Metamorphosis, Moaning Myrtle, PG
Sep. 15th, 2006 10:38 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lysanatt.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
femgenficathonTitle: Metamorphosis
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lysa1
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: #21 - "All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before. The young are at home here. Their eyes have always seen satellites in the sky. They have never known a world in which war did not mean annihilation..." -Margaret Mead.
Summary: Myrtle is coming to terms with changes in life and death as she discovers she still has a tribute to make. Beta by the wonderfulldybastet.
Metamorphosis
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
The water is an everlasting chain of sounds, little drops gathering into a tiny spring, then - together with other little springs - braiding themselves into a river that slowly flows over the dark marble floor, weaving through a world of broken basins and cracked cisterns. On the surface of the dirty river, debris is floating; flotsam from a ship called War. The water trickles over the floor, over the doorstep, and outside; just to disappear into the darkness of empty halls, bringing only the bell-clear music of rivers with it.
She sits here, silently, staring at the water spilling over the edge of the clogged-up basin, watching it pass her by, just as life did. The bathroom is empty now, she is used to that, only now there are no one caught in here by accident, no one to listen to her or make her laugh her sharp laughter, make her smile her wide smirk when she has delivered a particularly nice rant.
She hates to admit it, but she misses them all: the children. The young ones. The pretty ones. The crying ones. The brave.
She looks at the water spilling over the pale porcelain and she remembers: tears on pale cheeks, despair and sadness and a conscience, so abused and disturbed. She knows he is gone too, no more drip-drip-drip on a beautiful, narrow face. He is gone; to war, like all of them, teachers and students, all alike. She, on the other hand, is not. She is bound here, to this godforsaken place, an almost-ruin of happier times. She remembers. How can she not? She remembers the happier days, the days before he came here, before he took away her innocence, her life. It is strange, she thinks, how men decides to move the world, when women try to make it better. They start wars and women cry over lost husbands and dead sons.
She, luckily, has no such things to cry over. The only thing she has lost is her life and sometimes she thinks she is the happier one.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
'What are you doing, Myrtle,' a voice ask, clear as the ice on a cold winter's day, laughter skating just on the surface of it.
She looks up from the tiny lake she has conjured on the kitchen floor, a happy child, her water-blue eyes shining from mirth and definitely no matter. 'Wet!' she states, proud of what she has done, both the puddle and the word, the word the more difficult one.
'But mum has told you not to do this in here! You can go out in the garden and make water for the roses,' the soft, red mouth says, a mother nuzzling her child tenderly as she scolds her, absolutely without meaning it. 'They love the water.'
Their laughter and caresses mingle, little streams of joy and love, of innocence. 'Mum is so proud of you,' the woman says. 'You are my clever little witch.'
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
She tilts her head, following the drops, forming a little river over the floor in the great hall. She floated down there, following the little flood, through the dark corridors, through the empty staircases. Now she hovers over the large pool, almost a small lake, in the middle of the large room. She follows the drops, red, as they trickle over pale skin, drawing a pattern of pain and ebbing life over the silent face. She tries to touch him with a pale hand, translucent in the darkness. Her hand is but a cold whisper of death through dead flesh. She sits for a moment longer, her eyes running with the blood, following red and crystal clear fluids mixing under her hovering body. There are dead children all over the place, wounded witches and wizards, and the air is filled with a stench of iron.
He has taken the war inside her castle and she is nothing but hate, a shadow woven by fear and hatred.
She raises her voice in a primal cry, a storm of loss and powerlessness. This war, this slaughter? Why? She knows him, the wizard causing this: he loves what he is doing, he loves to kill, she saw that when he killed her: his disgust, his contempt. He made her feel unimportant. She never had an enemy. She never knew anything but love before she came here, and then he was here, finding her, and the world she lived in, a world of innocence and love, unimportant. Expendable.
Suddenly she realises that they all are. They are his pawns, his cattle, his prey. It hits her like a flood, the sudden recognition of what he is, and how he can be fought. She knows, with a certainty that cannot be killed: the hate, that is what he lives from, where he collects his powers, his strength. She knows, and her laughter is clear as ice, thawing on the first day of spring.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
She can almost hear her frozen heart melt, hear love return and warm her insides. She jumps in the air, floating on a stream of draught, she dives through the darkness, whispering in every ear she can find. 'Love,' she tells them, 'kills him. Don't let him make you hate!'
Maybe they listen, she does not know. She just sits in her bathroom for days, watching the drops fall, watching her death pass by. But somehow she has seen something, something that has made her grow up, not the innocent girl, the whining, crying ghost she once was. She is watching the drops fall, together with her old life, her old death. And her realisation is clear as spring water, fresh from the mountains, sparkling and new. This is the time - the moment in time - where they can all return to the age before the Fall of Man. This is how they can reclaim their innocence; how she can reclaim hers. By love. To drag people into love, into innocence: a task far more promising than dragging them into war.
She smiles as she realises that her life - or rather her death - will change. She has no intentions of being who she once was. A moaning, accusing, hating girl, bereft of her youth and her adult life.
'I forgive you, Tom Riddle,' she whispers, and her voice is pale, the words fade like rings on the water. A wind rushes through the castle and her faint outline shatters in the whiff of wind.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
Drip
The water in the girls' second floor bathroom stops running. Everything is silent. Outside, on the battlefield, a young wizard with green eyes and a prominent scar on his forehead repeats Myrtle's words, and suddenly, the world is free.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author:
lysa1Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: #21 - "All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before. The young are at home here. Their eyes have always seen satellites in the sky. They have never known a world in which war did not mean annihilation..." -Margaret Mead.
