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The Cupboard
The dormitory was too big.
Harry knew this was ridiculous. He knew it intellectually, the way you know a fact from a book and not from deep in your bones. Five beds, five trunks, five boys. There had to be enough room for everyone. It was just a high ceiling, tall windows, and enough space for five boys to live together comfortably.
His chest tightened anyway.
It wasn’t fear, exactly, not the kind that made you run or shout. It was a pressure, sudden and unreasonable, like his body had braced itself without asking permission. He dug his fingers into his hair harder than necessary, standing beside his bed and pretending to be very interested in deciding where to put his things.
The distance between the four posts made his skin itch.
There were no walls close enough to touch. Nothing solid at his back. Nowhere for the dark to press back.
‘Too open,’ he told himself.
“Oi, Harry, d’you want the bed by the window or–”
“I’m good,” Harry cut in quickly, a little too fast.
Ron paused, glanced at him, then shrugged and went back to trying to open the rusted buckles on his trunk.
Harry exhaled through his nose and forced his hands to move, unpacking with careful efficiency. Socks folded. Books stacked. Everything was placed with quiet precision. He didn’t look up much. He didn’t let himself think about the ceiling.
The too-high ceiling.
The too-spacious room.
By the time the lights were dimmed and the others were yawning, the tightness in his chest had settled into something manageable. He told himself that was proof enough that he was fine.
He climbed into bed last.
The mattress was too soft, and it took a long moment for his body to adjust to the sensation of sinking. He lay there staring upward anyway, counting beams he couldn’t quite see in the dark, listening to the rustle of sheets and the low murmur of voices fading into sleep.
The open space pressed in on him again.
His fingers curled into the sheets underneath him, gripping them as if they might slip away.
Then he abruptly sat up and reached for the bed curtains, yanking them closed in one swift motion. ‘Just to block the light,’ he told himself, as if anyone had asked.
The fabric slid into place, enclosing him. The moonlight dimmed. The ceiling vanished. The window disappeared from sight.
The world shrank.
Harry’s breath caught in his throat, and then, slowly, it steadied.
There.
That was better.
The air felt different immediately, heavier, closer, as though it might actually stay where it was. He sat on the mattress and let out a careful breath, shoulders loosening by degrees. His heartbeat, which he hadn’t noticed was racing, began to slow.
A cupboard-sized space.
The bed was still too soft, too comfortable, but the smallness was familiar. It made sense in a way the rest of the room didn’t.
Safe.
He lay back down and turned onto his side, facing the curtain, tracing the seam with his eyes until the last of the tension drained from him. Sleep came quietly after that, without effort.
~
In the morning, he opened the curtains again before anyone could notice.
Over the months, he left them open an inch longer. Then two.
By the end of the year, they don’t have to close all the way anymore, but that first night, in the dark, Harry slept better than he had in a very long time.
~★~
Bite
Snape’s voice was a blade.
It didn’t rise to yelling. It didn’t need to. It slides – soft, contemptuous, precise enough to cut without ever looking like it was trying.
“Potter,” Snape drawled, eyes skimming the classroom like Harry was something unpleasant stuck to the sole of his shoe, “Perhaps if you spent less time daydreaming and more time applying the most basic principles of potion-making, you might produce something other than this… sludge.”
A few snickers rippled through the room from the Slytherin side.
Harry’s jaw tightened.
He hadn’t been daydreaming. He followed the instructions exactly. He knew that because he checked twice. But that didn’t matter. It never did.
“Tell me, Potter,” Snape continued silkily, “Is there some genetic reason you struggle so profoundly with even the simplest tasks that even an insolent miscreant can understand? Or is this merely a personal failing?”
Something hot and sharp snapped inside Harry’s chest.
The words hit too close. Too familiar. The tone slid under his skin and buried itself somewhere old and raw. He doesn’t see the classroom anymore. He sees a living room. A voice that filled the air and left no space to breathe.
“Stupid insolent miscreant! You can’t even do one thing right!”
His mouth opened before he could stop it. “Funny,” Harry said, voice tight, “I did follow the instructions. Maybe the problem is the teacher.”
The room was dead silent.
Harry felt it then – the collective intake of breath, the invisible line he just crossed. His heart was pounding, hands clenched hard enough that his nails bit into his palms.
He didn’t plan on that. He never did.
