Shadow Walks
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
--Green Day, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
Chapter Two:
There's just too much that time cannot erase.
--Evanescence "My Immortal"
"G'devening," Ron said in a slurred voice with mock formality, as he stood in the open doorway, swaying slightly. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his clothing wrinkled and dirty. He had not even changed out of his Quidditch practice uniform before leaving the flat.
"Hello, Ron," Luna said, as if his arrival had been perfectly normal. "Would you like some dinner?" Ron lurched more fully into the flat, but appeared to have forgotten that the door was still open. Harry got up, and wordlessly shut it behind his best mate.
Ron shook his head ponderously for a long moment, before he realized that he wasn't actually saying anything, and managed a thick,
"No." He struggled for a moment, and added a, "Thank you, love." Luna made a strangled noise in the back of her throat that could have been interpreted any number of ways, as she moved toward him. She wrapped her arms around his middle, in an effort to keep him upright, and her gaze connected with Harry's around the curve of Ron's shoulder.
They had acted in this scenario many times. Luna's sharp eyes went to the knuckles of his right hand, which were smeared with half-congealed blood. Part of the sleeve of his keeper's uniform was jaggedly torn at the shoulder seam.
"You weren't fighting again?" Her brow was creased in worry and hurt. "Please tell me that a frumious bandersnatch attacked you on your way home."
"He…deserved it. Ssshoulda heard wha' he said." Ron was unapologetic. "He had - hada nerve to - to shay…" he paused, and seemed unable to remember what exactly had gotten him so incensed in the first place.
"By the Snorkack's Horn, Ron!" she breathed, in understated exasperation. "When are you going to start thinking of consequences? If this gets out - you know what the manager said! If he has to kick you off this team, you'll never make it above semi-professional Quidditch again."
"Shemi-profeshnal." This was said with a snort of disgust. Ron's keeping abilities had been deserving of attention, and after only a half-season in the lower leagues, he had been called up to the big-time. But his drinking and belligerence were constant problems, and he had bounced from team to team, too problematic to keep, but too talented to wash up completely. Then, rather unexpectedly, he blurted, "You sound like her," his voice mumbling and barely intelligible, but his eyes lucid. Harry watched as a flush burned its way up Luna's pale cheeks. They went through this every time too. Ron would make some sodden, but usually accurate remark about her, and Harry would be torn between the desire to pound Ron to a pulp, or hole up in his bedroom and Obliviate himself.
Just the thought of forgetting her was enough to send him into a momentary panic, and he felt his breath come faster. It was true that remembering her caused him inevitable pain, and he did his best to get through every day by not thinking of her at all. But to forget her altogether, to be unaware of the profound touch that she'd had on his life, and to be unaware of his ignorance…the mere concept was more frightening than anything else he'd encountered.
"Shower or bed?" Harry asked, reaching for his serviette to wipe his mouth, abandoning the futile attempt to eat dinner. His plate was half-full, but what remained of his food was going to end up in the bin, he was sure.
"Just his bed, I think," Luna said quietly. "He's pretty far gone. He did it quickly tonight." Ron was swaying in her arms, utterly oblivious to Luna's attempts to steady him, and was humming something tuneless under his breath. Harry came round to Ron's other side, and they began to Levitate him slowly down the hall.
Together, he and Luna disengaged the charm, not particularly gently, so that he tumbled abruptly onto his rumpled mattress, still unmade from the night before. When Luna had stayed in here, she'd made up the bed everyday, complete with coordinating throw pillows. Once, in a rare moment of levity, Harry had teased her for being so girly.
Ron let out a loud gusty sigh, and Harry's nostrils flared in disgust at the stale odor left behind by the alcohol. His best mate seemed to relax, and for a moment, Harry figured that would be the last they heard from him for the night. But then Ron fluttered his eyes open, and peered at him blearily through his lashes.
"It's almosh time again, i'n't it?" He asked fuzzily. Sod it all, Harry thought, annoyed. He'd held the futile hope that perhaps the time of year would pass unnoticed to Ron beneath a drunken haze. If Ron was going to insist on drinking himself into oblivion, it might as well be beneficial to all of them. But then he really knew better. The upcoming day could no more pass anonymously for Ron than it could for him. He found himself staring down into his friend's miserable blue gaze, and could not lie to him.
"Yes, it is. This weekend." He waited for a moment, sliding his eyes closed… and there it was, the convulsing throb of accompanying pain.
"I mish `er," he slurred, his voice very low. He sounded as if he were teetering on the very edge of consciousness.
