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small_giftsTitle: But With Light
Author/Artist: mustntgetmy
Recipient: everyoneinspaceisgay
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *Implications of violence. Implications of sex. *
Word count: 1,943
Summary: The first year of the First War, and the first holiday season after Hogwarts. Some darkness, but more light.
Notes: I tried to blend Kit's first two wishes together here (first holidays post Hogwarts + light in the darkness) and I hope it came out alright! I also made an attempt at inserting some contemporary references, but I am afraid you're all going to see one huge anachronism at the end that I just couldn't resist, I'm sorry!
Kit, I do hope you enjoy this fic, and have a very happy holiday season!
Sirius’s Christmas decorations begin and end with fairy lights around his window.They’re the kitschy kind, fat bulbs in a rainbow of colors that he’s charmed to flash red and gold every minute or so, because even though it’s been months since graduation his Gryffindor pride has yet to fade. The rest of his flat is as dark as the earth, for he buys no holly or tinsel, puts up no stockings, and does not even entertain the thought of a tree. With the war on it’s enough that he’s managed to put up a single string of lights.
The fact that it’s December still shocks him every time he goes outside: the crystalline chill as dazzling as a sunrise, the white lights wrapped round the trees in the park nothing short of a miracle in the snow. He hadn’t realized how much his duties to the Order had sucked at him, drained him dry, until now, when he finds himself feeling like a wraith walking through the Muggle packed streets, all of them jostling each other and laughing, warm from mead and good cheer, bright packages on their arms. Their cheer is like a foreign language to him; he’d watched a Death Eater kill himself to avoid capture yesterday. The images of the war, which he has only fought for months, rear up to consume him as he stands on a street corner, head bowed before the gently falling snow, struggling to remember anything about the other Christmases he’s had.
When the memories come they feel as if they’re from another life – all that laughter echoing off the vaults of the Great Hall, not an inch of it unfestooned, holly enough to fill a forest glade along the walls, and ornaments so glittery every time he entered he felt as if it was to the popping of Muggle flashbulbs – and it hurts him because it’s another loss, another thing he’s been made to give up. And he realizes, as he stands there getting soaked from the snow, that something must be done.
It’s days before he gets his chance, and he spends them following Evan Rosier in the hopes of overhearing him discuss plans with another Voldemort supporter. He trails him through dive bars where punks are still gnashing their teeth over the break-up of the Sex Pistols, their spikes drooping on their shoulders and their leathers faded, he trails him through the back rows of disgusting interspecies peep shows in Knockturn Alley, and once, even more horrifyingly, into a Muggle cinema for a showing of the Star Wars Holiday Special. Through it all Rosier says not a word, meets with no one, and gives nothing away, and so Sirius is on the verge of doing something stupid – something to force his hand – when the word comes from Dumbledore himself that there’s a ceasefire.
The Prophet promptly goes mad with speculation – Is the Dark Lord dead? Incapacitated? Taking time off to celebrate his New Year’s Eve birthday? – and the Ministry and the Order swiftly follow suit. Meeting after meeting is held simply to dissect a single Death Eater missive, and Sirius misses every one of them. The memory of standing in the snow and feeling like a ghost among the living has been burned into his mind, and he refuses to waste his reprieve from fighting on speculating why he has been given a reprieve from fighting. He bursts out of the Order’s most recent hidey-hole and into the sparkling lit up city night. He kicks up snow as he runs, grinning and without thinking, straight to the place he’s thought of as his own personal safe house these past few months.
Remus’s flat is as cool and shadowy as an underwater cave, and as spartan as a museum gallery is when stripped free of its art. He has even fewer holiday decorations than Sirius – just a menorah he’s yet to put candles in, and a copper snowflake his mother made – but that doesn’t usually matter to Sirius. He doesn’t come here to admire the décor, after all. He comes for the sight that greets him at the door: Remus, tousle-haired, wearing barely anything, a lit joint in his hand.
