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Godric's Hollow - Chapter Seventeen : Resolution - H/R - PG-13
Title: Godric’s Hollow
Author:shocfix
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Rating: NC-17
This is my Big Damn Table, turned into a multi-chaptered novella.
One hundred stories inspired by Broke Back Mountain.
Ron looks back on his life with and without Harry.
Chapter Seventeen : Resolution
Resolution One
So, he left.
He had his job, his flat, his boyfriend.
And he’d promised to visit.
He hugged Hermione and kissed her on the cheek.
He hugged me so hard I felt my ribs creak, and I felt the ghost of a kiss by my ear.
I worked non-stop on the World Cup for the rest of the summer; Harry didn’t make it to any of the games.
Hermione worked all hours too, and gave me sympathetic looks when I dropped into my armchair, exhausted, after a two day game between Spain and Peru.
Teddy and Alex returned from their honeymoon and started redecorating next door.
They’d decided they needed to change everything to make it theirs.
They started on the kitchen, which broke my heart a little more, just thinking of the times I’d gone round and found Harry sitting at the kitchen table.
September the first came and went and Harry didn’t turn up at the pub.
I waited.
Resolution Two
Hermione had always loved a full house for Christmas and that year we had all the children, plus partners.
All eight children.
Alex said that Harry was working over the holidays; so many people wanted time off at Christmas and it was hard to find cover – and his patients needed him.
So we had twenty people in the house, yet it felt empty.
“I’ve owled Harry time and again,” Hermione complained over lunch. “He always says he’s coming, but he’s busy.”
“He does work awfully hard,” Di put in.
“Well, when did you last see him?” Hermione asked.
“We went over for dinner last week,” Alex said.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He’s fine, Dad,” Teddy said. “He looked a bit tired, but he said he’s been busy.”
“Is he seeing anyone?” Hermione asked and I looked up and met Lizzie’s eyes. She wrinkled her nose at me and I shrugged.
“Yeah, actually he is,” Alex said quietly. “A nurse from the hospice.”
“Oh!” Hermione said. “Well, that’s nice.”
Teddy grunted.
“What?” Hermione asked him.
“Well, that’s why we went over to dinner,” he explained. “So we could meet. I didn’t like him.”
There was a ringing silence.
“Him?” Kate echoed.
“Yeah,” Teddy answered, spearing another parsnip and blissfully unaware of the reactions around the table. “Harry was waiting on him hand and foot and he was acting like this wasn’t enough; takes him for granted, if you ask me.”
Part of me was furious that Harry wasn’t being treated well.
Most of me was aware of how still Hermione had gone.
Resolution Three
No one mentioned it for the rest of the afternoon, except when Lizzie kissed me goodbye and asked if I was OK.
Hermione and I tidied up and went and sat in the lounge with a coffee and a mince pie.
“Ron,” she said calmly. “Have I been very stupid?”
“No,” I said automatically.
She sighed. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” she complained. “Have I been stupid about Harry?”
“We can’t make him visit,” I muttered. “It’s been four months, Hermione. He knows he’s welcome here.”
“Not stupid about inviting him to dinner, Ron,” she said, stirring her coffee and watching the cream spiralling into it. “He is dating a man.”
Ahh. “Yes, apparently so,” I said carefully.
“Why didn’t I realise this?” she demanded.
“Harry never dated,” I said. “How were you supposed to know?”
She shrugged. “Ron,” she said. “If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”
I put down my coffee. “Of course,” I said, knowing that this was it. The conversation we should have had thirty-three years ago.
“Did you and Harry have a… a relationship?” she asked. “A romantic relationship.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” she said quietly. “That explains a lot.”
She frowned as she looked into the fire, obviously threading this piece of information between her memories of our time together.
“You had an affair with him,” she said.
I winced. “Not an affair,” I said.
She cocked her head and looked at me.
“An affair is a short-term thing,” I explained.
“And how long were you together?” she asked.
“Well, we weren’t always together,” I said. “Sometimes nothing happened for years.”
“When did it start?” she asked. “When did you start sleeping with him?”
“When we were seventeen.”
She caught her breath. “And when did you last sleep with him?”
“On his birthday.”
“This year?”
“Yes.”
“And every other time you went away to that damned cottage?”
“Yes.”
“For thirty-three years?”
“Yes.”
“But what about me, Ron?” she said very, very quietly and I went and knelt by her feet.
I reached for her hand, but she shook her head and pulled it away from me.
