rurounihime (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rurounihime) wrote2006-05-14 08:35 pm
rurounihime) wrote2006-05-14 08:35 pm
Fic for Alex
This is a fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alex_s9, because she was the first person to correctly name all nine of the anime characters featured in my icon, as well as the shows they star in. Alex, I hope this is what you were looking for. *hugs*
Title: Daffodils
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: PG
Summary: Draco returns on a day of mourning. Inspired by William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."
Warning: character death
Notes: thanks to my betas, Fire and Coffee.
Disclaimer: The poem is by Wordsworth, the characters are not mine, but I'm being mean to them again. It's a sad habit.
...
Daffodils
They stared at him as he crossed the grass. He glanced, saw them weaving their way from the gravestone on slow feet, their bodies dark splotches in the clear air. The breeze ruffled through his hair like long fingers. He knew his black robes looked the same as theirs, the kiss of death on this perfect, vibrant field. In the procession, he caught flickers of fire, crackling glares, dull eyes full of his reflection. The spark of disgust only barely repressed. He wondered for a fleeting moment if they would go so far as to call the Aurors, or spit on him from the anonymity of their ranks; and then he was past them, and the soft white marble reared from the whispering grass at his feet.
Draco Malfoy read the carved name once, then knelt and laid his hand flat upon the mound of brown earth. It was cool and moist under his palm, and smelled of silence. Footsteps moved around him, the hush of cloth trailing over the grass. He imagined voices, and wondered at the knowledge he would never know now that it had gone to rest with the person buried under this patch of earth.
At last he stood and gazed over the surrounding hills. The procession filed past him, pausing, watching, a faceless group that did not hold the one he sought. He found him, finally, on the first gentle slope. He sat half in the shade of a tree, looking away from the grave, sorrow bleeding into the field around him. Playful gusts of wind teased his black hair, ruffled the daffodil petals. Sunlight glimmered off of glasses.
Draco climbed the hill with steady steps. He dug his hands into his pockets and breathed the air. Smelled freshness, and spring. His quarry did not move as he approached, and at last Draco stopped, mere feet from him, and waited.
Harry Potter gazed straight ahead, eyes fixed on some distant point. “So, you came.”
Draco nodded. Tried briefly to see what Harry was looking at, and then settled his gaze on the man himself instead. “Yes.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
Draco lifted his shoulders and sighed. “Perhaps.”
He lowered himself to the grass beside Harry, arranging his robes about him. Harry swallowed. His face was dry, but the etchings of unshed tears shadowed his features. “I Owled. When they stopped treatment.”
“I know.” Draco thought of the solitary white bird winging her way over the manor grounds, the distress leaking from such a broken string of words on folded parchment. An inevitable missive, and yet— He looked at the gravestone and found his own words muddled, like fibers in his throat. “I wish… I should have known Remus better.”
Harry’s eyes flickered. “You knew him better than most.”
Draco inhaled. Exhaled. Ran his hand over the soft, springy grass. “It’s beautiful here.”
Harry’s gaze focused suddenly, and his lips tightened. “It’s too alive. It doesn’t feel like there’s a—”
Grave. Draco nodded. Harry wavered, as if the breeze were blowing him about, and Draco placed a hand at his back, pressing until he felt the warmth of Harry’s body. His own body reached for it instinctively, sought to fold itself around it, and Draco shut his eyes against the onslaught. Wondered why he had stayed away. How he had stayed away.
Harry blinked, and his face sagged, became older. “He could have…” He stopped. Started again. “Closest thing to a father.”
“Harry, I’m sorry.”
Harry’s lips curved faintly. “I am, too.”
Draco rested his palm on Harry’s back and stared out over the swaying daffodils. Creamy yellow. The sky was the blue of oceans, broken by white puffs of clouds, like waves scudding across the surface of the sea.
“Why did you come?” Harry asked. “They might have…”
He gestured, an aimless wave of his hand. Draco looked down the hill at upturned eyes, slow-moving people in black. “Let them.”
Harry said nothing. Draco found himself leaning forward. Such a slight movement. “I wanted to be here, Harry. Should have… sooner.”
Harry’s fingers curled into the lush grass, wiry knuckles and blunt fingers. His hands were thinner, creased by two years Draco had not witnessed. By a slow, lingering death and a burial in a quiet field.
"Thank you for coming,” Harry said in a quiet voice. His shoulders slumped so gradually that Draco felt more than saw it. Green eyes closed. “It’s okay, though. You can… I want you to go, Draco. It’s okay.”
Draco reached up and brushed his fingers slowly through Harry’s hair. “You’re lying, Harry,” he said thoughtfully.
