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firewhiskeyficTitle: My Friend Liripipe
Author:paulamcg
I am of legal drinking age in my region: very aged
Pairing(s)/Characters/Fandom: Cuthbert Binns & Remus Lupin/HP
Challenge/Prompts used: all the prompts
Summary: On Saturday a week before Halloween 1993... just some dwelling and drifting, sharing and feeling alive when dead.
Rating/Warnings: G
Word count: 2800
Author's Notes (if any): All over the place, too many words, the drunk too slow.
Today I can't help dwelling on the fact that I've passed through the blackboard.
Today, once again because its another Saturday. There are no stunts in my classroom, and I can never make myself lecture to empty halls. It may look like I don't care if anyones listening, but its just that truly connecting with people is toohard for me. Reading aloud and knowing that my voice can be heard makes me feel alive and stop thinking about anything beyond the moment.
I do know that I am dead. Still, when I keep taking care of a class in the way Dumbeldoor once instructed me to teach History of MAgicit makes no difference.
On Saturdays and Sundays and holidays I hover des solately above my desk and peerout at the skies under which the earths rotating too slowly. Today also at the deepening autumn colours along the lake shore: the birches acquiring copper shades after golden yellow and gradually balding, but barely growing as transparent as I am.
In this absolute solitude my mind becomes keen enough to traverse my own history, retelling it to myself.
I haven't forgotten how my Muggle mum told me that dragon's didn't exist. I remember even the nursery rhymes. This one especially which she said was new to her, from an American bookof rhymes: one flew east, one flew west... I took the train north and learnt a different truth.
Hogwarts didn't manage to teach me many skills, though. I strugegled with Charms and Transifgurtion... and all ofit really. Totally lakcing in charm, it seemed, I failed to make close friends or to get any pussy – cuckoo's nest they called it, too – and I found it hard to figure out what to do after school.
So I ended up working in a Hogsmeade pub. Thas where, eight decades later, the newly-appointed headmaster kept throwing glances at me while describing to his brother what kind of candates he could consider.
"He must have the proper looks. He, of course. A history professor must be an old white wizard. The more ancient, the better. More convincing. That bartender of yours..." That's when Albus Dumbeledoere turns fully towards me. "You must join the Hogwarts teaching staff."
"Me?" As if bewitched, I shift my gaze to his twinkling blue eyes, and back to the mesmerising glint of copper and silver in his long curls. "I... didn't do many NEWTs, definitely not one in History of Magic. As far as I can remember."
"No matter. That is not required. No memerisation either. It's enough that you can read."
That I can do, still.
Now that I swirl around to look down at the several old tomes, always open on the pages Dumbledore has chosen, I catch a glimpse of a figure at the doorway.
Perhaps someone who'd... "Hear me?
He seems to clutch the doorframe, swaying a bit, and stroking his hideous moustach with the mouth of a Firewhiskey bottle. “Good mor... ning,” he slurs, “Porfess...sor Bunns!”
Ah, that's this year's Dfeence teacher.
I'm not the kind of ghost to socialise with other ghosts – or with other teachers either. But this wizard has approched me in a friendly manner before, as if he considered me an equal. The fact that he's now failed to name me correctly encrouges me further.
"I wish a pleasant Saturday morning to you, my esteamed colleegue," I say. "You can call me Cuddy."
To my disoinment, he doesn't reciporrocate, only nods distractedly, and sings to himself, "My travelling companions are ghosts and..." and breaks off, says, “I mean no offence. Truly, I'd value your company.”
It looks like he intends to offer me a drink.
"I'd make a wertched drinking buddy."
But he's only shaking the bottle and finding it empty. He manages to set in on the floor and stand up straight again. "Done with that, I'm heading for a walk. And forgot to bring my sketchbook. That's what I usually do. Sekeches, I mean. Landscape paintings. Not many people know. They think a professor only reads books."
"I only read. I can't do... those things: landscapes, walks."
"This close to Halloween, only a week to go... I need... I mean you must be able to go out to the grounds, and as far as the forest, at least."
"Ah, you are right. Around Halloween our shpere of haunting actually reaches all the way to the nearest graveyard. Thank you for..." Reminding me, enticing me.
