and we'll all float on okay, and we'll all float on anyway
"Jehu"
Gen (H/D if you squint)
Ron, Neville, Terry Boot, and Zacharias Smith accompany Harry on his private mission to find and kill Draco, Death Eater on the run. Things don't go exactly as planned.
R (language, violence)
1.
It was snowing when they left: thick cold beautful snow that crunched beneath their feet, sparkled and shimmered in the air, held to slow motion by storefront charms. Ron was still poor and his jacket was still thin, more patch than seam, but with the lights all up floating like that - glittering, refracted by the snow - he almost felt warm. Maybe it was just the firewhiskey still swimming in his veins from the night before.
It was Christmas day. Not that he was homesick or anything; he'd given up home a while ago. The hotel room smelled like soap and dust and by then he had learned to forget to look for the imprint of Lavender's head in the pillow next to him when he woke up. Nothing worth staying for, and his hero's money was running out anyway. Time to move on again.
Neville was tripping over his shoelaces, bent under his heavy backpack, and Terry came in close to mutter a lightening charm. Neville almost didn't straighten up - too much pride. But he stood, and they walked, and Ron trailed behind them watching.
"C'mon, hurry up," Terry said sharply.
Inside the Three Broomsticks, they shrugged the snow off their hair and dumped their bags into a pile. Ron slumped first into the booth and ordered a cup of coffee, left it black while he held his head between his fingertips and wished there was a shot of something stronger in it. Terry poured cream and sugar into his own coffee til Ron felt like throwing up on his behalf.
Everyone was moving slowly this early in the morning, workers in grey robes reading the paper (Chocolate frogs are having a terrible year in the market; giants in the north hold peace talks) and housekeepers squeaking their buckets and mops resentfully through the hallways. The fire was warm. He was warm. They could have been there for anything.
"So you've heard the stories?" Neville asked, still almost shyly. His foot was tapping almost imperceptibly. It's hard to stop being nervous, Ron thought, then fought off another wave of nausea.
"Everyone has," Terry said evenly. "Mr. Harry Potter, crazier than an acid pop. It's in all the tabloids."
"I don't believe it, not at all," Neville said, and he meant it. "Harry might have been upset after...well, after the fight, but he's a good, sane person." He picked up his saucer and spun it in his hands. Ron stared at it blankly.
"Still loyal, eh? Even after all that's happened? You never even had a moment's doubt, did you? You goddamned - "
"Boys, boys, let's all be good friends, shall we? None of this animosity. His Highness wouldn't approve." Zacharias Smith leaned in (out of nowhere, Ron would say, but then again he hadn't been paying much attention), all shaggy lemon-yellow hair and bought-new-to-look-like-used cordeuroy, the need to impress dripping off him. His jacket was buttoned all the way up, collar perfectly straight, trousers pressed with a defiant crease. His faced looked like it was used to sneering. So that's what happens when you break up a group of Hufflepuffs, Ron though, and pressed his palms into the cool of the marble tabletop.
"Oh, that's uncalled for," Terry said right before Neville jumped up and out of his seat, knocking over silverware and near-yelling into Smith's face if you still hate him then why are you here you goddamned -
"He's here because he's broke," Ron said lowly. "We all are. Except maybe you, Neville. And I think you meant to be angry at Boot, not Smith. Excuse me, please." He stood up, knocking his spoon in the cup with a clang, and slipped out behind Neville.
The bathroom door shuddered closed as he slipped across the still-wet floor, landing on his knees by the wall. The tiles sparkled and curled away from his feet as he bent over the toilet and gagged up the muffin he'd had for breakfast. "Christ," he said aloud, wiping bile from his lips. "The fuck did I do last night?"
"Well, whatever it was, never do it again!" the mirror said cheerfully.
"Yeah, fuck you, thanks a lot," Ron said, and smacked the heel of his palm into the glass as he walked out.
Everybody had settled down by the time he got back; not friends, but not fighting either, and he was glad - he wasn't sure if his head could take that sort of thing anymore, not without rebelling.
Terry had abandoned his coffee and was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, ripping a napkin to shreds. "I'm not particularly entranced with that side of it myself, I have to admit. It's a risk I'm perfectly willing to take, though."
"What're you on about now?" Ron asked, gulping down the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and instantly wishing he hadn't.
"If we die, we die. No use worrying about it." Terry stirred his coffee slowly, fingernail just touching the spoon.
"We're not gonna die," Neville said. "I'm not worried."
Yeah, you mean that, don't you, Ron thought.
2.
Christmas night, and they had already said everything they wanted to say. They'd been waiting at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the dark woods, the trees that cleaned all the light from the sky. Harry Potter was late.
"Look," Neville said, and pointed. High up in the clouds was a black speck that whistled closer til they could see a cloak streaming back, rain-plastered hair, last year's model of touring broom.
Harry Potter dismounted and walked towards them with a limp he didn't bother to hide. He slid his goggles over his greying shoulder-length hair, slipped them in a pocket, and reached out to shake everyone's hand. "I'm glad you all could make it," he said, though so quietly that Ron wasn't sure if that's what he said at all. He cleared his throat, and waited for full attention.
