Categories > Books > Harry Potter
The walking through the forest to the peeling two-story house is a rite of passage, a cleansing that causes a relaxation of the shoulders, a straightening of the spine, and a brightening of the eyes. No one comes out here any more, not with the rumors you helped to spread around. There are no shouting voices or blaring music to ruin the faint, tinkling sound of a stream off the beaten path, or the woodpecker who lives in a tree somewhere to the west of the house.
This is only in your memory, however, as you bypass the peace of the journey for the safety of the end. Collapsing on your kitchen floor, bleeding, gasping, and shaking, you leave a smear of blood on the table's leg as you haul yourself up to your feet mostly through willpower. A stack of old newspapers with flickering photographs are stuffed under one leg to keep the table from tipping, and they hold your weight as you lean down. You will have to clean this and this and this, when you are able.
It is only after all the struggle that you see the man sitting at the table - your table - with a mug of steaming tea cradled in his hands. There is the shock of seeing him, when you had been acting as though you were alone, and then the pain returns to overrun your thoughts like a red wave.
He gathers a hold of himself and sets down the mug so quickly that you're sure it's going to spill - but it doesn't. One less thing to clean up, says that distanced voice in your mind. You drift through endless corridors of sparkling clarity as he collects you, wrapping his arms around your waist, disregarding the blood as it will taint himself even as he pays a most peculiar attention it.
Even as he drags you up the stairs, no longer able to lift you entirely, you ask him what he is doing in your house. He speaks back, but the words mean nothing to your ears, just as yours mean nothing to his. In this kind of panic you both are only thinking of doing. To think that so much understanding between you has been lost in the shadowy spaces of time.
You will awake and it will be night. He will not notice your open eyes until he turns back from the bowl of bloodied water and the cloth that is soaking in it. During those few seconds, you will be able to see him clearly for the first time in what feels like forever. Irony. He will smile, a crooked and broken quarter-moon, and you will realize that this memory can not last.
This is only in your memory, however, as you bypass the peace of the journey for the safety of the end. Collapsing on your kitchen floor, bleeding, gasping, and shaking, you leave a smear of blood on the table's leg as you haul yourself up to your feet mostly through willpower. A stack of old newspapers with flickering photographs are stuffed under one leg to keep the table from tipping, and they hold your weight as you lean down. You will have to clean this and this and this, when you are able.
It is only after all the struggle that you see the man sitting at the table - your table - with a mug of steaming tea cradled in his hands. There is the shock of seeing him, when you had been acting as though you were alone, and then the pain returns to overrun your thoughts like a red wave.
He gathers a hold of himself and sets down the mug so quickly that you're sure it's going to spill - but it doesn't. One less thing to clean up, says that distanced voice in your mind. You drift through endless corridors of sparkling clarity as he collects you, wrapping his arms around your waist, disregarding the blood as it will taint himself even as he pays a most peculiar attention it.
Even as he drags you up the stairs, no longer able to lift you entirely, you ask him what he is doing in your house. He speaks back, but the words mean nothing to your ears, just as yours mean nothing to his. In this kind of panic you both are only thinking of doing. To think that so much understanding between you has been lost in the shadowy spaces of time.
You will awake and it will be night. He will not notice your open eyes until he turns back from the bowl of bloodied water and the cloth that is soaking in it. During those few seconds, you will be able to see him clearly for the first time in what feels like forever. Irony. He will smile, a crooked and broken quarter-moon, and you will realize that this memory can not last.
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