Forgetting 1/1
Author: Noctalune
Date: October 13, 2005
Category: Angst/Slightly Implied Romance
Pairing: Slight Draco/Ron (Like not really at all, in my opinion, but if slash squicks you in the extreme (!), I wouldn't read.)
Spoilers: If you haven't read all four books, why are you wasting your time reading this? Go read the books!
Rating: PG-13 (To be on the safe side)
Summary: Reflections and renewal.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns everything. I'd like to take credit for the idea, but I'm afraid it's probably not mine either.
Distribution: You can have it, I'd be flattered! Drop me a line.
Author's Notes: WARNING: Angsty-like in a very-much-so way.
The wind can ravage without blowing, just like the words never said hurt the most. The deeds never done are regretted, and the quest abandoned shames. Ron turned his face into the ravaging wind, willing it to move. Stagnation.
One wondered if anyone at Hogwarts obeyed the curfew, because the teachers never caught him on his midnight excursions. Not that he was tempting fate. No, that's not what these nights were for. They weren't for Harry, or Hermione, or to have a wizards duel. They weren't meant for sneaking, or studying, or snogging. They certainly weren't just for the hell of it. He walked in the dark because he saw clearly in the dark. Because he liked his shadow much better in moonlight. He liked being a shadow much better in moonlight.
The reeds growing ragged by the beach blocked inky triangles on the sand. The waters in the lake had morphed into glass. Fluid sheets of silver lay on the surface, tentatively disturbed by a gentle tide- a warp in the mirror. Ron lay on the dock that stretched out into the lake, one bare arm bent beneath his cheek, the other hand trailing in the water, making tiny ripples in his reflection. Little changes in his face. Silver light swept across his skin, staining it with an ethereal glitz- a strange glow that was blindingly angelic and a pale shimmer that was damningly like dead flesh.
Dead flesh. Ron closed his eyes.
Too-vivid flashes of light burst around the room with sounds like firecrackers that screamed or hissed and combusted like canons. The heat was unbearable, and Ron would have rather ripped out his throat than swallow the taste of screams that permeated the oxygen, filling his throat, his lungs, his mind, his nose, with vile reek and revulsion. However, one scream broke through the cacophony, and Ron spun, recognizing the voice. There he was. Lucius Malfoy, white mask shucked over a face that had lost its statuesque beauty in Azkaban. A black hood was thrown back and a sound like banshees and avalanches crawled over Ron's flesh when Lucius laughed. No human should be able to…to make a sound like that. Uncomprehending of the tears of misery and shock that rolled from his eyes, Ron watched, frozen in his place with terror as Lucius reached out a gnarled hand and fisted the front of a fellow Death Eater's robes.
"I have found him!" The creature shrieked, pulling the black figure off the ground, its legs kicking out ineffectually. "The spy! The spy! Oh, My Lord, how proud you will be of me! The spy!" Ron recognized the shriek before Lucius ripped away the mask.
There was no dramatic moment of puzzled disbelief, no battle of mercy and rage in Lucius Malfoy's eyes. There had ceased to be two sides for him long ago. A noise, worse than his laugh, piercing and squawk-like, ripped from the man's throat, and he threw his victim to the ground.
"Traitorous wretch!" He accused, his wand flashing above his head. It was then that Ron's mind began to wander, began to slow, and it seemed as if he was watching the whole world through a pair of omnioculars on slow speed. The dead man didn't cower- Ron laughed at this, because he knew now that the dead man didn't know how. Lucius' wand began to arch back down, and Ron wished, like so many moments before this one, that he were like Harry, unhesitating in the face of peril, and willing to risk anything for another's life. Ron's feet wouldn't budge.
"Crucio!" Lucius spat, and Ron felt the word shatter through him like a mirror. The lump of fabric and flesh on the floor writhed and shrieked in an agony that is definable only by experience. Ron stared. Was it a sign of mercy? Of feeling? One last punishment before death? A mistake?
He could move. Walking, running, he didn't know, he stood before the white mask and raised his own wand, not a stammer, not even the slightest hesitancy in his cast.
"Avada Kedavra." The word was dead. The creature crumpled.
Slowly, perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, Ron helped the dead man's son to his feet.
Ron's eyes opened, but they stared at the surface of the lake. A mistake? A mercy? He couldn't say for sure. Yet, in a way, he knew. Is it possible for one who has suffered, who has killed, who has watched the dead fall, to believe in fate? Was it that fickle mistress that set the words on Malfoy's tongue? Was it she who heard his thoughts, and answered them… Is it possible, for the forgotten, to believe in second chances?
The moon was almost spent, and the night was darkening. Ron lifted his head, and watched, indifferently, as the other shadows in the night crept away. Hermione, Harry, Neville, Snape, they all melted out of their places in the background, seeping back into the castle, trying to un-spill the cup. Ron was always the last. Always the last.
The dead man's son melted out of the shadows, and, as always, it surprised Ron that someone so pale and frail had always been so at home, so camouflaged, in the darkness. The splintered man padded silently across the grass, removing himself from the others, as he always had, though Ron had only recently noticed. Tonight, like always, he turned towards the dock, and sat down gingerly beside Ron.
There was always silence for a moment, when they both sat and stared into the mirror. The newspapers and the civilians said that Voldemort was dead. It was a lie. Ron thought of Hermione, of Neville, of Harry especially, of the dead man's son, and stared at his own reflection. Where laughter once eclipsed memories, haunted faces hung with fake smiles now stood- Tom Riddle's poison that was slowly but surely killing them off. Ron couldn't recognize his eyes anymore. It was a terrible lie. Yet…
"Forgotten?" The pale man asked.
Ron grimaced. "Almost," he lied, and the dead man's son knew that he lied, but maybe they needed it. Maybe lies were what starting over really was, because you can't really start over. You can't. Things are what they are and though life moves on and changes, the past seeps into your skin like mud and no amount of showers or happy moments will cleanse you. Yet…
Can I believe in second chances?
Silver eyes met his, shaky and awkward in the lake. Ron turned away from the water and to the man at his side. No one else was forgetting either, he knew. Gazes touched in comfortable silence. They all remembered. They wouldn't forget.
How many second chances?
Ron took Draco's hand, and squeezed.