See Your Shadow

See Your Shadow

Give me a reason to believe that you're gone

I see your shadow so I know they're all wrong

Moonlight on the soft brown earth,

It leads me to where you lay...

They took you away from me,

But now I'm taking you home

I'm going to stay forever here with you, my love

The softly spoken words you gave me

Even in death our love goes on

Some say I'm crazy for my love

But no bonds can hold me from your side, my love

They don't know you can't leave me,

They don't hear you singing to me...

I'm going to stay forever here with you, my love

The softly spoken words you gave me

Even in death our love goes on

And I can't love you anymore than I do...

I'm going to stay forever here with you, my love

The softly spoken words you gave me

Even in death our love goes on

And I can't love you anymore than I do...

The rain is a strange animal. I've spent many a day watching it, its pelting sheets, miniscule rivulets which paint unseen pictures on dingy windows. Yet I have never truly seen it until today. It falls, it descends before my eyes, and there is no clear or true way to stop it--it simply... happens. And all I can do is watch, in dumbfounded awe and superstition. I feel trapped, talking to the rain. In truth, this is the happiest day I've experienced in a fortnight. It is August 1^st. I'm still dressed in a black robe, a band tied securely about my forearm, soaked through, and I'm sure that any moment I'll hear Professor Lupin on the stairs, on his way to make sure I've changed into something dry. But I'll still be here, trying my best to see past the bleary reflection of myself in the glass and pierce the gentle rain drenching Grimmauld Place, the wet cats and the wet garbage, the slippery, slimy derelict buildings on every side, and each car as it passes by, highlights cutting drearily through the gray fog and the haze that obscures the sunset. It is all there, just beyond my fleeting reflection, your shadow. You were the world, my world, and now it can only appear in shades of gray.

I know you're there, a figure just outside my window, just beside my grasp--I can feel you, the creak of my door, a slight tickle on the base of my palm, a breath that teases my hair. Dumbledore lied. Lupin lied. They all bloody lied. I heard you, a voice murmuring behind the veil, a whisper that appears in the twilight between waking and sleep. I even hear you now, a secret that hovers just outside the glass, waiting for me to open the window and fly out with you. My hand is on the latch. I want to fall like the rain, delicate and true to my path, played by the wind, only to be pulled to the sky when the sun shines, and there we'll fly together, we'll fly, and none of them can stop us.

In order to keep up security, the funeral took place in the early morning hours, starting just as the sun rose. The only indication we received of that, however, was a slight lightening around us, a glaze of pink in the East that dared to makes its way through the oppressive blanket of clouds, and the twitter of one very brave bird. In a many-layered rectangle the Order of the Phoenix members stood, a haze of black dress robes and coats, hats and umbrellas forming a kind of second sky. Hermione stood across from me, on the other side of the open, and empty, grave, in a simple black muggle dress, her eyes intently on me through every second. Only Lupin and I stood closest to the grave and the marker at its head, both standing, as though impervious to rain and damp and cold, without the safety of umbrellas, and none approached us. I could feel nothing--not the cold stinging of water as it hit my cheeks or the heaviness of my robes as they dripped steadily on the grass. Dumbledore's voice droned on and on, yet I was removed, looking up at him as though I was in the grave, looking down at him as though I was flying above it, everywhere and nowhere all at once--like air I existed, uncaring and unmoving. Lupin's hand held my shoulder firmly--perhaps he thought I really would jump into the grave (he certainly had good reason), or he was about to fall himself, down into that muddy, empty blackness. I so wanted to fall--but to what end? You weren't there--I am closer to you within myself than in that cold grave where no body lay.

Professor Lupin had me read The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger the other week, in order to keep my mind straight and off more depressing things.

Can a body

Catch a body

Comin' through the rye?

I feel as idiotic as Holden Caulfield, fooling myself into believing I could save anybody, in a world I once thought was full of magic and heroes that is about nothing more than self-gratification. Could I have been Holden standing out in the field, waiting to save each and every person--Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Neville, Lupin, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Tonks, Fred and George...? There isn't a body strong enough to catch each and every one--and who will be there to catch me when I fall? Will it be you, you with your silver wings made of dusty attics, your laugh that once my father heard on a wedding day once upon a time?

Can a body...

"Sirius, we always knew you to be a kind and intensely brave man. You were a loving friend, and a dedicated godfather, and you will be missed by all."

And what does he know? Just a stupid old man in purple robes and crescent-moon spectacles, delivering a eulogy for a man he never really knew, speaking to a grave without a body--that's all he ever was. Perhaps if I could have looked down and seen your face frozen in time, that same look of mingled surprise and daring, deep in that hole in the ground, I would believe it--but all that came to my mind under the rain was the absurdity of it all. I almost laughed, but the rain clung to my cheeks and I felt numbed to the core of myself, under the dementors' spell, and Lupin's grip grew tighter. I still don't understand why.

Catch a body...

He showed me the actual poem which Holden had misquoted and misinterpreted. It didn't make sense to me that way--I liked Holden's version better. A lone sixteen-year-old in a field with an old catcher's mitt, covered in poems, waiting for dream children to appear out of the sky and save them from falling over a cliff, shadows before bodies lilting across the golden fireworks of rye. Perhaps he'd like some company that thinks the same way.

Comin' through the rye?

"I really like that poem, Professor. 'Can a body catch a body'..."

When it was over I took a walk through the cemetery, through endless streets of markers and tombs like small cracking houses, flowers drowning and wilting under the onslaught of rain. You never liked Grimmauld Place. We could've lived together in a small house in Scotland, surrounded for miles and miles by nothing but endless fields. I'd ride my broomstick every evening, and you could polish up that old flying motorbike of yours, and we'd never be sad or lonely again. And there you are, the boy in the field, young and daring and handsome forever, falling with a laugh dancing about your face.

Can a body

Catch...

Droplets of slimy brown and back earth flew before my eyes as my knees hit something soft. The grass was so bright, somehow, beneath the eerie heavens of twilight death, sparkling with droplets... This is our place.

"Harry... It's not really 'catch' a body. Didn't you read the poem? Even Phoebe said it to Holden, when he saw her in her bedroom."

She got so frustrated with him, and he watched her going round and around on the merry-go-round, trying to catch the ring, almost falling, while he sat on the outside, not moving at all.

Can a body...

The door is creaking open.

The grass was so very bright, the hole so very deep...

Meet a body...

There is your hand upon my shoulder.

I close my eyes--I'll never turn around--it will always be you there, your shadow falling over me like a blanket, my own--here by the window, as the rain falls--and I'll always believe that I could catch you...

Comin' through the rye.

I'll die; real love is forever.

Fin