a/n: I had a friend read over this and was told it's kind of dark. So. You've been warned. Also, the majority of this was written at insane hours of the night. Which really doesn't do a whole lot for coherency. Ron's point of view, second person.
disclaimer: I only wish that I owned it all.
---
wonderland
by lexie
chapter [one] of [two]
---
You're almost completely sure that you've reached the point where you're going nowhere. If so, then nowhere is slabs of tuberculosis gray concrete and a sky that matches, billows of cigarette smoke from the alley to your right (which you can only suspect are groups of teenagers, lighters in hand and almost smiles of newfound rebellion) and the sound of muggle cars assaulting the broken pavement road. You can taste the exhaust attacking your senses. It wouldn't be a bad way to die. Death by auto exhaust. It would almost sound appealing if it just wasn't worth the trouble.
You trudge along, letting the soles of your sneakers drag against the sidewalk. It's the speed of an almost crawl and you should be going just a bit faster in order to get home before she wakes up, but you'd rather just wander the frozen streets. It smells like clouds waiting to burst with snow and dry cement.
(snapshot: two boys and a girl at the edge of a castle. Faceless. Preoccupied with throwing snow and ice at each other. Tastes like winter and gray mothballs.)
(close up: two boys and a girl at the edge of a castle, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Snow forts and cheeks the color of melted lipstick. Technicolor splendor and distinguished outlines.)
The sky begins to fade into dawn, gray running into deep blue and then yellow. Your raven purple shadow dies away and you're left alone.
---
She's still asleep when you push the door open to the flat you share. You've become nocturnal, but it's better this way. Separate sleeping habits means you interact less. You're content to be ghosts that live and breathe. Glass eyes and hands that leave no finger print.
(She used to smoke, seventh year, a vice she picked up from her then Boyfriend, The Quidditch Star. Used the stress level of school as an excuse and seemed to calm her down a bit. Stopped later after her mum remarked about how yellow her fingernails had become. You never really minded, but hated the idea of a smell that could stick to a person, to their clothes, their hair, their breath. It's a second skin, invisible residue that's impossible to shed.)
Your days at Hogwarts were saturated with capital letters. The Boy Who Lived. The Girl Who Learned. The Redhead Who Tagged Along.
The two of you no longer have titles. One of the many tragedies of being without a real name.
It was your only rule. That the names become disposable, pushed to the back and thrown away after each stop. Kyle and Jenna in Devon; Adam and Emily in Wilshire; Holden and Haley in London. They might still be looking, you reason. But it's become an addiction, a rush. Emotional baggage is only attached to yourself. And if you're not you, then to hell with problems you had two cities back or ten. Peel it away. Shrug it off.
But maybe it's just easier to be thought of as the girl who no longer speaks and nobody.
No capital letters.
A clock on the kitchen windowsill proclaims that it's 5.00 am, either too early or too late, depending on how you see the glass of water (is it half empty? Half full? Does anyone really fucking care?) You avoid mirrors, glass, and shiny metallic objects in order to evade the sight of your reflection. As attractive as the vision of your two day old stubble and bags under your eyes must be. All compliments of the night shift you have at a bar that reeks of sex and alcohol.
You reach around in the cupboard for a box of old cereal bought far too many nights ago and any leftover milk. The flat itself is sparse. A weather beaten kitchen table with a pair of unvarnished chairs, an old sofa with the stuffing beginning to fall out, a white rug one of you must have been having a seizure when you bought that now displays the blots of meals past and mysterious blood stains that only appear after you've been out of the apartment (you should ask Hermione about it, tell her that if she needs to cut something, she can cut you and not herself. You would tell her that, too, if you had half the courage to. And if you trusted your voice around her.)
It's your home for now and it's borderline suicide inducing.
You grab the wand barely sticking out of your coat pocket and guide the box and carton over to the table lazily, searching the cupboards for a bowl without a crack down the middle. You've both been slowly but surely destroying every belonging you have, the silent aggressive way of lashing out at one another. You'll come home to find shattered plates. She'll wake up to find new gashes in the sofa.
