Title: And I Cannot Reach You
Word Count: 670
Note: This is a drabble I wrote for the LJ community LDWS, my prompt being an immediate continuation of the epilogue.
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Harry Potter. No, sadly I only own some cheap (yet expensive!) Harry Potter merchandise. I write in hopes of bringing some free entertainment to myself and, with hope, a few others.
Lily shoots up the stairs as soon as they're home from King's Cross Station, red hair trailing behind her like she's a firecracker. "Leave your flying bicycle!" Harry calls up after her. "Your Aunt Hermione almost cursed me when Uncle Ron went and nearly broke his neck on that thing."
"Everyone always brings that one up," Ron grumbles darkly, coming up behind Harry. Then,conspiratorially: "Left the womenfolk up front. So. Alone with the wife tonight, huh? You gonna…" he waggles his eyebrows suggestively before realizing just what he's suggesting. "I mean," he amends with horror. "Don't you dare -"
"I think it's a bit too late to protect your sister's virtue, Ron," Harry says dryly. "You have noticed James, Lily, and Al, haven't you?"
Ron shudders, twisting his mouth all out of shape for emphasis. "I was there when they came out, mate," he says, looking victimized. "Bloody awful. I thought the birthing experience was supposed to be –"
"Supposed to be what?"
Harry and Ron whirl around, and suddenly Hermione's there, thin-lipped, cross-armed and nearly swathed in hair.
"Disgusting!" Ron says. "Absolutely vile stuff! It wasn't, though. It was like watching a beautiful flower opening to the sun, and -"
"That's enough," Hermione says severely, though she's veiling a grin. "Hugo's up front with Ginny, Ron. He was peeping up the neighbour's skirt again. Now I'm not going to say he's learned it from you…"
"I'll go have a chat," Ron says dutifully, muttering as he walks back outside: "Boy's growing up too fast."
Ron out of sight, Hermione grabs Harry's arm in a movement more befitting of a twitch – as if she couldn't help it. "Are you two alright?" she asks tentatively, voice edged with worry. "Ginny hasn't said anything to me, but. Well –"
"You were always too observant for your own good, Hermione," Harry says fondly, staring up at the landing. Lily's there, rucksack slung over one shoulder and grinning ear-to-ear, her teeth glimmering like tiny pearls tucked between the flesh of an oyster. "We'll be fine," he says, and Lily's running towards him now. "We have to be fine."
Hermione purses her lips in response.
Harry says his goodbyes there, leaning down to kiss Lily's crown of mussed hair in a patch of sunlight that straggled in from outside before Hermione takes her hand, leading her down the front walk to a score composed of laughter.
Through the doorway he sees Ginny kiss Lily's head - pressing her lips to the same spot Harry had kissed her just moments before – and he aches. Lily's departure drags in silence just as it always has, leaving it morbidly exposed like a cat dropping the corpse of a bloodied bird onto the welcome mat.
Walking into the darkened foyer moments later, Ginny brushes past him. It's the most contact they've shared in weeks, and he thrums with it like a plucked string.
Harry trudges into the kitchen, grabs a bottle, fills a glass, and carries both into the parlour. He sits and waits, watching Ginny bustle about in twirling bursts of bright colour before she disappears, mutterings of "I'm going to Diagon Alley" left like a heavy fog in the air.
He fills a glass.
Light washes between blinds like a low tide, casting thickly-clinging shadows over everything, and Harry sees the shapes of what never was in the light flittering against the grinning family's portrait before him, traces it in the twist of their mouths.
He fills a glass.
When Ginny returns, her bright hair and pale face lights the darkness, and he remembers the fire she'd once possessed as she flits and weaves in and out of shadows like a dream. He'd still never really known her then. They'd never known each other.
He fills a glass, tastes blood.
Harry stretches out a hand, threading his fingers through all of the nothing and the everything that walks between them. He stretches out a hand, but still, he cannot reach her.
Thank you for reading. Any review would be greatly appreciated. :)