"I'm looking for Draco Malfoy. He's in there somewhere-" he pointed at the forest - "When we find him, you will be paid five hundred Galleons apiece. I am not responsible for your health on this mission. Remember that we are here unofficially, perhaps even illegally, and that the Ministry will not come to your defense if you should wish to pursue any sort of action against me. You may leave at any time." He nodded, then walked into the forest. They all followed, silently.
3.
"I thought about killing him, once."
The last few lingering threads of sunlight had run out, and the birds that chirped now sounded cold and mechanical. Terry Boot poked at the fire's dying embers.
"I almost did," he said. "Almost. Just before Voldemort died. When he kept sending his division on suicide missions. I had - had this potion, and I was going to slip it in his tea. Couldn't bring myself to do it."
Terry and Ron both looked over to Harry's tent, where he was sleeping alongside Neville.
"Once I wished someone would kill him," Ron whispered almost inaudibly. He wrapped his blanket around him tighter. The darkness and cold were almost living things out here, thick and aggressive. Creatures watched them from the trees, with red eyes and flashes of iridescent teeth. He moved closer to the fire.
"I dreamed about it last night," Terry said tonelessly. "Right before I dreamed about finding Voldemort in the bath in my apartment."
I dreamed about the earth swallowing me whole, Ron thought about saying, but was tired of repeating. "Would you stay up a bit with me?" he asked instead; Terry nodded.
4.
"You hear that?" Neville asked. There was a cry from somewhere above them, low and mournful. Ron's stomach did a slow-motion backflip at the sound. He'd heard it before.
"It's an augurey," Terry said. "Carrion bird."
"Doesn't it foretell death?" Neville asked nervously. "I don't like things that foretell death."
"It foretells rain," Harry said, and brushed past Terry. "Just rain. There is not going to be any dying here."
It was at Dublin, Ron thought as he trudged through the mud. I heard that song when Dublin burned.
The rain came. Swirling, staggering water, wind currents pushing it almost upwards into their faces. Ron fumbled with his wand for a shelter charm. The rain turned to ice, then to sleet, then to hail. Lightning crashed cinnamon-red above them: banshees swarmed out of their sharp-relief shadows: already-wet ground churned under the onslaught.
"Everybody down," Harry shouted, and threw a charm over them that Ron didn't even recognize. The wind howled around them. They crouched, silent, waiting.
Neville's shoes squeaked as he fought for balance. "Maybe it stands for rain and death. Or death by rain," he yelled over the ice.
"It's possible," Zach yelled back. Ron rolled his eyes.
Minutes passed, then hours. They settled down to watch as the lightning turned from red to blueish green. "Should be over any minute now," Harry mumbled around a mouthful of chicken pasty.
Ron dug out a flask from his bag and downed half of it when no one was looking. He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and then promptly fell asleep. When he woke, the sky was still grey, but the rain at least had turned into softly-falling snow. It fell in drifts against the dimly crackling magic that shielded them, muffling the howl of the wind. "Finite incatatum," Harry whispered, and the wall of snow fell slowly towards them.
Ron looked up to see the head of a centaur lodged in the limbs of the tree next to them, blonde hair covered with blood that melted each quiet snowflake. "Oh, fuck," he said, and vomited all over his shoes. Zach wordlessly handed him his water bottle.
"Right," said Harry. "Let's get out of here."
5.
Zach went white. "Um," he said, then slowed to a stop. "I think -" His knees buckled. Neville rushed to his side. "Malfoy," Zach rasped out, and "legilimen-"
"Imperio," Harry said calmly. "You're thinking of a mountain spring. There are butterflies and pixies flying around, and written on the rocks in white paint are the words 'don't even fucking think about it, Malfoy'. Now stand up."
Zach stood up.
"Finite incantatum. Is he still there?"
Zach shook his head.
"Right then. Onwards."
They stopped some time after midday, the sun dragging itself back to the horizon. Harry walked off alone. Zach made a face at his back, then groaned.
"He's driving us like Jehu. He's driving us into the ground. We're all gonna die, you know that? He's gonna fucking kill us all. You watch." Zach took a deep breath, then started again. "I can't fucking walk anymore, I'm out of salve and I'm shit at healing spells, there's these blisters on my feet the size of bludgers and they feel like they're on fucking fire. My legs are sore, my back is spasming, my eyes are fucking bleeding from the glare of that goddamn lumos spell and I swear to God I'm gonna go fucking nuts if I hear that FUCKING NYMPH SING THAT SONG ONE MORE FUCKING TIME," he screamed into the forest, and threw a rock in the direction of the wood nymph, startling it out of the trees with a squawk and a few leaves falling slowly to the ground. Potter had made his way back on the first shout, and was now standing at the edge of the clearing, arms folded over his chest.
"And where's Malfoy, huh?" His voice cracked on every other syllable. "Where the fuck is your quarry?" Stumbling, head bowed, like the ground was too heavy for him, like the roots were too much to take. "He's in my fucking head right now, Potter, ain't that a fucking trip? We're sure to sneak up on him. He's somewhere in the forest, huh Potter? That narrows it down. Hey, tell me where he is now. Tell me where exactly he is. Take your goddamned compass and charts and fucking tell me, Potter. Show me the trail. How many more fucking inches do we have left to cover? How big is this goddamned forest? Fuck, Potter, we're screwed and you know it. We're lost. Fucking lost. Fucking - " He heaved a breath - harsh and high-pitched in his throat - and crumpled to the ground.
