gwendolyn vane. (gwrach) wrote in disorderic, @ 2017-11-30 20:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | gwendolyn vane |
WHO: Gwendolyn Vane
WHAT: Dreams, good and bad, and dementors
WHEN: From childhood until today, 30th November
WARNINGS: Grief & dementorness!
David Winter’s face shone, the wind turning his cheeks bright red and making his eyes water on occasion, when it hit just right. He blinked to dispel it and Gwen laughed at him, a gurgling, delighted sound that was muffled by her scarf. “Daddy, your nose is red,” she said, reaching out. “You’re Rudolph.” David laughed back, lifting his hand and catching her small fist. “I’m Rudolph.” “Now you have to do the reindeer dance,” Gwen said, as imperiously as a small child possibly could. Laughing again, this time louder, David hoisted Gwen up, clutched her closer and nodded. He started to dance — Gwen woke up. It felt like a hush had fallen over the Vane household: everything quieter, softer, silence smothering the laughter that had been there beforehand. Gwen hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with the quiet. She didn’t know how to react when even her mother’s sobbing was hushed. Her own cries felt loud, like a volatile explosion leaving her every time. The noise shocked her, shocked the household. She’d forced herself to stop, an hour before, and now sat on the stairs, her elbows on her knees, listening to her mother’s low voice as she talked to her grandmother. “It’s like it’s a dream,” Violet said. “Not a good one. A really bad one. It’s like it’s a nightmare.” She started to cry again. Gwen could hear it, the ragged edge of her gasping breaths breaking like a tide over her ears. It was suddenly hard to breathe. She wanted her mum. She wanted her dad, back. She went to find Cai. “What do you dream about?” Cerys had asked her, tilting her head in curiosity. Gwen knew she’d expected an answer like the one she had been talking about: Disney princesses and dashing princes and the heady unfurling of romance which always ended in marriage. She told her, instead, about her real dreams. Gwen shifted in the playhouse, leaned closer, and told her about the wild snapping of magic, how dead bodies must look, about a blood soaked newspaper opened on a dead man’s lap. She told her about the wailing and wailing of bereaved people and the glint of a Death Eater mask she’d never seen, but seen over and over in the papers. “I’m sorry,” she said, later, to her teacher and to her mother. “It won’t happen again.” It didn’t. She got better at not admitting to her dreams. The nightmares became less frequent and she tried to stop reading and rereading articles about her dad. The dreams got better. “What do you want to be when you’re older?” her mum asked, pulling a cupboard door open and grabbing at spices. She added them into the pot precisely, following a recipe that she had stored in her head and never seemed to forget. Her movements were sharp, precise, miles away from the lackadaisical attitude she took to many household chores. Gwen rarely saw her mum cook like this anymore, but she loved it. She loved to sit in the large, warm kitchen, her notebook in front of her, occasionally drawing or writing in it. Mostly, she just watched Violet cook: watched the way she danced occasionally, or half-sung snippets of lyrics to herself, some of them misheard pop songs. She let the warmth and familiarity of it suffuse her, enveloping her. If she concentrated on it and nothing else, then nothing could get in that would harm either of them. So: instead of telling her mum how her fingers itched to write, Gwen smiled and said, “Probably a Healer.” Violet turned to her and smiled. “My clever girl.” Gwen grinned, lit up by the compliment. She didn’t let herself dwell on the lie at the heart of the moment. Hogwarts had been filled with images of her dad, ghostly remnants popping up everywhere, like faded dreams of him. His name was on a few plaques, his picture in prefect photographs. Some of the professors had had stories of him, which Gwen needled out of them with questions and a bright smile. She held onto every almost-memory tightly. It was during a detention she found another remnant of him: his name, scratched into the wall behind one of the suits of armour she’d been tasked with cleaning completely. Gwen looked at it and reached out, touching the shape of the letters. It was a slow, hesitant touch, as if she expected it to bite her. It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. All the same, she felt a hard pressure on her chest. She was quiet for the rest of the night and when she dragged herself into bed, she grabbed her journal and stared at it for a long time before writing down: It’s like almost catching onto something I never got to know and I hate it. She knew it was dramatic, she could feel a part of her brain mocking her for her own teenage angst. She wrote it anyway and then she closed her eyes and tried not to cry before she went to bed. She was sixteen now. She was too old for it. “Oh, don’t be silly,” Violet said, with a huff. Her breath hung in front of her: the winter morning had came on suddenly with a frosty chill that clung to everyone in the small city. Violet had her large winter coat on, a scarf, gloves — Gwen had let her mother thrust three scarves at her, but had stupidly went for the prettiest one (and not the warmest). She regretted it now. She regretted it, too, because she couldn’t hide in it. “I’m not being silly,” Gwen said, trying to sound strong and certain and sure of herself. “Of course you are,” Violet said, exasperation creeping into her voice. “Being a Healer was your dream. The rejection — Gwendolyn, it was only a setback.” Gwen tightened her hands into fists in her pockets, digging her nails into the flesh of her palms. It wasn’t her mother’s fault. She’d always been to afraid to tell her that her dreams weren’t really of being a Healer. It had been a nice idea, a fantasy, one she hadn’t ever really committed herself too, because behind everything was a certainty that what she wanted to do was write. She wanted to write and investigate and interrogate the world around her. She wanted to be like her dad. She’d always been to scared to tell her mother. The cold was making it impossible to think of anything else. “It’s not only a setback,” Gwen said, lifting her shoulders. It was a bad time to tell Violet, heading