title: salubrious
pairing: eventual h/g, r/h
an: well. hello everyone. thank you, all, and please feel free to leave a review. if you do, I will pour my love into your anonymous-internet direction. so much love.
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salubrious
Back resting against the door, Harry can feel his eyes widen behind his glasses as he looks incredulously down at the open Map. He haphazardly brushes the crumbs from his now-eaten dinner off the old, worn parchment, his pulse picking up as he once again reads the name that is labeled so close to his own.
She must have snuck up here while he was slinking around the corridors retrieving his dinner, he thinks. His pulse quickens with anticipation. Steeling himself with a deep breath, Harry stands, tucking the Map in his pocket.
A strong gust of wind pulls at him as soon as he exits the door.
His gaze finds Ginny as if she were a fiery red beacon shot straight into the sky.
She leans too daringly against the stone turrets of the Astronomy Tower. The wind whips her red hair violently, swirling and snapping around her head.
The sight makes Harry freeze, warning shivers shooting down his spine despite the warm summer air.
She leans too daringly against the ledge, arms outstretched wide as if trying to capture the wind in her embrace.
Her laugh, pitched and hysteric, whistles past him with the wind.
Her head turns just enough so her eyes, full of brashness and sadness, tears and challenge, meet his own. A slight smile, a hard smile, a brave smile remains on her lips.
She is not startled to see him, her gaze reaching him without wandering and the intensity in her eyes pins him down, roots him to the spot. He stands as if Petrified, the image she makes against the setting orange sky breathtaking and terrifying all at once.
His heart rate picks up dramatically, thumping heavily in his head as she turns away, hands dropping to clutch the outside purchase of the stone, hips jutting ever so slightly out over the surface of the ramparts.
Another gust of wind hits him. Her hair twists, suspended for a moment behind her like some kind of red-orange-gold smoke before it snaps to stream past her face and out into the open air.
Banished memories of a terrifying night a year past electrifies his feet and he is suddenly ripping her away from the ledge, hands throwing her back towards the inner wall.
She stumbles backwards, her expression, formerly so alive, souring as she stares incredulously back at him.
"What are you doing!" he roars against the wind, fists clenching, his vision almost hazy from the alacrity and thunder of the heartbeat against his skull.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouts again, raspier, and he feels angry, wild, his heartbeat is wild and his breathing all of a sudden doesn't feel adequate and he is helpless as that too picks up to a faster, shallow pace.
His fists clench and he turns away, away from her and her new concerned expression, bending and bracing his hands on his knees. He wills for his heart to slow down, for his breaths to even out, but there's just this fist in his chest and it's got his heart and it's squeezing, and, and and—
And a hand gently falls on his shoulder.
He jumps away and spins towards her all at once.
Her eyebrows are creased over brown pools. Her hands are ghosting towards his, her slender fingers twitching as if to grab them.
But she doesn't.
"Harry," she murmurs, soft now, and he can't keep up with her eyes anymore.
He gasps a few more time before making a quick exit towards the steps, breathing still out of control, ignoring the hurt that crushes her gentle expression. He can't reach the door fast enough.
He throws the door open not soon enough to escape one last, desperate shout of "Harry!" before he arrives within the shelter of the tower, rushing down the spiral stairs.
The quick shuffles of his steps echo along the empty walls. He feels moisture on his cheeks.
She was safe, his logic tells him. Nothing was going to happen to her.
Fear still courses through him, not to be checked, and he wonders what day his instincts had decided to switch from fight to flight.
She had looked so… free.
He doesn't hear the door open behind him. She is not following.