“I love you, Hermione,” I said and she shook her head. “I honestly do. Harry and I spent the summer we left school together. But that was it. Nothing happened once we got back, and then there was the war and then he left. He left, and that was it, Hermione. I promise.”
“But it wasn’t,” she objected.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t. Because he came back.”
“But you fought when he came back! You were both covered in blood.”
“We fought second, we slept together first.”
“Just like that?” she demanded. “You opened the door and there he was, and you hadn’t spoken to him for five years and you took him somewhere and fucked him?”
I winced. “Yes.”
“But why?”
“He’s Harry,” I said helplessly.
“And then you hit him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he was marrying Ginny.”
“But how could you just forget me and the girls and go off and do that?”
“He’s just inside me.”
She snorted.
I frowned. “I mean he’s part of me. Part of everything I do. I can’t turn him away, not if he needs me.”
“And what about what I need?”
“I stayed,” I said pathetically.
“Stayed?” she demanded.
“So many times he asked me to leave with him; but I couldn’t leave you and the girls.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?” she asked.
“No,” I said, hanging my head. “I just promised I’d tell you the truth.”
“You also promised things about forsaking all others, Ron,” she said.
I nodded.
“And now he’s left you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Again,” she added.
“Yes,” I sighed.
“And if he came back? If he asked you to leave?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think he’s coming back, Hermione,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “It’s only been four months. It was five years last time. And what was the longest you were apart after that?”
I thought about it. “It was two years after he came back that we went away together,” I said.
“When Ginny and I were so supportive of your male bonding trip,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“And we did nothing for five years after Ginny died.”
“I cannot believe I was so stupid,” she mused.
“Don’t blame yourself, Hermione,” I said.
“Blame myself?” she shrieked. “I blame you, you spineless cretin. How could you do that to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said hollowly.
“Why did you do that to me?”
“I love him,” I said.
“More than you love me?”
“Differently,” I floundered.
“Differently how?” she scoffed.
I tried hard to pin it down. “With you I love you because of all the wonderful things you are, that you do. For all the things we’ve done together, for our children.”
“And with Harry?”
“With Harry, it’s like breathing.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“It’s not for any wonderful qualities. He is a bastard sometimes; he is selfish and only comes to me when he is hurting, when his life is falling apart. You’re right, if this relationship fails he probably will come back to me. And I can’t turn him away, because I would die.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?” she said in a very small voice.
“Because it would be wrong.”
She snorted.
“Your behaviour pretty much illustrates you don’t care about right or wrong, Ron.”
“I do. I can’t do the wrong thing. I admit I’m weak when he comes to me, but I only went to him once.”
“When?”
“When Mum died.”
“Oh, Ron,” she sighed.
Resolution Four
So.
We had separate bedrooms.
We went to work.
Hermione worked even longer hours and I made myself something to eat when I got home and pondered on how I’d lost everything.
Things slowly got better between us.
Not as husband and wife, but as friends.
One afternoon, in the spring, we were both working in the garden and I looked down at her, kneeling in the earth, with a smudge on her nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said suddenly.
She looked up at me. “I know you are,” she said serenely.
I fell carefully to my knees beside her.
“I never meant to hurt you, Hermione,” I said. “Can we be friends? I can’t lose everything, not after all this time.”
“Of course we’re friends, Ron,” she said. “We’ve always been friends.”
I reached for her dirty hand and we sat and smiled sadly at each other.
Just then Teddy came through the gap in the hedge and stopped short at the sight of us.
I know they’d noticed the distance between Hermione and me over the past months and he seemed pleased to see his parents holding hands in the mud.
“Dad,” he said. “We want to start decorating the Master Bedroom today, but Harry left some stuff behind. Alex says he says he doesn’t need it, but I thought you should be the one to get rid of it.”
“Go on,” said Hermione and I hauled myself to my feet and trudged next door.
I washed my hands in their shiny modern kitchen and went up to Harry’s room.
There were no specific memories of being together up there; his children had been born in this room, Ginny had died there; we hadn’t slept together there.
There was a box of his stuff on the floor.
School stuff.
Books, scarves, ties, things that Hermione and I had given him for birthdays and Christmas.
All safe memories from the days before things changed between us.
All memories he had left behind; that he’s said could be thrown away.
I put the box on the bed, deciding there was plenty of room in my attic to keep the memories.
The wardrobe door was open and I looked inside.
Old, worn shoes in pairs on a rack.
A leather jacket that Ginny had teased him about for buying; that would never fit him again.
And, at the very back of the wardrobe, hung a shirt.