I havent cared to resotto this annual freedom, just as I've chosen to move mainly between the rooms designated to me, extremely seldom to pass through the staff room or the Great Hall.
"Let us go then, you and I! The two of us share some interests in common, and a chat can cheer us both up," he says when I still linger close to the backboard, hesitating. "Have you started reading the book I gave you?"
I reach to swing a pearly finger along the cover of the battered paperpack on the corner of my desk, right where he left it. "The title..." Yes, that's the reason I've now thought about the nursery rhyme.
"Oh, stupid of me! I can hold it open for you, and you read while we're taking our walk."
We pass through the corridors and begin to descsend the first starcase side by side. I couldn't possibly support him if he still stumbled. Fortunately he's sobering up.
Perhaps I'm doing something good. These are hard times for him. After a week a full moon almost exactly coincides with the annirsary of his loss of closest friends. I know well who he is. Attended the compulsury meeting in which Dumbledore made sure the whole staff were aware.
I haven't even forgotten he talked to me when he was a student. It's just that by that time, I'd become unable to memorise new names. It's inevitable that when addressing people, I resort to my old school mates' names: O'Flaherty, Grant, Pennyfether... Liripipe! That's what I must have called the werewolf – back when he was young and I didn't know he was one, and – right after he intruced himself as the Defence teacher, and I said I did remember him as the exceptional student who used to question the historical facts in the texts I recited. The facts about goblins in particular.
He does look irrevocably sad and acutely anguished, albeit healthier, less gaunt than in early September.
Noticing my glance at his face, he squeezes the book in his hand, and by the time were crossing the entrance hall, his started chatting. "I read this novel by Ken Kesey back in the 70s, just found this copy cheap when I got back to London in August."
"Back from... travelling?
Without waiting for his answer, I burst right through the heavy door.
What did I expect? To feel some resstance, the press of matter against my... against what I don't posesss? In my view, to experence something like that it would be a better Halloween treat for us, but I must be grateful for being able to now pass through the outer walls as easily as the inner once.
But I guess it doesn't... matter! It is a greater joy to actually be – in the way someone like me can actually be – out here in the open air, so close to the wilting grass and the wind-swept trees. And to have someone beside me whoseasked for my company.
"Travelling – drifting," he – let's say Liripipe – says when the door has closed behind him, and the word he chooses amuses... both of us.
Do we truly share a genune smile as we move off?
My friend Liripipe has opened the book to the first page, but he now closes it, and tells me a bit more. "In the late 80s I ended up in southern Africa. Perhaps that's why I like so much the rhythms in the songs another American made with African musians. The line I sang to you about travelling companions is from one of those songs.
"And the book?" I'm eager to read aloud, as I'm not so good at finding words of my own to say to him.
"I felt it was somehow fitting. When I was returning to this cuckoo's nest. The term refers to an insane asylem. That's were the story is set. But also..."
He stops and scans the grounds. I listen to the Whomping Willow rustling its lastpail leaves, and to the hems of Liripipe's robes flapping in the wind. He's not wearing a cloak.
"Also to the cruelty of our social... stuructures, instutions," he finally says, walking on. "And I meant returning to wzarding Britain, not just Hogwarts. I haven't reread the book yet, and I'll enjoy listening to your reading."
His now holding the opened book out, and here it is: just the ryhme.
"... one flew east, one flew west/ One flew over the cuckoo's nest," I recite.
He turns the pages to the beginning of Part I, and I read, and he hears me, and truly listens – if only to stop dwelling on his singular sorrows and fears.
At times I glance up from the text and let my eyes wander along the edge of the forest ahead of us, and then among the trees, up their trunks to their highest branches and to the clouds above. I drift through it all effrotlessly, but for once I'm not too sad about the lossof touch. Pardoxically, I feel I'm fully connected to every brirch and rowan and scrub and bolder of stone.
My friend Liripipe, in turn, needs to pick his way and focus on not tirpping on roots. He sometimes fails to reach his arm out for me to see the page easily. I don't mind taking small breaks so as to savour my surrundings and my companion's persence.
But in the end, I can't help committing the impolteness of drifting partly over him. This happens when I've read five pages, reached the end of a section, and become engorssed with its powerful last lines and I want to examine them closely.
...even if it didn't happen.
I can see my mistake in how my friend Liripipe shudders.
