Other Waters

by Mad Maudlin

7.

Sunday was the day of the "welcome home" barbecue, and the closer it got the less Harry was looking forward to it. The day before was mostly spent preparing food and moving tables back and forth between the garden and the living room as the weather witch on the wireless changed her forecast; in the evening Harry and everyone else in the house was pressed into helping clean plates and cutlery that already looked spotless, to ensure there were enough for all the guests Mrs. Weasley was expecting, which was apparently half the population of the wizarding world. The banner from the previous Sunday was resurrected and re-hung, and the twins conjured up more balloons and flying paper streamers.

Throughout all this the guest of honor remained silent and cloistered in his room, not even coming down to dinner. Mrs. Weasley looked warily up the stairs several times, but every time she ultimately frowned a bit, shrugged, and went back to her preparations with undiminished—in fact, renewed—gusto.

Sunday morning, Harry knocked on Ron's door, and waited almost ten minutes before going on. Ron was sitting on his bed with his knees pulled tight against his chest, staring blankly out the window. "You get any sleep, mate?" Harry asked, noting the dark smudges under his eyes.

Ron shook his head silently and sighed.

Harry leaned against the footboard of the bed, and just the creak of old wood was sufficient to make Ron twitch. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said.

Ron shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. "Mum'll kill me," he said raggedly. "They all want me there."

"That doesn't mean you have to do it!" Harry said. "Look, tell them—tell them you're sick or something. They'll call it all off."

"No," Ron said. "If I do that—if Mum thinks I'm sick she'll just tuck me into bed and pour broth down my throat and watch me." He shivered at the very thought.

"Then just say you don't want to do it!" Ron ducked his head at the sharp note in Harry's voice, and Harry took a deep breath, trying to reign himself in. "Sorry. I'm just...it's going to be a mad house down there, and I don't see any point in putting yourself through it if you don't want to."

"I'll be fine," Ron said mechanically. "I just...Hermione says I have to try, right? Try doing things?"

"Even Hermione can be wrong sometimes," Harry said.

Ron shook his head again. "I'll be fine," he said. "I just...I just need to, to calm down, and do it, you know? I can do it." He stood and started rooting through his bureau. "Got to just suck it up and do it."

Harry scowled at him, fighting the urge to yell and scream and chase all the guests away himself. Instead he took a few steps forward and touched Ron's arm lightly, in spite of the way he twitched and shied away. "Look," Harry said, "I'll be down there the whole time, all right? If you want to—er—take a break, I'll make something up and get you out of there."

Ron took a deep breath, held it for a few minutes, and exhaled in a rush. "Thanks," he said in a slightly steadier voice. "Thanks a lot."

"No problem."

Downstairs, Mrs. Weasley was agonizing over the last details while the twins and Bill moved the tables back into the garden—naturally the report had been wrong, and it was bright and quite warm for the second week of October. Ginny was at the furthest end of the table, eating oatmeal and reading the Sunday Prophet; Harry managed to extract a cup of coffee from the kitchen and sat next to her, out of the flow of furniture. "Want to read the sports section after I'm done?" she asked.

"Er. Sure."

"How's Ron doing?"

"...not well. Don't think he slept a wink last night."

She sighed. "He hasn't been—don't suppose he's said anything to you about it, but he's been having pretty nasty nightmares."

"He has?"

She nodded. "Wakes the whole house up. He won't talk about them, though...not that that's anything new..." She passed him the paper and gave him a few minutes to check the Quidditch scores, then cleared her throat. "Not to change the subject, but...have you been thinking about it?"

"About what?"

"About what I said the other day."

Harry considered playing dumb, but decided it was unlikely to help. "Um. Sort of."

"Have you decided anything?"

He watched his coffee swirl around the cup for a bit, trying to phrase his thoughts. "You're not—I mean, I've thought about it, too. What if."

"But?" she prompted.

"It's a bit pointless, isn't it?" he said, then quickly added, "not that I think you're—crap. You know what I mean. It's not like we can pretend things never happened."

"But can't we admit that we made a mistake?"

"Well, we can admit it, sure—but—" He rubbed his face and said softly, "Some things just don't go away because you say your sorry, Gin."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I thought you said you didn't blame me for—"

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean—" He glanced fearfully at Mrs. Weasley and lowered his voice. "I mean...look, this isn't a good time to bring it up."

"That's what you said on Wednesday."

