Author's Note:I am exhausted. Writing is so hard I don't even know if there is a plot to this just enjoy the pretty writing and metaphors.
It's quiet in the common room. The fire is dying down and they're all too lazy to light it again.
Ron sits back in a chair, dozing off, his legs bent at awkward angles. She watches the sparks flicker on and off like little lights blowing out.
Harry's glasses reflect the light like tiny mirrors in his eyes and she thinks of the way people see what they want to see. She imagines seeing only light for the rest of her life.
She places a hand on his left shoulder blade, feeling how cold he is beneath his clothes. "You okay?" She whispers.
"Sirius." He replies and she realises why his jaw is so stiff.
There are lights and there is music and there are flowing dresses and glinting sparkles and laughs. She can see it all from her where she's crouched, just a head below everyone else. Cormac had given her the most ghastly smirk, pointing to the red, leafy blossoms floating above their heads.
She'd voiced digestive distress and had run.
But everyone looks happy from here, all lit up and alive. Like they've put on their costumes and become real for one night. And nothing else exists.
It saddens her.
A hand wraps around her elbow and she is hoisted to her feet. "What are you doing?" Next to Harry is a misty-eyed Luna, taking in the party like a cat surrounded by shiny objects.
"I've just escaped-" That sounds suspicious, and she's not too fond of insinuating anything overly scandalous, "I've just left Cormac."
Harry grins.
She's dancing in the golden light, watching the colours of her dress reflect and change and move. She doesn't even mind that Cormac's hands are drifting south of her waist, she's too entranced.
She bends her neck back, staring at the ceiling. She lets the warmth breath through her skin. She lifts up her arms, touching the laughter and the music and the lights.
Cormac's hands explore her. She feels his hunger moaning into the crook of her neck.
She smooths her thumb over his lips, silencing him. His eyes sink into caves.
The sky is dark. She can see the shadow of clouds through her window. She reaches up a hand, touching the glass. She wants to break it. She wants to let in the wind that will wash away the stains from where he'd touched her. She can still feel his hands all over her.
But at least she'd felt something at all.
She runs way from the noise, the screaming and the shouting and the catcalls. She thinks of herself much shorter, with hair she couldn't tame and she thinks of herself running down the Charms corridor, trying her best not to cry.
She doesn't cry about it anymore. It only stings her insides and the wind feels clean against her face.
There is a ringing against the walls. It sounds like 'Mudblood!'
He's livid. He's screaming and cursing and his nose crumples in disgust and his eyes are daggers.
And she sits there. Her eyes feel heavy like stones, they weigh down in the back of her head.
"Why him?!" The words travel on the saliva flying from between his lips like acid rain. She closes her eyes.
"Why Lavender, Ronald? Why her?" His teeth clench. The stones itch against his brain, the acid floods her skull.
Silence rings through the corridor, like a dripping tap in the early morning when the light has not yet broken the space between the floor and the mattress. She feels so exhausted, as though that dripping silence had woken her.
The lines in the concrete wall draw shapes into the heaving skin of her back. She concentrates on the feeling of her fingers on her forehead, her palms massaging the bloodshot veins in her eyes.
She concentrates on her teeth and how they fight against each other so she can make sure she doesn't get too loud.
The air rushes in, knocking over her lungs and her kidneys and her ribs. It creates a heavy ruckus.
Her shoulders tap the wall, she's shivering. She hasn't got her cloak.
Her hands move, cupping the sides of her arms and she hopes for solitude. She hopes for the tap to stop dripping.
Once, twice, three times and water hits the corridor at every angle, on every surface. She's drowning in the droplets.
Four, five, six and it is larger, it is heavier, the ocean grows closer with every passing second.
She waits for the inevitable drench. She waits for the ice to invade her skin and curl around the empty base of her stomach.
Closer and closer. Silver light creates a ring around her huddled form. The tap reflects, the water halts.
The silence calls, "Granger?"