The Platonic, Sane Level -Part Two-
In October, Hermione brought pint-sized pumpkins instead of flowers to Grimmauld and placed them at every window and flat surface. She was about to magic them to sing, but Harry intervened, so instead Hermione settled for other charms. Most of the pumpkins just made silly faces as you walked by them. One puked its seeds over its table and then slurped it all back up.
It was at this pumpkin that Ron found Neville's Pygmy Owl, pecking at the seeds while the gourd watched with a horror-stricken expression. Neville had hand-raised the bird, and it showed.
Ron approached the owl, calling for it to drop its message. The bird hooted in indignation, wheeling away on bristling wings and toppling the pumpkin to the floor where it shattered. It wildly circled the house and emptied its bowels on a recliner. An offended portrait Siren lobbed her krater at it, but naturally, the vessel did not make it outside the painting. The krater and its contents splattered against the canvas surface, sending fragments into the panicked pixie's face. Ron yelled and pelted the bird with several pieces of bacon. Nothing worked. The chimeras carved in the moldings started getting restless. At a loss, Ron grabbed Harry’s Firebolt. Raising the broom over his head, he chased the insolent owl with broad, sweeping strokes. It dove through the open window and flew screeching into the overcast sky.
He found Neville's letter, dropped during the melee, behind the telly and read: "Been a long time since we've been to the pub. Would you like to meet up?"
It had been awhile-months. They hadn't gotten together since before the Anniversary.
A week went by before schedules could be aligned, but they finally met at their favorite pub. Neville walked in puffing on a cigar. Some ash trickled onto his newly-grown goatee. He had a fedora pulled low over his brow, and the differences didn't stop at the facial accessories. Always a little chubby, Neville's baby fat had melted away, carving stark cheekbones and a prominent chin. Now, all the fat seemed to flow to his bloated stomach.
As he walking in, he compulsively tugged at the bottom of his shirt trying to make his belly look flatter, his eyes darting around the crowd like he expected everyone to be gawking at his pregnant middle.
His chair scraped loudly against the floor when he pulled it out, and he glanced around the pub again, scanning for glares.
"You look like a gangster with that cigar," Harry said. "All you is need is a leather trench coat."
Ron grinned gratefully. Watching Neville at his awkwardest was painful. He remembered that from school. Harry had sensed Neville's discomfort like Ron had. Unlike Ron, he knew how to redirect Neville's attention.
His elbows held out, Neville studied the sleeves of his shirt and tried to imagine leather covering them.
"Aren't gangsters murderous, though?" he asked. "I don't think I can do that."
It was everyone's favorite pastime to watch TV post-war. Even Neville had gotten in on the action.
"They are, but in the Muggle world, they're considered..." Harry winced. "Cool, in a way."
Neville quizzically blinked.
Harry scratched at his neck. "Er."
Ron didn't want the conversation to continue along the vein of "cool murderers," so he cleared his throat. "How's Hannah been doing?"
Though Neville shared a flat with Hannah Abbot, she never joined him when he met them. That had been fine in the beginning. Ron had chucked it up to Neville wanting some male-bonding. Still, Ron wondered why he never brought her around. He'd only seen once her while she'd been dating Neville, and that was at the Ministry's anniversary gala. They exchanged brief words, she never met his eyes once, and Ron thought that she must have grown frigid since Hogwarts.
"Hannah's getting stuffy about my partying," Neville said. The he burped, and a breeze of Firewhiskey passed over the table. His head listed toward the right and his right eyelid slid halfway closed. His face stayed crooked for the rest of the night.
"Started a little early?" Harry asked lightly. Under the airy tone Ron heard the agitation.
Neville shrugged and tore the corners off his napkin.
Two songs played over the speakers while the three friends looked away from each other and people-watched. Neville was staring at a cluster of underage teenagers who had obviously snuck in. He stared with a hungry, grieving look.
