.
Part
[ I ]
you came as the warrior
released-returned in a time of peace
to a unfamiliar countryside
realizing that the battles were fought
for people and places
that have become foreign
Aries
[March 21 - April 20]
Mars
His flat starts out bare and empty, three echoing rooms, the bright chips in the mosaic tiles that decorate the floor the only color in the place.
He sleeps on a pallet like a prisoner, more exhausted when he awakes than when he lay down. It may have been almost two years, the first spent in a coma, the second wandering, but his eyes are still ringed in darkness.
The nights are like tunnels that he passes through, stars spinning back the night until the dawn is unveiled. There is a week of sickly dawns before the sun shines gold again.
The first month is all darkness and half-formed visions. He anticipates enemies around every corner with foreboding that compresses his soul.
He presses through because he must, because he lived against all odds and he cannot squander this gift as he did the first forty years of life. And yet he worries the bone of the future into slivers of the past.
During the night he stares out of the window at the halos of golden light, night-dark path alley-ways. He is near enough to the harbor to hear the symphony of night sounds assembling into their own songs, and near enough to scent the salt of the Mediterranean.
Just when he is certain that this moment in time is as far as he is able to go mentally, physically, emotionally—the currents of his past making the break too hard to withstand, the horizon of happiness looking like a razors edge he can never scale or cross—he begins to see the brightness of grace at the edges of his vision. They flash like stars at the very brink of the darkness.
He had made being an asshole a business—plotting his next move over the desk in his dungeons. Unlearning these patterns is like unmaking himself, but he is determined to tear out every stitch and begin again.
Taurus
[April 21 - May 21]
Venus
As the weather warms, his days are full of forgetting: reading poetry, attending mass in Spanish on Sundays, wandering like a shadow through the bazaar, and eating on the edge of the port.
The flat is filling: a plush futon covered with crimson embroidered scarves, a tooled brass lamp with sensuous curves, ancient and modern books that line the walls and stack in the corners, a rug made of bright silk remnants, and a low table for eating at.
He dreams. They are unformed and dark but behind them is healing light shining through like starry-pinpricks.
Memories unfold and float away in the haze of a healing brain.
It has been two years now but the date, May second, is indelibly incised on his soul.
It rains. On his balcony are intricately decorated clay pots lined against the brass railing next to bags of topsoil. He brings out potted dahlias, purple as the onslaught of twilight. He plants them in between the showers of spring rain until the balcony is an oasis of green life.
He is learning to cook; it is surprisingly or unsurprisingly like potions, depending on a person's perspective. When he started he followed the recipes to the letter and weighed all of his ingredients, but slowly he is learning to take risks. His mushrooms are still cut in perfect little squares and he doubts that will ever change.
He has a tagine now. A lovely clay affair, all painted with bright yellow lemons on the warm terra-cotta hued background. He slow-cooks lamb and oranges, or saffron and monkfish, or tender beef and dates under its pyramided lid.
He finds it is better to be kind. Kindness isn't what he thought when he was in school: a synonym for weakness. It doesn't come in the purple of bruised knees, the darkness of a black eye, or the red of a well-aimed hex. He finds it takes courage to be kind, to slow his words, to smile at the shopkeeper or the priest. It takes courage but he perseveres because the world has so much evil already—it is better to be kind.
Gemini
[May 22 - June 21]
Mercury
The breeze swirls up off of the Mediterranean, courting the pages of the book that lays open, creamy pages bare to the sun. The dark-haired man does not interrupt its dance; in fact, he does not even notice it. His dark eyes are watching the lovely young woman at the rail of the balcony with appreciation that looks a bit like longing.
In one hand she cradles a glass of pale wine and the long, elegant fingers of the other bear a slender cigarette.
She is vaguely familiar but he is too relaxed to apply himself to attempting recognition.
She turns, acknowledging his gaze with a lift of her glass and a half smile.