It seems that the walls are the one thing that you can both devastate together. It had been the cheapest flat you could find in a lousy wizarding neighborhood where you're considered lucky if you can make it down the street without being hexed into next week by a stray hag. You never paid much attention to the wallpapering in the living room, but found upon moving in that the previous owners must have been either color blind or just flat out mad. Mustard yellow and acid green stripes that reminded you far too much of bright flashes and pain and nausea. You ripped up part of it on a whim one day, deciding that bare wall with adhesive tarnishes was better than a daily reminder of it all, and found another layer of wallpaper beneath it. Pink flowers with a layer of blue polka dotted wallpaper beneath it. Three layers in all. You find yourself peeling away strips of it while she slept and she apparently has that same idea while you're not around. It's now a mixture of ripped dots and flowers and stripes, bright enough to cause anyone a migraine.
You stir a bit, bite, chew, swallow. Try not to gag at your meal of stale cereal and sour milk as you pour out the night's tips for serving firewhiskey and gillywater with a smile. Added on to your paycheck, it'll be enough to get through the week, you think, if you let Hermione have the last can of soup tonight and smuggle out food from work.
You thought she hadn't noticed when you snuck off each night and played pretend with yourself. Pretend that you have an almost normal life, pretend that your name is Ben (because that's what you told them your name was, didn't you? Ben the bartender slips easily off the tongues of drunks. No capital letters. You're Ben, the bartender. Not Ben The Bartender), pretend that you're happy, pretend that Ben the bartender has none of Ron Weasley's problems. Ben is an only child, as it would happen. Ben is lucky. Ben does not have any siblings that will ultimately betray him.
And Ben is not responsible for his best friend's death.
You thought she wouldn't grow curious as to where the only steady source of income between the two of you came from. You thought she wouldn't wait till dark, follow you silently from two blocks behind, sit in a dark corner of the bar where she thought you wouldn't see her, and stare until the dawn stretched its fingers over the horizon and a wizard who looked far past his expiration date stumbled in to take over. She trailed you home the way she had there. Quiet steps. Two blocks behind. The morning after that was the morning of two broken bowls and one new stain on the carpet.
And you tried not to hate her.
You push your breakfast (or is it dinner?) away, suddenly not hungry.
WHO ARE you?
It's been scratched in on the far end of the table with a sharp quill. A message you didn't notice when you first sat down.
WHO ARE you?
It's a question that you know she only did to drive you crazy, simply because it's the only question left that would have some sort of effect on you. It's what she asks without words the few times that you catch each other's gaze. You've known Hermione Granger for thirteen years, admired her for twelve, loved her for eleven, and yet she looks you in the eyes and only sees a reflection of her own. Brown on blue. It's not a good combination. Have you really become so hollow that she no longer recognizes you?
You want so much not to hate her.
WHO ARE you?
you. No capital letters.
You snatch a quill from an otherwise empty drawer from the kitchen counter and stand poised over the table. You want to write something to tear her apart, send her into nothing the way you've been for these past months. You want to be poetic, heartbreakingly beautiful, but you had never been the lyrical one. Even your form of love was bitter and unromantic, masked as resentment in arguments and sharp words.
And you have nothing.
i don't know. i'm lost.
It's not beautiful, not poetic, but as you carve it carefully into the table next to her neat handwriting, you decide that it's enough for now.
---
All the great fairytales follow simple structures, skeletons to be built off of:
Boy is special and lives life in a far off land with evil relatives.
Boy acquires Sidekick One and Sidekick Two.
Boy overcomes adversary and lives happily ever after.
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe no one could guess what would happen after the happy ending.
---
Sidekicks never get their own storylines.
It's a fact, plain and simple. Their sole purpose is to complement the hero until all is said and done. They're not needed after that and seem to dissipate, leaving only whispers where they once stood in full form.
You never minded playing helper boy to Harry Potter (at least, not out loud.) You never minded following him around. You never minded assuring him for the most part that yes, he was right, everyone else was wrong wrong wrong.
(You were also quite good at lying and putting on a cheerful expression. A brick wall to everyone else, transparent like water to her. But she very rarely told you that she could see straight through the façade. It generally went unspoken and unacknowledged.)
You and Hermione would forever be the unspoken heroes. The ones never scrawled down into the history books. But everyone had been quite suddenly deaf whenever they were told that Harry Potter had some help in the final showdown with Voldemort and so they stepped aside, allowed him to have the unwanted glory of becoming the savior of the wizard world.
