Title: Aureolin (2/4)
Pairing: Hufflepuff!TeddyJames
Author: Cassie (our dancing days)
Notes: We have a whole trend-thing going on here, and hence, this drabble is also a semi AU - what if Teddy and James were sorted into Hufflepuff? This is my first drabble as the Big Sis of the relationship, and I used the prompts Teddy/James, insanity and empty. And now, we shall boldly go where none have gone before. Enjoy!
"I'm only a man with a silly red sheet, digging for kryptonite on this one way street." - Superman, Boyce Avenue.
i.
You have never had anything that was just yours; apart from the voices.
(And they whisper too loud.)
When you were younger, they were just murmurs - words, thrown at you like toothpicks and knives - but now they scramble and scream and claw at the inside of your head. Your bars are no longer strong enough to hold them.
"James," a little voice says.
You shake your head because your prison walls are too frail now; words are earthquakes and the walls will crumble down, and who will be left, James, who would save you then?
There is a hand on your cheek, pulling you back to earth; grounding you.
You look up and you see blue.
"Teddy," you chant, "Teddy, Teddy, Teddy."
Teddy's grip tightens and he pulls slightly at your yellow tie. The kiss he presses to your forehead feels like home. You decide he is not yet young enough to understand the world. "Hello, James."
"How long?" you ask as your vision clears and you are left on an unnatural stone floor, Teddy above you and a black and aureolin scarf wrapped around your neck. You blink and you wish you were dead. "How long was I out this time?"
"Two hours," he replies slowly, and he closes his eyes. He is empty where you are spilling over. (But that's a lie.) "You said that the voices asked if you could fly."
You are atop the Astronomy Tower, then, you reason. The ground doesn't seem that far away.
It's a long time before you whisper, "Could I?"
He shakes. "No."
ii.
Teddy finds you curled in front of the aureolin common room fire, resting your head against your knees. Your fingers are stretched towards the twisting flames.
"Can you dance, Ted?" you ask, and he ignores you. The fire laughs and you join in; the air is too empty, too cold.
"I don't understand," he says with hesitance, and this time, the fire cackles and sparks. How funny this boy is, you muse. How full of life, and how dead. "I don't understand how I can still love you, after everything. You're insane. I must beinsane."
"Hot potato, hot potato," you sing.
He breathes deeply. "Victoire asked me out, you know. And she's a year older than you. She's pretty and funny and intelligent-"
"Hot potato," you whisper.
"I can't do this anymore, James," he tells you solemnly, all wild amber eyes and pitiful hooded eyelids. The fire leaps and hisses. He stands and he leaves, and the door slamming shut. The flames burn red, and suddenly you hate them with a burning passion, because they have no right to be more Gryffindor than you.
The fire is out before you breathe again.
"Let it go before you burn yourself," you murmur and the voices scream, HOT POTATO, HOT POTATO. You don't want to bleed fire anymore.
iii.
When you stand on the top of the Astronomy tower, you feel like a superhero.
You stand there and you feel the air against your face; the emptiness caresses your fingertips and you think that your aureolin robe could be a red cape. You think that if you jumped, you would never hit the ground. Up, up here, you are invincible, Jamie boy. Invisible.
But even heroes have the right to bleed.
How naive you are, darling! How wonderfully and pitifully oblivious to how close the ground lurks, to how hot the fire burns, to how sharp the wind bites. The air is not a lover; and neither are you.
"Teddy," you whisper, and it echoes - the wind twists it until it sounds like love and miss and hurt and fly.
The thing is, you don't trust your wings to catch you.
iv.
It is three years before you are alone together. Teddy and Victoire separated like Moses and the red sea - a lack of passion, she said; a lack of chemistry.
(You thought it was the lack of cock, but that is a whole other matter.)
"James." He nods at you, all formal brown hair and plain brown eyes and a smile like liquid nitrogen. "How are you?"
You smile back at him, omniscient and aware. You are not vacant. Those years were left at Hogwarts, along with dreams of flying; along with the burns on your hands. You have not been empty for a long time. "Quiet," you reply slowly.
He stumbles backwards, and clutches a doorframe to steady himself. "James," he whispers, and the name falls from his lips like a waterfall.
"It's me, Teddy."
Teddy chokes, and the tears spill over his eyes; it is a second before he loses control and his eyes slip back to aureolin, and his hair to water. This tempest has raged too long.
He is yours again.