It’s truly fucking wild that a) Harry is canonically obsessed with Malfoy and literally follows him around and loses interest in his favourite hobbies because of it, b) Harry is actually right about all his Malfoy theories because he KNOWS Malfoy better than the others and has been paying attention to Malfoy for YEARS in a way no-one else has been, c) Draco straight up refuses to confirm Harry’s identity at the Manor even as his parents practically beg him to and despite knowing the retribution he’ll face if Voldemort finds out, d) Harry specifically saves Draco (not Goyle) from the fire despite the extreme risk of remaining in the room any longer, e) like I’m so serious this is SO INSANE Draco RIDES ON HARRY’S BROOM BEHIND HIM he has his ARMS AROUND HIM they are SHARING A BROOM AS HARRY SAVES HIS LIFE Draco is clinging to him THIS IS A LOVE STORY you can’t make this shit up!!!! f) and it’s DRACO’S WAND that Harry ultimately needs in order to SAVE THE WORLD, and Draco’s wand responds just as well to Harry as the wand of one of his closest, longterm best friends.
poems to read while having breakfast at the heartbreak hotel
I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief (Sonnet II) by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I Am Not Yours by Sara Teasdale
[you fit into me] by Margaret Atwood
You by Carol Ann Duffy
Be Near Me by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Blessed be the spectacle by Lev St. Valentine
You Are Tired (I Think) by E.E. Cummings
Hope you're well. Please don't read this by Lev St. Valentine
To Say Dark Things by Ingeborg Bachmann
Lilichka by Vladimir Mayakovski
Love and Hate by Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
Sanctuary by Jean Valentine
the winter sun says fight by Peter Gizzi
The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
A Primer For The Small Weird Loves by Richard Siken
Dirty Valentine by Richard Siken
Morning by Frank O Hara
We Don't Know How To Say Goodbye by Anna Akhmatova
You'll Live, But I'll Not… by Anna Akhmatova
from “An Attempt at Jealousy” by Marina Tsvetaeva
The Last Toast by Anna Akhmatova
In Dream by Anna Akhmatova
Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath
Talking In Bed by Philip Larkin
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats
La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
(this prompt was sent to someone who wasn't me ((thank you @lunapwrites and @impishtubist for this)), and i...ran with i...feel like i should apologize? also hoping i did it justice <3)
about 5k.
-
They gave out pamphlets.
Leaflets.
Pastel-colored booklets with images of smiling children plastered on every side, hoping to bandage bad news the same way they bandaged injuries. But Remus’s arm kept on bleeding through the dressings and his mother hadn’t stopped crying. There was no way to put a bandage on this bad of news.
Your kid is a monster, better get used to it.
Remus didn't remember a lot about the first few weeks after he was bitten, aside from the pamphlets. He wondered if any of the children had just been turned into something they never asked for or if they had merely caught a cold. In any case, the pamphlets were left around his house, his parents gathering all and any reading material they could find in hopes of figuring out how to make this new...thing...more bearable for their son. The way they talked around it, through fake smiles and stickers that matched the color palette.
Remus also remembered what the Healer had told his parents when they thought he had been asleep. The side effects that weren't in the booklets.
Chronic joint pain
Vomiting
Hyperhydrosis
Fatigue
Early death. Shortened lifespan.
And that last one, Remus remembered loud and clear as he stared at his three new friends, his three best friends, that he made at boarding school who weren't tiptoeing around the secret Remus had managed to keep for all of half a year. Too clever for their own good. Too caring. Too much time on their hands.
Or they had gotten too close.
"You all don't....know. You don't get it," Remus said, looking down at his hands as he sat on his four-poster, knees tucked under his chin. He tried to remember the last time he looked down at his fingers and didn't see bandages and bruises, only to find he couldn't.
"No, we do get it!" James said indignantly, staring at him with hazel eyes and glasses too big for his face, "You're our friend! What else is there to get. You're not a monster, you're not a big scary thing, you're our friend."
