Harry Potter One Shots

Turntable

All rights belong to the author, Arsenic Allure

His face is shadowed by the smoulder, a mere silhouette of glowing after burn. A ring of smoke curls toward the elusive heavens and the secret flare of embers sparkle on the end of a delicate cigarette: it is a dangerous star congesting the illusion of a peaceful night. Stumpy fingers choke its length and crush the toxic nicotine in a merciless, shaking grip. Another drag to cracked lips, an amateur's cough, the acrid poison ripping his throat and cutting the air, smelling of burning steppes. The world seems on fire—

Memory: nightmare: dream: deep, dark red hair; brown open eyes; ashen grey smile ghosted across faded lips; himself dead across a table. The end of Gred and—

He lurches forward in a dry heave and hurls the offending drug to the pebbled ground, holding onto his contorted face with spread, dirty hands, gasping into them, eyes clenched tight against the memories, tortured mind begging release. His heart is just a mechanical contraption beating out of duty rather than passion, hanging by a thread inside the hollow body of a rusting tin soldier.

The park bench is hard against his concave back, himself a shadow illuminated only by the weak, fleeting light of stars missing their companion that should shine lunar blue. His shuddering intake of toxic life, still curling blue-grey in the air, erupts in silence. A large oak overhangs him, its arm hovering over his wilted shoulders in perpetual hesitation, its message of condolence stifled by the whisper of its leaves spiralling in the wind, like the lethargy of a hot summer's humidity and the echo of the slap of skin on skin. He moves his stiff arms to grip his knees and stares at the ground with eyes unseeing, the bitter resentment of life plaguing his thoughts.

Then: voices of strangers and friends, behind him, to the left. The voices come through the lamplight and set their hungry, searching eyes on his huddled form and that cigarette burning in the shallow sea of tiny stones. Choking, he is choking on acrid smoke and the impending milieu.

He rises only to stumble and hear worried tones in his single ear and hears their rising recognition of his escape and he almost manages to miss the desperate cry of George!

But he escapes their clutches once more and turns on the spot, cloak swishing around his aching legs, to apparate singular.

The cigarette peters out.

-x-x-x-

A neighbourhood he has only been to once is where he lands on unsteady feet. Red hair too long twists around his face, clawing pale cheeks like taloned fingers. Chin dotted with rusty stubble, arms hugging himself in the wind, his cloak embracing him, brown eyes like burnt coffee stare empty.

Grief personified.

The street is long and the house is lost and his soft footfalls irregular. He walks until he sees her in blinding, golden light, messy, bushy hair pushed away with a headband, legs curled under her as she reads through midnight in an armchair with her lips pulled between her teeth and her eyes drinking in each word like expensive wine. George steps toward the window, looking through those half closed curtains at the girl who may be his, until he is so close he raises a hand to place it on the glass, the barest hairsbreadth from her profile. His hand is cold and drained of blood, prickling like a curse, before she closes the book and smiles down at it in self-assured contentment. George's breath is a mist against the window and just as she is about to look up and see a ghost, he steps out of sight, counting left, then counting right, and stands on her doorstep.

Hours pass.

His mechanical heart beats but his face is pale and his limbs are sore and when he finally raises his aching hand to thud it uselessly against the door he hits it twice and thinks of—