How to the silver trio handle it when one of them has a nightmare or war flashback?
The nightmares aren’t new.
Ginny’d been having them since first year, finding herself in the Chamber, the snake slithering towards her heart, Harry nowhere to be seen.
For Neville they started when he was a child, the night after he met his parents for the first time. He dreamt of them in stone, mouths agape in solid, silent screams. He woke up crying, words unfamiliar on his lips. No one came.
Luna’s nightmares started at nine, when her mother cast a spell that killed her, her body dropping to Luna’s tiny slipper-covered feet.
They didn’t know that about each other. Different houses, different years, different chambers and beds and silencing charms. No one heard them sniffle, or suffer, or scream.
But in the Room, there was no point. Their efforts were focused on hiding from the horrors outside, not within.
The first night they lined their cots across the wall, Neville awoke, biting back his mothers name at the last moment. That’s when he heard Luna, normally optimistic and wise and curious and strong, with her pillow covering her face and her chest trembling as she fought tears. Neville wondered if Luna’s mothers name was on her tongue too, or more like a lump in the back of her throat.
He reached out, a hand to her palm, and stroked it with his thumb. Calming, soothing, just craving some touch in the darkness.
They both heard Ginny thrashing about. She was used to waking up with her blankets twisted around her legs and her pillow crumpled to the side and her hands gripping the sides of the mattress, the back of her neck sweaty, her heart racing when she finally woke. However, without the curtains surrounding her bed, the pillow was thrown into Neville’s lap, the sheets pooling to the floor. Her arms grasping at air and her snores replaced with whimpers.
Luna and Neville both got up, Luna pulling Ginny’s arms to her waist and Neville running his hands through her hair and they held her until her heart stopped pounding in her chest and her eyes lost the wild flare. They held her until she drifted back off to sleep, and it didn’t matter if Harry showed up in her nightmare Chamber. Because she was already surrounded by her friends, protected by their love.
The night of the war, when everything was chaos and Ginny couldn’t stop crying and Neville couldn’t get the blood out of the beds of his fingers, they held each other again.
That night, and every night after.