"Best friend," Peter agreed, and Remus looked up from his hands to see the small blonde boy nodding. Remus's eyes looked to Sirius, who had been quiet as the nervous confession spilled out of Remus's mouth, mumbled and garbled and Remus was sure he had drooled at one point. Arrogant, privileged Sirius Black, was quiet and listened, dark, thick eyebrows knitted together softly. And even after James and Peter continued to cheer him up, make him laugh, make him feel like maybe they did get it, Sirius stayed quiet and Remus would catch him glancing at him every so often, with the same look that Remus couldn't read.
Until they were alone in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, James already asleep and Peter close.
"Are you going to say anything?" asked Remus finally, "If you're...I know what you must think, I know--"
"Oh, please, go on, tell me what I think."
"You think I'm...dirty. No good. Half-breed. Don't you? Too proud to say it, especially not since James was so good about it, and Peter too. It's all over your face."
"I don't think that."
"Then say something!"
"What can I say?" Sirius asked softly, "What do you want me to say?"
"I dunno..."
"James already told you we're still friends, so you've heard that bit. Peters told you we'll wait up for you on full moons and take good notes during class. If you want to hear that I agree, then you've got it. We're still friends and I'm the only one of us who takes legible notes and you know, I....don't sleep so, the staying up part is already done."
Remus softened the arms that were wrapped protectively around his body--the last barrier he had between himself and his friends--dropping stupidly to his sides in front of Sirius Black who was perhaps the only person Remus had ever met who could maintain any sort of dignity in a dressing gown. "You don't have to."
"Shut up."
"Why have you been so quiet?"
"Why have you?"
"You're frustrating, you know. Answering my questions with questions when I'm the one who basically revealed the world's biggest secret today! I'm the one who's....sick and whatever! I'm allowed to have kept that to myself, you of all people should know what the worst looks like."
Sirius's eyes darkened for a split second and then it was just gone, replaced with an easy half-smile, "You're so dramatic, really?"
"I'm telling you all, you don't get it! It's not just a once a month thing--"
"Then tell us."
"I could die early, you know. You want to be friends with someone who could die when their sixteen? I could keel over next year for all I know!"
"Well...currently, I'm also friends with," Sirius held up his hand to count on his fingers, "Peter, who burps Irish folk songs, Marlene...who has more hair than I think anyone should and talks so fast I think she could win an award, James who does morning affirmations--"
"You've done them a few times," Remus grinned a little looking down at his feet.
"I will deny it. And then...my little brother, who is...ten and an artist. He paints." Remus laughed again this time a little louder, a little hard, "It's...watercolors? I don't know, he sends me cards sometimes. I've never had friends before this year, I'm not sure how friendships are supposed to go but...you fit right in with what I've gathered so far. Bloke who dies early."
"...Is...that better or worse than an artist?"
"Better. Definitely better."
--
Remus didn't think of the pamphlets again, not for many years. Because he made it to fifteen and suddenly there wasn't just Remus, there was Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Because he made it to seventeen and fell in love with the boy who had told him he was definitely better than a ten-year-old artist though he had substituted silk dressing gowns for sweatpants and nights in Remus's bed. Remus never let himself make plans, convinced they were going to fall apart anyway and he'd find himself in a hospital bed with his mother and father holding onto his hands, just waiting for the end to come sooner rather than later. But with James? Remus made plans to be around for a baby in the middle of a war. Plans that involved staying alive, and building cribs. And Sirius?
Remus made all the plans with Sirius.
Study plans.
Dinner plans.
Moving plans.
Wedding plans.
Secret plans that had Remus slipping out in the middle of the night, kissing the top of Sirius's cheekbone as he slept, hoping it didn't wake him up (it always did; Remus did it anyway).
Unexpected plans when Sirius didn't return to their tiny, weathered flat, and Remus had to find out through a long-winded grapevine that his best friends had been murdered, and his almost-fiancee had been the one to do it.
