A/N: Written for The 2012 Hogwarts Games (event: Long Jump Round 1), a thread found at the HPFC forum. I was given a theme (dark secrets) and had to base the story on my favourite character (Hugo Weasley).

Many thanks to my beta-reader mew-tsubaki and to ThePaperBagPrincess who made the story cover for me.

silence my ears, tell me no more

It just wasn't right, Hugo thought. It was too evil. He watched his sister apply more lipstick after wiping her mouth with a napkin held by shaking fingers, and he couldn't understand how it all was true.

It was another funeral.

He, Rose, their cousins, and their friends—none of them were the children they once had been (though it was much too soon to have to grow up) and there wasn't one chance in the world that they ever would go back to being them now.

He turned the fork over in his hand and tried to eat something, and he saw his mother's eyes burn when his father rose to get a second helping. And then Hugo scared himself by blaming them. Blaming them and their generation.

But who else was there to blame?

He saw Lysander's red-rimmed eyes but looked away when they met his because today he couldn't be comforting; today he couldn't deal with someone else's pain, even though he probably should have tried. That was what Hugo was expected to do.

But no, he could only watch.

He saw Scorpius getting another firewhiskey and another firewhiskey and another. And Hugo knew that Scorpius would never ever admit to any pain but always choose to numb himself instead with whatever he found.

Hugo sometimes detested himself and the way he never dared to act—just watch and watch.

And in his mind he was also watching. He saw it so clearly: Lucy sinking down in front of the glass tomb, her hysterical sobs that had made her body shudder, and he saw Lorcan's closed eyes and he saw how he himself must have looked, sitting on a chair between his parents, cheeks matching the colour of his hair and his too-red lips trembling.

Then there had been a pause, a hitch, when no one had moved. No one had walked up to Lucy and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, leading her away. No one had brushed her ringlets from her wet face. There hadn't been anyone.

Hugo knew the pictures could never be erased from his memory. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and, as he observed the garden where they were gathered, he saw none of the people who actually were there…only the holes left by the people who weren't there but should've been.

"Why do you think he did it?"

Hugo didn't answer immediately. "I don't… Um…" He trailed off and sat up, hugging his knees tightly to his body.

Louis made a kind of a sigh as he lay on the floor in the tree house in Hugo's family's garden.

It could have been just like when they were kids, except for the fact that Louis' legs were outside the house and Hugo's head touched the ceiling. But that was so easy to ignore, and these days Hugo did all he could to make himself float away from the present.

There was a lot less ache there, in their past.

"It wasn't very… Or was it?" Louis asked, the words being so carelessly spoken that he almost slurred.

Hugo had seen Louis like this before—this way he cared for something so much that he became scared of it and began to avoid it, this way he had built walls around him and only sometimes dared to peak over them.

"Wasn't it quite hard to tell what Lorcan felt?" Hugo asked lightly, because if he hadn't, he would've heard himself speaking of Lorcan in the past tense, and just the thought of that made it a little bit harder to breathe.

"I suppose so." Louis' eyes had a certain glint in them, and suddenly Hugo suspected that it wasn't really Lorcan about whom they were talking. "Was there really nothing… I mean, how come no one…noticed?"

"I don't know," Hugo said quietly. "But it's not the same, Louis. Dom… She wouldn't…"

Louis sat up. "But can you be certain?"

"No." Hugo had never felt more helpless. It was as though everything around him and Louis was falling to pieces, slowly, and they didn't know how to make it stop.

"She's always alone. She hasn't… She hasn't spoken to me for days."

Hugo hated how he always was the one who had to assure people, convince them and comfort them, when he was so uncertain of everything himself, when he didn't know a thing—least of all how he ever had gotten that role. But this was Louis, so he had to, he just had to say the words that would make it easier for the blonde to fall asleep in the evenings, that would make his uneasiness disappear—if just for a few hours. "She's always been that quiet. And I'm sure she's thinking too much. She would think of what it would do to…all of us. If she, too…die—" He paused to clear his throat. "…disappeared."

