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: 2015-08-31 10:59 pm (UTC)Hydra.
Nothing I can say is going to do anything but make things worse, I know that.
What I want to say is that after someone killed you, it mattered to me that the man who killed you, that his son had a funeral where other people would be there. That it wouldn't just be Theo Nott and his sister. That giving him that mattered, even when I hated him. Still hate him.
And I hate him for killing you. But I also hate him for raising a child who everyone was terrified of, who only his family loved, for his part in making a world where we - where I - failed to protect every single child that we taught, and failed even more to protect all the ones we should also have been teaching, and all the ones who should have been taught by other people.
What I want to say is that Tosha is the last person who knew you as a person, thought you were competent, knew you as an adult, not a teacher, not an uncle, but as a friend and brother and all the things you deserved so much more of and never had. And that she's got friend after friend she can talk to about Justin, when she's ready, and I have shadows and people who knew you from what the papers said, or if I'm really lucky, a half-dozen suppers. (My family liked you, but it's hard to say they had time to know you much.)
He did horrible things in pursuit of stupid choices. Just like you did dreadful things in pursuit of your stupid choices. And I've done some things
and Ireland got invaded because of what I did and I killedin pursuit of my own choices, some of which are already proven to be stupid and terrible. But if I hate him, I have to hate you, and I have to hate me, and I don't think that ends well.What I want to say is that we've lived in fear, for so long, that punishment for talking to the wrong person, thinking the wrong thoughts, seems reasonable, but that's not the way it should be, that's not the way forward.
What I want to say is that some of the children coming this year, or next, or the ones after, some will be the children of people who did horrible things. Brothers and sisters of people who did horrible things. Camp administrators and Enforcers and bureaucrats who thought nothing of shuffling people off to be worked to death or worse. Who abused the muggleborns in service. All the nightmares. The thing we can't afford, can't ever give into, is making sure the people like that have nowhere to be. Hated for continuing to love who they love. I'm can hear all the voices calling it weakness and justification. But that doesn't make it less fair, and it doesn't mean they deserve less welcome.
What I want to say is that I know how it feels right now, enough, that it's been not much more than a year since you, and I feel it all the time. I still feel the hole in the charms, and
Everything.
She is your niece, and you loved her, and you wanted good things for her. And I won't hurt her more, only I don't know how not to hurt her. Not saying anything will. Saying anything will. If I had years, I probably couldn't figure it out.
And I'm really sure that any promise made right now, with so much change and so much hurting, by anyone, it's not a good idea. (I keep thinking about what Poppy and Mum and Georg and other people told me, after you died, that there was no need to make hasty decisions, no need to commit myself to something. Though, then again, six weeks later, I joined the Order, so I guess I wasn't very good at that.)
The rest of it. I guess I keep trying to teach, because what else am I good for? And I bury my head in the tower, as much as I can, because anything else - anything else is too sharp, and I just can't. And people keep blaming me for things I'm supposed to know about, and don't, and it's not like people tell me things or ask me things I do know, or ...
Right. There are things I wanted to tell you. I can do that much, before I write something and fall over and realise no one's going to miss me at Malfoy Manor.
Tosha said he saw Harry, when he was dead. Not you, but I hope that means you've gone to find somewhere to be happy, somewhere with Quidditch and clear skies and a comfortable couch by a fireplace for after. That you know Harry's all right. I don't even know what I think about the afterlife anymore, whether I want there to be one or what.
In a couple of weeks, I suspect both Cedric and Charlie will be fed up with people telling them it'll be all right, and I'm thinking I'll let them know how it was with you. The things almost no one knew, about living with the pain and the curse damage, and the fear about it getting worse, and that if they want an ear, I'm not going to pretend it's like it used to be for them or can be again, but also that there's some way through it.
Preferably without either of them taking a ten year detour to black depths and bottles and all. I like them both too much for that. If I can avoid going there myself.
I don't know if I'll keep writing. It feels like all the before and whatever's next, they're two entirely different worlds (and if you were Tosha, I'd talk about wardrobes and paintings and all here, but you're not.) Maybe I'll write you proper letters, instead. I don't know.
But I always always love you, and I still dream of you, and I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why you're not there, and I don't think that will ever change.
I hope you don't hate me. Wherever you are.