Snape turned slowly, black eyes glittering. “Ten points from Gryffindor for backtalk,” he said softly. “And detention. Perhaps time spent scrubbing cauldrons will teach you the humility your upbringing so clearly lacked.”
Upbringing.
The word landed like a blow.
“It’s your abnormal upbringing that made you a freak! I wished you died with them, so we didn’t have to deal with you!”
Harry shrugged, forcing his shoulders loose. “Whatever.”
He didn’t look at the other students. He didn’t give Snape the satisfaction of seeing anything other than defiance.
But inside, something was still shaking.
~
Malfoy’s voice was different from the other students.
Louder. Cruder. Designed to be heard.
“Oi, Potter!” Malfoy called out in the corridor, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. “Forgot to polish your shoes this morning? Or is living like a pig with Weasley just natural for you?”
Harry stopped walking.
He knew he shouldn’t. He knew this never ended well. But the words hit that same place, sharp and sneering and meant to make him smaller.
He turned, his eyes hard. “Funny,” he said flatly, “Coming from someone who needs two bodyguards to feel important. At least I actually have a friend.”
Malfoy immediately flushed, and Harry could see that he was angry. It brought a deep satisfaction in his chest.
Then Malfoy smirked, and Harry prepared himself for the next insult.
“At least I have parents, unlike you Potter.”
The comment landed where it hurt most. And something inside of him cracked.
But outwardly?
Harry couldn’t help but smile and laugh, short and humourless. “Yeah? At least I have a personality, because last I checked, your Daddy can’t buy you that.”
Malfoy sneered. Crabbe grunted. Goyle stepped forward.
Someone shouted. A prefect appeared.
Harry sighed in annoyance.
Detention. Again.
~
Later, when Ron was ranting about Snape being unfair and listing all the reasons Malfoy was an idiot, Harry leaned back on the couch and let his voice wash over him.
Hermione sighed, clearly done with Ron, and looked at Harry instead. “I don’t understand why you always fight back,” she said, worry edging her voice. “It only ever seems to make things worse.”
Harry shrugged, staring at the ceiling. “If I don’t, they don’t stop.”
It was the closest he came to explaining.
Because freezing never worked.
Because silence was permission.
Because showing weakness was blood in the water.
Better angry than small.
Better biting than being broken.
~★~
Cynophobia
Fang was enormous.
Harry knew this was, technically, fine. Fang was Hagrid’s dog. Fang was friendly. Fang was currently sprawled half across the clearing, drool pooling at the corner of his mouth as his tail thumped against the ground with all the menace of a soggy towel.
Still, Harry did not move closer.
He kept his feet planted exactly where they were, weight balanced just enough, and every muscle in his body coiled tight that he could bolt if he had to. His pulse was loud in his ears. His hands hung loose at his sides, fingers twitching once before he stilled them.
‘Big dogs are louder,’ his mind supplied unhelpfully. ‘And big dogs run faster than bulldogs.’
Hagrid laughed, warm and booming. “He’s a gentle thing, really. Ain’cha, Fang?”
Fang responded by sneezing violently and rolling onto his back on the grass.
The movement sent a jolt straight through Harry’s spine.
His pulse spiked higher. His vision sharpened around the edges, narrowing down to sharp teeth and claws and the sheer reach of Fang’s legs. He tracked distances without meaning to, to the tree line, the rock outcrop, Hagrid’s bulk between them.
‘If he lunges, I run. If he grabs my sleeve, I twist. If he knocks me down–’
The memory came anyway.
Sunlight. Laughter. A voice shouting encouragement that sounded a lot like cheering. Teeth caught the bottom of his trousers, and Harry tore his leg free before they could sink into his ankle. The frantic scramble, roaring laughter behind him as he clawed his way up rough bark, his heart trying to tear its way out of his chest.
Harry swallowed.
“Yeh can pat him, Harry,” Hagrid said cheerfully, entirely unaware of what was happening. “He won’ hurt yeh.”
Harry’s face arranged itself into something easy. Practiced. Smiling was automatic by now. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He took one step closer.
Fang’s head lolled to the side, tongue hanging out. His chest rose and fell in slow, heavy breaths. He smells like damp fur and something vaguely rotten.
Harry stopped again.
His arm felt too heavy to lift. He told it to move anyway, just a few inches, then froze when Fang’s tail thumped harder against the ground.
‘That’s excitement,’ he tells himself. ‘Or warning. Could be either.’
