Title: Heavy Hearted
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character(s)/Pairing: Harry/Luna
Rating: PG
Warnings: Terminal illness.
Notes: Written for Welcome Home, a Harry Potter Ficathon
Harry absentmindedly set his hand over his heart and stared past his reflection in the window, out at the split oak tree. It'd been hit by lightning about a month ago, and the current had been strong enough the split the heavy wood apart. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and in response he tilted his head and brushed his cheek across the familiar cool fingers.
"Are you nervous?"
Harry shrugged and lifted his head, bringing his hand down to tap on the leather armrest of the sofa. It was worn and cracked from all the years of being sat upon by children and animals and friends.
"I dunno. I guess I should be, right?"
The hand pulled away and Harry turned his eyes up and focused on the effulgent hair piled on Luna's head with bobby pins and clips and various other instruments; they weren't very effective, because white strands of hair still curled around her neck and shoulders and face.
She sat beside him and said, "I don't think so. You've done so many frightening things, that whatever it is inside use that makes us afraid must be very worn down, depleted." She cocked her head in his direction, eyes on his knees, and said, "But then again, you're only human, and it's in every human's nature to feel afraid." She looked up at him, grinning. "If you were a Couragantin Brakkin, though, you'd have no such troubles."
"What the hell is that?"
"These tiny little things that look like fuzzy napkins."
Harry stared at Luna and Luna stared at Harry, and he wondered how he would've gotten along without her.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, saying, "I never thought I'd be dealing with something like this, though." He breathed an imitation of a laugh, almost bitter. "I can handle Dark Lords and serial killers and ferocious monsters and all those other awful things I've been dealing with for the past forty years, but this?" He wiped a hand over his face, sets his elbow on the armrest, and set his chin in his palm. "It's absurd, really."
"Like I said, you're only human." She turned her palms face up on her thighs and stared down at them with a line across her brow. "But even non-humans get sick. Even Couragantin Brakkins."
"But they're not afraid of it, right?"
She sighed. "Maybe. Maybe not. I've yet to study them enough to know how they respond to terminal illness."
He looked back out at the split oak tree and felt the ghost of pain on his forehead.
"You'd think it'd be something wrong with my head, not my heart."
He swallowed and looked over at the mantelpiece, at the photos of his children and his friends, and of Luna; he feels a sort of tightening in his throat.
"Harry?"
He blinked away sudden blurriness and let his hand drop back down to the armrest. He looked over at Luna, who's staring at him with wide wet eyes and pursed lips. He gently set his hand on the top of her pile of hair, and they looked at one another, both thinking very similar things and unable to vocalize any.
Harry cleared his throat and, again, turned his eyes back to the oak tree.
"I'm not afraid, Luna. I'm just sad."
"Sad?"
"Yes."
"Sad because you don't think… ?"
He looked back down at her, face pulled into weary lines. "I've been dodging death for fifty-one years, Luna. I'm running out of luck, I think."
"But they said that sometimes a second transplant – "
"Luna." She quieted and looked down at the floor, wiping her hands across her cheeks. "You know the statistics as well as I do. I can only undergo so many different kinds of surgeries and spells and enchantments, and take so many different kinds of supplements and potions before they're not enough."
She leaned further into him, then, tracing her hand along the scar going down the center of his chest.
"You've carried me along for so many years, Luna. I've got to be getting heavy."
"You'll never be too heavy for me." They're quiet, listening to the pattering of feet somewhere upstairs and dogs barking out back.
Harry breathed deep, trying to infuse himself with the smell of Luna's perfume, of their old house, and of the honeysuckles that crowded the back door. He tried to pull it deep into his person, tried to breath deep enough that he'd remember it all for good, forever, and hoped that if he didn't wake tomorrow, that whatever kind of life he had next, Luna would be there, too.
Most of all, he hoped that if he did meet her again, he wouldn't be so impossible to stabilize, so hard to love, so heavy to carry.