A riot inside (Prompt: Nostalgia)
It was messed up.
There was no sense of progression, none of the comforts of home and, every day, that growing pain inside him.
That thing was driving him mental: whenever he felt it resting against the muscles of his chest, it was as if he had a sort of virus playing with his mind, his senses, making everything ten times worse than it was.
It wasn't just that, it was beyond. At night, when the thing lay somewhere else, he still couldn't sleep or put his mind at ease.
He missed home. Not only the material stuff: not just his mum's wickedly delicious food, nor his comfortable bed, nor a proper bathroom with his favourite soap, nor even flights on his broom. Yes, of course, he missed all of that. But when you put all that aside and still don't have what he really missed, you realize that you have nothing. He had complained about what he didn't have all his life, and never paid attention to how important and valuable was what he had.
He missed his mum's soft humming in the mornings as she made breakfast. He missed the sound of knives and forks and spoons against the plates, and the sound of goblets hitting merrily the wooden table. He missed the chatting of people who were relatively happy, or at least felt happy when they were together and had full stomachs.
Oddly enough, he missed the radio with those cheesy songs that his mother loved and everybody else hated. Sounds, they filled his head at night, when it was clear of artificial doubts and there was no sound but the wind: the explosions in Fred and George's bedroom, the Weird Sisters floating through Ginny's window, the clucking of the hens.
Smells, too. Not only the smell of juicy sausages and chocolate gateaux: he could identify the smell every season had at home. In spring and summer, damp grass, fallen fruits in the orchard, herbs he would pick for his mother, ice-creams at Diagon Alley. Autumn smelled of wet earth, mud, easy entertainment for a bunch of kids when their education took place at home; of second-hand books and cleaned hand-me-down robes later when the time came to start a new term at Hogwarts. In winter they had hot chocolate and robust casseroles, logs would be burning and knitted sweaters would be all around, smelling just like home when they were away.
He was away from home now, and being with his best friend and with the person he loved, helping a cause that was greater than him, had not seemed such a grim prospect at first. Having his heart constricted by grief and fear of what might be happening to all that he missed, with the extra weight of the thing, poisoning his thoughts every minute, making him see what he knew to be lies but pained him all the same...
It was messed up.