The acoustics were bad in this room. All Ron could hear were the bass tones over the din of voices. Harry yawned and leaned back, his arms crossed over his chest. Ron nudged his knee under the table and dipped his head, trying to catch his friend's eye. Harry seemed far away mentally, and he wanted to understand what was going on his head. Harry wouldn't make eye contact. The mood at the table shifted and became strained.
Harry could have that effect. When his mood shifted for the worse, the people around him became anxious. His moods once indicated whether Voldemort was on the attack. People learned to be on alert when he was upset.
Ron felt his carefree evening at the pub slipping. He tried another topic of conversation. "Tell Neville what you've been up to these past few months, Harry."
Harry picked at a hangnail. "Nothing really."
"Oh, come on," Ron pressed, feeling himself grow frustrated. "Harry’s been seeing someone." He wiggled his eyebrows at Neville. "He's barely around the house anymore."
"Is that right?"
Harry shook his head. "He's got bad information."
"It's what Hermione thinks." And Ron laughed, high and thin. Hermione did think Harry was dating someone, and she was constantly pumping him for information he didn't have about it. "She has the best information."
"Hermione is not the best person to get information about me," Harry mumbled, irritation now plain in his voice.
"Well it’s not like you'd ever give me a straight answer," Ron snapped.
The two met each other's eyes then.
A waitress approached the table, opened her mouth to get their attention and was called away before she could get their orders.
Ron reckoned that Harry had the perfect eyes for face-offs. They were too light to look at. Like, creepy light. Like the color of diluted green tea. Mum always said not to stare at creepy things, so Ron didn't feel right about looking at them.
As the seconds dragged, a sneer crept like an oil spill over Harry's face.
"Merlin, you two are tetchy today. It's like watching Hannah and me fight..." Neville said.
His words choked off, ending in a wet, burbling sound.
The two glanced at him for the first time in several minutes. Neville's face was draining of color. His head jerked forward as his lips slammed tight, like he was trying to keep in a frog leaping up his throat.
Then Neville sicked up over table.
He was a noisy vomiter. Ron thought he could hear the stomach lining ripping from Neville's insides.
Harry leaped up and went to hold Neville's shoulders. The man was retching so hard he was throwing his whole upper body into it, bobbing toward the table with each wave of sickness, his chin dipping so low that it almost touched the mess.
On impulse, Ron banished it.
The Muggle teenagers that Neville had people-watched yelled at the display of magic.
That firmly shot down any chance of a relaxing evening. Obliviators had to be called to the scene, and the Evening Prophet ran with a bold font headline about the Boy-Who-Drinks.
"I'm sorry about that," Ron told Harry after they Apparated into his room.
Harry scowled as he stomped around his chesterfield, opening and slamming drawers. "Never thought it'd happen to Neville, you know?"
Ron was about to respond, but Harry started to undress. He tugged off his pub trousers, now splattered and stinking from Neville's episode. There was no boxers underneath.
Harry was not an exhibitionist. He was always the shy one in the dorm, changing behind corners with his back turned. "Can face You-Know-Who but can't show us your pecker," Seamus had said.
And now.
Now.
There were dimples in his arse cheeks. A sparse V of hair covered the base of his spine.
Mum said wizards who have hair there were born with demon tails that got chopped off at birth.
When Harry zipped up, his shoulder blades squeezed together, making the muscles in his back hop. Ron wanted to press two hands into Harry's arsecheeks and push him against the chest of drawers so hard the brass knobs left red marks on stomach.
"-sorry again about the Prophet," Ron murmured before Apparating to the Leaky Cauldron.
*___*___*___*
Two hours later he stumbled into Hermione's flat well and truly pissed. He didn't even attempt the coordination charm. It could damage his inner ear, and he was too far gone to attempt it. He did manage a few others, though. The breath charm coated his mouth with a taste like nutmeg, and the speech charm gave him a Polish accent. A still-slurring Polish accent.