Remus didn't make plans after that, for the opposite reason. Not because he thought he was going to die, but because he had no reason to live. Day in and day out, dead-end jobs that paid next to nothing, sweaters unraveling thread by thread, and Remus couldn't have cared. A rock stuck on the side of the stream, unmoving until a visit from Albus Dumbledore made Remus remember what it was like to have something to look forward to. Until that same summer, Sirius's face was on the front page of the Daily Prophet--though not in the way Remus ever thought his stunning, beautiful, charismatic, almost-fiancee-husband-life partner-better half-soul mate would be pictured in a paper.
Everything picked up. Remus met Harry, 13 years after he had first met him in a tiny blanket in his mother's arms.
James's smile.
Lily's eyes.
James's curiosity.
Lily's persistence.
Whiplash, moving back and forth between two people he would never see again, forming a connection with someone he swore he would never meet properly, his own cowardice to blame. Harry had more words now and Remus felt like he was making up for the time he hadn't heard any of them. And in one single night, everything changed. Just like that.
--
"We're in the middle of a war," Remus said.
"Deja vu, hm, babe?"
"Sirius..."
"You said yes before."
"You never asked me officially before."
"My coffee proposal was just as good as this." Sirius was smiling at him, down on one knee and ring in his hand. In the middle of the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, while they listened to the wireless for war reports, waiting to see if they would hear Harry's name.
"I dunno, I do love coffee..."
"I love you."
"Yes."
Remus's knuckles hurt more these days; Remus noticed when Sirius put the ring on his fingers how tight it was. but Remus made plans.
--
"What do you mean I have to go back to school?" shouted Harry abruptly, pushing back from the kitchen table roughly, "I graduated."
"You didn't graduate, Harry, you have--"
"I don't care about NEWTS! No one gives a damn if I have--"
"I give a damn," Sirius said, pointedly looking at Harry firmly, "I give all the damns that you go back to school and you learn all the damn things that you didn't get to learn because you had a Dark Wizard on your back," he said.
"And the damns Sirius doesn't give, I'll give. I think I have a few lying around," Remus said and Harry rolled his eyes.
"The Auror department just said I can walk in and I have a job. I saved the entire bloody wizarding world! What's it matter if I don't have NEWT's? Isn't the point to get a job?"
"The point is to be proficient at magic, Harry," Sirius told him, "Are you?"
"Are you?" Remus snorted. Like father, like son, James was never the best at arguing either.
"I graduated," Sirius responded. "And, you can go ahead and be angry at me for this...but it's already been decided."
"What?! Why even bother asking me! Family discussion my arse! This is bullshit!"
"Mhmm," Sirius nodded but didn't flinch. Only picked up his cup of tea and took a sip, making eye contact with Remus over the top. Remus raised his own cup in response.
Remus remembered Harry crawling into bed with them that night after spending the afternoon giving both of them the silent treatment. Harry cried into Sirius's chest, his hand gripping Remus's arm tightly until he fell asleep. The next morning Remus woke up and noticed the red marks on Harry's hand-- the bruising he had to use paste for that had Sirius worrying when he looked at it.
Are you sure we don't need to go to the Healers?
They didn't.
They had other plans.
--
And Remus realized. One thing was better than making the plans.
Executing the plans.
The wedding in the backyard of Number 12. The wedding night that ended with Remus's head in the lav, and Sirius pressing a cold washcloth to his neck.
Vomiting.
Watching Harry graduate and take a breath to think about what he wanted for themselves.
Painting the kitchen. Remus had to stop every hour, even doing it by magic.
Fatigue.
Planting flowers in the backyard that Remus wasn't able to keep alive.
Planning a second wedding--this time for Harry and a boy with a big smile and a bigger heart that was able to hold Harry with care. Wedding in the middle of winter, because they had met around Christmas, and Remus was sweating through his suit.
Hyperhydrosis.
It wasn't just around full moons anymore, Remus noticed as he aged. It was all the time.
Vomiting.
Fatigue.