Harry’s shoulders rose and fell again. “So what if I am? It doesn’t change a thing.”
“No.” Draco continued to card his fingers through black sable. “It doesn’t.”
Harry’s gaze tracked down over gentle slope, the waving yellow and rich green, until it reached the smooth white of marble. For the first time, his breathing hitched, and Draco saw him begin to slide apart.
“I wanted something more for him. It’s just… just a stone.” A glimmer edged the corner of Harry’s eye. Draco thought of matching headstones in the shadow of a manor, side by side in the desolation of gray rocks and ivy covered walls, with none but a solitary son laying irises on immaculate graves.
“I wanted something more than this. Than all of them.” Harry’s head jerked toward the line of people flowing around the gravestone, up and over the hills in piercing black. “All of them.”
The last word stung the air, a sharp prickle of thorns. Harry’s face had not changed, but the contortion of years was there. What had been stolen from him, and not given back. Draco’s hand stilled halfway through Harry’s hair.
“There will always be a ‘something more,’ Harry,” he said.
Harry turned dying eyes on him. His eyelashes brushed his cheeks and rose again, dewed with tears. The question in his face was plain as day, but it was an old question, long since put to rest. The pain of today had unearthed it again, and it had ripped furrows as it had resurfaced.
“It was never about them, Harry,” Draco murmured. Harry glanced away. His fingers jerked a few blades of grass free.
“I know,” he said. A faint smile touched his lips. “I suppose it was about me.”
It was about me, Draco thought, staring out over the rolling green and yellow. What would happen to me, how I would feel. And it never should have been.
He wanted to speak, for the first time. Wanted to play the words over his tongue and taste the futility in them. They balled in his throat heavily.
“What are they doing here?” Harry whispered. “They never knew him. Never wanted to.”
Draco stared through Harry’s eyes at the people filtering away from the gravestone. They’d decided long ago about the substance, the worth, of the one buried under that mound. Decided. Perhaps made it so with their ire.
They’d made so many things so with their ire.
Delicate yellow petals wavered in the breeze, and the grass sighed and bent. So easy to pluck. Throw away. Draco felt every day that had passed bearing down on his shoulders, as if he were the fragile surface of those petals, the succulent spring of each green blade. The marble headstone rose from the swell of color.
“He wasn’t very old,” Harry said. Helplessly.
And yet, he was gone. Draco felt for the press of the grass, smelled the sweet scent of the daffodils, and saw what lay unfinished before him. Remus Lupin would not go on, and what he had lived… had it been wasted? In words, in deeds – choices that echoed, short and final.
Somehow, Draco knew Remus had not wasted. Had not cut himself short. And yet, life had been drawn away from him. There had been more. There would always be more.
The black figures wandered below, deep and dark, snatching the life from the fields and hills, and Draco felt the crush of the time he’d spent listening to them. When what they had said and thought had mattered over all else. He had not lived his life, or Harry’s, but their lives. All those people’s. He’d wounded himself. He’d bled Harry for them. His failure tasted bitter on his tongue, and he gave up the walls all at once, walls that had been crumbling ever since he’d built them two years ago.
Draco leaned forward – fell forward – and slid his hand around the nape of Harry’s neck. Pressed trembling lips to Harry’s ear.
He began to whisper, not hearing his own words. Knowing for once that he spoke the truth. The reasons of before, bad or good, that now just were. Sundered emotions threading together on his tongue. Harry’s name, a balm in his ears. Loss. A pain that, for two years, he’d felt he had no right to voice. But it was no longer about him. It had never been. The realization loosened his words into murmurs and breaths, and Harry’s fingers found his arm and clutched. Tears dripped long trails and fell from Harry’s chin, and Draco felt the heat of them against his own cheek. Wet on his fingertips as he wiped them away.
“Oh gods, Draco, come ba—” Harry’s words splintered, quavered on the edge of a grief he had yet to voice. “Are you— Are—”
“Yes, Harry, I’m coming home,” Draco whispered.
I am so sorry. Words cannot express.
Harry’s arm came up, trembling against his side, and Draco gathered the other man to him. Heard a weak sob. Harry’s body held a familiarity he’d not forgotten: warmth, and breath, and solace. His own tears slid free at last, for all the weight he’d pressed into that body, the soul, that he loved so much. He turned his head and met Harry’s mouth. Harry’s arms were a mantle about him. Draco closed his eyes and saw creamy yellow and green dancing there.
...
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
~~William Wordsworth, 1804
Retrieved from this page
alex_s9, because she was the first person to correctly name all nine of the anime characters featured in my icon, as well as the shows they star in. Alex, I hope this is what you were looking for. *hugs*Title: Daffodils
Author: me
Pairing: H/D
Rating: PG
Summary: Draco returns on a day of mourning. Inspired by William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."
