| Inked | (George Weasley)

Chapter Eighty-Five

Olive's mind had shut down.

One moment she was standing in the corridor with Fred and George, telling them that it was her fault Cedric had died. The next she was sitting on a bed, the skin on her cheeks feeling tight from the tears that had dried on her cheeks.

How she got there, she didn't quite comprehend, because she had been zoned out ever since the words had left her mouth.

It's my fault Cedric is dead.

Her eyes stared at the garnet comforter, as if she were in a trance, the words bouncing and echoing around in her head until they didn't make sense anymore. They had morphed into a dark, deep-toned blob of sound that made her sick to her stomach.

It's my fault Cedric is dead.

There was a shift in weight on the bed, and suddenly someone was sitting directly in front of her, mimicking her crisscrossed position.

Olive's eyes didn't move. She continued to stare fixatedly at the comforter, practically trembling, feeling that at any moment her body would melt and dissolve into a heap of black curls and grief. She felt both numb and overly aware of every part of her body, and she hated it.

The person reached out, and a cool cloth wiped at her cheeks and was pressed to her forehead. Gentle fingers brushed against her cheeks as they tucked her hair behind her ears. Olive wanted to instantly relax into the touch, warm and familiar. However, something deep in the back of her mind stopped her.

"Olls."

It was like someone was gently shaking her awake from a nightmare, only she hadn't been sleeping, and the nightmare was very much real. This time, Olive was able to raise her gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and it took several heavy blinks for her vision to focus.

At her reaction to his quiet voice, George offered her a smile. It had been the first time out of many attempts over the last hour or so for him to get some sort of response or reaction to him saying her name.

George held Olive's gaze for a moment. His hands were still cupping the sides of her face, one thumb making tiny circles on her cheek. She had been quiet, basically unresponsive ever since they left the corridor just around the corner from the DADA classroom.

It's my fault Cedric is dead.

Why had she said that?

He didn't understand, and he didn't think he could until Olive told him what was going on. Just as he got to the corridor where Fred had found her, he had heard her telling his brother about how she had told Professor Moody how to reprogram portkeys. George had of course only heard the tail-end of that conversation, but he could hear in Olive's voice how much she believed what she was saying to be true.

George had immediately told her that it wasn't, because Olive couldn't even fathom doing such a thing. Besides, word got out almost immediately after he and Fred managed to get her into Gryffindor Tower that Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape had charged into Moody's office and apprehended him for being a Death Eater.

The news didn't seem to change how Olive felt.

She looked up to George, the color still drained from her face. Her eyes were more focused than they had been earlier. They searched his eyes, and seemed to trail over every one of his freckles. If this was a different, more positive situation, he would have kissed her, but he knew that it wasn't what she needed.

Olive needed him, and he was going to be there.

"Tired?" He asked her, sending a quick sideways glance to the clock on his bedside table.