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AU: SRAU | the worthwhile fight | june 1992 | r&s
Sirius stood in the corner of the bedroom, watching Remus sleep and anxiously twisting his wedding ring around his second left finger. There wasn’t any one thing to be worried about this morning—technically—and so Sirius’s imagination had space to run free.
Instead of looking for slowness of breath or a particularly infection-prone cut, Sirius could do nothing but watch the easy-sleeping body of his husband (human, once more) laid out on their bed, and try to stem the panic influences that pressured him to either wake Remus up before his body was ready, or to flee to make tea or check on Teddy or do anything else that might cause him to miss the moments when consciousness returned to the bedroom.
Consciousness and, gods willing, memory, too. As unlikely as it was, Sirius needed to keep hoping for it.
Month in, month out. It gave Sirius a new impossibility to cling to, now that the Wolfsbane actually seemed to be accomplishing its other goals.
Remus began to stir and Sirius was instantly on high alert. It didn’t matter whether the other man was merely rolling over in his sleep or intent on cracking an eye open. Sirius would be ready either way; ready, attentive. Here.
“Baby...” he couldn’t help but whisper, in some husky, sleep-deprived voice that registered too loudly to play off as casual. Just in case! Just in case Remus thought he was alone, so he wouldn’t be spooked later. Just in case Remus wouldn’t recognize Sirius, standing there in a neatly creased jumper and compulsively twisting his ring around in that bad-habit way of his.
How he longed to go lay in bed, too. Not because he was tired, but because he desperately wanted to be curled up beside his husband; to smell the freshness of the linens and the transformation-ached sweat of Remus both, to offer a hand or shoulder or arm or chest wherever it was needed. But Sirius continued to hover near the window, worrying at his lip and inspecting Remus none too subtly for signs of wakefulness.
“Rise and shine,” he tried again, more softly but more shamelessly, too.
@remus-whoisleft
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AU: Amnesia Verse | adore you | secret era | emma & davey
"Cooking something special?” asked Emma from the doorway, smiling up at Davey with knowing eyes.
Despite the fact that she hadn’t called before coming over; despite the fact that she’d left, last time she was here, in a cyclical huff of ‘this is the last time’; despite the fact that he’d asked her twice today at work if he’d see her later and that she’d enthusiastically shut him down both times.
The flat was familiar, even with Davey’s tall frame blocking the door, and Emma leaned against the open frame with the ease of someone who felt right at home. The place was messy, but no more so than usual. What really caught her attention were the sights and sounds of a dinner almost ready to serve. Emma didn’t know if that was a sign that he knew she’d show up—as she’d done increasingly so, then not at all for a habit-breaking while, and was in the process of ramping up again—or if he gave himself, a solo diner, this type of star treatment every night.
I mean it this time, Emma had said, just before she put on her second shoe and closed the door behind her, last time she was here. It had not quite been a week ago. This was the last time.
Emma reached into her purse and pulled out a bottle of wine, waving it in front of Davey like she was trying in equal measure to hypnotize and bribe him. Feeling bolder, she put her free hand to his chest and eased her fingers into a playful push. Ready or not, here I come, everything about her said. A far cry from the last time, but they both knew what the score was.
At least, Emma assumed they both knew it.
She still wore the dress she’d had on at the office all day, but the blazer and stockings and heels had been lost to her brief trip home before making her way here. Emma’s coat was pulled tight around her shoulders, but she wanted a warmer welcome before she decided to slip out of it and into Davey’s—usually waiting—arms. Her instinct was to rise up onto her toes and kiss him, but Emma would never do that in an open corridor, private residence or not.
“And grab the radio,” she added, although no invitation to come in had yet been issued. “The Wigtown game is going into overtime and I missed a chunk of it on the way over.”
@savingdavey
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cruel and unusual; antonin & gideon [AU WEEK]
AU: In which Death Eater forces take one the Prewett brothers captive instead of killing them both on the spot...but are happy to keep that information from the surviving Gideon, allowing him to think his brother is alive as leverage for Order information.
When Gideon Prewett regained consciousness, he was strapped to a chair in the center of a leaking, windowless basement room, and he could not remember where he was. The memory issue was enough to scare him at first more than the setting. Hadn’t Vince been complaining about that lately, more frequently and more urgently in recent weeks? But Gideon had never heard Vince complain about any associated pain. The pain Gideon felt, seeping along the base of his skull and handicapping him – no telling how temporarily – in one leg, was bad enough that he couldn’t see not complaining about it.
Slowly, Gideon’s memories came back to him. He thought they’d be a relief, or at least help him assess his way out of this shady situation, but they did neither. In flashes, he could remember the patrol. It was supposed to be a simple, quiet night. Nobody paired up both of the Prewett twins together unless there was excessive firepower needed, or if things were so low-level that they’d be allowed to play off one another, crack their jokes, blow off their steam. It was supposed to be the latter, the evening, and Gideon had actually been looking forward to it – in a different way than he’d begun looking forward to other meetings, in that itching, desperate-to-take-a-hit sort of way.
