Other Waters

by Mad Maudlin

2.

For a crystalline second, Harry felt frozen—even his heartbeat seemed to pause. Then he understood, really understood what Nott was saying, and something deep in his stomach seemed to explode. He turned and strode forward—Tonks had dropped his robes, apparently in surprise—and grabbed Nott by the hair, wrenching his face off the floor. "You know where to find his body?" Harry demanded, all thoughts of interrogation technique and dealing gone like smoke.

Nott licked his lips nervously for a moment. "I know where to find him," he said slowly, holding Harry's eyes. "He's alive."

Harry grabbed a fistful of Nott's shirt with his other hand, pulling him further off the floor. "Ron Weasley died three years ago," he told him brutally, "he was captured and killed—"

"I've seen him," Nott said, "I saw him just a few days ago."

"Potter," Tonks said, "this is not the time."

Harry heard her, but she might as well have been miles away. "What the hell do you mean, you saw him a few days ago?" he growled, tightening his grip.

Nott squirmed in Harry's grasp. "I mean I saw him," he repeated. "Alive. As in not dead."

"You're sure it was him?"

"Bit hard to mistake him for someone else—" Nott must've seen something in Harry's face, because he quickly added, "but yeah, I'm sure it was him, it had to be."

"And he's really alive?"

"Might be better off dead, but—"

"Potter." Tonks said again, closer. "Not now."

Once again he ignored her. "Where is he?" he demanded. "Who's holding him?"

"Up north," Nott said, "I've been to the house. Rodolphus Lestrange and a pack of wanna-be Dark wizards, they're in hiding up in the islands—"

"And they're holding him prisoner?"

Nott's mouth twisted into something that resembled a smile, revealing a jagged, broken tooth. "I suppose you could call it that...looked to me like he was more of a pet, really..."

Harry wanted to shake him, hit him, shout at him until he got the answers he wanted, but Tonks seized his wrist in one hand and the back of his robes in the other. "Harry," she said firmly, "save it."

He looked up at her, and briefly resented how quickly she'd regained composure. "Aren't you listening?" he demanded. "He's talking—"

"And whatever it is, he can say it later," she said.

"Tonks—"

"This conversation is over, Potter," she said with merciless firmness. "And we are leaving now."

She pulled him up—half-dragged him, like a recalcitrant puppy—and pushed him towards the door. He glanced back, just once, before he stepped through the illusory stone wall—Nott was watching him go with steady eyes, and while he was still sprawled on all fours, still shaking and panting, Harry could've sworn the other man's face was twisted into the faintest of smirks.

Then he was out of the cell, and stumbling towards Kingsley, who looked just short of furious. He seized Harry's arm and marched him out of the detention area, into an anteroom used by guards. "What," he asked with icy calm, "was that?"

"He knows where they've got Ron," Harry said, wincing at how young he sounded.

"What he knows," Kingsley said with rising volume, "is that you'll completely lose your head the moment he mentions that name again. You have given him an edge, Potter."

"You could at least have let me get the details out of him—"

"How do we even know he's telling the truth?"

"Why the hell would he lie about a thing like that?"

"Whoa," Tonks said, making a slashing motion through the air with her hand. "Okay. Deep breaths, everyone."

Kingsley glared at both of them, but lowered his voice. "Harry," he said, "if we jump on this claim too quickly, and it's bogus, it'll only encourage him to lie to us."

"But—he—are you even going to ask him about it again?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Tonks said, folding her arms. "I agree it's a weird thing to come up with, but...Harry, it's not all that plausible, is it? If he was counting on you overreacting—"

"I'm not overreacting!"

"Any reaction is overreaction," Kingsley said flatly. "And plausible or not, we can't afford to let suspects lead us around by the nose. If you can't be objective about this, Potter, then you are off the case, end of story."

Harry wasn't certain whether he wanted to beg or punch Kingsley in the nose, but he certainly didn't want to grit his teeth and say "Yes, sir," which was exactly what he did. Without waiting for a dismissal, he stalked out the room, fists clenched achingly tight. Neither Kingsley nor Tonks, wisely enough, didn't try to stop him.