He didn’t reach out to touch the dog.
Seconds pass. Then more.
Nothing happened.
Fang yawned hugely, jaws stretching wide enough that Harry’s stomach clenched despite himself, and then the dog flopped back onto his side with a huff, eyes sliding shut. Drool seeped into the dirt.
No barking.
No snapping.
No sudden rush of weight and teeth.
Harry exhaled slowly, carefully, like he was afraid the sound might change something.
The clearing doesn’t erupt into laughter. No one pointed. No one told him to stop being ridiculous.
His shoulders loosened by a fraction.
He stayed where he is.
Even as Hagrid rambled on about something to Ron and Hermione, even as Fang snored softly at his feet, Harry kept his awareness sharp and coiled. He memorized Fang’s breathing pattern. Noted the way his muscles twitch under his fur.
They may bark and growl, but sometimes they could pounce on him before he even knew it.
And people don’t always stop them.
Because safety can vanish without notice.
When they leave, Harry doesn’t look back.
And his pulse doesn’t slow for a long time.
~★~
Just in Case
By the time he was six years old, Harry had learned how to take food without being noticed.
It wasn’t a trick so much as a reflex, honed and polished over the years. His hands knew what to do before he thought about it – how to angle his body, how to block sightlines, how to make the motion look like nothing at all.
It was instinct now. Like breathing.
Like flinching away from raised voices.
Like knowing exactly how much noise a floorboard will make before you step on it, and which won’t.
The Great Hall is deafening with celebration at the end of the year’s feast.
Benches scraped, plates clattered, and laughter ricocheted off the enchanted ceiling. Someone has started a chant down the Gryffindor table.
Ginny’s alive.
Hagrid’s back.
Hermione was laughing, her eyes bright.
The petrified Muggleborns were eating like they had been starved.
Harry laughed too, because he was good at that. He laughed with his mouth, his eyes, his shoulders. He let the noise carry him.
And he kept his hands busy.
A dinner roll disappeared into his pocket as he reached for his goblet. Another followed when Dumbledore stood up to make his final speech. The motion was smooth, practiced, hidden behind the angle of his elbow.
No one noticed.
He didn’t look around to check. He didn’t need to.
A handful of sweets slides into the lining of his robes, chocolate, a couple of hard custards, their crinkling wrappers that were served with them muffled against wool. He pressed them flat with his forearm, feeling the reassuring weight settle against his wrist.
‘Just in case,’ a quiet voice insisted.
He told himself it was stupid. He told himself there would be food tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He told himself he wasn’t that kid anymore.
But tomorrow, he goes back.
Tomorrow, the locks might click into place.
Tomorrow, meals might become conditional again.
Tomorrow, he might have to decide whether hunger was worth the punishment if caught.
His stomach hurt.
Not the sharp kind. Not the kind that made you curl over or cry. This one was dull and constant, like something hollowed out and left to ache. It had been there long enough that he couldn’t remember when it started.
He stood on a chair at the stove, carefully turning the omelets so they wouldn’t burn. The smell made his mouth flood with salivation and his stomach twist tighter, a painful, hopeful lurch that went nowhere. He swallowed it down and kept working.
Uncle Vernon and Dudley wanted cheese on their omelets. They always did.
Harry unwrapped the block and sliced it thickly, the knife steady in his hand. He laid the pieces neatly over four of the five omelets, Uncle Vernon’s first, then Dudley’s.
Aunt Petunia was never a fan of cheese, so he didn’t put any on hers.
He went to fold the paper closed.
Stopped.
Just for a second.
Petunia’s back was turned, fussing with the kettle. Vernon was hidden behind his newspaper. Dudley was already shovelling cereal into his mouth, crumbs everywhere, his eyes staring off in the distance.
No one was looking.
Harry’s hand moved without him quite deciding to do it. Just one slice. He slipped it under his shirt and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers. The cheese was cool against his skin.
He finished wrapping the rest as if nothing had happened.
Breakfast passed in the usual blur of orders and complaints. Someone snapped at him for being too slow. Someone else complained that the bacon was overdone. Harry nodded, said nothing, and cleared plates.
Then he was finally allowed to go back to the cupboard.
The door shut. The lock clicked into place.
Harry waited.
He counted his breaths. He listened for Dudley’s footsteps, for the telltale thump of someone throwing themselves against the door for fun. Nothing came. Eventually, the house settled into its normal, distant noises.
