I don't understand why he makes me so sad sometimes.

Maybe it's because he's Ron—just Ron, my Ron, my best friend and my first friend. He's sweet and angry and happy and depressed and flawed so much that you forget he actually has talent.

The thought of Ron happy again always makes me happy, although I know it's probably never going to happen. He still sits out there sometimes, alone in the rain, and I often find myself with the urge to comfort him. That's completely natural, I mean, he's the best friend I've ever had.

Hermione's death was a shock to us all, mainly because her untimely death had nothing to do with anything Voldemort-related. It crept up on all of us unexpectedly, although the muggle doctors claim they saw it coming. She'd had—what is it called?—problems with her heart for years. Tachycardia, I think they called it.

And now Ron just sits out there getting soaked. He hardly speaks to me anymore. He says he likes the rain, likes the way it feels on his face, likes the heavy clouds in the distance like smearing a dark pencil line on the sky.

I don't know if he really does like the rain. I don't know much of anything anymore.

Luna still talks to me, sends me information on strange sightings in muggle newspapers. At the end of every conversation, she'll always ask how Ron is. I'll always reply, "He's fine, thanks." But she knows as well as I do that he is anything but fine.

He smiled at me this morning from across the breakfast table. He smiled and then gave me an ear-to-ear grin and then just starting laughing, loudly but not in the way one would laugh at a particularly good joke. He held his sides and full-on laughed, panting for breath and then abruptly stopped and stared at me.

One of us must've been going mad—I still don't know which—because then he leaned across the table and kissed me on the mouth.

He held the back of my head with his hands, his long fingers threaded in my hair, our lips parting. I'm sure I'd had that clubbed-over-the-head look; I was practically being attacked. Then his tongue slipped into my mouth, and it was the most foreign thing I'd ever experienced.

Then he pulled away from me, breathing heavily but not from lack of air, and tears glittered in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice breaking, and then left the table to head upstairs.

***

At night, he moans in his sleep. He'll whine like a hurt dog and then moan out that name as if trying to reach out to her.

Or sometimes he'd scream. He'd scream out my name, or Hermione's, or his Mum's. He got so scared that once I had to go over and climb in with him to calm him down.

Funny how Mrs. Weasley didn't even question it as she came to wake us up, our legs entwined and his head on my chest.

But then there was last night.

He'd been dreaming again, a bad one, and he thrashed about and moaned, "Don't! No… don't touch her… please…"

I woke up from my own dreams and looked over to him, his cheeks shiny from tears, and I knew in my heart that he couldn't stop. I stood up and came over to him, climbed in his bed and under the covers. I pet his hair and whispered to him, "It's okay, shh, we're fine…"

He relaxed significantly and shivered from obvious fear.

I felt my eyelids drooping closed like heavy bags of sand. I slowly drifted down into sleep again before I felt something hard and unfamiliar pressing against my leg.

"Oh, God," I whispered almost silently as I realized what it was.

Ron was aroused.

I scooted back a few inches to give him some room only to find myself hard too. I was more sleepy than shocked, however, and so managed with ease to fall back asleep.

***

I love Ron so much.

Nobody can argue that point, that my love for Ron is deep and not entirely healthy. I mean, I love him like a friend, like a brother; I wasn't positive if I loved him like a lover then, but it could've been that too.

And with all the things going on—Voldemort, Horcruxes, Charlie's death—what's the word "gay"?

Ron seems broken now, so very shattered, as if his skin is sealing up his pieces. If we don't help him soon, he'll be too broken to fix.

He still doesn't talk to me much. He doesn't even say good morning as he walks past me to stand on his lawn and stare at the skies. I don't know what he thinks he'll see, but I'm glad to let him dream.

He gives me strange looks from across the table sometimes, as if he's pondering what to do with me. He kissed me again a few days ago, deeper this time, our tongues colliding gracefully, and I didn't even flinch.

Then his hands moved to undo my belt and I grew hard again just thinking about it. I let him take me, let him push me toward his bedroom and he locked the door with shaking fingers. Then he shoved me down on the bed after taking off mine and his pants and moved his mouth to latch onto my neck.

I ran my fingers through his soft red hair, touched him reassuringly as he took off my shirt, even helped him with the buttons on his own. He pressed his skin down on mine, heated from arousal, and then he rubbed our clothed erections together.

"God—" he grunted, the only word uttered from him in three days. He held onto my shoulders with strong hands and kissed me, hard and sure and desperate, while I lay there and tried to grind up into him.

"Ron—" I choked, clinging to him and pushing up with my hips. "More…"

And then he did. He pulled my boxers down to my ankles and then his mouth was on me, so hot and wet and unknown, and I moaned quietly before coming into his mouth.

He panted, rolling off of me to lay beside me on his bed, and I frowned to see his hand down his own boxers, stroking himself.

He seemed so desperate for release, and I pulled his hand out to replace it with my own. He was so hot and hard beneath my fingers, pushing up into them with quiet moans, and he gripped my shoulders as he came in my hand.