"So do I," Harry murmured truthfully, his eyes burning, but dry. He was acutely aware of Luna's presence on the far side of the bed, and he hoped that Ron wouldn't say anything to hurt her, however unintentionally.
"Wash my fault, y'know. All m' fault." Harry's gaze snapped up to Luna's with some trepidation. This was new.
"She'sh gone. You tol' me to watch ou' f'her. My fault. He was laughing." A more alarmed look passed between Harry and Luna with this seemingly incongruous statement.
"Who was laughing, Ron?" Luna asked, striving to keep her voice as placid as possible.
"Ferr't… shaid - my fault. He wash laughing." Ron's voice faded to near silence.
"Oh, Ron, you didn't fight Malfoy?!" Luna was channeling the third member of the Trio again. Ron mercifully let it pass without comment, or he could have been too far gone to notice this time, Harry thought.
"Bel….trix…" Ron's mouth barely moved, and his eyes were all but closed. Harry reached frantically for him.
"Bellatrix? What the hell about Bellatrix?" Harry was practically shouting, his hands wound into the fabric of Ron's dirty uniform shirt, but it was pointless. Ron had passed out.
He looked up at Luna, his green eyes snapping with a combination of fury and futility. She lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug, when Harry said,
"What do you think that meant?"
"About Bellatrix? Harry, Lupin killed her nearly five years ago. Ron probably saw a Red-crested Peltrickesh, and mispronounced it." Harry gave her a withering look, and one corner of her mouth turned up in an almost wistful smile. She had grown increasingly less whimsical as Ron had increasingly turned to drink, and Harry found that he missed that aspect of her personality.
He moved around the foot of the bed, the silence broken by Ron's whistling snores, and wordlessly enfolded Luna in his arms. She was slight, and his chin could rest comfortably atop her head. Her hair smelled of flowery shampoo, and - unfortunately - a little like Calpurnia's eczema salve.
"I'm sorry we do this to you," he murmured softly. "It's not fair."
"If Ron was fighting with Malfoy, then he'll - he'll - " Luna hiccupped a little, and subsided into silence. Harry did not deny it. Ron's Quidditch career hung by the most tenuous of threads.
"You know Malfoy had to have provoked him," Harry finally said, patting her softly on the back, making an admittedly poor attempt to comfort her.
"Do you really think that will make any difference? You know how Ron gets when he's drunk. The word of a washed-up lush of a Quidditch player against Draco Malfoy? He's going to lose his position, and if you stand up for him, you could lose your job too. You know that the Minister's been looking for an excuse to get rid of you." The political climate had turned against them - the public's memory was notoriously short, especially toward heroes that refused to stay on their pedestals - and Malfoy had somehow managed to hold onto both his father's clout and his money, Harry had no idea how. Harry was a decent Auror, good at his job, but single-minded and driven when it came to Death Eaters - towards some of whom the Ministry had decided to turn a blind eye. His recklessness and disregard for policy or orders had made him few friends in the department, and he knew that if it hadn't been for the times that Kingsley Shacklebolt had stuck his neck out, he'd have already lost his job.
"I'm not going to let them hang Ron out to dry," Harry said determinedly. "He's the only family I've got left - and you, of course." She looked up at him with luminous eyes, and he chucked her under the chin, as a sudden surge of longing welled up and surprised him.
"Harry, don't look at me like that," she said softly, gazing at him with wary eyes that were not without desire of their own. He backed away from her, dropping his stare apologetically to his shoes and feeling ashamed of himself.
A couple of times, when Ron had been terribly difficult and both of them had had a bad day, the thought of doing something to console each other had crossed both of their minds - obvious, but never spoken aloud - yet they had never acted on it. Luna was in love with Ron, however self-defeating or foolish that was, and had been since their fifth year. Whatever they did with each other would be substitution, settling for something else - somebody else - that they wanted communion and intimacy with, but could not have. Harry would not do that to his friendship with Luna for anything in the world.
Besides, she was not the one he really wanted, and never would be. The converse was true as well; he knew that, and so did she. Luna's eyes drifted slowly to the recumbent figure breathing heavily in the bed, and a combination of fondness and tragedy haunted her eyes. Harry cleared his throat awkwardly, and she jumped, turning back toward him, and smiling self-consciously.
"Are - are you going to Hogwarts?" She asked, twirling a piece of dirty blond hair listlessly between her fingers. Harry stuck his hands in his pockets.
"I reckon," he said. "I always do."
"Will you see her parents this year?"
