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Challenges Listed at the Bottom
Word Count: 1589
Hogwarts Assignment 7: Folklore, Task 8: Write about someone bleeding (by any means).
Warnings: Character Death / Grief
existing without you (living is impossible)
It happened in seconds, and yet the moment seemed to take years. Tom felt Harry's hands on his side, a strong push that knocked him off balance. There was a bang, and then Harry was gone, thrown in the air by the car that had plowed straight into him—right where Tom had been standing.
It felt like slow motion, like an action scene from a movie, and the sickening crack of Harry's body hitting the tarmac echoed dully in Tom's head.
He rushed across the road and dropped to his knees beside Harry, ignoring the panicked screams around him, and the honking of other cars.
Harry's leg was bent in the wrong direction, but a broken leg was nothing compared to the bright red blood pooling beneath his head.
His eyes were still open, and he looked up at Tom with a pained expression.
"You're okay?" he asked, and Tom wanted to berate him and hold him tight and kiss him and hit him all at the same time, because Tom wasn't the one who'd just been thrown into the air, and Tom wasn't the one lying in a growing pool of his own blood.
"I'm fine, idiot," he settled on, and despite knowing he shouldn't move Harry, Tom shuffled a little closer and propped Harry's up a little into his lap, cradling his body. Nearby, he could hear a woman crying as she spoke into a phone, clearly calling for an ambulance. "Why did you do that?"
"Couldn't let you get run over, could I?" Harry replied with a weak smile. The words were followed by a cough, and blood spilled out between his lips.
Tom turned his head, looking around for any sign of the emergency services. He knew logically that he'd hear them before he saw them, but logic wasn't where his head was at.
"It's not okay for you to get hurt in my place," he told Harry, looking back down at him.
Harry just looked at him for a long moment. "M'sorry."
"Don't apologise," Tom said, stroking a hand through Harry's hair. "You're going to be fine."
"Tom—"
"Don't leave me like this, Harry. You can't."
"I'm cold, Tom. Really cold."
Tom had never felt so helpless in his whole life, and given his upbringing, that was saying something.
He shook his jacket off and draped it over Harry, rubbing at his arm for friction as he cradled him in the other.
"Harry."
"I love you, Tom. Don't ever forget that. I love you."
Deep breath. "Harry."
Nothing.
"Harry."
Still nothing.
"Harry, please."
But Tom knew it was too late, because not once in the time they'd known each other had Harry ever failed to answer him.
…
It was sunny. Tom wasn't quite sure why that irked him so much, except for the fact that he was feeling anything but sunny himself. It irked him that the sun dared shine when Harry was gone.
It had no right.
Tom dressed in a black suit, with a white shirt and a black tie and shined shoes. It was what was proper for a funeral.
Harry would have hated it.
The few times they'd had to dress up for one event or another, Harry had done nothing but complain about the monkey suits; he far preferred ripped jeans and a t-shirt with paint splashed all over it, or oil from the times he'd worked in the garage with his godfather.
He liked bright colours, reds and golds and blues and greens.
Black and white were only for penguins, in Harry's opinion. And even then, it was only because they were cute and suited it.
Tom checked his hair in the mirror and then leant over to flick on the radio. He didn't particularly care for 'current music', but anything to drown out the silence was welcome.
Even the noise that people seemed to enjoy these days.
The flat had never been so silent. Harry had been noisy. He had always been talking, or humming, or whistling. He'd even tapped his foot or his fingertips when he wasn't making noise with his mouth.
There was always something. It had annoyed Tom at times, but now, he'd give anything to have it back.
Anything.
A knock on the door startled Tom from his thoughts, and he opened it to see Lucius Malfoy standing there in a suit perfectly matched to Tom's.
"It's time, Mr Riddle."
Tom only nodded, stepping back into the flat to get his keys, wallet and phone. Not that he cared for anyone who might contact him now. He'd never hear the only ringtone he'd bothered to personalise ever again anyway, so what did it matter?
With a final glance in the mirror—if nothing else, he could look perfect for his Harry one last time—Tom left the flat with his PA.
It was time to say goodbye.
…
The graveyard was filled with people by the time Tom arrived, the car pulling right up to the gates. Everyone was wearing black, and while Tom knew most of the people in the crowd, he didn't want to talk to any of them.
He had nothing to say.
