Foreign Exchange, task 3: Write about someone trying to do something alone
Word Count: 589
Warning: alcoholism, grief
He's gone.
Dennis stands there, unsure of what to say. His head swims as he tries to understand the apologies that spill from Neville's mouth. Colin is gone. Colin, who had promised Dennis that he would come back, has broken that promise.
Dennis hates him. At least, he wants to hate him. After all, people who break promises are supposed to be the worst types. That's what his dad has always said.
But he doesn't hate Colin. He simply hates his absence.
Neville is still talking, still using words like hero and honor. Dennis doesn't want to hear it. With shaky hands, he accepts his brother's camera, trying not to react to the crack across the lens.
Colin would be devastated.
…
"Dennis?"
His father's breath smells heavily of alcohol. Dennis almost laughs. Like father, like son shouldn't apply to their coping methods, but here they are.
"You can talk to me, you know," his father says, his voice strained.
"I know, Dad."
He won't. There's nothing either of them can do or say that will make it any easier for the other. So far, they've managed to sit through one lunch that had been filled with a silence so tense and awkward that Dennis had barely been able to eat more than a few bites of his sandwich. Other than that, they haven't bothered reaching out.
Dennis wonders if he should be hurt by that. Maybe, but he isn't. It's easier to do it this way, to be alone with his grief.
When the door closes, Dennis drops to his knees, trembling. He leans forward, resting his face against his mattress and muffling the frantic sounds that escape him.
He reaches under his bed and pulls out the bottle he's stashed away. It's cheap vodka, and it tastes awful, but it's something his father won't notice is missing at all. Dennis opens the bottle.
Alcohol works its own strange kind of magic. One sip, and abracadabra! His demons fade away. Another sip, and the screaming in his head lowers to a dull roar. Slowly, sip after sip, he becomes numb.
…
Orla writes to him a few days after the funeral. She has always been such a good friend, so he isn't surprised when the letter comes.
He's tempted to reach out, to tell her that he's slipping. Instead, he just folds the letter and tucks it away. She doesn't deserve to have him drag her into his misery.
This grief is his alone. He will carry it, and he will learn to deal with it on his own.
If only he knew how.
…
Dennis paces, hands trembling as he finishes off yet another stolen bottle of alcohol. It has been a month since losing Colin, and it hasn't gotten any easier.
Maybe he needs something other than alcohol to cling to. Maybe he actually needs someone.
But he won't reach out. He can't. Dennis looks around, and people are healing. People are moving on with their lives and finding their smiles again. Even George Weasley is getting ready to reopen his joke shop.
Dennis is broken, and no one can fix him. He should have healed by now. Everyone else has, and it is so clear that something is wrong with him.
All he can do now is sit in his room, broken and holding onto an empty bottle, looking through the photographs Colin has left behind. Maybe there is no healing for him; maybe there will always just be this blanket of loneliness and grief.
