Chapter 22 – The empty wardrobe

Harry was standing in front of the wardrobe. It was almost empty. His clothes were neatly folded in a corner, and they took such a small place, the wardrobe seemed suddenly huge despite Ginny always complained about the smallness of it.
In the bedroom every drawer was open. They were all likewise basically empty. Only his scattered few possessions lingered in there, forlorn.
As soon as at home, he dashed there. He only wanted to hold one of her dresses to try to fill that hole expanding in him.
He wanted to assuage himself with the scent of her, he needed it to pretend everything was fine and she was only on holiday and would be back anytime. He needed it to ward off that insanity creeping over him. It could keep it in check only immersing himself in a world of lies.
But once back, with this craving gnawing him from the inside, he had found the house purged by every of Ginny's belonging. How could that be? But he wasn't really able to form any coherent thinking, nor formulate hypothesis. There was only a numbing confusion, so loud it silenced everything.
He looked at his few clothes in a corner and then at the vast emptiness of that wardrobe, always used to be full to the brim.
He brushed his palm on the shelf as if to make sure his eyes weren't playing a trick on him and suddenly all that emptiness terrorized him. It was too much a mirror of what there was inside him. An inside that terrorized him as much as the empty wardrobe.
He turned to look at the bed and he knew he could never have slept there anymore.
Inside the bathroom the sink was unusually bare, no bottles, no flacons. Everything had disappeared.
He looked in every corner to try to find a trace of her. He frantically emptied every cupboard of the little there was in it. Nothing.
He looked in the shower, not even her shampoo was there anymore.
It was like Ginny never existed.
The longing for something of her was menacing to devastate him, but he clung to it nevertheless because no matter how wrecking that could be, how maddening, how searing painful, it was anyway better than the pain it could be triggered by the actual longing of her.
He dragged himself back in the bedroom, took the brown bag left on the floor and went downstairs.
He sat on the sofa still unable to focus, still enveloped in the shock brought by that emptiness.
When he looked up, the first thing seen was Ginny smiling. She looked at him through a picture, and she was there so real but so fake at the same time, Harry knew he couldn't bear it.
The pounding in his head grew and grew so he stood up, a cold rage taking possession of him, took that picture of the wall, and opening the first drawer in the living room shoved it inside with such a violence the glass shattered.
It took another where Lily was waving. She was lost.
And one with all his family. Lost.
James, lost.
Albus, lost.
Sunrise, lost.
Ginny again and forever lost.
All of them, one by one were shoved in the drawer in a cold frenzy.
When he was done, the walls were bare, his hands had deep cuts and he was panting.
All of sudden he started to shiver; a strong, ever-increasing tremble was quaking his body. He clenched his teeth not to have them chattering and reached for the sofa crouching on it, trying to dominate that tremble, trying to keep his mind safe from the edge of insanity he was slipping into.
But the shiver wasn't abating, and the insanity was taking over. He felt it ever close. He found out air was too dense to breath properly, his chest was going up and down, but it was as though nothing was getting in.
He reached out for the brown bag on the floor and ordering his hand to behave, managed to retrieve a vial from it.
Uncork it wasn't easy because of the tremble but the need was so strong he succeeded. He brought it to his lips that were suddenly icy. He felt cold and shivering, a chilly sweat was glazing his skin. On the other side the liquid in his mouth going down his throat was so pleasantly tepid, so sweet, tasting like oblivion.
His body stopped gradually to tremble, his mind gradually calming. The confusion was leaving place to something soft, soothing, pleasantly numbing. A pink cloud was engorging every madness, dispersing all the soaring fears.
It was so pleasant.
And he was sliding in it fast but at the same time gently. And as the unhealthy sleeping was overcoming him, he found himself whispering to himself.
'I've lost everything'
But it was already forgot, and he was free from everything, with the promise to be so until the next sleeping potion.