Terry turned away and made a show of reading a book. Neville looked confused and upset, and like he was desperately trying to hide it. Ron inhaled deeply on his cigarette. Each waited for the other to do something.
Harry slowly took a necklace out of his pocket, copper wire shaped like a fish on a thin chain. He held it out for Zach to see; it swung, slowly. "If you want to leave," he said, and paused. "If you want to leave, you can." He held out the necklace. "It's a portkey back to Hogsmeade. If you want to leave, then go."
Zach looked woozily up from the ground. His outstretched hands were sinking into the rotting leaves.
"If you want to leave then go," Harry repeated patiently. "But I've enjoyed having you along. I don't want to see you go. It's your decision, Zach, but I never did anything intentionally to hurt you."
"If you want to leave..." Neville echoed quietly.
"Mrs. Smith and all the little Smiths might not be so happy you're home empty-handed," Terry said without turning around.
Zach half-sneered. "There are no little fucking Smiths, jerkoff. And Mrs. Smith is a cunt. Screw this. I'm staying. Just give me - give me a few minutes to catch my breath, okay?"
"I don't think he can take it, Harry," Terry said softly, later. "I think he'll be a liability. Why didn't you just tell him to go?"
Harry stared at him silently; his eyes said this is not about you.
6.
The unicorn was still warm when they found it. Neville dropped to his knees and dipped his fingers in the few remaining puddles of silver blood. "If I could get this back to St. Mungos..." he said distantly.
The hooves were sawn off, the heart was taken, the horn was razed. Ron didn't have the stomach to peel back the eyelids to check if Malfoy had taken the eyes; they were a delicacy, he'd heard. The two edges of the wound (the gash, the chasm) still struggled feebly to meet each other. "Crime," Neville whispered. "It's a crime."
Harry pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, then spoke with an odd sort of finality. "He's nearby."
They had gone a kilometer, maybe two, when Neville started to slow down, a purplish hue to his face. Ron thought it was maybe just delayed rage at the unicorn until he stumbled and fell to the ground, unconscious. Harry rushed to his side.
"Fuck," he hissed, and frantically searched Neville's body until he found them: pinprick-sized welts on his hands, thorn-holes. The infection was spreading up his arms. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he chanted as he hurried through the hidden pockets in his cloak for the medicine kit, then squeezed antiseptic potion out of its tube.
"We should go back," Ron said with a note of hysteria. "He needs help. He could die. I'm taking him back."
"We'll wait. If his fever doesn't go down by nightfall, I'll take him home." Harry stared wildly at him for a second, then flipped open his map.
Terry grabbed the flask from Ron's hand and took a swallow. "I don't like this. I don't trust him anymore. I think this is just another one of his half-brained suicide missions."
"So what if it is?" Ron looked up at him, unblinking. "None of us have much to go home to." He went back to the wood he was splitting cleanly down the middle with a charmed knife, flat and even. Neville had grabbed his arm in a rare moment of lucidity and begged him for a coffin, a proper burial: Ron had blinked back tears and said hey, man, what for?. But, hell, it gave him something to do, and so he sat holding nails between his teeth and hammering still-living wood together.
Zach strolled around the encampment in a circle. "Hey Harry."
They'd all learned to ignore him by now, but that didn't stop him at all. He smiled falsely and hooked his thumbs into his pockets. "I'm thinking of you, Harry."
That's nice, Harry mumbled automatically.
"I'm thinking of you safe and dead, sunk beneath the ground. You're on borrowed time, Harry, borrowed time with high interest. Count the seconds. I'm thinking about your next step, Harry, and the step after that. You're dead already, Harry Potter, count them. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three-"
7.
They woke up one morning and found that the sun had not risen. Plants lining their camp had crept away; the clearing was much wider now. Neville shook the last few remaining hallucinations from his brain.Harry sat for twenty minutes and watched the needle on his compass spin around. Somewhere something howled in pain.
"That way," Harry said, and pointed vaguely west. They walked.
Neville had gratefully taken the coffin and brightly told Ron that it was brilliant, really, he'd use it to carry his things.Ron hummed along to the bump-bump-bump of it hitting the rocks and roots lining their makeshift path. Johnny went to work in a diamond mine, came home one evening said 'I'm going blind. They make me cut the light from the diamond walls, bagging all the sparkle without any pause, so Foreman Stan can read at night, yeah so Foreman Stan can read all right.'
The thumping stopped. Ron looked around. "What is it?"
"I hear it too," Harry said. "Shh."
From the left came a thrashing sound, like wheat stalks snapping against each other. The hairs on Ron's wrists pricked up; his fingers tensed.
Terry dug in his jacket pocket for his wand. "It's coming closer."
Something swept down the hill towards them, trees breaking and plants flattening in its wake. Maybe it was just wind, a tornado, but Ron had never seen a tornado do that.
"It's here," Terry whispered, then he screamed as it picked him up and threw him against a tree, a giant Redwood that looked like it was made from stone, and all Ron could think was there are no Redwoods in England. The sound of back meeting wood was muffled and wet, like the thud his fist had made against Blaise Zabini's throat, or the crunch of his boots on the field of dead locusts. He squeezed his eyes shut and took three steps back, promised himself he would not cry and not throw up, then watched Harry Potter cast the Killing Curse at every moving thing he saw.