Louis sniffed. "Yeah."

"Have you any plans for the autumn?" Hugo asked a few minutes later.

"Not really. Probably gonna go see Charlie again. I won't find work." He lay down again, and closed his eyes. "But I still can't regret leaving school. Not…not when I hear about James and the way he works his arse off, and the way he's changed. I wouldn't wanna be like that."

Hugo hummed and looked out over the garden, seeing the shadows of eleven-year-old Louis and James running around there, the two being so close that seven-year-old Hugo was jealous of them to the point where he refused even to speak to them.

Now he had a best friend. Now he had Louis. And yet he wanted to go back to that time.

Hugo was walking home from the nursing home where his grandfather lived. He would never tell anyone, but if he was honest with himself he would much rather have stopped seeing Grandpa Arthur and let the memories of when he was little and Grandpa would take him to Muggle stores be the only thing left of the man.

But he felt obliged to do it. He didn't do it for his grandfather, because the man didn't recognize him. He didn't do it for himself, because no. He did it because someone had to do it.

"Hi, sweetie," his mother greeted him when he walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were tired, and he could see that she didn't want to be interrupted where she sat by the table with piles upon piles of parchment stacked around her. "Lysander was here before," she added, as an afterthought.

"He was? When?"

"Before lunch. Maybe you should… Maybe you should go and see him?" his mother asked, looking up from her work at last.

"Yeah, I'll do that." Hugo quickly walked out again and hurried down the street to the block not that far away where Lysander had an apartment. (And Hugo tried to focus on his steps instead of noticing how he almost had thought "…had an apartment together with Lorcan.")

It wasn't until he saw people opening up their umbrellas that he understood it was raining, but at that point he was already soaking wet and by Lysander's street door.

He ran up the stairs, all the time wondering why he was rushing because he really had no idea.

"Ly?"

"Hugo?" Lysander opened the door, and Hugo saw the way his fingers tapped too fast against the door, the way his eyes were showing too much of the white, the way his hair didn't seem to have been washed or brushed for a week, the way his lips were chapped, and he suddenly was glad he had hurried.

"You went to see me?" Hugo asked as Lysander moved out of the way to let him enter.

Lysander looked at him, for a little too long, and suddenly he looked exactly like Lorcan with those big, round eyes, and Hugo didn't want to see that, so he looked at the walls where, until a week ago, there had been posters covering every available spot.

Now only a few strips were left, hanging sadly from the places where the posters had been pinned. Hugo could see it in his mind, could imagine Lysander's eyes half-closed in pain, pulling them all down, hands shaking so much that he couldn't do it properly.

"I was," Lysander answered at last. "I had to… I needed someone to speak to—"

They were both quiet for long time. Hugo remembered the party Lorcan and Lysander had thrown to celebrate their new home; he could see the traces of that party in his mind. He could see Teddy and Molly slow-dancing to an up-tempo song, he could see Louis laughing at a joke James had told, and he could see Lily leaning on Lysander's shoulder. He could see it so well, but it felt so long ago that he suddenly doubted it had ever happened.

Lysander cleared his throat. "Take a seat if you want," he said, much louder than before, waving vaguely in the direction of the worn-out sofa.

"Thanks, mate," Hugo said.

Lysander took a deep breath. "Can you promise… I mean, just don't… Please make…"

"This stay between us?" Hugo asked, watching Lysander's shaking fingers yet again. "Of course, Ly."

"But it's not that… It's not just a…" Lysander leaned forward, scratching his hair, all the time not looking directly at Hugo. "It's different. You'll probably want to tell this to someone. …you're probably supposed to tell someone." He had his head buried in his hands, and Hugo watched the muscles in his back clench and unclench beneath his T-shirt, and he watched the shoulder on which no one was putting a comforting hand.

"What do you mean?"