He collapsed onto the couch next to her, bracing himself with her thigh. His head bounced against the Cavendish headboard as he sank into the thin antique cushions, heavily scarred now by Crookshanks' claws. Sometimes he fancied that an Iron Maiden would be more comfortable than the old sofa. Ron could only manage ten minutes at a stretch on it, but Hermione refused to give it up. It had been her great grandmother's, who had once entertained Churchill's Cabinet Ministers on the spine-splintering piece.
Not that Ron had a clear idea of who Churchill was.
"Why don't you ever cast the sobriety charm?" she snapped at him, drizzling his cheek with spittle. Her legs were tense as girders.
He slid his hand off her thigh.
"I don't see why you bother with all those other charms. Is staying pissed that important, or do you do it because you like to think you're fooling me?"
Ron watched as red blotches broke out over Hermione's face. Her brows furrowed at stark, 45 degrees angles sliding in toward an indignantly scrunched nose. Blimey, she was angry.
"I... I didn't realize you knew about the other ones?"
Her eyes closed headachingly tight, and she smoothed her hand over the cover of the book she had been reading, taking a bracing breath.
Ron eyed the book. The title was The Ethics of Transfiguring and Conjuring Animals: Are They Sentient or Mere Magical Manifestations? A Muggleborn's book. No one born into the wizarding world would even consider the dilemma.
.".. so of course you're using a breath charm," she was saying.
He blinked up at her and cursed himself for missing the beginning of that sentence. He usually lagged behind her in their arguments-there'd be Hermione, yelling and incensed by the thrill of debate, then Ron, yelling and incensed because he was gutcrunchingly angry and couldn't admit that he didn't know why. He needed to stay sharp.
"...and you come home talking in stilted sentences like an automated answer phone. That's obviously a speech charm, and a poor one at-"
"-What's an automated answer phone?"
"It's a device that answers-never mind."
"No-tell me. The more I know about Muggle stuff, the easier it is to watch the telly-"
"To hell with the telly!" She lurched off the sofa, the book in her lap sent rolling onto the floor. Now she stood before him, her hip tilted at an unnatural, jaunty angle that made her stomach look wider, her fists balled at her waist and squeezing up her belly fat. Her jaw jutted in defiance, the bottom row of teeth gleaming above her trembling lip.
He sighed. "So you're angry about the charms-"
"Yes," she said slowly, veins of ice cracking in her tone. "I am very, astronomically angry about the charms-"
"But you've known about them, and you never said anything. So why hold it against-?"
"I told you I didn't want to have sex while you were inebriated, and then you just- just decided to lie and conceal it with those charms! Doesn't that make you feel bad at all? That you were taking your girlfriend to bed under false pretenses, and that she wouldn't want to sleep with you if she knew the truth-"
"But you did know-"
"That's not the point, Ron!"
Hermione continued to thunder, but Ron had faded out. Watching her, her little pebble teeth twisting around nasty words, he experienced déjà vu. Not déjà vu in that he'd had this same fight before, but a déjà vu in feeling. He's felt this way before-amused, amazed, vaguely horrorstricken. It was years ago, when the brain attacked him at the Department of Mysteries. Only now it's Hermione's brain attacking him.
Ron threw up his hands. "I really don't feel like listening to you yowl all night. It's making my hangover come early."
"I hope you splinch yourself," was the last thing he heard before he Disapparated.
He appeared in Grimmauld's kitchen, fancying a snack of pickled herring and one more beer before he went to bed. The first thing he noticed was the uncorked chardonnay on the table. Harry hated chardonnay, said it gave him a headache before it got him pissed. Next to the empty bottle was a pheasant carcass and a plate of prawn tails. The Black candle ware had been polished and laid out.
Ron pinched the flames out before charging up the stairs.
Why he's charging up the stairs, Ron can't say. His room was up there, so while heading upstairs was reasonable enough, charging up was not. Charging indicated that he planned to find Harry and his date, and he intended to find them now. Charging meant that he was angry.
