Fic: Winter Chills
Author: Lorien_Eve
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Rating: PG
Summary: This is the sequel to Summer Storms and Fall Leaves.
Warning: Mention of character death.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry, Ron, and everything else in the Potterverse. I only own this story.
Ron wakes up to one of those in-between days. The temperature isn’t cold enough to be classified as winter, but the frost clots in a heavy crust and there’s a sharp chill in the breeze that an autumn sun can’t chase away. Ron’s bare toes are numbed by restless sleep and tossed covers. He is awakened by the coolness of a grey morning following a short night of clear, black, starry skies.
“Ron, dear,” comes his mother’s voice, “it’s half past nine. You’re going to be late.”
That’s the whole idea, he thinks. To be late. To not show. Today isn’t a day for him, anyway.
The pillow next to his is cold and white, a snowy landscape painted in oils on canvas. The snow-capped cotton ridges collapse under the brush of his fingers like rockslides excited by an avalanche. Sides of the mountains fall, chunks of earth that were sedimentary are suddenly alive with movement. A crashing, roaring sound, and then all is quiet.
Ron can feel his own breath, the expanse of oxygen swirling in his lungs. He thinks he could see it, too, the proof of his exhalation made visible by the crisp coldness, if he only opened his eyes to look. But darkness, like ignorance, is bliss and he mutely repeats Nox, Nox, Nox.
“Ron, dear.” It’s his mother’s voice again, closer now. A soft rapping on his bedroom door confirms his suspicions.
Mrs. Weasley opens the door before Ron has time to answer, and even though he wouldn’t have answered even if he’d had the time, he wishes she would’ve given him the chance anyway. He thinks he deserves that right, a little courtesy, a seconds’ more privacy, considering all things.
“We’re Flooing out in half an hour,” she says. A command issued with gentleness and pity.
“I’m not going, Mum,” Ron says, and he blindly skims his fingers over the empty pillow again, bringing summits down to the base.
Mrs. Weasley tenses, prepares for battle. Ron can feel it, that invisible coil of dread pulling up from his stomach until it springs in his head, leaving him with only a headache and no end to the argument. But he prepares for it regardless, because harder battles have been fought, and the chances of casualties in this one are much smaller.
“You most certainly are going,” she says, and Ron can picture her standing there, one foot pointed outward, hands on her broad hips like handles on a teapot.
“No, I’m not,” he says again, and he hopes she hears him this time because he doesn’t think he can say it anymore.
“Ronald Weasley,” her voice has lost most of its gentleness now, sounding more like a sergeant barking an order to a disobedient private, “you will go today. You will get up out of that bed just like the rest of us, and you will attend. You owe him that much. You owe it to Har-”
Ron’s eyes fly open, his long ginger lashes rising like watch fires. “Don’t!”
He almost shouts it until he realizes that his mum isn’t the person he’s angry with. He closes his eyes again, regains his passive detachment. “Don’t say it, Mum.”
“Well, it’s true,” Mrs. Weasley insists. She’s speaking in softer tones now, almost to the point of offering an apology without actually having to say the word ‘sorry.’
Time passes, and though Ron has no sense of it, he reckons it must only be minutes. If it were any longer, his mum would be late and today isn’t a day for being late. If it were any shorter, she would be betraying her own stubbornness that she so generously passed on to him at birth.
With the appropriate lapse in time, Mrs. Weasley turns and leaves the room. Ron doesn’t watch her, but he hears her. Slick soles of brand-new shoes, too shiny to be worn for simple everyday occasions, slip across his grey-boarded floor like skates over a frozen pond.
Ron has won the battle if for no other reason than he just refuses to fight. Lay your weapons down at the feet of the enemy and walk away.
****
Harry’s funeral is held at exactly 11 o’clock that morning. Cornelius Fudge makes sure of that. Can’t have an entire secret society turning out for a celebration and not delivering. Would be bad publicity, and certainly wouldn’t improve credibility. Elections are in six months, and things went bad enough during his first appointment as Minister. But now He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named can be named freely, and Mr. Fudge intends on flaunting the proof of it.
