Chapter Eleven.
Time/fragile.
"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."
- Henry Ellis
London. 2003.
Against a self in a room farther down the hall there rested a small photo album. For years it had been a record of the trials and failures of Ginny Weasly. I had been a book the sole purpose of which to be hidden away. A weak and secret shame. Now it was being filled with pictures of smiling people, with the happiness that love can bring into a world where, for so long, a darkness seemed to prevail.
Without much fanfare, and with no real reason, one day the book came out from it's hiding place and took on a new life. And it's it's own way it became emblematic of the changes to wider world around it, though of course it did this without any idea that it was. It was a book after all.
* * *
"There is a something wrong with a man that knows who he is and not what he wants to be.
I don't know if I can really claim to be either sort. I sometimes sit in my room, watching the rain on the nights when it rains, and wondering what the future will hold. Debating whether freedom is something that one earns or something that someone gives to them.
I wonder if Hermione has the ability to give me the freedom you have found or if it is something that I will have to find for myself. I usually stay up into the lonesome hours of the night thinking about these things, coming to one decision or another and disregarding them as soon as I have enough sleep in me to realize what and idiot I am, have been, and continue to be.
I think that, given time, I will realize how much of it I have wasted asking for more of it."
-Harry Potter, In a letter to Ron Weasly.
* * *
Draco opened the door one morning and found Amber standing there smiling at him. He had hugged her, given her a kiss, and told her how much he had missed her. And then they wrapped themselves around one another and stayed that way, taking breaks for meals and and sleep, for the next four days.
* * *
"Love is in the world to remind us that we don't have it. Or perhaps only to remind us that we are too small and weak to grasp it.
I look at how happy Draco and Amber are and I wonder if I'm missing out on that because I am so scared to try for it.
I don't know what it is that's holding me back, my inner pessimist maybe."
-Harry Potter, in a letter to Ron Weasly.
* * *
Harry found himself standing on a dock and looking at the huge sailboat he had just purchased. He grinned to himself, the assured grin that men have when they know that their futures are unclear, and walked away from the docks.
At his flat he knew that Draco and Amber were caught up in marital bliss, at Hermione's he knew that Ginny and Neville would be there spending every moment of their new relationship happiness in each others company. In Yorkshire he knew he would find Ron and Luna caught up in their perpetual newlywed bliss.
Not wanting to be surrounded by love when he was so unsure of his own, and not wanting to see Hermione for fear of the things they would say or do and that the knowledge that he would do nothing to stop them from saying and doing those things, he found himself walking the busy London streets.
He stopped off at a diner and ordered a coffee and some eggs and beans. He ate his meal in deepest introspective thought. He would list back and forth in his head, like the boat he had purchased would against the waves of the harbor. He knew what he wanted out of life, and he knew what he didn't and he was facing down a choice that was both of these things and neither. He found himself wishing for some kind of sign. For an answer he could trust for a source he knew to be honest.
A man came over and sat down at his table. Harry looked up at the man and knew instantly that he wasn't going to relish the conversation.
Ron waved down the waitress and ordered himself an English breakfast and tea, "black as the night and sweet as a stolen kiss" as he told the waitress. He looked at Harry a smiled his slow, knowing smile. He tapped his fingers in the silence while he waited for his breakfast to arrive.
Harry put down his fork and looked at his best friend, uncharacteristically quiet. Ron continued to tap his fingers and smile. Harry looked around, expecting something to come at him any moment. Finally the waitress returned with Ron's meal. Ron began to eat.
"Hello, Ron." Harry said finally.
"Hello, Harry." Ron said with his mouth full.
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to speak to you."
"Funny way of speaking to me." Harry said, "How'd you know I would be here?"
"I'm a wizard, Harry. How do you think I did it?"
"Point." Harry sipped his coffee, "So what do you want to talk about?"
"What do you want out of life?"
"Big question for this early in the morning."
"The only questions that matter are the very big ones and the incredibly small ones." Ron answered, "Regardless of the time of day."
"I guess so."
"So, what do you want out of life?"
"I don't know." Harry said, "I hadn't really thought about it."
"Yes you have."
"What do you want me to say? What's the answer to that?" Harry sat back and crossed his arms before throwing them out again, "Happiness? I want to be happy. Is that the answer to your riddle?"
"You know what your problem is?" Ron put down his fork and knife.
"No. What's my problem?" Harry said curtly.
"You're pain is all that matters to you." Ron leaned forward, "Look, mate, you've done a lot of good for a lot of people. You're a good man, ever there with the elegant solution to the moral conundrum. But you always used your own pain, always, to center you. To root you through all the darkness to the earth. You used it to feel human. And there is nothing wrong with that, in moderation. But you're out of hand. You're selfish."
"What?"
"Everyone gets hurt." Ron said simply, "You think you're the only person ever came out of life with a scar or two? Everyone gets hurt, everyone heals and everyone moves on."
"I never assumed that-"
"And it isn't brave or smart of you to pretend that you aren't playing the cautious game. And that's a long fucking game, Harry. It's a long wait for a train that don't come."
"I don't think-"
"And you know what? Fuck you. You want to be happy, that's what you want out of life? Well happiness isn't something that waits around to jump up and surprise a body. It's something we have to look for. We have to fight for. You can walk around with your head up your ass the rest of your life, doesn't matter to me because you'll still be my best friend, but you'll never accidentally be happy. Never."
