Archive of Our Own ^beta

Harry ends the war in the same way he does everything–one step ahead of everyone else, standing alone between them and absolute evil, true to the end with one last Expelliarmus to recall the one that saved his life in his fourth year. It’s always someone else’s well-being that he sees to, not his own—someone else’s grief that he comforts, someone else’s pain that he lessens (and the only way he knows how to do that is by shouldering the load). Maybe that’s why, when all is said and done, he can’t figure out how to piece himself back together in the end.

Somehow, impossibly, Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to support each other through their weariness as they make their way from the headmaster’s office to Gryffindor Tower. Harry, his dark hair covering his eyes, has one arm thrown over Hermione’s shoulders, and Ron holds him up on the other side, weariness and grief and shock still coursing through his veins like pure adrenaline. The heat emanating from Harry’s body warms Ron’s whole side, and he can only think, numbly, of the sight of Harry’s corpse not two hours ago, cradled in Hagrid’s arms, his head thrown back and his glasses askew and his chest painfully, terribly still—

The thought of returning to the Great Hall is unbearable, and Ron knows without needing to ask that the others agree with him. Exhaustion crashes down on them like the inexorable thunder of the sea, pulling them under; the reality of their victory is far away, distant, separate from them still. Without words they tumble into beds in the boys’ dormitories, Hermione loathe to be apart from the other two and the other two in fervent agreement. Ron and Harry tumble onto one of the beds, and Ron pulls Harry close, tears that he doesn’t want to shed falling anyway because Fred is dead and so are so many others but Harry is alive—the whole time Harry is silent, expressionless, smoothing Ron’s hair and gently kissing his temple and his eyelids and the freckles on his nose. Hermione pushes one of the four-posters against theirs and falls asleep on Harry’s left side, and Ron lies shaking on his right until some time mid-morning when he finally succumbs to exhaustion.

The entire time, Harry stares up, without blinking—looking at something not really there, with eyes that can’t really see, and when the other two wake a few hours later, he is gone.

Hogwarts empties of people in the next few days. None of the evacuated students are returned to the school, as it is in dire need of repairs; fires still smolder in some of the more out-of-the-way corridors, and chunks of stone the size of cars litter the grounds. Many classrooms and corridors have been all but demolished. The remaining possessions of the evacuated students—that weren't destroyed in the battle, that is—are returned to their owners within the week. As repairs permit, the school year will be concluded later that summer or in the early fall. Professor McGonagall is named temporary headmistress of Hogwarts; in a few months she takes on the role more permanently.

The remaining Death Eaters on the grounds are detained and held in the castle dungeons for the time being, as Azkaban is in no state to hold prisoners—dementors still roam the countryside, no longer under anyone’s control. The Ministry is incapable of recovering them yet. (Whether the dementors will even be reinstated as guards of the prison is another matter—and unlikely.)

The Ministry itself is retaken; hundreds of people are released from the Imperius Curse and restored to their former selves. The dozens of Death Eaters who’d infiltrated the Ministry are taken into custody and imprisoned at Hogwarts. Within hours of Voldemort’s defeat, Kingsley Shacklebolt steps in as Minister of Magic. No one objects. He takes back the Daily Prophet, and the truth is run in the papers for the first time since the war began.

Voldemort’s corpse is disposed of by the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix. The older members, including Professor McGonagall and Kingsley, work together to cast the difficult Fiendfyre curse to incinerate the body—just in case.

The severely wounded from the battle are moved to St. Mungo’s and to other hospitals in the area. Those who were killed are claimed by their families. The survivors go back to places that don’t really feel like home.

Ron returns to the Burrow two days after the Battle of Hogwarts. It’s the first time he’s been home in nearly a full year. Hermione, as her parents are still in Australia, is with him.

But Harry Potter—the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the One Who Defeated the Dark Lord—is nowhere to be found.

Riddle-Harry laughs a dark, terrible laugh, all flashing white teeth and lips stretched too-thin beneath the hollows of his eyes.

“You know why I’ve left, don’t you, Ron?” He twines his arms around Ron’s shoulders and puts his lips to his neck, mouths against the delicate pulse beneath the gossamer skin. His voice is a husky hum, vibrating against Ron’s throat—low, deep, sensuous—and Ron closes his eyes.

“Yes,” he says, breathes. The word never quite makes it from behind his lips. Harry licks a hot path along Ron’s jaw before turning his head and catching his earlobe between his teeth.

“What’s that, love?” Harry says, and the last word is painfully, terribly ironic, taunting, wry.

"Yes,” Ron moans, in despair—and Harry kisses him violently, biting down so sharply on Ron’s lower lip that hot blood fills both their mouths.

Ron wrenches awake at dawn on the morning of Fred’s funeral. Thin sunlight filters in through his bedroom window as he slips from the clutches of the nightmare. He realizes, slowly, that he’s sitting upright in bed, breathing hard, with the blankets clutched to his shoulders. His eyes burn.

He sits alone in the gray, early morning sunlight as the rest of the house awakes; later, he stands beside George during the service because no one else seems to know what to do for him. George hasn’t spoken at all since screaming Fred’s name in the Great Hall five days ago.

George doesn’t cry at the funeral, but icy tears pour down Ron’s face as he kneels before the casket, the sickly smell of too-sweet flowers filling his nose. There are dozens of bouquets strewn across the room around him, condolences from well-wishers and those who couldn’t attend. Ron stares at the polished wooden casket for a long time. His knees start to ache from kneeling, but he does not move. He feels frozen. When he reaches out to touch the smooth, shining wood, his hand trembles. The casket’s cold.

