Fangs. A snake, then half of one. Screaming, somewhere, everywhere, all at once everything is screaming and tearing and pain and everyone is bellowing the same thing. You. You. YOU!
You are the reason I am orphaned.
Amputated.
Dead.
It's all your fault, Harry fucking Potter, the boy who fucking lived. Hundreds of pairs of gaunt, mottled hands and glassy, milky eyes swam in front of Harry's vision as the shouts got louder, pounding against him so loudly they bruised his skin. All the things he broke, the unfixable things like lives and hopes and families, they chased him. The hands were around his wrists, his ankles, pulling him apart.
He closed his eyes and waited for the pain. Finally some suffering, finally some damage, finally he could be like everybody else. His limbs began to break away from his body and the agony was euphoric...
Harry snapped awake. His bed was wet and embarrassingly warm. Not just sweat this time.
Molly taught him a spell to clean the sheets, a quick charm that only works on enchanted linens. She confided that she had used it for the twins even until the age of ten. She had choked on the word 'twins'. Harry had held her hand and felt a small tearing in his stomach. So many people to bleed for.
Harry shook the memory from his head but the dream still lingered in the air around him, begging Molly's story along with all the others. He sighed as he uttered the charm- wandless. The first few nights Ginny had shared the bed with him, woken him from the worst dreams, rocked him until he slept again. That was until the bed got damp and he wouldn't let her in anymore.
But the bed looked too cold now, too empty without her. He shook his head and shuffled into his slippers, abandoning the prospect of sleep for the night.
Harry, Ron, Ginny, Hermione and George had found themselves homeless in the aftermath of the battle. It was not so much the consequence of the lack of a home, but an abundance of them. Shell Cottage, Hagrid's hut, the Tonks' house, Grimmauld place, places and people with coaxing smiles and warming beverages trying to make everything alright, all these claimed themselves home. Arthur Weasley had even been talking about rebuilding the Burrow.
But those places were tainted. Those places hurt. The spirits of the lost drenched their walls, every corner reeked of memories and regret. Everywhere they looked they saw another ghost and Harry felt himself rip somewhere new.
So they had moved here, to Ivy House, a cottage on the outskirts of a muggle village in Norfolk where nobody knew their names or asked if they were doing ok. The floors were wooden and a nightmare for splinters and the ceilings were so low George had taken in his more flippant moods to wearing a pillow on his head, but it was clean of the aching tragedy which had plagued the rest of their world. It was home.
Harry headed down to the kitchen, checking the time on the grandfather clock in the hall that had come with the house. Like the grandfather clock in the Burrow, Harry thought with a pang, a clock with two less hands. He shivered, shook it off, realised he hadn't even read the time. It was a quarter past two.
There was a light in the kitchen already, a balled up copy of the Prophet softly burning in the centre of the room. They didn't read it anymore, all it contained were obituaries and celebrations- either too real or not real enough. Mostly they kept it for kindling, stacks of copies by the fireplace, smiling and waving, ignorant to their own fate.
"'Mione?" Harry called out tenderly into the yellow darkness. She had probably already heard his slippers at the threshold, but everyone was jumpy these days and it paid to warn of your presence. Hermione was sitting at one of the stools on the kitchen counter, a muggle paperback in hand. Her hair was characteristically matted, even more so these days, what with all the tossing and turning in bed. She looked up as Harry stepped into the room, gesturing to her book.
"Reading," she said as if it needed explanation.
"Thirsty," Harry replied. No need to tell the truth in Ivy House. Everybody knew why you couldn't sleep. "Want anything?"
"Tea if you're making." He wasn't, but he filled the kettle anyway and pulled out the box of Earl Grey and two mugs. He crossed to the fridge, grabbing the milk and the chocolate powder that sat on top and got to work heating it up for himself over the stove in a small saucepan. Stirring, he felt almost as if he were back in Potions.
Another half spoon of cocoa, Potter, not everything in your life has to be inadequate. Harry shivered at the thought of Snape. Then stopped thinking of Snape, before he could feel the pain of it. Another set of footsteps, a voice at the threshold.
"It's only me."
Ginny had been the best throughout the aftermath of the battle. At first Harry could only see her as the confused first year he had saved from the Chamber of Secrets, innocent and incapable, needing his protection. He had refused to let her in, to let her see the horrors that plagued the back of his eyelids. Maybe he had hoped she would run away, just in case he hurt her like he had hurt all the others, but she had been patient with him, tending to everyone else's wounds until he was ready to have her look at his. He was glad she stayed.
She crossed the room to where Harry stood by the stove and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder as he stirred peacefully. The two swayed gently, taken in their own tide.
"What are you doing up?" Harry asked quietly, to the saucepan.
"I smelt chocolate," she explained. Harry huffed a laugh and turned, brushing away the hair that had fallen in front of Ginny's face and inhaled as he kissed her, sucking the memory into the deepest chambers of his heart. He tried to ignore the redness in her eyes as they came back up for air. She'd tell him when she needed to.
Hermione shifted in her chair and the creak broke the intimacy between them. They looked apologetically towards her but she hardly glanced up from her book, a small smile playing on her lips. Tonight wasn't a night to tease, nobody was going to blame them for their small comforts.
The kettle whistled and Ginny unlatched herself from Harry, making herself useful as she poured Hermione's tea and pulled another mug from the shelf for herself, seating herself in the stool beside her puffy-haired friend. Nobody spoke, savouring the warmth of the room and the cool flagstones and the crackling orange light that threw dreamlike shadows on the wall. Harry poured himself and Ginny some hot chocolate, leaving the rest in the saucepan for when Ron came down, and they drank together, Ginny's head in Harry's chest.
All five were in the kitchen by the time the sun rose. Ron and Harry washed the mugs and saucepan whilst Hermione and Ginny set the table for breakfast, scrambled eggs, fried bacon. George sat at the table, watching with dead eyes. It took him time to warm up to the day, to find himself amongst the pieces of the nightmares that racked him. It was best to leave him alone until then.
"Errol's been I think," Hermione murmured to Ron, rounding on him with a dishcloth to relieve Harry of drying duties, "there were some feathers through the letterbox. Your mum sent a postcard."
"What did it say?" Ginny asked finally when it became clear that Ron was too fixated with chasing the suds out of the final mug with the jet of the tap.
"They're reopening Hogwarts in September, that was the big news. Charlie's gone back to Egypt a bit now that Bill promised to help your dad with the Burrow, she said some other stuff too but I don't remember it now..." Hermione faltered. It seemed the boys weren't in the mood for reality yet. Finally, she took the mug from Ron's hands and dried it, leaving it upturned on the rack.
"She misses you, Ronnie. And your siblings. Won't you go see her?" Ron met her eyes.
"Yeah, no yeah I will, I mean..."
"He's not ready to be nagged quite yet," murmured George from the other end of the room, and for some reason none of them could quite explain it was the funniest thing George had ever said. The room filled with relieved laughter, followed by the clattering and fumbling of breakfast being served.