-/--/--/-

Harry went through the rest of his day and most of the next barely aware of what he was doing. Warring images chased themselves around his brain, each one more vivid than the last. Maybe, even now, Ron was bound and chained in some dank dungeon—or caged like an animal in a dusty ruin—maybe he was thin and injured now, maybe he looked a little different, but maybe he was alive, maybe he could stride out into the sunlight any minute if only Harry could find him—

Or maybe he'd been dead for three years, and Nott was lying through his broken teeth.

It had taken Harry months to admit that Ron was dead the first time. He had held out hope long after Hermione had started talking about him in the past tense, even after the Weasleys had buried an empty coffin next to Charlie's. Harry had told himself that until he saw the body, it wasn't really true: that the Death Eaters didn't take prisoners without a purpose. Even after Voldemort was dead, Harry clung to a useless fantasy that Ron would turn up any day in an abandoned Death Eater hide-out, or be found lost the countryside after his captors cut and run. It wasn't until a whole year had passed with no evidence, no sign that Harry had finally admitted to himself that it had just been too long; that Ron, wherever he had gone, was probably never coming back.

But if Ron was alive, had been the whole time? If he really had been held prisoner these past few years? It was absurd—he'd been captured only because of Harry, because he'd protected Harry, because he'd been Harry's friend. There was no reason for a Death Eater to have kept prisoners once the war ended. But if they had kept him—if he was still alive—alive, imprisoned—Nott has said, more of a pet, really—

It didn't make sense. In fact, it was completely improbable. Maybe Kingsley was right, and Nott was just trying to manipulate them into letting him off. But if there was even the slimmest chance, the scantest shred of truth in the claim...Rabastan Lestrange had killed himself when Harry took out Voldemort, and Bellatrix had been killed months before dueling an Auror, but Rodolphus had never been caught and was still officially at large. If he'd kept Ron for some bizarre reason, if Ron had been alive all this time and they hadn't been searching for him, had wasted time they could've spent freeing him...

But it couldn't be true. They had searched everywhere, every crack and corner of England. At first Harry had thought Ron would be used as bait, as Sirius had been, or later that he'd be held for some kind of ransom...but no, there was never anything. Ron was just another blood traitor, another enemy. No reason for a Death Eater like Lestrange to take any sort of interest in him, no reason to keep him alive...

But what if someone had?

But what if Nott was lying?

But what if he wasn't?

But, but, but...

It drove Harry to distraction: there was no chance he could actually read and make sense of the transcripts he was supposed to be evaluating, but Kingsley and Tonks were nowhere to be see. Which was just as well, because he wasn't certain what he'd do if he did see them. Beg? Grab one of them and shake them until they let him back onto the case? Apologize and try to convince them he could be objective when he was too preoccupied to do anything but ask himself what if, what if, but but but... No, he was probably better off where he was, pacing his cubicle in between bouts of pretending to work. Though he wanted to know what, if anything Nott was saying—wanted it more than he'd wanted anything in a long time—he didn't go so far as to seek someone out who knew. No need to embarrass himself any more than he already had.

By Thursday evening, though, it had simply become too much. When the clock on his desk finally ticked around to "dinner," he stared at the pile of paperwork he'd barely touched, checked his watch for just a moment, and grabbed his cloak off the peg.

"Taking my break," he told Williamson, the senior Auror on duty this time of night.

"Going out?"

"I'll be back in an hour or so."

He didn't really think about what he was doing or where he was going until he'd already Apparated; it took him several minutes of fierce concentration before he was sure he could do it without splinching himself. He couldn't say why it suddenly seemed like a good idea, but he was certain that if he stayed in that cubicle one minute longer the top of his head was just going to pop right off and break a light fixture. He had to get out, do something, do something. And having decided that, well, where else was he going to go?

The windows in the Ministry had been full of a clear autumn sunset, but when he appeared in Devon it was damp and overcast, almost full dark already. The lane that lead up to the Burrow was a muddy morass pocked with piles of early-falling leaves that likely concealed deep puddles between the ruts. The familiar old house was alive and shining at the top of its hill, full of warmth and life and memories. Harry watched the bright windows for a moment, and the shadows moving across them, torn for a moment between Apparating straight back or braving the lane, knocking on the door, going inside...

