Little Things

I'm a junkyard full of false starts
and I don't need your permission to bury my love
under this bare lightbulb...

It was the little things that bothered him.

The dishes left in the sink, clothes on the floor, clutter on the table; all insignificant, and yet they irked him quite disproportionately. A chair left standing away from the table rather than being pushed neatly back in place had the ability to send his mood into a downward spiral on some days. She, on the other hand, never seemed to notice these tiny disasters she left in her wake; cheerfully smiling at him, she'd kiss him into submission and dance off to create more catastrophes.

It was the big things that bothered her; the war, Harry's safety, and the politics that she had to endure daily. He suspected that she found the physical aspects of her job cathartic, allowing her to work through some of the frustration that built up. Other times she spent weeping in his arms as he soothed her and kissed the salt from her cheeks.

When his aggravations grew too great, he fell silent, internalizing the sharp comments that pricked at his tongue. He wouldn't risk losing her by speaking them, but he thought that she still heard them in the silence that stretched taut as a bowstring between them. He had only snapped once; a torrent of bile and anger had spilled out as he raged, and she had fled the cottage in tears. It had been their only falling out, quickly mended, and never spoken of since.

Despite the frequent tension that lived with them, the love that they shared had so many moments of sheer joy and purity that the thought of separating himself from the endless stream of irritants never occurred to him. Their vacation in Morocco, the weekend spent hiking in Wales, making love to her on the rug before the fire their first Christmas Eve together, the pancake disaster of his last birthday- all of these memories gradually eclipsed the frustration he suffered at her carelessness. But good and bad, all of the memories came to an end on a drizzly September morning.

As the Order scouting team to which they were assigned had approached the old manor home that was their objective, they were ambushed by Death Eaters. A hex hit her squarely in the back. The spell was a nasty one from the first war that he had almost managed to forget; she never stood a chance. He turned, saw her pitch forward, eyes wide and already glazing as the Dark magic coursed through her, tearing apart her organs and killing her before he could call out her name.

For many weeks after her death, he could barely function at all. After all, he had loved her very deeply. But even after the pain of her passing had begun to recede, and he was once again able to respond to the demands of life, he still felt that something was missing. He had stopped reaching out for her in the night, and he no longer would begin speaking to her, only to remember anew that she was gone. But the nagging feeling persisited, troubling him deeper than anything had in a while, and he lay awake one night in the bed that now seemed too big, wondering at the tangible void that hovered just beyond his waking thoughts.

In the morning he stumbled blearily into the kitchen, numbly following his usual breakfast routine. As he reached for a teacup, the sleeve of his dressing gown caught on the Daily Prophet that was lying on the counter, spilling it messily into the floor. He started to curse in annoyance, but the words hung in his throat as he stared at the papers that were strewn across the tiles. His hands shaking, he carefully set down the cup and knelt to gather up the papers, but stopped with his fingers hovering over the pages. He couldn't pick them up, couldn't even touch them, because the lost feeling had finally gone away.

He left the papers on the floor all morning, before finally picking them up at noon. After dinner, he left the dishes standing in the sink to wait until morning. And that night he slept soundly in a bed that, while still too big, seemed a little bit warmer.

Some of his friends commented out of his hearing that her death had undone him somewhat; tidy, orderly Remus Lupin had become a man whose home was now always to be found with tiny messes cluttering its out of the way corners. Little did they know how he coveted the small shrines of disorder he had created in the rooms she once shared with him, staving off his loneliness in the echoes of her passage through his life.