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Recollection
By Taleya
Chapter Twenty-Four
Harry stared dully at the fireplace, his sole companions a decanter and
glass. Finest scotch - on ice. A connoisseur's dream, cultivated to a perfection
far beyond that of the muggle world. Warm and peaty, a delight to the palate.
Not that he could taste it.
The rim of the glass drifted gently back and forth across his lips, tracing
flesh that still quivered slightly in memory. So warm, so soft. Just like he
remembered, curiously shy, yet somehow strong, neither aggressive nor
submissive, the taste…
No
He closed his eyes and raised the glass to his lips.
A shudder passed through him, and he put it back down, its contents untouched.
Ice chattered as his fingers trembled, the glass teetering on the edge of the
table before falling to smash on the floor as his hand leapt convulsively to the
scar on his forehead. A cold hand gripped his chest, paralysing both heart and
lungs as his sightless eyes stared in dull panic at the wall beside the hearth
Firelight flickered.
It was a sight he’d come to associate with comfort. Warmth. Homely images gently
wafting against the walls, a soft rug on the hearth, the gentle smell of wood
permeating throughout.
But rug was stained.
The images on the wall were wrong, warped, twisted and furious with evil.
Someone was screaming
And the fire engulfed him
~~~
// Reality wavered and rippled before him, a shimmering pool of
mercury, skating maddeningly past his fingertips again and again. There was
nothing, no one. No up, no down, no air, no light. He fell endlessly through the
void, although there was no sense of movement, nothing to gain purchase on.
Voices babbled, indistinguishable words, meaningless sounds, rising to shrieks
that made him want to scream and clap his hands to his ears, but he had no
mouth, no hands, no ears. The sounds faded to nothing, falling into the hollow
nothingness that was his world.
This was hell.
No body, no soul, no sensation at all, all that existed was his will, his
refusal to submit.
And his hate.
Anger, boiling and ripping through his very core, an endless hatred for everyone
and everything. He would escape. He would be free.
And the punishment would be great.
Babes would scream, boiled and skinned raw in their mother’s arms. Those who had
defied him would crawl, stomachs torn open and entrails dragging behind them in
the dirt, begging to kiss his feet, faces awash with the blood of those dearest
to them as they screamed and plead for a death that would never come. The skulls
of the unfaithful would splinter and burst in his hands, their raw, living
brains shrieked in an eternity of purgatory.
The impure would die, and the pure would be scoured, cleansed of all weakness,
blood would flow, great rivers of the precious fluid, he would bathe in it, he
would dine on it, there would be PAIN and DEATH and VENGEANCE.
He would rise again. And the suffering of those before him would never end...
//
~~~
Someone was screaming
It was him.
Harry slammed upright in his bed, hands clutching to his chest, fingers slipping
a little on sweat-slimed skin before coming to rest over his heart, thundering
as if to break through its fragile cage of skin and bone.
Something crept and slithered on the edge of his hearing, and his wand was to
his hand before he could even think, words tumbling hurriedly from his lips and
a raw burst of magic searing through the darkness to imprint on his retinas.
Crouching low on the floor, avoiding detection, gaining a precious few seconds
in combat, he called for a light.
"Lumos!"
In the soft glow of magic, a lizard stared at him reproachfully through the hole
blasted in the glass of its tank.
Harry dropped the wand and groaned, drawing his knees up to his chest and
pressing his forehead on them. Before him, the lizard clawed patiently a few
times at its rock, then settled down for another good stare, obviously expecting
an apology of some sort. A pet given to him from a few Slytherin, although
whether it was a welcoming, a reluctant acknowledgement of his position in
Severus' family, or a crack at his ancestry Harry had never quite worked out.
Probably all three.
The dreams. Always the damned dreams.
Voldemort wasn't dead. He was no more a corpse than the last time they thought
him gone. A raw essence, a terrible malevolence, railing and banging at the
edges of reality, seeking a way, a passage to tear back through. The Death
Eaters weren't trying to resurrect their dark lord, merely form the pathway for
his return.
The palm of his hand brushed over the familiar scar on his forehead, then
clenched, as if to tear it from his skin. Like a hunter who feels the ache in
old wounds at the snarl of the prey that escaped, Harry knew that Voldemort
still lived. The war wasn’t over. This time, these years….nothing but a
remission. A false peace. The eye of a terrible storm.
And every step of the way, he had a front row seat. Seconds, minutes, days,
years, he was always just behind, always just following the trail. But the gap
was narrowing, he could feel it. His daughters life was proof.
