Lost and Found (Harry, Ron, Hermione, PG, Harry Potter)
Title: Lost and Found
Author: Mimic
Characters/Pairings: Harry, Ron, Hermione
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: J.K.R. was more brilliant than me.
Notes: I sat down to try and write something, and this came out. It isn't perfect, I know that, but hopefully it's the first step in getting out of my writing slump.
Feedback: I appreciate any words, kind or unkind, you're willing to give.
Word Count: 1600
He comes back to consciousness the first time in complete darkness and silence. It takes him a minute to struggle for the realization that he isn’t at the Dursleys, but buried deep underground somewhere along the Atlantic coastline. His breath comes in short gasps after that, because this is the first time he honestly has no idea how he’s going to survive, and Ron’s body is frighteningly still next to him.
His eyes are stinging with shocked and frightened tears as he gropes for Ron’s wrist, and presses his fingers against his flesh, holding his breath for too long before he feels a pulse.
He breathes again, choking around sobs, and digs his fingernails into his palms until the tears stop.
He wishes he’d never heard of magic, and that brings a fresh wave of sadness and terror until he has to stop, and start trying to put his thoughts in order again.
It was an accident, overestimation, regarding what they thought was a horcrux. He has his doubts now, because what happened felt less like magic, and more like the entire earth rearing up against them.
He remembers Ron cursing, and the huge sound of dirt and rocks caving in around them.
Now there’s just silence. He can’t even hear the sound of the sea he knows can’t be more than three hundred feet in any one direction.
There has to be some kind of opening, though. He hasn’t suffocated, and he doesn’t think the air isn’t thinning down because his breathing would be just fine if he could calm down.
His wand is missing, which is by far the worst thing that’s happened, and there’s no space for apparition.
It’s enough to send him back into searching out the darkness with his eyes, chasing the colorful spots caused by his vision adjusting. His right hand is rubbing dirt from his leg rhythmically, and the left is gently clinging to Ron’s, a finger still pressed to his wrist to feel his continuing pulse.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, just the darkness brightening to something livable, and dreams of red hair and dancing in the air, flowers and sunlight. In his dreams, he smiles.
There is something shaking him, calling his name over and over with increased disparity. He opens his mouth to speak, and almost chokes at how dry it is.
He scraps his shoulder against hard rock and grit before he remembers everything.
“Harry, oh Merlin, Harry,” Ron is still saying, but now he’s half hugging him -- as much as the space allows, and burying his face into Harry’s shoulder.
“’S me,” he finally get’s out, and then doesn’t say much of anything else, because Ron’s alive and he’s alive, and maybe they can make it through this after all.
They take turns sleeping.
He says it’s to make sure nothing happens, or so they don’t miss if someone comes looking for them, but Harry thinks maybe it’s just so they don’t see each other crying.
He holds Ron’s hand when he’s asleep, because he still can’t convince himself he’s alive when it’s so dark and quiet.
Ron complains about the lack of light, how hungry he is, how he would have at least liked to ask Hermione on a real date before they died when he think Harry’s sleeping.
He doesn’t sleep much, sometimes he wonders if Ron’s faking it too. He realizes on the third shift that he doesn’t really care.
Harry strokes Ron’s hand, squeezes at the curve of his palm, and whispers, “I wouldn’t be here now, without you,” and means it in every way possible, even the bad ones.
Ron doesn’t move, but on the next watch he carefully rests a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and doesn’t talk for a really long time.
He feels the silence then, more than any time else, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it did earlier.
“Hermione should be here,” Ron says, finally.
Harry shifts under Ron’s hand, knowing that’s enough of an answer for both of them.
He thinks back to all the adventures they had together, since the very first, and thinks maybe it’s loony to send a bunch of stupid kids out as a last line of defense, but then, they’ve been doing this for years, so maybe it isn’t so bad.
Ron doesn’t wake up when Harry shakes him, and he’s so dehydrated that he can’t cry even though he’s sobbing. He pulls Ron to him, resting his head on his shoulder.
He passes out only minutes later.
When the shouts come echoing through to their prison neither of them can answer.
