Other Waters
by Mad Maudlin

4.

Harry awoke slowly, and only at length had the capability to wonder who was holding a cocktail party in his bedroom. The voices weren't loud, per se, but they were interfering with his sleep.

"...file all the paperwork. The Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee is going to hate me."

"At least we got what we came for, though, eh?"

"More or less."

A switch flipped, some connection was made, and Harry's eyes flew open as he remembered. He was greeted with a few streaks of early morning daylight creeping along the ceiling of a hospital ward—they'd brought him to St. Mungo's already. He tried to sit up, but every muscle in his body seemed stiff and unresponsive.

"Hey." Kingsley trotted over from one of the other beds—it was his voice that had woken Harry. He looked exhausted, but he still helped Harry sit up in bed. "Easy, Potter. That wasn't a short drop you took."

"What happened?" he asked. "Where's Ron?"

"Everything's fine," Kingsley said, patting Harry's shoulder. "Bloke tried to create a distraction by blowing the stairs out from under you. You got pretty banged up and both your legs were broken when we brought you in."

"And Ron...?"

Something seemed off in Kingsley's expression, but he said just as calmly as ever, "He's been placed in a private room for now. I already notified Molly and Arthur, they should be here by now."

Harry found himself breathing a little easier at that, and he tried to shake the sleep out of his head. "How did the rest of the raid go?" he asked. "Did we capture anyone?"

"Eight," Kingsley said with a sigh. "Most of them idiots and wanna-bes, but with serious potential to become something worse if they'd have a chance to cohere."

"So Nott was telling the truth."

Kingsley shrugged. "Or most of it. He seems to have left out a detail or two—seems he didn't leave the Branch House on particularly friendly terms with the inhabitants. We had to move him to separate detention for his own safety last night."

That certainly explained a few things. Harry stretched his arms over his head, feeling the twinges from his wrists to his shoulders. "What about casualties?"

"About a dozen hurt, including you, none killed. We also killed two suspects resisting arrest, not counting—ah—the one you found upstairs."

The man Ron had killed. Harry watched Kingsley's face carefully, but it was still as dreadfully composed as ever. "Are you—I mean, what are you going to do about that?"

"At the moment," Kingsley said, looking at something over Harry's head, "I don't see a reason to do anything. That may change as the investigation continues, but..."

"It was justified, Kingsley."

"I'm not questioning that." Kingsley paused. "He gave the Healers a bit of trouble, or so I've heard. They had to sedate him before they could treat him."

Harry thought of Ron's glazed eyes, the blood on the candlestick, his monotone chanting, and he cringed. A bit of trouble was probably an understatement. "Where is he? What floor?"

"This one, but I don't know whether you'll be able to see him right away or not." Kingsley stepped back as Harry swung his legs off the bed and stood up, slowly, trying to stretch his sore muscles. "You're free to leave, bye the way. Healers already gave you a clean bill of health."

"Thanks," Harry said. "Er—when do you want final reports on the raid?"

Kingsley hesitated, then smiled a bit. "How about," he said, "you take a couple of days off?"

"What?"

"You never used any vacation time you earned in training, and I can't imagine your mind's on paperwork right now." Kingsley's smiled grew wider at Harry's expression, which he imagined must be somewhere in the region of totally gobsmacked. "You heard me right, Potter. Report's not due until Friday. Now go on."

Harry didn't have to hear that twice.

A special ward for Aurors was maintained on the hospital's fourth floor and had emergency staff on hand at all hours, which was where Harry had awakened. It took a bit of exploration before he found the corridor where the private rooms were located, though the walk helped stretch some of the stiffness out of his legs and back. He knew he'd found the correct wing when he spotted the Weasley family clustered at the far end, looking as agitated as Harry had been most of the week. The twins were pacing in synchronization, Percy checked his watch compulsively, and Mr. Weasley kept sweeping a hand over his scalp as if he still had hair. Ginny was seated in one of the small, low chairs that lined the hallway, arms wrapped around herself, staring with wide eyes at a blank spot on the wall; next to her, Mrs. Weasley appeared to be knitting, though the thing dangling off her needles looked almost as lumpy as one of Hermione's elf hats.

Bill, who'd been leaning against a wall and tapping his foot, was to first to look up and spot him. "Harry," he called, "what the hell is going on?"

All of them looked up at him at once; Fred and George broke off pacing to march towards him, while Mrs. Weasley gave a little gasp of shock. Harry realized he was still in his uniform robes, which were dusty and a bit scorched around the edges; he hoped they couldn't see any lingering spots of blood against the dark red. The twins grabbed him by the arms and practically dragged him over to the family, almost all of whom had stood and were facing him like a sort of redheaded Inquisition.