Fred’s here, he thinks. Just two feet away. But it doesn’t seem real, it can’t be real—the world reaches out to him through a haze of grief and exhaustion. A fresh wave of freezing cold tears rises, overwhelms him, falls. His hand is shaking too badly to hold outstretched any longer, and he withdraws, taking his seat beside Ginny and waiting for George to join him.

George spends an even longer time at the casket than Ron had. His shoulders are hunched, his head bowed, but he does not tremble. Ron’s chest is aching and his eyes are stinging and he wants to go home, but a part of him will never leave this place. A part of him will always be sitting here, looking at Fred’s shining casket and George’s hunched shoulders and wondering why.

Everything blurs after that—forty minutes later and they are all standing in the sweltering sun, looking down at the coffin and an empty grave and waiting for the earth to swallow it whole. Ron wants to look away as Fred is lowered into the ground, but his eyes are drawn inexorably to the coffin. His mind is filled with the thoughts of all the things that Fred will never do—never fall in love, be married, have children, grandchildren—never visit another country, or listen to his favorite band’s first song on their soon-to-be-released album. He’ll never laugh again, never smile, never take the mickey out of Ron for who-cares-what, it wouldn’t matter—never again invent another product with George, or make everyone in the room choke on their butterbeers at once with a single joke—

Wherever Fred is (and it feels infinitely far away), Ron hopes, desperately, childishly, that he’s still laughing, at least.

The others leave after a while, many of them looking dazed. Ginny is weeping onto their mother’s shoulder. Their father looks drawn and old and tired. Bill and Charlie stay for a bit longer after their parents leave, looking with concern at George and Percy, neither of whom has moved since the service ended.

“You’ll stay with them?” Charlie asks Ron in a low voice; he and Bill are watching him closely.

“Yeah, I guess,” says Ron quietly, because he’s the only one left. Bill and Fleur have to return to Shell Cottage (Fleur is pregnant–she found out two days ago. Ron can’t remember joyous news ever being so joyless). Bill hugs him close for a moment, then, with a pained glance at the freshly-turned earth and his two immobile brothers, Disapparates with Charlie.

Percy leaves without a word after a while, his eyes flat and dull when they meet Ron’s.

“See you at home,” Ron mutters, and then Percy is gone, too.

Hermione, who has been quiet during the proceedings, now takes Ron’s hand and squeezes it.

“You can go back, too,” he tells her, and she seems to understand that he is asking her to do so. Please. She kisses him on the cheek, gives George a hesitant hug, and then she departs, too.

He and George are the last ones left, and only now does George start to cry—huge, wracking sobs take hold of his entire body, making his shoulders heave. He lowers himself to his knees, unable to take his eyes away from the polished, immaculate headstone. Ron crouches beside him and throws his arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, unable to say a word.

He feels utterly alone, helpless. I wish you were here, he thinks as he holds George close, but Harry, of course, cannot hear him, and Fred will never hear him again.

"Since you say you know,” Riddle-Harry hisses, drawing out the syllables, holding them between his teeth and tongue, “then tell me why I left.” His mouth is pressed, open, against Ron’s jaw, and his right foot is slipping up the back of Ron’s leg, dragging up the hem of his jeans.

“No.” Ron tries to push Harry away, and while he usually has no difficulty overpowering the smaller boy, Harry seems somehow immovable, terrible, monolithic. Ron’s hands push uselessly against Harry’s chest. Harry grins. For a moment Ron thinks he can see the true Harry in those bright green eyes.

“You—” Harry takes Ron’s wrists in his own and holds them with one hand over Ron’s head “—will do—” he slips his knee between Ron’s legs, gently nudging his thighs apart “—whatever I say.” His mouth stops a mere breath from Ron’s, the touch of his lips light and hot and barely there—Ron wants to lunge forward, to kiss him, but the dream holds him still, keeps him in place.

“I can’t say it,” Ron says, weakly, and Riddle-Harry’s eyes deepen to a dark, blood red.

He hasn’t had nightmares like this since before he destroyed the locket; before that, similar dreams had plagued him constantly and kept him up every night, but they’d been confused, scattered, with Riddle-Harrys and Hermiones and even his parents and siblings showing up sometimes. They’d all had flashing red eyes and words to affirm every one of his self-doubts: you’re not a part of this family, you don’t mean anything, you’re worthless, worthless. Now it’s only Harry—a dark and terrible (mesmerizing) Harry—and that’s somehow worse.

It’s only dawn but he’ll never get back to sleep, so he drags himself out of bed and pads down the stairs to the kitchen, meaning to fix himself a cup of tea and take it into the garden. Hermione, however, is also awake, sitting at the kitchen table and staring at her hands.

Ron swallows to wet his throat and says, “Tea?”

She nods once, tipping her head to the left, and Ron flicks his wand at the sink; water begins pouring into the teapot. Another flick of his wand and the water starts to steam and the tea leaves from the top shelf in the cupboard come flying down.

Ron sits beside Hermione and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” She glances up. “Your pot’s ready to boil over.”

“Damn.” He hurries to the stove to quiet the shrieking pot and makes two cups of tea, setting one before Hermione when he sits down again.

“Where do you think he is?” she asks, blowing lightly into the teacup. “Harry, I mean.” Her cheeks turn pink from the steam.

Ron’s throat closes suddenly, and he forces out, “I don’t know.”

