Comma

Disclaimer:They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: This is a shortie I’d almost forgotten about till it got back from beta. Next chapter of Voiceless is on the way, I promise.

Thanks for reading!

And thanks as always to miconic, the beta who I adore and who claimed the title to this piece as a ‘homage’ to herself *cough*

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When he’s away, she doesn’t sleep.

For the first few hours of the night, she curls on the bed and stares into the pages of a book, falling into the blank spaces between lines of print. These spaces that she normally speeds past, between paragraphs, punctuation, letters; between the end of a sentence and the beginning of another, these hushed spaces are suddenly the only things she can see. How deep they seem, how hollow. Especially those between comma and continuation, they’re the most frightening. Anything could happen. The pause may drag on and on until you realise that really, it’s not a comma but a fullstop. An ending masquerading as an interval.

Then, as the space grows bigger and bigger and she keeps falling and falling, past midnight, she tosses the book aside and slides off the bed.

She then begins to walk through the house, flitting from room to room like a moth looking for a light. She has one of his shirts in a fist and it trails behind her fretful feet. She picks up various objects and puts them down, tracing their contours, rubbing off smudges, smoothing down creases. Pillows, photographs, quills, spoons, the collection of Chocolate Frog Cards. He’s still trying to catch up with Ron who has at least twenty of each card. The two of them squabbling over the cards like they’re twelve again, after Sunday lunch at the Weasley’s while she dozes off pressed to Harry’s side, hugging his arm, Sunday Prophet on her lap. Of course, the difference is that now he’s on them, the cards. She turns lights on and turns them off, pulls drawers out and pushes them in, opens and closes doors, retracing her steps many times and starting out again. She takes care to make as much noise as she can.

The house, of course, remains obstinately silent.

Then she walks downstairs, across the dining area to the window that looks on the street outside the front door. Tonight there’s a drizzle and the road twinkles under the yellow streetlight. The trees are hung with the same wet stars. She slings the shirt over her shoulder, opens the window a crack and sticks out her nose into the cold clean air.

Right at the beginning they requested not to be partnered with each other, not due to the fear of having to make choices, but because choices were already made. There really is nothing to choose between each other and everything else. But when he goes away like this, she begins her endless questioning; after all, no one watches his back like she does.

She pulls her head in, wrapping the shirt around her neck, rubbing her cheek against the fabric. Crookshanks presses a wet nose to her ankle.

“In a minute,” she mutters. She blows into the glass and begins tracing a letter on the cloud that blooms there, breaking off suddenly when she realises what she’s doing.

“Honestly, acting like a schoolgirl,” she hisses. The faintest blur of daylight struggles in the distant sky over the rooftops. A furry face nudges her ankle again.

“All right. I’m going. Now.” She curls her nose at him. “I don’t like this, you know, how you seem to have appointed yourself his little henchman.”

She slides the window shut and moves to the couch. Then she settles on her side under the afghan, the maligned shirt tucked to her belly. The kneazle licks a satisfied paw. “Happy now?” she retorts and closes her eyes.

**

She wakes up to the sound of the shower.

She bounds off the couch and sprints upstairs, tripping over corners. By the time she reaches him, he’s come out into their room with a towel around his waist.

She grits her teeth to keep herself from crashing into his arms.

He seems slightly unsteady on his feet, his skin paler than usual, defeat tapering off his shoulders like a fine velvet robe. He shuffles over and slides his arms around her, pushing his face into the soft hollow of her neck. A sound halfway between a moan and a sigh rises low in his throat and loops around both of them.

She slides her urgent fingers into his wet hair, lifting and stroking. Her cheek dampens with the water clinging to him. Droplets run down her arms. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

He lifts his head. “Because you were asleep.”

His attempt at humour passes unnoticed as she looks at him, nibbling her lip. He lifts a hand to her mouth; “Don’t do that.” His thumb pulls her lower lip out of the grasp of her teeth. “I’m okay” he says, trying to smile to prove the point.

She sighs and takes his hands in hers. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

She helps him into a pair of sweatpants, and he heaves himself onto the bed and lies on his back, staring up at her. His arm lies slack across her lap. She rubs his chest with one hand, her absent palm pressing on his heartbeat, her fingers lingering over the pulse point in his neck.

The lightening sky is now rubbing against the curtains. There is still is an hour or so before day breaks properly with all its noises, but the muteness inside the house has vanished. She can hear it breathing.

“She had your eyes,” he says suddenly. His voice rasps.

“Brown. Not as beautiful, of course, but brown.” He smiles through drooping eyes, then swallows. “She was eleven.”

Glasses off, damp hair over eyes, he hardly looks older than the day he’d lain in the Hospital Wing trying to make sense of Cedric’s death. Part of what always frightened him had been the randomness, the calculated insignificance of it all. How it could just as well have been him rather than Cedric or how it could just as well have been Fleur or Krum rather than Cedric. How it could always just as well be anyone. How what you think is a comma may always turn into a fullstop at the flick of a cold wrist. Cedric didn’t come out of the labyrinth. He was meant to come out, they waited and waited for him, but he didn’t. Fullstop.

Harry’s face blurs before her and she blinks quickly. She leans forward and gathers his head in her arms.

“But I’m here,” she says, bending to kiss him.

His body rising to hers, his world filling up with her, he sighs into her mouth as her tongue reaches into those recesses that gather dark and cold. Only she can reach that far.

The thing is, with commas, you can never know. No matter how much you wonder, you won’t know until it’s over, either way--continuation or fullstop. The only thing you can do is speed past them, try not to think about them and just be glad when they are over.

He shifts and she climbs into bed. His arms part and pull her close, his face finding its place in her neck. She pulls out her wand and flicks the curtains tight against the morning light. The water clinging to his hair and body has thoroughly dampened her, but she feels warmer than she’d felt for days. Settling against him, she reminds herself to drop the shirt, mauled and soiled from being dragged around the house for days and now abandoned on the couch, into the wash. She closes her eyes, her cheek against his brow. He seems already asleep, but his hands are wandering, seeking the warmth beneath her nightshirt.

****