Vignettes of the Senses

Touch

Sometimes Harry just wanted someone to touch him. The desire was like a heaviness that rested on his shoulders and weighed him down, crippling him as he yearned for just...one touch. A brush of a hand against his own...even the accidental collision of bodies in the hallway could suffice.

When Mrs. Weasley hugged him after Cedric's death, even while devastated by the fact that someone had died and it was all his fault, his skinny, awkward frame had rejoiced and worshipped the feel of her form against his, the warmth of her body that had enveloped him. He savored the memory for months; in his darker moments, he took out the memory like some prize, setting it before him and remembering the way she had hugged him. The memory of Cho's kiss was cradled in the same manner, as was the feel of Ginny Weasley as he kissed and held her in sixth year, and the awkward hugs that a haunted Sirius Black had given him.

And then the war was on, and people who might've hugged him before, if he'd asked, were suddenly too afraid to touch, because touching meant people were real, and real people could die and never return. And the desire had gained weight and slumped his shoulders until people began asking if there was something wrong with his back, and it pressed down on his shoulders until he hobbled like an old man even as he fought and bled and fought in this vicious war.

Even bleeding, no one touched him. Not even the medi-witches. A mere press of a wand's tip to his wound and he was fine, perfectly healed, and off to the next battle where he'd bleed again. No one touched him, and the longing grew until one day on the battlefield, in the midst of a duel with Nott, he just...fell to his knees.

He didn't even notice when someone hexed Nott, too busy trying to shove off the weight of loneliness that perched upon his shoulders and had made his knees give out.

"Harry."

He kept pushing with shaking hands, certain that somehow he could knock the weight off and stand straight again. He had to, for when he fought Voldemort after all...a hero couldn't be a cripple--

"Harry."

And then, someone touched him. Fingers pressed against his cheek, callused and warm and real, and he blinked and looked up to stare into the face of a god named Oliver Wood.

"Oliver?"

Oliver smiled and hauled him to his feet. "C'mon, Harry, if you don't survive the war, the world's lost the best bloody Seeker ever!" Harry would have thought the burly Gryffindor was joking, had there not been a gleam of earnestness in his face. But then again, Oliver would be concerned with Quidditch while there was a war going on.

For a moment, he kept staring, and then he half-leaned into the touch and managed a shaky laugh. "Already recruiting me for the Puddlemere United, Oliver?"

Oliver smiled crookedly. "Can't blame a bloke for trying." He stepped back, his hands leaving Harry's shoulders, and then stared when Harry instinctively stopped him. His smile shifted to a look of concern that Harry knew all too well. It was a look Hermione and Ron wore all the time now.

"Sorry," he found himself breathing, and to his horror and embarrassment he felt tears prickling his eyes. "It's just...so nice to feel...a touch." And then the tears were spilling down his face and he could only cling to Oliver's callused hands like they were a lifeline and he was a drowning man instead of the crippled, tired boy he knew he was.

Oliver just looked at him for a long moment, and, despite the fact that there was a battle waging all around them, that Nott was cursing the Boy-Who-Lived and fumbling for a wand that Oliver had broken personally a few minutes earlier, he grabbed Harry and hugged him.

And Harry buried his face in the man's chest and felt the weight of yearning begin to dissolve as those steady, strong arms wrapped around him. Somehow this...touch enveloped his frame and pressed invisible hands to his back, straightening his spine. Somehow this touch burrowed deeper than the sensation of skin to skin and touched his heart, scattering all the longings and heaviness away and left him with a giddy sort of relief that came with weightlessness.

"Don't let go," he whispered.

Oliver rested his chin on Harry's head and smiled, ignoring the war that waged around them. "I won't."