"Er," Harry said.

"Explain," Fred said.

"Now," added George.

Mr. Weasley waved the twins off, but almost immediately grabbed Harry's shoulder himself. "Harry, Kingsley Shacklebolt said they found—that is, he told us you had—you being the Aurors, collectively, of course—that—"

"Yeah," Harry said, "it's true. We found him."

Mrs. Weasley let out a sort of little shriek and abruptly sat back down; Percy shook his head as if he had water in his ears and retreated a few paces with his arms folded tightly across his chest. The twins broke into genuine smiles, not their usual malicious smirks, and Mr. Weasley just blinked at him. "It's true?" he asked, sounding suddenly hoarse. "It's really true?"

"It really is," Harry said. "I saw him myself."

"How?" Bill asked. "I mean—we searched for ages. Where was he?"

Harry hesitated, but he supposed he couldn't withhold the truth forever, no matter how uncomfortable. "He was being held captive by Dark wizards," he explained, then hedged, "I don't really know the details yet. A suspect traded information for a lighter sentence, and we raided this house..."

"How long have you known about this?" George asked suspiciously.

Harry cringed again, but admitted, "About a week."

"A week?" Fred asked. "Harry, you prat, you knew last week and you didn't say anything?"

"I didn't want to get your hopes up," Harry muttered. "If nothing came of it—"

He heard someone running along the cross corridor and automatically turned towards the noise. Hermione burst around the corner, eyes wide and face very pale: her hair hung in an uncombed tangle around her face and her cloak was fastened somewhere under her ear. She stopped short when she saw Harry and the Weasleys. "Is it true?" she asked, breathing heavily. "Is he here?"

When no one else moved for a moment, Harry nodded.

Hermione stared at him for a moment before shouting "Oh, Harry!" and with no more notice than that she flung herself onto him, heedless of the state of his robes. He automatically embraced her to keep her from falling. Over he shoulder he saw Neville come around the corner with a blank expression: he stopped a few yards away, hands stuffed in his pockets, without saying a word.

"Is he all right?" Mrs. Weasley asked, drawing Harry's attention back to the conversation in progress. "Was Ron all right when you saw him?"

"Erm." He thought again of Ron's face in the wavering wandlight. "I really didn't get a good look at him. We were, y'know, in a hurry."

"The Healers won't let us see him," Mr. Weasley explained, wiping his glasses with the corner of his sleeve. "They keep telling us to wait but they won't let us see him."

As if on cue, a young man in green robes slipped out of one of the rooms and cleared his throat. "Mr. Weasley?"

"Yes?" said five voices at once. The Healer's eyes bugged out.

Mr. Weasley coughed and stepped forward. "That's me, I mean, I'm Ronald father. Is he, ah—?"

"He's sleeping right now," the Healer said. "We've done all we can for the time being."

"Can we see him?" Mrs. Weasley asked. "Just for a moment?"

The Healer hesitated. "We gave him a fairly strong sleeping potion, so he won't wake up, but it'll have to be a short visit." He glanced nervously at the mob surrounding him. "And, er, no more than three at a time."

"That's fine, that's fine." Mr. Weasley took his wife's hand as he helped her up, then turned to Harry. "Would you like to come in with us, Harry?"

He tried to disentangle himself from Hermione, stepping away. "No—I mean, I saw him last night already—"

"Oh, go on," Hermione said thickly. "You're the one that rescued him."

"I had lots of help," Harry muttered.

One of the twins pushed his shoulder, though, and Harry found himself stepping into Ron's room. He wasn't certain what he was expecting—leather straps and a muzzle, perhaps, the way Kingsley had spoken—but the bed that nearly filled the tiny space seemed no different from any other hospital bed he'd ever seen. They had even dressed Ron in the ubiquitous blue striped pajamas, which hid his shocking thinness, and they had cleaned him up and washed his hair and beard. Even the long scar on his face seemed less prominent than it had in the darkness. His hands, which rested on top of the blanket, were swaddled in bandages that disappeared into his sleeves.

"Are you his parents?" a female Healer asked quietly, looking up from a clipboard while her quill continued to write.

Mr. Weasley nodded. "Is he going to be all right?" Mrs. Weasley asked.

The Healer paused for a moment, then nodded slowly. "He's in very poor physical condition right now," she explained. "He's dehydrated, severely underweight and he had multiple infections...we've treated those, and we're taking steps to reduce some of the other scarring. The Aurors tell me he was injured slightly during evacuation, but those are incidental right now. He'll probably have to stay with us for several days."