They drink in silence, watching the sunrise through the open window above the sink. The curtains flutter in a gentle breeze. Hermione drains the last of her cup and puts her head on her arms.

“I hope he’s all right,” Ron says, and he knows the desperation and despair in his voice sound plainly. A strange look crosses Hermione’s face—and if it’s tinged with the slightest bit of envy and guilt, Ron doesn’t see it.

“Me too.” She talks into her arms. “I’m...I think I’m going to go to Australia tomorrow. To see my parents and set their memories right. See if they can remember me.” Her voice is carefully even.

“You want me to come with you? You know I will.”

“No—you can’t come with me.” Her cheeks turn pinker. “They, well, I told them about you and...you know.”

How you thought we’d be together by now. “Oh.” I’m sorry.

“I’m going to spend some time there with them. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I need some…time.”

Ron’s ears fill with a strange rushing sound, as if the world is closing in on him. “You’re leaving, too?”

She clears her throat. “I...yes. It’s harder to be around you when Harry’s gone, and after all that’s happened....” She waves one hand, and it somehow encompasses a year’s worth of fear and running and Horcrux hunting. “I need some time away. Not just from you, but...I’m sorry.”

Ron bites his bottom lip. “I understand,” he says, though he doesn’t want to, and he clings fiercely to her when she hugs him.

“Just a bit more, Hermione, you have a long journey ahead of you....”

“No, really, Mrs. Weasley.” Hermione holds up a hand with a weak smile. “I have to be off. Thank you so much—for everything.”

She lets out a strangled squeak when Mrs. Weasley tackles her into a tight embrace. “Be careful, dear,” Mrs. Weasley says into Hermione’s hair. “Come back and see us soon, all right?”

“‘Course,” Hermione says. Her face is red when Mrs. Weasley pulls away, and she shoots Ron a wide-eyed, almost accusatory look. He raises his eyebrows at her, but she does not explain, and he doesn’t understand until she’s disappeared in a flash of green fire.

His mother is bustling back into the kitchen when the meaning of Hermione’s glance hits him. Hermione is the only person in the world, at this moment, who knows about him and Harry—and judging by her behavior, his mother is likely hoping for him to end up with Hermione.

The realization is both unsettling and strangely wistful. A year ago he would have given anything to be with Hermione; now she can’t even bear to be in the same country as him, not now that it’s turned out he’s in love with his other (male) best friend.

Ron spends the rest of the day in his room, holding the Deluminator in numb fingers. He doesn’t click it.

A letter from Hermione arrives two days later. It’s full of scratched-out sentences, and the top of the parchment is torn as though Hermione had started the letter several times and been unable to get it right. Ron can’t remember ever seeing Hermione send a letter with a single word crossed out before.

Dear Ron,

I’ve just got settled here in Australia. It’s really a very pleasant place, but it’s hard to appreciate it too now. Maybe you, Harry, and I could Maybe one day I’ll have time to properly sightsee.

I’m sorry I left so suddenly. I feel awful now for leaving England so soon. I wish I had stayed just a little longer. I don’t know what came over me. Actually, I do, and that makes it worse, I guess. I hope you can Maybe one day you’ll forgive me for leaving you alone, though I doubt I deserve it.

I’m going to my parents’ house tomorrow. I’ll tell you how it goes, if you can stand to hear from me any more.

Write me when Harry comes back, all right?

With love,
Hermione

Ron sits on his bed with a slip of parchment perched on his knee and a quill poised in his hand for a long time. He doesn’t blame Hermione for leaving. Or Harry, for that matter. But putting that into writing is different from feeling it, and after a while he gives up, scrawling a quick, Don’t worry about it, good luck tomorrow, and handing it to the Ministry owl. Hopefully Hermione will understand that the message isn’t terse on purpose, and that he doesn’t mean to hurt her feelings.

After closing the window behind the owl, Ron slips out of his room and hesitates on the landing below at Percy’s door, where George has been sleeping since the funeral.

Ron knocks once. “George?” The door cracks open, but no one says anything. Ron pushes his way in and finds George sitting at Percy’s desk with the tip of a quill in his mouth, ink staining his lips, his brow furrowed in intense concentration. A bottle of firewhiskey sits next to the ink.

“Ron?”

“I—yeah?”

“Um, would you mind—well, you see....” George is looking with desolate exhaustion at the stack of papers on the table in front of him. “I’m going to need help with the shop.”

“You’re working?” Ron takes the quill from George’s hand. “You don’t have to work right now. Close the shop for a few weeks, take some time away—no one’s going to be shopping in Diagon Alley right now anyway—”

“No!” George leaps to his feet. “I have to work, Ron—I can’t just close the shop and let it go out of business!”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“I’m working,” George says, fiercely. “Me and—we made that shop together, and I’m not going to let him down.”

Fred’s name lingers unspoken in the air between them. Ron doesn’t know what to say to make George feel better, to assure him once and for all that he hadn’t failed Fred—hadn’t let him die. He doesn’t know how to explain to George that the only people responsible for Fred’s death are the Death Eaters who’d killed him, because Ron can’t yet believe it either, can’t stop blaming himself. (If I’d only moved faster—or maybe thrown Fred out of the way, when the wall exploded, or cast a Shield Charm, or died instead, or—or—or...)

So Ron doesn’t say anything about Fred. “Okay,” he concedes. “You’re working. You want me to...?”

George nods.

