warnings: mild slash. and if you haven't read all four books yet, then you just suck.
notes: this story was inspired by the smashing pumpkins, 'luna,' off the Siamese Dream CD, which is bloody incredible. and the lyrics harry sings are by the Beatles. Yay for the Beatles. :) Oh, and they're already together when this starts, explaining any random kisses or ooc-ness.
for pip, who would rather have oliver and percy, and clara, who nudges.
--
lunacy
by tini
'…and those moonsongs
that you sing your babies
will be the songs to see you through
i'll hear your song
if you want me to
i'll sing along
and it's a chance i'll have to take
and it's a chance i'll have to break
i'm in love with you…'
-smashing pumpkins, 'luna'
Atop the astronomy tower there is a sort of risky privacy, at least on clear nights. I kneel before the telescope, fixing it on the waxing gibbous moon, a silvery nut-shape in the sky. I like the moon. I can pick out certain craters, shadows, the infamous face.
"Harry. Harry."
"Hm."
"C'mere." I shift out of the way, carefully offering up the eyepiece to my companion. "Don't shake it. Don't shake it."
"You repeat yourself," he mutters, pushing his glasses up onto his unruly hair and taking a look. "It's the moon."
"Mare tranquillitatis. Sea of tranquility." I'm right beside him, my words coming out in little puffs of cold air and tangling in the black waves that stick out around his ear. "It's just a massive ocean of rock. Can you imagine that solitude?" I grin. "No Dumbledore, no homework, no Weasleys."
He shoots me a glare, backing away and raising his eyebrows, so that his glasses fall past the scar, resting on the bridge of his nose. He's perched on the edge of the tower with his intuitive seeker balance, hugging his knees in the cold. The light on his glasses makes his eyes look like spilt dishes of light, round and owlish. He isn't paying attention to me.
"Harry."
"For awhile I thought my mum was a moon goddess."
It's such a random declaration, such rare poetry from one who isn't known for their verbal eloquence. Sometimes during Quidditch matches, when we're both racing for the same glittering bauble, i can hear nothing but the wind whistling in my ears and Harry's string of curses. I am silent with the irrational fear that if i move, he'll stop.
"Draco?"
"I heard you." Keep talking, please keep talking.
He sighs, and I watch the weight on his back seep through his stooped shoulderblades, melting into his lungs and dissapating onto the air in a puffy exhalation. He has so much weight on his back for a sixteen year old...I wonder how many breaths it would take before his back was bare, and what would be there? Mentally I gave him wings, pale brown cicada wings.
"I thought my mum was a moon goddess. When I first found out how my folks really died, and what they really were. I imagined my mum as some lunar fertility figure. In my eleven year old mind this seemed perfectly feasible. Ift here was magic in my blood, then anything was possible."
"You weren't idealistic at all," I shoot sardonically, and instantly hate myself for it. The four entire seconds he is quiet for actually quite loud. There are no veins in the human ear, because the sound of the rushing blood would deafen us, but i'm deafened anyway by the simple capillaries. And the wind seems to pick up, knocking my telescope about. Two of the owls shriek at each other. A beetle clicks on the stone.
He laughs shortly and I breathe my relief, another silvery cloud. I love the cold because words and sighs are tangible in little clouds. It makes them seem more real.
"No, not at all." He grins lopsidedly at me, like he does when I kiss him while smiling. "I've never had real memories of my parents, so I started making them up. Like...once my mum and dad and I went for a picnic by this little creek and that was where i said my first word." "What was your first word?" I ask around my smile, forgetting for a moment that this wasn't real.
I think he forgot, too. "Pumpkin," he says, his neglected, beautiful head tapping on a ledge. "But now I think it must've been more like 'bunk'n,' because babies have trouble with certain sounds, don't they?" I realise, heavy hearted, that he's asking my assistance on fabrication of his memories. "Yeah, they do."
"And I remember...well, I mean, I pretend..." He looks ashamed suddenly, and i don't want that. I don't want him to stop talking. Why? Because, Draco, that voice in my head croons, you want to know all his secrets. If there's a someone who could be holding his attention while you're kissing his temples, you want to know about them.
It's his mother. I silence the voice. "You remember..."
"She sang to me. And the strangest thing is that my 'memories' don't even make sense, because i was eleven and confused when i started this. But she sang to me, and the song I always remember her singing was this silly Muggle song."
"What song?" I don't care that I probably won't know it. I want to know this woman's tactics.
Tactics. It's his mother.
He sighs. "You won't know it. It's the silliest song...'Picture yourself on a boat on a river...with tangerine dreams and marmalade skies...'"
I blink. I don't know the song, but I like hearing him sing it in a voice that isn't even singing, just a slightly tuneful variation on his speech. And something dark in me wants to go to the end of the earth just to learn it, to sing it to him, to erase his mother and fulfill his psuedo-memory.
"It sounds like a good song."
"It's a silly song," he says, smiling sadly to hide...something. "And I found out later that most people think it's about drugs, anyway." "Oh." I'll sing. Just ask me. The dark part of me wants to erase his mother again, and i can't stop it now. I want to sing for him. I want him to say 'pumpkin' and I want to make it all better. I want to hold him. I want to rule the moon. I'll sing.
"Her name was Lily."
"I know." I do know. What a perfect name. Lilies, the flower of the Blessed Virgin, the ultimate Mother. And lilies, white like the moon, the only other Mother in her phases: Starting young and waxing to fullness, then withering to black. Lily lily lily....the name makes my mouth ache and i don't like the way he says it. I kiss him gently, stealing the sickly sweet memory from his tongue and hiding it in my mouth with my own disgust. When I pull away I don't let him see me wipe my mouth on the back of my hand.
"I miss her." He's quiter now, one hand picking at his robes and not meeting my eyes.
It's his mother. I have a mother. She has long blonde hair and perfume that smells like some kind of flower that only exists in bottles. She wears amethyst earrings that look like big purple grapes. I smile unwillingly as i realise she probably made me who I am. Once I wanted to play in the mud and she whisked me back from the garden, washing my chubby hands and setting me on her bed, where I fell asleep on puffy, clean-smelling clouds of powder and rouge.
Then the guilt settles in; I shouldn't be thinking like that. Harry doesn't have a mother. Guilt doesn't feel good, that's why I always spit it at others. "She won't come back."
That beautiful head jerks up to meet my eyes, the light sliding off his lenses and disappearing so that I see green. "I know that."
He's angry, and I've caused it. That wasn't what I meant to do. "I'm just saying."
"Well..." He sputters, shifting. Don't go. "Maybe you shouldn't. I've got to go to bed, Ron and I are working on a project early tomorrow morning. Thanks for showing me the moon."
...And for listening. I wait. Nothing. "Don't go."
"I am." He gives me a kiss, rushed and bitter, and I can taste the name of Lily on his lips. "See you. Love you."
"Mm." He knows this means i love him too. So he leaves.
I wish I knew how to sing.
-fin-