"What happened to his hands?" Harry asked.

The Healer blinked at him. "I'm sorry, and you are...?"

"A friend of the family," Mr. Weasley said quickly.

"Harry Potter," Harry said.

While he hated trading on the power of his name, it did get the reaction he wanted: the Healer's whole demeanor changed very quickly. "His hands—of course. He had two broken fingers when he came in, but it appears his hands and wrists have been—er—damaged more than once, without proper treatment. His knees as well. There's some serious damage to the soft tissues around the joints, and it was making it difficult to heal the breaks the usual way, so we're regrowing the bones from scratch." She paused. "There may be some permanent impairment, particularly to his right hand—that one appeared to have suffered the worst damage."

"What does that mean?" Mrs. Weasley asked in a whisper.

The Healer sighed. "Possibly nothing. Possibly, he may have some difficulty with fine motor movements in the future. We'll have to examine him when we wakes up and the Skele-Gro has taken effect." She paused. "I'll be honest, it may affect his ability to do magic, if he's right-handed."

Harry's stomach curled, and he looked again at Ron's sleeping face. If they had found him sooner, if they had rescued him years ago...but it was no use kicking himself for something he couldn't have known. As far as he knew, he couldn't have known it. There were still an awful lot of unanswered questions about the situation, but he was suddenly far too tired to dwell on them.

He squeezed Ron's shoulder, and Ron's eyelids twitched, but true to the other Healer's word he didn't wake up. "I'll be back later," Harry whispered, and slipped out of the room while the Weasleys continued talking to the female Healer. He didn't linger any further and barely made eye contact with anyone but Neville, who had finally joined the others waiting in the corridor. He stood a step behind Hermione, awkwardly patting her shoulder, and Harry couldn't read the expression on his face.

-/--/--/-

Harry came back the next morning after the first good night (day, really) of sleep he'd had in ages. Despite the agonized wondering of the past few days, it still felt strange to think about going to visit Ron in the hospital—to think of Ron being back, for real, not just a fantasy. Harry paused half-dressed to look at the only photograph on his nightstand, an old picture from about sixth year or so. Most of the time he kept it flipped face-down, unable to bear looking at it even though he couldn't bring himself to put it away: it wasn't a particularly significant scene, just himself, Ron, Ginny and Hermione sitting around a table in the Gryffindor common room, goofing off. He wasn't even sure who had taken it. He watched the photographic figures smile and tease one another, and felt a sudden burst of something warm and light in his chest—optimism. He left the picture standing face-up.

On the way to Ron's room he ran into Bill coming the opposite direction. "Hey," Bill said with a smile. "You're looking a sight better than yesterday."

"I'm not sure whether that's a compliment," Harry said. "Is he awake?"

"Nah, they gave him some more sleeping potion last night—though, I dunno, it might be wearing off soon. I was just going to grab a cup of tea and come back down—Mum made me promise he wouldn't wake up alone."

"I'll sit with him," Harry said. "Go on, get your tea."

"Anything for you?"

"Nah, just ate."

At some point in the previous twenty-four hours, Mrs. Weasley had left her mark on Ron's room: the massed ranks of potion bottles on the nightstand were dwarfed by a vase of daffodils (Neville's breed, most likely) and a Chudley-orange afghan covered the bottom third of the bed. Ron's hands were no longer in bandages and he lay a little more naturally in the blankets, a little more comfortable-looking. Harry sat down carefully in the small chair next to the bed, which was still warm from Bill's body heat, and for a few moments just watched Ron's chest rise and fall.

That rise and fall quickly stuttered, however, and after a few moments Ron's eyes flicked open. He blinked muzzily for a few moments, looking around with a deeply furrowed brow until he spotted his visitor. "Harry?" he croaked.

"Right here, mate," Harry said, leaning forward a bit.

Ron took a deep breath and looked about the room again; he reached out and touched the vase of daffodils as if he expected it to shatter any moment. "I...is this the hospital?"

"Yeah," Harry said.

"This is real?"

Ron looked at him when he said it, deeply earnest in a way that made Harry's chest tighten. "Yeah, mate," Harry said. "It's all real."

Ron blinked a few times and let his head drop back onto the pillows "I'm out," he said softly, as if he were testing the weight of the words. "I'm free."

And then he smiled, a familiar and brilliant grin that seemed to light up the whole room. Harry swallowed a sudden inexplicable lump in his throat and smiled, too. "We've missed you."

