While You Slept

While You Slept

I sat with him while he lay there, his eyes closed, his chest steadily moving up and down with his rhythmic breathing.

He almost died.

They re-grew his arm; he has two of them again. His new arm doesn't have any of the scars the old one did. It's the same arm that lost all of its bones back in our second year.

The same arm that made me hold still long enough for Harry to kiss me the first time.

That arm has been through a lot.

So has Harry.

He's been asleep for three weeks.

Madam Pomfrey says he'll wake up at any time now. I'll be here when he does.

I reached up and held his hand as the night grew darker. It would be so easy to just slip away and go to sleep, but I don't want to miss him when he wakes up.

It wouldn't hurt to just close my eyes...just for a minute....

"Shall I buy you a more comfortable chair?" I heard someone ask. "Or will you learn what a bed is one of these days?"

Confused, I opened my eyes. "What?" I asked groggily.

"You're still sleeping in chairs," Harry chuckled. "Why?"

I didn't answer him. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly.

Harry chuckled and returned the favor.

"You scared the shit out of me," I whispered. "Don't do it again, okay?"

"Sorry," he replied. "You should learn when to stop running."

"What do you mean?" I asked, loosening my grip on him so I could look him in the eye.

"I told you to stop running. Voldemort directed his Killing Curse at you to get me to stop fighting. Unlike him, you can't survive that curse."

I smiled sheepishly. "You lost your arm. I wasn't thinking clearly."

Harry looked at his new arm. "It's amazing, isn't it?" I asked. "What magic can do for a person..."

I nodded slightly. It was amazing, even if I had been exposed to this sort of magic most of my life.

"He thought that if he took away my wand arm, he could take away my ability to battle," Harry explained. "The only thing that would have stopped me was your death. That's why he attacked you. He wouldn't have cared otherwise."

"It's over now," I said, wanting to drop the subject of Voldemort and the battle. "It's all over."

Harry nodded and we kissed.

He was hailed as a hero and, for the first time, he accepted the title. Even though he insisted that he couldn't have done what he had if Dumbledore and I hadn't been there, casting the curse along side him.

The power of love...anything can happen.

The nightmares returned, however. Harry was back to not sleeping, no matter how much I tried to get him to. Nothing would help him. No dreamless draught was strong enough; no spell could wipe the memories away from his tortured mind. Not even knowing I was there would help him sleep.

He said his worst nightmare wasn't even an actual memory. It was what could have happened if I hadn't stopped running.

We would stay up for hours, him telling me everything and me, lying there next to him, assuring him that I was there, listening to what he had to say.... It was torture, especially when he started to cry. Sometimes the tears would be so much that even I would join him.