Someone stepped out onto the front porch and took the decision out of his hands. "Oi!" the figure called out, leaning over the rail. "Who's down there!"

Harry stepped forward, stumbling a bit on the slick grass, and waved. "'S me!"

The figure on the porch made an exaggerated peering gesture, then clutched at his chest. "Bless me, do my eyes deceive me? Has the prodigal truly returned? Shall I alert the media?"

In spite of himself and the turmoil still circling his mind, Harry felt himself smile. "Piss off, Fred."

"I'm George, thank you very much. You see how long you've been away?" As Harry made his way up the lane, picking a path between the mud and the verge, George—or whichever one he was—stuck his head back in the house and shouted something indecipherable. The steady babble of voices from inside became a torrent as what looked like half the family spilled out on the porch to greet Harry on the occasion of his first visit in...he actually couldn't quite recall the last time he had visited, now. Quite a long time.

Mrs. Weasley was the first out the door and the first one to get to him when he climbed the front steps: she hugged Harry tightly and charmed his shoes clean in nearly the same motion. "Oh, Harry, dear, it's good of you to make it," she said.

"Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Weasley," he mumbled.

"Oh, don't say it like that, dear, you know you're always welcome here." She hugged him again, tight enough to make him squirm, and then she pulled him inside, into a wall of Weasleys. The other twin, allegedly Fred, slapped him on the back, Mr. Weasley shook his hand vigorously, and Bill threw an arm around his shoulders, all the while they were talking at once, greeting him, welcoming and castigating him in a steady stream of overlapping voices. Harry took it all in, offering up generalized thanks and apologizes, and after a moment he found himself being pushed towards the kitchen at the head of a noisy, unruly procession.

At some point in the last few years the Weasleys had given up pride and enlarged parts of the house, so that the kitchen was now just big enough for a massive table that seated everyone at a squeeze. The walls, which had always held a chaotic jumble of photographs, were now wide enough to accommodate twice their previous capacity. Most of the pictures were new and unfamiliar to Harry, but every few feet there was a familiar scene or a face looming out of the corner of his vision that reminded him of childhood holidays and his first tastes of family. He did his best to keep his eyes fixed to the front.

The rest of the family was at the table, still picking at an enormous dinner. Percy and Penelope were near seated at one end of the massive new table—the end further from Fred and George, Harry was willing to bet—and they smiled politely at Harry when he came in, but didn't get up. Next to them was Fleur, who was bouncing a squirmy baby on her knee and trying to tempt him with a spoonful of unidentifiable green paste. Jack, Harry recalled dimly, the baby was Jack, who had just been born...he couldn't actually remember when Jack was born. Damn it. He hoped he'd sent a card or something.

At the other end of the table sat Hermione, Neville and Ginny, two of whom actually looked pleased to see him. Neville stood partway and leaned around Hermione's back to shake Harry's hand. "Good to see you," he said cheerily, pumping Harry's arm vigorously. It was easy to forget just how strong Neville now; he still had that boyishly round face, but he also didn't need a wand to move fifty-pound sacks of fertilizer.

"Good to see you, too," Harry said, releasing his grip before his arm popped off entirely. "How's business?"

"Booming—or should I say blooming?" Neville said with a self-effacing grin. "Never been busier."

"I thought you were working tonight, Harry?" Hermione asked, just a hint too politely.

"I get an hour for dinner," he said as casually as he could force. "I, er, thought I'd drop by."

"Only an hour?" Mrs. Weasley said, as if that was the most appalling thing she'd ever heard. "Sit, Harry, sit, I'll get you a plate..."

As everyone shuffled back to their seats, Mr. Weasley conjured another chair in the midst of the confusion, next to Fleur. Fred and George glanced at one another, smirked, and shifted their plates one chair over each, so that the vacant seat chair ended up next to Ginny. She looked at it like it had landed from another planet. "Er," Harry said, sitting down slowly, "hi."

"Hi," she said with no particular inflection. "Fleur, pass down the potatoes, will you?"

"'allo, 'Arry," Fleur said, balancing the baby with one hand while she flicked her wand at the potato dish and sent it zooming down the table. "Dis 'salut' à Oncle Henri, Jacques!"