"I dunno," he responded. "They've been a couple of times, but they usually go to the - to the marker." The dim lamplight from down the hall was just enough allow Luna to see the muscles in his neck working as he swallowed.
"But you don't go there," she pressed. He was being unusually forthcoming - for him - probably a combination of his earlier mood, the approaching anniversary, and Ron's cryptic statement. The anniversary was something that he liked to spend quite alone; although Ron had accompanied him to Hogwarts before, it seemed to make them both uncomfortable.
"No - no, I don't," he said, roughly, having to clear his throat in the middle of the sentence. "She's not - she's not there." There had been no body, and for awhile, there had been the slim hope that some kind of magical mishap had occurred, and that she would eventually be found. But the weeks had stretched out into months, and finally, Ron and Luna had gone to break the news to her parents that the search had been called to a halt. Her distraught mother and father had put up a small marble monument in a Muggle cemetery, engraved with her name, the date of her birth, and the date Voldemort had been defeated. Previously, Harry had been working tirelessly, frenetically, almost wildly to find her, but upon hearing of the existence of the gravestone, he had not come out of his room for three days. When he strolled into the kitchen of their flat on the fourth day, dressed for work and asking for tea, it had been apparent to Luna how he intended to handle it - namely, by not handling it at all.
"She's not at Hogwarts either," Luna's voice was gentle and melodic. She did not miss the tremble in his hand as he reached for the finial on the end of Ron's bed, in an effort to find something solid on which to hold.
"But - but she was. Before."
"I know." She had covertly asked some of the faculty that resided at Hogwarts year-round what exactly Harry did during his visits. He always went and saw Hagrid, the graying half-giant still walking with a pronounced limp as a result of an injury sustained during the final Battle, but generally appearing to be in fairly good health and spirits. He always stopped by Dumbledore's tomb, sometimes bringing a pair of woolen socks or a packet of lemon drops. He always visited Dobby in the kitchens. Sometimes, her informants told her, he would visit the Quidditch pitch, going, not to the field, but to the stands, sitting where she had, cheering him and Ron on. Sometimes, he would go up to the Gryffindor common room, reclining in the eerie emptiness of summer, silently musing in front of the cold, blank fireplace.
Did he ever go to the library? She had wondered curiously, and the answer from McGonagall had been as emphatic and immediate as it was sympathetic. Never. He had not once, on any of his trips back, ever set foot in the library. The old Headmistress had said that she had walked with him around the school once, and he could barely even pass the battered double doors of that much-beloved room. When they had reached the end of the corridor, he was breathing as if he'd run a sprint.
Lastly, before walking back to Hogsmeade and Apparating home, he would visit the spot where she had disappeared. He seemed to know precisely and without fail exactly where it was located, even though the grass had grown back as green and verdant as anywhere else on Hogwarts' grounds. He would kneel there and weep, and talk to… to her, everyone assumed, although no one ever approached., and when he got up to leave, he walked with the gait of someone much older.
Luna knew from experience that when he arrived back at their flat from a trip to Hogwarts, he would go immediately to his room. He would not emerge again until morning, and when he did, despite his haunted, purple-encircled eyes, he would act as if the previous day had not occurred at all. She had suspicions that, during that night, he threw things, and probably railed and cried, and cursed whoever had done this to him, but he wasn't an Auror for nothing, and his Sllencios and Sealing charms were impenetrable.
"You should take Ron with you this time," she suggested mildly. His eyes went from her to his somnolent best mate, but they were flat and far away.
"Maybe," he said noncommittally. Part of him was already shutting down, Luna noted astutely. It was too close, this impending anniversary. Tomorrow would be worse, and then Saturday - Saturday, he would allow himself to grieve for her.
Sunday, it would all be over for another year.
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Some notes: Thanks for the response on the first chapter. I was thrilled that so many people were intrigued by the premise of the story.
There were several comments on OOC - or lack thereof - and I thought I should clarify. Harry and Ron may seem OOC from their general characters in canon, but there are reasons for their change, namely the tragic loss of Hermione. So, in that light, they may not necessarily be considered OOC. As I told Loup deNoir, I didn't just spontaneously make one of them goth over the summer break or anything.
There is no Harry/Luna…just deep, abiding, reliant friendship between the two. Luna has taken Hermione's place in that regard, as best she can, but she is in love with Ron.
This is not a Hermione-memory-loss story. This is something, I hope, that is a little new and different. You should continue to see hints of it throughout the beginning parts of the story.
Hope you continue to enjoy. You may leave a review if you like; it would be much appreciated.
lorien
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