Unwinding Lives

Prologue

1994

"Please," she sobbed, into his shirt, one of his last; he had just washed it the day before, he thought absently.

"Remus."

She was holding him - no, clinging to him - from the back, and she was shivering, shaking...Remus remembered being like this, when he was even younger than her.

She was too young - if not...

She came to him only for comfort, he reminded himself; the Dark Lord's snake had just attacked her father, and she was lost, and scared. She was lost, and scared, just like he had been, when he was even younger than her.

But he remembered her eyes, intense in their strange gold light, studying him, watching him; he remembered how he had fallen himself, had come too close, his fingers winding themselves in the red silk of her hair; he remembered their words, their mutual divulging of personal secrets, their shared tears - Sirius's house was claustrophobic, he had decided.

But now -

"Please," she repeated, and finally Remus turned around, hesitantly, feeling very much like a young boy again - her presence, her bright red hair and fair skin and small frame always made him feel as if he were, himself, still dark-brown-haired, with skin that was smooth with unstained youth and thin and gawky.

"It'll be alright, Ginny, it'll be alright," he told her, pulling her to his front, bending so that her thick, heavy hair was against his face, feeling with extreme awkwardness that it was an empty promise, although he knew that her father was not dead - he knew, and she knew, that they both meant the future.

She felt soft and pliable in his arms, and the sweet fresh scent that followed her was heightened, sharp to Remus's senses, and it frightened him, almost, to find that he could sink into it, could sink into her. It frightened him that she would fit so perfectly against him, and that his body betrayed his mind by taking comfort in it.

They were just two ordinary people, one giving comfort and the other seeking it, he thought. Comfort, as in consolation.

She is a beautiful girl, whispers a voice in his mind, capriciously. She is a beautiful girl, and of the same mind as yours.

Remus drew Ginny closer, burying his face into her hair, afraid of hearing more.

~

1966

Remus and Rafael were almost six. Rafael had a special child-sized coffin, dark green satin-lined, brass-handle shined.

From his vantage point next to the pastor Remus watched his twin brother, who was unmoving in his black dress robes, the one that Remus knew he hated. Remus had protested against the choice, for his was a boy after his twin's own heart, but he had been immediately hushed by his mother, whose eyelids were lined with grey and whose eyes were mapped with the thin red snaking strata-lines. Remus had retreated to the background, hurt and cold, because his clothes were too thin again - Rafael had had to take all the warm clothes in the house towards the trickle of the last winter, and now it was almost spring but Rafael was dead. Their parents had burned all the clothes and all the bed sheets and blankets that had been in the same bed as Rafael, and hadn't yet bought new ones to replace the ones Remus had sacrificed.

Rafael was pale and a mirror of Remus, only that his eyes were closed and his breath, for once, was silent. And his silence made the quiet sobbing around Remus even more loud, and Remus wanted to shut his ears, and scream, stop it, stop it, shut up.

Dark green had always been his and Rafael's favourite colour: it was their colour. And the dark green was stark against Rafael's white skin, against the coal black that was his robes. The deep chasm-like black which coloured the sides of the coffin stood against the brilliant green of the fresh spring grass which had only sprung up the week before, with a few patches amongst them still occupied by a sullen-looking, rather sloppy and grey-coloured snow. Above was the yawning blue sky, a lazy, velvety blue, the colour of Rafael's eyes: it was as if heaven was opening Rafael's eyes for Remus, because Rafael could no longer do so.

Remus watched Rafael, and he ached to cry but could not, because Rafael used to say that boys who cried were sissies, and neither of them was a sissy, which was why they would never cry, even if - well, Rafael never did complete his sentence, because at that very moment, their mother had called for them from the back of the house, announcing the arrival of freshly-squeezed bright yellow lemonade which was a lifesaver every summer. It had been last summer.

Remus wished he could cry. Even though he would probably look like the shaking girls and women around him. But he saw that the other boys and men did not cry, only looking stony and with their eyes averted. And then he could not cry, remembering Rafael's words that summer afternoon.