The baby waved at Harry and babbled something unintelligible. Bill took his seat again and ruffled the boy's light red hair. "That's my boy, Jack," he said. "You tell him."

"He's gotten big," Harry said as Mrs. Weasley passed him a handful of cutlery. "How old is he now, two?"

"'E is not yet one," Fleur said with a bit of a frown.

"Er. Right." Hermione cleared her throat slightly, and Harry scowled at her. "That's what I meant, one."

"He's big for his age, though," Neville offered.

Fleur beamed. "'E is, no? 'E is taking after 'is papa..."

"Nah, I was a runt as a sprog, wasn't I, Mum?" Bill said, then added a bit wistfully. "Charlie was the big one."

Harry quickly looked down at his hands, and Percy coughed loudly, but no one else seemed particularly affected by the mention of their deceased brother. Hermione nudged Harry gently and raised her eyebrows at him, as if this should've made some sort of point. If it did, Harry didn't particularly want to hear it.

"You were both fat babies," Mrs. Weasley declared, "and Jack is the spitting image of your grandfather Septimus." She dropped a plate in front of Harry that was positively groaning with food; it was probably more than Harry had eaten in the past two days, and the smell alone was enough to make his stomach growl. "There you go dear, now eat up, you don't want to be late back to work."

Harry started shoveling food into his mouth and let himself get lost in the dull roar of conversation around the crammed table. Hermione made an effort to include him, but it was awkward trying to talk across Ginny, who seemed to be more or less ignoring him. Instead she was chatting with Fred and George about some minor legal tangle they'd gotten into involving one of their products, a discussion that involved copious sound effects and a demonstration involving a roast potato and the butter knife. At the other end of the table, Fleur and Penelope cooed to Jack in French while Neville gave Mrs. Weasley advice about keeping the gnomes out of her pumpkins. Percy, Bill, and Mr. Weasley were holding up a halting conversation about goblin politics on the other side of the table, or rather, Bill was moderating the stiff exchange between his father and brother. Percy still wasn't close to his family—as if he ever really had been—and there were still certain fault lines running through these sorts of get-togethers, based on the few that Harry had brought himself to attend over the past few years. But Percy had eventually managed to swallow his pride and extend the olive branch, had made his peace with his father and siblings, though they first had to lose Charlie, and then Ron—

The food stuck in Harry's throat for a moment, and his mouth felt strangely dry. So much had changed when they lost Ron. What if, what if, what if...

"You all right, Harry?" George asked—he was fairly certain now that this one was George—with a bit of a frown.

He nodded and coughed a bit, swallowing a quick mouthful of pumpkin juice. "Yeah. Fine."

"You sure?"

"Yup, I'm great." He forced a smile and choked down another fork of potatoes, though his stomach suddenly felt tight. Didn't Ron's family have the right to know where he was, how he was? Didn't he have the obligation to tell them? But, but—he scanned the table of smiling, laughing faces—should he bring up such a painful subject when they had clearly already put it past them? Was it fair to make them hope again? Was it fair to withhold the possibility of hope?

Where was Ron now?

"Dessert!" Mrs. Weasley sang out, and Summoned an enormous cake from the kitchen. It had gooey white icing with Congratulations Percy and Penelope piped on top in sparkly purple letters. "Who wants a slice? The happy couple, of course—and Harry, I know you like chocolate swirl—"

"Er, I'm full, thanks," he said, and pushed his plate aside. The noise and laughter and warmth of the meal suddenly felt oppressive and disturbing.

"Are you certain? Not even a taste?" Mrs. Weasley asked, frowning.

He glanced at his watch very deliberately. "Actually, I should probably get going—"

"Oh, of course—wait just a bit, I'll make you up a plate to take home."

"You really don't have to—"

"Nonsense, it's no trouble at all." She reached over and poked him in the side. "Besides, you can't be feeding yourself properly, you're positively starved..."

Hermione was giving him a Significant Look and he ignored it; instead he squeezed out of his chair and grabbed his cloak. If he stayed in here any longer he'd either say something he'd regret or regret not saying something. "I'll be outside," he mumbled. "Er—good to see everyone. Congratulations, Perce, Penny, really happy for you..."

