Eloquence.

Tuesday morning reminds me of Sam. I can’t really explain why it does only that all my best memories of Sam happened on a Tuesday. The day we met was a Tuesday in November. The first time we had a civil conversation was on a Tuesday in March. The day she moved out of her parents house was a Tuesday. The day she asked me to be her maid of honor was a Tuesday too. I sit in my hospital bed for three hours coming up with Tuesdays that will never come to pass. She wanted to get married on a Tuesday too.

One of the older nurses seems to notice that I’m not keeping my end of the bargain for my discharge and sneaks in a cookie with my breakfast. I want to ask her if she thinks I’m four and a cookie will make the world look like a better place again. I don’t. I want ask if this plain sugar cookie will bring the dead back to life. I don’t because I like the gesture and she’s been nice to me for the past week. I don’t eat the cookie either because it reminds me of a day that’s eleven years old and a little faded. A day where sugar cookies were made by the gods and a ginger headed boy with a megawatt smile moved in next door.

The woman comes back again sometime latter after I’ve picked my food to pieces and sits with me for a little while. I try not to look at the ball of tissue in the trash that conceals the memory ridden cookie. She talks to me about her son at some length, pushing her gray peppered hair back into place and smiling with a startling amount of warmth. It’s a nice smile and I like her so I cross my legs beneath me and ask what her sons name is.

“Ned,” She smiles and the canary yellow walls of my hospital room brighten farther, “his name is Ned. He goes to Hogwarts, you know, he’s a Ravenclaw though so I don’t imagine you see him much being a Gryffindor such.”

“How’d you know I was in Gryffindor?”

Her eyes go sad for a moment and she place a work roughened hand on my knee, “I heard about how you landed yourself in here, dear. I heard about your friends and I work graveyard, you talk in your sleep before you wake up screaming. Also, you don’t strike me as Hufflepuff material.”

I pale a bit and she pulls back. She stands flattening out her pencil skirt and apron and stays like that for a long moment her hands flattened out against the fabric. When she looks at me next the urge to run boils up and my hands flex into fists. Come on Lark, an faint echo of Loyd’s voice runs through my head, where’s that Gryffindor courage? I force myself to sit still while she looks at me like she can see every little detail of my life mapped out on my face, it probably is.

“They aren’t coming back dear and I’m sorry.” Her hand is warm and worn against mine, “It’s not your fault.”

People keep telling me that, keep telling me that it’s not my fault like somehow I’ve missed it. I wonder if she’ll go away when I ignore her but I don’t get the chance because one of the other nurse is calling out a code and she’s sprinting off into the corridor. I lay back down, lacing my fingers behind my head and thinking about the people I loved that no longer breathe.

I can remember the day that Loyd’s dad died. We were still in Hogwarts, it was a Thursday in November of our fifth year. It was the strangest thing, I’d spent the better part of the morning with him mocking a second year that had blown up half the potions classroom. He’d been grinning when I left him at the top of the sixth floor staircase and then he’d missed dinner, as a rule Loyd didn’t miss a single meal. I can remember sitting down next to Will after my calls were ignored and asking him where Loyd was. Before he ever had a chance to answer Loyd’s despair slipped through the connection.

I’d learn later that that was because after half a bottle of Firewhiskey, Loyd is anything but sober and has a hard time keeping his concentration. I’d also learn (from Sam as it turned out in one of our many discrepancies) that I’d knocked over three goblets, a suit of armor and a first year in my rush to get to the Hufflepuff common room. Loyd made fun of me for it too almost a year later while drunk on gin, of course he also started a fist fight and tried to kiss me in that drunken state as well but that is an entirely different line of thought. That was the first of many a drunken nights (sometimes it was my drunken night and others it was Loyd’s but most times it was a joint effort) that I spent sleeping in my best friends bed.

A knock on the door makes me jump and I snap into a sitting position before turning to see who it is. I can remember vaguely one of the nurses telling me a few days ago that someone would be coming to help me find accommodations. A woman stood in the doorway looking incredibly put out at the sight of me and when the sharp click clack of her heels sounded I couldn’t help but return the look. Her name is Heather Crumby and she has a thick stack of paper work for me to fill out for my inheriting of my Gran’s vault and other belongings. By the way she’s scowling I can tell she’s far from pleased that I’ve left all of this alone for two years and I can’t bring myself to be any kind of polite. I tell her to go to hell three times in an hour and I know that she’ll hand off my case to one of the lower downs the second she steps back into her office at Gringotts.

The sugar cookie nurse scolds me while I sign discharge papers for being rude. I can’t bring myself to show a semblance of remorse. She tells me goodbye and it isn’t until she’s disappeared down another hallway that I realize I never asked her name. She was a Hufflepuff and that is all I can be sure of. I use the Floo system to get to Diagon alley and buy a drink from the keeper of the inn. Mid-morning light blinds me for the first time in two weeks when I walk out into Diagon alley.