He comes to the last time to too much light and too soft surrounding. His eyes sting and his throat hurts, and he can’t stop crying once he realizes he’s alive.
It isn’t any room he recognizes, the walls are a soft green and the bed isn’t like anything he’s been in before. The sheets feel like terrycloth, and there’s a steady beep coming from somewhere behind his left side.
He lets his eyes fall closed and reaches out, feeling for magic.
His throat closes up when he doesn’t sense anything, and then finally he gets it. It’s a muggle hospital, and when he hears voices passing in the hall beyond everyone is speaking a foreign language.
He stares up at the ceiling for a while before a nurse comes bustling in before seeing he’s awake and speaking into a little walkie talkie thing on her belt.
She smiles at him, and he tries to speak but nothing comes out.
The nurse says something about dehydration and lets him sip some juice out of a cup with a straw, when he can talk again he asks where he is.
She says a name he’s never heard of, and finally gets down to somewhere along the Russian coast.
He nods, and she goes on to ask him about how he’s feeling, if he’s in any sort of pain, and says he should be released in three to five days.
It’s squeezing at his chest so much he waits until she’s almost of out the room before he asks about Ron.
“The man you were brought it with? Red head?”
He nods, “Is he okay?”
“He’s still sleeping, suffered a bit more than you did, along with some minor fractures in his left leg. He should be fine, though,” and she smiles again.
He grasps at the meaning with his fingers. Ron’s alive, Ron hasn’t woke up yet, he should be fine.
“Thank you,” he says, before tears start leaking out of his eyes and he laughs once, breathlessly before focusing on the beep of the heart monitor.
He’s staring out the little window in his room when the nurse comes back in. She’s carrying his dinner tray and has a bit of an amused look on her face.
“Your friend is quite a character,” she says.
Her English is nearly perfect, and Harry wonders how old she is. He smiles, “Erm. Yeah, he was raised… in a unique environment.”
“Well, he fought tooth and nail against the IV.”
He eats a bit of his chocolate pudding. “Yeah.”
The nurse straightens out his bedding, and checks a few things on the monitors. “Oh,” she says, “There is a young woman who has been asking over you and your friend in the lobby. She didn’t have proper identification so we couldn’t let her through without your permission.”
He sits up faster than he should have and winces, “Hermione!”
“So you know her?” the nurse asks.
“Yes, she’s one of my best friends. She’s -- Bushy hair, really bossy?” He runs a hand through his own hair, and winces again at his description.
She gets a bemused look. “Yes.”
“Can she see me? Please -- I --“ The nurse cuts him off with a wave of her hand, tells him to eat his dinner, and says she’ll go see if she’s still around.
Harry works on breathing.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Hermione harshly whispers into his ear even as she knocks the wind out of his lungs hugging him.
Her hair is pulled out of the way in a thick ponytail, and Harry twists a finger into it. “It took me so long to find where you’d been taken. I thought, god, that Voldemort had --“
“I’m alive, Hermione.” He twirls a strand of her hair around his finger. “I’m, I’m good.”
She eased back, just a little, and stared him in the eyes. “You look different without your old glasses.”
“Huh? Oh,” he touched the rims of the ones he’d been given at the hospital. “I lost them, in the cave.”
Hermione bit her lip, and looked like she was on the verge of tearing into him again. Harry hastily cleared his throat, and shifted his supporting arm around her waist.
“How’s Ron doing, I haven’t been able to see him yet.”
Her worried expression gave way to amusement. “I tried to explain a few things, muggle things, to him when I visited, but he’s still very --“
“Stubborn?”
“I was going to say pigheaded,” she said matter-of-factly, and Harry laughed.
He couldn’t forget, not even as he was walking out of the hospital with Hermione and Ron on either side, their hands linking them together and Hermione’s head on his shoulder.
He could have died, both him and Ron.
It didn’t mean he would stop, because someone had to keep fighting, and he wouldn’t be any more or less scared the next battle, but he almost died.
That wasn’t something he could forget, and he didn’t want to.
He tightened his grip on both his friends’ hands, and kept walking with his eyes forward, feeling the cold wind blow over his face, relishing in it.
