Existing in Radiance

Chapter Two | Hester Hill, May 1985

Dedicated to Rhi, my darling friend.

You are so precious to me, as you all are.

Chapter Two

Hester Hill, May 1985

 

            Evening rolled through the hills, revealing the first hour of a starry violet sky. It wasn’t really dark yet, so Hazel let the twins run ahead; she could hear their chatter as they stopped to admire or investigate things they found along the hillside.

Hester Hill rose from behind the house, the trees thinning out so it was like an upside down meadow rising towards the clouds. It wasn’t steep, but to the almost six year old twins it was like a mountain.

Climbing the hill as well as everything else beside her was Remus, close enough that she could feel his warmth but not touching. This was the norm with Remus, especially when the children were around, and Hazel knew it was so they wouldn’t get confused – but sometimes she wished he would just step a little closer.

“Mamma, look!” Andrew held up an object that Hazel couldn’t make out in the twilight, but she nodded anyway.

“Fascinating darling!” she said, and he ran off to find another thing to show her.

Remus chuckled “Let’s just hope he doesn’t drag everything he finds home – my pockets were weighed down with so many of his rocks from the stream that I might’ve sunk.”

Hazel knew Remus was good for her, good for the twins; he was Andrew’s godfather, a father figure for both of them. He read them bed time stories, took them fishing and taught them how to tie knots – everything a real father would have done. Though someone Hazel doubted Severus would know how to fish or tie knots, she sometimes imagined him walking out across the field with a twin holding each hand, looking back briefly and smiling.

Sometimes Hazel thought her head might explode, her heart crumble as it had threatened to do for so many years and she would just cease to exist.

“May I say something?”

Remus, who had been in his own little world, watching the twins and making sure they behaved, nodded. “Of course Hazel, what is it?”

Looking down briefly, Hazel gathered all her sorrow and grief and guilt on everything she had ever done to Remus and tried to speak calmly “I’m sorry,” she said “Sorry that I never gave you a real chance, and just have you hanging around, waiting for me to do something about it.”

“Hazel…” Remus stopped and reached for her, hand hovering just over her cheek. He rarely touched her.

Dark eyes misty, Hazel leaned into his touch, feeling the calluses of his fingers against her cheek “Part of me wishes we had just done it, fallen in love and lived a life that we deserve. Not this one, were we hide and grieve and try to go on when we are suffering.” Closing her eyes, Hazel pushed Severus’ face from her minds eye “Part of me wishes that the twins were ours. You’re son and daughter, and we could forget everything that ever made us feel wrong inside.”