The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, from the gushing nosebleed I’d caused when I’d hit him in my old orange bedroom at the Burrow, that first day he’d come home. He had staunched the blood, which was everywhere, all over both of us, with his shirtsleeve.
The shirt seemed heavy until I saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Harry's sleeves. It was my own plaid shirt, the shirt Hermione had made me lend him that night, stolen by Harry and hidden here inside Harry's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.
I clutched them to me and crumpled to the floor.
I was vaguely aware of footsteps on the landing and Hermione opened the door.
I was also vaguely aware that I was curled up on the floor, clutching two old shirts and sobbing.
“Ron?” she said, kneeling beside me and touching my shoulder. “What is it?”
I mutely showed her the shirts.
She obviously had no idea what was upsetting me, yet she took me in her arms and rocked me and stroked my hair until I hiccupped and stopped crying.
“What is it?” she tried again.
I sighed and wiped my streaming eyes and nose on the shirt I was wearing.
“Remember when Harry came back and we fought and were covered in blood?”
“Yes,” she said equitably, and I know she was mentally adding fucked and fought.
“This is the shirt he was wearing,” I explained.
“He kept it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
I folded back the shirtfront and showed her what was inside. “And this is the shirt I lent him to wear that night,” I sniffed.
She ran her hand down the old, plaid cotton.
“I think you should go to him,” she said.
I gasped at her. “He left,” I pointed out.
“I know.”
“He left the shirts,” I said.
“Because he thought you’d never go with him,” she shrugged. “I think you should go to his flat and fight for him.”
“Hermione!” I gasped.
“What?” she asked, smiling wistfully.
“What sort of advice is that?”
She shrugged. “Advice I’d give my best friend, if his boyfriend left him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, yet again.
“Hush,” she said, folding the shirt closed again and buttoning it closed.
Resolution Five
I had never actually been to Harry’s flat in Muggle London, I was so nervous I was shaking, and I am very surprised that I didn’t splinch myself.
I walked up and down on the pavement outside the old house for another twenty minutes, trying to work up the courage to go inside.
There was a light on in the front room on the second floor, the location of Harry’s flat, according to Teddy, and the flicker of a Muggle television, so at least it didn’t look as if he was ‘entertaining’.
Finally I clenched my hands into fists and went up the short flight of stairs to the front door.
There was no light so I whispered ‘Lumos’ and ran my wand down the column of bell-pushes.
I rang the doorbell with ‘Potter’ on it and, after a short wait, the front door clicked open.
I shook my head as I closed it behind me and walked through the dark hallway.
He really should be more careful than to buzz someone in unannounced. But I suppose there were no Dark Wizards after a hospice administrator, were there?
I climbed two flights of stairs and walked along the landing to the plain door at the end.
A dim light in the hallway showed me another bell marked ‘Potter’ and I took a gulp of air and pressed it.
It took a little while for anything to happen and I wondered why he hadn’t come to his door sooner, having just buzzed someone into the building. I suppose people pressed random buttons downstairs and he just opened the front door automatically, trusting that the visitors would find their way to the right flat.
Finally I heard a chain being unhooked and a bolt being pulled back and I resisted the urge to Disapparate and the door opened and Harry stood there.
The light in his hallway was behind him and I couldn’t see his face, although he could clearly see mine.
“Ron,” he said and I nodded, feeling like an idiot.
He stood to one side and I swallowed and strode into his flat.
There were pictures of the children – both his and mine – down the passageway, and I passed a small kitchen and bathroom to one side and what I supposed was his bedroom to the other, before entering the lounge.
The room was cosy and filled with books and magazines and pictures, and I immediately felt at home. My foolish body started to relax, while my mind still raced and skittered and couldn’t decide what to say.
“Please,” he said, politely. “Sit down. Can I get you a beer, or something?”
“Sure,” I said, ridiculously proud that I had managed a whole word without squeaking or stuttering.
I sat down and he retraced his steps down the passageway, clicking on an electric light in the kitchen and returning with two bottles of Muggle beer.
He handed one to me, sat down opposite me and raised his bottle in salute.
I nodded and raised mine to my lips.
“Ron,” he said, for the second time.
“Um,” I said.
“Just passing?” he hazarded and I snorted.
“No,” I whispered. “Not passing. Passing out, possibly.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“From nerves,” I admitted.
“You’re nervous of me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“But why?”
“You left,” I said, helplessly.
“I had to,” he said quietly. “I needed…”
“Affection, yeah, I know,” I interrupted. “I heard.”