Thousands of witches and wizards Apparate at safe intervals along dusty hidden roadways and behind trees draped with moss. Electricity is in the air, sparking like a faulty potion, the static offspring of excitement and freedom. Today is a milestone, a history lesson that will be taught at Hogwarts, and even at Durmstrang. Too long had the magical world been held captive, living the cautious lives of prisoners, watching for that ever-evasive chance of escape. That time came at last, in the unlikely form of a skinny, dark-haired boy, who will forever be their symbol of peace and liberation.
Today’s fashions are robes of powder blue, lemon yellow, shamrock green, and sunset orange; garb much too cheerful for a traditionally black affair. Some witches wave banners, personal declarations flying proudly on wooden staffs. Some wizards carry children on their shoulders, piggyback rides into a brighter future where wars and tyrants only exist in stories told by the elderly.
Then the singing begins, the shameless rejoicing of voices, hymns and hands lifted up to the heavens in a swaying tribal ritual.
It’s almost like the Quidditch World Cup, even down to the squealing rosettes and Omnioculars.
****
Ron has his own funeral for Harry. It’s the very least he can do, he thinks. His world is free now, and wasn’t that Harry’s goal all along? Freedom for those left behind in a world that seems surprisingly unprepared for peaceful living. But prepared or not, Ron owes Harry. Harry gave his life, after all, and shouldn’t that count for something? So Ron has a memorial service, alone, in his room, with the sparrows trilling in the barren branches outside.
The eulogy is short and wordless. Ron discovers he isn’t able to put a voice to that dull ache in his chest. There’s emptiness and loneliness and hopelessness, and a million other words for sorrow. But they all require feeling something, and Ron is feeling nothing right now. His mouth goes dry and his throat tightens, and in the end, he decides that customs don’t matter anyway. Harry isn’t around to hear them, and besides, he knew Ron was never good with words.
Ron doesn’t bury Harry. Burials are for placing bodies in the ground, and Ron doesn’t have a body. There wasn’t enough left to make one, just ashes sprinkled over sticky mud and dead black grass. Ron was there, so he knows. He remembers trying to scoop the dust up in his hands, only to have it fall through his fingers. Then Dumbledore showed up, too little too late, and with that obscure gleam in his eye, told Ron it was all over. But Ron already knew that. The evidence was a dingy film on his hands and a grey powder at his feet.
Ron takes Harry’s things out into the garden. Then he burns them. He lights them up, watches the pale beginnings of a fire build and build until the flames crackle in the crisp air, then roar and race skyward. Harry’s clothes catch first and send up heavy clouds of black smoke, the byproducts of fabric and thread and a life unfinished. The pictures of his mum and dad start purple and kindle to orange, then curl at the edges until they’re charbroiled and blackened. Harry’s broom is the last to ignite, the treated wooden handle living up to its reputation by refusing defeat even in the roughest conditions. But in the end, the fire licks up the shaft and devours it with immeasurable heat. The cinders scatter, driven by a north wind. It’s a waste, Ron thinks, because really, it was a fine broom.
For the first time in his life, Ron tries to remember everything he’s ever known about the Dark Arts. There might be something in the forbidden black magic he could use. He’s heard of brining people back to life, and whether or not it can actually be done, he thinks it’s worth a shot. He’d need Hermione’s help, of course, but she’d probably do it. For Harry.
But then Ron decides against it. Harry could’ve saved himself if he’d wanted to. He could’ve refused to fight. He could’ve stayed at the Burrow, stayed with Ron. But Harry didn’t choose that. He left the Burrow, and he left Ron, and he went out to fight for a world that didn’t deserve the sacrifice.
****
The celebrations have quelled now, and people are resuming their lives, getting back to the mundane task of living. Ron’s father has returned to work after being off, with pay, and Ginny, who was given time off from school for the event, has returned to Hogwarts.
Except for his mum, the house is empty, and Ron likes it that way. He missed the noise before, but now it reminds him of different times, when Harry was still around. He misses the sounds Harry used to make, filling the drafty corners of the old house with everyday clatter, the unexceptional kind you only notice once it’s gone.
Those sounds have vacated the house, and maybe that’s why Ron notices the covert sound of someone suddenly appearing downstairs, the unmistakable transformation of thin air into a human body.
