Extended Family

Chapter 17 - AU: Hard work, Tenacity, Awesome. Part 2

Takes place after the first Quidditch game during Harry's fifth year.

"Thanks for sticking around to help, Rabbit," Angelina said.  "Not like those others that abandoned us."

They had just finished practice and Angelina told the team that they would not have another until they came back after the winter holiday.  While she enjoyed practice and exercising to a degree, she and her fellow seventh years needed to study for N.E.W.T.s and Harry and Ron needed to work on O.W.L.s.  Alicia had left to catch up on studying and Katie had been pulled away by Lyla.  The twins and Ron ran off the second they could.  Harry stayed to help tidy up the practice equipment and locker room.

"No problem.  I'm actually doing pretty well on studying for O.W.L.s.  Hermione made a nice study guide timeline thing and I'm on track."

"That's good.  Trust me, I'm not the most studious of us but you do not want to feel overworked on the other side of the holidays.  O.W.L.s are awful.  Even though I'm taking less N.E.W.T.s, it still feels like a lot."

"Yeah I bet."  After they finished putting things away, Harry dithered on the spot, looking nervous.  "I actually stayed behind to chat with you.  Do you have some time?"

"For you?  Of course."  She sat on a bench and patted the space beside her.  "What's up?"

He sat beside her.  "I want to apologize to you."

She looked confused.  "For what?"

"I haven't been...right to you," he said.  "I haven't treated you like you deserve to be."

She understood.  "You mean what you and I were or are.  Ever since the Ball last year."

He nodded.  "I had such an amazing time with you at the Ball, and we never really talked about it after, then Crouch happened.  I sort of...didn't talk about it with you all summer and the beginning of the year until Halloween happened."

"It really has been one big thing after another," she said softly.

At first, she wanted to talk to him about it.  She took the lack of awkwardness after the Ball for granted.  They did not need to talk about it at the time.  They had slid right back into their comfortable routine of being around each other.  Their displays of affection, the hugs and cuddles, had a different undertone after the Ball, but it was a nice one.  A warmer one that she had been afraid of defining.

Then the terror of Crouch happened and the long time it took for Harry to recover.  She had no desire to inflict more stress on him and had whole-heartedly been fine with helping him feel better first.  They had seen each other over the summer a few times and then he always felt reserved.  She knew it was not to her, he was like that to everyone.  He had something weighing heavily on his mind and she knew he would have shared what it was if he was able to.

Then Halloween.  Her heart had nearly stopped when he showed up that night: mentally dead with a hand dripping of blood and glittering of glass.  The explanation he gave that night broke her near-dead heart.  How Voldemort had lived on through Horcruxes, how he had tried to kill him over a prophecy.  How that night they had ended the threat of Voldemort once and for all.

How Harry felt completely empty and broken after.

It had taken weeks for Harry to slowly come back to them.  He had come to a terrible precipice and one wrong thing would have sent him somewhere he could not return.  Yet slowly and surely, he had come back.  Sometimes he would still stare blankly off, retreat into himself, but those times were far and few between thankfully.