HOUSE OF CARDS
I wrote this at 1 AM last night...the style is very different. It's present tense, for one thing, and the writing is "skin-and-bones" on purpose as that's indicative of the atmosphere in the household.

He returned four months ago, out of some vague promise muttered in a moment of quixotic, near-Shakespearan desperation.

He keeps his promises and she respects him for that.

She can – and does – lie unblushing, but whenever Harry tries to pull the wool over her eyes, the corners of his mouth twitches and his ears flush and his wrought hands fumble tellingly. 

He doesn’t say much anymore – telling neither poorly-executed lies nor half-truths. He’s content to sit in silence, pondering unknowable things. She hates silence with a vengeance. Silence reminds her of the diary, the noiseless deception. Silence reminds her of the Chamber. Sometimes she goes about the house, prattling to him as if he were a small child, with syllables and allophones all beyond his comprehension. Sometimes she leans in close and whispers “I’m leaving you, Harry” in his ear.

She wants to leave.

She wishes he would drink. At least if he was a day drunk, a raging alcoholic, she could pin down his condition, snatch away the brandies and vodkas, and pitch them into the Thames.

He doesn’t drink.

She nurses a drink in the middle of the day, sitting on the window ledge gazing at the withered flowers that no one has bothered to water.

She’s wilting from inside out.

She gets out his old Quidditch uniforms and drapes them artfully over the back of the sofa, hoping to coax the old Harry out of hiding.

He would rather languish, with endless pacing his only outlet.

On Sunday afternoons, Ron and Hermione come ‘round and the old Harry tentatively sniffs the air. They sit in the parlor and talk about The Before. It’s the Before The End that they speak of, or so she surmises from the snippets of conversation she can hear from her haunt in the stairwell. Sometimes the names of the dead cross their lips. Cedric Diggory, and wasn’t he a fair competitor? Sirius Black, and didn’t he hide out in the hills above Hogsmeade just to be at Harry's side? Albus Dumbledore. Rubeus Hagrid. Peter Pettigrew.  Susan Bones. Severus Snape.

She knows he still looks at Hermione in that same sidelong way – the same way his eyes drifted from his furiously blushing bride to her brown-tressed Maid of Honor on their wedding day. A part of her knew it even at that early hour. Maybe that singular glance was why she kept her maiden name; it would save her the trouble of switching back.

Sometimes they speak of better days. Doesn’t Harry remember Fred and George’s canary creams? And doesn’t Hermione recall the telling-off the Pink Lady gave them, the night of the duel-that-never-was? Their laughter rings throughout the house – their trembling house of cards that she can no longer hold together.

As afternoon slips into dusky eventide, he reaches across the coffee table and takes Hermione’s hand. Hermione doesn’t pull away.

And crouched in the stairwell, Ginny Weasley is going spare.