Neville was huddled down next to him, sobbing. Ron reached out hesitantly, paused with his hand an inch from Neville's shoulder, then awkwardly laid his palm down, feeling bones shudder under his skin. The snap of Terry's spine was still in his ears. "Shh, shh, it's over." Neville stood up slowly, shook Ron off his back.
"Thank you for not saying 'everything will be okay'. Because it's not, you know." He wiped his eyes ineffectively. "Everything sucks, and everything will continue to suck, and for Merlin's sake what are we going to do about Terry?"
Ron turned away and looked at the body, bile rising in his throat. "We could use the coffin. After all, that's what it's for."
But no, Neville explained with a shaky calm that didn't reach his eyes: it was storage space, and now they had more supplies to carry, and none of them were good enough at moving charms to do without it. Ron wasn't convinced, but he wasn't about to argue. If Neville wanted to drag the thing, then fine, and Ron would dig the grave. The ground was soft. Ron thought maybe Neville had become accustomed to the callouses on his palms where the rope had rubbed through skin.
"Do we have a shovel?" Ron asked as his cigarette burned down to his lips. "Or do I have to cast a digging spell or something? Is there even a digging spell?"
"There's a spell for everything, Ronnie my boy, a spell for digging graves and building men, spells for capturing the sun and moon. There's a spell to brush your teeth and a spell to - you're not listening-"
Ron had found a spade in Terry's bag and was digging, bit by bit. "I never listen, Zach." Spade down, handle fitted to his palm, pressure on an angle: blade cutting the earth cleanly, then pulling it apart and lifting it up, inch by inch.
8.
He'd missed.
He'd fucking missed.
"I didn't mean it," Zach said thickly. "I was aiming for - "
"Yeah, fuck, I know what you were aiming for."
It had started snowing again, slanting against the still-moving ground. He stood unmoving as it gathered on his shoulders. Neville was already turning grey. Ron blinked the snowflakes off his eyelashes.
"It's coming again," Harry shouted over to him. "Leave him, we need to go."
No, Ron thought, then said it aloud. "No, Harry, I don't think so. No. I'm not leaving him. No, no, fuck you, okay? I'm not leaving him here, not here, fuck. What the hell is - " His voice died in his throat. He looked frantically around him, heart pounding. "Harry, man, Harry - what the fucking hell is wrong with you? Why are you doing this? Malfoy's not worth this, Harry. Let him go. He doesn't deserve this. Neville - Neville's - fucking look at him, Harry. Is Malfoy worth this?"
Harry was still; through the snow, Ron could barely see his face. "Malfoy is the last living Death Eater on this earth, Ron. Malfoy is evil. As long as he lives, Voldemort lives. I can't sleep at night, Ron, do you know that? I take pills to knock myself out, but I never really sleep. Because somewhere out there, Malfoy is planning his return. And he will return, if he gets the chance. He will do everything he can to tear us down. And I will do everything I can to stop him. No, no, don't say anything, I'm not done. Neville wanted to be here. Terry wanted to be here. You wanted to be here, you still want to be here, because you don't seem to be running away. All of you could have left at any time, you know that. They knew that. So don't fucking blame me, Ron, this isn't my fault. I did everything I could, okay?"
"Yeah, you did everything," Ron said. "You're real big on doing everything, aren't you."
9.
Zach disappeared on the 24th day, leaving his bags and a trail of footprints leading into a thicket of snapper plants. Ron said a quick prayer for his safety, and then another prayer deeper down in the quiet part of him for his painless death. Zach would never make it out, not really. Didn't have a chance in the world.
They walked; Ron snapped his boots down on the dirt with military precision, Harry scuffled along ahead of him, like a shark tasting blood.
"Harry. C'mon Harry, slow down."
He'd abandoned most of his things two or three hours back, carrying his photographs and food in the coffin. The rope was wrapped around his arms tightly, and the wood against the rocks made a steady sound, bump-bump-bump. He hummed along.
He had stood desolately clutching the matching necklace while Harry portkey'd back with Neville's body, the metal freezing his unprotected hands. Harry hadn't spoken to him since.
"Harry, please."
Harry broke into a jog, then a run: Malfoy was just ahead of them., fleeing. Ron laughed. This was it. He almost hadn't expected it. It almost seemed like a joke.
Finally, Ron thought as he shook his wand into his palm and took aim at the streamers of blonde hair, then wait a sec -
"Wait, Harry, it could be a -"
Trap, his mind finished inanely as the ground in front of him exploded. Blood rushed from the earth. He didn't think as he felt his feet leave the ground, then his head pushed under the flood. Instinctively, he pulled himself up the rope, agonizingly slow. He clung to the coffin and watched the green glow of Avada Kedavra envelop Harry, then watched him go down. He didn't think anything at all.
The next thing his body knew was solid ground. His face half-buried, he opened one eye and saw: Hogwarts. He was out. A laugh scratched at his tongue, and he choked convulsively.
Somewhere above him a voice said are you all right, sonny? He turned over wearily, spat out the muddy water that clogged his throat. His hands scrabbled for a hold in the slippery grass; they found it, and he pushed himself up slowly, looked blearily into the sunlight.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
- E.E. Cummings
--------------------------
A/N: Based on Melville's oft-referenced but rarely read novel Moby Dick. Pick out the character parallels and you get a nickle.