"I apologise."
"Oh, it's all right," he says lightly.
But he's still shivring, and he closes the book, presses it against his chest, and does his best to cover his hands by pulling at the sleeves of the cadigan his wearing under the robes. He evidently doesn't enjoy being cold.
Instead, I catch myself revellingin the effect I can have on a wizard. I wish he wanted more of that kind of intraction.
He must prefer discussing what I've read. Perhaps I can now come up with something to say that stops him from regeretting he chose my company.
"You know, what Dumbledoor makes me teach is the opposite to this story: not the truth even if it did happen."
"You said it!" He gives me a grim smile. "His always gotan agenda of his own, and another, even more hidden one. Perhaps he's used the montonous classes for ingraning the offcial truths in the young minds. And for detecting those few students who are a potential threat to thesblishment. The ones most inclined for serious rebellion...
"You who insist on engaging even a teacher like me in a debate. About the goblin rebellions..."
"And you must have been ordered to report to him. When you recited the texts about the goblins' cruel nature, I couldn't resist prtesting. You helped me realise that history could show or hide how equally inhumane some acts of humans have been. How they can be even more cruel than crimes committed by those who are still denied equal rights. Dumbdore must have learnt he needed to keep me in check and the other Marauders as well – I mean, my..."
He suddenly falls on his kneeds. Bur when he lifts his head, theresa warmer smile on his face.
"Look! Chantrelles! There are bright yellow mushrooms on his palms. "We can have a harvest party. A wild harvest party!"
"I guess we could both do with some wild parting," I say, grinning.
"Maybe you can find some wild berries while I light a campfire. You know, I'll like one better than any jack-o'-lantern."
He starts by sumning dry pieces of birch bark, then uses his wand to rise small branches into a teepee around that tinder. It is a plesure tospot the deep read of cowberries when I take a swirl around, but since I can't possibly pick any, I perfer watching him.
He goes on, "And I trust there's something you can enjoy with me: the smoke..."
Now he crouches and lights the tinder – not with wand magic, but in the goblin way: simply bends his fingers over the nail of his left thumb.
I could ask him how and when he's learnt that bitof wandless magic. Or I could point out that I wont smell the smoke, just as I wonttaste the chanterellelles, or ever consume any food or drink. But he knows, and he must remember, and there's no point complaining.
When he's pierced the chanterelles with a stick and keeps levitating it not too close to the smoking wood, he looks up at me. "I'd love watching you dance with the smoke if you find it fun wild enough."
"Watching me?"
"Yes." He squints. "You know, in this daylight I can barely didvern you, and that's beautiful. This shimmer of you."
So as not to feel too self-conscius, I say nothing. I just start swirling above his campfire, and we keep wacthing each other.
"This is one of the things I wanted to do this Halloween. But also to travel to Godrics Hollow. I can't. Because of the moon, and the Wolfsbane Potion, which is supposed to be blessing but makes me more ill, unable to Apparate even now, a week before. You know, I wanted to visit that graveyard. Not just to see my my two friends graves. To see if perhaps... they might have remained as..."
Now I need to intrupt him. "No. Why would James and Lily Potter have chosen to stay as ghosts! There lives ended too early, but they lived well, until the end, and they certainly had the courage to go from this life."
"You must be right. Thank you, Cuddy! I guess I'm also trying to forget that my duty is to seek another... the living ghost of..." He shakes his head.
And as he starts munching a mushroom but also scanning the woods around as if he'd suddenly rembered that he might might spot the escaped prisoner right here, in right daylight... I drift a bit higher.
But soon I can hear him sing, "Losing love is like a window in your heart/ Everybody sees you're blown apart/ Everybody sees the wind blow."
It's so sad and beautiful, but he stops and laughs a little. His moods are truly all over the place.
"Even I," I say, taking a swirl precrously closeto his bare hands, which he's managed to warm with the fire, "without a body, can see the wind blow and hear the wind blow, although I can't feel it. Thanks to you, I've seen and hear today more than for a long time if ever."
"I think in a way you feel a lot, too."
"Love, you mean?" I've listened to so much – even though he hasn't spelled out that he loved Sirius Back – that I dare ask, "Do you think there's any living wizard who would find it pleasant... I mean, the effect of my... intimate closeness."