“All right.” Ron takes the stack of papers from the desk and sifts through them. It’s quickly apparent that he has no idea what any of them are. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

Riddle-Harry’s eyes are like glowing embers, dark red and fiery and lit from within. In one motion, he slips his hands from where they’re holding Ron’s wrists above his head down to Ron’s throat. He presses his forearm under Ron’s chin, applying the slightest touch of pressure. His knee shifts up from its position between Ron’s and stops at Ron’s groin, pressing forward dangerously. Pain throbs there, dully.

“Tell me,” Harry says, begs, and something inside him shifts, breaks, slips. “Tell me—tell me you think I’m a coward, a fool, a failure who can’t even hold himself together when he should be celebrating in the moment of victory!”

And Ron, who has been thinking the near-opposite (I’m the coward, I’m the fool, I’m the one who can’t keep it together and isn’t worth a damn thing) does the only thing he can think of: he brushes his thumbs over Harry’s cheeks and kisses him.

When he pulls away, Harry’s eyes are green again, and glassy.

“You should come back,” Ron says. “I need you.”

When he answers, his voice cracks, but for the first time in these dreams it’s Harry speaking, not the twisted, tortured Riddle version.

“I can’t.”

Two weeks later, Ron has moved into George (and Fred’s) rooms above Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. George gestures mutely at Fred’s empty bedroom, but Ron drags his pillow and orange Cannons blanket to the couch and sleeps there that first night (and every night after) instead.

In the time after Fred’s funeral and before Ron moved in, he and George have saved all articles and obituaries from the Daily Prophet and other newspapers that mentioned people they knew, people who’d died in the war and at Hogwarts. They’d even gone to Professor Lupin’s funeral, but neither of them had been able to stand it and had left before the service ended.

The shop, as it turns out, isn’t in the best shape; several windows have been broken despite the protective enchantments Fred and George had placed on the building before closing it at the height of the war. Most of the fireworks have been set off as well, and they’d reduced one corner of the shop to rubble. The shelves at the front are covered in shattered glass and debris, and the others sit in an inch of dust. The charms have, at least, prevented people from looting the place.

“Most of the potions have expired,” George says, examining them closely. “But the Skiving Snackboxes will still be good for a couple of months. Not that anyone will be buying them before Hogwarts is back in session.”

“Don’t worry about it, most of the goods are fine.” Ron pokes at the dead Pygmy Puffs with his wand. “Emphasis on ‘most.’”

George graces him with a quick, uncomfortable sort of a smile. “So, we’d better clean this place up before we can start working....”

It takes them two weeks to get the shop running again. The potions have to be remade; that process is still underway even when the shop reopens, as several of the potions take weeks or months to prepare. The destroyed corner of the shop has to be rebuilt. New glass windows have to be ordered, as the old ones were shattered beyond salvation even by a repair spell. It takes the windows more than a week to arrive, as most of the stores in Diagon Alley are in the same state as Weasleys’ Wizards Wheezes. Ron and George pass the time by cleaning up the rest of the shop and debating whether or not to restock the fireworks. They decide against it for now.

Sometime after the new windows arrive but before the shop reopens, Ron sends Harry a letter.

I miss you, he writes, and pauses. The words he’s wanted to say for nearly a month will not come. A drop of ink falls from his quill and bleeds into the parchment, feathering into the empty page.

I know you don’t want me to come after you, or else you would have taken me with you. I know you need more time to yourself, or else you would be back already.

What I don’t know is where you’ve gone, or why. I don’t know how long you’ll be away. Can’t you tell me? I miss you.

He almost adds an I love you, too, but stops before the quill even touches the page. Maybe that’s not what Harry wants to hear anymore. Maybe everything that happened between the two of them hadn’t meant the same thing to him as it had to Ron at all.

He signs the letter and sends it. He doesn’t expect a reply, and so he tells himself he can’t be disappointed that he doesn’t get one.

Ron’s first day at work starts at nine in the morning, three weeks after he moved into George’s flat. Working in the shop—well, it’s work, and it doesn’t feel like much else. Ron stumbles numbly through that first morning, wondering whether he’ll ever be able to turn around without seeing something to remind him of Fred.

“...And don’t worry about the back room, I’ll manage all the sales in there for now,” George says as he finishes explaining what the job will entail. “I’ll help you with the customers at first, too, so you can get used to it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ron assures him, though the twisting, roiling feeling in his stomach seems to have a different opinion on the matter.

“All right then,” George says, and flicks his wand at the front door to change the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’ for the first time in four months.

“You know no one’s going to be shopping yet.” Ron dusts the shelves for what must be the hundredth time, directing his wand at each in turn.

“Most likely not for another few days. Maybe a couple weeks,” George agrees. “But I feel better doing something, you know?”

“Yeah.” They work in silence.

“Ron?” George stops what he’s doing and turns to his brother, chewing at the corner of his mouth. “I haven’t—well, you’ve been spending all this time helping me, and I haven’t ever taken the time to check how you are.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I do, though. Harry’s been gone for six weeks—”

“That doesn’t—”

“And without Hermione here...well.” George looks at him closely. Before Ron can answer (“I’m fine,” he would have lied), the bell rings as someone walks into the shop.

George pales—without another word, he turns and disappears into the back room, leaving Ron to deal with the customer alone.

I can’t be Fred, Ron thinks, helplessly, as George leaves. I can’t be as close, I’m not as inventive, I can’t sleep in his bed or talk like him or live his life–

But George, for the moment, has asked him to.

And so Ron, with a deep breath, steps in.

He takes out the Deluminator that night, clicks it. The lights go out, but nothing else appears.