"I don't know why you would-"
"You want to be a man, you act like one. You see something you want, someone you love, and no matter what's between you and that you gotta reach for it. You have to fight until you have it and fuck the noise around you. You want to be happy, Harry, go be happy. Stop being a fucking idiot."
Ron stood up and paid for both of their meals before he left the diner. Harry sat at the table looking forward at a wall that would never give him the simple and plain truth.
* * *
Smoke curled up from the storm drains, crawling toward the sky and the heavy sheets of rain falling to meet it. There, between the sodden earth and the dark sky a dance began between the rain and the smoke. Weaving around and through one another, one destined to dissipate into the nothing of air currents and dark sky and the other to splash against the earth and be no more.
Transient things, in their briefest of moments, that had, but for the occasion, nothing more profound to be done with them.
Light, the forever being amidst all this temporal trappings, shown through a street light. It cast itself against the slow, sensual, wraith like dance. Illuminating everything, for no one to see. It would travel, the light, from that street light around the world and into forever from there. It would always be, in the way that light has always been, and it would outlive it's source.
These three things mingled for a moment in time. The temporary and the eternal.
* * *
Harry sat in his room and watched the rain fall. He wanted to stand in it, he wanted to rise from his life and stand in the rain.
He got up and went out, standing against a street light and in front of a storm drain and he screamed remarkable freedom into the sky and the rain. He spun circles and he laughed and he raged at the sky and in his own youthful folly he thought himself free.
* * *
As the weeks passed Harry would spend more time with Hermione. They would find themselves talking about life and the future and all points within and without. As time grew again between them it came to fill the silence that had been there. Until one day, without either one noticing right away, the silence was gone as the moments of their friendship had filled in the hole it left behind.
* * *
"I'm worried all the time because I'm happy most of the time. How fucked up is that."
-Harry Potter, in a letter to Draco Malfoy.
* * *
Draco had gone home, to New York. He and Amber were happy, they were always happy, and in that happiness they had a heart that belonged to one another. They kept, in their great shared heart, Harry Potter, always. They thought of him often and spoke to him every other night once the phones had been installed.
Sometimes Amber would see Draco bent over his desk composing a note to Harry. She had never known someone that communicated through letter until she had met Draco, and for this she loved him as well. She would always ask him to send her love with his own.
Every night before they went to sleep Draco would tell her that he loved her more than yesterday and not half as much as tomorrow. Together they would make love, or fall asleep or look out at the night sky and wonder. But it was always together.
* * *
"Life moves with a speed of it's own. Sometimes it seems amazingly quick and other times unbearably short. It is with no consistency that people change and grow. It is without prediction when love begins, ends or blooms.
Human beings are a rare sort of guest. They give the world nine months to prepare for their entrance and hardly any warning at all for their depart. They are one hell of a party guest in the meantime.
It is because of this that the world has never seemed to know what to do with us. We are that odd combination of planned and spontaneous. A controlled super chaos. It is with time that we realize we are fragile and it is with love that we realize we are not."
-Draco Malfoy, in a letter to Harry Potter
* * *
As the new relationship novelty wore off and the real bond strengthened Ginny would send Neville a note every day. He would send a reply in kind. They didn't see each other as often, but savored the nights when they could. Somewhere in those weeks between dating and loving one another they hatched the idea that they would get their own place closer to Hogwarts.
For her part Hermione supported them, though she did admit to the fact that she would miss having Ginny around. And as the weeks turned into months and finally into a year they bought a small cottage, a starter home they called it, and moved away.
Ginny and Neville stayed in constant contact with all of their many friends and families, and invited them over often.
* * *
"We'd love it if you could make it to the wedding. We want you and Hermione to be part of the wedding party. This would make your third stint as someone else's best man."
-Ginny Weasly, in a letter to Harry Potter.
* * *
Hogsmeade. 2004.
Ginny and Neville were married in a small ceremony. Ron and Luna, Draco and Amber, The Weasly family, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were in attendance. When her father gave her away she cried and when she saw her mother crying she cried all the more. When Neville kissed her and they were man and wife she beamed at him.
London. 2004.
Harry had taken to sailing his boat around the harbor on weekends when the weather permitted. He and Hermione would weigh anchor and eat sandwiches and laugh about the small nuances of work and life. They would touch, casually as ever, and share and in an honest if quiet way, they would both pretend that they were together for a few hours every weekend that the weather permitted.
* * *
One day Hermione came home from the office and found a photo album resting against a shelf. She thumbed through it and smiled. She closed it and put it on her half empty shelf, ate her dinner and went to bed. When she woke up she would fight down the knowledge that she was alone and carry on with her day.
* * *
Harry would sit back against his window when the rains came, and feel as they hit his back through the glass. He would look at his empty home and wonder when he would be strong enough. He would turn to press his forehead to glass and think about what Ron had told him.
* * *
"If I were to claim to know what the future holds I would be lying. But I know what I want it to hold. I know what I want out of life, and if I have to fight to get it I think I'm ready now.
Thank you."
-Harry Potter, in a letter to Ron Weasly.