“Heard what?” he said, tilting his head to one side and frowning slightly.
“Heard you were dating,” I elaborated.
“Ah,” he said. “Teddy.”
“Yes. Teddy doesn’t like him,” I pointed out.
Harry laughed mirthlessly. “I could tell,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Teddy is like a clone of you, Ron,” he said. “I always know what Teddy is thinking.”
“So, can you tell what I’m thinking now?” I challenged.
He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Actually, no,” he admitted.
“I’m thinking that if Teddy didn’t like him, I won’t like him, either,” I said.
“Ah,” he said again. “Well, you really won’t get the chance to find out.”
“You don’t want me to meet him?” I asked. “But I’m your oldest friend.”
He frowned at my tone of voice. “You won’t get a chance because I decided I don’t like him, either,” he said quietly. “I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Oh,” I said.
I’d come to fight for him, and now I had no one to fight.
Except for maybe Harry, himself.
“Is that why you came?” he asked. “To check up on my boyfriends?”
“There are more?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Not at the moment.”
So.
He had split up from the boyfriend.
He was alone.
And he hadn’t turned to me.
Not good.
I had to know that things had changed; that I’d changed.
“You should have come home,” I said.
“I am home, Ron,” he said.
I sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“And you know what I said,” he replied. “I can’t wait for a few days of happiness every year.”
“Are you happy now?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted. “Now I am miserable, because I let a Zach Smith-a-like run my life for six months. But I will get better, and I will try again.”
“Let me try again,” I begged, seeing my opening, but he laughed hollowly.
“Ron, nothing has changed,” he said softly.
“Then you still love me,” I said.
He snorted. “Good try,” he admitted.
I took a deep breath. “Everything has changed,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Hermione knows,” I said.
He went very still and I could feel magic crackling off him. “What?” he whispered.
“Hermione knows,” I repeated.
“Knows what?”
“What d’you think?” I complained. “Knows everything. Knows about us.”
“Since when?” he asked. He still hadn’t moved anything but his lips.
“Since Christmas,” I said. “When Teddy said you’d been dating a bloke it all fell into place. She asked me if we’d been together.”
“And?”
“And I told her. Everything.”
“Oh,” he whispered, and nodded. “And what did she say.”
“She shouted; she cried; she hated me. And we sleep in separate rooms.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said, shaking my head. “We barely spoke for a while, but now we are getting better.”
“In what way?” he asked carefully.
“As friends,” I said.
“Just friends?”
“Yes, that’s all we have left.”
“And does she know you’re here?” he asked in a small voice.
“Yes, she sent me,” I said.
“Sent you?” he whispered. “You didn’t want to come yourself?”
“I didn’t dare.”
“Sent you to do what?” he asked.
“To fight for you,” I said.
He snorted.
“Honestly,” I said.
He boggled at me. “To fight for me?”
“Yes.”
“Against what?”
“The boyfriend,” I said, as if it were obvious.
“Hermione wants you to fight for me?” he frowned.
“She wants us to be happy,” I said.
“But why? After what we did to her?”
“Because she’s our friend,” I said. “Because maybe we still have a chance of being happy?”
“I can’t breathe,” he said, getting up and striding to the window and throwing it open.
He sat in a chair by the open window, put his head down and took deep breaths.
I put my bottle down and went over to kneel by his side, not quite daring to touch him.
His eyes were closed and his head drooped over his clasped hands.
“Why now?” he asked.
I took a deep breath, myself. “I found the shirts,” I admitted.
His head swung up and our eyes met. “And?”
“And I bawled like a baby and Hermione held me and told me to come and fight for you.”
“And what are you suggesting?” he whispered.
“I want to be with you, Harry,” I said, laying my cards on the table. “I want to be together. I want you to give me one more chance, and I will leave Hermione and live with you here, or wherever you want. Our kids are grown; Hermione will still be our friend; this is better than I could have hoped for. And being without you is worse than I ever imagined.”
“Together?” he asked.
“Together,” I said.
“Really?”
“Picking out wallpaper, and Sunday lunch at the pub, and leaving each other notes when we run out of milk, and our toothbrushes living in the same mug. Together.”
He made an almost involuntary movement towards me and I opened my arms and my heart to him.
He crumpled out of his chair and landed in my lap.
His hands reached for my shirt and wound themselves tightly into it.
“I am never, ever going to let go,” he hissed.
“I’ll never let you,” I whispered into his hair, wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight.
And he was too thin, and he was shaking, but he smelt of Harry.
