Pieces Left Incomplete

[firethesound]

Title: Pieces Left Incomplete
Wordcount: 2k
Rating/Warnings: Teen, no warnings apply
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters and this is written purely for entertainment purposes.
Summary: It’s always too quiet these days, at least until he shows up. A remix of Nherizu's story And the Clock Keeps Ticking.
Author's Notes:Written for the 2015 HD-Remix fest over on LJ. This can probably be read without Nherizu's story, but a lot of things make a lot more sense in context, specifically Draco's ghostly existence and what exactly is going on with that.

Many thanks to Sophie and SarahReads for the cheerleading and beta on this. Title comes from the song "Cathedrals" by Jump, Little Children which I think I listened to approximately a bajillion times on repeat while writing.

The Manor grounds are never more captivating than when they are draped in great swaths of sparkling snow. It lies smooth and deep over the grounds, the grass, the paths, the tops of shrubbery. Here and there it’s broken by small indentations. Small trailing dots of a rabbit’s paws near the bushes. The light cross-hatching of a bird’s feet just beyond that, three small hops with the last one framed by two light swishes where its wings brushed the snow as it flew away. There are a few larger imprints from a peacock. Only one has ventured out into the chill this morning; it wandered below the window before making its way down to the flowerbeds where it’s still meandering slowly. The wind catches a dry leaf and blows it past and the peacock stalks after it, head bobbing eagerly, to give it an interested peck.

It’s unusually late in the year to have this much snow on the ground, piled deep enough to bury the furled green tips of sprouting tulips that have only just begun to poke through the rich soil. You can count on your fingers the number of weeks until the roses will bloom. Mother always loved the roses in bloom. Perhaps she will return soon, in time to see them. She has been gone for so long.

The wan sunlight filters through the thin blanket of grey clouds and makes everything glitter like a Christmas card, so bright and calm. The light filters through the windowpanes and sweeps the white marble of the ballroom, makes it gleam too. You lift your hand to the glass, your fingers pale in the sunlight, and the light filters through them as well. You turn around and look at your pale shadow stretched out behind you, barely visible against the shining white floor.

A ghost of a shadow, you think to yourself.

You close your eyes and reach back to press your hands hard against the windowsill, curling your fingers tight around it. You are here. You are here. You are—

 

***

 

The snow melts. The days lengthen. The gardens bloom. The trees sprout leaves. The leaves turn orange. The leaves fall.

Time passes oddly when you’re dead, you learn. Sometimes you stand at the window in your father’s study and watch a sunrise that feels like it takes a lifetime. Then you blink and all the roses have suddenly withered on their stems. Weren’t they just blooming yesterday? Didn’t you only just walk through the gardens and brush the velvet-soft petals with your fingertips? You touch one now and the edges are papery and dry, crisp like the crunch of gravel underfoot as you stroll the garden paths.

You’re here, but everything around you feels like a memory. The sun above you. The brisk breeze. It’s there-but-not-there, and you remember coming back from a long walk around the school grounds in winter four years ago—was it really four years ago, now?—and fumbling for a doorknob with cold-numbed fingers. It’s a bit like that. There, but not there. Solid beneath your fingers even if you can’t quite feel it properly.

(But you are here.)

You close your eyes and push out with your magic, stirring the air with your own breeze. You can feel that, really feel that. The magic in it is more tangible than the real breeze, more solid than the floor beneath your feet. You’re back inside now, but you don’t remember how you got here. You don’t know whether today is really today or if it’s become tomorrow without you noticing. You hate that you can’t tell anymore. You wish time still made sense to you. You wish for a lot of things.

Another burst of magic stirs another breeze that makes the crystal chandelier rattle as it swings wildly where it hangs from the ceiling on a dull bronze chain, faceted teardrops flinging small rainbows against the walls. You do it again. And again. And you feel a little bit better, the swell of regret easing to a dull ache deep in the pit of your phantom stomach.

You take a breath you don’t really need. Hold it. Let it out. Again. And again.

You wish Mother would come home.

You wish you knew what happened to your body.

 

***

 

It’s so quiet. It’s always too quiet, these days. Back after you first died, months ago when there had been snow on the ground, there had been an endless parade of Aurors tromping through the Manor, unbidden and unwelcome. You hid in the greenhouse for nearly two weeks until they’d stopped coming. You couldn’t bear the thought of being seen like this.

Shortly after that, the house-elves had closed down the Manor. Emptied the place of food and flowers, anything that could spoil. Draped all the furniture in crisp white sheets to protect the upholstery from dust. And then they’d gone too. You remembered them doing the same when you were a child, when your parents had taken you away to their other properties in France or Italy or Greece for a long summer filled with idle days of sunshine. When the Manor would stand vacant for at least a month or more.

It was then you’d figured out that Mother would be gone for a while. Perhaps for good. (Don’t think of that; she’s coming back. She is.) It’d finally sunk in that you were alone. It’d occurred to you that even with you here, the Manor is vacant.

After that, time stopped making sense.

 

***

 

The days get shorter, darker, colder. For a small stretch of time the afternoons are filled with the gentle sound of dry leaves chattering softly on their branches when they are stirred by the wind. On days when there is no wind, you push out with your magic like trailing fingertips sifting through the trees, making them shiver and speak.

When a storm rolls through one mid-autumn night, all lashing rain and screaming winds that make the Manor sigh and creak down to its bones, you stand at the window for a long time, watching the trees sway as they are stripped bare. It’s hard to see; the night is dark and the windowpane reflects your pale face bright as moonlight.

