Rain billows against the window, a solid sheet of water out of the dark. Cosette tucks herself up in the window seat, staring out into the storm. She has always been afraid of the dark, but the steady noise of the downpour and the firelight at her back reduce the fear to a pleasurable thrill. She might be a sailor at sea, an adventurer in India, a bird tucked safe in its nest in the swaying treetops.

Tomorrow the garden will be spangled with raindrops. There will be earthworms and snails prowling in the shade, gleaming in the sun; the air will be heavy and cool, sweet with the smell of wet earth and leaves. She will gather the late violets with the dew still on their petals, and bring them into the house and out the back door to her father, to make him smile.

(First Potterfic! :D Crossposted in illeatmyself.)

"Altair, Andromeda Arwen."

"I PROTEST!"

A murmur runs through the hall and dies into silence. The Sorting Hat topples off Miss Altair's raven curls and lies there fraying at the mouth.

"Have mercy on me," it wheezes. "I'm nearly a thousand years old. My seams can't take it. You know what kind of strain these little hussies put on me."

"Hat," says Professor McGonagall sternly, "I must ask you to speak civilly of my niece."

She picks it up again. "Better be Gryffindor, Andie. --Black, Brandy Blossom!"

A dozen portraits blink in the darkness as the Sorting Hat wakes, screaming.

(Pure self-indulgence)

When he understood what was happening to him, he was for a moment aghast. So soon -- so suddenly, as it seemed.

Never ailed a day in my life, he's said to Marcelin on more than one occasion, to quell an anxious look, and for the most part this is true. He is used to the occasional passing illness; not to this, this breathtaking and inexplicable pain. It flatly frightens him.

After that comes an overwhelming relief. An answer to prayer.

Because the one fear he has never been able to banish is that Marcelin would die, someday, and leave him -- more alone than he has ever been before. All else that he has loved has left him; this one great love is his life, and to lose it would be more than he could stand.

Now -- there is very little reason to fear that.

(For gleamswhichpass challenge #15)

Fantine trudges up the street with Thenardier's letter clutched in her hand. Moonlight gleams faintly on the rain-slicked cobblestones. She stops to cough, leaning against the lamppost.

"You all right?"

She starts, straightening with difficulty. The voice is high and anxious. "Madame? You all right?"

"Yes." She coughs again, manages to smother it. "I'm fine."

The child emerges from behind the grating, round-eyed. "Want any help?"

"No, I'm all right. Does your mother know you're out at this hour?"

"Got no mother."

"Oh." He is not much older than Cosette. "Well. Good night."

"'Night," he says, and vanishes.

It's more of a closet than a room, high up in a corner of the house. The floor is rough and dusty, the door doesn't shut properly, and it smells of mice and mildew. There's a window which is more of an afterthought; the ceiling drips when it rains. But it's cheap, and he has it to himself; no one in their right mind would try to fit two people in here.

He settles into it like a child who's found a cubbyhole. The close confines are a little stifling, but also a little comforting. When the door is wedged shut, he finds himself breathing a sigh.

(Somewhat half-assed Joly/Marius for Korin)

It's been almost a year since I saw Pontmercy last. He's gotten thinner, the boyish softness is gone from his face, but his dark hair is disarrayed as ever. One wants to run fingers through those curls. After a little mental debating I ask him to dinner with me.

He is nothing like my Bossuet, who endures his frequent poverty with flippant good cheer. He is stiff, formal, resentful of any whiff of charity, for all I endeavor to be tactful.

But he unbends, gradually, as the evening progresses. He doesn't get out much, it seems. My God, the boy's lonely. Behind that stolid dignity, he's lonely; and so am I, I reflect, mellowed and melancholy.

I pause on the street corner, waiting for him, and when he catches up, I kiss his cheek. His skin is as soft as it looks.

Four years makes little difference, at our age. We should both be staid and cool-blooded by now. Nevertheless it's he who kisses me, and I'm backed against the desk before I have time to think.

"Door, chéri."

He pulls away, blushing. "I know."

"Won't take a minute."

"I know, I know." He shuts it, and comes back.

Desire is a slow upwelling like a river in flood: gradual, inexorable. The texture of his skin has changed, but not the blue of his eyes, or the heat of him. My back, however--

"Bed, love."

"Must we?"

"Shameless one. Come to bed."

"She took a lover, the first comer, a man whom she did not love, through bravado, and with rage in her heart." --Les Misérables

Jacquot has dark soft hair that feels like smoke in my fingers, and a cleft in his chin that looks like strength. Young girls are in love with him all over the town, thinking him romantic in his shabby coat. Some of them give me surly looks when they see us together, thinking, I suppose, that I don't deserve him.