A few hushed voices later, and there’s a knock at his door, a quick, persistent tapping. But Ron doesn’t answer or budge from his position on the bed. Few things are worth getting up and getting dressed for these days, at least in Ron’s life. He’s been in the same clothes for five days and has patches of scruffy red whiskers on his cheeks. But no one is around to see or comment on his careless hygiene, and that suits him just fine.
“Ron?”
It’s a female voice, but it isn’t his mum. It’s Hermione, coming to cheer him up, no doubt, to tell him that everything will be all right, not to worry, that Harry’s in a better place now. But Harry doesn’t need to be in a better place. He just needs to be here, with Ron.
“What?” comes Ron’s answer, and he isn’t the least bit sorry about his clipped, short tone.
The door hinges squeak, rust against rust, signs of age and overuse. Ron folds his arm over his eyes. Harry’s the only one he wants to see, and he knows that wanting and wishing are as different from facts as life is from death.
“You aren’t busy, are you?” Hermione asks.
Ron would laugh at the irony and uselessness of the question if laughter didn’t seem so out of place in his throat. “No,” he says.
Hermione walks across the room, quiet as a mouse, and sits down next to him. The high winter sun makes long shadows through the windowpanes, throwing them on the bed in rectangles.
“You weren’t at the funeral,” she states. Hermione was never one for preamble, and even after all that’s happened, Ron is surprised at how little she’s changed since school.
“No, I wasn’t,” Ron agrees. He had his own funeral for Harry, complete with a bonfire and fireworks. But he doesn’t bother telling this to Hermione. She would think he was out of sorts, and chastise him for not using safety precautions.
“You should’ve been there,” she says, showing that assertiveness that Ron could never quite maintain, though he always wanted to.
“Why?” he asks. “So that I could see the spectacle? So that I could see Fudge gloating and Dumbledore taking credit for everything? No thanks, Hermione, I’ve seen enough.”
Hermione sets her jaw and narrows her eyes. Ron’s been on the receiving end of this too many times. It’s the countdown to the explosion. He covers his face, knowing that his arms will take the full brunt.
“It has nothing to do with Fudge or Dumbledore!” she screams. “Or even the other half a million people who showed up!” She pounds her fist on the bed for emphasis. “It’s about your disrespect and your disregard for Har-”
“Don’t talk to me about him!” Ron yells, showing more emotion than he ever intended. “What do you know? You weren’t there, you didn’t see him! You didn’t see what was left of him after...”
Ron trails off, leaves the words dangling between them like fish on hooks. He remembers what he saw, even remembers the overripe smell of charred flesh and the bitter taste of vomit in his mouth. But putting words to it only makes it more real, and it’s real enough to him already.
“I loved him, too, Ron,” Hermione says, softer now, but no less insistent. “We all loved him.”
“Not like I did.”
“Come on, Ron,” Hermione says, “I know he was your best friend, but he was mine, too.”
Ron was waiting for this, the drawing of comparisons, the assumption that his loss was no greater or less than hers. He knows that Hermione loved Harry. She was dedicated to him, always willing to help, and always there to keep him in line when he talked about breaking rules. But she didn’t know him like Ron did, the curve of his spine, the smell of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing. Those were things only Ron knew.
“We were more than friends, Hermione,” Ron whispers, not entirely sure he’s doing the right thing by letting her in on his and Harry’s secret.
“You…” Hermione starts, and Ron can hear the surprise in her voice. He thinks she must feel like a failure for not knowing something. How strange that must be for her. “You were…lovers?”
“No,” Ron answers. It sounds so silly the way Hermione termed it, too much like a Muggle romance novel. “Well, yeah, I guess we were,” he admits after a minute. A denial would indicate shame or regret, and he feels neither.
“Oh, Ron!” Hermione exclaims with shock and new sympathy. “I never…well, there were the rumors, you know, back in school…but I never believed them. I just thought you and Harry-”
“Were really close friends,” Ron finishes for her.
“Well…yes.”
A silence settles on the room, so complete that Ron can hear the slow, precise movement of clouds overhead; snow clouds, soft and grey, and as inevitable as rising waters and a dark, swift current at high tide.
