A/N: This is the third of ten stories for my fic exchange with Sceltina. This is the first without a holiday! I'm sorry for the morbidness… the theme is actually not so morbid, but yeah, it's pretty angsty. I rather liked this one, though it made me desperately sad.
Theme: Babies
Due: Jan. 30th, 2007
The line referring to gray as barely a color was inspired by a fanfiction, but I can't, for the life of me, remember which. Anyone willing to wager a guess? The whole thing is soaked in symbolism and such, but hopefully not too obvious?
Blue
By Twilts
"Harry, please wake up. Please."
It was a slightly hysterical voice that broke through the pill of his dreams. It had pressed down upon his thoughts, blinding out any feeling and sobering the frantic thoughts his mind was prone to make in situations like this. The scent of flowers was flooding his senses, lifting his heart out of its confusion and nursing it with butterflies that flew to his stomach in a whirlwind of good health. It masked even the stench of death.
When his eyes fluttered open they first saw the almost blinding glow of the pure blue sky above, not at all dimmed by the few fluffy clouds that sat upon its smiling face. Alone, one could almost imagine angels winging among the clouds, creating air-light cirrus clouds with every beat of their feathered wings. At the corner of his eyesight lingered a shock of deep red hair, and Harry sat up with a start. He just missed colliding his forhead with Ginny's, but his vision spun all the same at his rude start.
"Harry!"
It was the youngest of the Weasleys, it seemed, who had bathed him in the scent of flowers, and she grabbed him out of a mixture of relief, fright, and shock at his state. Harry's arms lifted automatically around her, and he blinked a few times. His arms gripped her tighter reflexively, and he blinked a few more times, not willing it to be true. They sat in their childhood spot deigned for giggles, but through the windows of the joke shop, Harry glimpsed the wreckage of a Death Eater attack. He wanted to avert his eyes, he did, and yet he stared as one does at a train crash that's just too horrible to look away. This went lightyears beyond the abstract threat of a train crash.
"Ginny… what...," Harry started, but his voice cracked painfully too early. He swallowed. "Who…."
"I don't know, I don't know Harry," she replied, knowing full well what he meant. "I haven't been out yet, I don't know if I can. We should call somebody."
It took Harry about half a minute to stop out of his horrified stupor and into the well-versed battle warrior he'd become, and, still holding Ginny with one arm, he conjured his Patronus. Admittedly fainter than as per usual, the stag gave him a mournfully look before cantering off to alert somebody, anybody, who was in t he Order and capable of helping. He watched it go almost wistfully, hoping that he'd still have enough happiness to raise the stag after walking out of Zonko's. He stood up, lifting Ginny along with him, and only stumbled a bit when he took his first step. He decided first to asses the damage around him as much as he could, because he could only vaguely remember what had transpired. Zonko's was in the process of being transformed in a franchise of the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and he remembered paying it a visit, and waiting for Fred and George, who were in the back somewhere. He felt the cold nails of fear and apprehension dig into his heart, and he turned to Ginny softly.
"Ginny, Fred and George, what happened to—," He started, stumbling over his words as he did over the WWW products that were scattered upon the floor. He took Ginny's silence as a sign that she had no idea herself, and could hear her shoes scraping behind him. Chances are they escaped the shop, right? They would have run if the heard the noises… and the Death Eaters would have hurt Harry as well, but Harry had escaped everything, so they must be okay, they must.
Harry wrenched the door open, sending the doorknob crashing into the wall, and he dug his nails into his fingers.
"NO."
This wasn't logical, this wasn't right, this wasn't probable, but… the Weasley's had gone and left no mark but for the puddle of blood staining the walls and the carpets and the boxes of their products, and the sharp smell of death. It was a bad omen, and Harry hoped that they would walk out of Zonko's and see the twins' smiling facing offering them a cleverly disguised Canary Crème. Ginny had grasped his forearms and he could feel her trembling against him.
"Ginny, we need to go look," Harry said, swallowing. "We need to go outside."
"We need to hope Harry, we need hope," she said, and he could see the sheen of tears in her eyes and she grasped his hand and entwined their fingers for comfort and strength. They'd split up at Dumbledore's funeral just three months before, and they should have been in school again and together, and Slytherin's locket was found and deep in the pocket of his robes.
They both hesitated, but walked out of the storage rooms and pushed the front door open in what seemed like one large stride. Harry willed his eyes not to wince closed.
Hogsmeade was a mess, to put it in the pure sense of the sky. Building were scorched black from the vile magic of the Dark Arts, windows shattered, lights shot, dreams shattered, lives crushed, and for once Harry did not see the comforting smoke of a warm fire curling up from the Three Broomsticks down the lane. The town was painted gray, barely a color and barely light in any matter. It was the depressed artist on his worst of days, and Harry had never seen a darker shade of gray.
It was… carnage. The amount of bodies that littered the streets was worthy of the bloodiest of wars, in which the heroes fought thousands of soldiers to bring victory to his side but… this was of a different breed. The dark hoods of the Death Eaters and the daily garb of the Order and the civilians were entangled amongst each other in a frighteningly beautiful harmony, and there was no one hero that fought for his or her cause. Harry's eyes were moving so fast that none of the bodies wore faces.
Ginny was walking now, and their entwined hands pulled Harry forwards as well, and he stepped onto the grass that was sporting a new red dye. Harry prayed thanks to a murderer at every body that wore no wounds but that of death, because the Avada Kedavara was a merciful way to pass. Harry had convinced himself long ago that the screams were for surprise, not pain. And yet, amongst the unabused were always the abused, whose eyes were open and haunting and shot arrows at Harry's soul, and pierced his eardrums with their silent screams. A pregnant woman was clutching her stomach that was weeping blood from a wound. Harry turned away and saw a tear fall upon the cobblestone street. Ginny was weeping.
They continued walking, but saw nothing but for the dead and the chaos, and it seemed for a moment that they were alone in the barren gray landscape they had once found liberating. Harry soon became aware of a steady, high-pitched squeal ringing in his ears and rattling around in his heightened senses. It felt like the scream of his soul, but a gasp from Ginny snapped him from his thoughts and he knew that sound was nothing psychological. His loved Ginny caught his eye, and they exchanged the wonderment and surprise they felt briefly before jumping and sprinting off down the alley to their right.
They ran and the whining grew in pitch and volume, and Harry felt his eyes sting, and he stumbled on the trash and the horror and followed Ginny's shock of red hair further and further down the alley, into the middle, dark and drench with misery, and watched stopped behind Ginny, who was kneeling down in front of a scene so familiar to him.
Two adults, dead not so long ago, curled together in their demise, clutching each other with the might of their love, and ignoring their blood streaked bodies for gazing lifelessly between them. A tuft of brown hair topped perfection.
A baby, simple and pure, lay beneath his dead parents, crying out of big, blue eyes. Ginny scooped him up into her trembling arms, her tears dripping down her nose and onto its forehead, willing the baby to stop its anguish and gaze upon the heavenly sky.
"We're here now. We've found you."