But I who am his lover, I can afford to laugh at them. I know the truth of Jacquot. He is nothing, really; no better man than Felix was, and not half as clever. God gave him beauty and an ear for a tune, and he uses them both to get him what he wants. Which is wine, mostly, and a warm bed.

We suit each other very well. He wanted somewhere to sleep and someone to hang on his arm, to make him look more significant. I wanted to prove that I was still desirable, shorn and shabby as I am-- and perhaps to spite the daughters of women who look down their noses at me. Petty of me, but it is the only triumph I can claim.

Jacquot deludes himself more than I do. He thinks I am in love with him like the rest, that I endure his tempers and drunken blows out of devotion, rather than indifference. Ugly bitch, he called me in one of his spiteful fits, and for a moment it almost hurt, until I remembered that I didn't care.

Find a pretty girl, then, I said.

He swore at me and stormed out, but he was back by nightfall.

I have never told him of Cosette. I don't care to hear what he would say.

(Managerslash drabble for kyra, whee! Set right after chapter 18, if you care.)

When the door of the managers' office shuts behind M. le Commissaire, they breathe two identical sighs.

"My nerves can't take much more of this."

"Your nerves?" demands Moncharmin without opening his eyes. "What about my nerves, with you thundering at me?"

"You're not the one who's had his pocket picked." Richard stands over his partner, glowering.

"By a ghost?"

"By someone."

"Really, my dear." With an air of immense fatigue, Moncharmin lifts a hand and tucks it into Richard's back pocket once more. "If it were me, don't you think you would have noticed? --Kiss me."

Richard sighs, relenting.

(More Westmark.)

Sparrow has moved up in the world. Dawn finds her atop the bridge she used to sleep under.

The Vespera is sluggish in the cold, grey and surly as her heart. Wind whips at her skirt. A sentimental girl might throw herself in; Sparrow is too practical.

Footsteps stop behind her. If it's Weasel, she'll hit him.

But the hand that falls on her shoulder is heavy, adult. She turns, looks up at blunt features and snowy hair.

She throws herself against him. "You!"

"Good morning," Dr. Torrens replies politely, and then: "There now," stroking her hair as she cries.

After a long time she was able to look at mirrors again.

For months after the disaster, she woke crying in the night from claustrophobic dreams. She had always been flighty; now she was nervous, flinching at shadows, at certain bars of music. She could not rest in a room lit only by candles. Her nightmares were so full of sound -- splash of water, low hum of viola, soprano scream, crash of glass -- that, waking, any unexpected noise sent her into hysterics.

It was over a year before she saw her reflection again. Skin like parchment, hollow eyes -- Meg wept.

(Westmark, not Les Miz, for once. Why? Because I can. Lloyd Alexander, not me, no money, don't sue.)

Florian is in the habit of choosing his words advisedly. When he was younger than Justin is now, he already knew how perilous it could be to say the wrong thing.

Justin knows it too, but the knowledge only makes him the more reckless. Zara never learned. Those two will get themselves in trouble, one day. Rina's innocence and Stock's naivete worry him; idealism without common sense is a recipe for destruction. Even middle-aged Luther, with his direct simplicity, is in danger of seeing too narrowly.

Children, he calls them, teasing -- but he does not use the word unthinkingly.

(Madeleine is a walk-on character in the musical Les Mis, a prostitute briefly seen squabbling with an old bag lady. Why am I writing for her? Don't ask me.)

Babette was his mistress, before she went mad and ugly from sickness. That's why he favors the old bitch. And she was a bitch, even before she lost her wits, thinking she was better than us, "Quiet, little whore," like she's Marie Antoinette?

"Move it, Madeleine."

"But--"

"I said shove off."

He's scum, they're all scum, but he could be worse and I don't want trouble with him. I pick up my skirts and move.

"Hey, m'sieur, only five francs, make it three for you." But the pretty boy only hands me a bit of paper and walks off.

Scum.

All her life afterward, Cosette will remember the bells. They sang sedately, calling you to prayers, to meals, to lessons; they rang peremptorily in summons; they tolled mournfully, lamenting a death. Bells tinkled in the open air, heralding a beloved face; bells bounded each day like the colored borders of an illuminated page.

Even during the worst times, when she argues with Marius, when Toussaint begins to slide into the lunacy of age, when they bury what would have been a daughter, given another few months, the distant music of church bells will bring a moment's serenity to her heart.

They all know his name, though none can remember learning it. He faded into their close-knit consciousness as Louison did, simply by always being there.

"Gavroche, do me a favor."

"Gavroche, what'd you do with your shawl?"

