The sun is rising over the castle and somehow, in the midst of all this grief and celebration, all I can think is that I don’t feel at home here anymore. It’s been nearly two years since my abrupt departure, and yet somehow the people I can see who left much longer ago than I did seem much more comfortable. I’m not sure why I came here last night, what possessed me to willingly enter a warzone, to go back to the castle that had known me as a pigtailed girl of eleven. As I cast my eyes over the crowd of people, young and old, students and adults alike, I catch the eye of a man who looks almost as uncomfortable in this place as I do.

He holds my stare, and in those deep blue eyes I sense pain, pain like I have not felt in almost two years. Pain I have drowned in many a bottle of firewhiskey. The raw, unbearable, almost physical pain of losing the person whose known you since… well, forever.

*

It’s two whole weeks until I cast eyes on him again, as he props himself up on the bar ordering drink after drink, completely alone. I let him continue; in fact I even pour the drinks for him, because I know that it’ll give him a few hours of peaceful oblivion. Sure, his grief will reignite itself tenfold come morning, but for now we are comrades in our silent battle to forget for a few short hours how it feels to be alone. It’s time to lock up, but he’s still sat at the now deserted bar. I approach him, unwilling to throw him out, but knowing I have to. Yet as I come to stand beside him he looks up and it’s as if he sees me for the first time. There’s something in his eyes, something other than the pain, and before I know what’s happening he’s kissing me.

I know I should stop him, but somehow I don’t want to. He’s drunk, far too drunk, but for the first time in years someone wants me. I feel alive, truly alive. I can suddenly remember what passion feels like, and I never want to stop feeling it, I never want this to end.

Suddenly he’s no longer kissing me, and I watch him stumble out of the door and into the night. As I watch him leave it feels as though my chest is constricted, I can’t breathe it hurts so much, and I’m not even sure why. It hurts to see him walk away, even though I’m not sure I want him to stay.

*

As I wake the next morning, alone in my tiny room above the bar, I find the sunlight streaming in through my cracked window almost blinding to my weary eyes. The window was damaged in a blast caused by Death Eaters many months before, and my shoddy attempts to repair it have done little, meaning I have a constant draft. Whilst this isn’t much of a problem in warm months like these, I dread to think how cold it’ll be when the leaves begin to fall and winter sets in. As I sit up, reaching for the bottle of Ogden’s finest I keep under my bed, I hear a faint, strangled, mewling sound that sends shivers up my spine. Curiosity overwhelms me, and I peer out of my tiny window into the street below. In the two weeks that have passed since it all ended most of the shops in Diagon Alley have made some attempt to re-open, but after nine months of being terrorised by Death Eaters progress is slow and shoppers are slower, it’s going to take a while for the community to get used to being safe again. The sound continues, raw in its desperation, and definitely closer than street level. I cast my eyes over the rickety rooftops of Diagon Alley, perhaps looking for a cat, but instead it’s Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes that catches my eye. Not because of the iridescent exterior, but because in the uppermost window in what I presume to be the flat above the shop the golden sunlight is pouring down on a crumpled figure curled in the foetal position on the window ledge. He is the source of the sound, and his cries make my blond hairs stand on end.

I know better than anyone that the last thing you want when you’re grieving is sympathy. Sympathy is suffocating; in fact just the presence of other people is suffocating. In that black space you’d happily let everyone else die, every single person, if it were to bring back the one person you’ve lost.

Seeing his grief splayed out before me, seeing him there like a red-haired angel cast out of heaven and crying from the depths of hell, once again brings my own hell back to the forefront of my mind, bringing me back to my perpetual state of blackness. I can feel myself slipping into oblivion as I grasp the bottle of firewhiskey from under my bed and pour it down my throat, the bitter taste has long since faded to nothingness for me, much like the burning embers of hell no longer render me as crippled as the man I can see through my window.

I once heard someone say that pain is only relevant if it still hurts, but I don’t think that’s true. Hell is always painful, but after long enough you become numb to it. This living hell of grief will never end, but I don’t feel it like he does anymore. I don’t feel anything anymore, pain nor happiness. The true agony of hell is the perpetual state of nothingness.

*

He’s in the bar again, drinking away his sorrows. I notice he’s a quiet drunk, not like most of the wizards I serve in here who become boisterous and lecherous after a firewhiskey or two. All of the confidence and bravado I remember of him when I was at Hogwarts has dissipated; if it weren’t for the distinctive mop of flame red hair he’d be completely unrecognisable.