“Harry was everything to me, Hermione,” Ron says flatly. “But now he’s gone. And I would appreciate if you would do the same.”
Hermione, seeming to listen to Ron for the first time in her life, rises silently and moves toward the door. She pauses, fingers around the brass doorknob, as if she’s got something else to say. Hermione always needs to have the last word. It’s how she compensates for her ridiculous insecurities, thinking she’ll never be good enough or smart enough. But after a moment she exits, closing the door softly behind her.
She’ll let Ron win this time. He’s already lost enough.
****
Winter is in full swing now, its frosty fingers gripping and squeezing, pressing the life out of everything, leaving nothing but brittle reminders that spring will come late this year.
Ron finds courage that he never thought he had, and one snowy day, he decides to visit Harry’s grave. There isn’t a body resting there, Ron knows that. But there’s a monument, big and blindingly white, shining in the winter sun like an oracle.
Silk flowers with beards of frost circle the grave, as artificial and vulgar as those who placed them there. Ron has to wade through them, a swamp of carnations, jonquils, and lilies. A raven, black and twitching, sits perched on the fence, cawing and surveying his deed of land. He’s the proprietor of the grounds - the grave markers, the weathered flowers, even the corpses.
Harry’s name is carved in deep, precise letters on the grave. Ron finds it strange to look at. Not the name, but the letters, big and bold like a neon sign. He wonders if there is an illumination spell on it so that at night or on overcast days, it glows, showing travelers the way.
Ron crouches next to the grave, where his knees leave slightly concave indentations in the soil. The ground around him is still up-turned, dark and fresh, giving off the rich smells of Earth. He traces the ‘H’ with his index finger, and wonders if Harry misses him. He likes to think so, likes to think there isn’t a place, however remote or imaginary, where Harry could go without taking a memory of Ron with him.
“I would’ve gone with you, you know,” Ron says.
Then he brings Harry back to life. In his heart, because that’s where Harry belongs, where Harry will always be. Not an iced corpse in the cold ground, but a life and a love, and something more enduring than Ron ever thought possible.
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Rating: PG
Summary: This is the sequel to Summer Storms and Fall Leaves.
Warning: Mention of character death.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry, Ron, and everything else in the Potterverse. I only own this story.
Ron wakes up to one of those in-between days. The temperature isn’t cold enough to be classified as winter, but the frost clots in a heavy crust and there’s a sharp chill in the breeze that an autumn sun can’t chase away. Ron’s bare toes are numbed by restless sleep and tossed covers. He is awakened by the coolness of a grey morning following a short night of clear, black, starry skies.
“Ron, dear,” comes his mother’s voice, “it’s half past nine. You’re going to be late.”
That’s the whole idea, he thinks. To be late. To not show. Today isn’t a day for him, anyway.
The pillow next to his is cold and white, a snowy landscape painted in oils on canvas. The snow-capped cotton ridges collapse under the brush of his fingers like rockslides excited by an avalanche. Sides of the mountains fall, chunks of earth that were sedimentary are suddenly alive with movement. A crashing, roaring sound, and then all is quiet.
Ron can feel his own breath, the expanse of oxygen swirling in his lungs. He thinks he could see it, too, the proof of his exhalation made visible by the crisp coldness, if he only opened his eyes to look. But darkness, like ignorance, is bliss and he mutely repeats Nox, Nox, Nox.
“Ron, dear.” It’s his mother’s voice again, closer now. A soft rapping on his bedroom door confirms his suspicions.
Mrs. Weasley opens the door before Ron has time to answer, and even though he wouldn’t have answered even if he’d had the time, he wishes she would’ve given him the chance anyway. He thinks he deserves that right, a little courtesy, a seconds’ more privacy, considering all things.
“We’re Flooing out in half an hour,” she says. A command issued with gentleness and pity.
“I’m not going, Mum,” Ron says, and he blindly skims his fingers over the empty pillow again, bringing summits down to the base.
Mrs. Weasley tenses, prepares for battle. Ron can feel it, that invisible coil of dread pulling up from his stomach until it springs in his head, leaving him with only a headache and no end to the argument. But he prepares for it regardless, because harder battles have been fought, and the chances of casualties in this one are much smaller.