And then he lay his head on my chest and cried.

***

If anybody noticed our awkwardness around one another then, they said nothing.

He wouldn't look at me anymore. He kept his eyes averted, always looked at something else, at someone else, and never into my eyes. He still didn't speak, which made it difficult when asking him questions. Normally, he just didn't reply.

I started to miss him as if he wasn't even there. I guess he wasn't all there anymore, not talking to anyone, desperate for isolation so he could go off and cry.

Poor, broken Ron. And not a soul could save him now.

I managed to get him outside yesterday after much convincing. He was hesitant to go, but he followed me, and we went to Hogsmeade to visit the candy store. He always loved candy.

But he didn't want to stay in Honeyduke's long. He wanted to go to the book store.

And like a fool, I let him.

It was warmer inside than I had expected. The heat embraced us welcomingly, although I don't think Ron noticed. He was busy picking up the books one by one, flipping through the pages as if looking for a lost paragraph.

When I saw Malfoy at the door, I touched Ron lightly on the arm and told him it was time to leave. He just shook his head as if scaring off a fly and said, "No. I want to stay."

I jumped a little, I admit, at hearing his voice again, at hearing him speak full-on sentences. He kept turning pages and then picking up the free copies of the Prophet that were lying on the table.

Hermione's picture was inside of it, an obstacle I hadn't foreseen.

He blinked at it a few times and ran his fingers down the soft line of her cheek, remembering.

"Well," Malfoy drawled behind us. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Ron didn't hear, or didn't care. He kept touching that picture with gentleness, with care.

"Stop," I said softly to Malfoy. "Leave him alone, he's grieving—"

"Oh," he interrupted, looking over Ron's shoulder to see the picture. "I'd forgotten that the Mudblood died."

Ron whipped around, a whole head taller than Malfoy and looking upset.

"What did you call her?" he said slowly. His eyes flashed.

"Sorry, I meant your whore. So sorry that your whore died, Weasley. I shall give my respects to you for the loss of the one good fuck you've ever had in your whole pathetic rent boy li—"

Malfoy made a little cry as Ron leapt forward and began to hit him, releasing all his anger and pain on this opportunity. His fists were flying and the rest of the customers screamed. A few tried to pry him off of the smaller man, but Ron just kept going with all he had.

"Take it back!" he screamed. "You can't call her that! Take it back, you bastard! Take it back, you… you…"

And then Ron slumped in the arms of a couple witches he didn't know and sobbed.

Nobody even noticed a bruised and bloody Malfoy shamble away, too busy comforting the crying red head in the shop.

***

I wish now that I had done something to help him earlier.

Anything. Anything he needed, I would've given it to him.

It was a few nights ago, I think. We were playing chess, the one thing he was still up for even in his weakest time. I was winning for once, because he was too spaced-out as if contemplating something important. Than he glanced up at me and gave me this look that was brilliant and heart-meltingly wonderful and kissed me from across the game board. It was brief but meaningful, and if I had to choose two things in my entire life that I could keep as memories, it would be that look and that kiss.

And then he whispered, in the voice of the Ron I used to know, the one who would sit up late with me and laugh with me and share his thoughts with me—not this new Ron, this foreign Ron, this sad and depressed Ron that was so very unfamiliar—he said, "You know I love you, right?"

I blinked at him and felt the tears pricking my eyes.

"W-what?"

He paused then. "Nothing." And then he took his turn.

I wonder if he knew that I loved him too.

***

I struggle to push past the arms grasping at me. They hold me back, telling me that it's too late, but I know I can save him. He's just resting, isn't he? He will get up and laugh with me like he used to, and I'll smack him on the head and tell him that it wasn't funny. That he scared me.

But he doesn't get up. He just lays there, eyes half-open, while Ginny is downstairs calling the police.

The paper is crumpled in my fist still, the ink still wet, and it presses into my skin to leave a mirror image of the letters. I hold it tightly and scream out all my energy that's deaf to my own ears.

Their mouths move, feeding me lies.

He's not gone. We can get him back.

I just need to touch him one more time.

The hands still pull, and I still push, all sounds muffled by the noise of my own heartbeat.

Then they release me, and I tumble forward to run to him, and I touch his hair. There's no blood. It wasn't a violent death.

I refuse to believe it was really suicide.

He doesn't move.

"Ron…" I whisper, the only sound in the empty vacuum of not-noise. He doesn't respond.

I grip his hand in my own. His is colder than I remember, like ice to my skin.

"Ron."

I press my ear to his chest and listen to the complete nothingness. No rhythm.

I feel the tears pushing at me and I give into them, burying my face in his neck.

And the paper falls gracefully to the floor, revealing smudged letters that were written in a hurry and yet were forced to have meaning.

All nonsense. Ramblings about snow, about spring trying to break through, about everything and yet nothing at all. Addressed to nobody in particular, but everyone knew who it was for.

I don't know what he meant.

But I want to understand.