'where we are now' remus lupin & regulus black

You broke my heart

I am expecting insults. Cruel jabs and thoughtless mentions about the last time I saw him.

"Evans." Regulus nods with feigned civility as I slide onto the stool besides him.

"Black." I mumble, mirroring Regulus as I pull the required textbook from my bag.

I honestly can't make out why I have a sense of disappointment, from this anticlimactic encounter.

It's a feeling other than the constant, pain, though, and that can prove to be a dangerous thing.

After the greeting, besides the odd ask from Regulus to grab certain ingredients or the spoken repetition of instructions, we don't speak to each other for the rest of class. Regulus does nothing but what is asked of him by the professor. Of course, the disdain is still there, but his usual snide remarks and taunts are no longer, giving me no reason to retaliate. We just simply work in comfortable silence for an hour.

☽☽☽

I don't want to go back to my empty dorm. Last night had been particularly brutal, and I have no desire to revisit the scene of the suffering. There is never any doubt I will have nightmares.

I always have nightmares now, every night. Not nightmares really, not in the plural, because it's always the same nightmare. You'd think I'd get bored after so many weeks, grow immune to it. But the dream never fails to horrify me, and only ends when I wake myself up with screaming. Eventually, my mom didn't even come in to see what was wrong anymore, to make sure there was no intruder strangling me or something like that— she'd grown used to it.

My nightmare probably wouldn't even scare someone else. Nothing jumps out and screams 'Boo!' There are no zombies, no ghost, no psychopaths. There is nothing, really. Only nothing. Just the endless maze of Hogwarts halls, so quiet that the silence is an uncomfortable pressure against my eardrums.

Its always dark, like dusk on a cloudy day, with only enough light to see that there is nothing to see. I hurry through the gloom without a clear destination,  always searching, searching, searching, getting more frantic as the time stretches on, trying to move faster, though the speed makes me clumsy... then there comes a point in my dream— and I can feel it coming now, but can never seem to wake myself up before it hits— when I can't remember what it is I'm searching for. When I realize that there is nothing to search for, and nothing to find. That there never had been anything more than just this empty, dreary, school, and there will never be anything more for me... nothing but nothing...

That's usually about when the screaming starts.

I'm not paying attention to where I'm walking— just wandering through empty, decrepit, abandoned hallways as I avoid all the ways that will take me to my room—because I don't have anywhere else to go; that's when I bump into him.

Peter.

Oh, I wish I could feel numb again, but I can't remember how I managed to turn it on and off before.

Maybe it was just perpetually on.

The nightmare is nagging at my mind and making me think about things that cause me pain. I don't want to remember the hallways. Even as I shudder away from the images and focus on Peter's face, I feel my eyes fill with tears and the aching begin around the edges of the hole in my chest. I take one hand from my pocket and wrap it around my torso to hold it in one piece.

"Cordelia! I didn't uh...I didn't know you were back!" The words run through my head, lacking the perfect clarity of my nightmare last night. They are just words, soundless, like print on paper. Just words, but they rip the hole wide open, and I fall to my knees, knowing I should not continue to try and walk while this incapacitated.

Peter rushes to my side on the ground. "Merlin!? Are you okay?" I curl over, pressing my face against his shoulder and trying to breathe without lungs.

I wonder how long this can last. Maybe someday, years from now—if the pain will just decrease to the point where I can bare it—I will be able to talk to his friends and reflect on those few short months as the best of my life. And if it is possible that the pain will ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I'm sure that I will feel grateful for as much time as he had given me. More than I asked for, more than I deserved. Maybe someday I'll be able to see it that way.

But what if this hole never gets any better? If the raw edges never heal? If the damage is permanent and irreversible?

Peter wraps his arm around me and I bury my face deeper into his chest. "I'm—Im okay." I manage to gasp.

He pets my hair soothingly, not seeming to give a damn that anyone could walk by and interpret this the wrong way. "I know you are," he whispers. "I know,"

If you know, why are you asking?

I laugh humorously to myself, still gasping for air. The dark humour distracts me, and the distraction eases the pain. My breath comes easier, and I'm able to lean back against him. Though it's cold today, my forehead is damp with sweat.

"Peter," I murmur.

"Yes," He says back.

The air I inhale quivers with my lips as I go to speak, "I'm sorry for your loss, if no ones said it already." I feel him stiffen around me. As motionless, as stable, as strong as a rock. "It must be a terrible thing. When the person you love dies before you have the chance to tell them how you feel. And, I'm just...so...sorry,"

It's quiet for a long moment as I use my lycanthropy to listen to Peters heart thrash around in his chest. Violently. In a tormenting way. In grief. "Thank you." He sighs heavily.

"You know, he sends me to walk these halls at six pm every day because he knows you like to wander around dinner time?"

"Are you going to tell him you saw me?"

"Do you want me to?"

"I want him to know, he broke my heart."

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happy christmas!

song: you broke my heart by current joys