InsaneJournal

Special delivery for coffee_n_cocoa
Title: Thickening A Man’s Blood
Author/Artist: fireworkfiasco
Recipient's LJ name: coffee_n_cocoa
Rating: NC.17
Pairing(s): Neville/Ginny
Word Count: 2121
Warnings (if any): none
Summary: Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley had been dating for two months when he had the nightmare. It was a reoccurring dream, one he’d had regularly since the War had ended, since he’d taken up Godric Gryffindor’s sword and become something of a hero.

Authors notes: coffee_n_cocoa; I hope you enjoy this! I had a wonderful time writing it.




Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley had been dating for two months when he had the nightmare. It was a reoccurring dream, one he’d had regularly since the War had ended, since he’d taken up Godric Gryffindor’s sword and become something of a hero.

Nothing had changed, really, but then—everything changed.

He hadn’t had it since he’d started seeing Ginny; it was something of a relief. He didn’t know how to tell her what it was that he saw when he closed his eyes at night.

The dream—the nightmare—is this:

He dreams of Hogwarts, of blood-red skies, and smoke. He dreams of corpses spilling from muddy graves, their ruined eyes rolling as they cling to his frozen legs. He dreams of their rotting fingers, their grips cold and clammy and dead. He dreams of the smell, how it rolls off their crumbling bodies in waves, the reek of it like soil, but not. It is worse. It is wrong.

He dreams of snakes, and of swords. He dreams the sword in his hand begins to grow, and grow, until it impales the dry earth, which splits and bleeds bugs and roots and bones. He dreams the snake grows another head, and another; they sprout like grotesque flowers, blossoming into hissing, spitting monsters. He dreams their eyes glow green.

He dreams that everyone dies, as he stands there, useless, clutching an impotent blade and screaming, screaming, unable to breathe, unable to look away. He dreams of darkness.

He dreams.

::

Ginny wakes him, hand cool against his cheek. Her eyes are concerned, glowing gold in the light from the hallway. She is pale, and beautiful, and Neville breathes out.

“Are you okay? You were—were you dreaming?”

The tension in him is enough that he feels ill, the tightness in his shoulders like a steel rod. His stomach is a crucible, his head a hurricane. Nothing in him is still, though his limbs are locked, rigid.

Outside, he can hear the wind whistling through barren willows, the hollow autumn air crisp and cold. He wonders if the moon is full, yet, and how clear the night sky is. He wonders how long until the first frost. He wonders to distract himself.

“Neville?”

His attention snaps back to Ginny, following the tangles of her hair, the crease across her temple from the pillowcase.

She doesn’t ever talk about the War, about what happened when they were at Hogwarts together. How students were pulled from classes and returned days later, empty-eyed and forgetful. How they would punish you by taking your friends. How no one was safe, nothing was sacred.

Here, now, in this moment, everything feels crooked.

He rolls his shoulders and ducks his head. “It was nothing; I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

The rest of the night he spends staring at the ceiling, waiting for any sign of dawn.

::

Things are normal the next morning; his shoulders are not tense, she is not concerned. He pretends nothing happened and she believes him.

For three weeks, Neville does not dream. For three weeks, things are fine. They are fine.

::

The night he dreams again, he wakes Ginny. She is sitting up, a black shadow in the low light, and he can see the fear on her face, see it in her wide eyes and trembling mouth. Her hands are shaking where they’re fisted in the sheets, her knuckles white.

He has the blankets all twisted around his legs and his pyjamas are soaked through with cold sweat; he feels out of breath and disconnected. His heart sounds in his ears like a drum.

Ginny exhales when he sits up, voice thin. “N-Neville? What was—are you okay? You were—you were—Neville, you were—”
“Don’t,” he says, the word strangely vicious. He wants to take it back the moment it falls between them, but he doesn’t know how. Ginny is still looking at him like he might fly apart, clutching the sheet to her chest as blinks at him. “Just—don’t. It’s fine.”

“Neville, you were screaming,” she hisses. “What’s going on?”

He throws aside the blankets, and sets his hot feet on the cool floor. The hardwood creaks as he stands, the sound following him to the door, where he pauses with a hand against the jamb, waiting. Breathing.

“Nothing. Nothing’s going on.”

::

Morning finds him asleep bent over the kitchen table, head between the sugar bowl and the salt shaker. He unfolds himself carefully, and stands, the afghan from the back of the sofa falling from his shoulders.

The flat is silent; he stands for a moment, listening, trying to reorient himself now that it is morning and the floor is lit in hazy gray. The sky outside is overcast, heavy.

It isn’t until he stoops to pick up the blanket that he sees the note, sitting in the middle of the table, his name written on the front in Ginny’s spider-like handwriting.

Neville—, it says, smeared in the corner. We need to talk about this.

He spends the morning watching the wind stir fallen leaves into a snarl, lips tight, before finding a quill and parchment to pen his reply.

No, it starts, ink thick, we don’t.

::

They fight, when she comes home.

It does not start immediately; he slams cupboards in the kitchen while she bangs around in the bedroom, the two of them gathering angry momentum.

When they stumble upon one another in the dining room, there is stillness and cold silence. She folds her arms and glares at him; he sets his jaw and refuses to meet her eyes.

“What happened last night?” she asks finally, lifting her chin.

Neville glances at her and then away, shrugging absently as he turns away. “I’ve already told you. Nothing; it was nothing.”