"It's big, Hugo. It's…fucking…big." Lysander looked up from his hands, and suddenly Hugo saw only Lysander. There was no Lorcan there, hiding in his features or his shadows. It was Lysander, scared out of his bones, helpless and desperate. And completely alone.

Hugo swallowed and didn't speak.

Lysander's eyes didn't let him look away. "I… It was me. I did it." As soon as the words had left his mouth, he seemed to repeat them in his head as he looked off to something in the distance.

"Did what?"

"What do you think?" Lysander sounded angry, but as he turned to look at Hugo again, he had a smile on his lips. But it wasn't his smile, because Hugo couldn't see it fit on Lysander. It wasn't the smile he had worn when Lucy and Lorcan had kissed for the first time; it wasn't the smile he had worn at Teddy's and Molly's wedding. But it was neither the smile he had worn when he had had to tell Hermione why he and Lorcan wanted to stay the night, that time when he had said "I'm sure Mum comes back tomorrow, and Dad probably just wanted to get some peace from the two of us." That smile had been there because he wanted to be strong, prove himself. This smile was curled up the wrong way.

"I don't know. That's why I asked."

The smile didn't disappear, and Hugo almost thought Lysander looked a bit crazy. "I killed him. It was me. It wasn't suicide." He spoke so quickly that Hugo didn't really understand what he'd said, but Hugo watched him spit out the words as though they were poisoned, as though he had to get them out of himself as soon as possible.

"Sorry?"

Lysander's eyes grew even wider and, as he stared at Hugo, Hugo didn't recognize him at all anymore. "I killed him. I killed my brother," he said, slowly.

"You didn't, Ly." Hugo shook his head, but somewhere in Lysander's eyes he saw that the blonde was telling the truth. But it didn't make sense that he was.

"I did." Lysander rose, all of a sudden, and put a hand in front of his mouth, as though he was trying to stop the sob that suddenly seized his body. He swayed slightly where he was staying, and Hugo rose, too.

"Hey, Ly, look at me," Hugo said, grabbing Lysander's shoulders. He suddenly was so scared, not only for Lysander, but also for himself. It felt as though he couldn't see anything anymore, because nothing looked as it should.

"I…" Tears ran down Lysander's cheeks, and Hugo thought he might be crying, too, but Lysander clutched Hugo's arms so tightly so that Hugo could only focus on the blonde. "We fought, and we were down underneath the bridge, you know…"

"Breathe, Ly," Hugo said quietly as Lysander choked on his own saliva. Hugo could see the bridge Lysander was referring to, but he couldn't see the things of which Lysander spoke. He could see himself and Lily sitting there that time when they had just passed their Apparition test and were skiving Transfiguration, waiting for Lucy and Lorcan. He could see himself and Lysander sitting there and waiting for Louis with lots of junk food and sweets, because Louis had just been fired. He could see himself sitting there with Lorcan, who just had started to smoke and didn't want anyone to find out.

But he couldn't see Lorcan and Lysander there…

"So we," Lysander continued, his breath ragged, "were just there, and then he said something about Luce and Lily and it was raining and I… Then he said something about Mum and Dad—I can't even remember what. And we started fighting, and it was horrible, and then he pushed me…or I had already pushed him, I don't know. And then I…then I fucking pushed him."

Hugo tried so hard to see it. But he couldn't. It wasn't… It made no sense.

"And everyone thinks he killed himself, that he jumped, but it was me. Hugo, it was me." Lysander sank down on the floor, tears still streaming down his face.

Hugo stood as though paralyzed.

"It was me," Lysander whispered, once again hiding his face in his hands. Hugo sat down next to him and put his arms around the shaking blonde. "I did it."

Hugo had no words at all to offer.

They sat there for hours, Lysander whispering the same words over and over until they turned into "I miss him, I miss him." And Hugo didn't say a word; he just combed through Lysander's hair with his fingers and wished for someone to take his place.