"We entrust into thy hands, most merciful Father,

The soul of this child departed,

And we commit his body to the ground,

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

And then there was a lowly murmured, quivering "Amen" from the small congregation, and then Rafael and his coffin was lowered, slowly, into the gaping six feet deep hole, and the black-frocked ladies around Remus threw in the white roses in their hands reverently, tearfully. Remus bent down, somehow seeing Rafael through the black wood of his coffin, somehow seeing the last of him, knowing that Rafael could not possibly - and suddenly Remus felt the choke of tears and a cocktail of an almost-six-year-old's emotions hurtling up his throat, and, alarmed, he turned, running, sprinting, dashing, down the tiny hill of the graveyard, blindly, lacking in purpose and direction, and he felt all the wind of the sky against his body, and the cold crashed into him like a breaking wave, and he ran, and flew, and ran.

He ran, and ran, and ran, not seeing, the ground hard from pre-spring frost, kicking up the barely-grown grass, until when he finally fell, and stopped unwilling, out of breath, he was surrounded by the dark green of the forest which had been half a mile away from the graveyard. He could not now see the entrance by which he had come from, and from the canopy of broad-leaved reborn deciduous trees he saw only patches of sunlight. Suddenly, as he looked around himself, the woods became larger, looming above his small frame, and his eyes dilated to adjust to the change in light. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of a secret, heavy with the scent of something primal, and abruptly Remus forgot Rafael and remembered stories of things that prowled the forests. A winding trail slipped through the forest, stretching across it like an animal on prowl. Then he remembered Rafael again, because Rafael and him had always been afraid of the same things as he, and Rafael would surely have felt afraid now, because Remus always knew when he did. And through the chasm of death Remus felt the prickling of fear from Rafael, who feared for his brother. Remus's grief momentarily forgotten, he opened his six-year-old amber eyes, not seeing the ancient amber eyes that spied him from behind the wild creeping vines and shrubs.

~

It must have been over in ten seconds, or less. Something foul and dead lay over him, the fresh horrible smell of gunpowder and guts and blood pervading it, its great hairy head bleeding from a gunshot that had crackled sharply in the thick forest air, seeping into the white of Remus's white shirt, but it was the only thing that was bleeding.

"Boy? Boy! Are you all right? My heavens, what is that ugly brute on him? A wolf? Surely it's too big - boy! I say, boy!"

"Good grief, Hastings, it got the boy's throat - "

"He's bleeding badly - bring those bloody hounds away, Cowell, they want blood, they've smelt it, the bloodthirsty louts -- "

"Pull him from under the beast; come on, give me a hand, the poor boy's barely breathing - "

"It'll be a ton of paperwork - "

"For heaven's sake, Cowell, would you help us and shut up a while? The boy's dying here!"

And then, to the cacophony of voices and baying hounds, Remus Lupin drifted off into a blood-hazed blackness, and faraway, he could hear a scream, a voice sounding very much like his mother's, or Rafael's when he was scared.

~

1994

The boy lounged against the large high-backed armchair, the velvety dark green cushioning his ghost-pale skin. Around him music was playing; it was either Clementi or Kuhlau, he never could tell. The light-hearted classical music which filled the spaces in between dances and food always sounded the same to him: the same flowing, pleasant melodies played on string or piano, which slowly seemed to morph into monotony.

The boy sighed inwardly, the glass of champagne hanging dangerously from the tips of his long fingers. The cultured chatter of the guests around him was making him feel heady, and clutched at his heart like fingers against Snape's ancient chalkboard.

He hated it, hated it, hated it.

Every year it was the same outward, superficial posterity and procedure: the faceless guests of the Genuine Old Families would flock down to the estate in their carriages and pearls and diamonds and silk handkerchiefs, and Father would give his speech where everyone was kept well-informed but at the same time not entirely-informed regarding the Inner Circle's most recent decisions. It was during these speeches where he would feel suddenly especially proud of Father - not that he wasn't already always proud of Father, but it was on such instances that he could be truly reassured that Father was Of A Position, and thus, as his son and heir, he himself would be Someone Of Position. And then, with that brief note of Pureblood fervour over and done with, everyone returned to their socialising, dancing on the floor with measured steps, speaking with measured vindictiveness, analysing others with measured glances. It was the same pattern, over and over and over again.