Gen (H/D if you squint)
Ron, Neville, Terry Boot, and Zacharias Smith accompany Harry on his private mission to find and kill Draco, Death Eater on the run. Things don't go exactly as planned.
R (language, violence)
1.
It was snowing when they left: thick cold beautful snow that crunched beneath their feet, sparkled and shimmered in the air, held to slow motion by storefront charms. Ron was still poor and his jacket was still thin, more patch than seam, but with the lights all up floating like that - glittering, refracted by the snow - he almost felt warm. Maybe it was just the firewhiskey still swimming in his veins from the night before.
It was Christmas day. Not that he was homesick or anything; he'd given up home a while ago. The hotel room smelled like soap and dust and by then he had learned to forget to look for the imprint of Lavender's head in the pillow next to him when he woke up. Nothing worth staying for, and his hero's money was running out anyway. Time to move on again.
Neville was tripping over his shoelaces, bent under his heavy backpack, and Terry came in close to mutter a lightening charm. Neville almost didn't straighten up - too much pride. But he stood, and they walked, and Ron trailed behind them watching.
"C'mon, hurry up," Terry said sharply.
Inside the Three Broomsticks, they shrugged the snow off their hair and dumped their bags into a pile. Ron slumped first into the booth and ordered a cup of coffee, left it black while he held his head between his fingertips and wished there was a shot of something stronger in it. Terry poured cream and sugar into his own coffee til Ron felt like throwing up on his behalf.
Everyone was moving slowly this early in the morning, workers in grey robes reading the paper (Chocolate frogs are having a terrible year in the market; giants in the north hold peace talks) and housekeepers squeaking their buckets and mops resentfully through the hallways. The fire was warm. He was warm. They could have been there for anything.
"So you've heard the stories?" Neville asked, still almost shyly. His foot was tapping almost imperceptibly. It's hard to stop being nervous, Ron thought, then fought off another wave of nausea.
"Everyone has," Terry said evenly. "Mr. Harry Potter, crazier than an acid pop. It's in all the tabloids."
"I don't believe it, not at all," Neville said, and he meant it. "Harry might have been upset after...well, after the fight, but he's a good, sane person." He picked up his saucer and spun it in his hands. Ron stared at it blankly.
"Still loyal, eh? Even after all that's happened? You never even had a moment's doubt, did you? You goddamned - "
"Boys, boys, let's all be good friends, shall we? None of this animosity. His Highness wouldn't approve." Zacharias Smith leaned in (out of nowhere, Ron would say, but then again he hadn't been paying much attention), all shaggy lemon-yellow hair and bought-new-to-look-like-used cordeuroy, the need to impress dripping off him. His jacket was buttoned all the way up, collar perfectly straight, trousers pressed with a defiant crease. His faced looked like it was used to sneering. So that's what happens when you break up a group of Hufflepuffs, Ron though, and pressed his palms into the cool of the marble tabletop.
"Oh, that's uncalled for," Terry said right before Neville jumped up and out of his seat, knocking over silverware and near-yelling into Smith's face if you still hate him then why are you here you goddamned -
"He's here because he's broke," Ron said lowly. "We all are. Except maybe you, Neville. And I think you meant to be angry at Boot, not Smith. Excuse me, please." He stood up, knocking his spoon in the cup with a clang, and slipped out behind Neville.
The bathroom door shuddered closed as he slipped across the still-wet floor, landing on his knees by the wall. The tiles sparkled and curled away from his feet as he bent over the toilet and gagged up the muffin he'd had for breakfast. "Christ," he said aloud, wiping bile from his lips. "The fuck did I do last night?"
"Well, whatever it was, never do it again!" the mirror said cheerfully.
"Yeah, fuck you, thanks a lot," Ron said, and smacked the heel of his palm into the glass as he walked out.
Everybody had settled down by the time he got back; not friends, but not fighting either, and he was glad - he wasn't sure if his head could take that sort of thing anymore, not without rebelling.
Terry had abandoned his coffee and was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, ripping a napkin to shreds. "I'm not particularly entranced with that side of it myself, I have to admit. It's a risk I'm perfectly willing to take, though."
"What're you on about now?" Ron asked, gulping down the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and instantly wishing he hadn't.
"If we die, we die. No use worrying about it." Terry stirred his coffee slowly, fingernail just touching the spoon.
"We're not gonna die," Neville said. "I'm not worried."
Yeah, you mean that, don't you, Ron thought.
2.
Christmas night, and they had already said everything they wanted to say. They'd been waiting at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the dark woods, the trees that cleaned all the light from the sky. Harry Potter was late.
"Look," Neville said, and pointed. High up in the clouds was a black speck that whistled closer til they could see a cloak streaming back, rain-plastered hair, last year's model of touring broom.
Harry Potter dismounted and walked towards them with a limp he didn't bother to hide. He slid his goggles over his greying shoulder-length hair, slipped them in a pocket, and reached out to shake everyone's hand. "I'm glad you all could make it," he said, though so quietly that Ron wasn't sure if that's what he said at all. He cleared his throat, and waited for full attention.
"I'm looking for Draco Malfoy. He's in there somewhere-" he pointed at the forest - "When we find him, you will be paid five hundred Galleons apiece. I am not responsible for your health on this mission. Remember that we are here unofficially, perhaps even illegally, and that the Ministry will not come to your defense if you should wish to pursue any sort of action against me. You may leave at any time." He nodded, then walked into the forest. They all followed, silently.