"Severus," he answers without hestation. "Serously. He's aroused by such a feeling – what you made me feel."
"All right. I can try getting close with him. I can't be very picky. Although his hair..."
He shivers, which may or may not be related to what I'm saying.
He's finished the mushrooms, and the fire has burnt out.
"Let's start our way back before you get too cold," I hurry to say. "If you don't mind, I could share a bit of my own history."
"Please do!"
"Why I remained... Because of Albus Dumbledore. He must have bewitched me. I loved him. His gorfwous hair. He wanted me to continue to serve him. Who could be a worse history teacher – a better one for his purposes – than a dead white man? He enticd me to remain by giving me false hopes... regarding another handsome wizard with long curls. A dead one. None other than your House's Sir Nicholas."
"Ah. Thank you for telling me..."
"May I also give you a piece of advice. Let your hair grow. And get rid of that moustache!"
Author:
paulamcgI am of legal drinking age in my region: very aged
Pairing(s)/Characters/Fandom: Cuthbert Binns & Remus Lupin/HP
Challenge/Prompts used: all the prompts
Summary: On Saturday a week before Halloween 1993... just some dwelling and drifting, sharing and feeling alive when dead.
Rating/Warnings: G
Word count: 2800
Author's Notes (if any): All over the place, too many words, the drunk too slow.
Today I can't help dwelling on the fact that I've passed through the blackboard.
Today, once again because its another Saturday. There are no stunts in my classroom, and I can never make myself lecture to empty halls. It may look like I don't care if anyones listening, but its just that truly connecting with people is toohard for me. Reading aloud and knowing that my voice can be heard makes me feel alive and stop thinking about anything beyond the moment.
I do know that I am dead. Still, when I keep taking care of a class in the way Dumbeldoor once instructed me to teach History of MAgicit makes no difference.
On Saturdays and Sundays and holidays I hover des solately above my desk and peerout at the skies under which the earths rotating too slowly. Today also at the deepening autumn colours along the lake shore: the birches acquiring copper shades after golden yellow and gradually balding, but barely growing as transparent as I am.
In this absolute solitude my mind becomes keen enough to traverse my own history, retelling it to myself.
I haven't forgotten how my Muggle mum told me that dragon's didn't exist. I remember even the nursery rhymes. This one especially which she said was new to her, from an American bookof rhymes: one flew east, one flew west... I took the train north and learnt a different truth.
Hogwarts didn't manage to teach me many skills, though. I strugegled with Charms and Transifgurtion... and all ofit really. Totally lakcing in charm, it seemed, I failed to make close friends or to get any pussy – cuckoo's nest they called it, too – and I found it hard to figure out what to do after school.
So I ended up working in a Hogsmeade pub. Thas where, eight decades later, the newly-appointed headmaster kept throwing glances at me while describing to his brother what kind of candates he could consider.
"He must have the proper looks. He, of course. A history professor must be an old white wizard. The more ancient, the better. More convincing. That bartender of yours..." That's when Albus Dumbeledoere turns fully towards me. "You must join the Hogwarts teaching staff."
"Me?" As if bewitched, I shift my gaze to his twinkling blue eyes, and back to the mesmerising glint of copper and silver in his long curls. "I... didn't do many NEWTs, definitely not one in History of Magic. As far as I can remember."
"No matter. That is not required. No memerisation either. It's enough that you can read."
That I can do, still.
Now that I swirl around to look down at the several old tomes, always open on the pages Dumbledore has chosen, I catch a glimpse of a figure at the doorway.
Perhaps someone who'd... "Hear me?
He seems to clutch the doorframe, swaying a bit, and stroking his hideous moustach with the mouth of a Firewhiskey bottle. “Good mor... ning,” he slurs, “Porfess...sor Bunns!”
Ah, that's this year's Dfeence teacher.
I'm not the kind of ghost to socialise with other ghosts – or with other teachers either. But this wizard has approched me in a friendly manner before, as if he considered me an equal. The fact that he's now failed to name me correctly encrouges me further.
"I wish a pleasant Saturday morning to you, my esteamed colleegue," I say. "You can call me Cuddy."
To my disoinment, he doesn't reciporrocate, only nods distractedly, and sings to himself, "My travelling companions are ghosts and..." and breaks off, says, “I mean no offence. Truly, I'd value your company.”