Warning: character death
Notes: thanks to my betas, Fire and Coffee.
Disclaimer: The poem is by Wordsworth, the characters are not mine, but I'm being mean to them again. It's a sad habit.
...
Daffodils
They stared at him as he crossed the grass. He glanced, saw them weaving their way from the gravestone on slow feet, their bodies dark splotches in the clear air. The breeze ruffled through his hair like long fingers. He knew his black robes looked the same as theirs, the kiss of death on this perfect, vibrant field. In the procession, he caught flickers of fire, crackling glares, dull eyes full of his reflection. The spark of disgust only barely repressed. He wondered for a fleeting moment if they would go so far as to call the Aurors, or spit on him from the anonymity of their ranks; and then he was past them, and the soft white marble reared from the whispering grass at his feet.
Draco Malfoy read the carved name once, then knelt and laid his hand flat upon the mound of brown earth. It was cool and moist under his palm, and smelled of silence. Footsteps moved around him, the hush of cloth trailing over the grass. He imagined voices, and wondered at the knowledge he would never know now that it had gone to rest with the person buried under this patch of earth.
At last he stood and gazed over the surrounding hills. The procession filed past him, pausing, watching, a faceless group that did not hold the one he sought. He found him, finally, on the first gentle slope. He sat half in the shade of a tree, looking away from the grave, sorrow bleeding into the field around him. Playful gusts of wind teased his black hair, ruffled the daffodil petals. Sunlight glimmered off of glasses.
Draco climbed the hill with steady steps. He dug his hands into his pockets and breathed the air. Smelled freshness, and spring. His quarry did not move as he approached, and at last Draco stopped, mere feet from him, and waited.
Harry Potter gazed straight ahead, eyes fixed on some distant point. “So, you came.”
Draco nodded. Tried briefly to see what Harry was looking at, and then settled his gaze on the man himself instead. “Yes.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
Draco lifted his shoulders and sighed. “Perhaps.”
He lowered himself to the grass beside Harry, arranging his robes about him. Harry swallowed. His face was dry, but the etchings of unshed tears shadowed his features. “I Owled. When they stopped treatment.”
“I know.” Draco thought of the solitary white bird winging her way over the manor grounds, the distress leaking from such a broken string of words on folded parchment. An inevitable missive, and yet— He looked at the gravestone and found his own words muddled, like fibers in his throat. “I wish… I should have known Remus better.”
Harry’s eyes flickered. “You knew him better than most.”
Draco inhaled. Exhaled. Ran his hand over the soft, springy grass. “It’s beautiful here.”
Harry’s gaze focused suddenly, and his lips tightened. “It’s too alive. It doesn’t feel like there’s a—”
Grave. Draco nodded. Harry wavered, as if the breeze were blowing him about, and Draco placed a hand at his back, pressing until he felt the warmth of Harry’s body. His own body reached for it instinctively, sought to fold itself around it, and Draco shut his eyes against the onslaught. Wondered why he had stayed away. How he had stayed away.
Harry blinked, and his face sagged, became older. “He could have…” He stopped. Started again. “Closest thing to a father.”
“Harry, I’m sorry.”
Harry’s lips curved faintly. “I am, too.”
Draco rested his palm on Harry’s back and stared out over the swaying daffodils. Creamy yellow. The sky was the blue of oceans, broken by white puffs of clouds, like waves scudding across the surface of the sea.
“Why did you come?” Harry asked. “They might have…”
He gestured, an aimless wave of his hand. Draco looked down the hill at upturned eyes, slow-moving people in black. “Let them.”
Harry said nothing. Draco found himself leaning forward. Such a slight movement. “I wanted to be here, Harry. Should have… sooner.”
Harry’s fingers curled into the lush grass, wiry knuckles and blunt fingers. His hands were thinner, creased by two years Draco had not witnessed. By a slow, lingering death and a burial in a quiet field.
"Thank you for coming,” Harry said in a quiet voice. His shoulders slumped so gradually that Draco felt more than saw it. Green eyes closed. “It’s okay, though. You can… I want you to go, Draco. It’s okay.”
Draco reached up and brushed his fingers slowly through Harry’s hair. “You’re lying, Harry,” he said thoughtfully.
Harry’s shoulders rose and fell again. “So what if I am? It doesn’t change a thing.”
“No.” Draco continued to card his fingers through black sable. “It doesn’t.”
Harry’s gaze tracked down over gentle slope, the waving yellow and rich green, until it reached the smooth white of marble. For the first time, his breathing hitched, and Draco saw him begin to slide apart.
