In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 4: Nebula

Chapter 186: The Courage of Stars

LUCY:

I talked to Harry first.

I must have been really asleep, I thought to myself as my senses returned to me one by one.

I was warm.

I could taste blood on my tongue.

I was tucked snugly in bed.

I could smell blood in the air, but there was something that smelled like home in the air too.

I was in the dark.

I could hear the sound of someone else breathing.

I wasn't alone.

I could feel someone's hand in mine.

My eyes snapped open. I wasn't alone. I could feel someone's hand in mine. I wasn't alone.

That someone was Harry. He was beginning to stir as well, so I drank in the sight of him for as long as I could before his eyes opened.

His adorably messy dark hair was making abstract art on the pillowcase. We were in the same bed. He had reached for me in his sleep. We were in the same bed. His hand, with a couple of ink smudges, was intertwined with mine, which had a couple of ink smudges too. We were in the same damn bed.

I couldn't remember how it had happened, and I didn't have time to try to figure it out before his eyes opened.

His mouth dropped open, and he groped for his glasses in the dark with his free hand, and once he had pushed his glasses onto his face he blinked several times before he managed to speak. "Hi."

"Hi," I said back, praying the room was dark enough to hide the fact that I was blushing. Even as I thought that, though, the room began to lighten incrementally, the way it did in the morning after a transformation to convince me to open my eyes. Terror froze the blood in my veins once it was light enough to see Harry properly — everything except his face was splattered with blood. "Harry, you're — there's blood on your — " The memories of the night before flooded back into my mind. "Oh. I — I slept so soundly I forgot — I forgot it all for a bit."

"Me too," he admitted in a whisper, pushing himself up onto an elbow, his eyes wandering over my robes before finding my eyes again. "How are you feeling?"

I did a quick mental inventory — the findings were more or less just ow ow ow ow — pushing myself up onto an elbow as well. Our hands were still intertwined. "I feel a bit as if someone turned my body inside out. How are you?"

"That's... not a bad description, actually," he said with a huff of laughter that was utterly devoid of humor. Harry closed his eyes and flopped back down, taking his glasses off so he could place his free hand over his eyes. "I can't — can't believe he's... Sirius is..."

"I know." I slipped my hand free of his so I could pull him closer than just the tethering of our hands. I placed my hand on his waist and tugged gently, a silent question. His arm shot out to wrap around my waist in answer, and we pulled each other close, like magnets, like gravity. "You were there for me a year ago. Let me be here for you now."

Harry heaved a shuddering breath, tears beginning to gather on his eyelashes. I held him tighter, trying to will my presence into his emptiness.

"I know," I whispered, "I know, I know, I know."

There was nothing else to say, really.

"It's okay" would be a lie.

"I'm sorry" would be meaningless.

But I had learned that grief was horrifically isolating. Even before I went home for the summer and lost all contact with the outside world, even before I was kidnapped and spent a week in the caves, even before I was the subject of Hufflepuff's scorn, I felt alone. Even though the twins chased me to the shores of the Black Lake, even though Ginny held me through the night, even though Harry held me through the morning, even though I was never really alone for the week before I went home, I was alone. Grief tossed a blanket darker than a night sky full of clouds and heavier than the whole world over my head and whispered to me as I collapsed under the weight of it.