Love Alone
When there's no place left for you to run
You can cast your past into the sun
Watch it light up the night
And honey, you will be fine
.
After eighteen years, he is defined by who he was, and he isn't sure who he is now.
He contemplates this existence. How odd, how ironic, that he, who always found humor in suffering, can find no relief for this suffering of his own. Self-consciously he rubs at the mark on his arm, this mark that defines his past. Does it define his future? He can't answer his own question.
The noise from the Great Hall has yet to die down. Nearly three hours post-victory, there are still shouts of triumph, which mingle oddly with the cries of sorrow. The resulting cacophony is overwhelming, and even here, in the dormitory he grew up in, he cannot escape it.
He does not belong to either of those noises. He has nothing to celebrate and nothing to mourn, so he sits, because the silence is the thing that fits him best.
He has been sitting there for a long while—he doesn't know how long, because that's the thing about silence: it doesn't keep track of time—when he hears someone fighting with the portrait outside.
"No, I don't know the password, I'm not a Slytherin!" exclaimed the voice, which sounded oddly familiar.
"No password, no entrance," deadpanned the portrait.
"You don't understand, someone is in there and I would like to talk to him," said the voice.
"No password, no entrance."
A yell of frustration from the voice, followed by a shout of pain from the portrait. "Was that really necessary?" exclaimed the portrait.
"Yes!" answered the voice. "Let me in!"
The portrait emitted a soft growl, then he heard the sound of swooshing air, suggesting that the portrait had swung open. "Damn students don't have any respect…" he muttered.
He briefly considers hiding himself away, pretending he isn't there, and allowing the owner of the voice to feel that she is mistaken. After all, he is nothing if not a coward. Instead, he lays there and lets her find him.
"And what makes you think I want to talk to you, Weasley," he asks, but there is no venom in his voice, for once, because he can't muster the energy or the hatred.
"I don't," she answers smartly. "But I want to talk to you."
"So I heard. You gave the portrait hell."
Although he has yet to sit up to look at her, he can hear the smirk in her voice when she answers, "I always do."
He wants to be angry at her for finding him, for wanting to talk to him, for caring. He can't. "So what do you want?"
It takes her a long while to answer. "You're more than what you've become."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you can move on from this. You don't have to be an asshole."
"But I'm so good at it."
She sighs. "Yeah, you are." And then there is silence for a long while, because she's trying to word this just the right way to make him see. "I know you hated Dumbledore and everything, but he says it better than I can. It is our choices that show who we are far more than our abilities."
He's quiet for a long time as he contemplates an answer. "I didn't hate him," he says eventually. "My father did, but I didn't."
She sighs again, then lays down next to him, budging him over so that she doesn't fall off the bed. How insistent, he thinks, but it doesn't really bother him.
"I wasn't going to kill him."
She meets his eyes for the first time, and she can see the honesty in them, the vulnerability that he so rarely shows.
"I know."
And then, because the moment seems right, she takes his hand, and is pleasantly surprised when he doesn't pull away.
"What I'm trying to say is you aren't your past. You can move beyond this," she says, and she touches his arm, and he jerks away and she knows she's hit a nerve. "Be someone else." She meets his eyes again with a small smile. "Something to think about."
And then she's gone, clambering out of the portrait hole ("All that fuss for five minutes! It couldn't have waited!") and he does think, and he thinks she's probably right.
He isn't his past. He is going to be just fine.