pandemonium + d.m. & h.g. & h.p.

03

TOKEN | tōken |

She grasped the trailing fingers of Harry Potter from her body, ceasing his intents. They lay uninterrupted on her bed as he traced imperceptible outlines down her spine, prompting her to arch her body towards his as she fluttered her eyes close, absorbing their close proximity. He shifted beside her, his arm stayed encircled around her petite body, pulling her closer and only permitting a very minute gap between them.

"I love you." His voice is a murmur in her ears and she nods.

She opens her eyes.

A repressed gasp absconds from her throat and she shoots up from the bed, releasing the sheet that conceals her unclothed body. Quickly, she glances at his silvery, blond hair. With his back turned from her, he is not able to see her current shape. Wide eyed and alarmed, she buries her hands in her hair, taking no notice of the sweat that falls down her back, and cries.

She snatches the broken wand from the indecent ground – the wand that she had removed from the red headed boy as he trembled between the falling castle's corners.

His blue eyes, which are like Ron's, halt her from her escape. She wishes that she can do something moral before she loses her saintliness. Before she turns into the distraught soul a part of her knows she'll become.

A glance at the young boy's state, she immediately glowers. A shake of the head in disappointment, he fails to show the bravery that was supposed to be shining in his eyes, the stance of defence absent.

Not Ron, he's not Ron.

She blinks away the simulacrum of his alleged, cause of death – blinks away the opposed spell that she'd unintentionally hit at the knights that were supposed to be on their side.

Forget the sharp spear that flew in the air, the terrible cries of dismay.

She looks at his green and silver tie, glowers, before the ropes she roused submerged his horrified screams, and she lopes into the hopeless battlefield.

She understands that he does not like it when she is like this. When she is recalling and lamenting the memories that should have continued to happen, but were not able to. She knows that he hates it when she cries out His name in the darkness of his room, when the fire of the candle drops, creating more shadows of their precedent. She knows that he dislikes her presence more than anything else, for she is the proof of his past, the reason of his exile, and the cause of his adversity.

And maybe that's why she comes back to him every time; to settle up her debt, to return the favour of sharing a lifetime of being an outsider to the world they allegedly belong to.

Carefully, she pushes the sheet from her body and rises to her feet. She retrieves the clothes she wore yesterday and redresses soundlessly. Then, she grabs her tattered bag from the floor, fishing out a cigarette.

She breathes in the taste of poison in her tongue. Relishing the feeling of calm, she closes her eyes and heads to a nearby window. The glass is stained and dusty, but she does not mind, disregards the blemish and focuses on the pregnant Luna that fills the murky midnight with light. She takes a drag and closes her eyes, remembering the feeling of Him and the feeling of the other.

He is still asleep, she perceives, noting the steady rise and fall of his shoulders and the relaxed contractions of his back muscles. She sighs and her breath is smoke and sadness in the nocturnal atmosphere. The recollection of what could have been – of what should have been remains imprinted in her head as she takes another puff, winks at the remembrance, and ignores the hollow feeling in her chest. The hole that maintains to grow abysmal and unfilled and she does not care.

She marvels the possibility of seeing Him again. She sees herself wearing white inside a coffin with flowers covering the casket and sees her mum and dad with the light of recognition and tears in their eyes. She sees the Weasley family mourning and the ghost of Ron and Fred beside them, smiling at her with open arms. She sees Draco Malfoy at the farthest position from her tomb as he eyed the cerulean box of cigarettes that they shared together with acknowledgement, and beams at him. Then she sees Him and she frowns.

His bright green eyes are barren as he looks at her. Unlike Ron and Fred's warm welcome to the afterlife, he is grimacing at her presence, shaking his head disapprovingly, and then says, "You don't belong here."

Close.

Open.

Close.

She opens her eyes and momentarily forgets how to breathe, chokes on the smoke, dropping the coffin nail from her hands. Gasping and coughing, she stomps on the cigarette, extinguishing the smoulder and scattering the contents with her foot.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

He sits up from the bed, removes the sheet from his body, displaying his member. She turns away, refuses to look, though she has seen it already and a few hours ago before they collapsed together from exhaustion of him inside her, and her nails scratching his back, leaving more marks on his body as they fucked.

The rush of revulsion hastily becomes pronounced on her face and she made sure that he is clothed below before reaching to look at his eyes. He only gave her a blank expression at her mien of repugnance, sending her an eye roll formerly, and then putting on his white shirt.

He walks toward her, points at the ashes on the floor. "Your mess, you clean."

The tone of his voice is intimidating, but she refuses to be cowed. "Speak for yourself," she says purposely, "Your house, your filth."

They stare at each other passionately, the past alive around them, the mistakes they made together, and she chooses to break their gaze by grabbing her purse and heading to the exit of his room.