A/N: Written for the Something…Wrong challenge, 15. Violent Video Games, and the pairing Harry/Hermione.
Caged Animal
She stood and watched him again, heart anxiously squirming in her chest, hands shaking as they gripped the tray deathly tight.
A little bead of sweat dribbled down his cheek and a biscuit snapped between his teeth. He narrowed his eyes at the screen, then grinned, squeezing the controls he held until the little figurine on the screen shattered with brute force.
The grin widened at the blaringly loud victory gong, then he waited, and had a bit of coke, as the preamble started.
'Hurry it up,' he mumbled after half a minute of watching the new fighters introduced. He couldn't give a damn about them after all; he was in it for the fighting: the adrenaline rush, the chance to showcase his strength and the satisfaction of watching the opponent collapse like a broken house of cards.
She knew he hated the games with the special effects though, and it was a small comfort to know. Like the ones his cousin had been so fond of, with splatters of blood on the screen, and little zips of red and green light from one fighter to the next –
She took the moment, offered him the drink she carried. Warmer, more bitter, and he grimaced but took it anyway, looking up into her frown. But she said nothing to him; she let him continue on with his little charade, where he was in a war and yet out of it, where the characters he killed and lost could stand up and walk again, where he wasn't a murderer…
'You have work soon,' she said a little while later. 'And an appointment with the therapist too.'
…and where he wasn't a living shell of a man that only she knew in its entirety, because everybody else just saw the shell-case he wore. The war-hero, the Head of the Aurors, the Executioner of Justice…none of them saw the broken man she could only keep because of that virtual world, that world which allowed him to exist without thought or remorse, only an animal to be let loose in the cage of a contained world.
She didn't know what to do if the animal escaped – and it would be her fault for rearing it in the first place. Still – and she took the empty cup back with still shaking hands, watching the other pair tightened around the controls once more – she didn't know what she'd do without him.