Hyperhydrosis.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
--
Remus woke up screaming one morning after a full moon that lasted longer than it should've in his opinion. Wolfsbane, while the most wonderful invention in his twenties, even in his early thirties, was miserable in his forties. You get to keep your mind. Remus didn't want his mind, Remus didn't want to know, or feel, or recognize any part of himself as he transformed, and tried to make his way back to being human. It would've been easier if he could just turn it off. But he couldn't. Especially when everything was getting worse. His shoulder, throbbing, aching, burning, singing the loudest amongst the other pains throughout his body.
"Baby, baby, sorry, I know it hurts," Sirius said, and Remus could barely make out his husband's face, barely registering his touch on his body his vision was so blurred.
"Sirius."
"I'm trying, baby, I'm trying, your shoulder, I can't get it back in, this is over my head."
Transformations got harder. That wasn't in the pamphlet. Remus even went back to check the pamphlets, making an absent comment to the Healer about how their reading material hadn't changed as the Healer put his shoulder back into place, though it didn't quite move the same after that. There should've been something in the leaflets that addressed what happened when you didn't die at 20, despite all odds, and now had a million things that you'd be leaving behind.
A script for Remus to follow.
Because he was coming up empty.
--
He could feel it. He could tell it was coming. His shoulder was useless. He had lost one of his canine teeth, though Sirius insisted it made him look cool. He was tired all the time, ending most days by 7pm and starting them at 10am.
He stopped teaching.
"You love your job."
"It's...an early retirement," Remus told Sirius for the millionth time. Sirius still slept on top of him and Remus was grateful that even this version of his body wasn't adverse to Sirius's touch. "Stop looking at me like that..."
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to figure me out. I've known you forever, I know that look."
The pinched dark eyebrows, the set jaw.
"I want you to be happy. Will you be unhappy if you stop teaching?"
"Are you here?"
"Sometimes."
"Then I'm happy."
"Remus..."
"I'm happy, Sirius. I'm fine."
--
"Remus--"
"I'm fine, Sirius."
"This won't stop bleeding."
"It will."
"Remus--"
"Kiss me."
--
"Is Moony okay?" he heard Harry ask one evening. Remus had fallen asleep on the couch, just after dinner with Harry and his own family. Remus hadn't planned for grandchildren, and now they were here and Remus used every bit of energy he had on them. Harry's oldest had a loud laugh. Harrys youngest loved to run. Remus's eyes were half-closed and he desperately wanted to open them and reach out and comfort Harry.
The person he had started thinking about plans for all those years ago. Because he had time then.
And now he was running out.
Sand through an hourglass, grain by grain.
"He's fine, my love," Sirius said, though it wasn't a terribly convincing tone.
"He's..." Harry paused, "The...Dursleys had a cat... he was old. I remember. And he would sleep more and more as he got older and--"
"Hey," Sirius said softly, "Remus isn't a cat. He's always loved sleeping and now we're both ancient. I found three grey hairs the other day."
Harry gasped, "Three!? Terrible news."
"It was, I debated shaving my entire head," Sirius said, "Moony's fine, Harry."
"Would you...would you tell me if he wasn't?"
"Yeah. I would."
"Okay."
But what if I don't tell you?
--
"You're the only kid I like," Remus told Harry one afternoon when they were outside in the sun together. The only place Remus felt remotely okay anymore. Until he got too hot anyway. "I hope you know that."
"You taught."
"Teaching is very different than...birthday parties. Still the only kid I like..."
"Still?"
"My kid."
--
Remus thought back to that first conversation with Sirius at eleven, swallowing wolfsbane with shaking hands as he looked at his husband across the table.
First, he was Remus.
Then Moony.
Then my love, darling, baby, my moonlight.
"Sirius?"
"Yeah, babe?"
"I..."
I'm going to die wasn't something that could be stirred into morning coffee.
"Alright?"
"I just love you."
"I love you."
You're the only reason I bothered making plans wasn't something that could be said casually, not like the way they talked about taking a walk or sitting in the sun together.
