Requiem
by Silvia
Thumbs pressed to her inner thighs and she breathes around them, skin pushing up with her lungs, with her air, against the round weight of his clutching fingers. Thumbs skate a few inches upwards, and she breathes harsher. Whispers.
"Don't."
Hand to his mouth, slick palm sliding over cracked lips, parted enough to dry this one part of her. Hand over his sticky, slow molasses mouth, itching next to the damp swivel of skin strung over muscle in her back and hips.
He would speak if she let him. He would marry her with a ring and a song. He would build her a house and a yard and a family like his own: large, thick, and warm.
Whispers, "don't, baby," against the soft tuft of hair at the end of his forehead, where she thinks souls might be, because it's where the smell is in newborns.
Her fingers are too slim for rings, too raw with paper cuts.
Whispers and widens her thighs for his thumbs and the rest, welcoming one in. Tilts her back and her head and closes her eyes for the push.
"More, baby."
And when there are two she rides them, hands on his shoulders and hips lifting and falling and she sinks down onto his fingers, imagines his eyes wide and cock waiting. It will have to wait, she thinks, because she feels too raw for more of him, can see still his hand in Harry's hand the last time he whispered. Before she began.
Wide eyes then too, and "goodbye, you're coming back, of course you are, you'll be over for Christmas and there will be pudding and duck and we'll save you a place and if you die we'll hate you forever or maybe just ten days and then hate ourselves for the rest of it and toss the rings into the lake that should swallow the school, should swallow everything, but won't."
Only they said none of that, but meant it, and whispered, "Good luck."
Mouth pressed to his sweat stained cheeks, his hand that is not folding up into her, but is clutching, scratching at her panted rough tongue, spreading the soft skin that lines her cheeks, begging her to her knees.
But she's on them.
Knees tight against the sides of his body, his delicate boned chest. Tensing for leverage, tensing for the drawing down and whispering, "Three baby, please," and it's just her robes and skirt pushed up, her knickers on the floor, and that's all he's maybe ever going to see.
Maybe that's all she has left, translucent nerves beneath the cloth, and it could be, it could, because she doesn't look anymore. She almost did, for the procession, when they were to all wear black and those special buttons, and Ron had a sash. She wanted to be just right, right for when they were laying out his all wrong body.
Knees quaking and the finger that stroked her cheeks backwards, they have always been backwards, is stroking at the opening of her throat and she knows what she's doing in his head, works to breathe around it.
She can speak around bigger things, holed in her stomach and the whole of her mouth, stuffing her sinuses and thoughts like cotton balls, the kind a girl paints her face with before wands, before she had dreams other than dentistry like Daddy, before she was speaking at a gravestone.
Speaking and telling it, "hello, and you do you remember the time we were hopped up on sugar quills and couldn't sleep for anything, and you told us you remembered one thing, just one thing before your aunt and uncle and you thought it was a Christmas ornament because it was all shiny and round like a glistening, chattering ball -- charmed, so it must have been back in that magic house and not later -- and I thought that was so beautiful and maybe Ron didn't understand but he wanted to, and you said we should love each other, always love each other, and we couldn't leave you, never, and we promised we wouldn't, and you never promised it back, did you?"
Only she said none of that, but meant it, and whispered, "Good luck."
And meant that for herself, because she'd need it and Harry, Harry wouldn't need much between the beetles and earth. She needs a horse drawn carriage full of something.
Ron needs, and she never whispers the right things for him because needing means he's needing. Means he's not yet gone.
"Good luck," she whispers, behind the back of his ear, tongue chasing her words. Tastes like salt and life and she chokes on it and comes, wet and slippery over his palm, dripping over the sides like tears.