Title: Do you remember?
Author: Geekmomma
Rating: R
Pairing: The Fat Lady/Violet
Summary: The Fat Lady remembers, and Violet does not. Memory is tricky.
A/N: OK, this didn't end up at all what I started out with. My first story began with a tea party, Sir Nick, and silliness. I must just be a maudlin kind of girl.
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How can you go on, not remembering the things I remember?
You still visit me, here, within the guilded oak, my home these days, at the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. You remember that we are friends, that we knew each other, and you find me familiar. You bring me the latest gossip, the news from all over these walls. You never notice how little I care. It is you, not the news, I want.
I want to hear you, see you. I love the flush of your cheeks as you hurry to tell me which boy was seen in which hallway with which girl in some state of undress. But your visits make me miss the rest of you. I want to smell you, and taste you and breathe you in, but that’s not possible, here, after all these years.
Do you remember anything from your younger days, from our younger days?
Let me remind you.
We were students once. Hogwarts was cold at night, in winter. Cold from rain and sleet for days on end, and the walls were stone. Cold because the only heat came from the fires, which burned too hot to stand beside for long, and too cool to warm the room. Sometimes we used heating charms, but then hey were tricky things, and were not sustainable for long. The walls wept moisture, and when it cooled, the icy streaks made dark patterns that we used to identify as shadows caught by hobgoblins, and trapped forever, lost to the unwary. We goaded each other on, each trying to top the other with stories of how these shadows were bartered or traded or snatched.
You were there, why don’t you remember?
When not at school, we lived in the old manor house. We were distant relatives by some thread, close enough to claim a place in the house, neither families sure of their tie to the real owner, but invited never the less.
At home on Christmas holidays, it was even colder. You used to creep across the manor with a candle in your hand, buried under layers of clothing: stockings, petticoats, flannels, smock, robes, dressing gown, cap. You would come to my room, throw more fuel on the fire until it blazed and crackled, and then you would find anything else in the room to throw on the bed, already heaped with blankets and downy comforters and handknitted throws. As fast as possible, you would slide yourself and your many layers under the covers, not letting any of the warm air escape. Then you would let me peel you naked, down to the last layer of skin, as the space under the blankets grew hot.
I would kiss the tip of your nose, a small icicle, exposed where everything else was covered by cloth, until it grew warmer. Then I would move to your fingertips, starting with kisses, and then draw each finger into my mouth, I would suck each one while you watched my lips, watched my tongue, until you couldn’t stand it anymore and would pull your hands away. You would take my face between those fingers and pull it to yours for a kiss.
Your lips were so sweet, like chocolate and honey. Heat, when there was no heat. Spring, in the middle of winter. You kissed me back like I was life, like I was breath, like you would never forget.Why don't you remember?
It wasn't always cold. We were always home for the warmest months. Sometimes, when summer lay on the house like a wet blanket, and each breath felt like it was as so thick you could drink it, the whole household moved into the cellars to sleep. We all turned nocturnal, using the cooler night hours to roam, sleeping through the days. Upstairs, the air refused to move, each bedroom became a mausoleum, each bed a sepulcher.
You and I were left to our own devices those days, servants and parents too hot to care. We explored the rooms, pretending to see them for the first time, and made slow, sweaty exploration of every bed. Does any of this flit through your mind, as you tell me about the latest gossip now? Do you remember the feeling of my lips at your breast? Of my fingers inside of you? Does your tongue remember the taste and feel of me? I can still remember the tang of your sweat as I licked my way from your ankle to your hip, to that groove where your hipbone curved into belly, watching the silvery hairs on your body respond to the cooling air.
You said my fingertips were cool, the coolest thing you had ever felt. Like the deepest waters of the lake, like the blunt edges of icicles melting against skin, like the deepest, wet layers of garden earth under rocks and below the dry topsoil.
Now do you remember?
In spring, we had picnics under the apple trees, books in hand, studying hard for our exams, heads in each other's laps. In fall, we picked apples and fed them to each other and read poetry until the sun went down and our fingers and toes were cold with the coming winter, walking back to our common rooms through a tunnel of starry night sky. Do you remember, telling each other our fortunes under the autumnal equinox? You said I would know great joy. I believed you.
In winter and summer, in spring and fall, you and I were together. We were wealthy and privileged daughters of the oldest wizarding families. At Hogwarts, we were inseparable. Later, we had private tutors, and private magic lessons, and spent every moment together. Our parents thought us brilliant pupils with all the time we spent studying. They didn't realize we were devoted to each other as much as to the books. The outside world thought us as two peas in a pod, and admired us for the beauties we were. We had suitors, and offers, and we turned them all down to be together.
I think you must remember this part.
We planned to meet late one late spring night, by the old ruins on our manor ground. I had been visiting an aunt, and had been away for weeks. I owled you every day, and you owled me back. Your answers seemed shorter and shorter. I thought you were immersed in your studies, as you sometimes became. You intended to be a great name in charms research.
When I reached the rocky ledge that used to be a wall, on top of the hill that overlooked the manor grounds, I found not only you, but also a man I had met many times before, a most ardent suitor, waiting. All I could think about was rushing into your arms, but this other person brought me up short, and I forgot my manners for a moment. I glared at him. He smiled, and you smiled at him, and then you both turned to look at me, and I looked between the two of you, and realized.
I had lost you. How had you slipped away without my knowing? How could I have missed this? I blushed with shame and frustration, while you explained that it had come on suddenly, and that you were in love. You said that what we had was only a childish romance, everyone had crushes while they were young, and that you knew a way that we could just pretend this had never happened.
You, who thought yourself so knowledgeable of charms, performed the spell. I never had the heart to tell you that it didn't work on me. I never had the courage to ask if it hadn't worked on you. It seems that it did. I am glad that I left you then, that I left the manor house we grew up in, that I lived my life as if I couldn't remember. You seemed happy, and that was enough.
What dreadful irony that later, when our portraits were painted, when we were older, middle aged and lumpy, that both ended up here. Here at Hogwarts, where my portrait sees your every day. We visit every day because, after all, we were such good friends growing up.
So you sit in your portrait, Vi, and I’ll stay in mine. I'll let the children in and out, and smile, and gossip, and smile, and miss you, and smile, and remember for both of us.