“I wanted something more for him. It’s just… just a stone.” A glimmer edged the corner of Harry’s eye. Draco thought of matching headstones in the shadow of a manor, side by side in the desolation of gray rocks and ivy covered walls, with none but a solitary son laying irises on immaculate graves.
“I wanted something more than this. Than all of them.” Harry’s head jerked toward the line of people flowing around the gravestone, up and over the hills in piercing black. “All of them.”
The last word stung the air, a sharp prickle of thorns. Harry’s face had not changed, but the contortion of years was there. What had been stolen from him, and not given back. Draco’s hand stilled halfway through Harry’s hair.
“There will always be a ‘something more,’ Harry,” he said.
Harry turned dying eyes on him. His eyelashes brushed his cheeks and rose again, dewed with tears. The question in his face was plain as day, but it was an old question, long since put to rest. The pain of today had unearthed it again, and it had ripped furrows as it had resurfaced.
“It was never about them, Harry,” Draco murmured. Harry glanced away. His fingers jerked a few blades of grass free.
“I know,” he said. A faint smile touched his lips. “I suppose it was about me.”
It was about me, Draco thought, staring out over the rolling green and yellow. What would happen to me, how I would feel. And it never should have been.
He wanted to speak, for the first time. Wanted to play the words over his tongue and taste the futility in them. They balled in his throat heavily.
“What are they doing here?” Harry whispered. “They never knew him. Never wanted to.”
Draco stared through Harry’s eyes at the people filtering away from the gravestone. They’d decided long ago about the substance, the worth, of the one buried under that mound. Decided. Perhaps made it so with their ire.
They’d made so many things so with their ire.
Delicate yellow petals wavered in the breeze, and the grass sighed and bent. So easy to pluck. Throw away. Draco felt every day that had passed bearing down on his shoulders, as if he were the fragile surface of those petals, the succulent spring of each green blade. The marble headstone rose from the swell of color.
“He wasn’t very old,” Harry said. Helplessly.
And yet, he was gone. Draco felt for the press of the grass, smelled the sweet scent of the daffodils, and saw what lay unfinished before him. Remus Lupin would not go on, and what he had lived… had it been wasted? In words, in deeds – choices that echoed, short and final.
Somehow, Draco knew Remus had not wasted. Had not cut himself short. And yet, life had been drawn away from him. There had been more. There would always be more.
The black figures wandered below, deep and dark, snatching the life from the fields and hills, and Draco felt the crush of the time he’d spent listening to them. When what they had said and thought had mattered over all else. He had not lived his life, or Harry’s, but their lives. All those people’s. He’d wounded himself. He’d bled Harry for them. His failure tasted bitter on his tongue, and he gave up the walls all at once, walls that had been crumbling ever since he’d built them two years ago.
Draco leaned forward – fell forward – and slid his hand around the nape of Harry’s neck. Pressed trembling lips to Harry’s ear.
He began to whisper, not hearing his own words. Knowing for once that he spoke the truth. The reasons of before, bad or good, that now just were. Sundered emotions threading together on his tongue. Harry’s name, a balm in his ears. Loss. A pain that, for two years, he’d felt he had no right to voice. But it was no longer about him. It had never been. The realization loosened his words into murmurs and breaths, and Harry’s fingers found his arm and clutched. Tears dripped long trails and fell from Harry’s chin, and Draco felt the heat of them against his own cheek. Wet on his fingertips as he wiped them away.
“Oh gods, Draco, come ba—” Harry’s words splintered, quavered on the edge of a grief he had yet to voice. “Are you— Are—”
“Yes, Harry, I’m coming home,” Draco whispered.
I am so sorry. Words cannot express.
Harry’s arm came up, trembling against his side, and Draco gathered the other man to him. Heard a weak sob. Harry’s body held a familiarity he’d not forgotten: warmth, and breath, and solace. His own tears slid free at last, for all the weight he’d pressed into that body, the soul, that he loved so much. He turned his head and met Harry’s mouth. Harry’s arms were a mantle about him. Draco closed his eyes and saw creamy yellow and green dancing there.
...
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
~~William Wordsworth, 1804
Retrieved from this page
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For a second there you had me thinking Draco was going to Harry's funeral :(
You painted the scene so well, I could almost play it like a movie in my head, great job Rou!
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Thanks so much, dearie. I lurve you and your lovely icon. Always makes me smile.
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If I didn't know better, I would also think this was Harry's funeral.
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You know, I was reading through it, and I thought, hey, this could almost be a ghost-haunting fic, right up until Draco mentions Remus. O.o
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BTW, there is one ghost fic that I adore. The title is "Body and Soul" but unfortunately I forgot who the author was.