Not yet, then.

The shop hasn’t been getting much business, Ron writes a month later in a letter he isn’t even sure Harry will receive. George doesn’t want to close it and wait for Diagon Alley to get back up and running, though, so we come to work every day anyway.

Sometimes he waits for me to finish his sentences, too, but I don’t know how.

He chews the top of his quill–where had that last bit come from? It’s almost too much to put in a letter, but he leaves it in anyway.

Hermione says her parents’ memories have been restored perfectly. I knew she could do it. They were angry with her at first, but she says they’ve gotten over it now. She’s staying in Australia with them for the time being, so it’s just me here. She keeps asking me whether I’ve heard from you. I keep saying no.

He doesn’t sign it, doesn’t add anything else. Pigwidgeon returns without an answer, but the letter itself, at least, is gone.

“Why not?” Ron asks. “Why can’t you come back yet?”

“I just can’t, all right?” Harry’s eyes meet Ron’s. “I need some time.”

“Time for what?” Ron bursts out. “You’ve been gone for ages—I need you too, you know! Don’t you want my help?” Don’t you want me?

Harry looks away. “I do,” he says quietly. “Of course I do. I just can’t yet, Ron.” He takes his hand, passes his thumb over the pulse in Ron’s wrist.

“God dammit, Harry,” Ron says, still angry, still frustrated, tired, sad. But he doesn’t pull his hand away. Harry brushes a kiss over his knuckles and disappears.

Ron wakes up and pulls the blankets over his head, trying to hold onto the dream, empty as it was, for as long as he can to keep Harry’s voice from slipping from his memory.

It’s your birthday today, Ron writes on July 31st. Mum wishes you were here to celebrate. She cried when you didn’t show up. So did Hagrid, when he stopped by.

He doesn’t add that he nearly had, too. Maybe. A little. He doesn’t want to invest too much into letters that might never even be read. The thought of Harry taking the letters from Pig and burning unopened makes Ron sick to his stomach.

He keeps sending letters anyway.

George finds him sending them once.

“Has he ever replied?” he asks, watching Pig disappear into the sky.

“Not yet,” Ron says, and turns away from the window.

“Fancy a drink?” asks George one night near the end of the summer.

“Uh, sure,” Ron says, and he swills the whiskey around in his glass for a long while rather than take a sip. He hasn’t had the stomach for any kind of food or drink lately. He’s lost an alarming amount of weight, but it’s easier to be hungry than sick to his stomach.

It doesn’t take long for George to get completely smashed; Ron had been betting on forty minutes, having experienced many nights like this that summer, but it takes even less time than that tonight. He feels nauseous, dizzy as he watches George even though he himself hasn’t taken a single sip of alcohol. I should stop him, he thinks, but he feels paralyzed by his uselessness, his inability to make George happier.

“Y’know, you,” George says, pointing at him with a grand sweep of his arms. “You—”

“Me,” Ron says calmly. He empties his full glass into the sink.

“You,” George repeats, and suddenly his eyes focus very clearly on Ron, “were there. Weren’t you. Percy said you were.”

“He said I was where, exactly?” Ron asks, but there’s a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach. He already knows.

“You were—you were with him. When he….” George takes several long swallows of firewhiskey.

“When Fred died?” Ron asks, in a low voice, because he has to be sure.

“’Course,” George scoffs. “Just said that, didn’t I?”

“Er, yeah.”

“But Percy—he wouldn’t tell me what happened.” George’s voice is becoming clearer, his gaze more focused, and he leans back in his chair and looks intently at Ron. “But you—you will, right?”

Ron clears his throat, trying to think of some excuse to get him out of the room.

“Please,” George says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Tell me. I have to…I want to…just need to know.”

Ron licks his lips. “Okay,” he says hoarsely, and he tells him.

He has to wrest the firewhiskey bottle out of George’s hands afterwards and lead him to the bathroom, where George is violently sick. Ron keeps watch over him all night, and the next morning he gets rid of all the alcohol in the apartment.

George never mentions the conversation again.

The newspapers run stories sometimes that conjecture as to the whereabouts of the Boy Who Lived. Some say that he’s in France; others are convinced that he’s still in England, just lying low; one earnestly declares that he’s boarded a ship to America and has no intentions of ever coming back.

Ron takes the articles seriously some of the time and tears them to pieces when he doesn’t. When an article runs in the Daily Prophet saying that Harry has been sighted on the outskirts of London, Ron’s heart leaps into his throat and he considers going to look for him.

But Harry hasn’t asked Ron to find him yet, so he doesn’t, though he rubs his thumb over the cold metal of the Deluminator in his pocket.

One night in mid-September, George announces that he’s going out. Ron looks up from his game of Exploding Snap.

“What?”

“Out.” George gestures weakly at the door.

“With who?”

“A customer—well, no, a girl. She asked if I was doing anything tonight.” George has gone slightly pink.

“Oh! Good. Good for you,” Ron says, and tries not to sound as surprised as he is. “You should do that.”

“I am.”

“Good,” Ron repeats, stupidly. “Have—have a good time, will you?”

“I’ll try.” George looks at Ron for a moment, then pulls him out of the armchair and hugs him.

“You should get out too, you know,” he says. “‘S not good, to be inside all the time—”

“Pot, kettle,” says Ron, turning pink as well.

George pulls away. “Well, think about it,” he says, not quite meeting his eyes. “You have to look after yourself too, okay? Maybe Hermione’ll come back from Australia soon, you two can go out for drinks—”

“Yeah.” Ron sits back down with his book. “Yeah, okay. When Hermione comes back.”