Nobody had expected the ambush. Once it began to happen, Gideon had not expected to be taken alive, either.
But here he was: alive and bound.
The only thing he cared to notice was that his brother was missing.
“FABIAN?” he called out. Instead of hello, instead of help, it was his brother’s name that burned at the back of his throat.
Fuck repercussions or secrecy at this point, right? There was no denying that Gideon was in a bad situation. Whatever was going to happen to him wouldn’t be prevented by waking quietly. Whichever Death Eaters had taken the twins had to know that, once they’d refused so violently to come quietly.
“FABIAN! CAN YOU HEAR ME?” — @antonin-whoisleft
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AU: SRAU | 1991 | aconite, monkshood, blue rocket | D&R
“Thank you for coming,” said Dorcas, opening the door with the breathless energy of someone who was somehow surprised that a good friend would be willing to come when she called; not only to see her, but to her cozy cottage away from the lights and blaring sounds of the city.
The smell of baked goods was present throughout the little house—an oasis for one, if you ignored the converted shed in the backyard that functioned as laboratory and apothecary in one—and decidedly ordinary, in that comfortable, comforting way only country cottages could be. They were magical, after all; it was not the burden of travel that Dorcas felt bad for laying on Remus’s shoulders, but the burden of effort at all.
Especially when she was so on the fence about what she’d called him out here to tell him.
It was a maybe, not a promise. But a maybe was so much more than either of them had had in a very long time. She was wary of getting his hopes up, of getting her own up. But this stunk of promise, and it had gotten to the point where it felt more wrong than right to keep it to herself.
What was she sparing him from at this point – hope? That wasn’t something she could withhold with a clear conscience.
“Can I get you dessert, or...I have a kettle on! That’ll be ready soon. If you want tea. I don’t know if you take milk, or sugar, or...I have all of it, so. Whatever you’re in the mood for.”
@remus-whoisleft
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AU: royal | let me live that fantasy | G&L
“Nobody is going to find out!” said Gretchen, running ahead. Only when she got to the door—hand pressed to it like ‘home base’ in a childish game of tag—did she turn over her shoulder to find Lucinda and fix her with a mischievous, come hither smile.
The door was familiar to her, as was the crown princess that trailed in her wake, to whom the wing and maze of rooms once belonged. The daughter of a minor lord with only daughters, her family had lived at court since Gretchen was nine and already wildgrown. She had not managed to find a rich husband, which had been the original goal, but she had managed to find a great deal of trouble, and a good friend in Lucinda.
“The guards aren’t even posted outside; she isn’t in there,” she added. “Nobody is going to find out, and I want to see what she’s done to your place.”
Though she was still rattling off justifications, Gretchen wasn’t waiting for agreement. Emboldened, as always, by the very fact that she had Lucinda with her—Lucinda who had more resources and more to lose, but would never have to face serious consequences—Gretchen pushed open the door that led to the newly imported, one-day-to-be Queen’s bedroom.
Gretchen’s skirts shifted around her as she walked, brushing the stone floors and ornate rugs. As soon as the room proper came into view, she gasped and clutched her hands to her chest – all the while hoping Lucinda had caught up, was close enough to appreciate the dramatics.
“I can’t believe this,” she called over her shoulder, without bothering to lower her voice. The girls would be in a world of trouble if they were caught in here—hands could be lost for all Gretchen knew, she had no idea how harsh the new Little Queen was in her rulings, but she didn’t seen fun—but the adrenaline boosted her mood greatly. “Everything is different!”
Wandering over to a dressing table, Gretchen ran her hands through a bowl of jewelry – gems and necklaces and brooches, pearl and ruby and so, so much gold. She picked up a bunch of necklaces and fixed them around her neck, not caring that they looked gaudy and mismatched all tangled together and admiring herself in the mirror.
The true prize was a tiara, proud and dazzling and beautiful; Gretchen popped it onto her head as a joke, not knowing or caring that it was Emma’s prized possession, that it’d been forged from the melted-down metal of her father’s first crown. Then, she spun around again, daring Lucinda to admire her and pulling a cheeky face.
“And she’s so short. Do you think she knows that’s considered a bad omen here?”
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au: amnesia | it’s better this way | hostile era | davey & emma
Davey Gudgeon loved his job. No one would even think anything less. Over the years, it had only gotten better as it grew and changed, so he could referee part-time and balance it with the DOMGAS projects he was actually getting paid for. It was shown in late nights and the barely a week he’d taken off since starting at the department.
