Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I'm only playing.
A/N: Don't hate me, I've an apology to make in advance. I may not be able to post next week. I've just started a new job which is eating into my writing time and headspace, so I'm running very low on ready-to-post chapters. I know, I know I promised I'll post every week, and lord have I been trying. So, yeah. I won't take too long though.
And thank you so much to beta miconic who I forgot to thank last week *shockhorrorgasp*. So thank you, with arrears.
Enjoy. As always concrit/questions very welcome. This is a bit of an odd chapter, almost off-key. I'd have liked to hang on to it for a bit longer to see if I can fix it, but yeah, I'm late as it is.
***
--Chapter Eight--
Harry twists the tap and props the small basin under it. Steam rises. He leans against the sink for support. His glasses keep sliding down. The bathroom door's locked against Ron.
She looked like he hit her. Like he'd probed and pushed and found her hiding in the farthest, deepest corner and beaten her out. He knew that she blamed herself for a lot of what happened, but…has he forgotten what guilt feels like? Or has he gotten so used to it that he can't recall how it feels when fresh?
A wild laugh struggles in his throat.
That's what's pissing you off, isn't it, Harry?
That instead of talking you out of your own guilt the way she would have in another life, another time, she's stuck in her own--
He turns off the tap and stretches his arm, pulling away the bandage. Close to his skin, it comes away with a small ripping sound. He lets out a breath and stares at the cut. Crusted with healing skin and dark around the edges, it isn't as bad as the bandage made it seem. Besides reopening the wound near the crook of his elbow, the glass has done little damage. He tests the heat of the water and adds more cold water. Bracing himself, he lowers his arm in.
He reels till the pain passes. Ribbons of blood loosen into clouds which then dissolve into a coppery pool. He reaches for a fresh bandage, pulls the arm out of water, then begins to clean and wrap up the cut. The fabric slips and rolls in on itself, his left hand growing quickly tired of trying to do something it's unused to. He wishes the birds would stop squabbling in the roof; their wingtips and high-pitched calls send tremors throughout the house. The babble of worry in the pit of his stomach he attributes to knowing that she's not going to look after herself. Her mother would be gone for most of the day. There'll be no one to hassle her to eat, to sleep, to pull the book out of her hand when light grew faint. Given half a chance, she would spend all day by herself, and who's going to sit with her quietly when she finally came looking for company and--
Stop it!
Stop pretending it's all about her when it's really all about you--
He takes a deep breath, unravels a section of the bandage and starts again.
Harry chooses to be vague about the war during the day because at night he has no choice. But there is one memory he carries with him always, polished and smooth by his constant fingering, a single bead left in a broken rosary.
It was in the early days, right after the summer following Dumbledore's death. They'd been in the castle for weeks, all of Dumbledore's Army and half the Order, trying to determine a course of action against the escalating attacks. One night, word came from Hogsmeade about ruptured wards and he ventured out with Shacklebolt and Tonks. That night he used the killing curse for the first time. Twice. One Death Eater was about as old as himself and a new recruit, judging by the tactics and terror, the other a known face Harry couldn't name. Tonks and Shacklebolt were already occupied elsewhere. There was no time to think; the curse shot from his tongue and unfurled along his wand, a smooth, precise move both times.
But on his way back to the castle, he was shaking badly and ill over hedgerows all across the village, as if trying to get rid of a part of himself that sickened him. The two Aurors had Apparated to London with a captive and he was on his own. He slipped past the crowded Great Hall and out through a hidden passageway, hoping to get to his room unnoticed.
Hermione was waiting at his door.
He had no idea if she knew when to expect him or how; he'd never thought to ask. Neither did he know where Ron was or what he would have done had he been there. Or what anyone else would've done had they seen him, seen in his eyes what he'd done, how easy it had been.
All he remembers is how Hermione was there, how she calmly took him by the arm, sat him down and pushed a glass of water into his hand. And there it was, the question he was terrified to ask his friends, and her answer, unhesitant.
