Bridges of Stone
This was a rather despondent piece of nonsense that I wrote when I was feeling rather low. Just posting it to watch reactions. There are more parts, if you like. The first-person touch refused to go away. Apologies.
Disclaimer: All characters and places belong to J. K. Rowling.
...you can only push someone so far...
[Harry]
I was
washing the dishes when they called. Incongruous, I suppose. My jeans – a
legacy from Dudley, and none too fitting – were rolled up around my knees, and
there was a cloth around my shirt, as close as I would go to an apron. I
must've looked a mess. Anyway, teenage boys, even in the Muggle world, don't
do dishes with Dudley's jeans and cloths wrapped around their good shirts.
I've known for quite a long while that I don't really cut a romantic
figure. I deal with it. Galleons don't buy jeans.
There was a loud horn outside the house, a horn that I somehow knew, and
I ran to the window to look outside and there was the car, just as it had been
in second year. I ran for the catch and stuck my hand out like an idiot. My
hand, covered in dishwashing fluid, long-fingered and incongruous like the rest
of me down to my bare feet, one jeans-leg slipping down to flow over my ankle.
Ron was staring at me. I think he was horrified.
'Harry.' Percy was driving this car? I almost fainted.
Wasn't he still investigating cauldron-bottoms? 'Get in. We've got your
luggage. Come on, Ron – give him a hand up –'
Ron, still staring at me as though he was seeing a two-headed Siamese
twin, stuck out his hand. I knocked my leg on the sill in my haste to escape. If
there was anything special about this particular summer, it was that I wanted so
badly to get out. Ron pulled harder and I flew into the back seat, looking at
the kitchen window. The Dursleys weren't home, or I would have had another
leg-pulling.
'You told us they wouldn't be here,' said Percy, smiling a
kind, tired smile. 'We had to wait. I'm sorry –'
'Nothing to be sorry about.' I stopped. Ron was tugging at the cloth
that clung stubbornly to my chest. 'Ron, what –?' I let him tug the cloth
off my shirt, then took it from him to wipe my hands of the suds. There was an
expression on his face that seemed alien to it.
He plucked the cloth out of my hands and dried his own hand off, then
tossed it out of the car. It fell through the clouds, drifting to land in
someone's garden. I tried not to think of how it would look, floating down
from the sky.
It was evident that Percy was thinking of it. 'Ron,' he burst
out. 'D'you know how that's going to look, a washcloth floating out of
thin air?' He shook his head and turned back to the wheel. 'We'll have to
watch out, that's all.' Traces of his apprenticeship with Crouch still
showed, I thought, and wanted to laugh.
'Leave it, Perce,' Ron said in a low, unhappy voice. I knew he was
preoccupied, and suddenly the car seemed terribly empty, although the last time
there had been only one more person. The twins and Ron collectively had
personalities that filled up the car. I would've given anything, anything,
to have a family like his. 'You can trust to their sensibilities. They'll
probably forget about it and think they've gone all muddle-headed.'
This seemed true, especially for the Dursleys.
'True,' said Percy a touch peevishly, and swerved to the left, 'but
you never know. You remember the last time they saw the car.'
Ron didn't answer. His red hair, grown out to a length just boyish
enough to escape teasing, seemed dimmed. He was avoiding my eyes. I knew there
was something wrong with him, and couldn't think why my appearance, shabby as
it was, had made him so upset.
'We're almost there,' said Percy, interrupting our silence, and
swooped down upon the Burrow. I felt that almost-familiar stirring of hope deep
inside, that feeling which told me I was really home. I thought of the note
I'd left at the Dursleys', on the dining room table where I was sure
they'd notice it first.
Dumbledore had promised that all my luggage would be sent there. I
didn't want the trouble – and possible danger – of loading all my trunks
into the car.
We touched down on smooth dry grass. The garden was deserted. The Burrow,
as lopsided as always but with many new parts tacked on (result of the money
Fred and George sent home). Ron slid out of the car, his awkward all-legs
scramble forgotten, and Percy slammed the doors. I climbed out, suddenly
painfully aware of the jeans that were slipping down my hips and wishing for my
trunk.