"Here, brat, take this, go have breakfast, you're scaring the women with those bony elbows."

When he was off on his own obscure errands, they were apt to forget him. Something in his smirking, young-old face forbade too keen an interest; their camaraderie he accepted, but not their concern.

Staring at the small still body, every one of them remembers this.

Cosette settles back against the pillows with a sigh. The bed curtains sway a little in the rose-scented breeze from the garden; she should get up and close the window, now that it's dark, but she feels too tired to move. She heard the Aunt go to bed a few minutes ago, slow footsteps coming up the stairs, pausing briefly outside the closed door. The Aunt treats her like more than a daughter, almost like a doll, picking out clothes and curtains with her with an air of shy excitement. Marius is still downstairs, she supposes, doing whatever it is he does in the evenings; she has a hazy idea that he has a lot of writing to do.

She has been all over the house, poking into the corners and old dusty cupboards. She was shy at first, hesitant to touch anything for fear she should disturb the established order of things; but Aunt and Marius and Grandfather all spoil her so that she has grown more confident. By now it feels almost like home, this house, and she has begun to put her own touches to it, claiming her place in it. The basement room is nearly cozy....

Cosette picks at the lacy sleeve of her nightdress, frowning absently.

If only he would talk to her! But he waits for her to say things, waits for her to make conversation, and only answers when she asks him a question. So she talks, rattling on and on in nervous chatter, thinking, Papa, don't do this, please don't, please talk to me.

Most of the time she doesn't think about it. Most of the time, between visits, she is happy, busy, in love. But there are pauses, little breaks in her thinking when she watches the door shut behind him, or when she lies in bed waiting for Marius to come upstairs, and the tears well in her eyes.

(I could get into this drabble thing.)

It has always been a struggle for him to refuse her. She is such a good child; she never asks for much. And even now, when this slim young woman in her elegant dress says to him, "Father, you will stay with us, won't you?" -- he sees a little thin-faced girl with pleading eyes.

Poor little girl, who had never had anything. It was hard to weigh caution, common sense, against her hopeful face. Toys, clothes, walks in the park, these he could give her for her happiness, but above all she must be safe.

"Won't you?"

"No, Cosette."

(100 words on the nose. Tra la la.)

The sheets are billowing on the line, and Louise takes a minute to rest against the wall, her back aching. They're all good sturdy linen, if a little worn, and heavy when they're wet from the washtub.

In the front yard, Eponine is singing tunelessly as she plays. The sun is pleasant on her face, and a clean smell rises from the drying laundry. In the still spring warmth, Louise feels a strange loosening, a pang of contentment.

Then the sun goes behind a cloud, and the greensickness comes over her again. Bitterly, without words, she straightens and lumbers indoors.

April is cold and sodden with rain. The winter was viciously cold, and the spring is correspondingly late in blossoming. Marcelin turns twenty-two on a day he scarcely notices, except as a lull between colds. His friends jostle for the places nearest the fire, and tease him for stoicism; but all it is, really, is apathy. The chill bothers him less than the continual overcast, the constant damp grayness of the air. All he really wants is sunshine.

He does not say this, being disinclined to listen to the inevitable quips about Apollo and the Light of Truth. They all like to poke fun at him on occasion, even Combeferre, for reasons he rarely bothers to guess, and ordinarily he takes it in good part, but in this cold gray spring he is not in a mellow mood.

In the lonely evenings he curls up on his bed, abandoning dignity, and reads by candlelight: stories he thrilled to as a child, simple, engaging, comforting. Till the sun comes out again, he has no heart for anything else.

Time was when she would spend her free hours tidying up her room, sweeping the floor clean, smoothing the bedclothes, scrubbing the windowpanes clear of dust. It was almost fun; Fantine, who never properly had a home, felt like a little girl playing house.

Now she's lost interest. A fine layer of grit settles between the floorboards, the bed goes unmade, and she lets the plant in the corner die. Why should she bother making the place nice, when God knows she may be kicked out of it any day? This is not her home, and she's suddenly tired of pretending that it is.

Marguerite looks in and clucks. "Goodness me, girl, the state you've let this place get into!"

"So?" she says rudely, and goes out to pace the streets awhile.

But when she comes home she apologizes, and sits on the low makeshift bed, letting the old woman comb her hair and braid it. Marguerite too is like a child with the comb in her hands. Fantine wonders if she ever had a doll when she was small. She did herself, once, a poor patched-together thing she called Mignon; the arms were different lengths and the stuffing leaked out at the seams, and any face it had was blurred to a smudge. But she lost it somewhere in her wanderings.

She feels like Mignon now.