It was what made it so uncharacteristic when he tapped into that abundance of accumulated vacation time incredibly suddenly. It was approved easily, of course, with a letter to Hamish about realizing they were between major projects and wanting to take advantage of that to not risk getting burned out on the next one. Of course, he’d let Emma know.
He hadn’t.
By the end of that day, he knew he wouldn’t be able to face her Monday.
Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was preservation. He was inexplicably still keeping their secret, still protecting them, and if he saw her again that soon, he wasn’t going to be able to pretend. It was hard enough at their best. They were lucky that they had long been friends, not just coworkers which helped, but he knew more now. Emma made it perfectly clear how she’d actually seen him all that time, that there’d been part of their years long, broader relationship that he didn’t know a thing about.
Davey knew there was only so long he could put it off. He took his time off and split the time between his family and the beach. He’d caved the first day to telling Galvin he’d been seeing someone and how it ended—not who, he claimed that didn’t matter. He wondered why he was protecting her. Instead of acknowledging any of it, he took every match he could ref the first couple weeks after, keeping him out of the office that much longer. He said as little as possible to Emma. He avoided her at every turn.
Until they were, inevitably, tasked together again with Quidditch Junior Nationals kicking off again. It was their baby; it was unquestionable they’d be working on moving the Little League World Cup out of the UK for the first time. He knew it was coming, he smiled through the meeting and emptily at her, and leaned into the part of him that was excited.
“Here,” Davey said, dropping on her desk the financial comparison report they’d started an intern on before this had all fallen apart, while it was an idea that they couldn’t wait for the official start to kick off. They wanted to be prepared. It was exciting, a natural next step. It was a lifetime ago. “Financials and logistics. I have our contacts and the growth numbers. June’s in town Wednesday to go over first steps.” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. “I can’t imagine we’ll need to talk before then if you trust me to do my job.”
@emma-whoisleft
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au: prohibition | the dirty work | mary & geraldine (& bellatrix)
Ollivanders’ was a perfectly reputable restaurant by day that was older than the city itself, and everyone knew it was a speakeasy. At least, everyone thought they put the puzzle together. It had the same name, the same location, but no one could figure out where the bar went during the day and the restaurant at night. It was the same owners, but no one was sure the elderly man who talked to every patron knew his granddaughter hadn’t taken as kindly to not selling alcohol. More than anything, no one knew how either business stayed alive considering it had to be the worst kept secret in town.
Geraldine wouldn’t have it any other way.
Not a single person knew all of her secrets, but some of the other entrepreneurs managing to capitalize on a trying time were given select answers. They included the well-placed bribes that kept the authorities from giving them too hard a look on any given night. In turn, they brought some of the smaller, non-entities into their protective umbrella.
The Tower was one such establishment. It had a certain charm, too much of a dive to be considered competition, and she liked Mary. Some of the rare nights she took off—random and unannounced to keep people on their toes without regard for their plans or disappointment—were spent there. They were good nights at that, even if she was certain Mary had a mole in Anastazie. Geraldine had an entirely oblivious threat of her own in Marya, which made the woman arguably more dangerous.
Today, it was broad daylight over lunch that was not at Ollivanders’, and she was curious what the other woman would have to say if she brought her in closer. It was a favor, in a sense. It would also make it harder for her to untangle herself should the time come. It had proved far more fun and rewarding than chess. The players were much better.
“I have a proposition for you,” Geraldine said, drumming her fingers on the table idly. Some places had no concept of service, but she couldn’t risk doing this at her own establishment. She’d distanced herself from this portion of it, anyway. Garrick took the day; the night was her risk, and he knew as little about it as possible.
“The terms are simple: do it for me, and I’ll cover you the next three months.” She had more than enough money to cover the bribes for Ollivanders and beyond, but requiring payment gave others a stake in it. It gave true monetary value to how carefully she arranged all of this, and hopefully today, it bought her a delivery service.
@mary-whoisleft
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au: political rivals | the world’s gonna know your name | anastazie & benjy
AU: Benjy Fenwick and Anastazie Dolohov are two of the political minds of the generation, and no one knows who they are. Working far more hours than they’re paid for moderate, freshman Representative Alec Connelly was a prefect early career move. They both know they’re going places, but neither of them knows exactly where or just how long this will keep them tangled together.
“It could be worse,” Benjy said from his spot at the window. He stared down at the interns sprinting across the concrete in their full business attire instead of at the stack of newspapers and files sitting on his desk. “We could be running.”
Normally, he didn’t mind pulling the relevant articles and putting together briefings. He had a good idea of what he was looking for before he came in every morning, but today, it was hot enough to make even him restless. Even a breeze would’ve helped, but all the open window was giving was a momentary reprieve from his work.