3.
"I thought about killing him, once."
The last few lingering threads of sunlight had run out, and the birds that chirped now sounded cold and mechanical. Terry Boot poked at the fire's dying embers.
"I almost did," he said. "Almost. Just before Voldemort died. When he kept sending his division on suicide missions. I had - had this potion, and I was going to slip it in his tea. Couldn't bring myself to do it."
Terry and Ron both looked over to Harry's tent, where he was sleeping alongside Neville.
"Once I wished someone would kill him," Ron whispered almost inaudibly. He wrapped his blanket around him tighter. The darkness and cold were almost living things out here, thick and aggressive. Creatures watched them from the trees, with red eyes and flashes of iridescent teeth. He moved closer to the fire.
"I dreamed about it last night," Terry said tonelessly. "Right before I dreamed about finding Voldemort in the bath in my apartment."
I dreamed about the earth swallowing me whole, Ron thought about saying, but was tired of repeating. "Would you stay up a bit with me?" he asked instead; Terry nodded.
4.
"You hear that?" Neville asked. There was a cry from somewhere above them, low and mournful. Ron's stomach did a slow-motion backflip at the sound. He'd heard it before.
"It's an augurey," Terry said. "Carrion bird."
"Doesn't it foretell death?" Neville asked nervously. "I don't like things that foretell death."
"It foretells rain," Harry said, and brushed past Terry. "Just rain. There is not going to be any dying here."
It was at Dublin, Ron thought as he trudged through the mud. I heard that song when Dublin burned.
The rain came. Swirling, staggering water, wind currents pushing it almost upwards into their faces. Ron fumbled with his wand for a shelter charm. The rain turned to ice, then to sleet, then to hail. Lightning crashed cinnamon-red above them: banshees swarmed out of their sharp-relief shadows: already-wet ground churned under the onslaught.
"Everybody down," Harry shouted, and threw a charm over them that Ron didn't even recognize. The wind howled around them. They crouched, silent, waiting.
Neville's shoes squeaked as he fought for balance. "Maybe it stands for rain and death. Or death by rain," he yelled over the ice.
"It's possible," Zach yelled back. Ron rolled his eyes.
Minutes passed, then hours. They settled down to watch as the lightning turned from red to blueish green. "Should be over any minute now," Harry mumbled around a mouthful of chicken pasty.
Ron dug out a flask from his bag and downed half of it when no one was looking. He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and then promptly fell asleep. When he woke, the sky was still grey, but the rain at least had turned into softly-falling snow. It fell in drifts against the dimly crackling magic that shielded them, muffling the howl of the wind. "Finite incatatum," Harry whispered, and the wall of snow fell slowly towards them.
Ron looked up to see the head of a centaur lodged in the limbs of the tree next to them, blonde hair covered with blood that melted each quiet snowflake. "Oh, fuck," he said, and vomited all over his shoes. Zach wordlessly handed him his water bottle.
"Right," said Harry. "Let's get out of here."
5.
Zach went white. "Um," he said, then slowed to a stop. "I think -" His knees buckled. Neville rushed to his side. "Malfoy," Zach rasped out, and "legilimen-"
"Imperio," Harry said calmly. "You're thinking of a mountain spring. There are butterflies and pixies flying around, and written on the rocks in white paint are the words 'don't even fucking think about it, Malfoy'. Now stand up."
Zach stood up.
"Finite incantatum. Is he still there?"
Zach shook his head.
"Right then. Onwards."
They stopped some time after midday, the sun dragging itself back to the horizon. Harry walked off alone. Zach made a face at his back, then groaned.
"He's driving us like Jehu. He's driving us into the ground. We're all gonna die, you know that? He's gonna fucking kill us all. You watch." Zach took a deep breath, then started again. "I can't fucking walk anymore, I'm out of salve and I'm shit at healing spells, there's these blisters on my feet the size of bludgers and they feel like they're on fucking fire. My legs are sore, my back is spasming, my eyes are fucking bleeding from the glare of that goddamn lumos spell and I swear to God I'm gonna go fucking nuts if I hear that FUCKING NYMPH SING THAT SONG ONE MORE FUCKING TIME," he screamed into the forest, and threw a rock in the direction of the wood nymph, startling it out of the trees with a squawk and a few leaves falling slowly to the ground. Potter had made his way back on the first shout, and was now standing at the edge of the clearing, arms folded over his chest.
"And where's Malfoy, huh?" His voice cracked on every other syllable. "Where the fuck is your quarry?" Stumbling, head bowed, like the ground was too heavy for him, like the roots were too much to take. "He's in my fucking head right now, Potter, ain't that a fucking trip? We're sure to sneak up on him. He's somewhere in the forest, huh Potter? That narrows it down. Hey, tell me where he is now. Tell me where exactly he is. Take your goddamned compass and charts and fucking tell me, Potter. Show me the trail. How many more fucking inches do we have left to cover? How big is this goddamned forest? Fuck, Potter, we're screwed and you know it. We're lost. Fucking lost. Fucking - " He heaved a breath - harsh and high-pitched in his throat - and crumpled to the ground.
