When he set the salad bowl on the wooden table I noticed the small splits that ran along the grain of the rough wooden planks. It was such an inconsequential detail to notice. I cringed at the dull sound of metal hitting the table. I twitched as I touched the coarse wood with my hands. I heard sounds that I knew were not there when my wooden chair creaked loudly. And every time he had this look in his eyes, as if he knew not to pity me but couldn't help himself.
I knew I needed help, but asking for help was never one of my strong sides. I knew that if things didn't change, that I would be stuck in this half-life. This wretched existence where everything was grey and dull, until it wasn't. Until memories of things I so dearly wanted to forget surfaced again and again. I was stuck. Stuck between staring out of the window into the nothingness of the nights and the days that seemed to follow each other without a single thing to separate them. And memories, always the memories.
The memories of being lifted onto a table by rough, uncaring hands. The memories of flesh hitting flesh. Of disgusting smells that wouldn't be ignored, like the uncaring looks would, by closing my eyes.
I lifted my head and looked in his eyes. Still that short flash of pity that he tried to repress.
I swallowed the bitter and salty tastes in my mouth. Tastes that somehow always appeared when we sat down at the table. Just like the smells that made their way into my head when I heard the chair creak. Or the flashes of uncaring eyes I seemed to see when I heard the sound of cloth rubbing against each other.
"Do you think it will ever get easier?" I asked while trying to sound blasé. No need to see more pity appear.
Apparently sounding blasé was easy when staring out of the window into the grey outside. But it wasn't as easy when my senses were attacked by memories that were ingrained into my brain. I sounded like I would break in thousand pieces at the next sound of a chair scraping across the floor. Or something like that.
I tried to make the sound of a sincere laugh to soften the reality of the question. I had evaded talking about everything. That had long been a survival strategy for me. If I ignored the reality of things and substituted my own reality, the pain would not be real as well. But somehow reality caught up with me and slammed it into my face. Repeatedly.
It's hard to laugh sincerely when laughing was not one of your usual tricks to survive. So I failed at that too. Well, congratulations.
"You know, I talked with Arthur about this" He spoke softly, while busying his hands with straightening the cutlery on the table. A rather unnecessary act. Dinner was set for the two of us. And we really did not need etiquette as another wall between us. So we were both pretending, he pretended that he had loads of things to do to occupy his mind. And I pretended that nothing had happened.
I looked at his face. "What did you talk about?"
I grabbed the glass of water, I did not want to seem too interested. I was afraid of another one of those looks filled with unspoken emotion. I realised that grabbing the glass was just another way of deflection.
"I asked him the same question after one of the funerals. I don't even remember which one to be honest." He grabbed the bowl of potatoes and started loading them onto both of our plates. Another deflection I thought.
"He told me something that stuck with me ever since"
He looked out of the same window. I noticed this synchronicity with an absent thought.
"Nothing will take away the memories. For a long time it will be on your mind, every second of every day. But one day you will get out of bed, and you will manage to forget about it for a few minutes, and next time you will forget about it for an hour and so on and on. But it will never truly go away. Memories will only fade over time."
He scratched his beard while looking at the table. "I think that I do not want to forget any of it. Sure, it feels good to escape from our memories, but in the end it is better to remember. Because when we forget what happened and continue on with our lives it didn't matter what happened."
He lifted his head up and looked straight at me.
"Because it did happen to you, and to me, and to all the others. And we can never forget that. We have to move forwards, but we also have to remember what happened. What they did. And why they did it."
His jaw muscles tightened, and for the first time in a long while I saw a bit of fire back in his eyes.
"But that's the problem Harry! I don't know how to move forwards from here. I'm stuck with these memories. And I want them gone."
He looked away from me. His right hand moved forward over the table and he touched the tips of my fingers.
"I will not let you forget this. Not this. I will help you turn the memories around. Turn them in to weapons, into tools. And we will use what we have lived through. We will take what they did and we will return it a thousand times."
He looked back at me, grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. I suddenly felt like I couldn't breath anymore. The memories floated to the top like barrels in a river. I could not look away from his eyes.
I felt weird, like I was about to break in thousand pieces. Pieces that would scatter in the wind and leave nothing of me.
And then and there I made a decision. Either I would break, and that would be my end. Or I would follow Harry till the end of whatever this was.
"We will do this together Luna." He softly spoke. "We will heal ourselves. We will move forward. But we will keep the memories alive."
I took a deep breath, squeezed his hand back, and nodded.