He watched the last couple make it to the line of cameras, knowing he would have been one of them before returning to his desk in the too small, too hot room. He settled in with a sigh, skipping from the papers to the files underneath, looking for something captivating to launch him back in. A bit of momentum could carry him for an hour, and if he was lucky, his periodic commentary would draw Anastazie into something.
Even a few months in, he wasn’t sure what to think of his coworker. She was whip smart, there was no denying that when she gave him a run for his money, and it made her fun to talk to both in the office and when all the staffers who weren’t important enough for their boss to name went out after work. To call them friends or even friendly, well… that might be a stretch.
She was still the first one he turned to when he stumbled across something unusual in his pile.
“Hey,” Benjy said, fingers stopping on the dark blue folder. It was made heavier by the humidity, logically, not the weight of the information it contained. “What committees is Connelly on?” He looked up at her after the question, not daring to open the cover.
He could recite the committees in his sleep, but he needed to make sure there wasn’t a new one. He needed to rope someone else in if he was really holding an unredacted intelligence documents. He didn’t doubt they would be helpful to the Representative on Foreign Affairs. What he wasn’t sure of was if he was supposed to happen, especially considering Benjy knew he wasn’t supposed to have them.
@tazie-whoisleft
#au: anastazie#pr: anastazie1#pr: anastazie#i hope it's okay i changed the context some#it made more sense to me this way#whoisleftau#whoisleftauclosed#for lexie/tazie
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AU: SRAU | low rising | r&s
AU Description: Everything up to now has been almost the same as canon, with a few details changed here or there. The fixed points remain the same; Remus Lupin and Sirius Black have been together since just before the end of sixth year. They love together, they leave school together, they join a war together. Then the fighting between them begins, and gets worse as Remus’s undercover missions begin to take over their life, and his secrecy clouds their relationship, breeding distrust and accusations... but they love each other, they’ll get through it. They think.
This is the (Almost) Everyone Lives AU, but they have a long way to get to that happily ever after.
@sirius-whoisleft
September, 1981. It was dreadfully late, it was raining, and Remus Lupin - who could only for the moment conceive the date as Late September, anything more detailed was lost on him - was bruised and battered and, Merlin, so fucking tired after his undercover mission; this time with the pack in York, near Terrington. Something had possessed him to take the train from York back to London after it had ended - curiosity, perhaps, or nostalgia for the hours he used to spend on the Hogwarts Express with his best friends and the boy he loved, the boy who he was maybe trying to avoid for as long as possible waiting for him back at their flat.
Was he even waiting? Maybe he wasn’t even home, honestly, and even if he couldn’t blame him Remus didn’t want to think about that as he turned his collar up to the rain. He deserved any cold shoulder he might get from Sirius, especially after the scene they’d both made on Remus’s way out the week before. It hadn’t been the worst of their shouting matches, sure; he had quite a few of those already categorized in his mind that held the top few spots, but it hadn’t been a warm farewell. Not that there’d been many warm moments to compare it to recently. Remus stepped off the mostly deserted train after it rolled to its stop, found the nearest empty stretch of alley, thought of home - ‘home, Sirius, let him be home, let him scream at me if he needs to but let him be home’ - and apparated the rest of the way. His feet wouldn’t have carried him the whole walk there, he knew that, and thank Merlin he didn’t splinch anything in the journey.
Remus landed in the far more familiar alley outside their flat, only stumbled a bit, and as he let himself inside the building he was at least able to place the time of night (well, morning, really) as sometime after Sirius’s pub had closed. Walking up the steps his mind wandered, and against his better judgment he couldn’t help but get hit with the sudden comforting, intoxicating, nearly painful thought of crawling into bed with Sirius: wrapping his arms around him, pulling him close, burying his face in the nape of his neck. He could breathe out, inhale Sirius in, and just exist next to him, potentially avoid a screaming match at three in the morning; maybe they could get through one more night like that, one of their silent agreements not to lunge for each other’s throats and pretend everything was alright for a few hours of needed sleep.
That’s what he kept telling himself, at least, as each day the war raged on seemed to add a heavier weight to his chest as Sirius pulled farther away. One more night was all he needed, and then they could start to fix what was destroying them, slowly but surely.
Exhausted, feeling like his bones were too heavy and his eyes prickling, Remus paused in front of the door to their flat, letting out a soft sigh, before quietly letting himself in. He was too tired to notice much but the darkness of the living room (and certainly he was too tired to count the amount of shoes near where he kicked his own off, where he might have seen a pair too many) as he stumbled half-blind toward Sirius’s bedroom. They each had their own despite the fact that they’d moved in together with no intentions of sharing different beds; two rooms with different amenities and aesthetics in each, both entirely theirs and separate all the same. Pushing the door open slowly, ignoring the persistent whistling in his ear that followed him after every ill-advised apparation, he called out softly before he was all the way inside:
“Sirius?”
