Intervals
written: 5th September 2005 6:32pm
Empty cigarette packets, glasses sticky from scotch, you yawn and stretch on the faded sofa and the motion sends the pile of paperbacks off the table. You shiver and wrap the gold and maroon patchwork quilter higher, right up to your chin. You wait, like some heroine in a teenage movie, for a phone that never rings, running conversations over and over in your head in the chance that it does. You'd moved into the muggle flat after the war, you had lost most of your connections to the other world, there wasn't much there for you and you wanted out. Old loves and old regrets were neutralised now, yet you couldn't move on, couldn't completely let go of all that. You had turned the photo frames over a few weeks ago, sick of the dull faces, the old staring into the new. If you closed your eyes even for a second you could see them all …
… Hermione, eyes wild, chin defiant, clutching onto lifeless body after lifeless body, wand out, searching for any sign of life in the pits of children. Slaughtered for a cause that was so unjust to her she couldn't rationalise it, wouldn't rationalise it …
… Ron, pacing furiously back and forth down the makeshift headquarters, counting numbers in his head. Counting, counting …
… Harry …
… and so you wrenched your eyes open again, forced them to stay open for weeks at a time until they scrambled closed on their own bidding when your mind had shut down and you couldn't see them anymore. Then you woke, horrified of missing a call, missing an owl, an update, a ray of hope, a sign that it was all a dream. You guzzled down the alcohol, hating its taste yet adoring its character, until you hallucinated and he was there again …
… Harry, 16 years old in your arms, speaking words of bravery and trust and hope. His glasses cold and hard against your neck, saying big things, always big things with no truth.
"Let's go to Karrakatta, we can do that right? When it's all over, we can see the fire lionesses sleeping under the stars. Yes, we'll do that, when it's over."
His body shaking slightly, you kissed his jet black hair and agreed that the lionesses would wait until it was all over …
… And he was the one who left, and you alone to cling to memories induced by scotch or brought on by fatigue. You picked up a battered copy of 'Advanced Potion Making' and flung it against the opposite wall where is joined a pile of other books that had been disregarded earlier. It had become a habit of yours in those seconds of lament. Was it seconds? You had no concept of time or place, just of loss and pain, waiting, waiting.