19 Years Later...
It is August and the Hogwarts letters have been sent and received. Nerves unsettled and calmed. Parents closing their eyes and seeing their childselves beckoning from a doorway far behind them, over their shoulder, looking back wistfully. Children, wide eyed, the world unfolding before them, magical origami of their own futures acting as signposts pointing "this way, just this way now". And the rushed morning on Platform 9 & ¾, memories as solid as a trolley to the shin, possibilities as tantalizing as the smell of leather and coal.
Ron and Ginny see their children off, Ron snuffles tears away and Ginny wipes them with the back of her hand. They meet, apart from the others, heads bent towards one another and they whisper.
Ron is nodding. "Right, right. I'll go then."
Ginny looks up into his eyes, there is so much of herself she sees in his face, his posture. Suddenly she throws her arms around his neck and pulls him towards her and he holds her tightly. Then she draws away and this time she doesn't dry her tears but whispers through them. "See if you can't bring him to dinner Sunday."
Ron nods, overcome.
One hour later and he's climbing the rickety dark staircase over "The Triumphant Sword" pub in Diagon Alley. He steps over a witch, passed out on the floor of the narrow hallway and uses his knuckles pressed hard under his nose to block the stale smell of urine. A small dirty window lets in a smudged morning light at the far end and the door on the left is cracked open and Ron shakes his head at this but reaches out for the knob and pushes the door inward.
The room is gloomy in its unnatural darkness and he realizes that its been spelled to be dark and dank and he moves to the roller shade and with a quick flick of his wand, the shade clatters upward angrily. He shakes the wand at the room and the false forever night dissolves, melting into the dirty floorboards. He turns to the cot pressed against the wall and George is lying there, curled onto his side, knees nearly touching his chest. He is as still as a corpse but his eyes are open and he's looking at his brother. Ron can feel the cold emotion rolling off the fetal form towards him. It snakes around him dangerously, small fanged bites of pain on his ribs.
"Stop that. I'll leave."
"Spell accomplished." George's voice is raspy.
But the biting stops although the sting remains.
Ron looks around the filthy room, empty bottles littering the corners, the bureau top covered with flasks and crumpled bits of parchment. He rights a wooden chair and sits heavily.
"Sunday dinner at Ginny and Harry's. We want to see you."
"See me do what?"
"George."
"That's my name say it again I'll tell you the same."
Ron feels his heart break a tiny bit. "That's bloody stupid."
"I'm stupid."
Ron stands furious impotent. He walks to the window and manually throws the sash. The morning air moves tentatively into the room. He leans out and breathes deeply. The contrast between the room his brother lives in and the outside world is so marked that he cannot help but feel a kind of hopelessness wash over him.
He takes a different tack. "First day of term."
The silence from the bed is as loud as a scream. Instinctively he covers his ears, then lowers his hands feeling caught out and ridiculous.
"Were you all down at the station, then?" George sits slowly and Ron feels a fearful relief at this movement, but then his brother reaches beneath the cot for a glass bottle. Ron has never seen such a simple yet complicated contraption. He knows it is not magical in design. George has muttered an incendiary charm and has his lips around a straw and is inhaling the grey smoke generated inside the bottle.
"Oh, hell no. No, George. No!"
George holds the smoke around pursed lips, eyes downcast. He opens his mouth, "Muggle drugs aren't detectable." The smoke billows out between his lips, with a practised puff of air, he transforms it into a dimensioned star polygon. The star disintegrates, one piece at a time.
"You need help."
"Help is on its way." He puts the glass jar back on the floor and scoots himself into the corner of the walls. Knees still up to his chest and Ron cannot help but see how vulnerable his brother is.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
George shook his head. "Nothing. It all means nothing, Ronnie. Don't worry. Go back to your beautiful life leave me to mine."
"I want to help you, George. We all want to help you."
"Help me what?"
"Dammit, George. You're talking as though you swallowed a Riddling Lozenge. Stop it."
A single shoulder shrug, but he has the good graces to blush a bit and nods. "Okay."
"Please come to dinner. Get out of here for a day. You haven't seen the kids since," he pauses awkwardly, "well, it's been too long, hasn't it?"
"Since that dreadful War Anniversary horrorshow? Feels like yesterday."
Ron nods. He suddenly knows he has to get out of the room, out of the pub, the Alley, anywhere but there. He lets out a rattled breath and George looks up at him. His eyes are not focussed and Ron cannot bear to hold the gaze.
"I'll come."
"Really? You will?"
"I want to ask Hermione something."
Ron feels a chill move down his spine, but he suppresses it. He watches as his big brother begins the descent into a place that only he can go. George's eyes close and his head falls forward, a sickening kind of sleep. The Muggle version of Draught of the Living Death. Ron sits down slowly. He presses both fists into his eye wells until stars explode on the insides of his lids. As always, he asks himself, "What would 'Mione do?" And then he stands and begins to tidy the room. It is far from perfect, far from anything Hermione or Ginny would do and it takes him forty minutes; George in another place another time. Finally he walks over to the bed and gently encourages his brother into a supine position, covers him with the now clean quilt, tucking the edges of it around his body, feeling how thin he has become. He leans closer to whispers something or other into the scarred ear, but George speaks first.
"Fred? Tha' you?" He begins to whimper. "Please..."
Ron lays a heart-heavy hand on George's shoulder, whispers a calming charm that moves from his mouth down his arm and out his fingers and into his brother. Beneath his hand, George quiets, and later Ron could not say how long he had stood there, rooted to this broken man, before he quietly turned and left.