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AU: Not Quite Glowing / pregnancy!verse / mary & james
AU: Following closely to canon with a few critical differences, Mary and James find themselves single and freshly out of Hogwarts when an unexpected event derails their plans.
--
It was only supposed to be one night.
When Mary had woken up in James’s bed the morning after, she didn’t think much of it at first. She had made a pretty regular habit of talking with her friends until the early hours of the morning when they would eventually fall asleep in bed together. Of course she would assume that’s what had happened. But her lack of clothes was the first hint that something a bit more than platonic had gone down. Memories of the two of them getting a little too drunk and caught up in “we should try it together at least once in our lives” came flooding back to her. In the bright, sober light of day, the reasoning did not hold up as well.
Thankfully, it was James. The two of them laughed it off and made some breakfast to combat their hangovers, and Mary felt confident that it wouldn’t affect their friendship going forward. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Now, a couple of months later, Mary stood in front of the door to his apartment trying to get her breathing under control. She hoped to not immediately worry James by giving away that there was an issue, but that was probably a lost hope. She looked like she hadn’t slept all night, her eyes bloodshot and her hair tousled. Her face showed the worried look of someone so conflicted, she wasn’t sure what she felt.
After a good minute of just standing there, she finally got up the courage to knock. She wanted more than anything right then to have comfort and reassurance from a friend, but after she told him what she had to, she wasn’t sure he would be the person to give that to her. But fidgeting in the doorway wasn’t about to solve anything and finally, for better or for worse, he answered
“Hi,” she said rather breathlessly. “Sorry to show up unexpected but, uh, can I come in? I have something I need to tell you.”
@jamesprongsy
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AU: SRAU | sharp and glorious thorn | january 1983 | r&s
Sirius had had this nightmare hundreds of times. He recognized it by the feeling it left him with—the gasping, sweating, kicked-in-the-chest feeling that always left him thrown awake with no chance of new rest—rather than by the sights and sounds that his tired mind always buried away for another night, another nightmare.
But even though Sirius couldn’t recall back the dreams in perfect detail, it all seemed to slot into place now. The creak of his shoes on the dark floorboards of the flat (because where else could it be but the flat); the unattended lamp still lit on the living room side table, the bulb too weak to make much difference in the room, in need of a change. And the silence. That was the scariest part of all – the silence.
It shouldn’t have been this quiet, with Remus at home, somewhere unseen in the flat. Because he was here or, at least, had to be. If he wasn’t, Sirius didn’t want to open his mind to the other possibilities. That he’d taken off for Wales again or somewhere even farther. That he’d left his shoes by the door and his keys in their customary bowl, but took off to the streets in some fugue state for which Sirius was sure he himself deserved the blame.
Or that he was at home, somewhere unseen in the flat. No longer making noise because he was no longer living.
Impossible.
It seemed more possible by the heartbeat.
James walked ahead of Sirius, the two of them twin pillars of anxiety. It wasn’t like Remus to simply not show up at a gathering where he was expected, especially when it was Lily’s birthday party. Then again, a lot of things that Remus had done since returning from Wales were not like himself. Just as very little Sirius had done since Peter died was like himself. Nor James nor Lily. Nor any of them, from the icy Emma Vanity who’d turned protective and involved to the once-vibrant Dubois siblings who’d turned to glum convention and pushed everyone else away to arms length.
Sirius and James’s eyes landed on the closed bedroom door at the same time and, without needing to speak, they reached the unanimous decision to investigate. It was not closed all the way, and Sirius’s imagination filled in every dread possibility for the slight gap in the door. He could not see into the room; with each step, he thought with more and more urgency that he did not want to.
“He could have just overslept,” said James, a decision that would have been comforting if Sirius thought of Remus Lupin as the type to sleep at all, much less too often.
“He could have,” said Sirius, because it was the only thing to say.
Don’t touch that door! A voice in Sirius’s head screamed it, and he nearly threw the words out loud, like a knife in James’s direction.
But—just like in his nightmares—Sirius could only stand there with no voice in his throat and his feet heavy, rooted to the ground, as someone else took the reins and drove his life forward. Without him.
The next few moments happened in slow motion, blurred together into a kaleidoscope that blinded Sirius to events as they unfolded but seared them into his memory—frame by frame—to obsess over later. There was James, the gentle push of his fingertips against the door. He was gasping in a way Sirius had never heard before, some horrible, guttural, animalistic recoil.
Sirius recoiled, too. He looked away, to steel himself for whatever had shattered James’s gasp into a million shards of glass, and his grey eyes lost focus until they zoned in on the kitchen table, stacked with evidence of unfinished meals and cups, dirty with old tea but never successfully drained. See? the voice in Sirius’s head insisted, already grasping for any shred of evidence to disprove the conclusion that the rest of his body had not yet arrived at. Remus doesn’t want to die; he’s got so many meals left to finish.