Terry turned away and made a show of reading a book. Neville looked confused and upset, and like he was desperately trying to hide it. Ron inhaled deeply on his cigarette. Each waited for the other to do something.
Harry slowly took a necklace out of his pocket, copper wire shaped like a fish on a thin chain. He held it out for Zach to see; it swung, slowly. "If you want to leave," he said, and paused. "If you want to leave, you can." He held out the necklace. "It's a portkey back to Hogsmeade. If you want to leave, then go."
Zach looked woozily up from the ground. His outstretched hands were sinking into the rotting leaves.
"If you want to leave then go," Harry repeated patiently. "But I've enjoyed having you along. I don't want to see you go. It's your decision, Zach, but I never did anything intentionally to hurt you."
"If you want to leave..." Neville echoed quietly.
"Mrs. Smith and all the little Smiths might not be so happy you're home empty-handed," Terry said without turning around.
Zach half-sneered. "There are no little fucking Smiths, jerkoff. And Mrs. Smith is a cunt. Screw this. I'm staying. Just give me - give me a few minutes to catch my breath, okay?"
"I don't think he can take it, Harry," Terry said softly, later. "I think he'll be a liability. Why didn't you just tell him to go?"
Harry stared at him silently; his eyes said this is not about you.
6.
The unicorn was still warm when they found it. Neville dropped to his knees and dipped his fingers in the few remaining puddles of silver blood. "If I could get this back to St. Mungos..." he said distantly.
The hooves were sawn off, the heart was taken, the horn was razed. Ron didn't have the stomach to peel back the eyelids to check if Malfoy had taken the eyes; they were a delicacy, he'd heard. The two edges of the wound (the gash, the chasm) still struggled feebly to meet each other. "Crime," Neville whispered. "It's a crime."
Harry pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, then spoke with an odd sort of finality. "He's nearby."
They had gone a kilometer, maybe two, when Neville started to slow down, a purplish hue to his face. Ron thought it was maybe just delayed rage at the unicorn until he stumbled and fell to the ground, unconscious. Harry rushed to his side.
"Fuck," he hissed, and frantically searched Neville's body until he found them: pinprick-sized welts on his hands, thorn-holes. The infection was spreading up his arms. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he chanted as he hurried through the hidden pockets in his cloak for the medicine kit, then squeezed antiseptic potion out of its tube.
"We should go back," Ron said with a note of hysteria. "He needs help. He could die. I'm taking him back."
"We'll wait. If his fever doesn't go down by nightfall, I'll take him home." Harry stared wildly at him for a second, then flipped open his map.
Terry grabbed the flask from Ron's hand and took a swallow. "I don't like this. I don't trust him anymore. I think this is just another one of his half-brained suicide missions."
"So what if it is?" Ron looked up at him, unblinking. "None of us have much to go home to." He went back to the wood he was splitting cleanly down the middle with a charmed knife, flat and even. Neville had grabbed his arm in a rare moment of lucidity and begged him for a coffin, a proper burial: Ron had blinked back tears and said hey, man, what for?. But, hell, it gave him something to do, and so he sat holding nails between his teeth and hammering still-living wood together.
Zach strolled around the encampment in a circle. "Hey Harry."
They'd all learned to ignore him by now, but that didn't stop him at all. He smiled falsely and hooked his thumbs into his pockets. "I'm thinking of you, Harry."
That's nice, Harry mumbled automatically.
"I'm thinking of you safe and dead, sunk beneath the ground. You're on borrowed time, Harry, borrowed time with high interest. Count the seconds. I'm thinking about your next step, Harry, and the step after that. You're dead already, Harry Potter, count them. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three-"
7.
They woke up one morning and found that the sun had not risen. Plants lining their camp had crept away; the clearing was much wider now. Neville shook the last few remaining hallucinations from his brain.Harry sat for twenty minutes and watched the needle on his compass spin around. Somewhere something howled in pain.
"That way," Harry said, and pointed vaguely west. They walked.
Neville had gratefully taken the coffin and brightly told Ron that it was brilliant, really, he'd use it to carry his things.Ron hummed along to the bump-bump-bump of it hitting the rocks and roots lining their makeshift path. Johnny went to work in a diamond mine, came home one evening said 'I'm going blind. They make me cut the light from the diamond walls, bagging all the sparkle without any pause, so Foreman Stan can read at night, yeah so Foreman Stan can read all right.'
The thumping stopped. Ron looked around. "What is it?"
"I hear it too," Harry said. "Shh."
From the left came a thrashing sound, like wheat stalks snapping against each other. The hairs on Ron's wrists pricked up; his fingers tensed.
Terry dug in his jacket pocket for his wand. "It's coming closer."
Something swept down the hill towards them, trees breaking and plants flattening in its wake. Maybe it was just wind, a tornado, but Ron had never seen a tornado do that.
"It's here," Terry whispered, then he screamed as it picked him up and threw him against a tree, a giant Redwood that looked like it was made from stone, and all Ron could think was there are no Redwoods in England. The sound of back meeting wood was muffled and wet, like the thud his fist had made against Blaise Zabini's throat, or the crunch of his boots on the field of dead locusts. He squeezed his eyes shut and took three steps back, promised himself he would not cry and not throw up, then watched Harry Potter cast the Killing Curse at every moving thing he saw.
