Thy Music Still To Play and Sing (bronze_ribbons) (31 Jan)

Title: Thy Music Still To Play and Sing
Author: bronze_ribbons
House: Ravenclaw
Date/Challenge: 31 - Music
Character/Pairing: post-Snape/Lupin, pre-Lupin/Draco
Genre/Warnings (as applicable): Heaps of angst. References to character deaths.
Rating: PG
Words: ~ 1225
Notes: For krissybl. A sequel to "Presence". The title is from "Greensleeves."


Thy Music Still To Play and Sing

Your vows you've broken, like my heart,
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?
Now I remain in a world apart
But my heart remains in captivity.

- a verse from “Greensleeves,” attributed to Henry VIII

The first time Remus Lupin heard Draco Malfoy playing a flute, he thought he’d fallen asleep, and that the harsh, irregular melody contaminating the air was merely just part of another dream about Severus. It had gotten so that he dreaded such dreams: they were vivid and wild, drenching all of his senses with an intoxicatingly toxic blend of memory and longing and regret. In them, he could once again smell the traces of Severus’s potion ingredients, and the tang of sweat drying against the inside of a thigh or across a scarred palm; he could taste the dregs of watered-down wine and the slurry of a stew improvised over a campfire; he could observe the elegant glide and swoop of Severus’s hands, and he could savour the hesitant dance of those hands and lips across his chest and face and arms.

There was more. There was always more, in the dreams, more than Severus and Remus had ever managed to give to each other. And now Severus was no more, cut down by Lucius in the next-to-last battle of the war, and Remus had not hesitated for even an instant when he next happened upon the Malfoys: the first Reducto had slammed Lucius into the nearest wall, and the second one had broken his neck, and neither Narcissa nor Draco had dared the slightest whimper or cry at seeing their lord and father thus destroyed. They both understood what they’d owed to Snape -- even spoiled, smug Draco seemed to have grasped that at last, judging from some of the images cached in the vials Lupin had retrieved from Spinner’s End.

It had taken the better part of the following year before he was able to bury Snape properly -- there were those who would never forgive him for murdering Dumbledore, and others who would never forgive Remus for being a werewolf, and he had had to call upon Harry, Hermione, and Ron’s collective influence to obtain the remote plot. He told no one of its location, fearing righteous vandals as well as shameless grave-robbers, but he was aware of Severus’s other visitors: McGonagall left bottles of Scotch and fragments of shortbread, and Narcissa’s house-elves tended the rosemary bush and the many-thorned jasmine vines she had planted nearby.

And Draco Malfoy serenaded the headstone with his flute. The second time Remus heard the boy play, he felt his throat close up, recognising some of the old English airs and Scottish laments and Welsh lullabies that Severus had secretly loved. There hadn’t been enough time for those, either -- Severus hadn’t been one to indulge in thoughtless humming, and he didn’t tolerate it in his workspaces, either, claiming that it disturbed delicate ingredients and disrupted the fragile progress of master-level potions being brewed. But he had covertly watched Severus at concerts and balls before the war, and the memories stowed in the Pensieve-vials had included glimpses of Severus soothing Draco out of nightmares with the cadences of “Ar hyd y nos” and snippets of other ancient tunes.

Remus had not actually looked at Draco the first two times. The third time he heard the flute, his heart almost stopped: Severus Snape was standing by the grave, scowling as Draco rushed and fumbled through one of the worst renditions of “Greensleeves” Remus had ever heard.

Lupin found his voice only after the final note had evaporated. “Draco.”

“It’s about time you showed up,” Draco said, his voice taut. “He won’t talk to me. No matter what I play, he just glares.”

“Draco,” Remus managed, with difficulty. “It isn’t him.”

“It is too!” Draco shouted. “I did the spell exactly the way he wrote it, and I’m playing the music he likes, and Mother gave me a flask of wine, and--”

“Draco,” Remus ground out. “I taught Defence as well. I am familiar with the spell.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Draco sneered. “Are you afraid--?”

Remus, his lips almost white with anger, cast a Silencio on the boy, Summoning both Draco’s wand and flute as he did so and stabbing them into the soft ground between them. Draco gasped as the thin silver reed half-disappeared into the earth, its upper half quivering with the force of Lupin’s shove.

Lupin almost smiled at the boy’s outrage. “I’m a barbarian, eh? What were you thinking? I fucking miss him too, you pathetic little snot, but doesn’t he deserve some peace after all of these years?”

Draco’s expression turned from mulishness to horror, his mouth working soundlessly as it dawned on him why both Lupin and Snape were displeased. Lupin kept his own face stony as he watched the boy crumple into tears and turn to Severus’s ghost, his arms outstretched as he voicelessly pleaded for -- forgiveness? pardon? acknowledgment? Lupin wasn’t sure, and Lupin didn’t care: he had silently promised to Severus that he keep watch over Draco Malfoy as needed, but he wasn’t ready to like the brat, never mind love him.

And oh, God, it hurt, seeing Severus here. Seeing, and knowing that it was merely a vision manufactured out of a stray sliver of Severus’s soul, lured away from where it belonged with the power of heartache and melody.

“End it,” Lupin said, and lifted the Silencio.

“I--”

“End it,” Lupin hissed. “For the love of anything you call holy, let him rest.”

Reluctantly, Draco stepped over to the half-buried flute. His eyes never leaving Severus’s ghost, he snapped the flute where it met the ground, so that the section lodged in the ground remained in it.

The apparition instantly began to fade from view, but not before it bestowed on Lupin a semblance of a grateful smile. Seeing this, Draco flung his half of the flute at Remus and then collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

Remus would have given much to do the same. His entire body ached with the effort of not lunging toward the ghost, even though he fully realised his arms and lips would have closed in on nothing but absence -- that he would have clawed at the damp emptiness of air, clamoring for more, more, more of what had never been enough. For a moment, he closed his eyes and allowed the grief to surge through his veins at will, scalding his nerves and numbing his lungs; for a moment, he imagined letting it stop his breathing and smother the too-insistent beat of his heart into stillness.

Then he opened his eyes, Vanished the segment of the silver flute Draco had hurled at him, and plucked a blade of grass from a nearby clump. He twirled it between his fingers for an instant -- silence for the dead, songs for the living -- and then Transfigured it into a plain wooden flute.

When Draco looked up, Remus held the new instrument out to him.

Draco glanced at the grave. Remus shook his head.

“No,” he said. “If you require an audience, you’ll have to settle for me.”

After a long minute, Draco stood up and accepted the present.