Remus’s skin is hot beneath his palms, his pulse fluttering where he kisses his neck. They leave the joint, still smoking, on Remus’s lone chair, and spend the next few hours engaged in the most essential of ceasefire activities.
Afterwards, they lie on Remus’s bed (which, in keeping with the rest of the flat’s aesthetic, is just a mattress on the floor), and share the joint as they listen to the title track off Aja. It unwinds over them like a dreamy summer twilight, and Sirius watches Remus’s eyes flutter closed for a moment as he takes it in, so deeply his breathing slows, as if he’s drinking of its tones and notes. When his eyes open again he lets out a sigh, and Sirius brushes the backs of his fingers down his cheek. Remus gives him a drowsy smile, and then Sirius says, “I’ve been thinking about something…and now I know what I’d like to do.”
“Fine, alright,” Remus grumbles, only half-listening. “Put on A Night at the Opera. But let me listen to the end of this song first.”
“No, that’s not what I – well, yeah, I’d like to put that on – but that’s not what I meant,” Sirius says, and then, as Remus’s eyes close again, he explains.
Remus listens, pale gray beneath his eyes from all the late hours of the war, his eyes fluttering open and shut as he nods at what Sirius is saying and that pale gray slowly vanishing from him, like clouds after a storm. He repeats back a little of what Sirius says, like he’s marveling at the words, like he too had forgotten them; it’s amazing how much a few months in the trenches can change things, how much it takes away. “Party,” he says, slow, every letter stretched, like a child would say it. “You want to throw a party.”
The smoke from the joint furls out over them, the music too, and for a moment they just lie there basking in the promise of having a plan that won’t end in bloodshed, and then they rise, to see that plan through.
Tinsel, candles, ribbons, ornaments, fairy lights: they gather them up in a mishmash of styles, run the entire spectrum from tasteful to gaudy, tacky to ornate heirloom, and every item glittering, made to be infused with light. They put them up in Sirius’s place, the red and gold blinking fairy lights becoming one small part of a glittery, Christmassy canopy. When they’re done the whole place is cheery just to look at, and becomes cheerier still when they pack damn near everyone they know into the room, and the first and only holiday party of that year officially begins.
It takes some work getting people to come; there is resistance, a continued desire to treat the ceasefire as a trick, and many of the older members of the Order think the idea of a party frivolous, a waste of time and energy. But the moment Sirius gets the Prewett brothers on board the resistance crumbles like bad bread. The brothers’ gift for corralling people and cajoling them into fun extends all the way up to the highest ranks of the Order; no one, not even Moody, can resist the cheeky smiles on their freckly faces. It helps, too, of course, that they’re heroes many times over, and have saved the lives of practically half the Order. So in the end it takes very little for them to melt the dour looks off the older Order members faces, and lead them, caroling, to Sirius’s place.
As the party begins it occurs to Sirius to consider two crucial things he has neglected in the wake of his frenzy over making sure every inch of his flat is decorated: namely, the lack of food and the lack of music. He panics, dives for his takeaway menus and tries to browbeat James and Peter into becoming an a cappella duet, but it turns out he doesn’t have to worry about either the food or the music. This night is kinder than all the ones that had led to it: everyone who comes walks in with a home cooked dish or a bottle of wine, and the sound of corks popping and the smell of warm food soon fills the air.
As for music, it’s Remus who takes care of that. Right at the moment when people all over the flat are looking up over the rim of their first empty glass to find themselves talking to someone they don’t know all that well, and the threat of awkward small talk becomes a clear and present danger – well, it’s then that Remus sets the record needle down, and magics the volume up, so that everyone hears the quick roll of the drums before dear Freddie Mercury begins to sing.