He escaped the chorus of goodbyes at his back and stood on the porch. A steady drizzle had resumed in while he was inside, swelling the deep puddles in the lane and trinkling down the rickety gutters. Why had he come here, anyway? To appease Hermione? To distract himself? To find some kind of answer to one of the fifty million but-what-ifs he had already asked himself? The Weasleys weren't going to give him that—if anything, he should be giving them answers, telling them what happened to Ron and why. As if he could—as if he actually knew. He wasn't even sure there was anything to tell.

The door swung open and he automatically turned around, saying, "Thank you. Mrs. Weasley, you really didn't have to—" But he got hung up halfway when he realized it was Ginny standing at the front door, holding a dinner plate heaped high with food and tightly wrapped in waxed parchment. "Er."

She smiled a bit without quite meeting his eyes. "Here—careful, it's heavy." He grabbed the plate, felt their fingers brush together along the bottom. "Erm. Mum charmed it to stay fresh, but you'd still better put it somewhere cold right away."

"Thanks. I'll, um, do that." There was a cold-spelled cabinet in the break room at work, he noted, he could leave it there until he got off work, so long as he put a hex on it because Calhoun would eat just about anything if it was left unattended for more than an hour—

"Harry." Ginny looked at him now, biting her lip a bit. Her hair was pulled back in a braid, but loose wisps blossomed around her face like a halo. "Is everything really all right?"

"Fine," he said quickly. "It's fine."

"You seem sort of...preoccupied."

He waved one hand vaguely through the air. "Just got some stuff on my mind. Work." Ron. "You know."

She nodded, and there was a long moment of silence, during which Harry told himself three times over that he needed to leave. They both watched the rain come down, and it occurred to him that if things had been different—very different—this wouldn't be an awkward pause at all. This would be normal, if not for Ron and Voldemort and a dozen little decisions in between; too late now, though, far too late to do anything about it.

(But what if, but what if, but if...)

"Er," Ginny said, and cleared her throat a little. "Harry. I know we haven't really talked a lot these past few...er..."

"Years," he supplied.

"Right," she said. "And I'm sorry for that."

Harry's hands tightened around the plate he was still holding. "'Snot your fault—"

"No, let me say this," she said quickly. "I'm sorry for—look, I don't want you avoiding the Burrow just because you don't want to see me."

"I'm not—" He shook his head. "I know I haven't been around much, but I've been busy. Work and stuff."

"Mum misses you," she said. "Everyone does. And I'm just saying—it's been over three years now."

Harry swallowed.

"And if I'm not over it by now, I never will be." She glanced up at him. "I know I can't take back what I said about—when we lost Ron, but for what it's worth, I'm sor—"

"I have to go," Harry blurted, and Disapparated on the spot.

He rushed back to the Auror's Division and stuffed his plate in the cold cabinet. If he'd stayed one minute longer, he would've blurted it out, he was positive. Ginny had called him every filthy name in the book when they thought Ron was killed, and he knew at the time he deserved most of them, but if Ron was really alive the whole time, if they'd been wrong—he wasn't sure what that meant. Maybe that he deserved more filthy names than ever. Maybe that he didn't deserve any at all.

Bloody hell, this was going to make him go insane.

He shuffled back to his cubicle, nodding to Calhoun and Williamson as he passed them. Williamson spun in his chair and leaned out into the corridor. "Oi, Potter, saw a memo head for your cubicle right after you left."

"Thanks, Williamson," he said. It was probably a scold for not making any progress on the transcripts the past two days. He had to put the whole Ron issue out of his mind before he really lost it—his mind or his job. He dropped into his desk chair and caught the memo as it started to flap about his face.

Inside it read:

Potter—

We've got partial corroboration on the Nott case. We're launching an investigation into a suspicious residence in the Hebrides. The mission briefing will take place at nine AM sharp tomorrow morning.

—Shacklebolt

There was a tiny subscript in more feminine hand that curled up the right margin.

p.s. Don't get your hopes up.

Harry read the lines over and over again, then sat back and shut his eyes. Don't get your hopes up, he repeated. It might not mean anything. Nott might be lying. Ron might really be dead.

But damn, it was hard not to wonder but what if, what if, what if...