out for a coffee and lunch, but there was no time like the present. Gwen wanted to be brave. “I want to write. I always did. I’ve been submitting pieces.” A beat and then, “I’m getting one published.” A stillness had settled over Violet, even as she kept walking. There was a severe line to her shoulders, a clear battle cry in the set of her jaw. Gwen looked at her mother’s profile and felt an ache in her heart. “We’ll talk about this at home,” Violet announced, in an icy voice. Gwen’s heart dropped, but she nodded. Her mother’s dreams for her had always been so different than her own. “Isn’t it like something out of another world?” Rosa asked, laughing, leaning on Gwen’s arm. Her eyes were shining, reflecting the bright lights of the annual Wizfeed Christmas party. Gwen laughed, feeling her heart swell up. “Yes, it’s magical.” There was a hush over the offices of the Daily Prophet: every time a conversation started, it was quickly cut off, everyone discussing the latest news in whispers. You Know Who, You Know Who, You Know Who. Gwen could hear it repeated over and over, reverberating in her ears. He was back and this was her worst fear, her worst nightmare, her mum’s. “What are you most afraid of?” Noel had asked her, once, while they were lying in bed, pretending at intimacies. “Ending up like my dad,” she’d said, and he’d pretended to know what she meant. She meant that she was afraid of being driven to death by a story, pursuing something until someone killed her so violently that it gave her family nightmares. She meant that she was afraid of seeing that the world was changing and deciding to do something about it, find out about why or how, or how to make it better, how to stop it and ending up dead because of it. You Know Who, You Know Who, You Know Who. It was a chant, a threat. Gwen flexed her fingers and reached for her bag. She had stories to chase, still. If the nightmares were getting worse, at least she knew why. I don’t want to die, Gwen thought, sitting bolt up right in bed. Everything whirled in her head: Narcissa Malfoy’s threat, the inferi on the pitch, Angelina’s horrible bite wound and the way her family had all looked, ill and frightened, as they stood in clumps and talked about the Death Eaters, about everything that had happened. Her mother had stood, back straight, and announced, “I lost my twin brother and my almost bloody husband and this dumb war isn’t taking another person from me.” Gwen leaned her head back against the headboard and closed her eyes. The dementor had come too close in Hogsmeade. She’d let it come too close, she’d let everything get too close to her, and it couldn’t happen. Her mum didn’t deserve to lose anyone else; her family had had too much already. She was going to survive this, she was going to keep her head down, she wasn’t going to draw too much attention to herself. It meant she’d live. She tried to go back to sleep. David was bleeding in front of her, his eyes wide, round, barely alive. He was reaching out towards her, his fingers too long and slim to be natural. Everything behind him was faded into black and white. He was speaking, but Gwen couldn’t hear him, even though she wanted to so badly it hurt. There was blood, suddenly, pooling in his lap, huge rivulets of it, blood gushing from a wound on his chest like waterfall. He was reaching for her, his hands soaked in his own blood, and the room was shaking and she jerked awake and there had been giants but there were gone now and the room wasn’t shaking, it was just Chelsea shaking her. Her dad wasn’t in the room and her heart wasn’t going to beat out of her chest. Gwen smiled at Chelsea, wanly, and stood up. It wasn’t a nightmare. It couldn’t be a nightmare, because it was real. Gwen was sure it was real. She’d been walking down the street, her bag clutched to her, her scarf pulled up to nearly cover her mouth. The screaming had started from around the corner and fear had seized Gwen’s chest, even as she started to make her way towards it. It was a deep voice, familiar, but not one she could place instantly. She rounded the corner and it got worse. The screaming was louder and there was more of it. Gwen could feel the temperature dropping, biting at her through her clothes, sending shivers up her spine. There was a pressure building on her and suddenly the screaming was there, right beside her, and it wasn’t just in her head, it couldn’t be but it sounded like Angelina, like Cai, and her mum and when she spun around she was almost sure it was going to be her dad, screaming at her to help him, even though he was already dead. She couldn’t help him. She never could. She couldn’t help anyone and there was a hooded figure coming closer and closer and — It wasn’t a nightmare. Gwen saw the creature and she knew. This was real, it was real, and it was coming towards her. Her hand was shaking so badly that she was afraid when she grabbed her wand it might fall, but she clung onto it. Her teeth chattered and her face was wet, her throat scratchy from shouting that she couldn’t remember doing. The dementor was right there, coming closer, so close she was afraid it would invade her space. Angelina had told her she could do this. Angelina, whose voice was in her ears, who she could see in her minds eye hung up like some kind of sick, twisted Death Eater trophy. Gwen screwed her eyes shut and tried to block it out, pressing aside every terrible nightmare she’d ever had, every bad dream that had haunted her. She could feel her mother’s screaming disapproval of the choices she’d made in her life crescendoing into a roar. Misery pressed in on her, trying to slide beneath her bones, insinuate itself into every thought she had. No, please, she thought, and she cast the spell, a wisp of silver appearing in front of her. No, she thought again and she cast the spell again, a not-quite shape bursting into the air and rushing the dementor. It moved back, slinking away for a moment. Gwen’s heart beat hard in her chest, bursting against her ribs. She cast the spell again, her voice stronger, trying to hear Angelina’s voice loud in her head and focusing on the good, only. She hardened her heart against every bad thought trying to clamour its way into her mind. The spell was good, it held, an animal she couldn’t identify just yet bursting out of her wand. The dementor fled. Gwen dropped her wand and, instinctively, started to cry. |