Order Only : Private message to Raz
Oct. 7th, 2014 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_sinistraI've started a message so many times, thinking you're just somewhere else, before I remember you're not. That it will remind people you're gone. But I promised myself, if I made it this far, I'd let myself write.
How did my sky change so much, so fast? I keep doing arithmancy, the patterns. Three years ago today, you thought Barty was dead, and we ended up in your bed, and everything shifted for the best.
975 days from then to that last lazy morning, before - before. (Minus the weeks Madam Toad stole.) 53 weeks to the day that we were married. 121 days since he killed you. Four months.
I miss so much, love. How you could change the world for me in a sentence. Your laugh. That you always took me seriously, what I thought, what I cared about. Curling up to mark on the couch, just together. Watching you fly or duel, when you were most free. The stolen moments, when there was nothing but us. How you grew into teaching. Nearly all of it. (I don't miss dinners with your family one bit.)
I understand you better now. Things I didn't, before. The black despair, how it's impossible to get out of bed, impossible to sleep, so hard to think or feel anything but wild fury. Dreaming you're there and then waking and losing you all over again. Hearing you call out 'Rory' and turning round, and you're never there.
There are days I stay in my tower for supper, because there's Lana. Who has husband and lover (you were right, your brother having someone), and all the things I don't and won't and can't have again and she doesn't seem to value any of it. Savitha, how her class - your class - has no Teddy Nott in it, and how that changes everything, and how she hasn't been broken and battered by her loyalty. Seeing everyone's lives go on, and all I can do is keep from drowning in it.
I worry that you hate me for what I chose. (Are you even there? Is Tosha right, and there's something beyond this world?I'm glad you're not a ghost, I don't think I could bear)
When they asked me, Remus and Poppy and Pomona, I needed to say yes. But I didn't know why. Then they told me about Harry and Draco and Hydra, and this has to be the right choice. The only possible one. (I keep reading your letter, over and over. What you wanted. You have so much to be proud of, with Harry, and we had no idea.)
They take care of each other. Not like the Council. Not like your family.
The oddest people have been so kind. Alice, so like I remembered from school, not the monster the papers turned her into. In some entirely different world, I think you and Frank would have been good friends, your skill and your fierceness to teach and protect, both. Muggles and Muggleborns, who have all the reasons to fear me or loathe me or both. But Regina likes that I've a scientific mind, and Cecilia's glad I was kind to her daughter, and I don't know how they do that. (And they're both so clever and capable, and I feel so selfish, all they've lost.)
I guess that's why I'm doing this. So that other women don't lose other husbands and other children. So that there's a better world for our students. (And all the students we didn't get to have.) So that there's somewhere that honours loyalty, not curses it to shattered bits.
And - well. I don't have much to lose now. If I get it wrong, maybe I get to see you again sooner than later.
I don't regret loving you. Not ever. I keep holding onto all the ways you loved me. Kept me as safe as you could. Thought about what that meant. Wand holster and training and brooms and plans and all.
I just wish we'd had more time.
Love you, more than stars.
How did my sky change so much, so fast? I keep doing arithmancy, the patterns. Three years ago today, you thought Barty was dead, and we ended up in your bed, and everything shifted for the best.
975 days from then to that last lazy morning, before - before. (Minus the weeks Madam Toad stole.) 53 weeks to the day that we were married. 121 days since he killed you. Four months.
I miss so much, love. How you could change the world for me in a sentence. Your laugh. That you always took me seriously, what I thought, what I cared about. Curling up to mark on the couch, just together. Watching you fly or duel, when you were most free. The stolen moments, when there was nothing but us. How you grew into teaching. Nearly all of it. (I don't miss dinners with your family one bit.)
I understand you better now. Things I didn't, before. The black despair, how it's impossible to get out of bed, impossible to sleep, so hard to think or feel anything but wild fury. Dreaming you're there and then waking and losing you all over again. Hearing you call out 'Rory' and turning round, and you're never there.
There are days I stay in my tower for supper, because there's Lana. Who has husband and lover (you were right, your brother having someone), and all the things I don't and won't and can't have again and she doesn't seem to value any of it. Savitha, how her class - your class - has no Teddy Nott in it, and how that changes everything, and how she hasn't been broken and battered by her loyalty. Seeing everyone's lives go on, and all I can do is keep from drowning in it.
I worry that you hate me for what I chose. (Are you even there? Is Tosha right, and there's something beyond this world?
When they asked me, Remus and Poppy and Pomona, I needed to say yes. But I didn't know why. Then they told me about Harry and Draco and Hydra, and this has to be the right choice. The only possible one. (I keep reading your letter, over and over. What you wanted. You have so much to be proud of, with Harry, and we had no idea.)
They take care of each other. Not like the Council. Not like your family.
The oddest people have been so kind. Alice, so like I remembered from school, not the monster the papers turned her into. In some entirely different world, I think you and Frank would have been good friends, your skill and your fierceness to teach and protect, both. Muggles and Muggleborns, who have all the reasons to fear me or loathe me or both. But Regina likes that I've a scientific mind, and Cecilia's glad I was kind to her daughter, and I don't know how they do that. (And they're both so clever and capable, and I feel so selfish, all they've lost.)
I guess that's why I'm doing this. So that other women don't lose other husbands and other children. So that there's a better world for our students. (And all the students we didn't get to have.) So that there's somewhere that honours loyalty, not curses it to shattered bits.
And - well. I don't have much to lose now. If I get it wrong, maybe I get to see you again sooner than later.
I don't regret loving you. Not ever. I keep holding onto all the ways you loved me. Kept me as safe as you could. Thought about what that meant. Wand holster and training and brooms and plans and all.
I just wish we'd had more time.
Love you, more than stars.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-08 01:41 pm (UTC)1) Tosha, you are sometimes the stupidest smart person I know, and part of me hates you for thinking that was a reasonable solution. (Followed by a lot of yelling that would not have done any good at all.)
2) Thank you, Poppy, I have in fact read the research on the repeated application of the Cruciatus curse. For some reason.
3) Remus, Tosha was hoping that his punishment would work. Obviously.
But you keep assuming it was a choice between Cruciatus and detention. And it wasn't. It was arbitrary harsh punishment or investigation. Investigation would find something, they always do. And then it would be investigation and death. Or maybe we would have had random death instead of Cruciatus. Do you really want that?
4) Thank you, Remus, for brutally reminding me that Raz is dead, and you see no benefit to his life. Your world must be much easier to live in than mine.
(Severus explained that one now. And that makes sense.)
5) Our choice is also not Tosha or Minerva. Our choice is that if Tosha did not punish enough, he would be dead, and then we would have Savitha as head if we were lucky, and Bellatrix if we were not. (And we would have Barty tearing the country apart, stone by stone for something he was allowed to blame, and a dozen things that are actively worse than they are now, and that's before I stopped counting.)
6) I miss you, my love. But this week, there have been times I'm actively glad you're not here. At least now you can't get hurt more. And I think you would have. I hate that that's what I'm glad about.