This Doesn't Feel Real [closed]

[chase_em]

It had been a little less than a week since his mother was attacked. The best and most attentive Healers were at her side day and night, new Potions hooked up to her veins every two hours, keeping her stable but the wounds weren't yet close to fixing themselves. It was frustrating and terrifying, Jonah never this close to tragedy before. All of his

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[dearest_ella]

It wasn't uncommon for Ella to find herself dreadfully behind in terms of news. She had never been one to pour over the Prophet on a daily basis the way many wizards did (if it wasn't on the front page and glaring enough to catch her attention when a stack of the day's copy was delivered to her department, she just never quite bothered to read it), and she preferred old vinyls of classical recordings to the chattering of the WWN. So unless something made its way across her desk in the form of an unfiled report, or a particularly noteworthy event was incessantly talked about around the office, she could very easily be left out of the loop on current events

[chase_em]

"Hi-"

His voice was shaky, throat hoarse from crying, maybe or just sitting there in the over-conditioned hallways. He hadn't expected to see Ella here, knowing that her brother died in a fashion very similar to this, knowing that (as far as Ava explained), it wasn't something she was at all comfortable talking about. She still hadn't mentioned it to him. And that was something he was alright with, that he understood. Especially now, the burden of having to explain to people what happened, how tight his voice grew or how shaky his hands went whenever it happened.

But she was here. It didn't matter how long his mother had been in the hospital or how long it had been since he'd last seen her.

She was here.

He turned to face her, his hand reaching to brush back through her hair, his heart still pounding in his chest as he pressed his lips to her cheek.

"You didn't have to come," he told her, as he pulled back just slightly. "I mean- I know that it can't be easy-"

[dearest_ella]

Ella didn't quite give him the option of pulling away any more, meeting his shaken greeting and so uncharacteristically broken expression by pulling him back in, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and burying her face against the side of his neck, desperately clinging to something warm and solid in this cold and fleeting sort of space. Both for his sake and (as much as she tried to deny and ignore it and push it away, because this most definitely was not about her, and she was all too used to burying these flares of memories to let them get to her now when she fully intended to be the solid, supporting one) her own-

"I should've come sooner- I didn't-" Didn't know, then didn't know when, didn't know howShe pulled back just enough to catch his eye, fingers lightly curling through the disheveled curls at the back of his head. "Jonah, I'm so sorry- is she-?" She left the question hanging, flicking a quick look at the eerily still figure of the woman laid out across the bed, a stranger to her in nearly every way, yet the sight of

[chase_em]

"She's asleep- or a coma, I don't know-"

He sounded frustrated. Well, he was. Of all the potions and all the antidotes, there was nothing that was really working. A few ointments kept the wounds clean and stopped the bleeding, herbal remedies. But he could hear the Healers when they talked to his father. "She's a Muggle, Mister Linney. She doesn't have the same magical ties that we do-" as if that was meant to help them feel better, as if that would at all ease their mind when their wife, their mother, their aunt was just laying there in some sort of strange slumber.

He tilted his head down, his hand reaching for hers. He didn't realize how much he needed her here with him until she came. Just the warmth of her hand was enough to make him catch his breath.

He didn't say anything for a moment.

He just sat there, comforted by her presence beside him, wondering when this whole nightmare was going to end, when he was going to wake up.

"Thank you-" he said, after a moment. "I can't sit here alone like this anymore-"