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even on a second read, everything onwards from He’d wounded himself. He’d bled Harry for them. His failure tasted bitter on his tongue, and he gave up the walls all at once makes me cry. i'm so glad that they find a way back to one another. i just wish it hadn't taken remus' death to bring that about.
finally, it makes me very very happy that you like that tori amos song because it's one of my favorite songs ever. i can listen to it again and again without getting tired of it.
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*hands tissues* Thank you so much, love. Honestly, tears are the best response ever. Because they are one of the hardest to elicit with writing, and also one of the most personal responses. *cuddles* Thank you for reading it over for me earlier, and for reading it again.
And you are SO right. I have not gotten tired of that song yet!
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Thank you so very much. I'm so glad you enjoyed the story. ^___^
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Icon contest? What icon-contest? *is confused*
I didn't make the Sesshoumaru icon I'd used for my earlier comment. I find it difficult to iconise animated characters...I prefer real people..but I try..when I'm desparate.
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Yeah, I thought that was Sesshie. *loves* Hard to mistake those stripes...
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The whole setting made me think of the latest canon funeral where unfortunately I can't find this extraordinary contrast between the tomb and surrounding nature despite the fact that t should be June. Your's perfect, enchanting, calm.
I really loved some expressions, like smelled of silence, which reminded me of some Emily Dickinson's poems or sorrow bleeding into the field around him which describes perfectly the appearance of people who lost somebody.
And this sentence Wanted to play the words over his tongue and taste the futility in them. made Draco a bit of a poet.
Lastly, let me say that amongst Tori Amos' sad songs "Winter" is my favourite but I really prefer "Happy Phantom". hell, "Little Earthquakes" is her best record evah.
Thank you very much for your beautiful fic.
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I have to agree that the last book, even the sad, sad funeral, really didn't come quite up to par in some respects. It's not my favorite of the canon, definitely.
I love you for saying that the story was poetic. That just made my day. ^_^
I guess I need to listen to more Tori! I've liked what I've heard so far, for sure.
Thank you so much for such a nice prompt, and then such a great review. ♥ I was happy to write for you.
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*sniff*
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Aww, thank you! That's so sweet.
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this is so so beautiful, and touching and lovely and tragic but in a refreshing way, not in a depressing way. if that makes sense. you're such a gifted writer. [i can't believe i still haven't finished reading Darker Magic, whoa i need to work on my procrastination!] i love this. thank you for sharing it with us ♥
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Thank you for coming back and reading it! I'm so glad you liked it. And don't even worry about procrastination. It's not required that you read all my stuff. I'm just happy you enjoyed this one. *hugs*
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well i'm telling you now.
i &heart; your writing.
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Heh, your screenname is my favorite angel. *kiss*
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Don't you think it's kind of, I don't know, fitting that their relationship would reckinkle at a funeral? I don't know about you, but I always thought that a death was the ending of a part of your life, and offered new beginnings, like a gift from the departed. Like the sunshine after the storm, I guess. Must be my way to deal with grief.
Bah, to get back on track, I think that you chose a very nice, very compelling setting for that particular story. Draco is offering a pain-ridden, bruised by life Harry a new beginning in a relationship that died before its time.
I'm not quite sure that made any sense, since it's very late (or very early) where I am, but what I wanted to say, overall, is that you're a marvel, Ru. A true and unique dazzler.
G'night!
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I think it's perfectly plausible. Loss can put things into perspective better than almost anything.
I don't know about you, but I always thought that a death was the ending of a part of your life, and offered new beginnings, like a gift from the departed. Like the sunshine after the storm, I guess. Must be my way to deal with grief.
I love this outlook, though. It's a wonderful, tender, heartfelt interpretation of life and death and what each means. You've really given me something to think about here. *ponders*
Draco is offering a pain-ridden, bruised by life Harry a new beginning in a relationship that died before its time.
Again, LOVE that. Thank you. Thank you for such a gift as this comment.
Drarry Queen
(Anonymous) 2010-05-09 08:22 am (UTC)(link)Re: Drarry Queen
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First, "Draco thought of matching headstones in the shadow of a manor, side by side in the desolation of gray rocks and ivy covered walls, with none but a solitary son laying irises on immaculate graves." your imagery
Then, "He’d bled Harry for them." your way of putting into words what Draco thinks he did in a few words yet I understood how deep the act was for him and how important Harry is to him.
Lastly, your use of Wordsworth. Perfect!
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Thank you so much for this compliment. You made my day. I really appreciate it. ^___^ I'm so happy you liked this story, as sad as it started out.