And life after that was almost simple.
---
There must have been a point in your life that you first understood the concept of death. The idea that no living thing can go on forever. Because people can't be born with that thought automatically implanted in them, can they? It must have been earth shattering, whatever made you realize it. And yet you can't remember.
You dream without sleeping, letting the shattered pictures play against your eyelids. Sleeping's impossible on the mattress with rogue springs cutting into your back (you gave the better one to Hermione in an almost bribe to get her to speak again, but no such luck.) Tell tale heart syndrome when you attempt to rest and let your mind slip away. Screams resound through you, screams you swear you've heard before, but may be another trick from your brain.
Behind closed eyes, you see pictures in negatives. Ripped polaroids from Colin Creevy's muggle camera and photos torn from a leather bound album. Overexposed pictures, too dark in places and too bright in others. Still shadows the color of a city in pitch black.
You're constantly outside your dreams, watching from behind a grainy glass wall that needs cleaning. Because it's the only thing that's dully running through your mind at this point. How if you could just wipe away the grit from the wall, you could see clearly, watch your own dreams without having to squint. Your voice in it sounds gravelly, unlike your own, and yet you know it's you. If that makes any sense.
(snapshot: two men in a dark and dingy cell. Dripping water. One is a heap on the ground, miracle they'll all whisper, miracle he hasn't screamed yet. Other poised over with a pointed wand. Tastes like ash and rust.)
(close up: two men highlighted only by the dying torch on the wall. The redhead on the ground, darker hair for the one standing over him. Unforgivable curses and demands for an address, a location, Harry Potter, where can we find Harry Potter. Writhing and blurred vision.)
You wake up with a start, the second hand sheets dotted every so often with a cigarette burn covered in your perspiration. It feels as if you've just been running, a marathon of sorts. Sleep being one more thing that no longer brings you relief.
---
The sun's only just beginning to set, but you don't know that. There are no windows in your flat, no panes to the outside world. You cannot see the blood red sun get enveloped by the horizon, not tonight.
Your father always loved them. The sunrises. He woke you up early as a kid, made you hike out to the big hill with the cherry tree on top, talked about responsibilities, grown ups, the birds and the bees. You were only eight then and therefore, had absolutely no idea what he was talking about (and had to get your real sex talk from Fred and George at age nine. Now that was scarring, to say the least.)
He was always a good guy, your father. Still is, but you tend to use the past tense when talking about your life before everything happened. Loved his life, loved his family. You liked him more than you ever really admitted. Everyone's supposed to hate their parents after the age of thirteen.
You never hated him. Not once. You wanted to be him until you were ten, and then you wanted to be Fred or George until you were twelve, at which point you secretly wanted to be Percy (a plan that pretty much shot to hell by the time you were fifteen, at which point you began to resent him, dislike him at seventeen, hate him at twenty, despised him until a few months ago, when you decided that he could die and you would stomp on his grave.)
But you never hated your father. He used to keep a diary, a leather bound, acid green journal. You would tell him that only girls write in diaries and then read them while he was at work. It was something different for you, to see your world from someone else's eyes.
It would be your first memory if you didn't have scenes, shapes, snippets of conversations and tastes on your tongue from before that.
So what's your first first memory?
No good. It was too long ago. It's all blurred.
But what's your first memory after all you've tried to forget?
Hermione. It's always Hermione. The image of Hermione covered in rain and blood and dirt after you two had been left for almost dead in an alley that looked as if it had never seen the light of day (but not dead—Death Eaters don't kill you if they think letting you live will cause you more pain. And it did, didn't it? It hurts like hell when you breathe.)
And that image will always be the first one after everything you've almost forgotten.
---
All the great fairytales follow simple structures, skeletons to be built off of. But maybe they just continued to build Harry's wrong.