From the corner of his eye, the boy suddenly caught sight of a flash of red and gold; and for a beat he snapped out of his reverie. Then he realised it was no other than Blaise Zabini, only with his dark red hair cut longer at the back again, and then he subsided back into his chair, disgruntled.

He had first seen her when he was seven, and what he had seen had caused him, even at that tender age (or perhaps perfectly because of the fact that he was at that tender age that he would have been that unsubtle), to turn around, and stare. She was barefooted, thin and sharply-angled and pixie-eared and clumsy, running with the other boys in the manicured gardens of the Fudge estate at the annual dinner and dance, her long white skirts hiked up to her knees, revealing her milk-white shins made dirty by grass stains as she chased or ducked, laughing freely, her bright red hair flashing gold and liquid ruby in the sunlight as she did so. Everything about her, despite the awkwardness, had been somehow entirely elemental, wild and wilful.

And somehow, despite his training and Father's open disdain at the girl's behaviour, he had felt the corners of his mouth twitch as she tackled a taller black-haired boy to the ground, falling on top of him and shrieking loudly.

But the next time he would see her was when he was twelve, and by then he had almost forgotten about her.

And then she had come up from behind Potter, snarling up at him, and he had been reminded of the girl who had tackled the older boy to the ground with fierce abandon, red hair flying like a flag behind her, testimony to her presence.

He had sealed his own fate with his instantaneous, reflexive retort, of course. He could still remember the words, falling sibilant off his lips, and the acute regret which he had come to be stabbed with the second afterward, when she had almost stepped backwards, and Potter had pulled her back, with the same hard-jawed heroism that he adopted all the time.

But it had also been at that instant that he had learnt her name. Ginny. Ginny Weasley.

That night, in his bed in the Manor, he would practice her name repeatedly, as if in a mantra: Ginny Ginny Ginny Ginny Ginny Ginny. And the next morning, before even the house elf which served him came to call him and prepare his day clothes and morning bath, he had written the words 'Ginny Malfoy' over and over again up and down his cream-embossed Malfoy parchment, and then burning each piece of painstakingly written work into the fire, watching the words crinkle and turn to ash. That was, of course, before he had found out that only girls did such things; boys didn't, it was not acceptable to be doing such things as a boy.

At twelve, he could see her separately from her family. At twelve he had still been naïve, and while he fell prey to hasty generalization, he was still used to the idea of her as the girl in the Fudge gardens, a separate identity. Mildly, blindly, at the back of his mind he knew of the impossibilities of his interest, but he was twelve, and at twelve he had never not gotten anything that really mattered.

And then, through, the year, he had watched her. He was somehow both glad and disappointed that she was hopelessly automatic in her reaction towards him: it was not hate; it was something between disgust and hate. A murky form of dislike. Somewhere in the standing waters of disregard and unconcern, was the measure of their relationship on her part. He had been glad because he had been afraid she would hate him with the same abandon as her brothers and Potter and Granger did, and yet he had been disappointed by it. And he had watched her, curiousy, as twelve-year-olds do, not understanding any deeper emotion or baser instinct; as unperceptive as the senses of a twelve-year-old's might be, he had noticed her change - it was a subtle change, the kind you wouldn't have known had you watched the object of change for a long period of time, as he had with her. She became tired, her face paler and shadowed with the kind of shadows that belong to those that are haunted, the kind he would catch on fleetingly on Father's face, at times, or on Mother's, but which vanished so quickly into vapour they could have even not been there. Her laughter was harder, glassier, and the gold light of her eyes was dimming into burnished bronze that had lost its sheen.

And then, one day, he had found her face up against a cold stonewall, sobbing wildly. Her face was streaked with black and dust, and her flaming red hair was matted copper, dirty. She had not noticed him, even though he had just emerged loudly from Transfiguration and was in a bad mood from his lesson with McGonagall, who had deducted marks from Slytherin for his gloating over Granger's being Petrified.

When he had seen her he had stopped, and then hesitantly, slowly, he had gone up to her, tapping her lightly on her shoulder, afraid that she would reject the action.

