harry james potter just wants a quiet life. (formerhero) wrote in reoccurrence, @ 2020-07-12 02:22:00 |
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The commentary had crackled over the radio waves and reported Ginny's injury in such a startlingly casual manner. Ginny, nastily injured. Taken to hospital. The game reared on, the commentary finding new points of action to focus on, forgetting her. Harry could not forget her. His breath caught in his chest and then disappeared entirely as his lungs refused to fill themselves. The images sprung to mind instantly, violently intrusive: Ginny, pale, lifeless, painted in her own blood. Ginny, looking exactly like the corpses in the Great Hall, like Cedric after the maze. He shut his eyes tight, bile burning up the sides of his throat. These are thoughts out of your control. Memories can't touch the present. Jumping to worst case scenarios doesn't help anybody. He repeated the mental assurances to himself, cycling through them without really being able to understand the words at first, and then finally finding himself moving slower, with more certainty. Focus on what you can do now. Focus on going to see her. Purpose emerged out of the fog of his head and he exhaled, pushing the tightness in his chest to the side. It didn't disappear, barely dented it if he were truly honest, but even that small dent allowed him more clarity. Enough for him to realise this was a Quidditch match. Relatively low stakes. War loomed large and frightening, determined to frame the incident in stark and terrifying ways, to make him think he could lose her. But he knew Quidditch, knew her, knew that the sensible part of himself struggled in moments like this. He let himself sink down to sitting. Inhale. Exhale. Rational thoughts flooded back and crashed over him in blissful relief. Later, the time finally came for him to see her alone. Molly and Arthur were eager to have dinner, and blissfully he found a moment without some or another sibling to move from his spot outside the door. It wasn't that he minded any of their presence, he felt a part of the furniture in the Weasley household now, loved them all like siblings of his own. But the idea of confronting his worries with onlookers, even trusted ones, felt too difficult for him to manage. Some kind of strange, intimate thing existed between them still, even if they were no longer romantic. To let anybody else witness it, and the concerns he let grow around it like ivy up a wall, felt like sharing a terribly important secret. "Hey," he said as he entered the room, his voice breathy. "How are – hi." The words sounded disjointed, awkward. He almost couldn't look at her in the hospital bed. |