crisis. We believe that every now and then, one has to have a crisis to go through in order to realize the full potential they can reach as a human being. A crisis in the hands of the darkness, with dead souls and flames around it, trying to encircle us in its web of deciet.
We have finally conquered ours, or at least, so we believe. The darkness, with its broadness of burning flames, does not continue to ride our tails any longer. We have successfully come through our bitter crisis, though not unscathed of course.
His premonition of nearing disaster was correct from the very beginning, although we did not listen to it much then, like we have learned to in the past few months. But we both have had enough melodrama in this lifetime, and would willingly give all our five senses to secure for us the luxury of nonfear. Nonfear is not a possesion to be prized, however, because it is simply a quality of thought, a mere state of mind.
Both of us have our moments of depression, of course, but other moments we now have too. Moments like happiness, and even simply peace knowing that the other soul is near and breathing with you in unison.
We have no secrets from one another now. All things, including the bitter and tasteless food we eat now, is shared between us.
We have no reason to hide ; what can be taken away anyway? Other than Varykino,what really did we own together?
Besides our love, what more do we really need?
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