Title: Godric’s Hollow
Author:
shocfixPairing: Harry/Ron
Rating: NC-17
This is my Big Damn Table, turned into a multi-chaptered novella.
One hundred stories inspired by Broke Back Mountain.
Ron looks back on his life with and without Harry.
Chapter Seventeen : Resolution
Resolution One
So, he left.
He had his job, his flat, his boyfriend.
And he’d promised to visit.
He hugged Hermione and kissed her on the cheek.
He hugged me so hard I felt my ribs creak, and I felt the ghost of a kiss by my ear.
I worked non-stop on the World Cup for the rest of the summer; Harry didn’t make it to any of the games.
Hermione worked all hours too, and gave me sympathetic looks when I dropped into my armchair, exhausted, after a two day game between Spain and Peru.
Teddy and Alex returned from their honeymoon and started redecorating next door.
They’d decided they needed to change everything to make it theirs.
They started on the kitchen, which broke my heart a little more, just thinking of the times I’d gone round and found Harry sitting at the kitchen table.
September the first came and went and Harry didn’t turn up at the pub.
I waited.
Resolution Two
Hermione had always loved a full house for Christmas and that year we had all the children, plus partners.
All eight children.
Alex said that Harry was working over the holidays; so many people wanted time off at Christmas and it was hard to find cover – and his patients needed him.
So we had twenty people in the house, yet it felt empty.
“I’ve owled Harry time and again,” Hermione complained over lunch. “He always says he’s coming, but he’s busy.”
“He does work awfully hard,” Di put in.
“Well, when did you last see him?” Hermione asked.
“We went over for dinner last week,” Alex said.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He’s fine, Dad,” Teddy said. “He looked a bit tired, but he said he’s been busy.”
“Is he seeing anyone?” Hermione asked and I looked up and met Lizzie’s eyes. She wrinkled her nose at me and I shrugged.
“Yeah, actually he is,” Alex said quietly. “A nurse from the hospice.”
“Oh!” Hermione said. “Well, that’s nice.”
Teddy grunted.
“What?” Hermione asked him.
“Well, that’s why we went over to dinner,” he explained. “So we could meet. I didn’t like him.”
There was a ringing silence.
“Him?” Kate echoed.
“Yeah,” Teddy answered, spearing another parsnip and blissfully unaware of the reactions around the table. “Harry was waiting on him hand and foot and he was acting like this wasn’t enough; takes him for granted, if you ask me.”
Part of me was furious that Harry wasn’t being treated well.
Most of me was aware of how still Hermione had gone.
Resolution Three
No one mentioned it for the rest of the afternoon, except when Lizzie kissed me goodbye and asked if I was OK.
Hermione and I tidied up and went and sat in the lounge with a coffee and a mince pie.
“Ron,” she said calmly. “Have I been very stupid?”
“No,” I said automatically.
She sighed. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” she complained. “Have I been stupid about Harry?”
“We can’t make him visit,” I muttered. “It’s been four months, Hermione. He knows he’s welcome here.”
“Not stupid about inviting him to dinner, Ron,” she said, stirring her coffee and watching the cream spiralling into it. “He is dating a man.”
Ahh. “Yes, apparently so,” I said carefully.
“Why didn’t I realise this?” she demanded.
“Harry never dated,” I said. “How were you supposed to know?”
She shrugged. “Ron,” she said. “If I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”
I put down my coffee. “Of course,” I said, knowing that this was it. The conversation we should have had thirty-three years ago.
“Did you and Harry have a… a relationship?” she asked. “A romantic relationship.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” she said quietly. “That explains a lot.”
She frowned as she looked into the fire, obviously threading this piece of information between her memories of our time together.
“You had an affair with him,” she said.
I winced. “Not an affair,” I said.
She cocked her head and looked at me.
“An affair is a short-term thing,” I explained.
“And how long were you together?” she asked.
“Well, we weren’t always together,” I said. “Sometimes nothing happened for years.”
“When did it start?” she asked. “When did you start sleeping with him?”
“When we were seventeen.”
She caught her breath. “And when did you last sleep with him?”
“On his birthday.”
“This year?”
“Yes.”
“And every other time you went away to that damned cottage?”
“Yes.”
“For thirty-three years?”
“Yes.”
“But what about me, Ron?” she said very, very quietly and I went and knelt by her feet.
I reached for her hand, but she shook her head and pulled it away from me.