It looks like he intends to offer me a drink.
"I'd make a wertched drinking buddy."
But he's only shaking the bottle and finding it empty. He manages to set in on the floor and stand up straight again. "Done with that, I'm heading for a walk. And forgot to bring my sketchbook. That's what I usually do. Sekeches, I mean. Landscape paintings. Not many people know. They think a professor only reads books."
"I only read. I can't do... those things: landscapes, walks."
"This close to Halloween, only a week to go... I need... I mean you must be able to go out to the grounds, and as far as the forest, at least."
"Ah, you are right. Around Halloween our shpere of haunting actually reaches all the way to the nearest graveyard. Thank you for..." Reminding me, enticing me.
I havent cared to resotto this annual freedom, just as I've chosen to move mainly between the rooms designated to me, extremely seldom to pass through the staff room or the Great Hall.
"Let us go then, you and I! The two of us share some interests in common, and a chat can cheer us both up," he says when I still linger close to the backboard, hesitating. "Have you started reading the book I gave you?"
I reach to swing a pearly finger along the cover of the battered paperpack on the corner of my desk, right where he left it. "The title..." Yes, that's the reason I've now thought about the nursery rhyme.
"Oh, stupid of me! I can hold it open for you, and you read while we're taking our walk."
We pass through the corridors and begin to descsend the first starcase side by side. I couldn't possibly support him if he still stumbled. Fortunately he's sobering up.
Perhaps I'm doing something good. These are hard times for him. After a week a full moon almost exactly coincides with the annirsary of his loss of closest friends. I know well who he is. Attended the compulsury meeting in which Dumbledore made sure the whole staff were aware.
I haven't even forgotten he talked to me when he was a student. It's just that by that time, I'd become unable to memorise new names. It's inevitable that when addressing people, I resort to my old school mates' names: O'Flaherty, Grant, Pennyfether... Liripipe! That's what I must have called the werewolf – back when he was young and I didn't know he was one, and – right after he intruced himself as the Defence teacher, and I said I did remember him as the exceptional student who used to question the historical facts in the texts I recited. The facts about goblins in particular.
He does look irrevocably sad and acutely anguished, albeit healthier, less gaunt than in early September.
Noticing my glance at his face, he squeezes the book in his hand, and by the time were crossing the entrance hall, his started chatting. "I read this novel by Ken Kesey back in the 70s, just found this copy cheap when I got back to London in August."
"Back from... travelling?
Without waiting for his answer, I burst right through the heavy door.
What did I expect? To feel some resstance, the press of matter against my... against what I don't posesss? In my view, to experence something like that it would be a better Halloween treat for us, but I must be grateful for being able to now pass through the outer walls as easily as the inner once.
But I guess it doesn't... matter! It is a greater joy to actually be – in the way someone like me can actually be – out here in the open air, so close to the wilting grass and the wind-swept trees. And to have someone beside me whoseasked for my company.
"Travelling – drifting," he – let's say Liripipe – says when the door has closed behind him, and the word he chooses amuses... both of us.
Do we truly share a genune smile as we move off?
My friend Liripipe has opened the book to the first page, but he now closes it, and tells me a bit more. "In the late 80s I ended up in southern Africa. Perhaps that's why I like so much the rhythms in the songs another American made with African musians. The line I sang to you about travelling companions is from one of those songs.
"And the book?" I'm eager to read aloud, as I'm not so good at finding words of my own to say to him.
"I felt it was somehow fitting. When I was returning to this cuckoo's nest. The term refers to an insane asylem. That's were the story is set. But also..."
He stops and scans the grounds. I listen to the Whomping Willow rustling its lastpail leaves, and to the hems of Liripipe's robes flapping in the wind. He's not wearing a cloak.
"Also to the cruelty of our social... stuructures, instutions," he finally says, walking on. "And I meant returning to wzarding Britain, not just Hogwarts. I haven't reread the book yet, and I'll enjoy listening to your reading."
His now holding the opened book out, and here it is: just the ryhme.
"... one flew east, one flew west/ One flew over the cuckoo's nest," I recite.
He turns the pages to the beginning of Part I, and I read, and he hears me, and truly listens – if only to stop dwelling on his singular sorrows and fears.
