Look Out, Jo!

Mid-Year Resolution: Write more in this thing like I originally intended. Gah, I am disappointed in myself for my lack of use of this space. I shall try harder. :) Maybe if I actually told more people about it and had more feedback I'd be more inspired. Will work on that.


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They stepped out onto the concrete path. It must have been two in the morning. The air was relatively cool, though muggy. A strange air seemed to hold them there for a moment.

"I've forgotten where I parked my car," she said, glancing around the metropolis of apartment buildings.

"I'll walk you out," he replied. "That way you won't be accosted either."

"Thanks," she said, with a gentle smirking laugh.

"We're glad you came to visit tonight," he said as they weaved between the small patches of grass whose size reminded her of postage stamps. Each building towered around them, all alike it seemed, and willing to trap anyone in their labyrinth of confusion.

"I had a good time," she replied, plunging her hand into her jeans pocket for the car keys. She genuinely meant it; she had felt so isolated and alone lately. The few hours of raucaus laughter had made her nearly feel human again. "We should really get together more often."

"Liz would like that, she works so much she doesn't get to spend time with people often."

They had stopped now, paused in the middle of the parking lot, feet away from the familiar sedan, now bathed in flickering lamp post light. She was so bad at departing, even from people she knew. Her feet shuffled as she shifted her weight, straining to think what to say.

Without a sound, his arm reached out towards her, and though at the same time she recalled never having been that close to him before, her feet carried her towards him as if willed to do so. She slipped her own arm across him to form the informal side-along hug. There was a beat in which she felt stuck there, and yet felt she belonged there all the same. A small pressure came to the crown of her head, so quick and so light that she hardly noticed before it was gone.

But in that sliver of time, a needle-like point pierced her heart, introducing the smallest poke of affection to her broken and sadly cold heart. It had been so long since she had intimately touched anyone; so long that she had given up on longing for the warm connections that once sparked her fiery heart. The feeling had in fact escaped her in what seemed like an age ago; her heart had forgotten it. But for that brief moment, it tingled as if remembering an old friend.

They broke apart. The pale flickering light of the lamp post dimmed in unison with the same light that had snuck up on her heart. The air was still and pressed down on every inch of skin. Silence seemed to muffle the lot, an odd thing even at two in the morning in such a place.

"See you next week," he called to her as he turned back to his building.

"Yeah, see you," she replied, looking after him. They both smiled, tossed hands in the air in departure, and he disappeared among the postage stamp lawns and twists of stairwells.

The engine of the car roared to life, but she paused a moment thinking. The moment had raced by her, and her mind couldn't help but reach out to try and hang on to its fading shiny tail. Affection seemed like such a foreign thing now. There was a time -- she strained to remember it -- a time when affection, nay passion, coursed her body and determined every action. A time when she was intimately in love with all in her life. A time when her heart loved freely, and she was content in just loving, as was all she was ever meant to do. It seemed like another lifetime to her now. In the fog that separated her from that past, demons had attacked her heart, seized the very ventricles that pumped life through her, suffocating the chambers that fought so valiantly for survival until they collapsed in defeat. The heart had deadened itself, its last instinct to hide itself in sorrowful retreat.

But the tiniest spark had flashed, as fast as lightning. The affection of a friend had needled itself just there, just upon the surface, perhaps to simply remind the heart that it was still living. Its briefness did not harangue to hasten a reemergence. "Just remember you are still alive," it whispered.

The car seemed to move on its own spirit, circling the drive with sudden familiarity. She gazed at the passing stark buildings, still blurring together as ever, but her eyes somehow landed upon the petite concrete step of B201, its porch light noticeably brighter than the rest.

I intended to have original writing in here, not Harry Potter junk, but I think I'll make an exception for myself. I think I'll allow all new HP stuff here actually.

This is a vision of Prisoner of Azkaban, only Lupin's point of view. I will make the excuse that it will serve as a writing exercise. Well, it does kinda, doesn't it?

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Remus Lupin sat with his eyes closed. A soft breeze tickled his hair against his forehead. Around him the sounds of the platform echoed in his ears; two witches gabbing about home remedy potions, a young wizard preaching educatedly to an older man, and the soft sound of a train approaching in the distance. He opened his eyes to find a small child staring at him as she clung tightly to her mother's pale pink robes.

He smiled at her and softly spoke, "Hello."

The child's eyes bulged as she started to scream shrilly, taking Remus by absolute surprise. The child's mother, while not seemingly as surprised as he, turned to look at him and upon seeing his tattered cloak and rustled hair, expressed her disgust by crinkling her nose and then led the wailing child off further down the platform.

Having been the recipient of similar reactions in the past, the incident only slightly effected him, and he glanced down the railway to see the shining red Hogwarts Express approaching the platform at which he sat, steam billowing over it like a skyline of fluffly clouds.

The train came to a grinding halt and let out an exasperated sound of air. The sight of it was greater than Remus remembered from his childhood. Its bright skin and shiny black edges had become a symbol to him of acceptance, freedom, and comfort. It was within the walls of Hogwarts that he found his true home, one that generally tolerated his wolfish affliction, at least more than those in his family home. This was his ticket to an understanding family.

He arose and gathered his luggage. It was still rather early to board the train -- he hadn't yet seen any school-aged children to speak of -- but he was still recovering from a very recent transformation and felt exhausted. The compartment seating would be much more comfortable than this hard wooden bench, surely.