He wants to speak to her but lacks the courage, finding himself smiling back shyly.
Time is a mountainous presence and he moves through it like a termite, tunneling dim passages beneath the cosmic skin of continuance, like a miner wandering his way through tunnels with faulty lamps. They prick the darkness as the flair of a match-strike.
She is walking towards him, her hips swaying as gently as the waves.
He is at a disadvantage, seated as he is. She towers over him, shaking her curling hair out of her eyes. But she seats herself next to him and reaches out to brush her fingertips across his knuckles gently, as though she doesn't quite expect him to be solid.
The contact sends sparks up his arm.
"I didn't believe it was you, at first," she says and smiles warmly.
All at once he knows her. The context blindsides him and he recoils. "Miss Granger?"
His voice cracks and he feels lightheaded.
She smiles blindingly and then frowned as he pulls away from her.
"I am sorry—I just saw you..." she trails off and takes a distracted drag from her cigarette. "And I had to say something. I thought you recognized me, too."
No, he hadn't, but now he feels like a simpleton because her lovely curling hair, though tamer now, can't be anyone else's. Her expressive mouth is just as he remembers it from her incessant chatter during to many potions classes to count.
"No one has seen you since you checked yourself out of St. Mungos," she continues quietly.
It has been so long since he has had to be biting and sarcastic that he feels like he has forgotten how. Instead he answers simply, "I didn't want to be seen."
She smiles again and sips her wine. "Is it alright if I stay?" She motioned to his table.
He shrugs and tugs his book closer but doesn't read it.
She offers a silver cigarette case to him. "Smoke?"
He doesn't smoke but he takes one anyway. When she leans forward to flick her silver lighter, he catches the scent of her perfume, a delicate but spicy amber scent. It matches her lovely hazel eyes somehow.
"I'll get a bottle of wine," she says, but it's a question.
He takes a long drag, a deep breath at the same time, and inclines his head.
She grins brightly and leaves the smoking things on the table as she returns to the bar.
When she returns, she brings a French burgundy and two bulbous glasses.
"You seem older," he muses. Has it really only been two years?
She lights another cigarette as a delicate flush winds around her neck. "Time-turner."
He nods once and busies himself by peeling back the foil on the bottle and easing out the cork.
There is a long pause as they drink and re-center.
"So…" she begins, but then stops.
He knows what she wants to ask: for an accounting of him and what he has done and how he survived, his motives and desires and all of the thousand little 'whys' and 'wherefores'. He can see the questions swirling in her eyes just as thickly as when she was a student.
He is surprised that he has a response for her unasked questions.
"My past… even so recently as March… consists of a great graveyard of monuments crumbling among the wonder-less backdrops of my horrible choices. I can't recount the last forty-years any more than you could pack all of your belongings into a single suitcase."
He is still surprised when she nodded knowingly.
"I'm surprised to have found you but so, so happy that you seem to be…" She starts earnestly but trails off as she recollects just whom she is speaking to. "I'm sorry Professor—I tend towards the romantic side of things."
"Really, Miss Granger? I had no idea." But he is amused and teasing. Conversation is coming easier now. He is surprised at this but unwilling to pursue that dangerous line of thinking. "Tell me about what has been happening, then?"
Her words are universes of lights, the ribbons of the aurora borealis, undiluted by the stars or the coming of the dawn. Her words are waterfalls, earthquakes, unexplored oceans, yellowed maps that lead to the lost becoming found.
He is fascinated.
At first she speaks of people they know—their careers and aspirations and the little families that are springing up. But soon they are winding through Alchemy theory and Hermione is sparkling.
When night has fallen and she gathers herself and her empty cigarette case up, he is surprised to feel disappointed.
"Would it be alright—I mean—may I come back to see you?" she asks quietly.
He only shrugs and then she is gone.
This is a story of growth, change and a narrative of "newness" or "firsts".
Edited on September 11th, 2014 by renaid who corrals my wandering tenses.