Neville was huddled down next to him, sobbing. Ron reached out hesitantly, paused with his hand an inch from Neville's shoulder, then awkwardly laid his palm down, feeling bones shudder under his skin. The snap of Terry's spine was still in his ears. "Shh, shh, it's over." Neville stood up slowly, shook Ron off his back.
"Thank you for not saying 'everything will be okay'. Because it's not, you know." He wiped his eyes ineffectively. "Everything sucks, and everything will continue to suck, and for Merlin's sake what are we going to do about Terry?"
Ron turned away and looked at the body, bile rising in his throat. "We could use the coffin. After all, that's what it's for."
But no, Neville explained with a shaky calm that didn't reach his eyes: it was storage space, and now they had more supplies to carry, and none of them were good enough at moving charms to do without it. Ron wasn't convinced, but he wasn't about to argue. If Neville wanted to drag the thing, then fine, and Ron would dig the grave. The ground was soft. Ron thought maybe Neville had become accustomed to the callouses on his palms where the rope had rubbed through skin.
"Do we have a shovel?" Ron asked as his cigarette burned down to his lips. "Or do I have to cast a digging spell or something? Is there even a digging spell?"
"There's a spell for everything, Ronnie my boy, a spell for digging graves and building men, spells for capturing the sun and moon. There's a spell to brush your teeth and a spell to - you're not listening-"
Ron had found a spade in Terry's bag and was digging, bit by bit. "I never listen, Zach." Spade down, handle fitted to his palm, pressure on an angle: blade cutting the earth cleanly, then pulling it apart and lifting it up, inch by inch.
8.
He'd missed.
He'd fucking missed.
"I didn't mean it," Zach said thickly. "I was aiming for - "
"Yeah, fuck, I know what you were aiming for."
It had started snowing again, slanting against the still-moving ground. He stood unmoving as it gathered on his shoulders. Neville was already turning grey. Ron blinked the snowflakes off his eyelashes.
"It's coming again," Harry shouted over to him. "Leave him, we need to go."
No, Ron thought, then said it aloud. "No, Harry, I don't think so. No. I'm not leaving him. No, no, fuck you, okay? I'm not leaving him here, not here, fuck. What the hell is - " His voice died in his throat. He looked frantically around him, heart pounding. "Harry, man, Harry - what the fucking hell is wrong with you? Why are you doing this? Malfoy's not worth this, Harry. Let him go. He doesn't deserve this. Neville - Neville's - fucking look at him, Harry. Is Malfoy worth this?"
Harry was still; through the snow, Ron could barely see his face. "Malfoy is the last living Death Eater on this earth, Ron. Malfoy is evil. As long as he lives, Voldemort lives. I can't sleep at night, Ron, do you know that? I take pills to knock myself out, but I never really sleep. Because somewhere out there, Malfoy is planning his return. And he will return, if he gets the chance. He will do everything he can to tear us down. And I will do everything I can to stop him. No, no, don't say anything, I'm not done. Neville wanted to be here. Terry wanted to be here. You wanted to be here, you still want to be here, because you don't seem to be running away. All of you could have left at any time, you know that. They knew that. So don't fucking blame me, Ron, this isn't my fault. I did everything I could, okay?"
"Yeah, you did everything," Ron said. "You're real big on doing everything, aren't you."
9.
Zach disappeared on the 24th day, leaving his bags and a trail of footprints leading into a thicket of snapper plants. Ron said a quick prayer for his safety, and then another prayer deeper down in the quiet part of him for his painless death. Zach would never make it out, not really. Didn't have a chance in the world.
They walked; Ron snapped his boots down on the dirt with military precision, Harry scuffled along ahead of him, like a shark tasting blood.
"Harry. C'mon Harry, slow down."
He'd abandoned most of his things two or three hours back, carrying his photographs and food in the coffin. The rope was wrapped around his arms tightly, and the wood against the rocks made a steady sound, bump-bump-bump. He hummed along.
He had stood desolately clutching the matching necklace while Harry portkey'd back with Neville's body, the metal freezing his unprotected hands. Harry hadn't spoken to him since.
"Harry, please."
Harry broke into a jog, then a run: Malfoy was just ahead of them., fleeing. Ron laughed. This was it. He almost hadn't expected it. It almost seemed like a joke.
Finally, Ron thought as he shook his wand into his palm and took aim at the streamers of blonde hair, then wait a sec -
"Wait, Harry, it could be a -"
Trap, his mind finished inanely as the ground in front of him exploded. Blood rushed from the earth. He didn't think as he felt his feet leave the ground, then his head pushed under the flood. Instinctively, he pulled himself up the rope, agonizingly slow. He clung to the coffin and watched the green glow of Avada Kedavra envelop Harry, then watched him go down. He didn't think anything at all.
The next thing his body knew was solid ground. His face half-buried, he opened one eye and saw: Hogwarts. He was out. A laugh scratched at his tongue, and he choked convulsively.
Somewhere above him a voice said are you all right, sonny? He turned over wearily, spat out the muddy water that clogged his throat. His hands scrabbled for a hold in the slippery grass; they found it, and he pushed himself up slowly, looked blearily into the sunlight.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
- E.E. Cummings
--------------------------
A/N: Based on Melville's oft-referenced but rarely read novel Moby Dick. Pick out the character parallels and you get a nickle.