Bill came back with his teacup, and Ron leapt into a sitting position, eye fixing on the door; his wrists popped loudly as he braced himself. "Hey!" Bill said with a grin, setting the teacup aside. "Welcome back to the land of the living, little brother."

Ron flinched when Bill gave him a warm slap on the back, but still grinned up a little shyly. "Hey," he said.

"That's all you've got to say to me?" Bill said. "Well, I suppose you have an excuse..." He conjured his own chair and dropped down next to the bed, still smiling. "I mean it, though. Welcome back."

"Thanks," Ron said. "Er, how long have I been here?" he asked.

"Just a couple of days—don't you remember?"

"Er...sort of." His grin slipped. "It's sort of...fuzzy, though. Like a long nightmare."

"Do you remember Tonks and me?" Harry asked. "And walking down the stairs?"

Ron nodded slowly. "And you found—?" he glanced at Harry with fear in his eyes, and in that moment Harry knew that Ron remembered exactly what he'd done.

"We found you," Harry said, meeting Ron's eyes, "and got you out. Or tried, anyway. I don't remember anything after the stairs went."

Ron blinked at Harry and swallowed hard, but if Bill noticed anything significant about the exchange he didn't react to it. "Tell you what," he said, "I'll go let Mum know you're awake and she and Dad can come see you. They can even bring Jack around for you to meet."

"Jack?"

"Your nephew."

Ron's eyes bulged for a moment. "My—what? You and Fleur had a baby?"

"Well, she did most of the actual work involved..."

Ron shifted up higher in the pillows and made a face. "Very funny. How old...?"

"Just about a year now." Bill's face glowed with fatherly pride as he added, "He's a little monster."

Ron chuckled weakly. "Dunno if I want to meet him or not."

"If he'd not napping I'll have Mum bring him round. You've got an awful lot of catching up to do."

Ron watched Bill leave with a wistful expression. "How long's it been?" he asked Harry. "I mean, what's the date?"

"Twenty-sixth September, 2001," Harry said.

Ron nodded, not looking particularly disturbed. "That's about what I would've guessed," he said. "Based on the weather, at least. Almost four winters."

There was a moment of silence; Ron pulled up the afghan and examined it, while Harry watched Ron's hands move. They were lined with scars, and his fingers still didn't look quite straight—the last joint of his right ring finger took a perceptible jog to the outside. But they didn't seem to be causing him any discomfort, and he wondered if the injuries were so old he no longer felt them.

"Thanks," Ron said suddenly. "For not...saying anything."

"Who was he?" Harry asked.

Ron stared at the pattern of loops in the afghan, "Rodolphus Lestrange."

Harry swallowed, thinking back to a few things Nott had said. Had they been in that manky little house the whole time, and no one noticed? Had they really been in such easy reach? "We looked for you," he told Ron, the words practically bursting out. "When they took you. We looked...well, we thought we looked everywhere. We looked everywhere we knew at the time."

"How'd you find me now?" Ron asked, and he listened while Harry explained quickly about Nott and the investigation. "Bloody hell. Reckon I should send him a thank-you note?"

Harry shrugged. "He probably saved himself a decade in Azkaban by talking. I wouldn't worry about it." Ron nodded, and Harry braced himself to ask the most nagging question. "Ron...were you there, the entire time?"

Ron's shoulders seem to fold in on themselves, and his head hunched a bit, hiding his face behind a tangle of hair. "I don't know where they took me first," he said quietly. "It had some kind of dungeon. For a while I thought I was just, I dunno, bait or something—they were going to try to blackmail Dad or lure you into some kind of trap or something.

"But then Lestrange—Bellatrix—showed up, and started questioning me. Wanted to know stuff about you, about the Order—but of course, I wasn't talking. I think it made her angry..." He paused, and when he resumed his voice was a low monotone. "She got angry and then she got careless. I got hold of her wand, hexed her and tried to escape. I didn't make it.

"The next thing I remember is Lestrange—her husband—showing up in the cell. He told me that his wife was dead and somehow that was my fault."

"It wasn't," Harry said. "I mean—as far I ever heard, she was killed by Aurors."

Ron shrugged. "I dunno. He just told me that it was my fault, and so I would have to replace her. Not like that—" he must've caught sight of Harry's expression. "He never tried—that. But I reckon I was his favorite toy. He took me everywhere he ran to, over the years. Didn't want to give up his prize possession.

There was a blankness in Ron's voice, a lack of anger that made Harry's chest hurt. "I'm sorry," He said.

