Pieces

I know I always hoped too much. Deceiving myself into thinking that things were going to stay the same, I almost believed it that day. So we just lay there, under the peace-woven sky, breathing long, breathing hard. Madness grew when above us were world's insanities and a darkness that threatened on.

He kissed explosive, brash kisses.

And breathed ragged irrationality.

Calmness flourished when all that lay between us was a distant love. Bodies so close, apart. It was a strange day. An abstract, exquisite imbalance marked that day, and Sirius' scent that was so exotic, lustily moody --seductive.

Oh, that breathless air.

I woke up the next morning to a rain-fogged window. Coldness that seeped from outside seemed trivial compared to the warmth of him beside me. His heat was so smooth and gentle and still, too much like a dying, gracious ember. Next thing I knew, I was running, with fragments of gasps, from the door that led out of the house and onto a damp pavement. Let it pour, let it devour, let it burn me away. Safer outside, drenched, protected. Panicked.

He was too close, too near, too warm. Damn it, he couldn't be that close, he couldn't. Not with the war and the Order, half its original members dead, dwindling by the days. No, Sirius had to stay away, so far away so I could convince myself that he wasn't there at all. So that if fate comes down to us, we would be --

Happier?

Windswept were those lonely nights when fear always triumphed in my dreams. In those nightmares where he drifted deathly in a pond of blood, with blank eyes staring evenly at me. I think he was crying.

I knew worse than death, and found that there was nothing worse than his death. But what he had done -- oh Sirius -- certainly was. Or what I thought he had done.

And now? Now that everything's changed, is death really better than betrayal?

Yes -- I hope -- it is.

This couldn't possibly be love. No, it's aped, it's mocked, untrue. This is a poetaster's dream, this isn't love. Why is it caustic like silver and sound so much like the maddened laughter of a murderer…

*

The swing swayed with wooden screeches of rusted metal clamps, leaves glided away with the panicked motion of cold winds. Clouds veiled sparsely over the bleak sky, bleeding much, leaching much, while the sun was an unassuming brightness that did not illuminate at all. Even so the swing hung so pitifully with a languid motion that the autumn cool could not still, and a bitter winter loomed on nonetheless.

There was something about this place, something pensive. A certain wistful cool that the house always brought, even more than the sky behind it. Some sick feeling not quite so close to dolour, same anyway. The same irrationality bursting from the unconscious, the same frustration at undisclosed causes and a forlorn pride. How I wish this wasn't home.

Well, it wasn't anyway. Too many bloody memories that I can't rid, too scarred to be cosy. That couldn't be what home feels like. Home was supposed to be snug and warm and secure, they say that home is where the heart is. So how can this be home if I haven't a heart anymore?

The door screeched away to the wind.

The dust-shrouded house was, with the exception of some boggarts, empty. I was hoping that something else might be there too, something so terribly inane that I don't remember what it is. Maybe it was the air that should have been steaming with cosiness and familiar scents. But certainly, that couldn't have been what I expected. I laughed a nervous laugh. This was the house where everything resembled a deep, unhealed wound whose scar was still crimson on my left shoulder.

Yet I was hoping for a soulful fire burning so brightly in the fireplace while a delicious aroma wafted from the kitchen. I was hoping for the normal definition of a home…Wait, what was it again?

Emptiness swelled and deflated, and was gone. I think I am delusional.

I suppose, all of my life, I was running, hiding, doing something to disguise the truth. I lived in my dreams, no better than a madman. I imagined and believed.

Well, as for me --as for this moonlit, dreadful night, I lay down and breathed, and waited for It to come. C'mon, take me away, Moony. Carry me away so that I don't have to remember.

When the first sliver of moonlight spilt over frail trees, agony slithered its way up my wrists. Ah, but it felt so sating. That divine pain slowly choking air out from the oesophagus until I was dizzy. Felt so good. Sufficing that emptiness, that must for cloudburst, that impetuous need for something, anything. Felt so fucking good.

I had an excuse to scream.

But the Wolf never fully took over -- the potion, I suppose, held it back. The forgetfulness, the dreamy escape was, as I imagined, held back too while the Wolf grinned menacingly at the back of my mind.

It was furious, I could tell.