Will you still…?
Of course. Always.
It was as if she took something ugly and black from him, closed her fist over it and hid it behind her back--safely out of sight for the moment, so he could get on with the rest of it.
You did what you had to.
You did you best not to have to do it--
You did what you had to.
And he had got on with it, so well. Too well, that eventually she felt it was too much and had to go find a way to save him, a way for him to not kill--
And now she's left, she's let go, opened her fist and--
What a mess, Harry. What a bloody mess.
The bandage done, he mutters a spell over it. It's not as neat or tight, but it'll have to do. He empties the dirty water into the sink and clears the countertop. The bathroom, like elsewhere in the house, is done in various textures of black; black tiles, black enamel, a black mirror set in a frame of ornate black wood. He raises his head and meets his eyes in the mirror. Not much light to see by. Where was he? Where was he, in the debris of those months, the things he did?
Countless times he'd tried his own logic; it's a war, Harry. People kill. Get over it. But it hadn't worked, it seemed different from her reasoning and faith, calm and so utterly irrefutable. Without that, who was he?
Simply a liar and a killer, Harry. And a coward.
*
Saturday she spends in her room, counting blue daisies on her bedclothes.
Sunday too she spends in her room putting finishing touches on her quilt of misery. She allows no loose threads; a breath of light at a window, on the edge of a curtain, gets snipped so fast it's like it was never there in the first place.
By Monday, she's so hungry for light, misses him so much, she perches on her windowsill waiting for dawn, freezing. Her mother finds her but doesn't know how to bring her back.
On Tuesday she ventures out, desperate to get out of herself. She walks round the block, walks round the block again, then stops at the small children's park down the road. It's a school-day noon and no one's about. Spring's still a long while away but there's a doggedness to sunlight that hasn't been there before. The swings are slightly damp with the night's rain, their chains rusty. She sits on one. Something falls out of her coat pocket and she picks up the small scroll case from the night the bike crashed. She sighs.
Serves you right.
She opened the scroll case that same night, after she left Harry sleeping in Buckbeak's room. It wasn't easy; while the case looked ancient, the charm held fast. To her disgust though, she had no trouble remembering any of the unlocking spells she'd ever learned. Inside she found the oldest parchment she had ever seen, made of a thick, fibrous material, clinging to the sides of the case. Rolled tightly to fit the case, they almost came apart in her hands despite the preservation magic she detected. At first, she thought the inscriptions were of a foreign language, but a closer look revealed barely familiar words and characters that made rudimentary sense. Pulling out an Old English dictionary stashed among her school things--and promising to punish herself later--she set out to read.
Then you got chicken and you ran.
All the while knowing that he's going to be convinced it was his fault you ran.
She kicks her feet against the hard earth and the swing creaks to and fro. The sun falls full on her face, then slides away with the motion of the swing. She propels herself again, and again the sun slides in, slides out.
How long are you going to keep this up, Hermione?
She hooks her elbows around the chain, hands in her lap. Smudges of rust colour her palms. Vaguely, she wonders about trains to London. She thinks of her armchair in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, hours spent staring into the fire, knowing he was nearby. She thinks of choosing and being chosen, of wars and their ending, of familiarity and something else, a clean, singing warmth in her belly, something to do with an incomplete kiss. The sun swings in and out, and with it her courage. She doesn't feel time passing. She stays there so long that when hunger finally drives her home, faint fingerprints of sunlight linger behind her eyes, her heart.
*
"Harry, what are you doing?"
Ron stands at the top of the stairs, a robe wrapped over his pyjamas. Harry crosses the hallway, gesturing over his shoulder at the door.
"I thought I heard something--someone."
"No, you didn't." Ron begins to climb down, muttering to himself. "Tramping up and down the bloody house like a troll in the middle of the bloody night, every night, and he says he heard something--"
"Ron, just go back to bed."