"Weasley?" he had whispered.

"Are you alright?"

She had finally looked at him, her amber eyes wide and large and not focussing, and suddenly she had grabbed onto him, holding him tightly, her fingers clawing into his back, his arms, and, startled, he had dropped his things, just as her nails bit into his skin, drawing blood around his neck.

"Weasley?" hearing the tremor in his voice.

"Tom, leave me, please; save me from Tom, please please please..." her voice was a low moan, and she began sobbing again, into his neck.

"Ginny?" he had asked, letting her name slip of his tongue, and it thrilled him how easy it was to allow it so, and how comfortable it felt saying it, the reality and absurdity of his current position being too surrealistic for his senses.

"Tom, I can't, please Tom, please...I don't want to..." she murmured into his side, but her sobbing had begun to subside, and her body had become limp against his.

"Ginny?" he repeated.

There had been no answer, not even along the lines of an incoherent one.

"Ginny?" tentatively, he lifted her face, winding his arm around hers; her eyes were closed, the lids grey, as if they were bruised over.

Ginny Weasley had fallen asleep in his arms, he realised.

His twelve-year-old mind knew nothing of exploitation of such situations, and so he sat, holding her, almost not questioning himself over the identity of the person named Tom. And finally, watching her, questioning himself in a roundabout manner, he had begun to fall asleep himself, leaning in towards her, his white-blonde hair falling over her uniform, which was stained and wet and dirty.

Hours later, he would awake, only to find that she was already gone. It was the night that she had disappeared into the Chamber of Secrets.

Two days later, when she had finally emerged from exile, she stared right past him.

She did not remember.

Slowly she began to return to what she was before her first year: her red hair was resplendent again, her skin pure and radiant white, her eyes bright gold. But he still watched her, beneath half-lidded eyes, and he still saw the shadows that flitted across her face, the simple ones and the monstrous ones that threatened her existence at the brinks of her soul.

And then his fifth year started, as did her fourth year.

He soon began to make out a pattern in her visits to the library: she liked to study every once a week, on Saturdays, and every Saturday at around eight o'clock she would dutifully place herself at the quietest table at the furthest end of the library, round the restricted section. He assumed that she wanted some quiet time for actual study: she would come to the library with her friends every other day, but she would never use that table, and she would make a lot of noise along with the rest of them, and laugh and joke and poke at the books, at pictures which were more gruesome than funny.

And so, one day in early October, he carried his books and sat at her table, across her. She had glanced up at him, and he had returned her glare with a cool look, not trusting himself to speak, and had made to start with his work. It was a look that instigated retaliation rather than challenge: he knew that she would choose not to give him the satisfaction. After a spell she followed suit, and his heart had heaved a sigh of relief, whilst his eyes had roved stealthily over to her, watching her as they always did whenever she was in sight.

Watching her at close range was more beautiful than watching her from far away.

He committed her every expression to memory, drinking in each tiny movement, the reflexes that so defined her subconscious character, the character he had seen years ago in the gardens, and then in the brief lapses between the times in the Chamber of Secrets. Slowly he became to more than watch her; he had become to understand her, to tap inch by inch into her thought-process, to predict her reactions.

There was a lot you could learn from watching a person's treatment of her quill.

And he had become to quietly enjoy their sessions - he felt the quiet warm pulse of being close to her, and amongst the silver-fish-infested books he fell into the illusion in his mind that if he just reached forward, and stroked her face, let his hands wander and stray down the red fall of hair, she would mirror his actions, and then -

It had become an addiction, and soon he realized that she herself had fallen into the routine of seeing him at Their Table every Saturday, for once he had hurried up, late, only to find her yet to open her books: she only did so when she saw him; then, with an imperceptible, subconscious nod, she began to her work. It was that day in October that he had almost been convinced that she would speak to him, and then he would trust himself to return, with all the conversations that had been in his head.

But she had not.

He had still waited.

And October had come and gone, and November had come, as it always does after October. It had been with the same consistency that he would meet her at Their Table, regardless of the insults exchanged between him and her brother and her brother's best friend throughout the week.

