Journey to Perfection
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. I only claim ownership to the characters I create (i.e. Isabelle Starrpynski) and the situations (that are not Canon) that I place them in.
Excerpt: The passage is from the poem "The Crucifixion of the Outcast," and was written by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865 - 1939).
Rating: R, for sexual and adult themes, violence, and imagery.
Word Count: 938
Summary: Remus Lupin has not always had an easy or a happy life, but now after resigning from a job he loved and enjoyed, he's forced to, once again, sulk on his lonely and bitter existence. Wallowing in his self-pity, Remus ventures into the Hog's Head, only to meet a erudite woman that may just help to disrupt the monotony his life has become. Remus/OC, Post-POA.
Note: This story was featured on Mugglenet Fan Fiction, in March 2005.
Remus had arrived home. His home was a modest, decrepit, inexpensive shack
with a wood fence and weeds growing numerously in the yard; it looked eerie
and undisturbed under the blanket of nightfall.
Inside, he hung his shabby coat on the mahogany coat rack, slipped off his
loafers, and stood languidly in front of the couch, falling gracefully into its worn
cushions. His back groaned as his spine relaxed and he propped his feet up,
crossing his ankles and flexing his toes beneath the thin fabric of his socks.
Closing his eyes and laying his arm across his line of vision, he sighed and let
the darkness engulf him.
Presently, he calculated that he was a fourth of the way to being drunk; he only
stood a tad bit jaded. He thanked his higher powers for his high tolerance level,
after consuming half a bottle of Vileplume’s Blackberry Vodka; a substance
similar to Ogden’s Fire whiskey, but exponentially stronger. He could also thank
his condition for the fact that he’d have to practically destroy his liver to get
relatively drunk.
After she had left, the heaviness of his morose musings finally crashed home,
leaving him bewildered and melancholy. Her words repeated like a broken
Muggle record player through his befuddled mind.
You are who you are and you can’t help that. No one can help
that.
“What did she mean by that?” He muttered surreptitiously. He knew in a literal
sense what she had meant. That was the easy part. He also knew, very well,
that what you mean and what you imply were two very different things. The
double-entendre bothered him; he was begging to know how it applied to her,
and then again, maybe he didn’t want to tread in those waters.
Removing his arm and sitting up on the couch, Remus smoothed his hand down
his face and neck and stretched, motioning his arms outward and letting a huge,
drawn-out yawn escape. For the past eight days, Remus’ sleep deprivation had
hit an extreme, almost to the point where he was sleeping every other night,
and those nights that he did sleep, it was only for five hours, tops.
His final night at Hogwarts haunted him. The fact that he could have bit
someone haunted him.
Since he first understood why people feared werewolves, he feared himself;
hence the reason his boggart happened to be the moon. The moon signified
becoming a monster, losing control, and biting an innocent, which meant he
would either curse them or murder them. Waking up in the morning with your
own blood in your mouth is one thing, but waking up to the metallic taste of
someone else’s? Remus didn’t want to know.
Isabelle sat curled up in the den of her home, wrapped up in a warm quilt,
reading a book. Though it was summertime, she felt most times that she lived
inside an iceberg; it’d get so cold.
A man, with thin brown hair and a pale
face, half ran, half walked, along the road
that wound from the south to the Town of the
Shelly River. A man, with thin brown hair and a . . .
“Bleeding hell,” Isabelle angrily exclaimed, having all ready read the same
passage over five times. “I can’t concentrate,” she stated to no one in
particular.
She ran a hand through her golden tresses and threw the book down on the
table beside her. Getting up, she headed into the kitchen.
Tapping her wand on the wall, all the candles along it lit one by one, illuminating
the tidy, gothic-looking kitchen. She poured a glass of water from the tap and
drank it down, almost with the speed of an alcoholic deprived of their addiction.
She slammed down the glass on the counter, shook her head as if berating
herself on some ridiculous notion and placed her hands on either side of the
sink, shifting all her weight onto them. Taking a shuddering breath, she
impatiently exhaled.
She currently was mentally arguing with herself as to why she was so
preoccupied. Thus far, everything she had come up with being horrid excuses for
preoccupation.
Am I tired? Though, with her record of sleep and her nightly activities at
an all-time high, most would consider her nocturnal. “No,” she concluded
aloud.
Does it have to do with my rendezvous with Richard earlier? Richard may
be a welcome for a great time, but there was a huge lack of communication
between them, and he lacked the intelligence to construct a sensible sentence.
Though, she did give him credit for trying to match her vocabulary, even if the
words were used incorrectly. “Too bad it’s one of my greatest pet peeves,” she
grounded out.
Maybe my mother’s call earlier ruffled my feathers a bit more than I
thought? Isabelle loved her mother very much, but lately, her mother had
been more irritating than a five-year-old inside a sweet shop. Yet, her mother
was not annoying enough to occupy her thoughts, even with the current
dispute going on between them. “Hmpf.”
The only other thing—person—that it could be pertained to a certain werewolf
she had met earlier at the Hog’s Head, which, sadly, had been the highlight of
her night. She laughed outright.
“No. Way.”
Isabelle continued to chortle all the way back to the den, where she settled and
proceeded to read The Crucifixion of the Outcast. Though her mind was
still muddled, she read poetry into the night, sighing sadly as she observed the
sunrise outside the fogged window beyond the horizon.
“Chalk up another sleepless night, Starrpynski. You’re on a roll.”