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None Returning
Harry Potter, Remus/Sirius. Spoilers through Half Blood Prince. 200 words. 1 May 2010.
Harry Potter double drabble in response to the prefacing exchange in Half Blood Prince. I could go into a long treatise on how of course Remus didn’t share his grief about Sirius with Harry openly for fear if he let it out, he’d never be able to resurface under its weight, but I think between the line at the end of Order of the Phoenix (“Lupin turned away from the archway as he spoke. It sounded as though every word was causing him pain.” OotP p808) and the drabble-inspiring bit from the end of HBP, good old JK told us herself.
Also, the title is from The Final Problem, by Arthur Conan Doyle (which also makes my heart ache): “Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning.”
As usual, apologies for the author’s notes being longer than the fic. It’s always a struggle to keep myself short-enough winded as to be intelligible. Forcing myself to write things in drabble/doubledrabble format both keeps me from going on too long and ensures that something actually gets done (have I mentioned there are seriously 80 unfinished fics and fic fragments on my hard drive right now? *hangs head*).
“Ron — Dumbledore’s dead,” said Ginny.
“No!” Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, as though hoping the latter might contradict her, but when Harry did not, Lupin collapsed into a chair beside Bill’s bed, his hands over his face. Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent.
--HBP 514
There was no doubt in his heart which had hurt more—Sirius, by an order of indescribable magnitude—but the force with which the news hit him was surprisingly painful. It wasn’t the cold nothingness that had set upon him in the bowels of the ministry, leaving the shell of his body to watch over the Death Eaters and to make his way unconsciously back to Grimmauld Place before collapsing on the bed that they had shared; wanting nothing more than to forget this place, this war, this man, this . . . -–Sirius-- entirely and retreat to the solitude of his hidden flat. But Remus knew the Order needed him—in the greater scheme of everything but his heart, this, relatively speaking, changed very little—so he fought. He choked back the tears that wouldn’t even attempt to fall for weeks filled with shock and more attacks. He stood up.
No, at Ginny’s words, it was not grief that wracked the werewolf’s already-broken body. Remus sank down into the chair because for the first time in the course of two wars, this single man’s death had imparted in him the overwhelming, real fear that they were going to lose.
Harry Potter, Remus/Sirius. Spoilers through Half Blood Prince. 200 words. 1 May 2010.
Harry Potter double drabble in response to the prefacing exchange in Half Blood Prince. I could go into a long treatise on how of course Remus didn’t share his grief about Sirius with Harry openly for fear if he let it out, he’d never be able to resurface under its weight, but I think between the line at the end of Order of the Phoenix (“Lupin turned away from the archway as he spoke. It sounded as though every word was causing him pain.” OotP p808) and the drabble-inspiring bit from the end of HBP, good old JK told us herself.
Also, the title is from The Final Problem, by Arthur Conan Doyle (which also makes my heart ache): “Two lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the farther end of the path, both leading away from me. There were none returning.”
As usual, apologies for the author’s notes being longer than the fic. It’s always a struggle to keep myself short-enough winded as to be intelligible. Forcing myself to write things in drabble/doubledrabble format both keeps me from going on too long and ensures that something actually gets done (have I mentioned there are seriously 80 unfinished fics and fic fragments on my hard drive right now? *hangs head*).
“Ron — Dumbledore’s dead,” said Ginny.
“No!” Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to Harry, as though hoping the latter might contradict her, but when Harry did not, Lupin collapsed into a chair beside Bill’s bed, his hands over his face. Harry had never seen Lupin lose control before; he felt as though he was intruding upon something private, indecent.
--HBP 514
There was no doubt in his heart which had hurt more—Sirius, by an order of indescribable magnitude—but the force with which the news hit him was surprisingly painful. It wasn’t the cold nothingness that had set upon him in the bowels of the ministry, leaving the shell of his body to watch over the Death Eaters and to make his way unconsciously back to Grimmauld Place before collapsing on the bed that they had shared; wanting nothing more than to forget this place, this war, this man, this . . . -–Sirius-- entirely and retreat to the solitude of his hidden flat. But Remus knew the Order needed him—in the greater scheme of everything but his heart, this, relatively speaking, changed very little—so he fought. He choked back the tears that wouldn’t even attempt to fall for weeks filled with shock and more attacks. He stood up.
No, at Ginny’s words, it was not grief that wracked the werewolf’s already-broken body. Remus sank down into the chair because for the first time in the course of two wars, this single man’s death had imparted in him the overwhelming, real fear that they were going to lose.