There is something different about the way dawn settles into her this day, although it’s difficult to tell you how. She knows it just like you know two plus two equals four without questioning why the number four matters in the overall scheme of things. Why are numbers there anyway? And how did anyone stumble upon such a perfect system of organising them, with rules that are unchanging, with progenies that are endless? Humans got tired of naming them and made up a zillion. But you won’t disagree with her when she argues that there is a zillion and one, and eventually, a zillion zillion. Then, you’ll pause and think: what is the use of this particular contemplation? It’s futile in its monstrosity. Zillions pop into zillions and zillions more; it’s simply too big for everybody’s head to enclose within a single thought or two.
That’s what scares you. What you cannot conceive of in thought - like the overall totality of numbers, the length and breadth of the universe, the fact that the watch ticking on your wrist is following an uncomplicated, direct and stringent law which will outlive both you and itself- eternity in its entirety, so to speak, is frightening because it’s relentless. So, dawn, the arrival of the sun, the bringer of that comforting little belief that oh look, it’s another morning, another day, and life will go on because the big ball of light isn’t going to stay put on the sky and it’ll exit, in the same passive fashion, and we’ll all celebrate what we call a –nightâ€, the binary opposite characterised by long stretches of dark hours that most of us use to rest. Subsequently, when existing becomes too big for our hands to carry, we’ll sing or say, –Tomorrow will be a new dayâ€. –This shall also passâ€. –Darkness is followed by lightâ€. We’ll do this because nights are always succeeded by mornings, unless we live in areas where the concept of days and nights are seasonal.
Yet there is no night or day once you leave earth. There is only that giant ball of light. Our solace rests upon a trick that doesn’t even laugh at us. This is the reason Perenelle weeps sometimes, although she’s been careful to keep Nicholas in the dark about it.
Once upon a time, she thinks. Then, she pauses her thought to laugh. That phrase came into use when she got married; it slipped itself innocuously into a book of fairy tales for young witches and wizards, and before long, it was a presence in every narrative that was supposed to make you happy. –Once upon a timeâ€, it declared so recklessly, without knowing it had a future that would outlast the parchment upon which it had been written with ink that cost so little, and throughout consecutive once-upon-a-time’s, as history grew, it’d be appropriated by those too lazy to take recourse to the methodology of dates. As long as you had a once-upon-a-time, your tale could be a tale. Now, Perenelle is doing the same, in spite of being older and wiser. Grown careless. But it’s so easy, so easy.
In a certain once-upon-a-time, Perenelle doesn’t shy away from showing Nicholas her tears. They are very young, and her parents want to marry her off into a prominent wizarding family’s son whom she barely knows. She can’t accept it; she has already picked her partner, a wizard who employed by her father, who’s poor but extremely skilled. Perenelle is crying, her body convulsing with great, heavy sobs, and Nicholas, so clever yet so idiotic, says, –Perenelle, your parents have your best interests at heart.â€
She hexes him.
–I am poor,†he insists, between casting a counter-curse to get rid of the enormous warts which have appeared on his cheeks, and trying to sound nonchalant. –My life is full of hardships you won’t be able to cope with.â€
–I knew that!†she says hoarsely. –I knew that on the first day we kissed, and it didn’t matter to me. Or to you.â€
–Because we were both fools,†he replies. He’s trying to smile. –We should have known that our lives outside of Hogwarts are too different. This couldn’t last forever.â€
–But I love you,†she pleads with him. –And you cannot deny you love me too.â€
–Love is not enough all the time.â€
Nicholas disappears and refuses to reply to her letters. It’s the night before the wedding when Perenelle makes a drastic decision. She lies awake, even after midnight, her fingers knotted together. There is simply no way she’ll be happy with the man she is betrothed to. No, it isn’t important what they say; love will not follow ultimately. That is the most unreliable excuse. It’s only that people of a certain temperament get used to each other because they realise, quite acutely, that they have no other choice. Or they’re lucky enough to be one of the few who do manage to fall in love.