He could have died.
Author: Mimic
Characters/Pairings: Harry, Ron, Hermione
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: J.K.R. was more brilliant than me.
Notes: I sat down to try and write something, and this came out. It isn't perfect, I know that, but hopefully it's the first step in getting out of my writing slump.
Feedback: I appreciate any words, kind or unkind, you're willing to give.
Word Count: 1600
He comes back to consciousness the first time in complete darkness and silence. It takes him a minute to struggle for the realization that he isn’t at the Dursleys, but buried deep underground somewhere along the Atlantic coastline. His breath comes in short gasps after that, because this is the first time he honestly has no idea how he’s going to survive, and Ron’s body is frighteningly still next to him.
His eyes are stinging with shocked and frightened tears as he gropes for Ron’s wrist, and presses his fingers against his flesh, holding his breath for too long before he feels a pulse.
He breathes again, choking around sobs, and digs his fingernails into his palms until the tears stop.
He wishes he’d never heard of magic, and that brings a fresh wave of sadness and terror until he has to stop, and start trying to put his thoughts in order again.
It was an accident, overestimation, regarding what they thought was a horcrux. He has his doubts now, because what happened felt less like magic, and more like the entire earth rearing up against them.
He remembers Ron cursing, and the huge sound of dirt and rocks caving in around them.
Now there’s just silence. He can’t even hear the sound of the sea he knows can’t be more than three hundred feet in any one direction.
There has to be some kind of opening, though. He hasn’t suffocated, and he doesn’t think the air isn’t thinning down because his breathing would be just fine if he could calm down.
His wand is missing, which is by far the worst thing that’s happened, and there’s no space for apparition.
It’s enough to send him back into searching out the darkness with his eyes, chasing the colorful spots caused by his vision adjusting. His right hand is rubbing dirt from his leg rhythmically, and the left is gently clinging to Ron’s, a finger still pressed to his wrist to feel his continuing pulse.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep, just the darkness brightening to something livable, and dreams of red hair and dancing in the air, flowers and sunlight. In his dreams, he smiles.
There is something shaking him, calling his name over and over with increased disparity. He opens his mouth to speak, and almost chokes at how dry it is.
He scraps his shoulder against hard rock and grit before he remembers everything.
“Harry, oh Merlin, Harry,” Ron is still saying, but now he’s half hugging him -- as much as the space allows, and burying his face into Harry’s shoulder.
“’S me,” he finally get’s out, and then doesn’t say much of anything else, because Ron’s alive and he’s alive, and maybe they can make it through this after all.
They take turns sleeping.
He says it’s to make sure nothing happens, or so they don’t miss if someone comes looking for them, but Harry thinks maybe it’s just so they don’t see each other crying.
He holds Ron’s hand when he’s asleep, because he still can’t convince himself he’s alive when it’s so dark and quiet.
Ron complains about the lack of light, how hungry he is, how he would have at least liked to ask Hermione on a real date before they died when he think Harry’s sleeping.
He doesn’t sleep much, sometimes he wonders if Ron’s faking it too. He realizes on the third shift that he doesn’t really care.
Harry strokes Ron’s hand, squeezes at the curve of his palm, and whispers, “I wouldn’t be here now, without you,” and means it in every way possible, even the bad ones.
Ron doesn’t move, but on the next watch he carefully rests a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and doesn’t talk for a really long time.
He feels the silence then, more than any time else, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it did earlier.
“Hermione should be here,” Ron says, finally.
Harry shifts under Ron’s hand, knowing that’s enough of an answer for both of them.
He thinks back to all the adventures they had together, since the very first, and thinks maybe it’s loony to send a bunch of stupid kids out as a last line of defense, but then, they’ve been doing this for years, so maybe it isn’t so bad.
Ron doesn’t wake up when Harry shakes him, and he’s so dehydrated that he can’t cry even though he’s sobbing. He pulls Ron to him, resting his head on his shoulder.
He passes out only minutes later.
When the shouts come echoing through to their prison neither of them can answer.