As the steps groaned under his heavy, adamant steps, Ron told himself that he was being a tit. When he reached the top, he was going to turn around and walk slowly down in a private walk of shame. Then he was going to make himself walk back up the stairs at a reasonable pace as punishment for rushing up like a-
Ron heard yelling.
"For fuck's sake, please!"
For a moment, he was struck by how desperate Harry sounded. His voice squeaked like a creaky wheel. Ron has seen Harry through some desperate exploits, and he's never sounded so... frenzied. Not when they were breaking into Gringotts or Death Eaters were spilling from the Room of Requirement or handfuls of Harrys were being shot out of the sky...
There was a whack. It landed with a beefy clap. It struck flesh.
Harry groaned. The groan started low and ascended pitch like a tea kettle.
Ron rushed the door and shook the knob. Found that it was locked. A jolt of magic coursed out of Ron's wand. His senses were shredded by fear-Merlin knew if he used an Alohomora or blew it off its hinges, but he fucking opened it.
And then he nearly retched over his shoes.
In place of Harry’s nightstand was a steel X-frame as tall as Ron. Harry was strapped to it -naked, his meaty arse wiggling- with leather restraints around his hands and ankles. Red slashes scored his back and buttocks.
Blaise Zabini turned to him with the whip in his hand and sneered. "Naturally, this would be how we'd meet again," he sniffed.
Ron cursed acid into his ears. They sizzled and dissolved into two globs of mottled flesh at his jaw line, and Zabini crumbled to the ground, his hands hovering besides them, wanting to clutch his head but not daring to.
Harry started shouting curses and twisting in his binds. Dumbfounded and fascinated, Ron watched his body pitch against the chains.
It's all too incredible, too ridiculous. Ron slid into a crouch, hugging his knees, and laughed his arse off.
Harry would never do this, he told himself. Harry would never do this.
*___*___*___*
Harry and Zabini spent hours at St. Mungo’s.
There's nothing good on the telly at this hour, but he sat in his recliner anyway. Ron tried to undo the speech charm and failed. He repeated "Harry's a woofter" to himself, and it's still in that crap Polish accent. His teeth ground until his head pulsed with a migraine. The images from Harry’s bedroom kept blinking into his brain.
Embarrassment churned his innards like a big bad meal he was force fed at wand point. He felt too disgusted and too betrayed and too bone-deep mortified. Parts of Ron were crumbling inside. If he tried to sit up, his shoulders would crumple inward because there was nothing inside his hollowed torso. He wondered if he made a Horcrux while blacked out in a pissed stupor. Maybe that's why he felt so broken-up.
Eventually, he admitted it. He mumbled to himself, "Fuck, am I a poufter?" and felt lighter.
Then he imagined he heard the chimney jingle with someone flooing in, and he started so bad that he nearly retched again. He realized that he couldn't face Harry.
Not after hexing his lover.
Or abuser.
Or victim-solicited rapist-whatever the hells Blaise was.
*___*___*___*
He left the house, but he didn't go far. He slept in the garden dew that night.
In the morning he went to Gringotts and withdrew all his meager savings, most of which were given by the grateful after the war. At the bank he sent an owl to the Burrow saying that he was going away for a few days but not to worry. Then he changed the money over to pounds and checked into a Muggle hotel six blocks away from the Leaky Cauldron. His savings paid for six days.
If he went to sleep, he dreamt about gay fucking. Blaise Zabini and he appeared in bed together. Ron protested at first. Then he heard some say, "Shut up, Ron." Harry then appeared in a chair next to the bed, his hands clasped and cradling a crossed knee. Then Blaise fucked Ron, and it was uncomfortable and nerve-wracking. Ron begged Harry to switch with Blaise. The pressure of a cock squeezing inside him was too much. Ron felt like his arse was being stuffed with cotton, and he wanted to yell at Zabini to stop stuffing him with cotton because all the fabric was going to mangle his digestive tract. The dream recurred with minor variations every night during th hotel stay. Disgusting.