Perenelle, with the determination and single-mindedness that being eighteen entails, decides she cannot be either. She’s obstinate by nature, and she doesn’t believe in luck. Most important of all, she wants only Nicholas. To kiss another man, to peck away at life by posing as a docile and decorative wife, to pretend that she’s thrilled by the warmth of a stranger’s body reclining next to hers - all of these are repulsive notions. Nicholas is the only man who thinks of her as an equal; he isn’t condescending when he’s playing wizard chess with her, as her brothers and father are wont to be. He concentrates on the game and congratulates her if she wins. He asks her opinions if he’s unsure of something. And when he kisses her, she can tell from the alternating tenderness and ferocity that he wants her, really wants her, and there is nothing else apart from that want in his head when his lips are pressed tightly against hers and his tongue swirls insider her mouth.
It has to be Nicholas, who has left. Without thinking any more of it, she drinks the potion in her hands, hoping it will work.
She doesn’t die; she never planned to. But there’s something about being unconscious for a month that is unappealing to a young man who wants a wife that is healthy, physically and mentally. Perenelle is pale, emaciated and weak. Her family fails to understand what went wrong; the Healers are perplexed. Then, he turns up one night, climbing through her window.
–Is that really you, Nicholas?†she rasps, thinking it’s an illusion brought on by lack of sleep.
–Why?†he demands without preamble. –Why did you have to do this?â€
–You broke through the protective enchantments,†she observes, and she is laughing. –Oh Lord! If my father finds out, he’ll force you to cast a better set before having you flogged.â€
–Perenelle, quiet!†He’s understandably agitated. When he kneels next to the bed and clasps her hands, his eyes are wet. –You are unbelievably foolish.â€
–Ah! There’s not much of a difference between us then,†she tells him, gripping his hands with all the strength she can muster. –Can you see it now? This is why we should be together.â€
–Will you marry me?†he asks her.
–No one else but you, Nicholas. No one else but you.â€
No one else but him. Now, Perenelle wishes she can stop with a –and they lived happily ever afterâ€, yet she cannot. The temptation to do so is strong, though. After all, in her tale, she and Nicholas run off to another country, where he’s working under the patronage of a wealthy wizard. They never have any children, and although that causes both of them some grief for a while, in the long run, it turns out to be for the greater good.
Her sigh is long and audible as she turns away from the window and shifts. Nicholas’ body, to her immense relief, is still moving. She smiles. No matter what, her anger will not be directed towards him. It is no one’s fault, much less his, that on a morning much like this, she wakes up shivering uncontrollably. –Nicholas,†she tries to call, except it’s a shudder, and then, she faints. For weeks, she constantly spins between consciousness and nothingness, until one day, she finds herself in his arms, and he has a stone in his hands, one he has been working on ever since they got here, and it’s all over.
It’s a cruel thing to halt at the age of sixty-five. It’s not a question of health. It’s not that by this time, most people’s propensity for sexual longings has petered out. It’s not that you are old. It’s just that, sometimes, there are these sudden flashes when things are indistinguishable. Not in the sense that the framed painting gifted by a famous Italian Squib from the sixteenth century when they were in France is similar to the collection of opera tickets Nicholas has gathered over the decades, or that something as mundane as the basket of fruit which greets her every morning at the dining table can be mistaken for the Ming vase in the corner of the living room, stuffed with a bouquet of roses. Not in that way. It’s when she says something like –It looks as though it’s going to rainâ€, and immediately, she wonders what she said, and why she said it, and if her words actually mean anything anymore because she might have said it many, many times before.
It is that. Precisely that.
So, why is this dawn any more special?
Because, when she draws herself closer towards Nicholas, who, even in sleep, knows it is her and pulls her into his arms, she can listen to life thudding madly inside the two of them, and it is so beautiful, this thing called –livingâ€, beautiful as it isn’t meant to endure. Because, after she kisses his forehead and shuts her eyes one last time, she can say she has loved and dared as much as she can. Because, there is no longer any need to feel any need. Because, she doesn’t have to do it all alone; she’s with Nicholas, ready for the next great adventure, delivered by the blinding sunlight that consumes them.