They sat together in silence.
It was their usual and most repetitive way to spend time together, of late.
And, in some strange and ultimately cruel way, she hated him for it.

Here's the day you hoped would never come…

He lay stretched out listlessly on the lounge, his long arms dangling from the cushions, the muscles on them wasting away before her eyes. His usually cheery blue eyes had taken on a sombre dullness that scared her, and as she sat meekly on the stool beside him, her knees tucked up to her chin, she felt a tear slide down her cheek. 'Charlie, what am I going to do with you?'

The quiet, hoarse question echoed uselessly in the empty house; he didn't even blink.

'Charlie… you have to stop this.'

The silence returned again, but with it brought a small flutter of ginger eyelashes, as Charlie flicked his eyes in her direction, watching her with a sullen stare.

'I can't bear to watch you like this anymore.'

There was a little cough before he spoke.
'Then leave. Leave, Kates. Don't waste your days away watching me lie here.'

Katie frowned, her own blue eyes glistening with frustration.
'I do it because I care about you.'

The silence became unbearable this time as the minutes stretched painfully into each other, the agony of so many words to say but too much time to fill.

Katie sighed. It was always the same.
Every day, they said the same thing to each other, and every day, Katie would come back to the house to see him still lying where she'd left him, as sullen and impossible as ever. She might as well have just moved within him, there was that much continuity between her visits.

Charlie coughed loudly, his wasting body wracked with convulsions, and then he lay back on the couch again, in the exact same position, staring at the ceiling with stormy blue eyes.

Katie watched on as this happened, another tear escaping from her large blue orbs and sliding down her bony cheek. She herself was wasting away. She hardly ever ate, as did Charlie, and they both sat in the same state for hours at a time, rarely talking, never touching.

He began to cough again, and as she looked on, something inside her snapped. Leaping from the stool, she grabbed hold of his bony wrist and yanked him up off the lounge awkwardly.

He gave a strangled yell that ripped through his throat, his once musical voice now so rarely used that it hurt to talk. Undeterred, Katie pulled him with her through the tiny house as she snatched up keys, beanies and coats, before dressing him up accordingly and pushing him out the door.

'Where are – what the – Katie, what the fuck is going on!?'

She turned and grinned at him, a sight he hadn't seen in weeks, and slid her hand from his wrist onto his palm.

'You couldn't stay on the lounge forever, could you?'

Charlie privately disagreed with this statement, but nevertheless, he gripped her hand tightly – the first contact they'd had for as many weeks as he could think of – and followed as she walked quickly along the pavement of the city. When they reached a set of traffic lights, banked up for metres upon metres with cars, she stopped walking and turned to him, laughing.

He frowned, confused.

'Remember when we were kids and we used to dare each other to go sprinting through the traffic? And your mum used to have a coronary every time we did and nearly got arrested that one time she froze all the traffic so we wouldn't get hit?'

A small smile lit up his face before he could stop it and he chuckled.
'We weren't allowed to see each other for a month.'

'It nearly killed me.' Katie said with a merry giggle, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of his lank ginger hair back behind his ear.

'I used to argue with mum every day,' Charlie said quietly, reaching out with a calloused hand and stroking her blushing cheek gently, 'I used to tell her that you couldn't cope without me – that there'd be no one to save you when you fell out of the tree in your garden…I used to be able to make her so guilty.'

'I never knew that.' Katie admitted, clutching his freezing hand to her cheek, 'I just knew that I missed you more than anything.'

'You have no idea how much agony I went through that summer.' He replied, his hand warming to her touch, 'But that's all a long time ago now.. lets run.'

Grinning, Katie clutched his left hand and nodded and they both sprinted out into the traffic, dodging cars every which way and laughing raucously as the hysterical voice of Mrs. Weasley seemed to reverberate in the air.

…Don't feed me violence, just run with me
Through rows of speeding cars…