At least back at the Shrieking Shack, there were remnants of Sirius, his smell and teeth marks and nail prints. I supposed that was enough for the Wolf, who, too, had never forgotten the callused but passionate musk of a black, furry dog.

I was the Wolf, I was always the Wolf; we were never separate entities. Its bloodlust was my desire; my hunger was in Its cries.

And then, It -- I -- It howled.

*

The full moon ended no happier than when it began.

So I sat on the cold, hard bed alone and looked out to the reluctant sunrise, knowing that I must have looked so weak. I felt weak anyway, not just from the potion. This world was again so unfamiliar, this bed so icy, this sky and sun so utterly strange.

Happiness was relative when despair was not.

The silver tipping the treetops faded, replaced by a slight burning that marked another day's arrival. This hour was the bleakest. The coldest. This was four A.M., the loneliest, the most lamentable, the hour that even the Wolf couldn't endure.

I remembered this hour. This was the time on my watch, when, with one frantic motion, Sirius crushed into my mouth with a ferocity that only I --the Wolf -- I, could comprehend. That cloudy, Gray night in the astronomy tower, in that near-day light growing slowly in the east, on the stones that were still moist, that first, burning kiss.

I would like stay in the past, in those reckless teenage years, when friendship was distinctly different from aloneness, when life was so much like an insatiable dream. Those dreaming, stargazing days.

I've never told him that it was ironic how we laughed so readily at petty pranks and dry jokes when, outside the stone confines of the enchanted Hogwarts, there prowled darkness. Back then we were still untouched by the harsher reality, despite how much we thought we had matured; younger than we ever liked to be. But then, I didn't tell him that he always pulled me back every time my thoughts wandered that way. I can still remember the warmth, the longing touch he always embraced me into -- it made me think that if we could curl up on our four-poster, crimson beds, then darkness would be tomorrow's burdens; that if he was there, laughing with me, there was perfectly nothing to worry about.

Except that he wasn't here now, was he? His canine laugh seemed no more than a vague echo of a dream. He wasn't here to remind me of closeness now. There would be no one grinning in mischief in front of the Hogwarts Lake as the sunset slowly poured its delicate shade of amber over its glittery, watery surface. He wasn't here to remind me of closeness now. No more would his gleaming, sunset-lined face look so serene against the golden sky while his elegant, long hair flew so freely into the wind that whisked the air into that expanse of twinkling gold. His eyes faded into the warm breeze.

I never told him I loved him --

There were many things I didn't tell him.

The Wolf growled then, I snarled back.

I remember --

Letters, notes, memos written on my old text books. His wobbly doodles and scribbles. His fiercely passionate verses and lyrics and flows, his most secret thoughts dribbled in ink, singing in stanzas and a graceful Del canto. The letters he wrote me, the thoughts we shared; those intimately acidic songs.

I don't think there had been enough joy in my life to overlie this barrenness, this haunting flame that consumed the charred, searing air.

There must have been a way I could see him again, he was just beyond that veil, wasn't he? That strange, deathly alien arch. To tell him that I would miss him if he was gone.

"…and little Harry looked just like Jamie! You should have been there, you don't know what you missed!…"

One day I'll learn to bite back tears.

Damn it, I don't want to let it go. I can't forget and realize the reality. It was still too familiar, too close, too sharp and vivid; too much like a yesterday that never faded away while tomorrow never came. So I lingered there just to embrace that agonizing lonesomeness and defeat. I couldn't let go. He was my only strain of intimacy. I might hide my thoughts but the Wolf forgets nothing. It regrets nothing.

Wait, maybe it would be easy enough. One point, one incantation and everything would fade away and I would be…

…maybe maybe maybe…

…obliviate…

*

Days passed. Months went by.

Gone by from what, I don't think I remember. I know that the Wolf knew, but I didn't. I don't think I wanted to know anyway, something about it made me uneasy.

Life had somehow changed, though I'm not altogether sure if it was for the worst or better. At any rate I didn't care enough. The house is no longer dusty, no longer stale with that moldy, coagulating smell. Sunlight came through the windows now that they were clear again, nicely illuminating the house even if it was still thoroughly despondent and cheerless. Yeah well, I knew that it would be no different. Days were just as icy and impersonal as the day I first came back, and still the Wolf hated it. It detested this house for a reason that I'm not entirely sure of, but I've never been sure about the Wolf anyhow.