George looks reassured. Ron doesn’t tell him that Hermione hasn’t mentioned coming back to England since the first week of June. She’s even postponed attending her final year at Hogwarts to the following year. She says Australia has been good for her.

When George is gone, Ron picks up his quill and scrawls a quick letter.

Better hurry back soon. George is going to be setting me up on dates at this rate. Dates with girls. Girls who definitely aren’t you.

Miss you.

For the first time, he gets a response. He takes the letter from Pig’s leg with shaking fingers.

Well, I wouldn’t want that, would I?

There isn’t anything else.

Tell me how I can find you, Ron writes back, desperately. Please.

Harry only replies: I can’t. Not yet.

Hermione’s letters become increasingly sparse, then stop altogether without warning. The last one she sends closes, as all the others, with: Write me when Harry gets back, will you? Ron guesses that she, too, is wondering whether Harry is ever going to come back at all.

“Any news from Hermione?” George keeps asking, and Ron keeps shaking his head.

“I bet she’s just busy,” George says kindly.

“I bet.” He doesn’t really believe it. His two best friends feel very far away.

From the windowsill, Pig hoots excitedly. In three strides, Ron crosses the room and takes the letter from his leg.

I know I’m being a complete prat. I’m sorry. You don’t have to wait around for me.

“Who’s written you?” George asks, peering over Ron’s shoulder.

Dry-mouthed, he crumples the letter in his fist. “Harry.”

“Really? What’d he say? Has he written you before?”

“Once or twice,” says Ron. His throat is burning. “He’s still not coming home.”

Harry—

Just give the word when you want me to find you. If you ever do.

He doesn’t send any more letters after that.

Early October, and George brings the girl he’s been seeing every few weeks over for dinner. Her name’s Amanda, and they aren’t dating, George says (several times), but he kisses her on the cheek when she arrives and takes her coat, and his eyes light up a bit at the sight of her. Ron’s glad. He is too tired, too run-down to take care of George by himself any longer. Hell, he doesn’t even think he can take care of himself anymore.

“Pleased to meet you,” Amanda says, shaking his hand.

“And you,” he says, cringing inwardly because he should be engaging or witty or something but he just feels tired and curled in on himself and small. It’s been six months since the war ended, but somehow having dinner with someone who might be dating his brother still feels like something that shouldn’t be happening.

She smiles brightly, glances around. “And where is Fred, then? Will he be joining us?”

Ron’s heart flutters frantically against his ribcage even as his stomach twists into knots. “What?”

Amanda is still smiling. “I’ve heard so much about him from George—I’d really love to meet him—”

There is a look of dismayed shock on George’s face, and looking at him, Ron feels cold, empty. The frantic fluttering of his heart has gone dismally still.

“Er—no,” Ron says, “actually. Fred passed away a few months ago.”

“What?” Amanda looks horrorstruck. “You never said—George….”

He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes. “I know. Look, I’m….” But whatever he is, exactly, he does not say; he gives Ron a helpless glance and disappears into his room.

Amanda presses one hand to her mouth. “Oh no—I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. He never told me.”

“’S not your fault,” Ron says, mechanically.

She is still for a moment, looking down the hallway. “Is he all right? I mean, how has he…?”

“Been dealing with it?” Ron remembers the way George had thrown himself into his work after the funeral even when he hadn’t yet been able to handle it; he remembers the firewhiskey, the number of nights that George had gotten drunk that summer, the alcohol still hidden away in George’s room that he thinks Ron doesn’t know about. “Fine,” he lies.

“Did he—did he die in the war?” Amanda’s voice is quiet, but strong.

“Yes,” Ron mutters. “The night You-Know-Who was defeated.”

She irritatedly brushes at her eyes, then: “My brother was killed a year ago. By Death Eaters. He was an Auror.”

“I’m sorry,” Ron murmurs, knowing how uselessly empty the words will sound.

She gives him a tiny smile. “Seeing George has been the first thing in—months, really, that’s taken me out of the house. Didn’t want to be inside anymore.” She lifts her chin and looks at Ron, her gaze remarkably clear, her eyes now dry. “I don’t want to impose on you any more tonight. But if he’s feeling better in a few days—” she tilts her head towards the bedroom “—have him Floo me, yeah? Maybe I’ll stop by, if that’s all right?”

“Of course,” Ron says, feeling relieved that she isn’t angry, that she doesn’t think George is mad. “Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble,” she says, and she clasps his hand and is gone.

Once Ron has seen her out and shut the door behind her, he turns, slowly, to face George’s room. You have to go in, he tells himself. You have to see if he’s all right.

He opens the door. “George? Amanda’s left.”

“’Course she has,” George says. He’s sitting on the bed with his back facing Ron.

“She says she’ll stop by in a few days if you don’t Floo her first.”

“All right.”

“I think you should Floo her.”

“Fine.”

“She seemed really understanding.”

“Okay.”

Feeling his frustration mounting, Ron goes to sit beside George. “What are you doing?”

George is holding a photograph; Ron gets a glimpse of Fred and George, their arms over each other’s shoulders, before George sets the photo on his dresser, face-down. He doesn’t answer.

“It’s all right to be sad, you know,” Ron says, finally. “You don’t have to try and hide it by working all the time and drinking and going out with girls. It’s all right if you still miss him.”

“I just want to see him,” George says, his voice hoarse and quiet.