“I love you, Hermione,” I said and she shook her head. “I honestly do. Harry and I spent the summer we left school together. But that was it. Nothing happened once we got back, and then there was the war and then he left. He left, and that was it, Hermione. I promise.”
“But it wasn’t,” she objected.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t. Because he came back.”
“But you fought when he came back! You were both covered in blood.”
“We fought second, we slept together first.”
“Just like that?” she demanded. “You opened the door and there he was, and you hadn’t spoken to him for five years and you took him somewhere and fucked him?”
I winced. “Yes.”
“But why?”
“He’s Harry,” I said helplessly.
“And then you hit him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he was marrying Ginny.”
“But how could you just forget me and the girls and go off and do that?”
“He’s just inside me.”
She snorted.
I frowned. “I mean he’s part of me. Part of everything I do. I can’t turn him away, not if he needs me.”
“And what about what I need?”
“I stayed,” I said pathetically.
“Stayed?” she demanded.
“So many times he asked me to leave with him; but I couldn’t leave you and the girls.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?” she asked.
“No,” I said, hanging my head. “I just promised I’d tell you the truth.”
“You also promised things about forsaking all others, Ron,” she said.
I nodded.
“And now he’s left you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Again,” she added.
“Yes,” I sighed.
“And if he came back? If he asked you to leave?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think he’s coming back, Hermione,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “It’s only been four months. It was five years last time. And what was the longest you were apart after that?”
I thought about it. “It was two years after he came back that we went away together,” I said.
“When Ginny and I were so supportive of your male bonding trip,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“And we did nothing for five years after Ginny died.”
“I cannot believe I was so stupid,” she mused.
“Don’t blame yourself, Hermione,” I said.
“Blame myself?” she shrieked. “I blame you, you spineless cretin. How could you do that to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said hollowly.
“Why did you do that to me?”
“I love him,” I said.
“More than you love me?”
“Differently,” I floundered.
“Differently how?” she scoffed.
I tried hard to pin it down. “With you I love you because of all the wonderful things you are, that you do. For all the things we’ve done together, for our children.”
“And with Harry?”
“With Harry, it’s like breathing.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
“It’s not for any wonderful qualities. He is a bastard sometimes; he is selfish and only comes to me when he is hurting, when his life is falling apart. You’re right, if this relationship fails he probably will come back to me. And I can’t turn him away, because I would die.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?” she said in a very small voice.
“Because it would be wrong.”
She snorted.
“Your behaviour pretty much illustrates you don’t care about right or wrong, Ron.”
“I do. I can’t do the wrong thing. I admit I’m weak when he comes to me, but I only went to him once.”
“When?”
“When Mum died.”
“Oh, Ron,” she sighed.
Resolution Four
So.
We had separate bedrooms.
We went to work.
Hermione worked even longer hours and I made myself something to eat when I got home and pondered on how I’d lost everything.
Things slowly got better between us.
Not as husband and wife, but as friends.
One afternoon, in the spring, we were both working in the garden and I looked down at her, kneeling in the earth, with a smudge on her nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said suddenly.
She looked up at me. “I know you are,” she said serenely.
I fell carefully to my knees beside her.
“I never meant to hurt you, Hermione,” I said. “Can we be friends? I can’t lose everything, not after all this time.”
“Of course we’re friends, Ron,” she said. “We’ve always been friends.”
I reached for her dirty hand and we sat and smiled sadly at each other.
Just then Teddy came through the gap in the hedge and stopped short at the sight of us.
I know they’d noticed the distance between Hermione and me over the past months and he seemed pleased to see his parents holding hands in the mud.
“Dad,” he said. “We want to start decorating the Master Bedroom today, but Harry left some stuff behind. Alex says he says he doesn’t need it, but I thought you should be the one to get rid of it.”
“Go on,” said Hermione and I hauled myself to my feet and trudged next door.
I washed my hands in their shiny modern kitchen and went up to Harry’s room.
There were no specific memories of being together up there; his children had been born in this room, Ginny had died there; we hadn’t slept together there.
There was a box of his stuff on the floor.
School stuff.
Books, scarves, ties, things that Hermione and I had given him for birthdays and Christmas.
All safe memories from the days before things changed between us.
All memories he had left behind; that he’s said could be thrown away.
I put the box on the bed, deciding there was plenty of room in my attic to keep the memories.
The wardrobe door was open and I looked inside.
Old, worn shoes in pairs on a rack.
A leather jacket that Ginny had teased him about for buying; that would never fit him again.
And, at the very back of the wardrobe, hung a shirt.