Breaths are exhaled, shoulders are loosened, and what darkness that remains makes its excuses and leaves, and everyone pours themselves another glass, gently swaying to the beat. The lights bank off their faces, made pale by winter and war, and infuse them with a mellow glow, returning to them their youth, their brightness. They laugh, some of them for the first time in weeks, and think how strange it is that they could have ever forgotten this, the very thing they were fighting for. There is a sense of something lifting from them, the hatred and the fear and the closely held pain absconding, even if only briefly; and in its place comes something that exists between forgiveness and relief, a kind of lightness that each of them share with each other.
Sirius closes his eyes, basks in this feeling, in the closeness of all his friends and comrades. He tilts his head back, listens as Freddie’s voice rises up through the crowd, smiles at what he sings. Oh my friends, he says, as if he knows them, we’ve had our hopes and fears. Oh my friends, it’s been a long hard year. But now it’s Christmas. Yes, it’s Christmas.
And yes, Sirius thinks, it is, it is, and maybe that doesn’t change anything, but it could, even if only for an hour, even if only for tonight. He’s seen the worst of people this year and still he thinks that even though they’re outnumbered, even though hate has so overwhelmed them, there’s still a chance. And this feeling is in the air too, along with the gentle merriness that persists throughout the room: the sense that maybe they could win, or, that maybe this is something that doesn’t even have to be won. Is it naivety or a form of love to believe that they could share this feeling across that invisible borderline, to think that they could end all this hurting not with more bloodshed, but with light?
Sirius knows what it is; he knows where they stand. But still, he cannot help it, not as he looks out at this room, at the smiles, at the glow, at James and Lily snuggled up beneath some mistletoe, at Peter dancing in a crooked Santa hat, and at Remus, dear Remus, gold and rose in the lights, his gaze on Sirius, his smile just for him, a beckoning look in his eyes – no, he cannot help it at all. He still hopes.
The music plays, the guests laugh, the cups overflow, and for this hour – or maybe for much longer – the war is over.
Author/Artist: mustntgetmy
Recipient: everyoneinspaceisgay
Rating: PG-13
Contents or warnings (highlight to view): *Implications of violence. Implications of sex. *
Word count: 1,943
Summary: The first year of the First War, and the first holiday season after Hogwarts. Some darkness, but more light.
Notes: I tried to blend Kit's first two wishes together here (first holidays post Hogwarts + light in the darkness) and I hope it came out alright! I also made an attempt at inserting some contemporary references, but I am afraid you're all going to see one huge anachronism at the end that I just couldn't resist, I'm sorry!
Kit, I do hope you enjoy this fic, and have a very happy holiday season!
Sirius’s Christmas decorations begin and end with fairy lights around his window.They’re the kitschy kind, fat bulbs in a rainbow of colors that he’s charmed to flash red and gold every minute or so, because even though it’s been months since graduation his Gryffindor pride has yet to fade. The rest of his flat is as dark as the earth, for he buys no holly or tinsel, puts up no stockings, and does not even entertain the thought of a tree. With the war on it’s enough that he’s managed to put up a single string of lights.
The fact that it’s December still shocks him every time he goes outside: the crystalline chill as dazzling as a sunrise, the white lights wrapped round the trees in the park nothing short of a miracle in the snow. He hadn’t realized how much his duties to the Order had sucked at him, drained him dry, until now, when he finds himself feeling like a wraith walking through the Muggle packed streets, all of them jostling each other and laughing, warm from mead and good cheer, bright packages on their arms. Their cheer is like a foreign language to him; he’d watched a Death Eater kill himself to avoid capture yesterday. The images of the war, which he has only fought for months, rear up to consume him as he stands on a street corner, head bowed before the gently falling snow, struggling to remember anything about the other Christmases he’s had.
When the memories come they feel as if they’re from another life – all that laughter echoing off the vaults of the Great Hall, not an inch of it unfestooned, holly enough to fill a forest glade along the walls, and ornaments so glittery every time he entered he felt as if it was to the popping of Muggle flashbulbs – and it hurts him because it’s another loss, another thing he’s been made to give up. And he realizes, as he stands there getting soaked from the snow, that something must be done.