No one else knew about the dreams. They were intelligence, he knew. Vital
intelligence, they should be shared. But the ministry would ponder and discuss
and the usefulness would fade under the minutiae of officialdom and ultimately
crumble as dust. And what good would it do? The final showdown, he knew, would
be his. And his alone. The fate of everything, of everyone, rested on his
shoulders.
And it terrified him.
He was no longer the boy who lived. No longer sheltered by childish
misconceptions and belief in the innate goodness of the universe. Stripped of
innocence, he had seen the sins of the world too many times, had seen the light
drowned and too drenched in blood to ever face that kind of evil again with the
joy and righteousness of his childhood. He was nothing now, nothing but a tired
man.
And when the time came once more to face the Dark Lord, Harry knew he was going
to lose.
And he was going to die.
In the soft glow of wand light, the lizard finally turned its eyes away at the
sound of his tears.
By the soft glow of the coals in the fireplace, Remus pondered.
Beside him, he could hear the reassuring breath of his lover, feel the soft rise
and fall of his chest under the covers. Absently, he stroked the hand laying on
his chest, peering through the darkness at the thin face draped in tendrils of
long black hair.
A simple realisation hit him, one long known, but never failed to take his
breath away. He would die to keep this man safe. To keep his life happy. And he
would die without fear, without regret, would in fact go joyfully simply to
treasure his lover all the days of his life. His lover, and his daughter.
Ah… his mouth opened around a silent exhalation. But therein lay the nub,
did it not?
It should have been settled. Should have rested. The issue should have been laid
to rest, to no more trouble the minds and hearts of wizards.
The word should, he pondered ruefully, was, however, rarely found to have
any relevance to actual events.
Remus Lupin was in something of a quandary.
A werewolf is always of two minds. The rational thinking mind of a man
overlaying the dark instinctual undercurrent of the wolf.
Most of the time the two lived an uneasy truce. With day to day tasks, the wolf
became disinterested, antsy. Remus had found music of the classic artists fed
its passion – Mussorgsky and Wagner among others soothed the savage beast
somewhat. But always, inside him, he felt it pacing, hungry, waiting for the
moon, the time to drench itself in blood and violence, leaving the man-mind
helpless in its wake.
But this was known. Known to him since almost that first bite that had
alternately blessed and cursed his life.
The problem was Harry.
The wolf in him howled at the intrusion, teeth and claw itching to savage this
other male who whined and sniffled at the edge of his pack. But the man in him
recognised the inevitable truth – that Harry was part of his family, that he
deserved to be a part, and if Remus attempted to refuse him, it would only drive
a wedge between Severus and himself.
And the core of him wanted to see Harry a part of his family. Because it was
right.
So his feelings towards Harry were often mixed, to say the least.
Pressing a kiss to the pale face snuggled against his shoulder, he gently
extricated himself, slipping silently from the bed and suppressing a small hiss
as his feet met the cold flagstones between the bed and a rug. He'd never
managed to convince Severus that a warm floor was a happy floor.
Padding quietly through their chambers, he paused in the doorway to Araminta's
room. The toddler was sprawled on her back in the innocent abandon of children
everywhere, one hand curled up near a cheek, the other clutching her stuffed
snake. She'd kicked off her covers. Again.
With an affectionate chuffing noise, Remus pulled them back up to cover her,
pausing for just a moment to watch, to let himself linger, to love her.
Mine…
Araminta wuffed in her sleep and snuggled further down under her doona.
Sleep eluding him, Remus found himself walking the halls of Hogwarts. The silent
stone breathed beside him as he wandered aimlessly along endless corridors,
wrapping itself around his mind and whispering alongside his thoughts.
Family. It was a concept that he'd embraced warmly with both his arms and his
heart. A lover. A child. Precious, precious gifts he'd thought never to be his.
He treasured them both, every day of his life.
Could he expand his thoughts of family to include Harry?
He thought that maybe…just maybe….he could find out.
Somehow he'd ended up outside the guest quarters. He cast a hesitant, almost
furtive glance at the door to Harry's rooms, and saw with some surprise that the
wake-lights were lit in their sconces. It seemed the Auror was having no more
luck sleeping than he was.
And on the edge of scent, always strong so soon after a change, he thought he
caught the bitter tang of tears.
His hand rose to tap at the door, then faltered, drifting back to his side. It
was most likely private musings that kept the other man awake. He shouldn't
intrude. It wasn't his place.
He had half-turned to go when he paused. No. Enough. Closed doors and secrets
was a game he knew well, one he'd been forced to play all his life. And Harry
had been excluded long enough. Being family didn't mean that you could walk
away. Being family meant that you couldn't.
He knocked on the door.
To be continued...
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