𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆

Part 18

Breathe

This won't work as well as the way it once did
'cause I want to decide between survival and bliss
And though I know who I'm not I still don't know who I am
But I know I won't keep on playing the victim

-- Alanis Morrisette, Precious Illusions

Ginny Weasley wanted a drink. She wandered down the streets of muggle London, shuffling through the puddles of pale lamplight pooling on the sidewalks. Her head was spinning. Harry had been released from the hospital four days ago, after nearly three weeks. There had been some debate about releasing him. He was healed, by all accounts, but he still couldn't walk without support, he couldn't stand, he could barely use his hands. Even lying down, not moving a muscle, he was in constant pain. They tried spell after spell after spell to cure him, to no avail. Finally they threw up their hands and brought in a counselor. "It must be psychological," Ginny had heard them whispering. Harry listened dully to the advice of the doctors, psychologists, experts of all varieties.

Dumbledore had come to visit as well. He hadn't said very much, really, not that Ginny had overheard. He had just sat with Harry for a while, patting his hand, pouring him cups of tea, listening to what Harry wanted to say like a priest in a confessional, nodding and doling out Hail Marys, Our Fathers. But Dumbledore had no easy solution to Harry's mea culpa. Instead he patted Harry's hand, poured more tea. On Harry's lap were letters, sealed, sent and returned, organized in a shoe box according to date. Ginny guessed that there were perhaps seventeen or eighteen of them, some of them bound together with twine, some without envelopes, written on scrap paper with the hospital logo on it. A couple of them toward the end of the box were scratched rather badly by Hedwig's talons, as if she had offered them personally with her bony fists, not waiting for them to be untied. Harry ran his fingers over them. When Dumbledore left, he took the box with him.

And so they had prepared Harry and Ron's flat for his arrival. Malfoy had left no mess, only an absence. Ron fretted, piling cards and gifts and flowers on the desk in the corner, rearranging Harry's closet, stripping his bed. He gathered up what few things Malfoy had left (some pieces of clothing, two brightly painted pasta bowls, a collection of photographs, a wristwatch, a stack of books, a well-floured cookbook, a small decanter) and sealed it into a box, which he hid under the rafters at the very top of the front closet, behind discarded mittens, a Russian rabbit-fur hat, and a stack of old divination textbooks. Ginny and Hermione both helped in silence, looking, stupefied, at the forlorn objects, so casual and inoffensive, which were now forced into hiding. They added a few charms here and there to help with Harry's movement around the flat according to the instructions in the pamphlet Ron had brought back from the hospital (cushioning spells around corners and slippery surfaces, like the kitchen and bathroom; magical grips on the walls which were invisible until you reached for them; spells to automatically light or extinguish candles from a distance, and so forth). They moved slowly, not entirely believing all this was necessary. Sitting with Harry in the hospital was one thing; bringing his new, mysterious disability into the real world was another.

It had been Ron who endured the disastrous confrontation. Ginny found herself both jealous of Ron's burden of knowledge, and relieved that it wasn't hers to divulge. He had come home from the hospital, head pounding and eyes still burning from lack of sleep to find Malfoy in Harry's bedroom, packing his things. Ron had pressed him, but Malfoy said very little, other than a series of stinging insults in an over-loud voice. "Tell him it's over, he should forget about the whole thing. My mistake. Tell him I have nothing else to say."

"Tell him your damn self, Malfoy. You owe him an explanation, at the very least."

"Fine. So don't tell him. Then he'll just never know." He lifted a bag onto his shoulder and headed for the door.