Disclaimer: Harry Potter and friends belong to J. K. Rowling. And while Nicolas and his wife are historical figures, I'm considering them as book characters only, a part of the canon world that Rowling created.

Challenge: The Yin and Yang Challenge

Challenge Issuer: XxFearlessDeparturexX

Where?: Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum

Challenge: Pick a number for a 'Yin' quality and another for a 'Yang' quality, be given them and write a fic, either romance or friendship, expressing said qualities.

Yin Quality: Honey. Yang Quality: Masculine.

Notes: Meant to write Lucius/Narcissa. Did this instead. o_0 Not sure what to think of it, really: I realise that I probably messed up a hundred and one things (though I'm well aware that I mostly assigned darkness to Yang instead of Yin, and did so quite deliberately) -- but this fic came to me in images and feelings, not specific words. And as a result of that, it's probably rather weird and not that great. Still, a challenge is a challenge! I need your comments. Please, please review, even if you don't particularly like it...constructive criticism is spiffy, particularly. ;) Hope you enjoy!~

She remembers white sheets soaring through the air like feathers to be caught by her mother and neatly tucked in under a heavy mattress. A dull but sheltered life of domesticity stretching both behind and before her.

She remembers Nicolas's dark, ever-challenging eyes as he asks her what the empty jar on the sideboard will contain. She tells him honey.

"Everything begins empty," he tells her a moment later, brimming with a sudden, passionate excitement that only the young can instantly muster. "But we fill things up as we wish -- they become, have a purpose, what we choose them to be. But is it not possible, Perenelle, to alter things when they are full? To redefine them, give them new meaning?"

He springs up and starts pacing in the tiny, cramped kitchen, barely sparing her a glance until she moves to answer him -- how she is not sure, but she feels that she must answer. Then he stops, stills, and looks into her widened eyes. She falls silent, all thoughts of speech forgotten.

"Is it not possible, Perenelle, that you will eat the honey with your small, sweet mouth and after fill the jar with something else? That the honey jar will not always be a honey jar?"

She nods, as she senses that this is what he wants, but she is really thinking that now he has defined it as such, with that impassioned, alluring voice, it will always be a honey jar.

"Nothing is a fixed state, my dear. Everything has the power to change -- the power to be changed. Nothing is rigid or defined: not matter, not life, not you or I -- not you and I."

There is a moment of unspoken things unsaid. And then he kisses her, in that tiny, cramped kitchen.

"Science," he says as he takes her hand, "and magic."

He takes her hand in that tiny, cramped kitchen, and pulls her into a world that she could never have imagined.

_________

She remembers white weddings in churches and white dresses -- her own, her sisters' -- roses and kisses, in churches and not in churches.

She remembers, before that, many more black dresses in those same churches. Less people to kiss, less people to love, a state that cannot be altered or avoided no matter what Nicolas Flamel says.

Her husband.

She remembers someone growing inside, curled up like a bud in darkness, but then blossoming, opening -- then withering, struck by disease: no children at play in the sunshine, or with grubby faces, grubby hands, clutching at her skirts and tugging her away from her washing, but bottles and unwashable grime and darkened corridors to lighted doorways which she cannot pass through: the world of change. The world of men. Of magic.

But she also remembers how he returns each night from his work to slowly run the ebony brush through her hair, even as it starts to whiten, turns to ivory and frost: a hundred strokes.

If she sits in front of the mirror in that spot, closes her eyes, she can feel it. Smooth and gentle from his calloused, masculine hands -- sharp contrast to the jibes, arguments, roughness of their daily lives. Life.

Ah, but then he succeeds, she remembers. The Philosopher's Stone. Elixir of Life. Eternal youth -- or what they have left of it -- and any gold that they desire.

Things change, of course, though the honey jar is still just a honey jar.

_________

She remembers another white dress as they renew their wedding vows.

But she also remembers heavy blackness, coffin of her sisters, and even more black dresses. Because the Elixir, the gift of extended life, is purely Nicolas's to give as he will and he will share it only with her. He says that she is his gift to the world: the one gift that matters.

Of course, they have to move. It is eventually obvious that her worn, feminine hands are not as worn as they should be, that the frown lines on her husband's broad forehead, often obscured by his long, wild hair, are not as deep as they ought to be. She remembers bidding farewell to the place of her childhood; then, going to new places, experiencing new things. Nicolas's life's work is completed -- this they both know -- but if one lives forever then one must live enough for those who don't.

Perenelle closes her eyes, then, the night that Nicolas agrees that the Stone must be destroyed: his life's work. His hands do not shake as he runs the brush through the tangled weave of her hair, but every stroke feels like a goodbye all the same.

"Nothing is a fixed state, my dear," he tells her weakly, when they realise that he will die before she does. "Not matter. Not life. Not you and I."

A year later she remembers unfurling white sheets as they separate her from the evening gloom. She finally shows him that she disagrees. Death is a fixed state. They died apart but will meet again.

Opposites attract, yes. But only those who can walk side-by-side will forever have a path ahead.

Fin.