little boy blue
It started slow—just a sniffle here, a bit of shivering there—but Harry insisted he was fine. He always did.
By the third day, he couldn’t get out of bed without wobbling. He tried anyway. Molly caught him halfway down the stairs in Ron’s old jumper and socks two sizes too big, pale-faced and sweating.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, back to bed with you,” she said, arms already guiding him gently but firmly back up.
“I’m fine,” he croaked, sounding the exact opposite.
“You are not, dear.”
And she said it like it wasn’t up for debate. Like he wasn’t going to get in trouble for being sick. That was the first odd, quiet relief.
She tucked him in with a gentleness that stunned him. Cool cloth to the forehead, a charm to lower the fever, broth with a spoon he didn’t even have to hold. He lay there blinking up at her, unsure what to do with all this… tending.
At one point, Molly noticed the way he kept shifting uncomfortably, face tight with nausea, but never once said a word.
“Harry,” she asked softly, “do you feel like you might be sick?”
His eyes darted to hers, wide and so young, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to admit it.
“I—yeah. But I didn’t want to bother anyone.”
Oh, sweet Merlin.
Molly was up in a second, conjuring a bowl and kneeling beside him with a hand to his back. “You will never be a bother for feeling poorly, darling. Never.”
And that—that broke him.
Because who was the last person who’d rubbed circles on his back while he got sick? Who had wiped his face, changed the sheets, made sure he wasn’t alone?
No one. Not ever.
He curled in on himself and started crying, quiet and hoarse, like he didn’t know how else to react. And Molly—weary, grieving Molly—just gathered him into her arms, cardigans and all, and rocked him like he was five, because maybe, in some ways, he still was.
“You’re safe, Harry. You’re looked after. You’re loved.”