She hurries around the table, trying to block his retreat to the kitchen, arms spread across the doorway. The sight is almost comical; she is only as tall as his shoulder, but he would know the stubborn pull between her eyebrows anywhere. “You were shouting in your sleep, Neville. You nearly knocked me out of bed! That’s not nothing.”

“Drop it. Please,” he mutters, knowing she won’t. “It doesn’t matter.”

He pushes past her, crossing to the stove; she follows him closely, a hand on her hip. “No. I can’t drop it; I care about you—and because I care, I want to know what’s going on.”

There is a pause. Finally, he sighs. “I had a bad dream, okay? Just a bad dream. It was nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

He bites his tongue and nods, and nods, and nods until he can speak without saying something he’ll regret. “I’m sure.”
She seems to accept this, drifting away to pull down plates from one of the cabinets. He breathes out, loosens his shoulders, stirs the pasta sauce and adds another dash of basil.

He wants that to be the end of it, though he knows it isn’t. He knows, that if he were to tell her the truth—what he can see, when he closes his eyes, how it sticks in his throat, still half-alive—he does not think she would be able to handle it. The things they saw at that school during the War were frightening, horrifying. And Ginny—as a Weasley, as a girl, as someone outspoken and passionate and proud—Ginny had seen plenty.

But she never mentioned it, never spoke a word about what happened during her many detentions, during classes, at all. It was as though it never really happened.

In the dining room, he can hear Ginny humming to herself as she sets the table.

::

“A month ago, you woke me up in the middle of the night. Were you dreaming then, too?”

The words are jarring in the steady silence between them. He marks his place in his book with his finger and glances up at her. “Hmm?” It has been nearly a week since their fight; he has not dreamed again since then, and he’d hoped it was forgotten.

She clears her throat, fingers curling around her knees. “A month ago, you were thrashing around in your sleep and groaning, and you woke me up. Were you dreaming then, too?”

He swallows. “I don’t remember.”

Her lips twist. “Don’t lie to me, Neville. What were you dreaming about?”

He lets the silence drag itself into awkwardness and then stands, shaking his head at her. “I said I don’t remember.”

The door closes behind him and he doesn’t hear her come to bed.

::

She is gone when he wakes up, and he spends the morning at the kitchen table, again, staring at the bleak sky.

Behind his eyelids, there is blood again, and he wants to scream.

::

Two days later, and the flat is still empty. Neville worries, spending his nights pacing hollow rooms to keep himself from sleeping, from dreaming.

There is a letter at one point that he reads with shaking hands. In it, Ginny says she is fine. That she is safe, that she needs time to think. That she loves him, but she doesn’t understand him. That he’s scaring her.

He starts a reply, but ends up falling asleep as he pens it. The ink spills, and he wakes in time to watch the sun set.

::

By the time she comes home, he is on edge.

Everything in him feels like it is waiting. Even his skin feels taut over his bones. He has not slept in three days.

The floorboards moan under her progress around the living room; he can almost see her standing at the window, blindly staring at the panes of glass.

“Neville,” she says, loud enough that it scrapes into every corner of the flat. “We need to talk.”

He knows she is waiting for him. He knows she is going to yell, going to demand things of him.

So when he slips into the next room, he is ready; he does not wait for her to speak. She is sitting on the sofa, hands limp in her lap, hair caught back in a messy ponytail. There are circles under her eyes that make him feel twice as exhausted as he already is, the bones of him almost too heavy to move anymore.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks, and his voice drags through him like a sieve.

She stands, back ramrod straight, and he can feel her frustration and her rage. It’s a familiar thing, and he revels in it. “I want the bloody truth!” she spits, hands on her hips.

In three steps, he has her against the wall, a thigh between hers as he holds her in place. His hands fit around her shoulders easily, flattening her to the drywall.

A breath. She is strangely still, staring at him, fingers curled in his robes; he presses closer and she gasps, the sound tearing out of her almost reluctantly. “What are you doing?” she hisses and it climbs down his spine with icy fingers.

“You,” he answers, and he kisses her. He kisses her hard, taking, pressing into her until she’s breathless and half-limp in his arms. When he slides his thigh higher, he can feel the shudder jerk through her, and her fingers tighten their grip on his collar.

His hands slide up the ridges of her ribs, palms curling around her breasts. Her hips arch, rolling against his, and the friction makes him groan. Their motions are frantic and uncoordinated; he fumbles the zip on his trousers as she struggles with his robes.

Her knickers are shoved to the side and then he is there, all heat and need and want. She whimpers with every thrust, clinging to him as he fucks her. His hips jerk again, and again, and her hips make a dull knocking sound against the wall.

She does not speak, and he can’t. Everything is scattered and half-forgotten, the only thing left her skin on his.

He comes with a low cry, listening to her thin exhale as her knees lift around his ribs. The darkness, this time, is thankfully silent.

::

“Ginny?” he says later, after they have found their way to the bedroom. She is curled against his side, distractedly tracing patterns onto the sheet.

The words are perched on the end of his tongue, waiting. The confession tastes brittle and rusted, its heavy weight strangely familiar.

She shifts, red curls spilling everywhere as she glances up at him. In the dark, her eyes are cat-like, wild. Gold, again. Her hand finds his, and it gives him strength.

He opens his mouth, and he speaks.