BLUES
a fic by Rocio
Rating: Eh, I'll go with PG-13 for now.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and am not fiscally responsible for the trash in which I am preparing to mire them. Lyrics belong to Celine Dion. (Yes, I am ashamed.)
Author's Notes: This is set in Harry & co.'s seventh year. Voldemort is still lurking around, randomly employing torture and homicide as a source of power, wealth and entertainment. Although we all know stuff was bound to happen between the fourth and seventh years, let's just pretend that it wasn't very eventful and that all the characters are in the exact same emotional positions they assumed at the end of GoF. My only difference is that now Harry's gang says Voldemort's name. Capiche?
* * * * *
I'll paint my moon in shades of blue/Paint my soul, to be with you.
* * * * *
The rain's monotonous pattering on the windows afforded a vast, hard comfort to the harsh quiet of the Gryffindor common room. Sunday evenings usually found the area glowing with activity and chatter, but dull classes and a pervading armor of numbness had weaned it of its amicability and left it with just another frosty, silent October night.
Several young witches had sprawled themselves in easy chairs with textbooks, and a few lone couplings of first and second years were attempting chess. This was the extent of enthralling teenage pandemonium within sight; Ron Weasley found himself desperately wishing that his twin brothers, Fred and George, could have been there.
At the very least, his friend and partner-in-anxiety, Hermione Granger, could have spared some of her thoughts and given him a conversation. Hermione, however, had adopted a soundless strain of worry very atypical of her. She glared out the window, trying vainly to penetrate the layers of darkness and falling water.
"What time is it?"
Her voice had grown hoarse from disuse, and it startled him. He jerked involuntarily, caught himself, made a mental note to be less jittery ("...never going to defeat Voldemort if HERMIONE scares you!..."), and checked his watch, the worn leather band of which was perilously near splitting.
"Nine o'clock."
She accepted this phlegmatically, not even bothering to shift her gaze from the uneventful skyline.
He sighed.
Minutes resisted, relaxed, and melted away into irretrievability. Ron sensed their passing acutely, but Hermione was oblivious. He felt his concern for her slide up, as the ever-present serpent he had come to personify it; only October, and already Hermione was too tired to really BE Hermione...
This musing was interrupted by the opening of the portrait hole. Ron would have sworn he heard Hermione's neck pop as her head swiveled to observe...
Harry Potter, absolutely coated in mud, absolutely diminutive in his soaked clothing, absolutely fearless and somewhat bitter in his "old age" of seventeen. Harry, torn between scorn and reverence toward his identity; Harry, whose ambivalence manifested itself physically in ways he never would've noticed.
"Hey, guys," he said, strolling towards their corner. His step had acquired a weight over the past years; Ron didn't know if this was the weight of being seventeen or the weight of being Harry or the weight of consistent maturity beyond their years. Whatever. It was heavier.
"Harry! Don't you think you ought to be finishing Quidditch practice earlier than this?" Hermione greeted him.
"We have to get in practice any way we can, since Snape's taken to letting the Slytherins monopolize the field during daylight hours." If possible, he looked more unhappy than Hermione about the situation, but he was also wearing what Ron mentally termed the Resolute Martyr Face.
"But surely you can go to Dumbledore –"
"Tried it."
"But that doesn't seem –"
"Yeah, I know, can we just not talk about it?" He sank into a chair across from Ron.
Hermione opened her mouth to start in again. "But it's not safe –"
Ron, who didn't especially enjoy crossing her in the same way he had a few years ago, snapped to just drop it, already. Hermione, who mostly knew the boundaries of Ron's temper by then, did as she was told.
It was Hermione who began the "remember when..." conversation. They talked of summers at the Burrow, and past Christmas gifts that seemed so absurd now; they discussed their childhoods, shared and separate, accepting as they did so that it was a memory and not a present condition anymore. Ron's recollection of first meeting Hermione was so clearly engraved upon his mind, that he couldn't help but do a mocking impression of it. She playfully launched a textbook at his head in retaliation; to her surprise, he didn't duck it, and it connected with his temple in a THUMP.
"OW! Bloody HELL, Hermione!"
His reaction, coupled with Hermione's mixed look of horror and hilarity, caused Harry to break into a surging chord of laughter.