The three of you were going to be great. It's what you told each other up in the Astronomy Tower one night during Seventh year, while you were supposed to be in your dorms and in bed. But it was too beautiful a night, too warm and breezy, too perfect to stay indoors. So you huddled with Harry and Hermione under the Invisibility Cloak for what you all swore would be the last time (but really, there were about seven more times after that, weren't there?) and snuck out, despite Hermione's feeble protests. You tripped over each other's feet and laughed as quietly as you could and felt your stomach jerk slightly as her hand brushed against yours and linked arms and skipped along like a trio of imbeciles. Hermione conjured a small fire when you reached the top for light and you talked about what you were going to do with your lives. You had long since decided that you would be an Auror, partly because the idea of it gave you a rush, partly because there hadn't been a Weasley Auror in centuries, partly because you had grown accustomed to being Harry's sidekick and, truthfully, weren't too sure how not to be. Hermione's final decision of going into training to be a Healer came after approximately 14,792 cases of her changing her mind.
You think that out of everything, you like this memory the best.
And so you sat with them, talking about the future that you would welcome with open arms.
Shooting looks with Harry when Hermione reached into her pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Eye roll.
"I thought you decide you were going to stop," Harry mused.
"I did. Decide I was going to stop, I mean. I just haven't yet."
"Those things are going to kill you one day," you told her with a crooked grin.
"Oh, please. Like you and Harry don't go out drinking every Friday."
"That's different. Our habits won't cause lung cancer."
"No, just liver cancer."
Another eye roll from you. Harry waited until she had looked away to snatch her lighter and fiddle with it to go up all the way. You burst out laughing when she tried to light up and caught fire to her bangs.
"Honestly!" she shrieked. "You'd think that you two would grow up by now!"
"You would think so," you replied, clutching your now aching stomach from laughing so hard. "But no."
"Seriously, Harry," she snapped at him. "You're worse than Ron. Well, no, you're not."
"Hear that, Harry? I still hold the position of Number One Idiot in her life."
"Oh, Ron," Harry smirked. "We always knew you'd grow up to be something great. Your parents must be very proud."
"Extremely. My mum has a plaque hanging on a wall at home detailing all the stupid things I do. She shines it daily."
"Grow up," she mumbled before breaking out into a tiny smile.
You never admitted to her that you had. Too fast, too soon. You spent Third year trying to salvage what was left of your childhood after Ginny and the Chamber of Secrets, after Voldemort, after she spent an entire summer calling out in her sleep for Tom.
You let your life unfold the way you had planned it that night at the Astronomy Tower.
Voldemort was no longer a problem, a threat. You moved onto training with Harry as Hermione prepped to work at St. Mungo's (you leave Hogwarts and it's nothing but more school. Fantastic.) And your lives were almost normal. You can't say you were completely surprised when you found out about Ginny and Harry. Just caught off guard. But you feigned happiness for them, because that's what friends do, apparently, not to mention Hermione elbowing you in the ribs every time you said something that could be construed as critical.
You dated a blonde, a blonde, a brunette, and a blonde (not all at the same time, obviously, but in that order as it would happen), met Hermione's nauseatingly Perfect Boyfriend, Collin, and tried to forget about the time she kissed you when you were bother too intoxicated to walk in a straight line.
An epilogue to the fairy tale.
You all just assumed that with the Dark Lord out of the way, everything would be smooth sailing.
You were stupid not to take vindictive Death Eaters into account.
---
You wander into the living room, finding it empty. Not too surprising. Hermione's very rarely around when you are. She comes home with a bundle of galleons sometimes. You never ask her where she's been or how she got the money.
You should eat before heading into work again, but your stomach still turns at the prospect of food, so you settle for a glass of water in a chipped cup. You notice that the clock has been broken since this morning.
The glass makes dark water rings on the table that you lazily wipe away mid shiver. The winters here are brutal. You're really going to have to figure out those warmth charms they taught you while you weren't listening in class.
You move to stick the glass in the sink when more writing on the table catches your attention.
THINGS I KNOW ARE TRUE
my name is hermione granger.
This is just getting ridiculous.
If the only way she'll communicate with you now is by turning your kitchen table into an open message forum, then you refuse to indulge her.
There are new words by the time you leave, slamming the apartment door at no one.
dearest hermione,
it would give me great pleasure if you would, in fact, bite me.
sincerely, ron.
You almost go back and cross it out until you remember that you hate her.
---
The bar is emptier tonight, allowing you to hear your own thoughts for once. This is bad. Not only are your thoughts bloody and gruesome, but lest people means less tips.