“You most certainly are going,” she says, and Ron can picture her standing there, one foot pointed outward, hands on her broad hips like handles on a teapot.
“No, I’m not,” he says again, and he hopes she hears him this time because he doesn’t think he can say it anymore.
“Ronald Weasley,” her voice has lost most of its gentleness now, sounding more like a sergeant barking an order to a disobedient private, “you will go today. You will get up out of that bed just like the rest of us, and you will attend. You owe him that much. You owe it to Har-”
Ron’s eyes fly open, his long ginger lashes rising like watch fires. “Don’t!”
He almost shouts it until he realizes that his mum isn’t the person he’s angry with. He closes his eyes again, regains his passive detachment. “Don’t say it, Mum.”
“Well, it’s true,” Mrs. Weasley insists. She’s speaking in softer tones now, almost to the point of offering an apology without actually having to say the word ‘sorry.’
Time passes, and though Ron has no sense of it, he reckons it must only be minutes. If it were any longer, his mum would be late and today isn’t a day for being late. If it were any shorter, she would be betraying her own stubbornness that she so generously passed on to him at birth.
With the appropriate lapse in time, Mrs. Weasley turns and leaves the room. Ron doesn’t watch her, but he hears her. Slick soles of brand-new shoes, too shiny to be worn for simple everyday occasions, slip across his grey-boarded floor like skates over a frozen pond.
Ron has won the battle if for no other reason than he just refuses to fight. Lay your weapons down at the feet of the enemy and walk away.
****
Harry’s funeral is held at exactly 11 o’clock that morning. Cornelius Fudge makes sure of that. Can’t have an entire secret society turning out for a celebration and not delivering. Would be bad publicity, and certainly wouldn’t improve credibility. Elections are in six months, and things went bad enough during his first appointment as Minister. But now He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named can be named freely, and Mr. Fudge intends on flaunting the proof of it.
Thousands of witches and wizards Apparate at safe intervals along dusty hidden roadways and behind trees draped with moss. Electricity is in the air, sparking like a faulty potion, the static offspring of excitement and freedom. Today is a milestone, a history lesson that will be taught at Hogwarts, and even at Durmstrang. Too long had the magical world been held captive, living the cautious lives of prisoners, watching for that ever-evasive chance of escape. That time came at last, in the unlikely form of a skinny, dark-haired boy, who will forever be their symbol of peace and liberation.
Today’s fashions are robes of powder blue, lemon yellow, shamrock green, and sunset orange; garb much too cheerful for a traditionally black affair. Some witches wave banners, personal declarations flying proudly on wooden staffs. Some wizards carry children on their shoulders, piggyback rides into a brighter future where wars and tyrants only exist in stories told by the elderly.
Then the singing begins, the shameless rejoicing of voices, hymns and hands lifted up to the heavens in a swaying tribal ritual.
It’s almost like the Quidditch World Cup, even down to the squealing rosettes and Omnioculars.
****
Ron has his own funeral for Harry. It’s the very least he can do, he thinks. His world is free now, and wasn’t that Harry’s goal all along? Freedom for those left behind in a world that seems surprisingly unprepared for peaceful living. But prepared or not, Ron owes Harry. Harry gave his life, after all, and shouldn’t that count for something? So Ron has a memorial service, alone, in his room, with the sparrows trilling in the barren branches outside.
The eulogy is short and wordless. Ron discovers he isn’t able to put a voice to that dull ache in his chest. There’s emptiness and loneliness and hopelessness, and a million other words for sorrow. But they all require feeling something, and Ron is feeling nothing right now. His mouth goes dry and his throat tightens, and in the end, he decides that customs don’t matter anyway. Harry isn’t around to hear them, and besides, he knew Ron was never good with words.
Ron doesn’t bury Harry. Burials are for placing bodies in the ground, and Ron doesn’t have a body. There wasn’t enough left to make one, just ashes sprinkled over sticky mud and dead black grass. Ron was there, so he knows. He remembers trying to scoop the dust up in his hands, only to have it fall through his fingers. Then Dumbledore showed up, too little too late, and with that obscure gleam in his eye, told Ron it was all over. But Ron already knew that. The evidence was a dingy film on his hands and a grey powder at his feet.