"Ohh, Ron, I'm – don't swear –"
"DAMN! NOW I know why you carry books heavy enough to break your back!"
"I really didn't mean –"
"You're trying to break my HEAD with them! It's your secret plan, isn't it?" he roared, rubbing his injury spitefully.
She giggled, attempted to apologize again, gave it up and giggled more. Hers and Harry's amusement made it worthwhile; nobody was really that cheery anymore.
Hours later, when he finally eased himself into a tentative sleep, that was what he carried with him: his two very best friends, laughing and sitting around a fire, like the kids they had been before this mess. He didn't know it then, but he had a feeling that he'd carry that image for a long time to come.
* * * * *
The following morning dawned with an encouraging brightness, and Hermione woke determined to experience an extraordinary – or at least better-than-normal – day. She had a warm shower that unwound her muscles; she pulled on her favorite azure sweater and drew her hair into a bushy ponytail. She thought happy, positive thoughts. She hummed a nameless, ageless melody remembered from a Muggle television show years ago.
She arrived at breakfast unscathed and seated herself next to Ginny Weasley. Even the Daily Prophet's myriad casualty reports could not deter her rather forced joviality.
That is, until Ron and Harry appeared for breakfast.
"Morning," she said brightly, taking a bite of her toast.
"Whatever," grumbled Ron sleepily. He leaned over Hermione to look at her schedule and accidentally poured cold pumpkin juice right down the front of her robes. She jumped up, startled.
"Watch what you're doing!"
"Just go change," he retorted nonchalantly. She grabbed an apricot and raced upstairs. By the time she managed to get back down again, everyone had left, including Harry and Ron. Frantically, she ran catch up with the rest of the seventh year Gryffindors on their way to Potions. In fact, she rushed so quickly that she hardly noticed where she was going until she crashed headlong into... Argus Filch.
"Miss Granger!" he shouted, brushing her off. "You again! As Head Girl, YOU ought to be setting a better EXAMPLE! Running about in the corridors, banging into people with enough force to knock out a mountain troll... tsk tsk... yes, you shall have to be punished."
Hermione groaned inwardly. Filch began to lead her to his office.
"Um, Mr. Filch?" she tried. "I'm really very, very sorry, but could I please come and get my punishment some other time, please? You see, I'm kind of late for class and you know how Professor Snape is when people are late –"
"Oh yes, I do," he snarled. "It'll serve you right. Come along."
Filch took much longer preparing her punishment than could be considered reasonable. By the time she was finally free, Hermione was ten minutes late for class. She walked as quickly as possible to the dungeon, which just happened to be on the opposite end of the castle, and arrived to discover that Snape was in a particularly nasty mood that morning.
"Well, well, if it isn't our very own bright, shining intellectual star, come to join us at long last." The joy in his voice was revolting. Pansy Parkinson snickered gleefully.
"Yes, sir, you see, I had to go and change my robes because I got pumpkin juice on them, and then I was trying to get here and I ran into –"
"Silence!" sneered her professor. "As captivating as I'm sure that your tale of woe is bound to be, I'm not in the mood to entertain dramatic performances. Tardiness is an unmistakable sign of blatant disrespect and I will not tolerate it! We will discuss your detention after class, now if you will please get started on the lesson..."
A nearly unbearable eighty minutes later, Hermione met with Ron and Harry outside the classroom.
"What happened?" asked Ron.
"I have two detentions, one tonight and one tomorrow night, one from Filch and one from Snape, and they're both your fault!" she spouted rather testily.
"My fault?"
"Yes, your fault."
"And how is that?"
"If you hadn't spilled juice all down my front this morning, I wouldn't have had to go and change. If I hadn't had to go and change, I wouldn't have had to run to class and wouldn't have, literally, run into Filch. And if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been late. Do you not see how this is your fault?"
"It is not. You probably spent a bunch of extra time getting dressed, fixing your hair and the like," argued Ron stubbornly.
"Fixing my hair?"
"Well, yeah," he said, slightly uncomfortable. "Girls do that. It takes them half an hour at least, and it'd probably take you even longer."
