Post by ginger newts on Jan 31, 2005 20:38:21 GMT -5
Staying Up Late
This past week has been miserable and I know I’ve been behaving like an idiot, I suppose kicking Albus out last night was really too much. He’s been such a darling all week even though I wouldn’t tell him the cause of my bad mood. To be honest I was embarrassed to tell him because I knew intellectually that it was foolish. Except that it doesn’t feel foolish. Perhaps it would be better if I were to start at the beginning.
Last weekend, one of my nieces got married. She and I have always been close and she had asked me to come for the entire weekend, not only the ceremony and reception, so I made arrangements to travel to my sister’s home on Friday evening. Albus would arrive on Sunday afternoon for the actual wedding and though it was the first time in our relationship that we would be parted for two nights I was looking forward to my time with my nieces on Saturday. What I didn’t know was that the bride’s sisters and friends had planned a girls night in for Friday, which mainly consisted of staying up all night and enjoying their second to last night as a group of single women. I attempted to go to bed when my sister and her husband did, but Katherine would not hear of it. She insisted that the party would not be complete without her favorite aunt, so I remained in the sitting room with the young women.
We ate a great deal of food and played a few games before the younger girls fell to chatting about the men they had been dating and various other aspects of their lives. For a while, I felt just like “one of the girls.” I spoke a little about my relationship with Albus, telling them how wonderful it was to find love with someone you had known as a friend for many years. It’s not exactly easy to begin a romance because there is always the fear that you will ruin a wonderful friendship, but for us it has been nothing short of fantastic being in love. I’ve worked with Albus for more years than I care to remember sometimes and he has always been a very dear friend, but ever since the night we left poor little Harry Potter with his mother’s sister, officially ending the war with You-Know-Who, things have been changing.
Rather, things began changing, for now they have settled down. Once the chaos of the war and the rebuilding were over and Albus finally had time to breathe again, he and I had a long talk over an abandoned game of chess about our relationship and how we desired to get to know me as more than a friend. I was both flattered and relieved because, to be perfectly honest, I’d had what my students would call “a crush” on him for many years. Our friendship easily evolved into romance and I have never been so happy in my life as I have been for the past eight months. I truly did feel that I fit in with the younger women that night, we exchanged tales of dates gone wrong as well as those marvelous men in our lives that made us feel cherished.
As the night wore on, though, I began to feel very tired and ended up falling asleep in the armchair I was seated in. I awoke the next morning and joined my sister and her husband for breakfast, only to be told that the girls had just been going to bed when they got up an hour earlier and would probably sleep the day away. It was then that I began wondering when I lost the ability to stay up all night. I was even more depressed when the girls woke up before lunch and seemed to have as much energy as ever.
The rest of the weekend passed quickly, in a blur of last minute wedding preparations, and the ceremony on Sunday was beautiful. I was very glad to see Albus again and to have the opportunity to dance the night away in his arms without the worry of interruptions. We returned to the school after the reception and went almost immediately to bed as it had been a long and tiring day.
In the days since the wedding, I’ve had a lot of work to catch up on. It is rare that I am away from the school for an entire weekend during term time and I had quite a large stack of essays awaiting me when I returned. There were also my duties as deputy headmistress and head of Gryffindor. I had to update the files of all my students who had been assigned detentions in the last month, which actually takes quite a while so that I usually dedicate an entire Saturday afternoon to the task. Having missed an entire weekend, I began to stay in my office later into the night. Twice I woke up after midnight, having fallen asleep slumped across my desk.
When had I gotten old, I began wondering. I used to be able to stay up and complete my work with no problems, but now not only was I falling asleep at my desk, I often felt the urge to take a nap during the day as well. When I finally identified this as a sign of age and started remembering the way Professor Binns always fell asleep in the staff room, and in fact eventually died in his favorite armchair, my mood darkened immediately.
For days, Albus attempted to find out the cause of my sudden depression. The dear man even attempted to “subtly” find out if I had been hoping for a wedding of my own so that attending another had put me in low spirits. That may have been the only time all week he got a smile out of me, he was just so adorable that night. Last night, however, he got on my last nerve and I threw him out of my bedroom, where he had spent all of his nights for several months. He just wouldn’t stop the incessant questioning and then had the audacity to suggest I go to bed early because I looked tired. I’m afraid I let my temper get the better of me and now I need to go apologize.