Once on the train, he seemingly chose a random compartment in which to settle, though truthfully he had selected it with great precision. It was the same compartment in which he rode every year to school, collecting there with his other friends for a riotous eight hours of entertainment. After hoisting his things up into the luggage rack, he knelt onto the floor, trying to cramp his now much taller body as close to the carpet as possible. He ran his hand along the wall just under one seat and smiled. "Still there," he said aloud as he ran his fingers across the distinctive letters carved into the surface: "JP + LE"

With a little effort he got up again and settled into the corner of one of the benches near the window and gazed out of it. As a student he always had sat in this spot, daydreaming as the English and Scottish countryside rolled past him, often being interrupted by James and Sirius' hyjinks and frequently being bopped in the head by some flying thing.

The thought clouded his mind slightly. The memory of Sirius and those joyful days of boyhood bothered him now. Not only had Sirius turned to betray James and Lily, but the news of his escape from Azkaban that had The Daily Prophet bursting at the seams day in and day out worried him more. Somewhere Sirius had soured and had now spent twelve years being demented in Azkaban. His escape was a serious threat to wizardkind, and Remus remembered now that Hogwarts was to be surrounded by Azkaban guards this year. "What happened to you, Sirius?" he thought. "What devil grasped your heart?"

Remus shivered and yawned. Students were now arriving on the platform, some, he noted, in a pack of flaming red hair. His eyes felt like they couldn't hold themselves open and so, leaning his temple against the cool windowpane, he quietly and easily fell into sleep.

His sleep was troubled with strange visions and indistinct blurs of cool colors and shadows. Occasionally, muffled voices entered his dreams, falling out of the surroundings if he strained to understand them. Eventually, the train jarring to a stop shook him from a deepness of sleep, his eyes now open but still unseeing as it was pitch black, and his ears greeted with the shuffling and confusion of several students hissing at and tumbling over one another.

"Quiet," he instructed hoarsely to them. They seemed suddenly still, surely taken unaware by his sudden consiousness. Conjuring up light from his wand, he peered around at them briefly. "Stay where you are."

But before he could investigate any further, the compartment door slid open and before him stood the whispy shadowy figure of a chilling dementor. Automatically, Remus drew his wand at the creature, and wordlessly, a shining white figure leapt from the wandtip and chased the dementor from the compartment, taking its chilling presense along with it.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked. The lanterns had relit and he could see the frightened looks on the faces of the four students staring wordlessly back at him. A fifth student had fainted dead away onto the floor.

"Help me get him up onto the bench again, will you?" Remus asked the nearest boy, who looked timid and small.

"Professor, what was that?" one of the girls asked. She had bushy brown hair and slightly large front teeth.

"A dementor," Remus answered her as he splayed the unconscious boy out on the one bench. Distractedly, he pressed his hand against the boy's forehead and felt that it was rather hot. "I didn't think they'd allow one onto the train, or anywhere near the students for that matter."

The girl seemed to understand and looked shocked at such news, but the others appeared equally bewildered. "They really haven't had much good training in Defence, have they?" Remus thought to himself. He was certain he had learned about dementors by the time he was their age.

He looked down again at the boy, whose eyes were now darting beneath his eyelids. Remus focused on his face a moment; something seemed awfully familiar about him. He moved his hand away from the boy's face, and the dark, wily hair swept away to reveal a bright, clear, lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

"By Merlin, it can't be..."

Remus struggled to swallow. The boy's eyes opened, revealing brilliantly green gems of familiarity. The boy pushed himself up into a sitting position, and looked around weakly at everyone. A fiery-haired girl leaned forward to hand him the circular-framed glasses that had fallen onto the floor. The world seemed to slow down as the boy slid the glasses up the bridge of his nose. Just there, just then, Remus' heart leapt forward in his chest. It was like seeing him again, seeing him as he did when he was thirteen. He might have sworn he was looking fully upon James Potter.

Remus stood up and rummaged in a bag for something. He extrated a large chocolate bar wrapped in silver paper.

"What... what was that thing?" the bespeckled boy asked.

Remus began snapping the chocolate bar into pieces. "A dementor, one of the guards of Azkaban prison." He handed the boy the largest piece of chocolate. "Eat this, you'll feel better. Excuse me, I am going to go have a word with the driver." He handed the last bits of chocolate to the other children and stepped out of the compartment. The snap of the door behind him startled him as he stood there, exasperated. He hadn't thought... he hadn't imagined how old the boy must be, but yes, he should be thirteen now he thought about it. He was mixed with delight and shock. His heart had surged at the memory of his long-departed friend, and that that boy inside the compartment was the living image of him. Peering through the glass, he noted not one of the students had eaten one bite of their chocolate. He slid the door open again.

"I haven't poisoned that chocolate, you know," Remus said smiling. His eyes were fixed on the dark-haired boy.

The boy timidly nibbled the corner of his bar and suddenly appeared less white, less shaken. He seemed surprised to have been feeling better just by this small action.

"We'll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes," Remus estimated. Still looking deliberately at the boy, he added, "Are you all right... Harry?"

The hills beyond the grove always looked best in the late afternoon. Golden in hue, they rolled along softly down, down, down -- with no sharpness about them, easing blurrily into the creek that separated them from the expanse of the rows and rows of sighing trees bursting with colorful dots of apples.

This is where Lana sat quietly whenever she needed peace. Closing her eyes, she'd breathe in deeply, nose to the air of apples and water and trees. Her hands would search the ground beneath her folded knees, soothing the firm, slick blades of grass between her fingers. This, she often thought, as strains of the "Moonlight Sonata" floated on the water in her minds' eye, was surely how it must be in heaven.

If it were absolutely quiet -- if her father weren't running the farm equipment, or her brothers weren't playing ball in the field -- if it were absolutely quiet, the birds' voices would echo across the expanse and dot the musical crashings of the creek which -- if given enough of a silent streak -- would lull Lana into the beautifully numb, soft and dreamy state of silken relaxation.