Ron takes Harry’s things out into the garden. Then he burns them. He lights them up, watches the pale beginnings of a fire build and build until the flames crackle in the crisp air, then roar and race skyward. Harry’s clothes catch first and send up heavy clouds of black smoke, the byproducts of fabric and thread and a life unfinished. The pictures of his mum and dad start purple and kindle to orange, then curl at the edges until they’re charbroiled and blackened. Harry’s broom is the last to ignite, the treated wooden handle living up to its reputation by refusing defeat even in the roughest conditions. But in the end, the fire licks up the shaft and devours it with immeasurable heat. The cinders scatter, driven by a north wind. It’s a waste, Ron thinks, because really, it was a fine broom.
For the first time in his life, Ron tries to remember everything he’s ever known about the Dark Arts. There might be something in the forbidden black magic he could use. He’s heard of brining people back to life, and whether or not it can actually be done, he thinks it’s worth a shot. He’d need Hermione’s help, of course, but she’d probably do it. For Harry.
But then Ron decides against it. Harry could’ve saved himself if he’d wanted to. He could’ve refused to fight. He could’ve stayed at the Burrow, stayed with Ron. But Harry didn’t choose that. He left the Burrow, and he left Ron, and he went out to fight for a world that didn’t deserve the sacrifice.
****
The celebrations have quelled now, and people are resuming their lives, getting back to the mundane task of living. Ron’s father has returned to work after being off, with pay, and Ginny, who was given time off from school for the event, has returned to Hogwarts.
Except for his mum, the house is empty, and Ron likes it that way. He missed the noise before, but now it reminds him of different times, when Harry was still around. He misses the sounds Harry used to make, filling the drafty corners of the old house with everyday clatter, the unexceptional kind you only notice once it’s gone.
Those sounds have vacated the house, and maybe that’s why Ron notices the covert sound of someone suddenly appearing downstairs, the unmistakable transformation of thin air into a human body.
A few hushed voices later, and there’s a knock at his door, a quick, persistent tapping. But Ron doesn’t answer or budge from his position on the bed. Few things are worth getting up and getting dressed for these days, at least in Ron’s life. He’s been in the same clothes for five days and has patches of scruffy red whiskers on his cheeks. But no one is around to see or comment on his careless hygiene, and that suits him just fine.
“Ron?”
It’s a female voice, but it isn’t his mum. It’s Hermione, coming to cheer him up, no doubt, to tell him that everything will be all right, not to worry, that Harry’s in a better place now. But Harry doesn’t need to be in a better place. He just needs to be here, with Ron.
“What?” comes Ron’s answer, and he isn’t the least bit sorry about his clipped, short tone.
The door hinges squeak, rust against rust, signs of age and overuse. Ron folds his arm over his eyes. Harry’s the only one he wants to see, and he knows that wanting and wishing are as different from facts as life is from death.
“You aren’t busy, are you?” Hermione asks.
Ron would laugh at the irony and uselessness of the question if laughter didn’t seem so out of place in his throat. “No,” he says.
Hermione walks across the room, quiet as a mouse, and sits down next to him. The high winter sun makes long shadows through the windowpanes, throwing them on the bed in rectangles.
“You weren’t at the funeral,” she states. Hermione was never one for preamble, and even after all that’s happened, Ron is surprised at how little she’s changed since school.
“No, I wasn’t,” Ron agrees. He had his own funeral for Harry, complete with a bonfire and fireworks. But he doesn’t bother telling this to Hermione. She would think he was out of sorts, and chastise him for not using safety precautions.
“You should’ve been there,” she says, showing that assertiveness that Ron could never quite maintain, though he always wanted to.
“Why?” he asks. “So that I could see the spectacle? So that I could see Fudge gloating and Dumbledore taking credit for everything? No thanks, Hermione, I’ve seen enough.”
Hermione sets her jaw and narrows her eyes. Ron’s been on the receiving end of this too many times. It’s the countdown to the explosion. He covers his face, knowing that his arms will take the full brunt.
