Special thanks to webpixie, Noyoki and Rori Potter! You guys are so awesome I just had to update today. We're going back to Harry's second year... Ready?
Deep
It feels like a desperate gasp for air.
Like she's drowning, struggling, pulled under, until suddenly her head breaks through the surface of the water and she breathes. The air is stale, heavy enough to force a weak cough out of her lungs, and tainted by a smell that might have been blood but makes her think of death instead.
It's staggering in a way, disorienting, because one moment she's- not gone, exactly, more faded out, like an old wallpaper that peels off on the edges, and then she's back, in her body, there, aware and in control.
The stone floor feels cold and uncomfortable against her cheek, too hard, too harsh, and she wants to shy away from the sensation but she's back and there's nowhere to go.
The light is dim, still too sharp and too bright for her senses, but almost bearable, and her eyes are adjusting slowly. Now that the haze has left her she sees clearer again—and yet, perhaps, not as clear as before.
She scrambles towards him the second she first catches sight of his body, motionless, still. Her movements are jerky and awkward and out of practice but she's not so much embarrassed as she's sad—sad about losing a sense of completion and perfection she can now barely remember, sad about being back. There's knowledge too, somewhere in the back of her mind, and maybe it's not as much knowledge as it is understanding, but it's just as important and she feels it, remembers it, even as it escapes her, dissipates and withdraws and slips away.
The body groans, the sound loud and unforgiving in ears that she can't remember hearing with in too long, maybe forever. Then his eyes flutter open and they're bright and green, the first colour she's seen since the haze has been lifted and it's—earth-shattering, is what it is.
Because she sees it in that unique shade of green, sees a smidgen of the beyond she's been pulled back from, sees a half-formed understanding of something their minds are not meant to grasp, a shared desire for something life can not offer and she latches on to that, holds it with everything she has because—
It's the only thing that feels real to her, in a world she's been returned to live in, a world she has already left behind, a world that can not live up to the memories she has of it.
He takes pulls her to her feet, none too gently, and she doesn't mind. It's soothing in a way, this, he, they. There's something about him that takes the edge of life away, something already half-way gone, something never truly there, and it calms her, grounds her in a way she's not aware she desperately needs.
Later she tells them it felt like waking up from a long, deep sleep.
Deep
What do you think?
Within this cloudier heaven contains one of my favourite interpretations of how the Chamber incident might have affected Ginny in a different world. Did anyone else ever think it was strange how she just seemed to get over the Chamber incident? Sure, she was shy but I can't remember reading something about therapy sessions in canon and shouldn't she have at least been checked?
The next prompt word is 'Seeking Solace'. Any guesses what it's it about?
xx ReRe