Every so often, he would try out his homosexuality, saying things like, "I'm Ronald Weasley, and I like men-but I can still kill a werewolf," to himself.
One time, he went outside for fresh air. A middle-aged Muggle woman was walking two male bull dogs in the car park. When she stopped to take a call on her cell, one dog started sniffing at the other. Soon it was mounted and thrusting into its doggy mate, and honestly, Ron had seen dogs going at it hundreds of times, so why was he watching like it was a premiere nature program on the WWN?
He stared at the top dog's arsehole. He thought, “Look at that hole! Poufters put their dick in that?”
It was so tiny. It was an arsehole.
The owner caught him watching and quickly trotted her dogs away, casting a worried glance over her shoulder.
Ron's hair became greasy. Muggle shower water smelt funny so he didn't want to take a bath.
When his money ran out, he spelled himself clean and decided it was time to face his girlfriend.
*___*___*___*
The conversation with Hermione went around and around like this for the longest time:
"Why would you spend a week in a Muggle hotel?! Please, let me understand what you are going through!"
"I'm not going through anything!" he lied. "I... was being stupid."
"Are being stupid. You are being stupid. Not past tense. What made you leave?"
"Nothing made me leave..."
The lies kept pouring from Ron's mouth. He was too tired to admit the truth. Like a diamond pick to the skull, he suddenly realized he'd been tired and lying to her for a long time. Every time they shagged he lied. Until this moment, he didn't realize, wasn't sure, if being gay meant that he had to break up with his girlfriend. To an outside observer, it would be natural to conclude that being gay meant he wouldn't date women. Those natural pieces hadn't come together in his head.
This was his Hermione, a fact of life since he was eleven.
We're breaking up, Ron realized.
The thought of breaking up exhausted him further. For a moment, he wondered if he could just stop coming around to her flat all the time. Taper off their interaction until they stopped seeing each other all together.
But this was his Hermione, and she's owed some honesty. At least this one time.
He realized he's going to cry, and he hasn't done that since he heard her screaming under the Cruciatis. The memory shook him, and he felt the tears roll down his cheeks. He dipped his head against his shoulder to wipe them off on his shirt, and realized that when his face was down at that angle, pressed against his chest, he wouldn't have to watch her face while he broke the news.
When he told her he was gay, she was in denial at first. Then she screamed, "How long did you know?" Then she broke up with him. She hexed him with a skin disease that swelled his scrotum with cherry red pustules. Ron buckled to his knees. His hands scrambled with his zipper, and he pulled his jeans down, his genitalia out. His back was too her, his freckled rear wiggling at Hermione.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh..." He cast a Numbing Charm on his crotch. ."...Much better."
Hermione was laughing so hard she started hiccoughing. He heard her tossing on the couch, and he could picture it: her curled up and fetal, rolling around hysterically with her face twisted in the rictus of laughter. She became a very exuberant laugher after the war-as though some part of her were saying, Phew, now we can let out the hilarity! A manic edge tinged her chuckles now.
"Here, I think I know I the counter curse..." she sputtered between giggles.
After he pushed himself back to his feet, he waddled, bowlegged and ginger like a saddlesore cowboy, toward a random wall space hoping he could bash his head against it.
"Don't bother, 'mione," he whimpered. "Let it run its course. I deserve it."
And he meant that. He could nurse a magical STD for a few days. It might even assuage his guilt.
She clucked her tongue. "Don't be a martyr. It doesn't suit you."
When she lifted it, he slumped against the curtains covering her balcony sliding glass door. A cobweb tangled in his hair. He felt the spider tiptoe over the top of his ear. With a shriek, he kicked at the curtains and stumbled from the glass.
Hermione watched him flail with a hint of a fond smile. Tears edged her eyes.
For a minute he brainstormed for words that would make her feel better.
"G'bye. Sorry," he said after an empty silence.
Part Three