Only then does he reach under his shirt.
The cheese has gone soft and warm, slightly bent from the way he hid it. He peeled it carefully from his body, like it might break apart if he moved too fast.
He took a bite.
It was salty, a bit bland, but perfect.
Harry chewed slowly, reverently, making it last. His stomach unclenched a little. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
‘Best bite ever,’ he thought.
Then he finished it and licked the salt from his fingers before the smell could give him away.
Ron was leaning toward Hermione, animated and loud, reenacting Lockhart’s backfired memory charm with exaggerated gestures. Hermione was laughing so hard she had to wipe her eyes.
Harry shifted slightly, tugging his sleeve down to hide the faint outline of what he had taken.
No one sees.
They never do.
And that was fine with him.
The feast carried on. The noise swelled. Plates refill themselves. Harry ate until his stomach was warm and full and almost convinced that it would get more food tomorrow.
Almost.
When the cheering started again, he joined in without hesitation, grin wide and effortless. He looked exactly like someone who belonged here. Someone who was safe.
And when the night finally wound down, and people began drifting away, Harry checked his pocket one last time, just to be sure.
The food was still there.
Harry kept smiling.
~★~
Cast Iron
“Fred – George – NO, JUST CARRY THEM!” Mrs. Weasley shrieked.
Fred and George had their wands out, identical grins splitting their faces. Harry barely had time to register what they were doing before the room erupted into motion. He pushed back from the table on instinct, chair legs scraping, just as the cast-iron cauldron of stew hurtled down the table. It scraped to a halt an inch from the edge, scorching a black line into the wood as it went.
At the same time, the flagon of Butterbeer slammed down on the table with a crash, bursting open and sending foam spraying across the surface. And the knife slipped from the breadboard and punched straight into the wood with a thunk, shuddering in place where Sirius’ hand had been seconds before.
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” Mrs. Weasley screamed.
The whole thing was so sudden, so absurd, that laughter burst out of Harry before he could stop it. Sirius was laughing too, sharp and startled and breathless, and Harry let himself follow it–
–but for half a second, Harry wasn’t in Grimmauld Place at all.
He was twelve again.
There was no warning. No raised voice beforehand. Just a sudden movement at the edge of his vision, fast and heavy. His body reacted before his mind could catch up – duck, now – as a frying pan whistled through the air where his head had been. He felt the rush of it, close enough that the displaced air brushed his hair.
His stomach dropped as the realization hit him.
She almost–
The smell hit him: metal and heat, sharp beneath the overpowering floral soap Aunt Petunia liked so much. His heart had slammed against his ribs, frantic and wild, as he’d stared at the pan in her hands.
Too slow and that would’ve–
Harry’s breath caught, sharp and shallow. His face didn’t change, but his shoulders had gone rigid, braced for a second blow that never came.
The present crashed back in all at once.
Mrs. Weasley was still shouting. The knife was harmlessly stuck in the table, ridiculous now instead of deadly. Butterbeer pooled and dripped onto the floor. Sirius stood beside him, still grinning, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve like this was nothing more than a close call to laugh more about later.
Harry kept laughing until Sirius stopped.
He was good at that. Reading the room. Matching the moment.
But his heart kept pounding for a few seconds longer than it should have, hard enough that he felt it in his throat. Arthur and Molly were still talking, arguing really, with Fred and George, but Harry didn’t hear the words. His gaze flicked automatically around the room, cataloguing the doorways, corners, hands, the way people were standing, and mapping exits and angles without conscious thought.
Nothing followed.
No one grabbed him.
No voice snapped his name like a warning.
No punishment waited for him once the noise died down.
Suddenly, there was a tense silence as everyone moved to sit down at the table.
Plates clinked. Chairs scraped. Conversation faltered, then resumed, filling the room with ordinary sound.
Harry reached for his cutlery. His fingers were steady again by the time they closed around it.
He ate as if nothing had happened.
Because outwardly, nothing did.
And because some dangers don’t have to land to be remembered.
~★~
Hands
The Malfoy Manor was dark and loud with screaming.
Ron’s breath was coming fast as they stumbled toward the door. And they heard voices before footsteps descended the stairs behind the cellar door.
Harry’s heartbeat was hammering against his chest.
Then the door opened.
