Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or settings of Harry Potter; they all belong to J.K. Rowling and her publishers.
Every night, she cries herself to sleep. He noticed it a week after she moved in with him, and ever since then, he's been sitting outside her room, listening.
Were he asked why, he would not be able to tell, and so he is glad that there is nobody to ask him. He hasn't seen his friends in a long time. He isn't interested, and as time went by, they all became resigned and left him alone. If he wants to rot at Grimmauld Place alone, let him. It's not like they can force him. Some time ago, Ron tried to make him go to a Quidditch match with him, but he doesn't remember if it's been weeks or months now, and he doesn't want to think about it.
Just like he doesn't want to think about why, every evening, when his aunt gets up from her place in the living room and leaves, he waits for fifteen minutes, making sure that she has enough time to get ready for bed, and then sneaks upstairs and sits down next to the door, waiting. It never takes long until it starts. Softly at first, as she tries to remain in control, but she fails every time, and soon, the soft whimpers give way to harsher sobs, and Harry closes his eyes, his head leaning against the wall, not thinking, just listening, until, far too soon, she falls asleep.
He knows he should feel sorry for her, but he doesn't. Ever since Voldemort died almost a year ago, he hasn't felt much of anything – and again, he doesn't know why, and doesn't want to think about it. And concerning his uncle and cousin, he can't be expected to be overly sympathetic, can he? They never liked each other when they were alive, and now that they're dead, he doesn't miss them. She does, of course, and that's why she cries, but he can't care. All he can care about is being there when she does, listening.
After leaving home – if you will call it that – three years ago to come and live here, he would never have believed that he could ever need her again. But now he does, if only during these brief minutes every night, and it feels as though he's never needed her more.
She needs him as well, because since her house burnt down to the ground five months ago, taking all her possessions along with her husband and son while she was not there, she seems to be dead as well. Every day, all she does is sit on the couch and pretend to read, and sometimes not even pretend but just stare into space. She eats and drinks, she showers and combs her hair, but she won't talk to him, and she won't go out, and all he ever hears from her are her sobs at night, when she seems to awake from her stupor and behaves like a human being who still has feelings inside her chest.
Maybe that is the difference between them, he thinks one evening as he is listening again. And now, after four months of listening to her crying, he knows why he needs it so much, knows why he feels like he couldn't go on without it any more.
He gets up and opens the door, silently, so as not to disturb her. She doesn't notice him entering, and doesn't notice him still when he sits down on the chair next to the bed, watching her. Even if she did, he doubts she would care, and he knows he wouldn't care if she saw. He needs her, now he knows it for sure, now that he sees her as well as hearing her, sees her bony form curled up under the blanket and her shoulders shaking, her face contorted with pain as she whimpers and sobs and moans, one hand clutching the pillow like a claw, dirty-blond hair sticking to wet cheeks splotched with red.
He needs her to show him how it is to feel - something that he seems to have forgotten - and not like his friends tried to do. He doesn't need their laughter and merriness and relief that the war is over, doesn't need their sympathy, or their pity and attempts to help. He needs to see her cry, because for the seventeen years that he lived with her, she tried to make him miserable and would be glad when she saw that she succeeded, but now he sees her miserable in return, so much more than he ever was, and nothing, not even Voldemort's dead body, can compete with that.
And maybe, he thinks a week later, maybe it's not that, maybe it's just because he wishes that he could cry as well, maybe it's because despite appearances during the day, she is still more human than he himself, and he has the absurd hope that in hearing and watching her, he can learn it again.
But it hasn't helped so far, and he fears it never will, and weeks and months will go by, and she'll cry herself to sleep every night, and he'll listen, until one day, she will be over it. She will stop, and he'll be lost.
Listening isn't enough, and for the second time, he gets up and enters her room and sits down, and again, she doesn't appear to notice. But it doesn't take him long to realise that this is not enough, either, and now what will he do?