Instantly, he knew he'd gone too far. Hermione's eyes flashed angrily. "Oh REALLY, and why is that?"
"Well... I mean, because your hair has... more volume?"
Without a word, she stormed off down the corridor. Ron gaped after her.
"What just happened here?" he asked Harry.
"Beats me. I'd say you crossed the line."
"The line?"
"Yeah. You know, the line."
"There's a line?"
"Uh-huh. Never make a negative comment about a girl's physical features."
"But it wasn't negative."
"She obviously thought it was."
"It was merely a factual statement. Her hair DOES have more volume." Ron tore his eyes from her back to look at Harry. "And how do you know this stuff, anyway?"
Harry shrugged. "Television?"
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"I reckon we ought to get one of those at the Burrow."
"Yeah." Harry clapped his bewildered friend on the back. "You'll make it up with her somehow. C'mon, we've got to get to Divination."
* * * * *
At eight o'clock that night, Hermione found herself giving all the broom closets on the fourth floor at least two coats of paint manually. It was messy, back-breaking work, and she knew she'd be at it until at least midnight, and probably later. Damn Ron Weasley.
"Hermione? You in here?"
Damn him all to hell.
"Go away. Can't you see I'm trying to subdue my wild mane and can't be bothered?"
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Or maybe you'd just like to get me another detention."
"I want to help you."
"Help me?" Her brush strokes quickened considerably. "I woke up this morning perfectly resolved to have a nice day. You then proceed to dump breakfast all over me, make me late for class, secure me two wonderful detentions, and insult my hair! I think you've helped quite enough, thank you."
He sighed resignedly and sank down onto an empty crate. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? You're not the only one on edge lately, you know."
She glanced down at him and realized that she didn't really have the energy to be angry.
"Oh, get up. If you're so bent on helping, there's another brush over there."
He grabbed the brush and rolled up his sleeves. For the next four hours, they painted walls beside each other, and even though they hardly said a word, Hermione found herself thinking that maybe the day hadn't been such a waste after all.
* * * * *
The next night, Ron again joined Hermione in scrubbing the dungeon floors at an ungodly hour. It was excruciating, and the floors looked as though no one had washed them since the 16th century.
"Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"Why are you helping me?"
He would have shrugged, but he was too busy wiping furiously at some dried pickled pig brains that had apparently been cemented to the floor. "I dunno. I wanted to... I crossed a line."
"A line?"
"Yeah." Ron's ears turned slightly pink. "I mean, that remark about your hair... that was a crossed line there."
"I would agree."
"And it was partially my fault you got detention in the first place."
"Partially?"
He grinned. "Okay, totally."
"Yes."
They worked in companionable silence for another five minutes.
"Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you going to do when we get out of here?"
"Out of detention?"
"No, out of Hogwarts."
"I don't know." He paused. "I mean, I don't like to think about it. Because, you know, the uncertainty..."
"Yeah."
"What about you? You have any plans?"
"Oh, I don't know. I mean, I used to have all these big ideas for what I would do. First female Minister of Magic, or something. But now I know better."
"You could be."
She snorted expressively. "Yeah. There we go. That'd be so accepted by the magical world, wouldn't it? A Muggle-born – and a woman – controlling everything. And in times like these..."
"Well. I guess. But people are stupid."
"Yeah."
"It's gonna be so weird. Getting out of here."
"More than weird. It'll be surreal. I can't imagine it any other way than the way it is, you know?"
"Yeah. Where'll we go? We'll never even see each other anymore. I mean, maybe like, once a year. That's just wrong."
"I can't even begin to fathom life without you and Harry."
A casual observer might have noticed a slight pause before 'and Harry,' but Ron didn't.
"Who's going to tell me to study all the time?"
"Who's going to beat me at chess constantly?"
"Who's going to whack me in the head with textbooks?"
"Who can I blow up at when I'm angry?"
"Who will tell me not to swear?"
"Who will get me into detention?"
"There is no detention in Real Life."
"There are equivalents. Like prison."
"We only have seven months left."
She shuddered. "Seven months... and then what? What about... where can Harry go? He's going to be in danger."
"So will we."
"I don't like to think about that."
"We'll have to soon enough."
"Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"D'you think... d'you think that maybe one day... we'll defeat him? Forever?"