It takes a scant moment of effort to force yourself insubstantial. You step through the window and drift down to the sodden lawn. The shrubbery shivers as the wind tears another handful of leaves from the trees. You watch them tumble away into darkness.

(Would that you could disappear so easily.)

The fierce wind can’t touch you like this, but the raindrops tingle faintly as they pass through. A shiver works its way up your spine and erupts into an irrepressible full-body shudder. Someone must be walking over your—

(Don’t think of that.)

You think longingly of warm wool coats and soft scarves and fur-lined hats, of Mother’s gentle admonishments to dress warmly that followed you all the way to Hogwarts. You’d been frail as a child and she’d never quite overcome her fear of losing you to something so mundane as the weather.

(Careful, now. You’ll catch your death of cold.)

Defiantly, you let yourself become corporeal. The wind pushes at you, and you are soaked through in a matter of moments. You turn your face up to the sky and close your eyes, cold rain pattering down on your face, running down your cheeks like tears.

You wish you could still cry.

 

***

 

When you open your eyes a moment later, the storm is gone and the sun is out. The garden around you is in shambles, damp leaves and torn branches strewn everywhere. The wet earth and lingering puddles comfort you. Give you a way to ground yourself. To place yourself in time. It is the next morning. It is only the next morning.

(Do not think about the gaping maw of time that stretches before you. Eternity is a terrible word.)

You spend a while using your magic to sweep detritus from the garden paths. Then you decide it doesn’t matter and you go back into the house.

 

***

 

When he shows up—unexpected, unannounced, and unwanted—you’re not sure why you’re surprised to see him. He’s always been there to witness you at your lowest, and you’re certain it’s not possible to sink any lower than this.

(Don’t think of your body, six feet under.)

He has no right to be here, none at all, but isn’t that just the way of him? Like a bad knut, turning up wherever he’s not supposed to be. His footsteps echo hollow down the hall. His boots leave perfect prints along the dusty floor. He looks round, curious and unhurried, and you see the Manor as he must see it, with its furniture shrouded in sheets, with trailing cobwebs spanning every corner and a light layer of dust coating every surface. Not at all as it should be.

(Nothing’s as it should be.)

Anger slams through you, whipcrack quick, and you want him gone.

You barely register the crackle of magic flittering through you before it pushes out in a strong breeze that stirs the dust and rustles the sheets draped over furniture. He pauses at that, looks round, and you don’t even think, you push outward with another burst of magic and reach for the nearest object, something sheet-covered on a small table nearby, and hurl it against the wall.

It’s immensely satisfying, the way he jumps at the sudden clang of a bronze lamp crashing against the wainscoting. You’re not sure what you were expecting beyond that, for him to cower, or cringe, or bloody well leave. Merlin knows you’re not that lucky. But instead he’s angry, picking up the lamp to fling it away with another loud bang.

And then he yells for you, like you’re the one inconveniencing him. As if he didn’t barge his way in here uninvited. The way he spits your name lights your anger into a pure rage that twists white-hot through the core of you. Your magic surges again, unbidden but oh-so-welcome, strong enough to knock him off his feet, strong enough to tear the crystal chandelier from the ceiling and bring it smashing to the floor beside him. He blinks up at the ragged hole in the ceiling, surprised, as plaster dust drifts down, settling over his hair and shoulders like a fine dusting of snow. Shards of crystal dot his clothing, glittering like ice.

You stalk right up to him and he gawps at you like a fish from where he’s sprawled on the floor, and it’s been a long time since you’ve hated anything like this, since you’ve felt anything like this. Since you’ve felt. You’d had no idea of it until now, but you’d been as covered up as any of the furniture. Shrouded in blank loneliness and quiet despair, but that’s gone, shredded, torn away as he recovers himself and climbs to his feet and shouts at you. And it feels so good to shout back at him because he’s a stubborn arse and refuses to leave despite his firm footing on the moral low ground of having invaded your home; he even has the poor grace to throw your death back in your face, and you honestly don’t know what incenses you more: his words or how carelessly he says them.

Abruptly you reach your limit. You brain him with a vase and dump his unconscious body in the dirt just outside the gates. The sky, you note with vicious satisfaction, looks as though it’s about to rain.

 

***

 

To your dismay, you discover that being dead hasn’t quite rid you of the inconvenience of having a conscience. Mercifully it’s not enough to have you dragging him out of the rain and back into the Manor. Nor is it enough to prompt you to heal the nasty gash across his temple. But it’s enough to keep you lingering nearby to make sure that he doesn’t actually die. You tell yourself it’s because your afterlife is hard enough, and it’d be just your luck he’d choose to haunt you for all eternity.

(And the relief you feel when he finally stirs, well. That’s just relief that he’ll soon be on his feet and on his way and out of your life for good.)

His eyes blink open, green like bottle glass, like springtime leaves, like—

Too late, it occurs to you that you should have disappeared before he’d seen you. This is what your existence has become, a litany of too late and should have.

You draw yourself up, wrap yourself in arrogance and lock any uncertainty away behind a haughty look. And you really should have disappeared because he opens his mouth and gives you back the one thing you didn’t want, hands it to you like a benefaction, as casually as any insult.

(Hope is a four letter word. Don’t even think of that.)

But it’s too late.

The idea of it—that ghosts can’t do magic—has sunk in deep, swelling up so big inside you that you feel you can’t contain it, warmth and shivery excitement spiked with sharp bursts of fear that he’s wrong, what if he’s wrong?

(Hold tight to your anger, because he’s given you back that too. No matter what else happens, at least he’s given you back that.)