"No, I can't. Because you've freaking woken me up now, haven't you? Hermione wasn't kidding when she said you don't sleep, and she sleeps with her bloody door open too. No wonder she had enough!" He reaches the last step with a grunt. Turning towards the kitchen, he catches Harry's eye.
"Harry, it was a joke." Shaking his head, he pushes the kitchen door open. Harry follows him.
Ron pulls out a half-empty bottle of Firewhiskey by wandlight and settles at the table. Harry stokes the cold grate, starts up a fire. Its spitting orange glow soon fills the kitchen with shadows holding hands, collapsing into each other.
"Ron, I've got something to tell you."
Ron pops the cork on the bottle. "Great. Don't change a thing. Your sense of timing is bloody perfect."
Harry pulls out a chair opposite Ron.
"I'm serious."
Ron glares at him, then sighs.
"All right, fine. Carry on."
Harry traces a groove in the wood with a finger. Where to start? How to say it? All he knows is that it's time, because it's already too late. Ron pushes the Firewhiskey across the table. Harry touches the bottle lightly as if afraid it might blow up any second.
"You know when you got hit with the…the Crippler…"
Of course he'd know because he's the one hit with it, you dolt.
He rubs a hand over his face, clears his throat and tries again.
"Ron, your leg…the reason you were hit with the Crippler--it was all because I--"
He swallows, watching Ron's face slowly becoming still.
"It was all because I kissed Hermione."
He winces inwardly at how stupid and awkward it sounds when put into words.
Ron's eyes darken, closing in, unreadable. He rubs his hands briskly over his face and leans back in the chair.
"What are you talking about? Fancy starting at the beginning?"
Harry reaches for a glass and the bottle. The spitting fire seems to throttle the kitchen with warmth.
"There is no beginning. We--I--neither of us saw it coming…"
"I mean the curse."
"That's what--of course." Harry rubs the back of his back, irritated at the warm flush spreading over his skin.
Didn't expect this to be easy, did you?
He takes a gulp of whiskey and wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. He hasn't recounted those hours since the tortuous hearing at the Ministry right after the defeat, when they were still trying to determine what exactly had happened. He keeps his eyes firmly on the glass.
"It was right after…the castle turned on us. People everywhere, some Death Eaters…total chaos. Bodies, bits of statues and portraits, wood from the broken doors, glass, stone, broken wands…and no light. No light at all. Remember how all the lamps went out at the same time? Yeah, well. We were in the Great Hall, you were right there but I couldn't see Hermione. She was behind me when we came back from the dungeons after…Voldemort died…but suddenly I couldn't see her. And hardly anybody realised that Voldemort was dead so when all those curses started firing from nowhere and those…weird noises started up everyone just began panicking and screaming again, and--"
Absently, he moves his glass and rubs at its damp imprint on the dark wood.
"Anyway. I looked around for Hermione, but I couldn't see her, anywhere at all. The Hall was falling to pieces and she was suddenly…just gone. She was there all that time, all through that whole night and then suddenly she was gone. I heard you calling me but I was--anyway."
He pushes the glass back towards him, fingers tight around it.
"So when she walked up right behind me…I just--"
He tries to find words for the way the world centred again, the way it tilted right side up inside like a fallen snow-globe, picked up and set back on a smooth surface. But eloquence has never been his forte so he settles for the barest words.
"I kissed her. I just pulled her up and kissed her."
She smelled of grime and sweat and so did he. When he touched her, he found dried blood on her cheek. When his lips were almost over hers, her eyes widened and she stalled him with a hand at his chest, but that was only momentary. She seemed to reach for him before he even began. She reached deeper and farther into him than they had time for, as if time wasn't in the equation. Nothing was in the equation, nothing but her, him.
He looks up, seized with a sudden realisation.
The reason he hadn't wanted to tell Ron what happened was not because he thought it would hurt Ron.
But because it's mine, that moment, the clearest moment in my life--only mine. Mine and hers.