"And I meant it on Wednesday, because Ron is...he's...he needs me, all right?"

Ginny cocked an eyebrow at him. "He needs all of us right now, but that's not scaring me away."

You're not the same, Harry thought, but drowned the words with a slug of coffee. "I just...I want to wait until things settle down a bit, okay?"

"And when's that going to be?" she asked.

"I don't know when!"

"Then define 'settled down!'"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. "I...er...I mean...I mean when—"

Ginny snorted and stabbed her oatmeal with her spoon. "Never mind. I get the picture."

"Ginny, wait—" But she was stalking outside, loose hair streaming behind her like a column of fire. "Dammit."

"Something the matter, dear?" Mrs. Weasley called.

Harry shook his head and polished off the last of his coffee. "I'm fine."

Hermione and Neville came in through the back door just then: Hermione was not wearing makeup today, he noticed, but Neville was still walking a pace behind her and not really making eye contact with anyone. "Good morning!" Hermione called. "Good morning, Molly."

"Good morning, Hermione dear, Neville. Can you carry these bowls outside for me?"

Harry jumped up to help as she sent four or five overflowing serving dishes at Hermione with a flick of her wand. Neville caught two of them, but turned and walked outside when Hermione tried to thank him. She scowled. "Something the matter?" Harry asked softly.

"I don't know, why don't you ask Ginny? I saw her outside," she snapped, and stalked out the back door with a bowl of crisps. Harry took a deep breath, steadied the tray of cocktail sausages he'd snagged, and carried them out into the garden, where Mr. Weasley had donned a plaid apron and was cheerfully prodding a Muggle barbecue with his wand. At least, he told himself, the day could still get worse.

-/--/--/-

The guests started showing up late in the morning—Mrs. Weasley had apparently invited everyone from their year of Hogwarts who was still alive and out of prison, plus a few other, somewhat more random-seeming choices. Harry could understand inviting Luna Lovegood, for instance, but what on earth was Romilda Vane doing here? Or the Creevey brothers? Or—he grimaced—Blaise Zabini, in a pair of dress robes that probably cost more than Harry's flat? Even if Mrs. Weasley had invited them all, why on earth had they shown up?

He got part of an answer when Mrs. Weasley asked him to help her clear off the kitchen table so people could eat inside if they chose: he picked up the newspaper Ginny had discarded and found himself looking at Ron, or at least, an old photograph of Ron from when they were in school. It was badly cropped, but he thought he saw his own arm flapping around the margin, and picture-Ron kept looking off to one side and making a peculiar face. "War hero discovered alive after three years?" he read aloud.

Neville appeared around the corner and sighed. "Found that, did you?"

"'Senior Aurors remain mum on the circumstances surrounding the return of Ronald Weasley, the decorated war hero and longtime ally of Harry Potter—' What the bloody hell?"

"Nobody's been particularly careful about keeping it mum, have they?" Neville asked, gathering up extra forks and spoons. "Suppose it had to get out some times. Least it's not Rita Skeeter writing it up, eh?"

"I wish it were, we can deal with her," Harry growled. "Since when was he decorated with anything?"

"Well, 'decorated hero' sounds better than 'stupid git,' doesn't it?"

Harry's head snapped up; Ron was hanging back around the foot of the stairs, wearing a small, forced smile. He'd put on clean clothes, but he couldn't hide the dark smudges under his eyes, and he drummed his fingers nervously against the banister. Neville took the paper out of Harry's hand and offered it to him with a tight smile. "Want to have a look?"

Ron chuckled, a high and thin sound that didn't reassure Harry at all. "Sure," he said. "Might as well keep up on my publicity."

"How bad is it?" Harry asked Neville, while Ron scanned.

Neville shrugged. "They don't have any of the facts, I don't think. It mostly just talks up everything Ron did in the war, how he was your best mate and all."

That mollified Harry somewhat; at least Ron's privacy was still intact. He carefully watched his friend's face as he read the story, but Ron just skimmed for a few minutes before tossing the paper aside. "Funny stuff," he muttered, still sounding edgy.

"Everyone out there has read it," Harry warned him. "D'you still want to—?"

Ron peeked around the corner through the kitchen windows, and his eyes went wide when he saw the number of people already gathered in the back garden. Don't go out there! Harry screamed in his head. Don't put yourself through that ringer! Just tell them all to piss off where they belong!