He got to be Moony again-- this time said differently from a kid who agreed to be his at fifteen. Moony from cradle...to grave.
Then finally husband.
And Grandad Moony.
Remus got to be a lot of things.
He was sure there were more things he could plan for....but he was out of time.
This was it.
"Baby?" Remus managed, watching as the moon out the window began to rise, and he could feel it deep in his bones that this was it.
Shortened lifespan.
Early death.
"You're alright, I'll see you soon, okay?"
"I'm the bloke who dies early."
Remus held on just long enough to watch as Sirius's face registered what was happening before his eyes, a tattooed hand reaching out to Remus's face.
It wasn't his mother and father there holding his hands. It was Sirius. His last touch.
"Remus..."
"Still better than an artist?"
"Just--"
"I'm sorry."
Mostly poetry with some fun spine details. Latest commission
Shop / Instagram
<33
who else is gay for hp gals? 🙋♀️
ayeeee!
(a jilytober drabble)
"You're in my seat."
"Sorry?"
"My seat. You're sitting in it."
Hazel eyes dance. "I didn't realize they assigned seats beyond secondary school."
Green eyes narrow. "I've been sitting in this seat all term. It's mine. A fact which you would know if you'd turned up at any point instead of only on exam days."
A smirk joins the dance. A stomach flips. "I have been here all term as a matter of fact. And I have, indeed, seen you sitting here."
Teeth grind. "Glad we've sorted that. Now please move."
The boy infuriatingly does not, of course. If anything he settles in more firmly on his—her seat. "What's so special about it anyway? I've been dying to know."
"And that's why you're here?"
The boys smirk twitches wider momentarily. "One of the reasons, yes."
She doesn't care to ask for the others. There are only ten minutes until the exam is due to start. Every minute speaking to this trouble-maker is one fewer for her last minute notes review.
Her pause is long enough to welcome him to continue. "I think I've determined why you like this spot so much. First off, it's perfectly positioned by the heat vent—not directly underneath to make you too warm, but close enough to pull the chill out of the air. It also has a lovely but not too distracting view of the courtyard outside. And, I suppose, once old Sluggy gets here, the acoustics are probably top notch: loud enough but not too loud."
"You're mad," she says, blush creeping up her cheeks. How did he do that?
"I'm not the only one, I reckon," the boy replies, now standing. She has to crane her neck to maintain eye contact and boy does she find herself wanting to. "James, by the way, James Potter."
He stretches his hand out but she eyes in, faking repulsion.
"Am I supposed to care?"
He—James Potter—laughs. "I guess not. Well, that's what I get for waiting all term to talk to the prettiest girl in class. Maybe we'll have a class together next term and I can steal your seat then, too."
He steps around her, agile despite his wide shoulders, the grin never leaving his face. He sends a wink toward her before jogging up the steps to a desk in the back row.
She can't help but watch him plop down in the seat, an easy grin still on his face as he waves to her. She turns away in a huff, gently sitting down in her seat, angry more at herself than him for the fluttering in her stomach that tells her he isn't the only one hoping they share another class next term.
Okay fuck it if this post reaches 666k notes by the end of 2023 I'll practise basic self care
Why 666k? Because it's funny and impossible so good fucking luck
i want to gorge on my wolfstar daily consumption but I cant :(
When will my husband (Ao3) return from war (is up again)
also shout out to Rue's mom, I dont KNOW what its like for her, i dont know a thing abt being a mother and heck i cant even BEGIN imagine what it must be like for her!!! she is just so strong!! i mean like fuck man??? how is she SO FUCKING STRONG!!??
i mean from what i saw, what we all are seeing it must be so fucking hard!!!
shout out to all the mums out there, all the mums who know what its like to be rue's mum, all of you who has been in her position, and just really all of you who are mothers tbh, god you are doing a great job and yes you all are so strong SO FUCKING STRONG!
Here’s a video so you can hear the water and the thrushes. I took it for you because you couldn’t be there. <3
Do you walk in the valley of kings? Do you walk in the shadow of men?