count the ribs
A year after the war, he begun to go to church.
His mind was quiet there between the pews and the traditions and the evil that seemed to cling to every surface. The holy water which may have once made him flinch only served as a blade with which he sliced into himself, spilling out onto the cobbled floors.
London was empty, when you took all of the people out of it.
It was nothingness tied up in a tattered bow, presenting itself to the world as special when it was really the opposite. He sat in St James Cathedral and imagined his parents were sitting on either side of him, sandwiching him in something warm and uncomplicated.
He stuck the prayer books when they came on his desk. He impulsively bought a computer from a store he’d passed by. It’d had impossibly large windows with flashing screens in all sorts of colours. It sat on his desk, untouched, for months.
At night, the ocean sunk into him. He made sure to blink away the salt when he woke up.
Ron came, sometimes. Usually he brought fire whiskey and they drank by the fire, talking about nothing important at all.
“It’s bloody sweltering,” Ron would complain. Harry kept the hearths lit at all times; it was the comparable evil to being cold, freezing, sinking further into the deep as his lungs tried to expel water, as his limbs burned and the light slipped to a pin prick-
They’d drink until Harry grew snappy and Ron got tired of walking on eggshells.
One night, before he slipped through the Floo and back to the Burrow, he’d hugged Harry so hard his lungs had expelled all of their air and he'd almost screamed in agony at the sensation until Ron loosened up, turning his face to be in line with his own.
“Did you know Draco’s started some kind of business?” he said, still clutching at Harry’s horribly overgrown hair.
The columns, the cold, the shock of white.
“I don’t care,” he muttered and did not smile when Ron waved him goodbye.
He didn’t care about much those days. At least that was what Hermione would tell him when they went out for lunch. Most foods he couldn’t stomach anymore, but he tried for her. There was something in the act of dying which did not lend itself well to the act of living.
He went to church. He prayed. He tried to believe in God. He stared at the ceiling of St James and brushed his eyes over the vaults in the ceiling. Each arch curved perfectly, dividing the thunderous roof into manageable portions.
His desk was full of dusty prayer books and pointless electronics, and the cold always came, no matter how hot the hearths.