You get chatted up by an old, purple robed wizard who wants to know what team you support.
("The Chudley Cannons," you answer automatically without stopping to remember that Ben doesn't like Quidditch.)
"It's a good time to be rooting for the Cannons, my boy," he says while nursing his drink. "The new Keeper is really turning the team around. They're having their best season since 1934."
"No kidding. Who's the new Keeper?"
"Ward or Wold or something like that...Wood! That's it. Oliver Wood."
If your life were a comedy act, this would be where you spit out your drink. But seeing as you're not drinking anything, you just allow your eyes to grow wide.
"You're joking."
"If I were, the name 'Oliver Wood' wouldn't be a very good punch line, now would it? Why? You know him?"
"Went to school with him."
This is, yet again, all wrong. Ben went to some obscure school in America.
"Hogwarts?"
"The one and only."
The man studies you for a moment, as if looking over a text book.
"Have we met?"
"I don't...believe so..." you answer uneasily.
"How old are you? If you don't mind me asking."
"Twenty-four."
"So you were in Harry Potter's year," he says darkly.
It's ask if you've been dipped in a bucket of ice. Your limbs are frozen and brittle.
"It was a shame what happened to him," the man goes on. "To die that young. And years after defeating You-Know-Who, too...I'll tell you, if someone had come up to me and told me that his way to go would be by the hand of a group of Death Eaters, I would've told you that you were mad. Flat out mad."
You can't get the words out, so you simply nod and become rather interested in wiping clean a spot on the counter. Your mouth tastes bitter.
"Are you quite sure we haven't spoken before?" he asks for the second time. But before you can tell him that no, you have not bloody spoken to him before, his eyes light up in sudden recognition.
"You're one of Arthur Weasley's kids, aren't you?"
"No," you reply far too quickly.
"I just knew you looked familiar! It's the red hair, I'm telling you...I used to work with your father, over at the Ministry..."
"I think you have me mistaken for somebody else. I'm Ben."
But he ignores you and talks far faster than you think you've ever heard a human being speak.
"Which one of the Weasley kids are you? Can't be Ginny, obviously, Charlie, no, you're too young to be Charlie, not Bill either, tell him congratulations on his engagement, by the way, can't be one of the twins because I don't think anyone in their lives has ever seen one without the other, so...you must be Ron."
"You skipped Percy."
"Sorry?"
"Percy. I could be Percy for all you know. You skipped right from Bill to Fred and George. If I were a Weasley—which I'm not, by the way—I could very well be Percy."
You've given something away by saying this, although you're not too sure what, exactly.
"There are more people like you out there than you probably think."
"Sorry?"
"People who are forced to leave everything and run. These are dark times."
"I really don't know what you're talking about."
He stares again before finishing off his drink and reaching for his cloak.
"Unless Azakaban security has begun to seriously lax, I think I can safely say that you're not Percy.
It was certainly nice talking to you, Ron. Or Ben. Or whoever you've decided you are today."
Percy jail Azkaban Death Eaters holy fuck
"Wait," you find yourself calling after him. Your only link back to your life. Your old life. "Could you...maybe...tell him I'm okay? And...and not to worry? My...my dad, I mean."
He pauses before giving you a tiny nod. It's the last of your conversation before he pushes the door out into the velvet night.
You have to remind yourself that boys don't cry.
---
So.
Percy's in Azkaban.
As you walk home, you decide that you hope Azkaban is worse than hell.
And throw up on the sidewalk curb.
"Is everything wonderful now?!" you scream at no one.
---
One more item to Hermione's list.
i can't remember my favorite food
You stop mid route towards your room.
it's pasta
You forget that you hate her until the morning.
---
a/n [2]: So. Beginning to piece things together a little bit? Things really will be explained. Really.
Certain lines from here are taken from/inspired by quotes from "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," another thing that I, naturally, do not own.
Please excuse any glaring Americanisms, seeing as how I'm not British.
A big thank you goes out to Sara, my lovely partner in crime and ongoing source of inspiration (not to mention being the owner of the original graffiti table.) And to our other Sarah. My almost twin. The two of us wouldn't have to gang up on you so much if you weren't so wrong all the time. You guys are awesome.
Make my day? Review?