He would have loved to say that of course they would, that he saw victory as surely as her beauty, that there was no way they couldn't win, but he had promised himself to always tell the truth with her. And she could tell when he was lying anyway. Plus, the whole beauty thing would have been too sappy and forward and he would NEVER say that.
"I don't know. I don't know if we can."
"I guess no one does."
Neither one of them felt warm to conversation after that.
* * * * *
Friday rolled around, and with it came the first Quidditch game of the season – Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Harry came to breakfast looking frantic.
"I wish your brothers were here," he told Ron. "They were good Beaters." He glanced over at Seamus Finnigan and Rain Scott, his new Beaters. "I mean, Seamus and Rain are fine. But they're not Fred and George... at all..."
"I saw your practice last night," piped up Ginny, "and I think you're all doing fine."
Harry smiled weakly at her.
"'Xactly," said Ron through his toast. "Don't worry about it, chap. You're gonna kick Malfoy's –"
"Ron! How many times have I told you –" Hermione interjected.
"Yeah, yeah... But seriously Harry, you're a pro by now."
He sighed. "Well maybe not that, but I have played a lot of games... and I shouldn't be nervous, I just have a bad feeling about this one. You know?"
Ginny and Hermione exchanged anxious looks; Harry's "bad feelings" were usually spot on target. Ron shrugged.
* * * * *
By dinner, Harry had grown extremely pale. Draco Malfoy, of course, took advantage of the opportunity.
"Scared, Potter?" he scoffed as he walked by the Gryffindor table with Crabbe and Goyle. Harry made no response because Professor Snape chose that moment to saunter by for no identifiable reason.
"You know what, guys?" said Harry after he had passed. "I think I'm going to go down to the locker rooms now. Maybe get in a little practice before the game..."
When he was out of hearing distance, Hermione turned to Ron.
"He'd better win. He'd just better. I haven't seen him this nervous since..."
"...before the Yule Ball," finished Ron.
"Well, actually, I was going to say his first Quidditch match, but if you say so," shrugged Hermione.
"It's a guy thing."
"If you say so," she repeated. "I'm going to go finish up my last bit of Transfiguration."
He rolled his eyes. "At a moment like this..."
"I don't want to be distracted during the game."
"How could you be?"
"See you in a bit."
* * * * *
Half an hour later, Hermione went down to the Great Hall and found only a few last diners, none of which were Ron. Figuring he had already went down to the field without her, she headed out to the stands.
She scanned the crowd. No red hair came to her attention, so she sat down by Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown. They told her that no, they hadn't seen Ron since dinner, but they were sure he'd turn up. She tried her best not to notice when they winked at each other behind her back.
The two teams paraded out onto the field. Even from her position at the top of the bleachers, Hermione could see Harry looking as though he might retch at any moment. Draco was laughing, and the Gryffindor Beaters were taunting him, but it only caused him to laugh harder.
"GO HARRY!!!!" cheered Hermione, in what Ron called her Determined-To-Be-Perky Voice. Harry glanced at her and gave a thumbs up. She grinned, and suddenly realized that she didn't see Ginny anywhere either.
Oh no.
No. No. No.
Maybe they were just late. It was possible.
Ron. Late to a Quidditch game. Late to one of Harry's Quidditch games. No way.
Without stopping to give an explanation to Parvati and Lavender, Hermione jumped off the bleachers and dashed to the castle just as the teams lifted off.
* * * * *
Hermione prayed to every deity she could recall on her way to the common room; for the first time in her life, she was praying to be wrong. More and more lately, students had been summoned from class to be given the news that someone in their family had been killed. Siblings were always told together.
As big as the Weasley family was... it was pretty possible that one of them had been –
No. No way.
Hermione ran straight up to the girls' dormitory as soon as the reached the empty common room, to check if Ginny was there. No such luck.
She couldn't go back down to the Quidditch field. It would only cause her to fidget and worry, and her intuition told her that something wasn't right about this situation. If anything had happened – well, she just had to be there.
Patience was her only choice. Hermione grabbed a book and sat down by window. She could barely see the tiny figures darting around and above each other out on the distant field.