He finds Ron's gaze on him and doesn't know how long he's been silent. He lets out a breath and carries on.
"And then we heard you yell, and…saw Dolohov, right behind us. Ron, he was aiming for Hermione. The Crippler was meant for Hermione. But because I pulled her away, without knowing and you were running after me…" He gives a small shrug, exhausted. "So there."
The gabble of the fire close to hand smothers other small sounds of the house. Bearded with long cobwebs and their longer shadows, the roof seems lower than usual. The whole kitchen seems shrunk, crowded with shadows and their endless quivering. Just when he begins to fear his best friend will never speak to him again, Ron clears his throat.
"So Dolohov wanted to finish what he couldn't in our fifth year." He leans back in his chair, hooking an arm over its back. "Blimey, some people just hold on to grudges, don't they?"
Harry peers at Ron.
"Are you…aren't you mad?"
A beat of silence later, Ron flashes a grin. Harry stares at him.
"Did you know? Did Hermione tell you?"
Ron leans forward again and shakes his head. "Hell, no." His grin grows wider. "But I bet she's been at your back forever, right?"
Harry lifts a shoulder. "Yeah, well. She was right."
"And you've been trying to tell her that it's better this way, that I'd not feel any better if I knew, right?"
Harry frowns, irritated. "What's going on? What're you looking so pleased about?"
Ron clears his throat and pulls his face straight. "Oh, don't mind me. I just solved a mystery, is all." As if unable to help himself, he grins again. Harry glares at him. Ron sighs and settles more comfortably in his chair with the air of a long-suffering primary school teacher.
"Harry, what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to feel bad that Hermione wasn't hurt? Do you think I'd feel any better if Dolohov did hit target? I mean--one of us would have got hurt, that curse would have hit someone. Given the…logistics of the scenario, you know, how erm, everyone was situated, it might've even hit you. Am I supposed to think, 'oh blimey, I wish Harry or Hermione got crippled instead of me?'"
"That's not the point--"
"That is exactly the point."
Harry falls silent, watching all levity drain from Ron's face.
"You're both so stupid about this, Harry. I knew something was up, I just didn't know what. But really…do you know why neither of you've ever beat me Wizards Chess?"
"I--what?"
"Because you never see the big picture, Harry. Both you and Hermione. You're always too focused on the pieces right in front of you, you never even consider that the one in the far corner might do something to upset the whole bloody game. You always forget that they can move--that you're not the only one in control of the game."
He glowers at Harry, intent to make the point as clear as possible.
"You're both so one-track minded, so bloody obsessive that it's a fucking joke sometimes! I mean, just look at the whole--" he waves an arm wildly--"thing about the Incinerator. She wanted so badly to make things easy for you that she went and fell for it--and now she's blaming herself for having found the curse, and you're blaming yourself not only for using it, but for her blaming herself, and then you're both blaming yourselves for burning London down!"
He stops to breathe. Swallowing, Harry pushes his glasses up.
"And you know what the funniest part is? The funniest part is that London didn't burn because of you! It all went horribly wrong but not because of you, either of you."
Ron rubs his hands over his face. A sudden dart over the dresser catches Harry's eye. He looks up just in time to see a long tail flick from an enormous soup ladle, then disappear behind the dresser.
"It just went wrong, Harry. Things do, sometimes. And if anyone's to blame it's all those morons who didn't stop to think that when they were covering up anything anyone could ever know about Horcruxes, they were actually making things worse. How the hell were we supposed to defeat a man who was using Horcruxes if we didn't know what the fucking word meant? How bloody stupid is it to think that just because you don't talk about something it'll just go away?"
Harry pushes the bottle of Ogden's across the table. Ron takes a long swig and sets the bottle down with a thud, his eyes bloodshot. When he speaks again, his voice is much lower, tinged with a strange sad note Harry has never heard from Ron before.
"Can't you see, Harry? All this guilt, all this wallowing--you're letting him win. All over again. That makes it--all those deaths, everyone who lost something, someone--it makes it all have been for nothing."
