title: salubrious
pairing: [eventual] harry/ginny
an: from 100_situations, though I haven't submitted it there... yet? I'd been looking to do this for quite some time now, and finally missed writing enough to finally do it. I'm aware of all my other s[hit]tories that I've started and not finished, which I swear if I come up with motivation for I'll continue... but for now, I'm liking the conciseness of a drabble... If I don't venture from the table, there should be 100 chapters of this.
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salubrious
His body still aches as he regains consciousness.
It takes him more than a second to realize where he is, and, more significantly, what he has done.
His green eyes flit around the space trapped inside the closed curtains of his four-poster bed. At Hogwarts.
Voldemort.
-is gone, his mind cuts in after the familiar dread creeps up on him. is gone, and you stopped it. You did it.
It's over.
Over. It is finally over. Harry tries to relax in his four-poster bed, feeling slightly nostalgic as he fidgets around the comfortable bed.
He feels strange, being here. He should be camping in some forgotten forest, fearful, continuously checking over his shoulder, scrounging for something to eat, dirty. Has he taken a shower? The last thing he can remember is crawling up the steps to the dormitory before…
That's the last he remembers, so he must have slept-walked to the bed.
Quietly he sniffs the air.
He hasn't taken a shower. How long has it been, actually? There's no way he remembers that. Does the jump from the Gringott's dragon into the lake count? Probably not, and regardless, he still smells. And his hair feels matted and grimy against his scalp.
How long has he slept? He wonders what time it is, tries to remember what time it was when he hid the Elder Wand away and trudged back to the common room with Ron and Hermione—
And with that, the semi-haze lifts.
Colin Creevey. Lavender. Fred!—
His mind falters on the previous three, unable to compute the fifty more.
Lupin and Tonks. Pressure heightens behind his eyes. Gone, both gone. Only just married, with a son!—
Another orphan like him. Another orphan because of a war.
Flashes of his childhood sink his stomach. Because of this, Teddy will—
But he won't. Things are different this time. He's gone, really gone, and there will be no need for all the protection that had been set up around Harry.
He will have family that loves him, he thinks fiercely.
Unbidden, Fred Weasley invades his thoughts and suddenly he can think no more as grief, regret takes him.
Fred didn't deserve this, none of them deserved this, the family's they left behind didn't deserve this…
Harry screws his eyes shut again. As he lies there in bed, thoughts lay heavy as he thinks of all the grieving families that lost a loved one because he, Harry, was being hunted by Lord Voldemort.
Guilt overwhelms him in the small, dark, confined space of his four-poster bed and he no longer cares what time it is.
He is tired, tired still, cannot think of a time when he didn't feel tired, and rolls over, trying to regain unconsciousness.