"Come on," Neville said in a bracing voice, and clapped Ron on the back; Ron jumped and spun away. "How bad can it be?"

"Yeah," Ron said, and swallowed hard. "How bad...?"

"I'll just tell them all you're coming out," Neville said, and before Harry could protest he was out the door. Harry could faintly hear him shouting for attention.

"Last chance, mate," Harry said ominously. "I'll take the blame, if you want."

Ron shook his head fiercely. "No. No, it's just a stupid bloody party." He charged after Neville, and Harry scrambled to stay just a step behind him. Ron lingered for a moment with his hand on the doorknob, listening to the sounds of the happy partygoers; then he took a deep breath, held it, and stepped outside.

More people had arrived while Harry had been inside, and the garden was absolutely packed. And the moment they saw Ron, every started clapping and cheering and whistling for him. Harry grabbed hold of Ron's shoulder and squeezed, while Ron blinked like a dear in the headlights: then he suddenly plastered on a very big, very fake smile, and waved weakly at all his well wishers. That only provoked another round of cheers, and then Seamus Finnegan bounded up to the back stoop and shook Ron's hand with both of his, hard enough to pop it off completely. "Good to see ya, mate," he said, grinning, "good to have you back—"

After that it was almost like a repeat of his homecoming last Sunday. People kept grabbing him, hugging him, shaking his hand, and Harry could feel Ron's shoulders tighten and twitch every time, could see Ron's hands trembling as he shook with every idiot who came up to him and yammered into his face. Ron was breathing very loudly through his nose and never made more than one-word answers, but most people seemed more than willing to do all the talking, telling Ron how glad they were to see him alive again, how amazing it was, how much they hoped everything would go well for him. Part of Harry knew that most of them were more or less sincere—that anyone who'd lost a loved one in the war might feel a vicarious sort of sympathy for the Weasleys. But most of him was raging that nobody else seemed to notice how pale and shaky and scared Ron was just to be in the midst of the crowd with all of them talking and touching and moving at once. How could they be so stupid? How could they all be so bloody oblivious?

Hermione cut through the crowd with a cup of punch, and Harry was relieved that she, at least, seemed to recognize the toll this was taking. "Thirsty?" she asked Ron, eyebrows low and tight.

He shook his head and rubbed fiercely at the back of his neck. "I need to go," he said in a choked sort of whisper.

They were the words Harry had been waiting to hear the whole time. "C'mon, let's get out of here," he said, taking Ron's elbow. Hermione set the punch aside and took Ron's other arm in hers; he twitched and shied away as if by reflex, but let them hold on and guide him away.

They barreled through the crowd, cutting off greetings and ignoring the shouts behind them—"Just look at the door," Harry muttered to Ron, "look at the door and not at the people"—past all the smiling stupid guests, past Mr. Weasley struggling with his Muggle barbecue pit, into the house and through the kitchen, through the living room, to the stairs—

Harry braced himself when he heard footsteps coming around the corner, and Neville's voice saying, "This way, the party's around the back." He came into view suddenly, with two unfamiliar witches behind him, but paused when he saw the three of them at the stairs. "Oh, look, there he is, man of the hour!"

Harry would remember the moment later as if it had occurred in slow motion. Both the witches' eyes lit up when they saw Ron, and one of them plunged her hand into her huge, ugly handbag and drew out a massive camera. The other was suddenly holding a Quick-Quotes Quill and a roll of parchment. Before Harry could react, before he could think, the witch with the quill was saying "Hello, Moira Finch with the Daily Prophet—" just before the photographer took a picture, blinding them all with her flash.

Ron screamed a little—that was the only way to describe the noise—and his arm twisted out of Harry's grip. Harry got one last good look at Ron's face, his glassy, terrified eyes, and then he was bolting up the stairs, up and out of sight.

Hermione was the first one to recover her wits. "Get out," she snarled, looking as terrifying as she ever had in battle.

Moira Finch looked appalled. "I just wanted to ask a few ques—"

Harry pulled his wand on her. "Get the hell out of this house," he said, "and don't you ever come back." The witches backed away, and almost as an afterthought he Summoned the camera away.

"Hey," the photographer said, "you can't do that, we've a right—"

Harry pried the back open, releasing a puff of fumes, and yanked the film free before tossing the machine back at her. "Now get out of here."