The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, from the gushing nosebleed I’d caused when I’d hit him in my old orange bedroom at the Burrow, that first day he’d come home. He had staunched the blood, which was everywhere, all over both of us, with his shirtsleeve.
The shirt seemed heavy until I saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Harry's sleeves. It was my own plaid shirt, the shirt Hermione had made me lend him that night, stolen by Harry and hidden here inside Harry's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.
I clutched them to me and crumpled to the floor.
I was vaguely aware of footsteps on the landing and Hermione opened the door.
I was also vaguely aware that I was curled up on the floor, clutching two old shirts and sobbing.
“Ron?” she said, kneeling beside me and touching my shoulder. “What is it?”
I mutely showed her the shirts.
She obviously had no idea what was upsetting me, yet she took me in her arms and rocked me and stroked my hair until I hiccupped and stopped crying.
“What is it?” she tried again.
I sighed and wiped my streaming eyes and nose on the shirt I was wearing.
“Remember when Harry came back and we fought and were covered in blood?”
“Yes,” she said equitably, and I know she was mentally adding fucked and fought.
“This is the shirt he was wearing,” I explained.
“He kept it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
I folded back the shirtfront and showed her what was inside. “And this is the shirt I lent him to wear that night,” I sniffed.
She ran her hand down the old, plaid cotton.
“I think you should go to him,” she said.
I gasped at her. “He left,” I pointed out.
“I know.”
“He left the shirts,” I said.
“Because he thought you’d never go with him,” she shrugged. “I think you should go to his flat and fight for him.”
“Hermione!” I gasped.
“What?” she asked, smiling wistfully.
“What sort of advice is that?”
She shrugged. “Advice I’d give my best friend, if his boyfriend left him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, yet again.
“Hush,” she said, folding the shirt closed again and buttoning it closed.
Resolution Five
I had never actually been to Harry’s flat in Muggle London, I was so nervous I was shaking, and I am very surprised that I didn’t splinch myself.
I walked up and down on the pavement outside the old house for another twenty minutes, trying to work up the courage to go inside.
There was a light on in the front room on the second floor, the location of Harry’s flat, according to Teddy, and the flicker of a Muggle television, so at least it didn’t look as if he was ‘entertaining’.
Finally I clenched my hands into fists and went up the short flight of stairs to the front door.
There was no light so I whispered ‘Lumos’ and ran my wand down the column of bell-pushes.
I rang the doorbell with ‘Potter’ on it and, after a short wait, the front door clicked open.
I shook my head as I closed it behind me and walked through the dark hallway.
He really should be more careful than to buzz someone in unannounced. But I suppose there were no Dark Wizards after a hospice administrator, were there?
I climbed two flights of stairs and walked along the landing to the plain door at the end.
A dim light in the hallway showed me another bell marked ‘Potter’ and I took a gulp of air and pressed it.
It took a little while for anything to happen and I wondered why he hadn’t come to his door sooner, having just buzzed someone into the building. I suppose people pressed random buttons downstairs and he just opened the front door automatically, trusting that the visitors would find their way to the right flat.
Finally I heard a chain being unhooked and a bolt being pulled back and I resisted the urge to Disapparate and the door opened and Harry stood there.
The light in his hallway was behind him and I couldn’t see his face, although he could clearly see mine.
“Ron,” he said and I nodded, feeling like an idiot.
He stood to one side and I swallowed and strode into his flat.
There were pictures of the children – both his and mine – down the passageway, and I passed a small kitchen and bathroom to one side and what I supposed was his bedroom to the other, before entering the lounge.
The room was cosy and filled with books and magazines and pictures, and I immediately felt at home. My foolish body started to relax, while my mind still raced and skittered and couldn’t decide what to say.
“Please,” he said, politely. “Sit down. Can I get you a beer, or something?”
“Sure,” I said, ridiculously proud that I had managed a whole word without squeaking or stuttering.
I sat down and he retraced his steps down the passageway, clicking on an electric light in the kitchen and returning with two bottles of Muggle beer.
He handed one to me, sat down opposite me and raised his bottle in salute.
I nodded and raised mine to my lips.
“Ron,” he said, for the second time.
“Um,” I said.
“Just passing?” he hazarded and I snorted.
“No,” I whispered. “Not passing. Passing out, possibly.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“From nerves,” I admitted.
“You’re nervous of me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“But why?”
“You left,” I said, helplessly.
“I had to,” he said quietly. “I needed…”
“Affection, yeah, I know,” I interrupted. “I heard.”