Once everyone has gone and he once again presses his lips to mine, it occurs to me that he’d never do this stone cold sober. Yet I still take his hand and lead him upstairs, desperately longing to feel something, feel anything.

I know this isn’t a relationship; I know we’re using each other’s bodies as a means by which to escape our mutual agony, his fresh, mine less so. But I still need him, I need him to come back tonight, and I know he will because he needs me too.

During the day, we never see each other; he leaves my bed before I wake, and the next time I see him is at nightfall when he’s already drunken himself into such a stupor that he’s using the bar to prop himself up. Every night for weeks, we share my bed, sharing our pain.

Even though I know he’s grieving and he knows I am too, we never discuss it. It’s too painful to say their names and that’s not why he’s here. He’s here to forget, to forget he’s one half of a whole for a few short hours and to lose himself in me, and I guess I’m okay with that because for so long I’ve been so very alone. No one notices the girl behind the bar with the pain in her eyes because they’re all too busy drinking away their own problems to deal with mine. Besides, for many I’m too much of a reminder of the war they’re desperately trying to forget.

*

I wake from a nightmare, the same one as always, to find he’s not lying next to me. Not that I really expected him to be, but somehow I wish he’d stayed. I want him to put his arms round me and tell me everything’s going to be okay, even though it probably isn’t, and even though he’d never think to say it. As the hazy early morning sunlight casts an amber glow over my room I sit up, but before I have a chance to reach for the bottle I keep under my bed for moments such as these I’m hit with an overwhelming feeling of nausea and run to the tiny bathroom adjoining my room.

Funny, because hangovers have never made me sick before.

*

I wait for him, waiting for him to come into the bar and make me feel alive again, but he doesn’t come. Not that night, nor the night after, nor the night after that. Without him to escape into memories come flooding back, memories that can no longer be forgotten about with a good swig of firewhiskey. It’s as if he’s the only one who allows me to forget, because he’s the only one who understands what it feels like. Before him I’d spend my nights drinking away my sorrows, but it’s no longer enough, I need more, I need him. But he doesn’t come back.

It’s not just my mind that can’t cope without him; it’s my body too. Every morning I feel worse, waking up alone after another night without him, my grief and my pain of losing him are enough to make me sick. Even old Tom comments on how awful I look.

I can’t bear it anymore, the pain is physical, it feels as if every fibre of my body is burning and nothing can subdue it, not even the countless shots I’ve been swigging. As I go to clear the glasses off an empty table, I notice him enter. It’s as if suddenly everything’s going to be okay again, here he is, the man who takes me to the place where I can finally forget, the man who’s eyes I can look into and know he understands everything. But then I notice he’s not alone.

Grasping onto his hand is a woman I vaguely recognise from Gryffindor, I think she was on the Quidditch team. How could he? How could he leave me for her? How could he leave me alone in my agony?

I don’t notice my legs have given way until I hit the floor. Someone calls my name, I’m not sure who. I try and speak but the pain is too much to bear, so I give in to it.

*

As I drift into consciousness, I realise I’m not in my own bed. The sheets are too crisp, too clean, and the light is too stark to be the sunlight that drifts in through my attic window. As I open my eyes, it takes a few seconds for the room before me to slip into focus.

‘Where am I?’ My voice is croaky, as if I haven’t spoken for days.

‘St Mungo’s dear, you’ve had us all a bit worried!’ The response comes from a woman in white stood at the end of my bed, who I now realise from her response to my question is a medi-witch.

‘Why am I here?’

‘You had… well you had a miscarriage. Because you were quite far along it rather complicated matters, so you slipped into a coma for a few days. Nothing we couldn’t handle though.’

I gape at her in shock. A miscarriage? I wasn’t even pregnant!

But then it occurs to me that maybe the sickness and the pain wasn’t because of him. Who brought me here? Who was it that shouted my name? It must have been him, he must have seen me collapse and brought me here!

‘Is he here?’

‘You mean the lovely young man who hasn’t moved from your bedside since you arrived? I just sent him to get himself a cup of tea, I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute dear.’ She gives me a comforting smile and then bustles out of the room, leaving me to process it all. He rescued me, he brought me here, he must have realised he needs me too.

I look up as a figure enters the room, but the man who walks in and breaths a sigh of relief doesn’t have red hair, nor does he have the eyes I know so well. I stare at him in shock.

‘Neville?’