And they immediately lunged at Pettigrew. Ron went for the wand while Harry slapped a hand to his mouth to quiet him.
But then his silver hand closed around Harry’s throat.
He could barely breathe.
Everything was narrowing.
The pressure was immediate, crushing, cutting off air and sound alike. Panic flared hot and blinding, drowning out thought, drowning out everything.
Not again.
Harry’s body reacted before his mind could catch up – thrashing, clawing, desperate. His nails scraped uselessly against Pettigrew’s wrist, his boots skidded against stone as he tried to get leverage.
The memory hit him hard and fast, uninvited and merciless.
Blazing evening sky. A front yard. Fingers digging into his neck while a red, furious face loomed inches from his own. The sound of his own pulse roaring in his ears. The neighbours were peering out of their windows. Looking at them and not doing a thing about it.
They never did anything to help him.
Still, he doesn’t make a scene.
‘You brought this on yourself,’ he thought to himself as the fingers finally left his throat.
His vision sparked at the edges.
‘This is how it ends,’ something inside him whispered, calm with familiarity. But then, unexpectedly, he finally managed to speak. “You’re going to kill me?” Harry forced out the words, tearing his throat raw. “After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail!”
He didn’t think it would work. That maybe Pettigrew might be able to do something that Uncle Vernon couldn’t do.
But Pettigrew hesitated.
It was barely anything – a fraction of a second, a slackening of pressure as something flickered in his eyes. Guilt, maybe. Memory. A tiny, merciful impulse.
Harry wretched himself back, finally breathing. The air burned into his lungs, but it was the best kind of burn.
And he watched as the silver hand moved.
And it tightened, not on Harry, but on its owner.
Pettigrew made a strangled sound, eyes going wide as the metal fingers crushed his throat with relentless strength. He clawed at it in disbelief, staggering backward, knocking into the wall.
Harry tried to help him. He did, but the silver hand was so strong that he couldn’t pull it an inch away from Pettigrew’s neck even with Ron’s help. He heard the wet, choking sounds as Pettigrew collapsed to the floor and watched as the life drained from his eyes.
Then he heard Hermione screaming above them again, just as Pettigrew stilled.
Harry stumbled away from him, gasping, barely aware of his own feet beneath him.
And then, without thinking, he ran upstairs.
~
Later, much later, they were out. Free. The air cut sharp and cold, heavy with salt from the ocean nearby, buzzing with overlapping voices, frantic movement, and the stunned, hollow shock that followed too closely behind.
Hermione was shaking. Ron looked like he might be sick. Bill was there. Fleur was there too, a bit further away. Everyone was talking all at once, overlapping, frantic.
And Dobby was dead.
Harry stood a little apart from them.
His hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Not from the fight. Not from the escape. Not from watching Dobby die in his arms. But from the way his throat still felt like the fingers were there, ghost-tight, reminding him how easily it happened. How familiar it was.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, curled them into fists until the shaking dulled.
No one noticed
And Harry doesn’t say a word.
~★~
Expendable
Harry didn’t think of himself as brave.
Bravery implied a choice. A weighing of risks. A moment where self-preservation argued its case.
For Harry, it never did.
~
The first time, it didn’t even occur to him to hesitate.
Someone was trying to steal the Stone, the kind of stone that gave riches and immortality.
Someone horrible was going to come back if they succeeded.
That person was going to go on to hurt people.
So Harry went.
He didn’t stop to wonder why he should be the one to deal with it. He just dropped through the trapdoor with his friends and kept moving, because if something needed stopping and he was standing there, then clearly it was his responsibility.
Later, people would call it reckless.
Harry just remembered thinking, ‘Well. I’d better do it.’
~
When Ginny disappeared, the thought landed fully formed and unquestioned:
‘If I don’t go, she will die.’
That was it. That was the entire calculation.
The Chamber was dark and lethal and full of things that should make him turn back, but the idea of not going never once crossed his mind. He didn’t think about whether he would survive. He didn’t think about what would happen after.
Just that someone needed him.
That had always been enough.
~
When Ron was dragged into the Whomping Willow, Harry didn’t even swear.
He ran without hesitation.
Branches slam around him, splintering wood and bruising bone, but his body was already moving, already ducking and weaving without conscious thought with Hermione. He didn’t consider how badly this could go wrong. He only knew that Ron was in trouble, and that meant go.
People would later say he was lucky.
