I feel so awfully hollow, it feels like I died
There is a ringing in his ears. It won't stop.
It won't stop, no matter what he does. He tried pressing his hands against his ears, he tried humming, he tried focusing on Ron's voice that is talking about any and everything, but it just won't stop ringing in his head.
There is a fog in front of his eyes. It won't improve.
He has never been the one with great eyesight, but now it's even worse. He blinks once, twice, tries to clear his vision. A shacky hand rises to feel for his glasses at the tip of his nose, he pushes them up, twitchy fingers unstable, but even though he is wearing them, it doesn't change a thing. He just can't see the world in all its brightness anymore.
There is a shaking in his limbs.
It won't go away.
It will never go away again, he thinks. He has always been a jittery lad. Back when he was living with the Dursleys, he wasn't allowed to rest, always had to do the cleaning, the cooking, tending to Petunia's damn garden. In school, the one he went to with Dudley, he had to be on the move constantly, otherwise he would get beaten up.
In Hogwarts, it was first excitement that got him going, especially in first and second year.
Then, the dementors came. Then, the triwizard tournament. Then, the dark lord.
And then, ohhhh then, the horrid accusations came. He was brimming with rage back then, his limbs always tense and ready to strike. At who, he will never know, because he had Ron, ready to defend him whenever from whatever.
There is a shaking in his limbs. It has nothing to do with being busy, or scared, or angry. Its cause is the cold. The one he associates with death.
He remembers being kissed by a dementor, and he remembers dying.
He will always be the boy-who-lived, never to know when his life really began, won't he?
He tries to focus on his best mates who are bend over him. He thinks they have bathed him, because the smell of rotten corpses and dried blood isn't quite as intense anymore. Then again, that smell might as well be clinging to his skin now, cold hands clawing at his chest, ready to take his beating heart out of it.
Hermione leans close, their noses almost touching.
"Good morning, sweetheart," she whispers, softly weaving through his hair. She looks... better, he thinks. His eyes have yet to focus, but she definitely looks lighter, as if a burden was taken off her shoulders.
"We are in St. Mungos." She continues and Harry recognizes the ugly yellow walls as the magical medical institute.
"Your magic is completely drained, but you should be fine." She smiles that small warm smile of hers and Harry, for the first time in foever, thinks he might be okay one of these days.
"We will be taking you home in less that a second, Harry."
Home is such a foreign word to him, no picture materializes in his head. Home has always been subjective to him, but when he really thinks of Home, he sees Ron and Hermione.
He tries to sit up, to talk to both of them, but is softly pushed down again by a big hand, freckles strewn on the back of it.
He follows that big hand to an arm with thin red hair up to a shoulder that he knows as intimately as one knows someone they have slept with multiple times. He cried on that shoulder more times than he cared to count.
"It's over, mate." Ron talks just as quietly as Hermione did, but his voice booms in his head, the sentence repeating like a broken record in his head. He sees Hermione whack him, whispering that he did NOT need to tell Hrry that so soon, but Harry barely hears her.
He follows up with "You saved us all." Totally ignoring Hermiones scandalized shrieks. There is so much awe and devotion in Ron's voice, it stunts Harry. He blinks in shock at the redhead and he wants to yell.
Ron lost a brother, what the fuck does he mean Harry saved them all? There is guilt chocking him again, a stone settling into his gut, but he is used to that, ever since Cedric and all the others that died in his name.
He opens his mouth, ready to scream, but to his utter humiliation, all that comes out is a sob, strong and unfiltered. Tears leak down his face and his nose immediately cloggs up. He reaches out with both his arms, his fists curling and uncurling.
He doesn't know for what he is reaching, he never had much comfort in his life, but it works. Hermione and Ron immediately both reach back, because they always do, and fold him in their arms.
He feels the wetness of their tears on his arms and he feels onlookers gawking at them in shock, but he doesn't care. Let them write about Harry Potter, bawling in his best friends arms this time, instead of Harry Potter, defeater of Dark Lords. He knows which version of this is more realistic anyways.
Still sobbing into Ron's shoulder, for the quadrillion time in a lifetime, he feels Hermione slink away. Sobbing even harder, he tries to reach for her, a sense of abandonment settling in his weary bones, his fists once again doing that whole curl- uncurl thing. Ron takes his fist and kisses the back of it really softly, shocking Harfy into temporary stillness.
"She'll come back, mate. She just wants to talk to your healer and ask when we can leave."
There are big thoughts settling into his brain and he realizes with a start that while his friends were horribly concerned with his health, he doesn't even know if they both got checked up. His throat closes up in alarm and he feels like such a prick, it starts a new wave of tears, but of course Ron understands him even non verbal.
"We are both okay and healed." This, once again, rips into him like a tidal wave and he cries even more, clinging to Ron. Hermione comes back and tells them to use the floo, apparition would be too straining on "poor little Harry", she explains, and Harry can't even muster up the anger to be offended.
His knees shake as they make their way into the floo system, towards the fireplace, but thankfully both his friends don't mention it. He keeps crying too, but that isn't important anyways.
Soon he finds himself in the entrance hall in Grimmauld place, unfriendly and cold, but right now he can't think of something better. They slowly make their way to one of the upstairs bedrooms and Harry can't let go of either of them, so they settle in as a trio.
He can't calm down, sobbing and heaving for breath, so soon his body forces him to, exhaustion dragging him into some half baked unconsciousness. He wants to stay awake, to look at his friends and make sure they are okay, but his heavy eyelids drop, leaving him in darkness and the warmth of his friends bodies warming him and his corpse cold body on both sides.