“I know. But you can’t—torture yourself into thinking he’s still here. Lying to Amanda—” to yourself “—it’s not going to change anything.”

“Yeah.” George doesn’t look at him.

“You okay?” It’s a stupid question, but he won’t get a truthful answer anyway.

“Yeah,” says George, gazing at the face-down picture. “But, you know…thanks.”

Ron’s dreams aren’t angry anymore; he and Harry don’t talk about Harry’s continued absence; Riddle-Harry doesn’t appear. It’s just Harry and Ron, and sometimes Hermione, too. In the dreams, she’s usually forgiven them.

“Ron?” Harry asks, his bright green eyes seeking Ron’s. He doesn’t move from where he’s lying on Ron’s chest.

“Mm?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing important. Why?” He shifts slightly and runs his hand through Harry’s hair.

“Just wondering.”

The sun is bright and golden above them, and the grass they’re lying on is soft, green, reminiscent of rainy springs and hot summers, long days spent together without a moment apart. Harry slips one of his legs over Ron’s and twines their ankles together.

“We should go inside soon.”

“Mm,” Ron says again, but neither of them moves.

As it turns out, George does try to set Ron up with a girl a few weeks later.

“Her name’s Jeanine,” he begins, but Ron interrupts before he can get any further.

“No.”

“Oh, come off it, Ron, if you’re embarrassed about going on a blind date—”

“I’m not embarrassed. I just don’t want to, all right? Is that so hard to understand?”

George is quiet for a moment. “No. I just thought you might like to...get out, you know? I feel better when I do.” He and Amanda, while still not officially dating, have spoken, at least, since the dinner three weeks ago. George had Floo’d her three days later.

“I know.”

“And if you don’t want to go out with a girl, you could just hang out with a friend, maybe? Who were the other Gryffindors in your year? Dean and Seamus something-or-other?”

“They don’t want to see me.”

George sighs and sits at the table beside Ron. “Ron.”

“George.”

“What do you want, Ron?”

I want Harry to come back. I want me and Hermione to be friends again. I want the whole fucking war and Fred dying and Australia and shitty letters that don’t tell me anything to just go away. “Nothing.”

George looks at him for a moment, then holds up his hands in defeat. “All right,” he says. “All right, then. I’m sorry. Should I tell Jeanine and any other girls I come across that you’re not interested?”

“That’d be good,” says Ron, “seeing how I don’t even like girls.”

George gives him a long look, but he doesn’t ask. Ron is slightly disappointed.

Harry’s third letter arrives in mid-November on a cold, frost-bitten morning. Ron has to cast a warming charm on the owl before he can even take the letter from her leg.

I can’t stop running. Consider this me giving you the word, if you still want it.

The letter falls from numb fingers, and Ron slips the Deluminator from his pocket before the parchment has time to hit the floor. He’s gone a few seconds later.

The Deluminator takes him where he wants to go, as he knew it would. Harry had just needed to want to be found.

For a moment, Ron isn’t sure where he is. Then everything slip-slides sideways into place, and he recognizes his surroundings. It’s the Forest of Dean, and through the trees Ron can see their old campsite, untouched. Decaying leaves—reduced to smears of musty shadows in the dim light—are strewn across the ground, damp and cold. The wind is picking up, whistling in from above the trees, whispering down, bringing with it an all-consuming, wearying chill.

Someone clears their throat uncomfortably from behind him, and Ron turns. At first he thinks no one is there, that he’d imagined the noise, but then Harry steps out from behind one of the trees, stowing the Invisibility Cloak in the front of his robes.

“Um.” Harry shifts his weight from foot to foot, shrugs helplessly. “Hi.”

Ron, numbed by the cold and the sight of him, cannot think of how to respond. Harry looks thin and tired, his face more angular and gaunt than the last time Ron had seen him. His cheeks are alabaster-white, almost unearthly in the twilight filtering in through the trees—his eyes look heavy and dark, set deep in his face like stormclouds on the horizon. His robes are slightly too big, and he is lost inside of them, plucks at one of the sleeves.

“I…” he begins, and stops.

Ron can’t bear it anymore. He launches himself at Harry, grips him by the shoulders and pulls him close and buries his face in his neck, his throat and eyes burning.

“Jesus, Harry,” he whispers. “Where have you been?”

Harry grips him more tightly. “Here and there,” he says, and Ron can hear him struggling to keep his voice steady. “I couldn’t stay in one place. I had to keep moving.” He’s silent a moment, hesitant, his grip on Ron awkward. “Are you mad at me?”

For the first time in what feels like forever, Ron says the whole truth. “Yes, of course I am, you berk.”

He can feel Harry nodding on his shoulder. “Oh...yeah. I know. Well, um, if you’re seeing any of those girls George introduced you to, I deserve it, so don’t—”

Ron shoves him, hard, relishing that he can push him away from once, as he never can in his dreams—“God dammit, Harry! I haven’t seen you in seven months—I don’t want to talk about anyone else, I want to talk about you!”

Harry runs his tongue over his lips and looks away, his face crumpling. One of his hands inches toward the Invisibility Cloak under his robes. “Sorry.”

“Stop.” Ron takes the Cloak from him, the silvery fabric pooling like water in his hands. “Why’d you go?” he asks, quietly.

Harry swallows. “I don’t…I’m not sure. I felt…guilty.” His lashes feather, smudge against his cheeks. “For surviving. For everything that happened.”