He climbed out of the car and walked up the gravelly path amongst the perfectly lined graves. The stones were newer here, more recently placed, but Tom couldn't find it in himself to care about any of them.
Who cared about any of the nameless, faceless other people that died every day when his Harry was gone?
When he joined the masses, he realised that some people were already crying.
Tom supposed that was normal, but he hadn't shed a tear. Not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't. While all of these people—people who'd loved Harry, people who'd liked him, people who'd cared about him—had managed to get to the sorrow stage, Tom was still stuck on rage.
Rage was familiar, at least. Tom was well acquainted with the emotion, though he'd had far less use for it in recent years. Harry's smile had been enough to keep it in check.
Tom didn't have that anymore.
Ignoring the ones that raised their hands in greeting, and even though that muttered their condolences as he passed, Tom walked into the crematorium.
He took his seat in the front row, and Harry's godfather, Sirius, clapped him just once on the shoulder in acknowledgement. The coffin was too close, and Tom couldn't pull his eyes away from it. There was a photo in a pretty silver frame on top of it, Harry smiling down at them all with an almost angelic look on his face.
Almost—because Tom could see the mischief in his eyes. Harry was always a contradiction like that.
He'd had that look on his face the first time he'd turned to Tom and asked, "What if I kissed you right now?" It had been their first kiss, and Tom had been too shocked to answer, so Harry had just done it. They'd been together ever since.
Instead of the photo, Tom couldn't help but think of the body beneath it, trapped within the wood. He wanted to force away the lid, to pull Harry out and breathe life back into him, because that was Tom's life in that box, and it was about to be burned into nothing but ash.
Tom didn't hear a word of the service. He saw people move up to the front to stand at the podium, either to readings or talk about their own memories of Harry, but Tom didn't care for any of it.
He knew all of the people here had lost Harry too, but he was entirely sure that none of them could understand the sheer amount of pain Tom faced when he thought of life without Harry.
Or existence, since that was what it would be.
There was no living for Tom now. There was only existing, until he was finally taken back to his love. His childhood fear of death was nothing in the face of living forever without Harry.
A song played, and Tom's heart clenched when he realised it was a song the two of them had danced to on the same night Tom had dropped to one knee in front of Harry, to ask him for forever. Harry had said yes, but forever, it turned out, wasn't very long.
It could never have been long enough, Tom had realised.
The curtains shifted, and Tom realised that the coffin was moving. It didn't even take the whole length of the song to disappear behind the curtain.
And again, the realisation dawned that Harry was gone.
He wasn't coming back.
…
The funeral long over, Tom arrived back at the too-silent flat. He didn't bother with the radio this time. He took his shoes off with less care than he'd ever shown, using his toes to hold the heel down, and he shook his jacket off and let it fall to the floor.
Paying no mind to the rest of the flat, Tom walked into the bedroom and climbed onto the bed. He tugged the pillow from the opposite side to where he usually slept into his arms, and into a pillow that still held a vague scent of Harry, Tom cried.
He cried as though his world had ended, because it had.
He may still be breathing, but his life had burnt up in the flames behind the curtain the coffin had rolled through.
Because his life was Harry, and Harry was gone.
Written for:
Gotta Catch Em All: 11. Duskull: Crying
Written In The Stars: 13. Established Relationship
Showtime: 2. Sunny
Elizabeth's Empire: 6. A funeral
Amber's Anime: 14. (theme) Death
Buttons: E3. Rage
TV Spree: 10. Trapped
Halloween Bingo: 43. Coffin
Costume Party: IT: Balloon: Red
Trick or Treat: Malfoy House: Proper / Treat: "What if I kissed you right now?"
Monster Mash Up: 8. Demon: Angelic / 16. Kraken: Drown
Apple Picking: Lost
Apple Bobbing: 26. Graveyard
Horror Scavenger Hunt: 14. Write a story including a graveyard
Pumpkin Carving: Step 2: Startle
Hot Air Balloon: 3. Contradiction
Spooky Playlist: 2. "Don't leave me like this."
Til Death Do Us Part: Character A dies in Character B's arms.
The Spooky Express: 2. Wraith's Wharf: Funeral
Moony's Neon Cafe: Table: 2. Silence
365: 321. A Funeral
Scavenger Hunt: 75. One half of your OTP dying
Fantastic Beasts: 37. Cheval Gauvin: A graveyard/Cemetery