Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

10 December, 1981 - Love

Lavinia fell apart that night for the first time since everything had gone wrong. She curled up in her bed and let it all out, muffling her sobs in her pillow because she didn't want Remus to have to deal with her grief on top of his. She didn't want him to see her cry. But cry she did. For hours, until her face was splotchy and red and her head hurt like hell and she quite simply had no more tears left.

It wasn't enough.

The hole in her chest was far from gone. The iron grip on her throat hadn't released. And the shattered feeling in her heart remained. She wondered if these things would ever go away. If it would ever be enough. If anything could ever be enough. Because... because he was gone. For good. She would never again see those grey eyes. Never again feel the soft touch of his hands or his lips. Never again hear him whisper I love you in her ear. Never never never. So many things she would never again see or do. So many things she would miss.

All the tears in the world would not have been enough.

So after that one night, she decided she wouldn't bother shedding any more. Because it would make no difference. And there was no point in crying her eyes out if in the end, she had the same aching hole in her chest, plus a headache for good measure. Instead, she made her grief become a quiet thing, tucked down by the remains of her heart in that pit in her chest. And she didn't waste time thinking about any of it.

Instead, she simply went about her days. She went to work and did her job, tuning out the words of the hit wizards comparing notes on their latest captures or chases, tuning out people's worry for her, tuning out the endless guilt and shame that pooled in her. Tuning out the world because she simply couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear any of it.

But mostly... mostly she couldn't bear herself. Those words she had spoken kept haunting her, adding the guilt that was already more than she knew how to take.

I don't want him.

So final. So... wrong. And though she knew it had been the right thing to do, though she knew any child would suffer at the very least from neglect with her as its mother right now... the words were wrong.

I don't want him.

It was the only promise Lily had ever asked for. And Lavinia... Lavinia had failed her friend. Those green eyes stalked her nightmares, staring daggers at her, condemning her with nothing more than a gaze that screamed of disappointment because Lavinia had failed. And even if the blood magic was the best protection anyone could offer...

I don't want him.

She hated herself for saying it. She hated that it was true. The last thing she wanted or needed right now was a child for whom she would be responsible, a life she would have to care for when her own hung so close to the edge these days. But true or not, she shouldn't have said it. Not like that. Not like... not like she hated the child. Even if the thought of those eyes in her everyday life made her want to scream, want to run and jump from the highest places she could find. Because the reminder of what she had lost... it might well have been the last straw.

But she still shouldn't have said it.

She kept wondering if she should apologize to Remus, or else explain herself. But, of course, she knew it wasn't Remus she wanted or needed to apologize to. It was Lily. And James. And that infant boy she had just... given away. But the child wouldn't understand any of her apologies and Lily and James... well. She didn't think apologizing to the dead would do much of anything anyway.

So she did what she had done with every other pain, and she drowned it. She shoved it down down down until it bled and blurred into the void and was just another guilt, another pain. Until she could sometimes even forget that it existed.