BLUES
Rating: Still PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the Bible, which is going to be quoted in this chapter. (First Corinthians, Chapter Thirteen, in case you're wondering.)
Author's Note: Wow, thank you all for the reviews... you're so nice! (And Rocio's mother says there are no more nice people in the world...) I hope this chapter doesn't prove to be too trite/boring for you... I honestly didn't know what I was going to write until I wrote it, which is a great feeling, but if it sucks then tell me! :) Oh, one more thing: I hope I don't offend anyone with the biblical reference – I picked it for the power and significance of the words, not for any ulterior motives to lure you to religion, or whatever. Now...
* * * * *
"I just don't think you had to snap at her like that."
"She's MY sister, okay?"
"I know that, but I'm saying that maybe you get a little forgetful of -"
"Harry. We are not going to talk about this tonight. You can take issue with my treatment of my little sister tomorrow, and that's fine. But not right now."
Harry said nothing, only nodded. Ron apprehended the jade gaze for a second, then dropped it and went back to studying the prostrate young woman on his bed.
"They dump pots of water on them in Muggle cartoons," Harry piped up helpfully.
"As much as I think Hermione's had a dunking coming to her for a long time, this is probably not the most opportune moment for that."
"Yeah, probably not. Maybe we should ask your parents about it."
"Are you crazy? They're tired and stressed and my mum is about to cry herself to schizophrenia. I do not think so."
"Maybe Percy would know something."
At this, Ron had to express his dubious amusement. "Percy? Like he would know anything except how many years on Magical Probation I'd get for casting the spell in the first place."
"But..."
"What?"
"Well, it just seems like, since Percy was always the butt of the twins' jokes, he might understand the spells a little better than we do."
"Well... I suppose that's right. God, Harry, I better not have screwed this up."
Harry had lost both the will and energy to be comforting. They headed for Percy's room without a word exchanged.
* * * * *
"What in bloody hell do you want now?"
Harry and Ron's jaws plummeted, suspended in the territory between "shock" and "hysteria" at hearing decorous, respectable Percy respond in such a... coarse manner.
"We, er, need to ask you something," tried Ron impatiently. "Involving Hermione. And a sleeping spell. Which hypothetically I may have cast on her and hypothetically may have misused. And hypothetically she might not be waking up like she's supposed to."
"Ron, you idiot!" came Percy's terse and – Harry couldn't help thinking correct – response. "Those spells are illegal to start with, and –" the door swished ajar with great spirit "– a horrific violation of –"
"Percy, I beg you to believe that I don't care about the consequences. I need the reversion. Is there a set time she stays asleep, or do I have to wake her somehow? What do I do? Is it possible I could have accidentally made her comatose?"
"Where did you get this spell?"
"Huh?"
"Where did you learn it? What spell is it exactly?"
"Dormir Embrassius. George taught me in fifth year when Hermione was studying so hard for her O.W.L. tests; he was afraid she'd burn herself out and I'd need to cast it on her."
A superbly peculiar phenomenon occurred; it was a happening prophesied in legend, an event long awaited by the denizens of the Burrow, for at that moment... Percy laughed.
"HA ha ha ha ha... oh, my... burn herself out, indeed! Ha ha ha ha..."
"What're you on about, you stiff-necked prat?" Ron demanded.
"My, they would have loved this..." Percy continued wildly. "Couldn't resist one last joke, could you, brothers? I only wonder where you learned the spell..." The lines enclosing Percy's sanity appeared to be blurring.
"Percy?" tried Harry.
"Tell me what it is, right now, or I'll –" threatened Ron. Percy's manic chuckling subsided in favor of his old formality.
"Oh, I'll tell you, all right, but you won't like it."
"Just go on," Ron encouraged.
"George taught you a highly advanced illegal charm; I'm only amazed you could make it work, seeing as you've never been incredibly gifted in that area."
Ron uncharacteristically ignored this subtle insult. "And?"
"You never actually saw him exercise it on anyone, did you?"
"Well, no. He told me that they used it on the Catnap Crystals."
"Undoubtedly they used a variation of it, but not that exact enchantment, no."
"Get to the point."
"George didn't really have Hermione's health in mind when he taught you that spell, although I suppose it could've been a secondary consideration."
"What did he think he was doing, then?"