"'S not your fault," Ron mumbled, looking away.

"I know, I just—" There were no words to express what he was feeling, the anger and disgust and a kind of grief. "I'm still sorry."

"You got me out of there, though." Ron peeked up through his fringe with a ghost of a smile. "Reckon that makes us even, doesn't it?"

Harry tipped an imaginary cap. "Just doing my job."

The door banged open again, and this time Ron really jumped, his head whipping around so fast Harry was surprised it didn't pop off. Hermione appeared with shining eyes and a thick leather book, and immediately bounced up to Ron with a grin. "Oh, good, you're awake, I was hoping you would be." She stopped—practically skidded—at the edge of Ron's bed, and for a heavy moment they just looked at one another. "Erm. Welcome back."

"Hi," Ron said, a touch breathlessly, though Harry couldn't tell if it was from the shock the door or of seeing Hermione. He was more than a bit surprised himself. She was wearing the snug-fitting cardigan she normally only pulled out for certain semi-formal parties and he could've sworn she'd put on make-up. She blushed a bit, and then threw her arms around Ron's neck and squeezed. Ron squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, going rigid and still under the sudden onslaught. Hermione must've sensed it, because she released him almost immediately.

"I've brought you something," she said hesitantly, holding out the book. "I thought—well, you've got an awful lot of catching up to do, so perhaps it'll be a bit less of a shock if you have, you know, a bit of a warning."

"Bill said he might bring around a little monster named Jack," Ron said. Harry noted he was scooting subtly away from Hermione's side of the bed; Hermione seemed to take it as an invitation perch on the edge of the mattress, rather than take Bill's empty chair.

"I've got his baby picture in here somewhere," she explained, thumbing through the pages. "I have to go back to work this afternoon, but maybe Harry or your parents can explain the rest of the pictures. Well," she glanced over at Harry, "your parents probably can."

That stung. Ron was looking at him oddly. "Where's Neville at?" Harry asked pointedly. "I haven't seen him since yesterday morning."

Hermione's blush deepened. "He's, erm, busy," she said. "He had to go into the greenhouse early this morning for...something."

Ron raised his eyebrows at her. "Neville?" he asked.

"Yes," Hermione said. She picked at the binding of the scrapbook. "Neville and I...we've been dating for a couple of years."

Harry thought it was amazing how much could be communicated by a short soft "Oh."

When neither of them spoke for a minute—Hermione looked at her hands and Ron looked at his feet—Harry cleared his throat and flipped open the scrapbook. "What sort of pictures did you put in here?" He asked.

"Oh," Hermione said, "just a few things. I threw it together in a bit of a hurry."

The first two pages were full the Daily Prophet's headline the day after he killed Voldemort, and Harry winced. "Did you have to include that?"

Ron reached out and traced the paper, which was getting a bit yellow, running his finger over the date and the headline. "I dunno, mate, that's a pretty good picture of you," he said vaguely. The photographic Harry, in spite of the crease through his middle (or perhaps because of it) made a rude gesture, and Ron's smile reappeared. "No—scratch that, a really good picture."

"I was dead on my feet," he muttered. "And I'd just—I didn't feel particularly heroic at the time."

Hermione tisked at him. "If you hadn't snuck off on us, you might've had someone to fend off the journalists for you."

"If I hadn't snuck off they'd have attacked Hogwarts, before any of us woke up," Harry shot back.

Ron looked at them both, blinking with a brow furrowed. "From the beginning?" he asked.

They took turns telling the story and correcting each other, occasionally searching through the scrapbook for evidence. It really was quite thorough, no matter what Hermione said—she'd never have tolerated anything less. Ron listened and usually laughed in the right spots, but he didn't ask many questions or make any comments. When the Weasleys returned—three generations in tow—there was another round of greetings and stiff, one-sided hugs until one of the Healers irritably reminded them of the three-visitor rule that was still technically in force.

"Surely the baby doesn't count," Mrs. Weasley, clutching Jack on her hip. "He's only a little thing."

"That still makes four," the Healer said, staring pointedly at Harry, Hermione and Bill.

Hermione stood and gathered her purse up. "Don't worry," she said, "I've been here for ages, I can go—in fact, I probably should've been back at the office hours ago."

"Thanks," Ron said quietly. "For the scrapbook, I mean."

Hermione's cheeks colored again, and she smiled at him, but he didn't look up from the pages. "You're welcome," she said, and hugged him again. Again he closed his eyes and held his breath, but he also clumsily patted her hand with his. Hermione backed out of the room, not taking her eyes off of him until she was out of the door.