It’s days before he gets his chance, and he spends them following Evan Rosier in the hopes of overhearing him discuss plans with another Voldemort supporter. He trails him through dive bars where punks are still gnashing their teeth over the break-up of the Sex Pistols, their spikes drooping on their shoulders and their leathers faded, he trails him through the back rows of disgusting interspecies peep shows in Knockturn Alley, and once, even more horrifyingly, into a Muggle cinema for a showing of the Star Wars Holiday Special. Through it all Rosier says not a word, meets with no one, and gives nothing away, and so Sirius is on the verge of doing something stupid – something to force his hand – when the word comes from Dumbledore himself that there’s a ceasefire.
The Prophet promptly goes mad with speculation – Is the Dark Lord dead? Incapacitated? Taking time off to celebrate his New Year’s Eve birthday? – and the Ministry and the Order swiftly follow suit. Meeting after meeting is held simply to dissect a single Death Eater missive, and Sirius misses every one of them. The memory of standing in the snow and feeling like a ghost among the living has been burned into his mind, and he refuses to waste his reprieve from fighting on speculating why he has been given a reprieve from fighting. He bursts out of the Order’s most recent hidey-hole and into the sparkling lit up city night. He kicks up snow as he runs, grinning and without thinking, straight to the place he’s thought of as his own personal safe house these past few months.
Remus’s flat is as cool and shadowy as an underwater cave, and as spartan as a museum gallery is when stripped free of its art. He has even fewer holiday decorations than Sirius – just a menorah he’s yet to put candles in, and a copper snowflake his mother made – but that doesn’t usually matter to Sirius. He doesn’t come here to admire the décor, after all. He comes for the sight that greets him at the door: Remus, tousle-haired, wearing barely anything, a lit joint in his hand.
Remus’s skin is hot beneath his palms, his pulse fluttering where he kisses his neck. They leave the joint, still smoking, on Remus’s lone chair, and spend the next few hours engaged in the most essential of ceasefire activities.
Afterwards, they lie on Remus’s bed (which, in keeping with the rest of the flat’s aesthetic, is just a mattress on the floor), and share the joint as they listen to the title track off Aja. It unwinds over them like a dreamy summer twilight, and Sirius watches Remus’s eyes flutter closed for a moment as he takes it in, so deeply his breathing slows, as if he’s drinking of its tones and notes. When his eyes open again he lets out a sigh, and Sirius brushes the backs of his fingers down his cheek. Remus gives him a drowsy smile, and then Sirius says, “I’ve been thinking about something…and now I know what I’d like to do.”
“Fine, alright,” Remus grumbles, only half-listening. “Put on A Night at the Opera. But let me listen to the end of this song first.”
“No, that’s not what I – well, yeah, I’d like to put that on – but that’s not what I meant,” Sirius says, and then, as Remus’s eyes close again, he explains.
Remus listens, pale gray beneath his eyes from all the late hours of the war, his eyes fluttering open and shut as he nods at what Sirius is saying and that pale gray slowly vanishing from him, like clouds after a storm. He repeats back a little of what Sirius says, like he’s marveling at the words, like he too had forgotten them; it’s amazing how much a few months in the trenches can change things, how much it takes away. “Party,” he says, slow, every letter stretched, like a child would say it. “You want to throw a party.”
The smoke from the joint furls out over them, the music too, and for a moment they just lie there basking in the promise of having a plan that won’t end in bloodshed, and then they rise, to see that plan through.
Tinsel, candles, ribbons, ornaments, fairy lights: they gather them up in a mishmash of styles, run the entire spectrum from tasteful to gaudy, tacky to ornate heirloom, and every item glittering, made to be infused with light. They put them up in Sirius’s place, the red and gold blinking fairy lights becoming one small part of a glittery, Christmassy canopy. When they’re done the whole place is cheery just to look at, and becomes cheerier still when they pack damn near everyone they know into the room, and the first and only holiday party of that year officially begins.
