swim || remus lupin

all of me

The water was staining my shirt, permeating the fabric, seeping below my clothes. I felt it touch my skin, felt the small scale poke its head through its slitted house, felt my identity shift the slightest. But this was different.

My eyes found James, frantic and confused. My body was stiff, shocked, pining for answers.

Why? I screamed at him wordlessly. What did you do? What happened?

The boy stared back with the same shaking concern. He was clueless, he was scared, he had no idea what was happening either. His breathing was shallow and rapid, as though he had run here.

Peter was pulling at his fingers. He looked at me, then quickly to the white tiled floor, then again to some arbitrary spot on the ceiling, then to the infirmary doorway. He seemed to be calculating how quickly he could escape this shrinking room.

Sirius ran a hand through his hair.

"Moony," he said, and all of our eyes snapped at the sound. "Stay, yes or no?"

Remus's face was gone, hidden away, buried deep into my chest. His thinned arms swallowed me, linking around my waist as though I could disappear from his grasp at any moment. He was trembling, his eyes pouring water over my shirt.

He shook his head, and the three boys froze their little tics for a moment before leaving.

James's clueless eyes followed me until the white curtain slid shut behind them.

I was terrible in crying situations. I could calm down the angry, rejoice with the happy, compete with the competitive. But I did not know how to handle someone who was crying.

Perhaps it was because I had grown up with the trauma of losing both parents, of not knowing the sort of love that came from a real mother, the sort of laughs that came from a real father.

Perhaps it was because my grandparents seared into my brain the image of monstrous creatures within the lakes, creatures that I would mirror if I were anything other than happy.

Perhaps it was because Theo never cried. He smiled, laughed, yelled, went silent for days, but he never cried.

Perhaps it was because when I found out that my mother had killed my father, that my brother had killed my mother, and that my brother had tried to kill me, I had instinctively pushed my scarring aside to manage the scarring of those in the room with me.

Perhaps it was because I had never learned to feel, and in turn I had learned to not feel. I had learned to be numb.

But now was no time for being numb. Now, when my waist was trapped in trembling arms. Now, when my body shook in sync with his. Now, when his brown hair was caught in my fingers as I tried to think, to move, to react. Now, when golden eyes cried silver tears. Now, when my sun was dripping away.