But Harry didn’t feel lucky. He felt relieved. And that was different.
~
By the fifth year, it was familiar.
Sirius was in danger. Sirius was being tortured somewhere dark and terrible.
Harry didn’t ask for proof.
He didn’t wait.
He just went.
Hermione yelled. Ron argued. Everyone else shouted that blurred into background noise. None of it mattered. The pull was immediate and absolute, like gravity.
If someone he cared about was suffering, then Harry would walk straight toward it.
That was just how things work.
~
Standing in the forest, it finally crystallized.
There was no rush this time. No chase. No panic.
Just certainty.
He understood the logic instantly: if the thing inside him was what kept Voldemort alive, then the solution was obvious. Remove it. End it. Be done.
He didn’t think of it as dying.
He thought of it as finishing the job.
For the first time, he noticed something strange, not fear, but the absence of resistance. No instinct rose up to scream runin the opposite direction. No voice argued that maybe, just once, he deserved to live.
The idea of choosing himself felt foreign. Almost wrong.
Selfish.
He thought, distantly, of cupboards, of being alone, and minuscule meals earned only by being unobtrusive. Of learning early that his presence was tolerated, not wanted. That space, food, safety, those were things other people got by default.
But never him.
Harry learned to make himself small.
Learned that trouble followed him anyway.
So, when the moment came to trade his life for everyone else’s, he didn’t feel cheated.
He felt… useful.
~
Afterwards, people would try to tell him he was extraordinary.
That he was selfless. Noble. A hero.
Harry smiled and let them.
He never told them the truth.
That when danger comes knocking, he won’t run away from it because no one ever taught him he was worth protecting.
That sacrificing himself doesn’t feel like courage.
It felt like a habit.
~★~
I’m Fine.
Harry sat on the edge of the bed with the curtains half-open.
Just half.
Moonlight spilled across the floor in a pale strip, stretching wide and open and quiet. Once, a room like this would have sent his pulse skittering, his mind racing for corners and shadows. Now it only tightened his chest for a moment before easing again, like a bruise pressed and released.
He breathed through it.
Slow. In, out. Counted, the way he’d learned to.
Behind him, the mattress shifted.
Ginny stirred, turning onto her side, hair a dark spill across the pillow, eyes barely open. She watched him for a few seconds, long enough that he felt it, before speaking, her voice soft and blurred with sleep. “Harry?”
He glanced back. “Sorry. Did I wake you?” he asked, his voice full of guilt.
She hummed, rubbing at her eyes. She didn’t answer the question. Instead, she asked another. “Why are you awake?”
He paused.
He didn’t know what had woken him, whether it had been a sound, or a shift in the room, or nothing at all. Sometimes it was just the absence of something that did it. Silence, maybe. Or the way his thoughts slid too easily into old, familiar paths once sleep loosened its grip.
Harry looked down at his hands, resting loosely in his lap. They weren’t shaking. That, apparently, was enough reason. If he could keep them still, if his breathing stayed even, then whatever this was didn’t count.
He flexed his fingers once, testing them. Steady.
He searched for an answer anyway – something simple, something ordinary. A bad dream. Too warm. Couldn’t sleep. All of them were true in their own small ways, and none of them were close enough to the real answer.
Because how did you explain waking up with the sense that the room was too big again?
Or that the dark felt safer than the light?
Or that sometimes his body remembered things his mind didn’t want to name?
It felt too heavy to say out loud.
Ginny studied him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable in the low light. Then, gently, she asked, “Are you okay?”
Now that was an easier question to answer. The words came without effort, without thought.
“What?” Harry said lightly, the corner of his mouth lifting as he reached for the bedside lamp, then stopped, leaving the room in the dark except for the moonlight. He should buy some thicker window curtains. “Of course, I’m fine.”
The words settled easily on his tongue. They always had. Easier than explaining. Easier than unpacking memories that still knew how to tighten his chest, how to make a wide room feel dangerous if he wasn’t paying attention.
Ginny didn’t argue. She never did when he woke up on these nights.
Instead, she shifted closer, warm and solid at his back, her arm draping over his waist like an anchor. Her hand rested there, steady and real, grounding him to the present.
Harry stayed where he was, hands still in his lap, gaze fixed on the half-open curtains and the sliver of moonlight beyond.
He doesn’t move them.
He doesn’t say anything else but:
“I’m fine.”