Chapter Text
Sound came to her first — muffled and distorted voices, like they were underwater. Then a crack as loud as lightning — the snapping of bone — pulled her back to consciousness.
Then the pain. Fuck did her head and ribs hurt. Her head was pounding to the frantic rhythm of her heart.
As she tried prying open her eyes to slits, that's when she realized she was upside down. Then she saw it.
A flash of green light wrapped around the now limp body next to her. She could still smell his comforting aftershave that he would wear, now mixed with the copper tang of blood and cloying smoke.
She tried turning her head, but nearly blacked out from the pain. A concussion was now forming a large lump on her forehead.
From the corner of her eye, she could see, though, that the man’s neck was at an odd angle.
She needed to remember something. Something important. But everything felt so far away and like such a big effort.
Then suddenly more loud cracks snapped. Were more necks being snapped?
No, it must have been someone else Disapparating.
Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She couldn't think.
She needed to move; that was important, but she still felt like everything was underwater.
She even heard the drip of water. Wait. Not water. It was her blood dripping down onto the roof of the flipped car. The car radio was on, the song skipping on repeat over and over and over again. She tried moving her arms to get out and away from the car, before a lashing wave of pain rendered her unconscious again.
Moments or years later, she felt the crisp night air on her bloody cheeks. Fuck. The blood was everywhere. She was going to be sick. Especially with the rocking motions as she was being carried.
Wait. She was being carried. Who the fuck was carrying her? She started lashing, trying to get away from her captor. Her father’s murderer was carrying her away to finish her off; she was next; she needed to fight.
Her dad. The person next to her in the car with his neck at an odd angle. His neck snapped. Her father was dead. The man who would hold her on his shoulders when she was younger, who introduced her to her love for reading. Dead. Gone.
Somehow, that realization hurt more than her probably broken ribs and pounding concussion. She was alone now. Truly, and utterly alone. The last one surviving of her entire family.
The odds of her escaping were stacked against her as the strong, male body holding her pinned her closer to his chest despite her desperate attempts to flee. Tutting at her like a child in need of scolding, almost like he was disappointed by her flailing attempt to escape his arms.
Just as he began murmuring to her, his voice got fuzzy. She couldn’t make out the words he was trying to say. It was something important. Then, the world went black.
✵✸✵
Sophie Alderwick woke with a start. Sweat coated her body, so very much like the blood that night her father was killed. Like its cloying scent was still coating her. Sophie barely made it out of the tangle of her sheets with her wand before making it to the adjoining bathroom and vomiting in the toilet.
She lay there for what seemed like an eternity, dry heaving. Forehead pressed down to the cool penny tiles, she slowly fiddled with her wand — rowan wood, a smooth dark obsidian at the base, fading to a pale ash-blond at the tip. Runes and vines had been carved along its length, curling up the grain like ivy.
She traced the etchings of runes and vines, following them as they curled up from the obsidian base — Algiz. Tiwaz. Eihwaz— through the burnished middle where Kenaz glinted faintly beside Fehu and Ansuz, and finally toward the fading pale tip where the carvings thinned into Berkano, Ehwaz, Wunjo, and Othala, were barely visible.
She knew her luck for finding sleep the rest of the night was spent.
Rinsing her mouth and spitting into the porcelain sink, Sophie looked up at the small mirror above the sink. She looked like shit.
Her round face was pale, slimmer than she remembered. Shadows clung under her dark forest green eyes, and her dark brown waves clung to her temples, matted down with sweat. The faint smattering of freckles across her prominent cheekbones looked, in this light, like flecks of dried blood splattered across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes looked too wide and alert for how she felt.
Sophie looked away from her reflection, quickly casting a scourgify on her body, and made her way back to the small room she shared with Luna, Hermione, and Ginny. Half their beds were empty. Ever since the war, Hermione had started to sleep in Ron’s room, while Ginny stayed with Harry.
Luna stirred, “You alright?” she asked sleepily.
“Y-yeah, go back to sleep. Sorry for waking you,” Sophie whispered hoarsely. Luna began softly snoring, already back asleep.
Reading the clock by her makeshift cot, Sophie saw it was just past four in the morning. Sighing, she made her way down the rickety stairs of Grimmauld Place, the official Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, to the kitchens below.
Although the war had ended barely four months ago, many of those who lost everything in the war were welcomed to stay at Headquarters, Sophie included.
As she entered, she wasn’t surprised to find Harry there, sitting at the long wooden dining table, staring endlessly at the floor until he looked up, noting her silent arrival. He looked as she felt. His golden brown skin was dull, his eyes were wan and half hidden beneath his unruly hair that stuck up on end. He looked like shit.
Many people these days don't sleep so well. Harry and herself included.
“Couldn’t sleep again?” he asked her softly.
Sophie gave a slight nod. Wordlessly, she summoned two mugs with her wand, put the kettle on, and waited. After these dreams, Sophie’s throat would always be scratchy and raw from screaming, making it hard to talk.
Harry and Sophie had come to an understanding and friendship over the last few months after the war. While they didn’t interact much during their younger years at Hogwarts due to Harry being in Gryffindor and Sophie in Slytherin, everyone who was still at Grimmauld Place had begun to have an ease that one only attains when you live and fight in a war together.
One night, Harry found her sitting on the roof, feet dangling over the ledge, somberly smoking a Muggle cigarette. She had offered him hers, he had taken it and took a long drag, coughing loudly, which made her laugh, causing him to nudge her halfheartedly. Ever since, they began a habit of smoking together whenever it was too loud in their heads, which was often.
No words were needed to know neither of them wanted to talk about what had chased them from sleep this early in the morning.
Sometimes, just the company of someone who understands is enough.
Sophie sat next to Harry, drinking the soothing mint tea with extra honey, like her father would make for her when she was feeling sick.
Harry murmured, casting stasis and warming charms on their mugs. They sat there until the early hours of the morning, until they departed the kitchen with grim smiles as Sophie left to go get ready and packed her trunks before heading to King’s Cross Station for the journey back to Hogwarts.