Disclaimers in chapter one. (I still don't get them, dangit!)
Spayshal thanks to Chaser, for just being the coolest ever, and Tasnim, my wife ;) lol and Irda, the way spiffy president of my fanclub, and Jair, who really should sleep more lol. You guys rock!
**
Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes but morning comes. . . . Keep hope alive.
- Jesse Jackson
**
Ron stood shivering on the porch of a small, single story house. He'd managed to make his way on brightly lit streets and the edges of the sky were beginning to grow brighter, but the chill never left the air. He had his arms wrapped tightly around his body, trying vainly to keep his body heat from escaping as he waited. He knew someone was home; a light had come on shortly after his second ring.
The door finally opened and Ron found himself face to face with a very sleepy, rumpled looking Hermione. He grinned and held his arms open for a hug, but she just stood in the doorway, staring at him blankly.
"What. The. Hell?" she said finally. Ron sighed and dropped his arms, all hope of a warm welcome lost.
"Um. Hiya, 'Mione. Can I maybe come in for awhile, it's cold out here and I need to ask you something." He adopted his best puppy dog look, batting his eyelids, and with a sigh she stood aside and let him in. He hurried past her, desperate to get warm again. Hermione showed him into the sitting room and started a fire, sting down in a large armchair and motioning for Ron to do the same. He took the chair next to hers and, after several minutes of companionable silence, she spoke.
"That god-awful job of yours has finally driven you completely bonkers, hasn't it, dear?" Ron looked up at her, surprised by the tone in her voice. She was looking at him with a bit of amusement mixed with pity. Ron just laughed.
"What makes you think that?" he asked with a chuckle.
"Well! You show up on my doorstep at six o'clock in the morning, dressed like some sort of Muggle teenager with a half-crazed look in your eye and looking like you could do with a long, hot shower, and you expect me to think that everything's just fine?"
Ron actually laughed outright, the humor of the situation striking him with her words. "Hermy, I'm probably more sane now than I have been for months. Or, well...more comfortable, anyway." He chuckled again, and this time Hermione joined him.
"Oh, Ron, it's so wonderful to hear you laugh again." She beamed at him from under her unruly, curly hair. "Hearing that sound almost makes getting up this early worth it." Ron smiled at her, remembering the similar conversation that he'd had with Harry only the day before. Freedom sure had a way of changing people for the better, apparently, and it amused Ron that it had taken his most bitter rival to initiate that change in him.
Hermione was staring at him quizzically again, as if wondering what he wanted. He shrugged. "I suppose you're wondering what I want." She nodded. "Well, I wanted to ask you some stuff, and um. Yeah."
"And this stuff couldn't wait two more hours?" She sighed when Ron shook his head seriously. "Okay, ask away, I'll do what I can with a sleep-deprived brain."
"Oh, hush. You do fine with any kind of brain." They both grinned, glad to be bantering again. "Anyway, um, I need to know as much as you can tell me about the myth of Pandora's box. I know that I knew all of that stuff at one point, but lack of interest and endless days of dull labor has erased it."
Hermione rose an eyebrow. "I can't imagine why you would need to know anything about that with this much urgency, but um." She glanced at him and saw the determination in his eyes. "I'm not going to ask. Let's see what I can remember, here." She paused and chewed on a fingernail for a moment, lost in thought.
"Okay, there are a lot of different versions of the story, but they all involve a woman named Pandora, obviously. In most versions, she was supposedly the first mortal woman ever created and was given a box full of all sorts of unpleasant things, plagues and pestilence and the like. There was only one good thing mixed in with all of those horrors, and that thing was hope. When she opened the box, hope was the only thing that she managed to save. According to the legend, that's why horrible things exist today, because they escaped from Pandora's box and flew out to inhabit the earth."
Ron drew his eyebrows together and pursed his lips. "Well...but how come it's a good thing that she trapped hope? Wouldn't it have been better if it had escaped too?"
Hermione shrugged. "Well, not really I suppose; if hope had escaped than no one would know where to find it, would they? With it safe in its box, people can be comforted, because hope is safe. It isn't fleeting. Or something, of course, it's just a story."
Ron nodded. "Yeah. Have you got any books about it or anything that I could borrow for awhile?"
"You want to borrow..." Hermione's eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hair. "I'll be damned, Ron, whatever this is, I hope you get to the bottom of it soon. It's really gone to your brain." She stood up and shuffled out of the room, calling "I'll be right back!" over her shoulder.