“Sirius, help me,” was what James choked out next, but he was blocking the way. He was white knuckling both sides of the door frame, keeping himself forced out with so much tension that it looked as though he was trying to keep something else in. And he was, in a way. The truth, the secret, the terrible condition of Remus Lupin laid out in a bed that Sirius used to gingerly carry him into.
Was it helpful to James, for Sirius to stride up in a panic and shove him bodily aside? Not particularly. But it was helpful to Remus—who wasn’t dead, oh god, oh please, oh somebody, anybody, he isn’t, he can’t be, I’ll join him, I’ll race him, don’t let it be true, this is a nightmare, oh please, oh no, oh Remus—and that had become the only track Sirius’s mind was able to run along, headed for the hills or a brick wall or whatever laid at the end.
And so Sirius shoved James out of the way and walked into the dark of the room. He did not realize that he’d thrown himself over Remus’s body until he was short-circuited by the scent of his lavender shampoo. He did not realize that he was using unforetold, adrenaline-spiked strength to drag Remus’s dead weight out of bed until he stumbled, fell to the floor in a dull thump of knees against wood and Remus’s elbows to his rib.
And he did not realize Remus was alive until he saw the rise and fall of his chest, slow and unsteady but clear as day.
That—Remus breathing—could not have been a hallucination.
Remus was always less alive in Sirius’s nightmares. Not more.
“James!” Sirius yelled, just once. And then, “Call somebody! He’s still–”
That was as many words he could get out to somebody who was not Remus Lupin, who was not the pale and half-corpse angel whose head was supported in Sirius’s lap. With shaking hands and shoulders wracked by sobs, it took all of Sirius’s strength to push Remus’s hair away from his forehead; to dissolve into a chanted stream of consciousness strung together with wake up and I’m sorry and Remus, please like lights waiting to be wrapped around a tree.
“Baby?” he asked, deaf to the sound of James crashing about in the other room, on the phone and doing something with his wand, but never able to make his way—however much he tried—over the actual threshold of the room. “Remus? Remus. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please– wake up, and–”
And what?
Please wake up and don’t be dead, was the Sirius wanted to ask for, every instinct in his body reduced to that of a scared, pleading child. And be okay and stay with me forever and don’t be gone, don’t hate me, don’t be dead, don’t go away again.
“Look at me! Please. Remus, open your eyes and look at me.”
#tw: drug use#tw: suicidal ideation#srau: remus3#au: srau#chat: remus all#srau: remus#whoisleftAU#whoisleftAUclosed
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AU: boarding school bitches || emma & lucinda
Emma Vanity quite liked the privileges that came from having a single room.
Single was the preferred descriptor of herself, if she was being honest about it. Not in the romantic, juvenile way that her peers often threw it around to describe themselves and their dating aims, but in all the other wonderful ways it had come to define her life. She was in charge for looking out for herself, nobody else; she was on a one-woman battlepath toward the future, with nobody who could get in her way or serve as distraction.
Emma had a fair network of friends at school—a prestigious and overly competitive boarding academy, which suited her—and cared for them as well as she could. But at the end of the day when classes were capped and dinner plates were put away, they all had to drift back to their shared bedrooms. While Emma, thanks in part to luck of the draw and in part to her prickly personality, had been able to revel in the silence and order of her single.
It had been a room-for-two-for-one ever since freshman year, when her original roommate had not returned from Christmas holidays. Many parents across the country sent their kids to the academy to straighten out bad behavior or inspire them to butt heads with the best of the best of their peers. Most couldn’t handle it; dropouts weren’t uncommon. Emma quite liked that, too.
It was a chilly Sunday, and Emma had dedicated her day to studying for a monster of a chemistry review set to take place in a few days. In the library, she always gravitated toward the sturdiest table, the least comfortable chair. But here, in the solace of her dormitory, Emma could relax without losing focus.
She was curled comfortably up, her bed made to military standards beneath her, dressed in a weekend uniform and the knee-high socks that other students saved for more formal occasions; poor circulation would mean death to her field hockey progress.
When a knock on the door sounded, splitting through the silence of her room, Emma did not move. Her friends stopping by unannounced was not strange. They liked to use her second, empty bed as a place to sit and chat, or else soak of the study-worthy quiet for themselves. But Emma declining to answer was not strange, either. Everyone that she knew would get the message and drift away without insult, without bothering her again.
Knock, knock.
The second set of knocks captured her attention, and Emma looked up from her notes with a frown. Either it was an emergency or somebody had decided to get on her bad side voluntarily. The first seemed unlikely—why wouldn’t they announce themselves, if something was on fire or the sky was falling?—and the second seemed impossible.