Yet I found myself reluctant to change. That necessity to stand still, that instinctive inertia resisting all motion was overmastering, voracious in its persuasive course. Such was a powerful seduction.

I didn't want to change anyway.

Because moving meant new pains, insecure foreignness. It meant letting go and moving on and allowing the past to fade into memories. Except that I'm not sure if I remember.

In the rain-swept wind were lost songs.

The Wolf knew those songs. Its howls gave it away. Those star-muzzled, painfully knowing howls.

Obscured behind the full moon, was that something. That same something the Wolf wouldn't tell me. Something whispering --

Don't let go.

Let what go?

Maybe it's just my imagination.

But something always stopped me; something. Some warm, familiar feeling that drew me back, feeling like a hand, or a breath. Something that made me sit alone and think for hours at a blank sky because it seemed to have held the answer. I don't think I ever found one.

But I kept searching anyway.

Time went on all the same while the senselessness never stopped.

Sometimes, a snarling wind, I think, would bring a laughter that rang crisply in the vastness of an empty house. That was familiar, I knew it. Breathing intensely from that laughing wind, I knew that some fiery scent lay there, even if latent beneath a forgetful moment. And I knew, I knew fiercely that the scent fed the insatiability that burned so bitterly now. Oh if only I knew what it was.

And why does it taste so greedily passionate?

There had been more moments like this. Some stolen, forgotten instants where an echoing dream would flash at the back of my mind, bringing my feet, for a second, to an abrupt stop. I remembered this somehow. There was always hidden behind the orange sunset, the shimmering water, something, something. There had been moments when prosaic objects seemed so intriguing that I'd stare at them for hours because it didn't seem right somehow. Again that nagging, irksome feeling chiming a piercing reminder at the back of my mind, telling me that I was forgetting something, but what? What had I forgotten? What was so fucking important?

The Wolf knew it, I didn't.

What the hell was it?

Can someone please tell me?

*

I dreamt of falling today. Falling because there was nothing beneath me, nothing above me to hold onto, every thought rushing into a tide of shrieks. Memories of jumping from yesterday, life notwithstanding, gruesome glory forgotten somewhere between now and tomorrow; in spite of all that I knew, for all that I did not know. So what if I was falling into a death? I was flying. Hope had meant nothing then. I had wings.

As I fell the world fell with me. This black sky I trod beneath my feet and this ocean of silvery sin seemed inconstant. Dark figures contrasted so exquisitely against the gleaming backdrop, and had talked of something in terrible whispers that were lost in the December wind. Was it December already? It was already so deep within the vicinity of a desperate winter; and yes, Christmas, too. I don't think I'll ever come to understand the hopeful, gold-sprinkled Christmas night. They were still whispering in their ghastly wheezing voice, with a certain craziness in their movement and eyes. Not that I could see their eyes. If I could only get close enough to hear their words. Suddenly the wind roared on with all the intensity of a wolf that was howling. The light blinded, the figures faded, and snow fell onto the shiny pavement with a madness and fallen velocity.

In the silver light, in the full moon's light, in the red and green glow of a gilded Christmas that had lost its elegance, a glass-like music box turned while its song haunted a cheerful air. The resonating sound hung lonesome and cold. While grey ashes flew into the meandering waves that consumed all and every, betrayal reeked sinfully over those looming, fearsome lies.

And maybe when it rains again, it will be on a new moon night and I won't shiver so badly because there would be someone to shield me from the cold.

Whoever he would be.

Remember me, Remus. Dream of night skies. Dream of me when I'm gone.

*

I went to the edge of the world today
And saw the abyss in its affray
I wondered why
Calmness gone awry
Wonder why I compromise
To a madman's sinful guise
To this obsolete madness
And chaos
Ah this must be love.
But who thereof?

I heard a lovely song today
But I've forgotten what it tried to say
Nothing there but the notes
Nothing there but the motion
The rhythmic devotion
Drowns and screams
A world's dreams
It was death
A life time's breath

A full moon on a starless night,
A fallen wingless flight.

*

I'm coming.