Summary: Myrtle is coming to terms with changes in life and death as she discovers she still has a tribute to make. Beta by the wonderful
ldybastet.Metamorphosis
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
The water is an everlasting chain of sounds, little drops gathering into a tiny spring, then - together with other little springs - braiding themselves into a river that slowly flows over the dark marble floor, weaving through a world of broken basins and cracked cisterns. On the surface of the dirty river, debris is floating; flotsam from a ship called War. The water trickles over the floor, over the doorstep, and outside; just to disappear into the darkness of empty halls, bringing only the bell-clear music of rivers with it.
She sits here, silently, staring at the water spilling over the edge of the clogged-up basin, watching it pass her by, just as life did. The bathroom is empty now, she is used to that, only now there are no one caught in here by accident, no one to listen to her or make her laugh her sharp laughter, make her smile her wide smirk when she has delivered a particularly nice rant.
She hates to admit it, but she misses them all: the children. The young ones. The pretty ones. The crying ones. The brave.
She looks at the water spilling over the pale porcelain and she remembers: tears on pale cheeks, despair and sadness and a conscience, so abused and disturbed. She knows he is gone too, no more drip-drip-drip on a beautiful, narrow face. He is gone; to war, like all of them, teachers and students, all alike. She, on the other hand, is not. She is bound here, to this godforsaken place, an almost-ruin of happier times. She remembers. How can she not? She remembers the happier days, the days before he came here, before he took away her innocence, her life. It is strange, she thinks, how men decides to move the world, when women try to make it better. They start wars and women cry over lost husbands and dead sons.
She, luckily, has no such things to cry over. The only thing she has lost is her life and sometimes she thinks she is the happier one.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
'What are you doing, Myrtle,' a voice ask, clear as the ice on a cold winter's day, laughter skating just on the surface of it.
She looks up from the tiny lake she has conjured on the kitchen floor, a happy child, her water-blue eyes shining from mirth and definitely no matter. 'Wet!' she states, proud of what she has done, both the puddle and the word, the word the more difficult one.
'But mum has told you not to do this in here! You can go out in the garden and make water for the roses,' the soft, red mouth says, a mother nuzzling her child tenderly as she scolds her, absolutely without meaning it. 'They love the water.'
Their laughter and caresses mingle, little streams of joy and love, of innocence. 'Mum is so proud of you,' the woman says. 'You are my clever little witch.'
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
She tilts her head, following the drops, forming a little river over the floor in the great hall. She floated down there, following the little flood, through the dark corridors, through the empty staircases. Now she hovers over the large pool, almost a small lake, in the middle of the large room. She follows the drops, red, as they trickle over pale skin, drawing a pattern of pain and ebbing life over the silent face. She tries to touch him with a pale hand, translucent in the darkness. Her hand is but a cold whisper of death through dead flesh. She sits for a moment longer, her eyes running with the blood, following red and crystal clear fluids mixing under her hovering body. There are dead children all over the place, wounded witches and wizards, and the air is filled with a stench of iron.
He has taken the war inside her castle and she is nothing but hate, a shadow woven by fear and hatred.
She raises her voice in a primal cry, a storm of loss and powerlessness. This war, this slaughter? Why? She knows him, the wizard causing this: he loves what he is doing, he loves to kill, she saw that when he killed her: his disgust, his contempt. He made her feel unimportant. She never had an enemy. She never knew anything but love before she came here, and then he was here, finding her, and the world she lived in, a world of innocence and love, unimportant. Expendable.
Suddenly she realises that they all are. They are his pawns, his cattle, his prey. It hits her like a flood, the sudden recognition of what he is, and how he can be fought. She knows, with a certainty that cannot be killed: the hate, that is what he lives from, where he collects his powers, his strength. She knows, and her laughter is clear as ice, thawing on the first day of spring.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
She can almost hear her frozen heart melt, hear love return and warm her insides. She jumps in the air, floating on a stream of draught, she dives through the darkness, whispering in every ear she can find. 'Love,' she tells them, 'kills him. Don't let him make you hate!'
Maybe they listen, she does not know. She just sits in her bathroom for days, watching the drops fall, watching her death pass by. But somehow she has seen something, something that has made her grow up, not the innocent girl, the whining, crying ghost she once was. She is watching the drops fall, together with her old life, her old death. And her realisation is clear as spring water, fresh from the mountains, sparkling and new. This is the time - the moment in time - where they can all return to the age before the Fall of Man. This is how they can reclaim their innocence; how she can reclaim hers. By love. To drag people into love, into innocence: a task far more promising than dragging them into war.
She smiles as she realises that her life - or rather her death - will change. She has no intentions of being who she once was. A moaning, accusing, hating girl, bereft of her youth and her adult life.
'I forgive you, Tom Riddle,' she whispers, and her voice is pale, the words fade like rings on the water. A wind rushes through the castle and her faint outline shatters in the whiff of wind.
Drip-drip.
Drip-drip-drip.
Drip-drip.
Drip
The water in the girls' second floor bathroom stops running. Everything is silent. Outside, on the battlefield, a young wizard with green eyes and a prominent scar on his forehead repeats Myrtle's words, and suddenly, the world is free.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 09:37 am (UTC)