Memory Like Old Lace

To love is to give all and to give oneself. --St. Therese of the Child Jesus

The Dark War (as it had been so glibly named by those who remained safely locked behind their office doors for its duration) had claimed its casualties in cool numbers, the latest in a three-thousand-year broken recording of rebellion, civil war, conflict, and strife; broken down, in the appendix, into injured, missing, and dead. Those who had fought and survived knew they were not numbers only by the handshake of old friends, the kiss of a wife, and the midnight squalling of a colicky infant. Those who had fought and died neither knew nor cared.

And then there were some, like Gregory Goyle, who had been trapped between the knowing and the unknowing, the caring and the uncaring. His strength had been his strength, unalloyed by agility or quick thinking. Thus, when he was ambushed at the height of the War, he could only stand dumbly protecting those he loved, unable to conjure a shield other than his body.

When the smoke and the bodies had been cleared, he had been borne hastily to the makeshift infirmary. After a week of intensive observation and examination, the Healer had shaken her head and washed her hands of him. The fabric of his body had been riven irreparably, and his memory had become like a scrap of old lace--yellowed, frayed, and more gaps than threads. The tenuous, unpredictable strands of lucidity that lingered in the tangled knots of his mind only heightened the anguish of their breaking. He had been sent home with his young wife to languish in the spectre-haunted borderlands between dreams and death as the remainder of his legendary strength slowly slipped away.

****

"Millicent? Millicent! Where are you?" His drooping eyelids struggled to open as anxiety puffed his breath in short gasps. One hand stretched out to grasp at invisible wisps of elusive phantasms.

"I'm here, Greg," she said soothingly, taking his searching hand between hers and feeling his chilled skin leaching her warmth. His eyes stared blankly at her face and yet far past her, flickering inscrutably at a scene beyond her ken.

"You're not Millicent. Who are you?"

She sighed almost imperceptibly and forced a smile onto her face, ignoring his innocent question. "Come on, let's get up."

"Alright," he answered with a beatific expression, making no move to do so.

She bent her knees, locked her hands behind his back, and heaved, lifting him up smoothly with the practiced skill of a thousand repetitions. As he quivered on wasted muscles, she noticed that, once again, he had managed to dribble soup down the front of his robes. In the few seconds it took her to locate her wand and remove the stain, he flailed his arms wildly and pitched forward with a startled cry quickly smothered by the lodging of his face in her cleavage. She carefully righted him with a bit of effort, but his head remained bowed. With closed eyes, he inhaled her scent blissfully before trailing a chain of tantalizing kisses just above the neckline of her robes.

Knowing it was folly and yet unable to relinquish this fleeting respite from the lonely tedium of her nights and days, she allowed his hands to cup her breasts with a tenderness she scarcely remembered. Allowing herself a moment of pleasure stolen from the past, she kissed him deeply, her latent passion rising fiercely from its early grave. He reciprocated eagerly, returning the kiss with a guttural moan low in his throat. His hands slid languorously down her sides to claim her hips, pulling her tightly to him with all the remnants of his former strength he could muster. He deftly found the hidden clasps of her robes and slipped his fingers between to knead the heavy softness of her stomach.

Suddenly, he pulled away from her embrace in confusion. The frustration and loss were too deep for tears, so she choked down the ache, clutched tighter the ragged cloak of her composure, and began to steer him towards the hallway.

"Where are we going?" he demanded petulantly, frowning in baffled discontent.

"To bed."

"Ah. . . . Where?"

"We are going to bed," she repeated patiently. "To sleep."

"Forever?" he asked plaintively.

"No, Greg! Just for the night."

He permitted her to lead him down the hall to their bedroom, her awkward backwards strides matching the cadence of his shuffling footsteps. She sat him down on his side of the large, canopied bed to administer his daily sustaining potion, which he swallowed obediently despite its bitterness.

As she snatched the empty phial his slack fingers were about to drop, he said abruptly, "I love her, you know."

"I know," she replied in a barely controlled voice at the edge of tears. "She's very lucky."

He continued, unaware of the pain he wrought. "I fell in love with her the day she bloodied my nose. . . . We were on our way to Potions. . . . Was that yesterday?"

Unable to answer, she knelt to remove his slippers.

"Yesterday? Yesterday? Or maybe tomorrow?" He yawned, trailing off into unintelligible mumbling as she hoisted his legs into bed and tucked in the blankets around him. She padded around to the other side of the bed, slipped off her own slippers, snuffed the candle, and slid exhaustedly under the covers. She gently smoothed his brow and brushed a chaste kiss over his lips.

"G'night, Millicent," he whispered. "I love you."