“Heard what?” he said, tilting his head to one side and frowning slightly.
“Heard you were dating,” I elaborated.
“Ah,” he said. “Teddy.”
“Yes. Teddy doesn’t like him,” I pointed out.
Harry laughed mirthlessly. “I could tell,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Teddy is like a clone of you, Ron,” he said. “I always know what Teddy is thinking.”
“So, can you tell what I’m thinking now?” I challenged.
He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Actually, no,” he admitted.
“I’m thinking that if Teddy didn’t like him, I won’t like him, either,” I said.
“Ah,” he said again. “Well, you really won’t get the chance to find out.”
“You don’t want me to meet him?” I asked. “But I’m your oldest friend.”
He frowned at my tone of voice. “You won’t get a chance because I decided I don’t like him, either,” he said quietly. “I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Oh,” I said.
I’d come to fight for him, and now I had no one to fight.
Except for maybe Harry, himself.
“Is that why you came?” he asked. “To check up on my boyfriends?”
“There are more?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Not at the moment.”
So.
He had split up from the boyfriend.
He was alone.
And he hadn’t turned to me.
Not good.
I had to know that things had changed; that I’d changed.
“You should have come home,” I said.
“I am home, Ron,” he said.
I sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“And you know what I said,” he replied. “I can’t wait for a few days of happiness every year.”
“Are you happy now?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted. “Now I am miserable, because I let a Zach Smith-a-like run my life for six months. But I will get better, and I will try again.”
“Let me try again,” I begged, seeing my opening, but he laughed hollowly.
“Ron, nothing has changed,” he said softly.
“Then you still love me,” I said.
He snorted. “Good try,” he admitted.
I took a deep breath. “Everything has changed,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Hermione knows,” I said.
He went very still and I could feel magic crackling off him. “What?” he whispered.
“Hermione knows,” I repeated.
“Knows what?”
“What d’you think?” I complained. “Knows everything. Knows about us.”
“Since when?” he asked. He still hadn’t moved anything but his lips.
“Since Christmas,” I said. “When Teddy said you’d been dating a bloke it all fell into place. She asked me if we’d been together.”
“And?”
“And I told her. Everything.”
“Oh,” he whispered, and nodded. “And what did she say.”
“She shouted; she cried; she hated me. And we sleep in separate rooms.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said, shaking my head. “We barely spoke for a while, but now we are getting better.”
“In what way?” he asked carefully.
“As friends,” I said.
“Just friends?”
“Yes, that’s all we have left.”
“And does she know you’re here?” he asked in a small voice.
“Yes, she sent me,” I said.
“Sent you?” he whispered. “You didn’t want to come yourself?”
“I didn’t dare.”
“Sent you to do what?” he asked.
“To fight for you,” I said.
He snorted.
“Honestly,” I said.
He boggled at me. “To fight for me?”
“Yes.”
“Against what?”
“The boyfriend,” I said, as if it were obvious.
“Hermione wants you to fight for me?” he frowned.
“She wants us to be happy,” I said.
“But why? After what we did to her?”
“Because she’s our friend,” I said. “Because maybe we still have a chance of being happy?”
“I can’t breathe,” he said, getting up and striding to the window and throwing it open.
He sat in a chair by the open window, put his head down and took deep breaths.
I put my bottle down and went over to kneel by his side, not quite daring to touch him.
His eyes were closed and his head drooped over his clasped hands.
“Why now?” he asked.
I took a deep breath, myself. “I found the shirts,” I admitted.
His head swung up and our eyes met. “And?”
“And I bawled like a baby and Hermione held me and told me to come and fight for you.”
“And what are you suggesting?” he whispered.
“I want to be with you, Harry,” I said, laying my cards on the table. “I want to be together. I want you to give me one more chance, and I will leave Hermione and live with you here, or wherever you want. Our kids are grown; Hermione will still be our friend; this is better than I could have hoped for. And being without you is worse than I ever imagined.”
“Together?” he asked.
“Together,” I said.
“Really?”
“Picking out wallpaper, and Sunday lunch at the pub, and leaving each other notes when we run out of milk, and our toothbrushes living in the same mug. Together.”
He made an almost involuntary movement towards me and I opened my arms and my heart to him.
He crumpled out of his chair and landed in my lap.
His hands reached for my shirt and wound themselves tightly into it.
“I am never, ever going to let go,” he hissed.
“I’ll never let you,” I whispered into his hair, wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight.
And he was too thin, and he was shaking, but he smelt of Harry.