This past week has been miserable and I know I’ve been behaving like an idiot, I suppose kicking Albus out last night was really too much. He’s been such a darling all week even though I wouldn’t tell him the cause of my bad mood. To be honest I was embarrassed to tell him because I knew intellectually that it was foolish. Except that it doesn’t feel foolish. Perhaps it would be better if I were to start at the beginning.
Last weekend, one of my nieces got married. She and I have always been close and she had asked me to come for the entire weekend, not only the ceremony and reception, so I made arrangements to travel to my sister’s home on Friday evening. Albus would arrive on Sunday afternoon for the actual wedding and though it was the first time in our relationship that we would be parted for two nights I was looking forward to my time with my nieces on Saturday. What I didn’t know was that the bride’s sisters and friends had planned a girls night in for Friday, which mainly consisted of staying up all night and enjoying their second to last night as a group of single women. I attempted to go to bed when my sister and her husband did, but Katherine would not hear of it. She insisted that the party would not be complete without her favorite aunt, so I remained in the sitting room with the young women.
We ate a great deal of food and played a few games before the younger girls fell to chatting about the men they had been dating and various other aspects of their lives. For a while, I felt just like “one of the girls.” I spoke a little about my relationship with Albus, telling them how wonderful it was to find love with someone you had known as a friend for many years. It’s not exactly easy to begin a romance because there is always the fear that you will ruin a wonderful friendship, but for us it has been nothing short of fantastic being in love. I’ve worked with Albus for more years than I care to remember sometimes and he has always been a very dear friend, but ever since the night we left poor little Harry Potter with his mother’s sister, officially ending the war with You-Know-Who, things have been changing.
Rather, things began changing, for now they have settled down. Once the chaos of the war and the rebuilding were over and Albus finally had time to breathe again, he and I had a long talk over an abandoned game of chess about our relationship and how we desired to get to know me as more than a friend. I was both flattered and relieved because, to be perfectly honest, I’d had what my students would call “a crush” on him for many years. Our friendship easily evolved into romance and I have never been so happy in my life as I have been for the past eight months. I truly did feel that I fit in with the younger women that night, we exchanged tales of dates gone wrong as well as those marvelous men in our lives that made us feel cherished.
As the night wore on, though, I began to feel very tired and ended up falling asleep in the armchair I was seated in. I awoke the next morning and joined my sister and her husband for breakfast, only to be told that the girls had just been going to bed when they got up an hour earlier and would probably sleep the day away. It was then that I began wondering when I lost the ability to stay up all night. I was even more depressed when the girls woke up before lunch and seemed to have as much energy as ever.
The rest of the weekend passed quickly, in a blur of last minute wedding preparations, and the ceremony on Sunday was beautiful. I was very glad to see Albus again and to have the opportunity to dance the night away in his arms without the worry of interruptions. We returned to the school after the reception and went almost immediately to bed as it had been a long and tiring day.
In the days since the wedding, I’ve had a lot of work to catch up on. It is rare that I am away from the school for an entire weekend during term time and I had quite a large stack of essays awaiting me when I returned. There were also my duties as deputy headmistress and head of Gryffindor. I had to update the files of all my students who had been assigned detentions in the last month, which actually takes quite a while so that I usually dedicate an entire Saturday afternoon to the task. Having missed an entire weekend, I began to stay in my office later into the night. Twice I woke up after midnight, having fallen asleep slumped across my desk.
When had I gotten old, I began wondering. I used to be able to stay up and complete my work with no problems, but now not only was I falling asleep at my desk, I often felt the urge to take a nap during the day as well. When I finally identified this as a sign of age and started remembering the way Professor Binns always fell asleep in the staff room, and in fact eventually died in his favorite armchair, my mood darkened immediately.
For days, Albus attempted to find out the cause of my sudden depression. The dear man even attempted to “subtly” find out if I had been hoping for a wedding of my own so that attending another had put me in low spirits. That may have been the only time all week he got a smile out of me, he was just so adorable that night. Last night, however, he got on my last nerve and I threw him out of my bedroom, where he had spent all of his nights for several months. He just wouldn’t stop the incessant questioning and then had the audacity to suggest I go to bed early because I looked tired. I’m afraid I let my temper get the better of me and now I need to go apologize.
I liked the way you used the teaser line in the story. 
Krys