'We got your clothes,' said Percy, as though he'd read my mind,
'they're upstairs, in Bill's room. You can go change, if you like.'
I waited, somewhat awkwardly, for one of them to open the door. They
seemed to be doing likewise. There was a minute-long pause.
'Open the door, Harry,' said Ron, a trace of mischievous stubbornness
in his voice.
More to be polite than to follow instructions, I put my hand on the
doorknob, and opened the door, which didn't creak any longer. There was a
small flash of sea-blue, and I was standing face-to-face with someone I had
parted with two weeks ago, someone with brown hair that went slightly lower than
her shoulders and a sweet, concerned face.
She put her arms around me. 'Hermione,' I said, just for the sake of
saying it. 'How did you get here?'
Over the top of my head she said to Ron, 'Were the Muggles there?'
and said to me, 'You smell of soap.' Her voice was laughing, but I divined
an underlying spark of concern in her simple words. She smelled of soap as well,
but a nicer kind of soap; probably shampoo or something like that. I didn't
care to mention it as she let go of me.
Percy and Ron pushed both of us into the house. Mrs. Weasley was there to
greet me, and she hugged me as well. She had mellowed out over the years; her
face was softer, her voice not half as acid even when admonishing her grown
children. Mr. Weasley shook my hand. The house seemed emptier than it had been.
Ginny came out of her room and down the stairs, looking strangely grown-up and
not childish and clumsy any more. She put her arms around me too, rather
awkwardly and very briefly.
The Weasleys have beautiful hair. Beautiful, beautiful hair, really.
Hermione's
fingers traced endless patterns on the lace of the tablecloth. It was a small
symbol of the Weasleys' updated status, the lace; a gift from Charlie really,
but it was a marvel they could now keep things like that in the house. I was
truly glad they had some finances now; I would gladly have given them all the
gold in my account in Gringotts, if they would have taken it.
Hermione had long, white fingers. They looked nice against the white
lace. I watched her fingers moving, quite unlike my own work-roughened hands.
Ron was watching her too, almost cagily.
Charlie, who was staying over at the Weasleys' for a visit, asked me,
'Are you staying till the end of the holidays, Harry?'
'Yes,' I said, looking at him. He didn't much resemble Ron.
'Are you going back?' he asked, in a voice so low that only someone
who was really listening could have heard. 'After Hogwarts?'
I didn't know, really, and didn't want to think about it. I said,
'No. They probably won't want me.' The old sting barely made itself felt
now, but it still hurt, as it always had, to know that there was no one in the
world who wanted me at all.
He paused. The shadows flickered over his nose and cheek. He looked like
some thoughtful statue. 'If worst comes to worst, Harry…' he said, even
lower, 'we can always…' He was gone in a flicker, pushing his chair in,
disappearing into the kitchen. If there was one thing dragon-taming had taught
him, it was how to move like a shadow, quickly and silently; most of the
Weasleys either drifted or tripped like Ron, or trotted like Mrs. Weasley.
I felt a little better.
Hermione was watching me curiously from the other end of the table.
'Harry, what did Charlie say?'
I knew she meant it kindly, and stopped myself from snapping as I did
with Dudley whenever he pried into my business. 'Nothing. I – I couldn't
hear.' A picture had come into my head, a picture of Dudley sitting droopily
over tea and bread and butter, and I hated it.
I was being selfish. It wasn't only me who was upset, despondent; even
Dudley was lonely in a way that I could never understand, even Hermione had
turned sad, writing me pages and pages of other-than-sensibilities that I never
could understand over the holidays. She wasn't Hermione any more – the old
Hermione had always been so sensible, so reassuring. 'I don't know anything
any more, Harry,' she had written. 'I can't make sense of my life.'
The next day a cheerful owl would come, saying that she had watched a
root canal being done and describing it to me, and saying that she had met an
old friend in her neighbourhood and become reacquainted.
Life was full of contradictions. Hermione was no less so.