“Harry....” Ron wonders, briefly, what to say—if he can, in fact, say anything that will help. “What happened in the war or afterwards or—or whatever it is that you’re running from—it’s not your fault. I promise. Okay?”

The chill wind picks up, blowing their robes around them. “Okay,” Harry says, his voice nothing more than a whisper. He doesn’t sound as if he believes him.

“Yeah?” Ron looks at him. “You can’t stay here. You need to come home, Harry. Please.”

He lowers his gaze. “I don’t know where to go. Who’ll have me.”

“Harry, look at me.” He does. “You’re coming home. With me. Please. Don’t leave again.”

“I won’t,” says Harry, and Ron takes him by the hand.

They Disapparate and reappear together at Diagon Alley. Snow has begun to fall, tiny flakes falling lazily to earth, drifitng through a coal-gray sky. Harry and Ron look up at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, where a light is still on in the windows above the shop.

“Why have we come here?” Harry asks, his head tilted back, his neck exposed.

“I’ve been living here with George,” Ron says. “I moved in after Fred’s funeral.”

Harry is quiet, and when Ron glances at him, he can see that he’s pale, his face shockingly white against the black of his robes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Me too. But Ron, who has spent seven long months on his own, finds that he doesn’t need to hear it. It’s enough that Harry is back, that he’s here and standing so close to him that Ron can feel the heat from his body through his robes and see the snowflakes melting in his hair. “Don’t be,” he says.

They are quiet for a moment. Harry looks at the shop and Ron looks at Harry, his gaze tracing the contours of his face, his cheekbones, his jaw, the thick rim of his glasses. It’s hard to believe that he’s here, right here, after so long.

“How is he?” Harry asks suddenly. “George.”

“He’s…better. Not good, but better than he was. Considering.”

Harry smiles, thinly, his lips drawn and pulled like an elastic band, tense.

“Let’s go inside,” says Ron, and leads him through the shop to the back where a staircase goes up to the apartment above. The stairs have always creaked, and so by the time they reach the top Ron is sure that even if George had been sleeping, he wouldn’t be any longer. As it is, he’s waiting for them when they open the door.

“Ron!” George bolts out of the armchair he’s been waiting in and takes Ron by the shoulders. He’s clearly been drinking, but he isn’t drunk, for which Ron is profoundly grateful. “Damn it, I’m glad you’ve listened to me and gotten out of the house for once, but tell me before you disappear like that, all right?—Who’s that?”

Harry is lingering in the shadows of the doorway. When George notices him, he steps forward, looking pale and tired. “Um…hullo, George.”

“Harry—!” George stares, and Harry shrugs self-consciously. Before Harry can say another word, though, George has closed the gap between the two of them and pulled Harry into a tight hug. “Jesus, Harry, it’s really you—where the hell have you been all this time?”

Harry looks at Ron over George’s shoulder, and Ron is gratified to see some of the uncertainty and exhaustion leaving Harry’s face.

“Dunno,” Harry says. “Bunch of places.”

George pulls away, grinning. “Not going to tell us, eh? Well, it’s enough that you’re back. You’re staying, right? Blimey, someone had better tell Mum—she’ll go into hysterics for a bit but that’s what you get, Harry, for running off like that…everybody else will want to see you, too. Ginny, obviously, and we’d better write Hermione—”

“Let’s tell Mum tomorrow,” Ron interrupts, slipping his hand in Harry’s—Harry had started chewing his bottom lip at the mention of Mrs. Weasley and the others. “I think it’s a little late for that tonight, don’t you?”

“Ah, of course—you’re right,” George says, and though his gaze slides down and over Ron and Harry’s clasped hands, he doesn’t say anything about it, merely smiles and jerks a thumb towards the kitchen. “Butterbeers, then, before bed?”

Ron nods. “Just butterbeer,” he says, to be sure, and George has the grace to look slightly abashed.

Before disappearing into the kitchen, George says, “It really is good to have you back, Harry. Things weren’t the same without you, you know.”

Harry looks overwhelmed, watching silently as George leaves the room.

“You all right, mate?” Ron asks.

Harry, who still seems more withdrawn than Ron remembers him, merely nods and changes the topic. “He didn’t say anything about…you know.” He squeezes Ron’s fingertips.

“Yeah, well, I think he figured it out already,” Ron says. “I pretty much told him, actually.” His gratitude for George, and for how close they’ve become in recent months, washes over him and threatens to overwhelm him. A year ago, George would have taken the piss out of him for fancying a bloke, never mind that that bloke was Harry Potter. Ron both misses who George was and is grateful for who he is. Eventually, he and Harry will have to face the rest of his family, but on that day, perhaps, George will stand by them.

But that is all very far away at the moment; eventually, he will have to face his mother, and his sister, and his friends, but right now there is Harry and George and warm butterbeer and time, seemingly endless time, to spend with Harry, forever.

Harry walks his fingers up Ron’s chest, hopping from freckle to freckle like he’s walking across stepping stones, following a path only he knows. He brushes his fingers against the delicate blue veins in the crook of Ron’s collarbone, and then cups his jaw in his palm, dragging his thumb over Ron’s lips.

“Hey,” he says, and their eyes meet.

“Hey,” says Ron. Their lips touch, briefly, nothing more than a brush of lips and an exchange of breaths.

It’s warm and early, clouds gathering low and smoky on the horizon. The sheets are still tangled around their legs. Ron sweeps the hair from Harry’s eyes and runs his palm from Harry’s shoulder to his chest to his hips.

“Love you,” he murmurs, “so much,” and this time Harry is still there when he wakes up.