"It's an ancient spell, a modified version of which was used by witches and wizards in the old days as a sort of – entertainment device. It was eventually outlawed because they would cast it on Muggles, and word would spread, especially after a couple of the poor magic-less fools got themselves killed trying to break it, and then it was greatly romanticized in –"
"I don't need a bloody history lesson!"
"Fine. Well, what it boils down to is that the person who casts the spell has to kiss his or her victim in order to remove it."
Ron tried to swallow, but his throat had gone dry and this only irritated him further. "W... Wh... WHAT?"
"Harry, you came from the Muggle world. Do you remember their story of Sleeping Beauty?" Percy continued upon his cultural seminar, now that Ron was stricken in alarm.
Harry was snickering violently and trying to camouflage it, so he had trouble answering. "Yep, I definitely do. Thanks, Percy."
"Right." Percy slapped his brother's back reassuringly and returned to the morose sanctum of quiet within his room.
* * * * *
Oh no, oh no, oh NO WAY could Ron do this.
He wanted very much to hunt down George and commit seriously brutal acts of torture upon him, until he remembered that his brother was already dead.
Just do it and be done. Pressing your lips to her stiff, inactive ones for a nanosecond is not going to make you spontaneously combust with passion. It'll be fine. It's your own fault for taking care of her against her will, anyway.
He sighed and followed a still-covertly-laughing Harry back to their room. They stood together in the doorway and eyed Hermione. Ron's grimace very much resembled the way Snape had looked in the presence of Hagrid's magical pastel bunnies.
"Well? Aren't you going to..." trailed Harry suggestively.
"Yeah, yeah. Yeah."
"D'you want me to leave and give you two a little privacy?"
Yes. "No. Um, whatever you want, Harry."
"Oh, okay, I'll just stand here then."
It was amazing that Harry's mischievousness chose to surface now. Amazing, and regrettable.
Ron summoned his Gryffindor courage and strode across the room. He knelt with an expression Harry decided was enraptured and terrified; he grasped her shoulders firmly, leaned over, and brushed his lips with hers lightly, uncertainly, like a whisper of terribly, deliciously forbidden confidence. He waited and watched her. And...
* * * * *
She flew toward the surface, absorbing momentum, and everything was cold and shining, and from this jeweled winter she arose and washed on a shore into warm brown eyes.
"Rrrgh...er...ahem...Ron?"
Ron was on his knees beside her with a death grip on her shoulders, looking alternately shocked and relieved and... something else unidentifiable. She barely registered that he was blushing.
"Hermione? Are you okay?"
"Um... yes, I think I am. What on Earth did you do?"
"Er. Well."
"He put a Sleeping Charm on you," chirped Harry from the doorway. He was happier – at least more entertained – than he'd been since Before It Had Happened.
This was unquestionably one of those Before and After events about which people are always talking. Of course, Harry's life was just an unbroken series of them; Hermione wondered how he ever managed to be upset about anything.
"Ron!"
"I'm really sorry." He truly looked it, too. "I just wanted..."
"What?"
Maybe his reluctance was the product of Harry's unwavering presence, but he got to his feet instead of answering her. "Could you do me a favor and smooth things out with Ginny for me? I was a bit... uh... harsh, sarcastic, to her, earlier, because I was worried that, uh, I'd messed up the spell somehow. I didn't mean to disturb her."
"Okay, then." Hermione rolled off the mattress with some effort and brushed past Ron and Harry into the hallway. "Oh – goodnight," she called back.
"'Night, Hermione," they chorused. If she'd closed her eyes, it might have been a second of Hogwarts.
* * * * *
Hermione was standing at Ginny's window in the morning, fully groomed and dressed in her black school robes. Her back was turned to him, and the door was open; Ron ambled in and cleared his throat.
"Good morning."
Her hair rustled softly as she turned and said wryly, "I wouldn't exactly characterize it as 'good.'"
"I was being optimistic."
"Ah. Where's Harry?"
"Getting dressed. Where's Ginny?"
"Bathroom."
"Ah."
"Yeah."
He took one long step closer, not enough to bridge the distance but within arm's length. Arm's length, she thought, and still so far away. Bittersweet irony colored everything between and around them, and all she wanted was to be blind to it.
They looked at each other like two desperate prisoners on opposite sides of an inflexible glass wall. She was about to say something, anything at all, when Ginny burst in the room.