Left along, Ron tried to connect some of what he had just found out to what he knew. He cursed silently, wishing that he'd had more time to read the papers on that desk at Barty's. He really wanted to think that maybe the Death Eaters were going to go searching for the box itself, but he cast that idea off as silliness. It was just a myth, and while that was the most logical train of thought he could come up with, it didn't seem to make much sense. ~When has anything like this ever made sense, though?~
He heard Hermione coming back in, and turned to see if she needed any help. In her hands was a large book bag that looked mostly full. She plunked it down on the floor in front of Ron with a friendly smirk.
"Bit of light reading for you, there. I found all of my old textbooks and threw in some others I had lying around. Hope they help, at least some."
Ron jumped to his feet and gave her a tight hug. "Thank you so much! You're the greatest, you know that?"
He felt her laugh against his shoulder and pulled away. "Of course I do," she said lightly. "Where would you be without me, Mr. Weasley?"
"I'd be hopelessly lost, that's where," he replied with a grin. They stood together for a few minutes, both thinking about their old days in school. Finally, though, Hermione spoke.
"Well, Ron, I really am glad that you stopped by, but I'm going to go back to bed and I'm sure you'd like to get started right away on all that reading." He nodded and picked up the bag, grinning as his friend shooed him towards the door. They stopped on the porch, staring up at the hazy dawn light.
"Have you got a boyfriend these days?" Hermione asked suddenly, her eyes fixed on the pastel clouds above them.
Images of Draco bending over him flashed through Ron's mind. Draco's comfortable weight against him, his intoxicating smell, his fathomless gray eyes, his soft lips..."No, not really." Ron shook his head and glanced over at her. "You?"
She chuckled. "Nope. But that's all right." They nodded together, neither looking at the other. "Well, good luck with everything, Ron."
"Hey, thank you, you're a lifesaver. Really!"
She smiled and shook her head. "Bye!" He held his hand up and smiled as she shut the door, amazed at what wonderful friends he had been blessed with.
The trip back to Draco's was much less distressing, mostly because the sun was beginning to rise. The streets were beginning to come alive again; a coffee shop owner was standing in the window looking for customers, and a homeless man sat beside an old trashcan, soaking in the early morning light. Ron moved as quickly as he could down the empty streets, taking a slightly different route on the off chance that one of his nightmares with empty eyes was waiting along his previous one.
When Ron finally pushed open the apartment door, he saw Draco sitting on the couch holding the note. He looked up blearily and Ron had to hold back the urge to laugh. Draco looked like he had just woken up. His hair was mussed up, almost in a blonde parody of Harry's, and his features were dull with sleepiness.
Ron glanced at his watch; he'd been gone for nearly an hour. He set his bag down and walked over to his sleepy associate. "How sweet, you decided to wait up for me," he quipped with a grin.
Draco raised a bleary eyebrow. "You know, Weasley, I've had this little suspicion that there's someone else..." he trailed off and grinned. Ron just rolled his eyes and sat down next to Draco, his arms crossed over his knees. He stared blankly at the carpet for a few moments until Draco's voice broke into his thoughtless daze.
"Hey, Weasley?" Ron looked over at him his eyebrow quirked slightly in a silent invitation to continue. Draco made a very serious face and rested one hand comfortably on Ron's shoulder. "You look like shit." Ron stared at him for a moment and then burst into half-hysterical laughter.
"Yeah...go figure..." Ron shook his head and stood up, stretching. "I'm going to borrow your shower, 'k, Malfoy?" Draco nodded and waved at him somewhat dismissively.
"Yeah. You should probably sleep too; you can just use my bed. I haven't got any other spares; Creevey's on the couch right now." Draco pointed towards his room. "Just don't break anything, Weasley..."
Ron gave him a withering look and very eloquently flipped Draco off before heading into the bathroom. He carefully locked the door before stripping down and turning on the water. A glance in the mirror stopped him before he stepped into the tub, and he turned completely to face his reflection.
It seemed strange to him that his mental projection of himself was so completely different from what he saw in the mirror. He reached up and poked at his cheeks and eyebrows, and tangled a strand of bright red hair around his fingers. He didn't *look* like a murderer...
Even his eyes were different than he thought they should be. When he thought of them, he thought of something more...dull. Less interesting than the amber color that they were. Harry used to tell him that even his eyes were like fire, and they'd go a shade darker when he was angry or upset. Ron had just shrugged that off; after all, nothing about him was as interesting as that.