He had begun to think that she could see him separately, as well.

And then Corner had come, and asked her out for the next Hogsmeade weekend.

He had observed the shy repartee between the two, and had abhorred it: he had been disgusted enough with Corner, and it killed him to see Ginny return it, smiling shyly, speaking shyly, her red hair down the side of her face, hiding her left eye, shyly. He knew her façade, he knew she was afraid to show what she was, the girl in the Fudge gardens.

It was wrong; wrong, wrong, wrong.

And then, with her shy promise in his unremarkable mind, Corner had left. He had watched as the shyness peeled itself layer by layer off her, until the bare disappointment was apparent. He had known to whom the disappointment belonged.

He hated it. He hated her. He hated her for making him hate her when he knew that he far from hated her. He hated her because she was being like himself, hating herself like he would hate himself for all his inadequacies. The inadequacies he had begun to acknowledge, from when he was twelve, at the Quidditch pitch.

He had slammed his book shut. Startled, she had looked up, brown eyes wide.

"I hate you, Weasley. I hate you."

He saw the shock fly across her face before the coolness settled in.

"I hate you too, Malfoy. Glad to know we're on equal footing."

They were not. He wanted her; she did not want him.

"If you didn't want to go with Corner, why did you agree?"

A sharp look from her, and then the eyes had lowered.

"It's none of your business, Malfoy."

"An evening with Corner, Weasley." He sneered. "Letting his rough, artless hands touch you. Hearing his whining, pathetic voice. When all you want is someone else, don't you? Someone else's hands. Someone else's voice. Someone else's lips." His voice had become steadily higher, and he had felt the tremble in his hands as they clutched the table, watching as his words broke into her.

She did not want him. She never would want him.

She did not see him separately.

Something had broken within him.

It was a swift action, lacking in the control that he had so carefully tried to cultivate, and earnestly tried to emulate. With both hands, he had spun her about, away from the table where the both of them had been half-standing by then, against the library wall.

Gold eyes against silver.

Red against white.

They were really not so different; they were simply incongruous.

Not thinking, he had kissed her, hard, his body pushing up against hers, rough and without affection, as in addiction and obsession.

She had struggled, but even with his slim stature she was smaller. He forced himself through, through her lips, tasting the faint taste of pomegranate juice, against her teeth, the resisting tongue. His cold hands had felt hot against her skin, which was flushed against his actions and her reactions. He had felt the sharp nails drawing blood, and then finally the limp acceptance, the melting, and he kissed her harder, more searching, and in a rush of blood to the head he had felt her kissing back, her fingers no longer digging but sliding against his skin, pulling. He had heard the low moan at the base of her throat, feral; he had heard her voice, trying to form a word.

A name.

Briefly, he had pulled back, in ridiculous ecstasy.

The word formed, as her eyelids were drugged heavy from his efforts.

"Remus..."

A whisper.

A moan.

A sliver of a second ticked by, and in his horror her eyes had snapped open in shock.

Remus. Remus, not Draco.

In his numbness he had registered her pulling away, running, her hands scooping up her books, dropping some of her things in her rush; in his numbness he registered himself with his hand against the wall, with nothing of a Ginny against him.

Remus. Remus, not Draco.

Remus, not Harry.

Remus, not Michael.

Remus, not Tom.

Remus.

He could still hear the word. Remus.

It defiled her lips, just as he had sanctified them, claimed them as his.

There was a painfully familiar ring to it; he knew it had to remember, had to recall, but he could not.

Remus, Remus, Remus.

She no longer turned up on Saturdays after that. His eyes sought her out, and through the week he would still see the traces of their kiss in her lips, traces that no other would have noticed. But her eyes were shaded, hidden behind the shutters of her own soul, and he later found out that she had gone with Corner to Hogsmeade. And then he had tried to make a move on her, tried to kiss her, but she had pulled away, almost as if she were afraid. It was the talk of the Boys' Prefects' bathroom.

Ginny, Ginny, Ginny.

Draco Malfoy watched the gold of his champagne swirl in his glass, determined that he would eradicate Remus from her mind.

~