Playing With Fire * { Fred Weasley }

Linger

I slept in fitfully that night, plagued with strange dreams that startled me into wakefulness, my heart pounding hard. Mostly, they were the sort of dreams you'd expect—variations on the same theme of black cloaked figures, screaming, blood, darkness, and death. They might have been a cliché if they didn't feel so real.

But the worst dreams weren't nightmares in the traditional sense. The worst dreams were the ones where everything was fine and none of this had happened: with those dreams, you had to contend with the reality of waking up in a world that was just as dark and scary as it had been when you went to sleep—and then you had to mourn the loss of your safety and comfort all over again.

I woke just before five. Waking up wasn't so bad at first—the harsh reality of the waking world was somewhat blunted by the weight of the quilt and the warmth of Fred's arms around me. I was pleasantly sleepy and sluggish. Briefly, I contemplated closing my eyes and letting myself drift off again—I was so warm and comfortable and it's not like Fred was asking me to leave...

But then the gears in my brain began to creak into motion and everything that had happened the previous night suddenly stood out in sharp relief, stirring a combination of fear and sadness somewhere in my chest.

The next thing I noticed was the absence of certain key pieces of clothing.

My jumper and knickers had seemed adequate when I pulled them on last night, but in the pale light of morning, I was painfully aware of all the bits and pieces that they didn't cover. My legs, for example. Which were tangled up with Fred's bare legs, like a too intimate physical manifestation of the Gordian knot that was our entire relationship.

I didn't regret anything, but I felt self-conscious and exposed in a way that I didn't entirely understand.

None of this made it any easier to get out of bed, though. For all my anxiety and misgivings about this particular tableau, there was something almost hypnotically seductive and comfortable about his arms and the warmth of his bed in the early morning light. There was a part of me—a large part of me—that was very tempted to stay.

But staying was at odds with my reality. If I waited too long to leave, the more likely it was that someone would notice, and the thought of conspicuously returning back to my own bed the morning after I'd actually lost my virginity made me feel a little sick and strange. It didn't seem right to present it for public consumption and gossip, even though it would further serve our narrative. It felt like an intensely private thing, a strange sort of secret that I was compelled to shield from the world.

Ultimately, this was what made me carefully lift Fred's arm from my waist and begin the process of quietly gathering my clothes.

"You leaving?" Fred asked sleepily as I pulled on my jeans.

"Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"'s all right, you're fine."

I ran my hands through my hair. It had come loose at some point during the night, the elastic nowhere to be found. Probably, it looked a mess. I combed my fingers through it as best I could, wishing I had a mirror.

"All right, well..." It occurred to me that I was stalling. I swallowed, my hands nervously smoothing out the quilt. It's not that I wanted to stay, but the thought of leaving was also making me feel oddly restless and anxious, like I needed some sort of reassurance that I couldn't quite name.

There was a beat of quiet before Fred spoke.

"D'you still feel all right about everything?" His tone was careful, like he might be a little worried.

"Yeah, of course." I licked my lips, realizing that I was a little afraid of the question I was about to ask. "Do you?"

"Yeah, if you do."