Sighing, annoyed, Emma slid to her feet and completed the short walk to the door. She wrenched it open without pretending to be gracious about it, fixing a scowl on her face before she was even visible. With a start, she realized that she did not recognize the girl—pretty, tall, confused—on the other side. At a school this small, that simply did not happen.
“Who are you?” Emma asked. “And what do you want?”
@lucinda-whoisleft
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twin, singular; vince & gideon [AU WEEK]
AU: In which Gideon Prewett survives the ambush that killed him in canon; Fabian is not so lucky and leaves him behind, adrift.
Gideon Prewett spent most of the day looking down into an open casket, staring at his own face.
Not his face exactly. Some of the freckles formed different constellations, the nose was a little bigger, the eyebrows slightly better kept. But what had always separated the twins was the different expressions they made, the different ways they moved. And Fabian, who was dead, would never move again. That much was clear on his pale, stagnant face.
He couldn’t remember their faces. The Death Eaters who’d ambushed him and Fabian…they had worn masks, of course, but that didn’t move the needle of Gideon’s guilt. Vince had managed to pull of a Death Eater’s mask once in the middle of an attempted kidnapping, on heroism and gut instinct alone.
And here was Gideon: unable to remember even the markings of the masks that covered up the faces of the people who’d murdered his brother.
The wake had been unbearable, and Gideon had managed to make it through the three hours and packed room without speaking to a single person. Order members, family friends, even virtual strangers had all turned up to pay their respects. The soldier within Gideon wanted to insist on something more private, with better security. In case someone felt like being disrespectful or, as a lesser concern, finishing the job and offing Gideon, too.
But Fabian deserved something better. He was free now from the paranoid shelter of war. People should be allowed to mourn him the way he wasn’t ever allowed to live – openly, without fear.
An open casket was very nearly not a possibility. The funeral director had formed Gideon, somewhere between black humor and genuine gratefulness that they’d have had no hope of reconstructing Fabian’s face into something that looked anything like he had while alive, if not for Gideon’s features to serve as a template.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men...
The funeral had been something worse than bearable. Gideon hardly remembered it. Somewhere lurked a half-memory of Molly falling into the grass to cry and their father trying to hug him when the first shovel of dirt was scattered over the coffin. Logically, too, Gideon knew that he had spoken. He’d given the eulogy, in a detached steady voice to a large group of people who’d watched him to see when he would break. But he didn’t remember doing it, didn’t remember how it had felt, didn’t remember what he’d said.
The vodka was contributing to that helpful lack of memory. Gideon was not drunk – could not get drunk, because he was afraid of what he’d let loose if he lost control, emotionally or otherwise – but he’d been suspended in a constant state of moody tipsiness since he’d been released from St. Mungo’s. Alone.
Along he was now, too. Sitting on the back garden stoop of Molly’s house, his knees bent high in front of him and the vodka bottle keeping him welcome company. The house was more than full, serving plate upon plate of dinner to the mourners and friends that’d overflowed here after leaving the cementary.
Hospitality was the one thing keeping Molly and his parents sane, and the kids were too young to grasp the permanency of what had happened. What was the one thing keeping Gideon sane? It was not this alcohol; it had always been Fabian. And now it was nothing.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, when the door opened behind him. It was nighttime outside, the sky navy and dotted with stars. From within the warmth of The Burrow, light spilled yellow-gold out onto the steps and covered Gideon from behind. He kept his back turned to the light, to the warmth, to what he was sure was Molly or Arthur, intruding to ask the same question they’d asked at fifteen minute intervals since everyone arrived.
“Really. Give it a rest, Mols.” — @vince-whoisleft
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au: safe house || we'll meet again soon || gretchen & remus
Gretchen had exactly one goal in mind when she showed up at Sirius and Remus’s isolated safe house that morning: to say goodbye to Remus without letting him catch on to the fact that it was the last goodbye.
Until the great, elusive ‘after.’ Not that she believed in ‘after’ anymore, not in the hopeful, cut-and-dry way she used to. There would be no great, glowing peace to look forward to. The things Gretchen and Remus had talked about, sitting on motel rooftops or smoking outside forgotten country pubs, would not come to pass. Not the way they’d dreamed about them happening; not without losing so much—too much—in the process.
She was failing in her goal spectacularly. From her first hello, there was something weighty and emotional in everything she said, like some unpracticed author who tried to slam so much foreshadowing and symbolism into her work that she lost the reader’s interest by page two.
For instance, she’d teared up a storm when she handed Remus a stack of old newspapers, courtesy of the Prophet’s archive collection, so that he could challenge himself—and Sirius, if they ever talked when Gretchen wasn’t around, because they certainly didn’t when she was here—to some out of date crosswords and news that did not revolve around his outing or calls for his head.