"The public has a right to know—"

He stepped forward, wand unwavering, and they backpedaled and fled. He followed them to the front door and watched them scramble down the lane, clinging to their hats and bags; when they finally Disapparated, he tossed the exposed film into the bin and stalked back into the living room, seeing red.

Mrs. Weasley had already beaten him there. "I can't believe you would do such a thing!" she was shrieking. "Letting those people into this house—"

"You invited half of Britain to show up!" Neville shot back, looking uncharacteristically red in the face. "How was I supposed to know how who belonged and who didn't?"

"You could've asked," Harry snapped, and shoved his wand into his pocket before he was tempted to actually use it. "You could've asked someone instead of letting a couple of complete strangers trounce all over the house—"

"Well, excuse me for not having an Auror's sense of rabid paranoia!"

"That's enough," Mr. Weasley said, appearing behind his wife's shoulder.

Harry ignored him and tried to seize Neville's arm; Neville shook his grip off easily. "You idiot, you know better, did you really think Ron would be having a grand old time out there tonight?"

"Touch me again, Potter, and I swear I'll—"

"That's enough!" Mr. Weasley shot a fountain of sparked between their faces, making them both jump backwards. "This isn't accomplishing anything."

Hermione trotted down the stairs, face pinched with worry. "He's locked the door," she said. "He won't talk to me and he's locked the door—I can hear him moving around, but he won't talk to me, and I don't want to startle him by charming it open."

"I'll try talking to him later," Mr. Weasley said with a sigh. "Now, boys—Neville made an honest mistake—"

"It was a stupid mistake," Harry snarled.

"Harry, he couldn't have known!" Hermione snapped.

Neville smiled unpleasantly at her. "Oh, thank you, dear, what a nice surprise!"

"Though if he'd actually spent any time helping over here," she added in a nastier tone, "he might've known who was invited at who wasn't."

Neville snorted. "Sorry about that, but I didn't want to interrupt your special time with him."

Hermione's jaw dropped open, and she marched down the stairs a few steps. "How dare you?"

"I'm going home," Neville announced brusquely. " Hurry up and decide, Hermione, because I'm getting sick of waiting." On that cryptic note, he marched over to the fire—shouldering past the twins, who were watching with baffled expressions—and Flooed away.

Hermione watched for a moment, then burst into tears. "Dammit, dammit, DAMN IT!" she shouted, and then ran outside, into the front.

Mr. Weasley looked around, more angry than Harry had ever seen him. "Well?" he demanded. "Shall anyone else scream and run away, or can the rest of us start behaving like grown witches and wizards?"

Harry wanted to snap back with a smart remark, but bit down on it; it wasn't going to be helpful and nothing was Mr. Weasley's fault, anyway. Not really. "Ron wasn't feeling well all day," he told them all, "he's been—er—nervous. The crowd was getting to him."

"Why didn't he say something, then?" Mrs. Weasley asked plaintively.

Harry shrugged, and was probably a bit too harsh when he said, "He knew you all wanted him to come down."

The back door clanged shut, and Bill and Ginny came in, looking frazzled. "We told everyone Ron's gotten sick," Ginny said. "A bunch of people are already leaving."

"Better send them all off, I think," Mr. Weasley said with a sigh, and began to untie his apron. "Ron is—er—not himself right now."

"He'll be all right, though, won't he?" Fred asked anxiously. "I mean—he's been getting back to normal. Isn't he?"

"Depends on how you define normal," Harry snapped back, unsure why it piqued him so much.

"Harry," Mr. Weasley said warningly.

Mrs. Weasley wrung her hands and then started for the stairs. "I'm going to go check on him," she said. "He'll open the door me—won't he?"

"Molly, he probably just needs time to relax," Mr. Weasley said.

"We can't just leave him up there all alone, Arthur!"

"Give him a little while," Harry said, stepping forward so he was just barely blocking the stairs. "Let him calm down a bit on his own. He seemed—er—not good, when he went up there."

That only made her wring her hands more, but she retreated. "All right," she said, then a bit more firmly. "All right." Then she turned, glaring at her assembled progeny. "What are you all doing, standing about? Start cleaning up! There's food to be put away..."

Harry suppressed the urge to stay put and stand guard over the staircase and instead joined the others in wrapping up the festivities. Some of the guests were more reluctant than others to leave—Seamus in particular loitered near the food for an awfully long time—but when an army of grim-faced Weasleys started gathering up chairs and taking down the decorations, they got the hint. The twins had to chase down a few unruly streamers that seemed to be making a break for the village, and Ginny collected a half-dozen discarded handbags from various points around the garden, but with everyone working together it only took a few hours to clear away what had taken a whole day to set up.

