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Jan. 30th, 2009 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hug_machineTitle: Dirigible Plums
Characters:The Lovegoods
Word Count:654
Rating:G (and mebbe a big sloppy S for sad ;~;)
Note:Placed first in a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
quills_elite contest.
It was the last thing she ever said to him. And he doesn't know what to make of it.
Nobody teaches Xenophilius Lovegood how to be a widower. There are no books, no classes, and no spells to make it easier. Nobody teaches him what to say to his daughter or even what to say to himself.
The last thing she ever said. And he doesn't know what to make of it.
It's not for lack of trying --since the accident, Xenophilius has stayed up late every night, tinkering and toying with Artemis's tubes and casks, her potions and tinctures. Poring over half-finished experiments and hand-written observations. Scouring endless underlined passages in dog-eared herbology manuals. He doesn't have the faintest clue of what he's supposed to be doing, but still he tries, because that's better than doing nothing.
Every night he climbs into his empty bed too late, and those words --her last words, seem to lay beside him, playing over and over until he dreams of his wife, his daughter and their shared life, now forever passed.
He loved Artemis because she believed in him. She believed in him and understood him, when all the others laughed. Really, he never much noticed that other people laughed, until he met someone who didn't.
"You make my brain go fuzzy," she told him once.
"That could be wrackspurts," he answered seriously. "Always wear a hat in July, prime hatching season, you know."
"I'm not sure I want to get rid of this one." She laughed and touched his nose.
When Luna was young, Artemis would tell her stories about mischievous, innocuous wrackspurts. Xenophilius never approved of this --a plague of wrackspurts had wreaked absolute havoc in America when he was younger, and he felt they should be dealt with as seriously as any normal household deals with a boggart infestation. Still, Luna grew to love wrackspurts --when she was five, she asked for a pet wrackspurt for her birthday. She'd even fashioned a little terrarium for it, rocks and twigs and water and leaves.
When Artemis was alive, she and Xenophilius always slept entwined together in the center, their combined weight pressing a permanent dent into the bed.
Xenophilius tries to sleep on the edge of the bed these days, but every morning he wakes up in the center. And those words, those last-thing-she-ever-said-to-him words, wake with him.
They follow him downstairs, shadowing him in his morning routine. Return to her lab, they demand. Perhaps you'll find something you missed! They are all he thinks about. Glum and automatic, he scarcely tastes his breakfast and barely reads his own articles in the Quibbler.
Even the bobbing of his daughter's blonde sleep-scraggled head escapes notice.
"Good morning, daddy!" She says cheerily, leaping down the stairs three steps apiece. She plops into the chair opposite of him and pulls down his open copy of the Quibbler with a single finger. He dimly registers the dirt under her nails.
She leans in and wraps her arms around him, and that's when he sees them.
"What're these?" He points at the small, radish-like red things dangling from her ears.
"Dirigible plums!" Still sockfooted, Luna takes his hand and pads toward the door, swinging it wide. Behind her, a twiggy red-fruited shrub stands in a mound of freshly dug dirt. "I planted myself." She beams up at him, toying with her earring. "They keep your brain right and open, you know."
"Dirigible plums." Xenophilius sags against the door frame.
The evening moon, he notices, is starting to vanish into the lightening sky of dawn. For the first time since Artemis died, Xenophilius is tired. His back aches from sleeping at the edge of the bed, his eyes burn from scouring endless pages of lab notes. And his heart aches when he realizes all that he's missed.
Grinning, Luna pries open his hand and drops one of the tiny fruits into his palm.
The last thing she ever said to him, and at last, he knows exactly what to make of it.
Characters:The Lovegoods
Word Count:654
Rating:G (and mebbe a big sloppy S for sad ;~;)
Note:Placed first in a
quills_elite contest.It was the last thing she ever said to him. And he doesn't know what to make of it.
Nobody teaches Xenophilius Lovegood how to be a widower. There are no books, no classes, and no spells to make it easier. Nobody teaches him what to say to his daughter or even what to say to himself.
The last thing she ever said. And he doesn't know what to make of it.
It's not for lack of trying --since the accident, Xenophilius has stayed up late every night, tinkering and toying with Artemis's tubes and casks, her potions and tinctures. Poring over half-finished experiments and hand-written observations. Scouring endless underlined passages in dog-eared herbology manuals. He doesn't have the faintest clue of what he's supposed to be doing, but still he tries, because that's better than doing nothing.
Every night he climbs into his empty bed too late, and those words --her last words, seem to lay beside him, playing over and over until he dreams of his wife, his daughter and their shared life, now forever passed.
He loved Artemis because she believed in him. She believed in him and understood him, when all the others laughed. Really, he never much noticed that other people laughed, until he met someone who didn't.
"You make my brain go fuzzy," she told him once.
"That could be wrackspurts," he answered seriously. "Always wear a hat in July, prime hatching season, you know."
"I'm not sure I want to get rid of this one." She laughed and touched his nose.
When Luna was young, Artemis would tell her stories about mischievous, innocuous wrackspurts. Xenophilius never approved of this --a plague of wrackspurts had wreaked absolute havoc in America when he was younger, and he felt they should be dealt with as seriously as any normal household deals with a boggart infestation. Still, Luna grew to love wrackspurts --when she was five, she asked for a pet wrackspurt for her birthday. She'd even fashioned a little terrarium for it, rocks and twigs and water and leaves.
When Artemis was alive, she and Xenophilius always slept entwined together in the center, their combined weight pressing a permanent dent into the bed.
Xenophilius tries to sleep on the edge of the bed these days, but every morning he wakes up in the center. And those words, those last-thing-she-ever-said-to-him words, wake with him.
They follow him downstairs, shadowing him in his morning routine. Return to her lab, they demand. Perhaps you'll find something you missed! They are all he thinks about. Glum and automatic, he scarcely tastes his breakfast and barely reads his own articles in the Quibbler.
Even the bobbing of his daughter's blonde sleep-scraggled head escapes notice.
"Good morning, daddy!" She says cheerily, leaping down the stairs three steps apiece. She plops into the chair opposite of him and pulls down his open copy of the Quibbler with a single finger. He dimly registers the dirt under her nails.
She leans in and wraps her arms around him, and that's when he sees them.
"What're these?" He points at the small, radish-like red things dangling from her ears.
"Dirigible plums!" Still sockfooted, Luna takes his hand and pads toward the door, swinging it wide. Behind her, a twiggy red-fruited shrub stands in a mound of freshly dug dirt. "I planted myself." She beams up at him, toying with her earring. "They keep your brain right and open, you know."
"Dirigible plums." Xenophilius sags against the door frame.
The evening moon, he notices, is starting to vanish into the lightening sky of dawn. For the first time since Artemis died, Xenophilius is tired. His back aches from sleeping at the edge of the bed, his eyes burn from scouring endless pages of lab notes. And his heart aches when he realizes all that he's missed.
Grinning, Luna pries open his hand and drops one of the tiny fruits into his palm.
The last thing she ever said to him, and at last, he knows exactly what to make of it.