At times I glance up from the text and let my eyes wander along the edge of the forest ahead of us, and then among the trees, up their trunks to their highest branches and to the clouds above. I drift through it all effrotlessly, but for once I'm not too sad about the lossof touch. Pardoxically, I feel I'm fully connected to every brirch and rowan and scrub and bolder of stone.
My friend Liripipe, in turn, needs to pick his way and focus on not tirpping on roots. He sometimes fails to reach his arm out for me to see the page easily. I don't mind taking small breaks so as to savour my surrundings and my companion's persence.
But in the end, I can't help committing the impolteness of drifting partly over him. This happens when I've read five pages, reached the end of a section, and become engorssed with its powerful last lines and I want to examine them closely.
...even if it didn't happen.
I can see my mistake in how my friend Liripipe shudders.
"I apologise."
"Oh, it's all right," he says lightly.
But he's still shivring, and he closes the book, presses it against his chest, and does his best to cover his hands by pulling at the sleeves of the cadigan his wearing under the robes. He evidently doesn't enjoy being cold.
Instead, I catch myself revellingin the effect I can have on a wizard. I wish he wanted more of that kind of intraction.
He must prefer discussing what I've read. Perhaps I can now come up with something to say that stops him from regeretting he chose my company.
"You know, what Dumbledoor makes me teach is the opposite to this story: not the truth even if it did happen."
"You said it!" He gives me a grim smile. "His always gotan agenda of his own, and another, even more hidden one. Perhaps he's used the montonous classes for ingraning the offcial truths in the young minds. And for detecting those few students who are a potential threat to thesblishment. The ones most inclined for serious rebellion...
"You who insist on engaging even a teacher like me in a debate. About the goblin rebellions..."
"And you must have been ordered to report to him. When you recited the texts about the goblins' cruel nature, I couldn't resist prtesting. You helped me realise that history could show or hide how equally inhumane some acts of humans have been. How they can be even more cruel than crimes committed by those who are still denied equal rights. Dumbdore must have learnt he needed to keep me in check and the other Marauders as well – I mean, my..."
He suddenly falls on his kneeds. Bur when he lifts his head, theresa warmer smile on his face.
"Look! Chantrelles! There are bright yellow mushrooms on his palms. "We can have a harvest party. A wild harvest party!"
"I guess we could both do with some wild parting," I say, grinning.
"Maybe you can find some wild berries while I light a campfire. You know, I'll like one better than any jack-o'-lantern."
He starts by sumning dry pieces of birch bark, then uses his wand to rise small branches into a teepee around that tinder. It is a plesure tospot the deep read of cowberries when I take a swirl around, but since I can't possibly pick any, I perfer watching him.
He goes on, "And I trust there's something you can enjoy with me: the smoke..."
Now he crouches and lights the tinder – not with wand magic, but in the goblin way: simply bends his fingers over the nail of his left thumb.
I could ask him how and when he's learnt that bitof wandless magic. Or I could point out that I wont smell the smoke, just as I wonttaste the chanterellelles, or ever consume any food or drink. But he knows, and he must remember, and there's no point complaining.
When he's pierced the chanterelles with a stick and keeps levitating it not too close to the smoking wood, he looks up at me. "I'd love watching you dance with the smoke if you find it fun wild enough."
"Watching me?"
"Yes." He squints. "You know, in this daylight I can barely didvern you, and that's beautiful. This shimmer of you."
So as not to feel too self-conscius, I say nothing. I just start swirling above his campfire, and we keep wacthing each other.
"This is one of the things I wanted to do this Halloween. But also to travel to Godrics Hollow. I can't. Because of the moon, and the Wolfsbane Potion, which is supposed to be blessing but makes me more ill, unable to Apparate even now, a week before. You know, I wanted to visit that graveyard. Not just to see my my two friends graves. To see if perhaps... they might have remained as..."
Now I need to intrupt him. "No. Why would James and Lily Potter have chosen to stay as ghosts! There lives ended too early, but they lived well, until the end, and they certainly had the courage to go from this life."
"You must be right. Thank you, Cuddy! I guess I'm also trying to forget that my duty is to seek another... the living ghost of..." He shakes his head.
And as he starts munching a mushroom but also scanning the woods around as if he'd suddenly rembered that he might might spot the escaped prisoner right here, in right daylight... I drift a bit higher.