* * * * *
It was at least fifteen minutes, probably more, before Hermione heard the portrait hole swing open. She uncoiled her body from the chair and was on her feet in an instant.
It was Ron. He looked absolutely awful, with hair standing on end and an expression of complete shock. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow.
"You waited."
"Yeah."
"You shouldn't have done that," he said, walking toward her slowly. "You're missing the game."
"Well, yeah. Harry'll win anyways."
"Yeah."
"Ron –"
"Fred and George." He pronounced his brothers' names carefully, like the words were frail porcelain. "He got Fred and George."
She swallowed hard. The air around her suddenly felt cold.
"It was just six hours ago, Hermione." Ron's eyes were locked on hers, and she could see the pain there. "We were in Care of Magical Creatures at the exact moment my brothers were killed. They were just making lunch. There was peanut butter and jelly on the counter. They were making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Hermione, and they just – they were just –"
In complete abandonment of pretense or forethought, Hermione fairly hurled herself at him and clung; it was undoubtedly the most desperate hug she had ever given anyone, and she wasn't even sure he noticed.
He did notice, but there were a few seconds of uncertain numbness when he couldn't react or speak. When did get his bearings, she was a little surprised; usually tension braced his entire body during her moments of "unrefined girliness," but now he was relaxing into the embrace almost unconsciously. His head sank almost to her shoulder; she couldn't be sure, but she thought she felt his hands shaking on the small of her back.
The human mind is truly an astounding instrument. It constantly seeks the most vibrant, energetic and tenacious of the people around it; it labels these people "protectors." From the moment this subconscious identity is assigned to them, they are thought invincible. At some point, though, the true insecurity must be exposed, and the shock is electric and disillusioning.
That is what happened to Hermione. The most fervent passions of her life paled in comparison to the desire she felt to help, to save Ron in that moment.
And she felt so much that it seemed to leak. Her sorrow and anger and denial fell in miniature torrents from her eyes; her compassion and sympathy and – there was no other fitting description – love for him bled through her own skin and into his heart, or so her incredibly delirious mind imagined.
He might have concurred, because his nausea and raging pulse were at least a little calmed by proximity to her. He was also in the process of theorizing that the scent of her hair contained oblivion-inducing properties similar to those of morphine.
Finally, he raised his head just enough to make it about an inch from hers. For the longest time, they'd each privately wanted a moment like this. Now that they had it, it wasn't about romance or really even love. It was about finding solace in another person. Gently, he lowered his lips and pressed them to hers.
Shy and cautious, for a second neither of them knew quite what they were doing or what would happen next. But then, either because they realized how much they wanted it or because it was a desperate attempt to escape from their sorrow, the connection deepened. Hermione felt Ron's arms tighten around her waist; she responded, pulling him closer, if that was possible. For one instant that might have stretched into nirvana if not for human boundaries, they were only aware rushing blood in their ears; then they broke apart, and the silence resumed its reign. Hermione lifted her dazed eyes to Ron's and suddenly realized that she couldn't do this. She couldn't, she wouldn't be the instrument of his grief. It was just too much to ask.
"Ron..." Her voice was barely a whisper, but the objection came through clearly enough. He disentangled his body from hers without stepping away.
"Hermione, no," he said, his voice straining to make her see that she was wrong. "It's not like what you're thinking. It's more than that, you're more than that." When she continued to look at him dubiously, he sighed. "All right, yeah, I'm in shock right now, I can't – can't talk about this right now, but can we talk later? Please?"
She nodded. "Um, yeah. Sure. Um, where's Ginny?"
Ron ran a hand over his eyes. "She fainted," he choked. "They've got her up in the hospital wing for the night. They told me to come back here, but I wanted to stay... I think I might have yelled a little bit. It hit her – pretty hard."
Vaguely, Hermione considered going to see her friend, but one look at Ron convinced her he needed all the support he could get. When he spoke again, his voice was distant.
"The Quidditch crowd will be here in a minute." Noise. People. Too many people, yelling and commotion. "I'm going up the dorms where it's quiet. Come with me?"
Ron outstretched a hand, feeling he needed to hold onto something and it might as well be her. Hermione took it and followed him up the staircase without a word.
Outside, it began to rain.
* * * * *