While Mrs. Weasley was struggling to find a place for all the uneaten food, Harry took the chance to slip upstairs, unseen. It wasn't as though he had anything to say to Ron—other than perhaps a promise to punch Neville in the head later, which really didn't seem constructive—but he had an inexplicable itch to see with his own eyes whether he was really okay. Or, well, as good as could be expected under the circumstances. There was no sign of life in Ron's room when Harry got upstairs, and he waited for several long moments before knocking softly on the door. "Ron, it's me," he said.

No answer.

"Everyone's gone. Well, most everyone."

Nothing.

"We're all worried about you."

Harry counted five heartbeats of silence before slowly and gently turning the knob. "I'm coming in now," he said, and pushed the door open.

The shutters and curtains were closed again, and glowed red in the late afternoon light. For a short, horrible moment, the room appeared empty—the bed was still neatly made, the closet door was shut. But then Ron said softly, "Please close the door," and Harry realized the voice was coming from the kneehole of the desk.

He shut the door behind himself and crouched down. Yes, Ron was curled up under the desk, barely visible in the darkness, with his head buried in his folded arms. "'Lo, Harry," he said, not looking up.

"Hey." Harry pushed the desk chair out of the way a bit, and sat down. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, you know, same old, same old." Ron sounded exhausted—Harry didn't blame him—but there was still something brittle in his voice, something that said that he was still to very close to the edge of panic. Harry automatically reached out to touch him, rub his shoulders or something, but stopped himself just in time. Ron noticed the gesture and cringed, but didn't say anything.

Instead they sat in silence for a few minutes before Harry asked, "D'you want me to punch Neville in the head later?"

"No."

"D'you want me to hold Neville down while you punch him in the head?"

"No," Ron said, then took a deep, shaky breath. "I want to get some sleep."

Harry looked around. "Bed's that way, mate."

"I know that. I'm—" Ron looked up, and his eyes looked so hollow and blank in his thin, ravaged face that Harry's heart ached. "I don't want to go to sleep yet," he finished quickly.

Harry had a hunch that wasn't what Ron had been about to say, but it didn't seem like the time or place to force anything out of him. "You need the rest, though," he pointed out. "It'll help you relax."

"Maybe," Ron said doubtfully. "Don't think I could fall asleep right now if I tried, though."

"D'you want a sleeping potion?"

Ron 's shoulders twitched, and he said "No," in the firmest voice he'd used all day.

"Why not?"

"Just...no, okay?"

Harry drummed his fingers against his knee for a few moments, thinking. Ron was too keyed up right now to sleep without a potion, he was sure, and if he didn't get some rest soon he'd just collapse on them, or perhaps worse. "What about a half-dose?" he suggested.

"Harry, I don't want a potion."

"You need the rest, mate. Please."

Ron looked at him again, with the hollow eyes, then looked away for a long time in silence. Harry was on the verge of asking again when Ron suddenly said, very softly, "Stay with me?"

"What?"

"I'll take the potion," Ron said, looking at his knees, "but...stay with me, okay? For a little while."

Harry squirmed a bit, involuntarily. "You mean, like, watch you sleep?"

"Yeah," Ron said, and it was hard to tell in the dark but Harry was almost sure he was blushing. "Just for a little while."

It wasn't the weirdest thing they'd ever done for one another. Harry nodded. "All right. I'll, er, go get it for you, then."

"Thanks."

Luckily he found a bottle of E-ZZZs Super-Soothing Soporific in the upstairs bathroom; it was a bit old, but it didn't smell off, so he poured half a dose into the cup that usually held the toothbrushes and topped it off with water. He stepped back into Ron's room without knocking and found Ron in the midst of putting on his pajamas; he got the faintest glimpse of Ron's scarred back and the ghastly protrusion of his ribs and spine before Ron dropped an old shirt over his head. Harry cleared his throat, causing Ron to start, and offered the glass. "Here you are."

"Thanks," Ron said. He stared at the glass for several minutes, then chugged it down in a single gulp. Harry felt strange watching him climb into bed, so he made himself conspicuously busy arranging the desk chair until he heard the mattress stop squeaking.

"Sweet dreams," Harry said, more than half hopefully, but Ron was already asleep.