But soon I can hear him sing, "Losing love is like a window in your heart/ Everybody sees you're blown apart/ Everybody sees the wind blow."
It's so sad and beautiful, but he stops and laughs a little. His moods are truly all over the place.
"Even I," I say, taking a swirl precrously closeto his bare hands, which he's managed to warm with the fire, "without a body, can see the wind blow and hear the wind blow, although I can't feel it. Thanks to you, I've seen and hear today more than for a long time if ever."
"I think in a way you feel a lot, too."
"Love, you mean?" I've listened to so much – even though he hasn't spelled out that he loved Sirius Back – that I dare ask, "Do you think there's any living wizard who would find it pleasant... I mean, the effect of my... intimate closeness."
"Severus," he answers without hestation. "Serously. He's aroused by such a feeling – what you made me feel."
"All right. I can try getting close with him. I can't be very picky. Although his hair..."
He shivers, which may or may not be related to what I'm saying.
He's finished the mushrooms, and the fire has burnt out.
"Let's start our way back before you get too cold," I hurry to say. "If you don't mind, I could share a bit of my own history."
"Please do!"
"Why I remained... Because of Albus Dumbledore. He must have bewitched me. I loved him. His gorfwous hair. He wanted me to continue to serve him. Who could be a worse history teacher – a better one for his purposes – than a dead white man? He enticd me to remain by giving me false hopes... regarding another handsome wizard with long curls. A dead one. None other than your House's Sir Nicholas."
"Ah. Thank you for telling me..."
"May I also give you a piece of advice. Let your hair grow. And get rid of that moustache!"
resotto?
Date: 2022-10-05 02:33 am (UTC)I was able to decipher most of this, but I admit I'm stumped by...
"I havent cared to resotto this annual freedom"
Lovely mood though. I can feel the wistfulness.
Re: resotto?
Date: 2022-10-10 08:33 pm (UTC)I'm glad you could feel such a mood here! Thank you for reading/deciphering and commenting!
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Date: 2022-10-05 01:02 pm (UTC)Lovely writing
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Date: 2022-10-05 07:06 pm (UTC)Poor Binns!
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Date: 2022-10-08 04:33 am (UTC)This is one of the best examples of a typo that still made sense ("stunts" instead of "students"): "There are no stunts in my classroom.". FWF drunken typo for the win!
Yays for using ALL the prompts!
Fave phrases in this fic: "not the truth even if it did happen...." and "...that's beautiful. This shimmmer of you...." and "Reminding me, enticing me....".
<3 that there's a mention of Firewhiskey in the fic. *g*
LOLZ for these particular typos: "reciporrocate" and "wertched".
<3 for the T.S. Eliot reference. "Let us go then, you and I."
<3 for the Paul Simon lyric (especially since I titled my first-ever FWF a while back with a Paul Simon song title).
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Date: 2022-10-11 02:42 pm (UTC)It's great to hear that you appreciate my typos, which seem to have slipped into only a few words, longer and less common ones.
Remus surprised me by being already drunk when he arrived. Of course, the bottle I gave him was Firewhiskey, but since he'd emptied it, that was that about fest-approriate activities.
As for the prompts, I kept the list at hand, and made sure to include them – those two, too, which I'd managed to mention early on – just before the end. A somewhat different strategy from the one several other writers used? Nick was the main prompt that inspired me in my choice of protagonist, but he ended up having only a small role and a brief mention.
I must add some disclaimers when I post this thing on AO3. One of your fave lines is – as I hint – a modification of a sentence in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey: "But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."
My Remus has used and reused and abused that T. S. Eliot line several times, starting when he was fourteen and trying to figure out if he could go out with a witch.
And you and I share love for Paul Simon in common?! That fic of yours was titled Father and Child Reunion, right? I've admired Paul Simon's music and lyrics since Graceland came out in 1986, and I happened to hear the title track once again just when I opened my bottle of ouzo.
My artist Remus helped me describe something as a beautiful shimmer, and perhaps a bit of a poetic tone slipped into Binns's voice, too, as I allowed some dialogue tags to continue the thoughts he didn't complete aloud. It's reassuring to learn that you liked also those couple of phrases in particular.
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