earlybloomingparentheses

Uncreated Night, ch. 10: What I do and what I dream include thee

Rating: Explicit

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

Remus can drift through whole worlds in his own mind. Sirius lives in his body, electric, ablaze. In 1979 and 1996 and 1978 and 1981 and in many other years and many different places, they search for the bridges between them and the spaces they can share. Time after time, they fight their way back together, head and heart, mind and body.

And in 1998, Remus stands before the veil, wondering if he should finally stop thinking, and just act.

chapter 10, in which we go beyond the veil. author’s notes WITH SPOILERS follow.

---

I’ve been trying to push myself in this fic in terms of formal experimentation. the non-chronological storytelling, but also the experiments with chapters 4 (the letters), 6 (time passes) and this last chapter, chapter 10. plus all the references to other works. I enjoyed it, and I think I learned a lot.

this chapter almost didn’t happen. I almost left things up in the air. that was the plan from the beginning--to end with chapter 9, remus walking through the veil. I talked through my change of mind with bigblackdog, who is, I have to be honest, partly the reason it ends this way instead. when I began the fic, in the fall of 2017, I was pretty sure my life would look like remus’ does when he thinks he has to live in his own head: small, on the outside, big, on the inside. I thought that would be okay. and maybe it would have. but since then I’ve changed my dissertation to be more experimental and more exciting, and gotten closer to my little group of queer friends, and started dating bbd, and just generally lived more like I imagined I wanted to but couldn’t. and my life seems less narrow and things seem more possible. and that felt important to communicate: that I have literally thought, this is simply not possible for me, and I was wrong. I have also thought, I know other people say things aren’t possible and then it turns out that they are, but that will not be true for ME. so. I’m not leaving remus suspended in that moment of walking through the veil forever. he gets sirius back. he gets tonks and harry. he gets to have things.

and that’s not, probably, a simple “happily ever after, the end.” one thing I wanted to show with the non-chronological storytelling was that there’s no stopping place for remus. he’s dealing with the same issues and questions over and over again. his world narrows and widens and narrows; he’ll never be a totally different person. but at the same time, he does grow. he gains perspective on these cycles. he’ll never be free of his hangups and anxieties and insecurities, but he can learn to relate to them differently. and he can learn to embrace the things about himself that are wonderful. maybe he thinks too much, but he can also think himself back into creation.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do 
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, XXVIII