“It has nothing to do with Fudge or Dumbledore!” she screams. “Or even the other half a million people who showed up!” She pounds her fist on the bed for emphasis. “It’s about your disrespect and your disregard for Har-”
“Don’t talk to me about him!” Ron yells, showing more emotion than he ever intended. “What do you know? You weren’t there, you didn’t see him! You didn’t see what was left of him after...”
Ron trails off, leaves the words dangling between them like fish on hooks. He remembers what he saw, even remembers the overripe smell of charred flesh and the bitter taste of vomit in his mouth. But putting words to it only makes it more real, and it’s real enough to him already.
“I loved him, too, Ron,” Hermione says, softer now, but no less insistent. “We all loved him.”
“Not like I did.”
“Come on, Ron,” Hermione says, “I know he was your best friend, but he was mine, too.”
Ron was waiting for this, the drawing of comparisons, the assumption that his loss was no greater or less than hers. He knows that Hermione loved Harry. She was dedicated to him, always willing to help, and always there to keep him in line when he talked about breaking rules. But she didn’t know him like Ron did, the curve of his spine, the smell of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing. Those were things only Ron knew.
“We were more than friends, Hermione,” Ron whispers, not entirely sure he’s doing the right thing by letting her in on his and Harry’s secret.
“You…” Hermione starts, and Ron can hear the surprise in her voice. He thinks she must feel like a failure for not knowing something. How strange that must be for her. “You were…lovers?”
“No,” Ron answers. It sounds so silly the way Hermione termed it, too much like a Muggle romance novel. “Well, yeah, I guess we were,” he admits after a minute. A denial would indicate shame or regret, and he feels neither.
“Oh, Ron!” Hermione exclaims with shock and new sympathy. “I never…well, there were the rumors, you know, back in school…but I never believed them. I just thought you and Harry-”
“Were really close friends,” Ron finishes for her.
“Well…yes.”
A silence settles on the room, so complete that Ron can hear the slow, precise movement of clouds overhead; snow clouds, soft and grey, and as inevitable as rising waters and a dark, swift current at high tide.
“Harry was everything to me, Hermione,” Ron says flatly. “But now he’s gone. And I would appreciate if you would do the same.”
Hermione, seeming to listen to Ron for the first time in her life, rises silently and moves toward the door. She pauses, fingers around the brass doorknob, as if she’s got something else to say. Hermione always needs to have the last word. It’s how she compensates for her ridiculous insecurities, thinking she’ll never be good enough or smart enough. But after a moment she exits, closing the door softly behind her.
She’ll let Ron win this time. He’s already lost enough.
****
Winter is in full swing now, its frosty fingers gripping and squeezing, pressing the life out of everything, leaving nothing but brittle reminders that spring will come late this year.
Ron finds courage that he never thought he had, and one snowy day, he decides to visit Harry’s grave. There isn’t a body resting there, Ron knows that. But there’s a monument, big and blindingly white, shining in the winter sun like an oracle.
Silk flowers with beards of frost circle the grave, as artificial and vulgar as those who placed them there. Ron has to wade through them, a swamp of carnations, jonquils, and lilies. A raven, black and twitching, sits perched on the fence, cawing and surveying his deed of land. He’s the proprietor of the grounds - the grave markers, the weathered flowers, even the corpses.
Harry’s name is carved in deep, precise letters on the grave. Ron finds it strange to look at. Not the name, but the letters, big and bold like a neon sign. He wonders if there is an illumination spell on it so that at night or on overcast days, it glows, showing travelers the way.
Ron crouches next to the grave, where his knees leave slightly concave indentations in the soil. The ground around him is still up-turned, dark and fresh, giving off the rich smells of Earth. He traces the ‘H’ with his index finger, and wonders if Harry misses him. He likes to think so, likes to think there isn’t a place, however remote or imaginary, where Harry could go without taking a memory of Ron with him.
“I would’ve gone with you, you know,” Ron says.
Then he brings Harry back to life. In his heart, because that’s where Harry belongs, where Harry will always be. Not an iced corpse in the cold ground, but a life and a love, and something more enduring than Ron ever thought possible.