He comes to the last time to too much light and too soft surrounding. His eyes sting and his throat hurts, and he can’t stop crying once he realizes he’s alive.
It isn’t any room he recognizes, the walls are a soft green and the bed isn’t like anything he’s been in before. The sheets feel like terrycloth, and there’s a steady beep coming from somewhere behind his left side.
He lets his eyes fall closed and reaches out, feeling for magic.
His throat closes up when he doesn’t sense anything, and then finally he gets it. It’s a muggle hospital, and when he hears voices passing in the hall beyond everyone is speaking a foreign language.
He stares up at the ceiling for a while before a nurse comes bustling in before seeing he’s awake and speaking into a little walkie talkie thing on her belt.
She smiles at him, and he tries to speak but nothing comes out.
The nurse says something about dehydration and lets him sip some juice out of a cup with a straw, when he can talk again he asks where he is.
She says a name he’s never heard of, and finally gets down to somewhere along the Russian coast.
He nods, and she goes on to ask him about how he’s feeling, if he’s in any sort of pain, and says he should be released in three to five days.
It’s squeezing at his chest so much he waits until she’s almost of out the room before he asks about Ron.
“The man you were brought it with? Red head?”
He nods, “Is he okay?”
“He’s still sleeping, suffered a bit more than you did, along with some minor fractures in his left leg. He should be fine, though,” and she smiles again.
He grasps at the meaning with his fingers. Ron’s alive, Ron hasn’t woke up yet, he should be fine.
“Thank you,” he says, before tears start leaking out of his eyes and he laughs once, breathlessly before focusing on the beep of the heart monitor.
He’s staring out the little window in his room when the nurse comes back in. She’s carrying his dinner tray and has a bit of an amused look on her face.
“Your friend is quite a character,” she says.
Her English is nearly perfect, and Harry wonders how old she is. He smiles, “Erm. Yeah, he was raised… in a unique environment.”
“Well, he fought tooth and nail against the IV.”
He eats a bit of his chocolate pudding. “Yeah.”
The nurse straightens out his bedding, and checks a few things on the monitors. “Oh,” she says, “There is a young woman who has been asking over you and your friend in the lobby. She didn’t have proper identification so we couldn’t let her through without your permission.”
He sits up faster than he should have and winces, “Hermione!”
“So you know her?” the nurse asks.
“Yes, she’s one of my best friends. She’s -- Bushy hair, really bossy?” He runs a hand through his own hair, and winces again at his description.
She gets a bemused look. “Yes.”
“Can she see me? Please -- I --“ The nurse cuts him off with a wave of her hand, tells him to eat his dinner, and says she’ll go see if she’s still around.
Harry works on breathing.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Hermione harshly whispers into his ear even as she knocks the wind out of his lungs hugging him.
Her hair is pulled out of the way in a thick ponytail, and Harry twists a finger into it. “It took me so long to find where you’d been taken. I thought, god, that Voldemort had --“
“I’m alive, Hermione.” He twirls a strand of her hair around his finger. “I’m, I’m good.”
She eased back, just a little, and stared him in the eyes. “You look different without your old glasses.”
“Huh? Oh,” he touched the rims of the ones he’d been given at the hospital. “I lost them, in the cave.”
Hermione bit her lip, and looked like she was on the verge of tearing into him again. Harry hastily cleared his throat, and shifted his supporting arm around her waist.
“How’s Ron doing, I haven’t been able to see him yet.”
Her worried expression gave way to amusement. “I tried to explain a few things, muggle things, to him when I visited, but he’s still very --“
“Stubborn?”
“I was going to say pigheaded,” she said matter-of-factly, and Harry laughed.
He couldn’t forget, not even as he was walking out of the hospital with Hermione and Ron on either side, their hands linking them together and Hermione’s head on his shoulder.
He could have died, both him and Ron.
It didn’t mean he would stop, because someone had to keep fighting, and he wouldn’t be any more or less scared the next battle, but he almost died.
That wasn’t something he could forget, and he didn’t want to.
He tightened his grip on both his friends’ hands, and kept walking with his eyes forward, feeling the cold wind blow over his face, relishing in it.
He could have died.