She is wearing a blue nightgown, and for some reason, it reminds him of the one she had been wearing when he was small, no older than four. It had been of the same blue, but with little flowers on it. He remembers because there had been one night when, just like today, he had seen her cry. She had woken him up, the stairs rumbling and creaking above his head as she had rushed downstairs, and after a while, he had got up and followed her into the living room. She'd been sitting on the couch, in that blue nightgown, with a pillow hugged to her chest, sobbing, and she hadn't noticed him until he had been standing beside her and spoken.
"Why are you crying, Aunt Petunia? Does something hurt you?"
She had stared at him wide-eyed for some seconds, and he'd already been afraid she might get angry, but then she had simply nodded and put the pillow away, opening her arms for him to come onto her lap. He couldn't remember that she had ever done this before, but after a moment, he had complied, and had spent the next half hour with her rocking him and crying into his hair.
In the end, she had sent him to bed, and never mentioned it again, and he had known better than to bring it up, small as he had been. He eventually almost forgot about it, but now it is here again, and as he remembers, he realises that there is one thing he can't remember any more: how it felt to be held, to be touched like that.
His friends have hugged him, of course, every now and then, and there had been Ginny before they had broken up, but it wasn't the same, and they aren't here. She is here, however, and before he can change his mind, he gets up from the chair, goes around the bed and lies down behind her on the blanket. She goes stiff when his arms wrap around her, and he can feel that she is holding her breath. He doesn't say anything, just holds her tighter, and after a while, she relaxes and exhales, and then more sobs shake her, now stronger than before. He closes his eyes and feels her body jerk in his arms, until finally, she is exhausted and sleeps, and he leaves.
She is the same as always during the next day. She sits on the couch and stares down on her hands, she eats what he cooks, and she doesn't speak. In the evening, she cries, and he comes and holds her until she is asleep.
Two more weeks go by like this, and with every evening, he gets to know her body better. He knows when she will stop trying to calm down and instead give herself up to sobbing, knows when she will start trembling, knows when she will gasp for air between sobs like she's choking, knows when she will curl up even more and start rocking herself gently, and he knows when she will get silent and sleep. And one evening, his face pressed against her neck as he breathes in the perfume he got her some weeks ago, he knows something else as well.
He turns her around, and she lets him, and she doesn't back away when he wipes the tears off her face with his sleeve. She opens her eyes and stares at him - like she did in that night all those years ago, he thinks. When he leans forward and kisses her, she lets it happen. Her lips are thin, but soft, and it doesn't take long until she returns the kiss. After a while, he takes off his clothes and her nightgown, the kisses going down her jaw, her neck and her chest.
Her body is different from Ginny's, her breasts smaller and not as firm, her stomach softer, with stretch marks from pregnancy, and he feels bones where he couldn't with the girl. It doesn't take him long to be ready, and she doesn't protest, just closes her eyes and clings to him tightly, and when he comes and begins to cry, she holds him like she did only once before, his head resting between her breasts and her cheek on his hair. She waits until he falls asleep before she puts on her nightgown, robe and slippers and goes downstairs, into the living room. She sits down on the couch, hugs a pillow to her chest and starts rocking herself, and she doesn't stop until morning arrives and he finds her and makes her take a shower, dress, and eat.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
A year later, Harry appears to be much better. His friends are happy, for now he will meet them again, come to their birthdays, go to Quidditch matches, or invite them for tea. They are glad that he got over his depression and found back to his old self, and they admire him for taking care of his aunt, that poor woman.
Aunt Petunia still doesn't speak. She eats and drinks, she takes showers and combs her hair, and she uses the perfume Harry gets her, because he tells her to. She sits on the couch and stares at nothing, her arms sometimes wrapped around a pillow while she rocks herself. She looks paler and thinner than when she moved into Grimmauld Place, like a ghost, but she doesn't let anyone take her outside. When one day, Hermione, who sometimes stops by and talks to her, tries to touch her, she shies away and runs out of the room.
In the evening, she doesn't cry any more when she goes to bed, but he comes nevertheless. He needs her, always will. She needs him as well, because who would provide for her if he didn't? That's what he asks her, but it's not like she would leave anyway. She lets him hold her and undress her, she kisses him back and clings to him silently until he is done.
She only ever cries when she is sure that he is gone and asleep.