It takes some work getting people to come; there is resistance, a continued desire to treat the ceasefire as a trick, and many of the older members of the Order think the idea of a party frivolous, a waste of time and energy. But the moment Sirius gets the Prewett brothers on board the resistance crumbles like bad bread. The brothers’ gift for corralling people and cajoling them into fun extends all the way up to the highest ranks of the Order; no one, not even Moody, can resist the cheeky smiles on their freckly faces. It helps, too, of course, that they’re heroes many times over, and have saved the lives of practically half the Order. So in the end it takes very little for them to melt the dour looks off the older Order members faces, and lead them, caroling, to Sirius’s place.
As the party begins it occurs to Sirius to consider two crucial things he has neglected in the wake of his frenzy over making sure every inch of his flat is decorated: namely, the lack of food and the lack of music. He panics, dives for his takeaway menus and tries to browbeat James and Peter into becoming an a cappella duet, but it turns out he doesn’t have to worry about either the food or the music. This night is kinder than all the ones that had led to it: everyone who comes walks in with a home cooked dish or a bottle of wine, and the sound of corks popping and the smell of warm food soon fills the air.
As for music, it’s Remus who takes care of that. Right at the moment when people all over the flat are looking up over the rim of their first empty glass to find themselves talking to someone they don’t know all that well, and the threat of awkward small talk becomes a clear and present danger – well, it’s then that Remus sets the record needle down, and magics the volume up, so that everyone hears the quick roll of the drums before dear Freddie Mercury begins to sing.
Breaths are exhaled, shoulders are loosened, and what darkness that remains makes its excuses and leaves, and everyone pours themselves another glass, gently swaying to the beat. The lights bank off their faces, made pale by winter and war, and infuse them with a mellow glow, returning to them their youth, their brightness. They laugh, some of them for the first time in weeks, and think how strange it is that they could have ever forgotten this, the very thing they were fighting for. There is a sense of something lifting from them, the hatred and the fear and the closely held pain absconding, even if only briefly; and in its place comes something that exists between forgiveness and relief, a kind of lightness that each of them share with each other.
Sirius closes his eyes, basks in this feeling, in the closeness of all his friends and comrades. He tilts his head back, listens as Freddie’s voice rises up through the crowd, smiles at what he sings. Oh my friends, he says, as if he knows them, we’ve had our hopes and fears. Oh my friends, it’s been a long hard year. But now it’s Christmas. Yes, it’s Christmas.
And yes, Sirius thinks, it is, it is, and maybe that doesn’t change anything, but it could, even if only for an hour, even if only for tonight. He’s seen the worst of people this year and still he thinks that even though they’re outnumbered, even though hate has so overwhelmed them, there’s still a chance. And this feeling is in the air too, along with the gentle merriness that persists throughout the room: the sense that maybe they could win, or, that maybe this is something that doesn’t even have to be won. Is it naivety or a form of love to believe that they could share this feeling across that invisible borderline, to think that they could end all this hurting not with more bloodshed, but with light?
Sirius knows what it is; he knows where they stand. But still, he cannot help it, not as he looks out at this room, at the smiles, at the glow, at James and Lily snuggled up beneath some mistletoe, at Peter dancing in a crooked Santa hat, and at Remus, dear Remus, gold and rose in the lights, his gaze on Sirius, his smile just for him, a beckoning look in his eyes – no, he cannot help it at all. He still hopes.
The music plays, the guests laugh, the cups overflow, and for this hour – or maybe for much longer – the war is over.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 07:05 pm (UTC)Oh wow, the way they had forgotten about something like having a party and just good times,really hit me hard.They were so young and to be like that,really good work bringing out their situation. Seriously,I'm so glad you ended it with the lovely scene of everyone having a good time,the relaxed atmosphere is just perfect. <3
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 02:32 am (UTC)(P.S. Mention of the Star Wars Christmas special made me laugh.)
(P.P.S. This is Maggie, who forgot to sign out.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-21 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-01-06 11:13 pm (UTC)