Harry looks away, distracted by something slowly shuffling into place. An ivory glow hangs about the mildewed window, the first inkling of dawn. Something creaks above the ceiling and settles with a groan.
"You knew your Dad was dying, didn't you?" He glances at Ron.
Ron's eyes widen. He stays silent for a long moment, then shrugs. "Yeah. For months."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
Ron twirls the cork from the empty bottle between his fingers, eyes speared on the end of a bitter laugh.
"That's what everyone wants to know--Fred, Ginny, Mum." He shakes his head. "Dad didn't want me to, Harry. Made me promise. He said…he said he was dying for a reason and he didn't want to distract everyone from that reason."
Harry leans across the table.
"But couldn't we--"
"No." Ron's voice is abrupt. "No. This is what I keep telling everyone but…never mind. The fire-scorpion was very old, Harry. They're apparently not even supposed to live that long. So its venom was a lot stronger than normal. Dad was weak anyway, from the…Dementors."
He lobs the cork at the fire where it immediately sparks a new flame.
"But mostly, it was him. He said he…just didn't want me to waste my time." His hand closes over the mouth of the empty bottle. "And I should never have listened to him."
Harry sags back in his chair, staring at his hands. Right again, Hermione. When news came of Mr Weasley's sudden death and the other Weasleys simply crumpled, Ron had nodded and turned away. Harry didn't know what to think, to do, but Hermione had a theory.
And now I don't know what to say either, and you're not here.
Minutes disappear into the hiss of the fire. Harry scratches his wrist idly. His arm is healing slowly, a maddening itch beneath the bandage. He blinks, trying to clear the spots in front of his eyes, his glasses smudged with careless handling. Finally, Ron straightens up, his crutch scraping against the table.
"We should get to bed." He gestures at the window. "You've got to go to the Ministry in a few hours."
"Yeah." Harry agrees. He watches Ron get to his feet ponderously, his chair wobbly as he leans on it. "Ron, are you really not mad--are you really okay with…with--"
"Am I okay with you going off and snogging Hermione again?" He tilts his head, a mock serious expression on his face. "What did I just say about one-track minded, Harry?"
"Oh yeah. Go on. Rub it in." Harry rubs the back of his neck. "For the record, that's not what I meant."
A sudden chuckle rings out through the kitchen. "Seriously, if you could just see your face now. Ha! I mean, you move fast when you want to Harry. I really didn't expect it to take this long--"
"Expect what?"
"Oh, come on. Butter wouldn't melt--" Ron stops laughing and stares at Harry, his expression slowly turning incredulous.
"For the love of Merlin!" He shakes his head, looking supremely disgusted. "You know what? That thing I said about chess pieces? Well, I take it back. You don't even see what's fucking right--"
He doesn't get to finish the sentence. A loud thud rattles the house. Startled, they stare at each other. A second crash fills the house. Harry jumps to his feet and rushes out the door, toppling chairs on the way. A small light shivers in the living room. Then it's snuffed out in haste.
"Who is it? Who IS it?"
He reaches the front door just as it slams. The door swings and hits him on the arm. Swearing loudly, he runs out into the street, but it stands empty. A gaggle of startled starlings rush up into the sky, loud in the pale air.
"Harry! Look--"
Standing at the doorway, Ron holds out a mitten. Harry sprints up the stairs, and peers at the dark green embroidery on the fabric.
"That slimy bastard--I missed him again!" He kicks the doorpost.
"Yeah, but now we actually have something to show--"
"He can't be far--"
"Harry, he fucking Apparated, you can't follow him now!"
"I knew someone was here--"
"Just come inside. You can't do much now. We're going to have to get Tonks--blimey, Harry, Harry--"
"What? What?"
Mouth hanging open, Ron points at a spot halfway down the hallway.
"Mrs Black's portrait. It's gone."
--end chapter eight--