Her presence itself evoked images of distress, all flowers tinged with brown and oxen beaten to their knees. Her hair was impeccably combed and straightened like limp rods of fire, and her back was drawn up straight like her mother taught her to walk with Hogwarts: A History balancing precariously on her head. She was put together and breaking within, which Ron knew by one glance.
"Ginny, how are you?"
"As well as could be expected," she said, averting her eyes. "Where's Harry?"
"Right here," Harry said from the doorway.
In the struggle toward maturity, there are antagonists and then there are allies. Each is special in its own role, because adolescence is a much more frantic, secret war than any with heavy machinery and drilling and yelling and screams in the climax of battle. Adolescence is the devils of childhood and adulthood, all closing in blistering pursuit on an uninformed and unsophisticated civilian. The allies in this are priceless and never forgotten.
Before, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny had all been individual soldiers or maybe mercenaries. Standing in that room that day, the four became an army. Unspoken understanding flooded them, and they shouldered their burdens like veterans before marching resolutely to their very first battle together.
* * * * *
From the Weasley house, past approximately half a mile of dust and fallen leaves reclines the old Weasley cemetery. It is the consequence of grief and ages, but within it floats forsaken devotion like an invisible blanket. Hermione thought that she felt the force of mourning for every other life lost; she thought she felt their spirits. She dismissed it, though, in favor of staring at Ron. He looked like he wanted to throw himself into the ground with the coffins of his brothers, which Arthur Weasley and Albus Dumbledore were lowering with their wands. The procession of various Weasleys and old Hogwarts companions stood watching sullenly, some of them crying. Alicia Spinnet was sobbing, a high shrill sound that rose up and shattered the quiet like a thin piece of glass.
The wood touched the earth and Arthur asked Albus to say a few words. He nodded, sighed, straightened, and stood before the bereaved.
"A very wise person once said something which had a ring of truth that can be felt even now, through our grief and our sorrow. I memorized it in youth, and I will say it to you now."
Even the weeping quieted in response, although a few sniffles punctuated Dumbledore's speech every now and then. Mrs. Weasley had all but lost consciousness in her husband's arms. Hermione thought it was the saddest, most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"'Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels," began Dumbledore, "but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.'"
Rain began to mist over the party.
"'And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all mysteries and knowledge – and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.'"
Hermione looked over at Ron, who was on her right. He was crying. She lost it, released her self-control and inhibitions, and she cried with him. He looked up and caught the sight of her; it seemed to be too much for him. He gasped and wheezed and tried to stop and couldn't, helpless to the cataract of his melancholy; she reached over and grasped his hand. The looked ahead together.
"'And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned in sacrifice, but have not love, it profits me nothing.'"
Ginny occupied herself by studying everybody else. She noticed that Aunt Virgil was wearing a gloomy wine color instead of black, that Angelina's eyes were closed, that Harry's shoulders had gone lax. When he didn't make the usual effort to align them perfectly, there was a deep indentation between the blades. She saw Hermione reach for her brother's hand and thought, Thank God, they at least have that.
"'Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.'"
Percy looked like he was choking. Bill had bowed his head, and Charlie was gripping his robes with such tenacity that Ginny wasn't sure the wrinkle would ever disappear.
"'Love does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil.'"
The word "evil" reminded Harry sharply of Voldemort. Some dark, highly sensitive muscle inside him clenched and writhed and longed to abandon restraint.
"Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."
Ron's hand tightened in Hermione's. She couldn't tell if it was involuntary or on purpose, but she squeezed back.
"'But where there are prophesies, they will fail. Where there are tongues, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.'"
The calmness of distance washed away. Two tears trickled their well-worn path down Ginny's cheek.
"'When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put childish things away.'"
Childish things, mused Hermione. Like steadfast, lovelorn pining for your best friend?
Then she forgot about that when she remembered that Fred and George had never really gotten to be men... until they died. They died like men.
"'For we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face-to-face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.'"
Harry shook his head slightly, as if thinking rationally about the loss of it all. Actually, he was plotting his vengeance. He saw it in his mind and heard shrieking and thrashing and moaning and dying and felt satisfaction, which frightened him into not thinking anymore at all.
"'And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these –'" Dumbledore's eyes twinkled sadly "'–is love.'"
* * * * *
