Fragments
And the picture frames are facing down
and the ringing from this empty sound
is deafening and keeping you from sleep.
And breathing is a foreign task
and thinking's just too much to ask
and you're measuring your minutes by a clock that's blinking eights.
This is incredible.
Starving, insatiable,
yes, this is love for the first time.
Well you'd like to think that you were invincible.
Yeah, well weren't we all once before we felt loss for the first time?
Well this is the last time.
Dashboard Confessional - The Brilliant Dance
When he wakes in the middle of the night, he is not surprised. Immediately, his eyes drift over to the clock on the
bedside table.
12:01.
Right on target, he thinks bitterly.
Next to him, the sheets are rumpled and tangled, but the space usually occupied by his wife is empty.
Also right on target.
Pulling back his own sheets, he climbs out of bed, wondering why either of them bothered to try and sleep in the first place.
Sleep on this night is impossible.
The floor is cool under his feet, pinching at his heels and he shivers. Grabbing a bathrobe, he goes in search of his wife.
He finds her in the same place that he finds her every year. The middle of the living room floor, bottles upon bottles of firewhiskey spread out around her.
His wife rarely drinks.
She's far too rational for it-his wife has always needed to think clearly. She hates the way that alcohol dulls the senses.
But on this night-this one night-she can't ever seem to help herself.
She's giggling as he approaches her-though her eyes are red and swollen with tears. Her face is pale, her lips dry and chapped. Her nightgown is wrinkled and dirty from the floor.
This is the woman he sees every year-the woman she's never shown the rest of the world. This is the woman who is broken and grieving.
This is the woman that she allows herself to be on this day, once a year.
The day that Harry Potter died.
He settles himself down next to her and he knows-she isn't the only one that feels it-she isn't the only one that wants to drown herself in alcohol until the pain is dulled.
But one of them has to stay strong.
"G'morning, Ron," she greets cheerfully, holding up a bottle of firewhiskey.
"Good morning," he says quietly, prying the bottle out of her hands. "I think you've had enough."
She frowns at him, but doesn't make any moves to take the firewhiskey back. "What're you doin' up?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"M'neither," she whispers, biting her lip. "You know what today is, don't you? Don't you, Ron?"
"Yes, Hermione. I know."
She shifts, drawing her knees up to her chest and letting out a shuddery sigh. "Always hurts-always hurts."
"It hurts me, too."
She nods. "Just us. Just us that can understand." Her eyes shimmer with tears. "No one else can-no one else understands what it was like to lose him."
He looks away from her, feeling his own tears. He can hear her unspoken words clearly-no one else has to deal with the burden of not being able to save him. The rest of the world grieves for the loss of the Boy Who Lived. They grieve for their inability to save him. That's what they were supposed to do-and he died. He died and he knows they'll never stop blaming themselves for it.
Their lives haven't stopped.
For three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year, they don't let Harry's ghost hang over them. They bicker-occasionally they fight-they go to work, him, as an auror, her, as a Hogwarts' professor. They visit friends and they make love and they laugh together and they share chaste kisses in public.
So they give themselves this one day-this one day to remember.
"It's been 15 years, Ron," she says softly, almost calmly, and he wonders if the alcohol is wearing off… or if she was even drunk enough in the first place.
"I know," he says. "I can't believe-it doesn't seem that long."
She touches her mouth with her fingertips. "He kissed me before he left-he said that he needed it to… he promised he'd be back, just so he could kiss me that way again."
His heart feels heavy and he wants so badly to reach out-but she never lets him touch her on this day. On this day, she ceases being his wife. On this day, she belongs to another man-the only man she's ever really loved.
He remembers how it used to frustrate him at first-how Harry still held her heart even though it was his ring on her finger and Harry was dead.
But he can't blame Harry. He can't blame Harry when Harry is dead and Harry was his best friend.
He can't blame Harry when he's the one who ended up with everything Harry ever wanted.
He remembers the way they clung to each other after Harry's death. They had no one else in the world but each other. So they clung to each other and they picked up the broken pieces of their lives and they got married.
All we had was each other.
No, if he blames Harry for anything, it's for leaving them.
"I can still feel the way he used to kiss me," she whispers. "Like… like the world was ending and nothing mattered but the two of us. I sometimes think that there was some part of him that must have… known."
He doesn't say anything. He's heard this before-he hears it every year.
"But that's silly, isn't it?" she says, her voice breaking. "Impossible for me to remember what it was like when he kissed me… it was so long ago…"
"It's not silly," he says firmly, as he says to her every year.
"Sometimes I wonder…" she trails off, hugging her knees to her chest with sudden desperation. "Sometimes I don't think he really loved me-sometimes I wonder if I'm making it all up."
This part is new and he looks up, startled. "You know that's not true. You know that everything he did was for you-for us."
Her hands hit the floor with a sudden thump. "Then he would have come back!" she yells. "If he loved me the way I loved him, he would have come back! Because nothing could have kept me from him!"
Her words pain him a little-it pains the part of him that is her husband. But the part of him that is Harry's best friend can do nothing but silently agree with her. He left them both.
"I'm sorry, Ron," she says, exhausted. She twists her wedding ring on her finger. "Not fair to you… not fair when I love Harry…." It's the first time she's said his name and her voice breaks. "Not fair at all…"
She does this, too, every year. Tell him that they should end things between them. He knows that it's just words-that in the morning they'll wake up together and carry on with their lives and never speak about it again until this time next year.
But he knows. One day she really will leave him. One day his love won't be enough to help fill the void that Harry left behind.
And it will destroy them.
They need each other. Two parts of a broken third. Together they can stumble on, bear the loss, but alone they'd crumble.
It was never supposed to be this way.
It was supposed to be the three of them.
Forever.
A perfectly balanced triangle.
Not fragments struggling on alone.
"I miss him, Ron," she whimpers. "So much… every day…"
"Me, too."
Her face crumples and her shoulders shake with sobs.
He struggles against his need to try and comfort her. She doesn't want him, he knows.
Just as he knows that one day she's going to leave him. Not today-maybe not for years and year-but one day she will.
And he dreads that day.
***
A/N - Don't despair just yet - this is Portkey after all... chapter two coming real soon.