Gretchen was glad she was failing. Her dream was to enjoy her last day with Remus without spoiling it with a ticking clock to their goodbye and all the pressure of making it count. But her nightmare was leading Remus to believe that she might be back soon, or that she was abandoning him by choice when that inevitably did not happen.
Looking into his eyes, Remus knew. She could see that, clear as day. It only served to make her more upset, more liable to lean her head on his shoulder and wrap herself around one of his scarred arms and try to remember what his aftershave smelled like.
“I have to leave soon,” she said. By some miracle it only came out as half a sob. “If Dumbledore didn’t think it was a major, major risk, he wouldn’t be making me stay away.” But did she really trust Dumbledore’s judgment, without question, after the way their Brave New World was shaping up? “And I can’t be the one to compromise your safety. I can’t be. If something happened, I’d always wonder if I was the one...”
@remus-whoisleft
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be as you are || DE!Ava + Neutral!Evan [AU]
Evan stood over an opened wooden box. Several rings stared back up at him from their beds of velvet. The rings were beautiful and varied. Elegant and simple, yet mighty. Each piece of jewelry was cursed.
He snapped box closed and secured the lid. It wouldn’t due for someone to touch them by accident. All in all, Evan’s day had been rather productive. It wasn’t an oddity, being productive, but it wasn’t exactly par for the course, either. Between the libraries in the Manor, the townhouse, and the villa, Evan had more books to read than he could hope to read in one lifetime. It was only out of necessity he restricted his reading list to topics that either were of genuine interest or genuine use. He read, he traveled, he schmoozed, and sometimes he worked. It was easy to how people might assume he was more idle than productive. In fact, that was entirely the point. Appearances were powerful. Evan had spent the better part of the past year cultivating an image of himself as ‘just another member of the idle rich.’ So he read, he traveled, and he schmoozed. He read books the likes of which would only be found in the Restricted Section, if not at Hogwarts at all; he traveled because he could; and he schmoozed at society events to hear (or overhear) whatever little jewels of information slipped out of loose lips.
Evan locked the box in one of the many built-in drawers in the room. Satisfied that no one would accidentally stumble across them, he headed out the door to the terrace. Before he could find a spot to sit saw a familiar figure out on the grounds. Evan descended half of the stone staircase that connected the terrace to the garden.
“Hey, Ava,” he said.
@ava-avery
#pls pretend he is wearing a shirt#and obviously no horses#AUchat:ava#whoisleftAUclosed#au:MadeUpWords#whoisleftau
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au || california dreamin’ || dorcas & davey
“Dorcas! Dorcas, wait!” Davey called.
It’d been a weird night right from the start. Family parties weren’t uncommon in the Gudgeon household, but they usually came with more warning and a higher concentration of Muggle relatives. There was a peculiar buzz in the air, too, but Davey couldn’t investigate it until he’d finished his first round in the kitchen.
It’s July, right? Galvin confirmed, meaning it wasn’t anyone’s birthday—his own included, it wouldn’t be the first time he was months off.
Come, come. Guest of honor’s in the family room. I’ll finish that. His mum ushered him away with a distinct giddiness for her as she all but dragged him away. He truly froze for a moment, unable to be pulled a step further, when he laid eyes on Dorcas for the first time in over a year. Apparently, that was the sign to let him go, let him take this at his own pace. It was usually head on.
He did his best with letters, but he had always terrible at them and deliveries were slow. He knew the pictures he sent weren’t as detailed as her notes, but it was what he had. Five-minute phone calls were a rare and expensive luxury across the world. He knew they hadn’t stayed in touch as well as they promised, but he still couldn’t believe he didn’t know she’d come home.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, barely looking at the person he’d interrupted to greet her. He had no intention of continuing the conversation either, slipping off himself with a smile that faded rapidly faded as he wandered off to find her. It wasn’t hard. Not because of the limited options but because despite the time and the distance, he still knew her.
“Doe,” he said quietly from the door frame. He saw it now. The strain in her eyes, the tightness of her smile, the signs he missed by coming up behind her. He used to be able to read it in her shoulders; maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he still could. He likely wouldn’t have led with the quick compliments about her being as astounding as ever and being shocked California let her leave.
Davey closed the few steps between them and wrapped her in a tight hug. He was, despite it all, beyond happy to see her. He felt an unhampered lightness that he’d lost the moment she boarded the plane. It hadn’t been the best year; it hadn’t been a particularly impactful one at all. This—with the surprise and running off and the fact he hoped she was happy to be there, too—still managed to be the highlight because Dorcas was there. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the reunion he’d imagined.
“What’s wrong?” Davey asked, still holding her. She was still Dorcas. He hardly changed. They had long been best together, and as certain as he was that she’d become as steady on her own, it was so easy to pick back up.
@dorcas-whoisleft
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