But...he noticed as he poked at his face that they were a slightly different shade than usual. With a sigh and a shake of his head he turned away and stepped under the heavy shower, wincing a little at first because of the hot temperature of the water. He made no move to turn it down, instead making sure that the heat beat at every inch of his skin. He wanted to be completely clean of everything that had happened, and he scrubbed frantically at his legs and abdomen, even after all the tiny spots of blood were gone.
He stayed in the shower until the hot water began to cool and his skin was practically numb from the heat and scrubbing. As he stepped out and began to towel off, his eyes traveled the length of his body slowly, taking in the bright red skin and white splotches where circulation had been interrupted. He looked awful, and felt awful, and needed to sleep before he fell over in the middle of the bathroom. Without another glance, he pulled on a pair of dark blue boxers and padded out of the bathroom, holding his clothes in a small bundle under his arm, and headed for Draco's room.
He tossed the bundle of clothing in the corner and glanced around the room, curious despite his need for sleep. On the wall hung an ornate picture of a tiger with Chinese lettering across the top, and a poster with five nuns holding shotguns and the words 'Rage Against the Machine' underneath them. He made a note to ask Draco about that when he woke up. The rest of the room was very uninteresting: a small dresser in the corner, and some other clothes scattered across the floor. The slight untidiness surprised Ron a little, he'd always taken Draco to be a blatant neat freak. Even his fingernails were clean, he remembered with a little grin.
Shrugging, he pushed the door shut and toppled onto the soft bed, pulled the comforter and sheets up to his chin and, for the first time in his life, he fell asleep wrapped completely and comfortably in someone else's scent.
Spayshal thanks to Chaser, for just being the coolest ever, and Tasnim, my wife ;) lol and Irda, the way spiffy president of my fanclub, and Jair, who really should sleep more lol. You guys rock!
**
Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes but morning comes. . . . Keep hope alive.
- Jesse Jackson
**
Ron stood shivering on the porch of a small, single story house. He'd managed to make his way on brightly lit streets and the edges of the sky were beginning to grow brighter, but the chill never left the air. He had his arms wrapped tightly around his body, trying vainly to keep his body heat from escaping as he waited. He knew someone was home; a light had come on shortly after his second ring.
The door finally opened and Ron found himself face to face with a very sleepy, rumpled looking Hermione. He grinned and held his arms open for a hug, but she just stood in the doorway, staring at him blankly.
"What. The. Hell?" she said finally. Ron sighed and dropped his arms, all hope of a warm welcome lost.
"Um. Hiya, 'Mione. Can I maybe come in for awhile, it's cold out here and I need to ask you something." He adopted his best puppy dog look, batting his eyelids, and with a sigh she stood aside and let him in. He hurried past her, desperate to get warm again. Hermione showed him into the sitting room and started a fire, sting down in a large armchair and motioning for Ron to do the same. He took the chair next to hers and, after several minutes of companionable silence, she spoke.
"That god-awful job of yours has finally driven you completely bonkers, hasn't it, dear?" Ron looked up at her, surprised by the tone in her voice. She was looking at him with a bit of amusement mixed with pity. Ron just laughed.
"What makes you think that?" he asked with a chuckle.
"Well! You show up on my doorstep at six o'clock in the morning, dressed like some sort of Muggle teenager with a half-crazed look in your eye and looking like you could do with a long, hot shower, and you expect me to think that everything's just fine?"
Ron actually laughed outright, the humor of the situation striking him with her words. "Hermy, I'm probably more sane now than I have been for months. Or, well...more comfortable, anyway." He chuckled again, and this time Hermione joined him.
"Oh, Ron, it's so wonderful to hear you laugh again." She beamed at him from under her unruly, curly hair. "Hearing that sound almost makes getting up this early worth it." Ron smiled at her, remembering the similar conversation that he'd had with Harry only the day before. Freedom sure had a way of changing people for the better, apparently, and it amused Ron that it had taken his most bitter rival to initiate that change in him.
Hermione was staring at him quizzically again, as if wondering what he wanted. He shrugged. "I suppose you're wondering what I want." She nodded. "Well, I wanted to ask you some stuff, and um. Yeah."
"And this stuff couldn't wait two more hours?" She sighed when Ron shook his head seriously. "Okay, ask away, I'll do what I can with a sleep-deprived brain."
"Oh, hush. You do fine with any kind of brain." They both grinned, glad to be bantering again. "Anyway, um, I need to know as much as you can tell me about the myth of Pandora's box. I know that I knew all of that stuff at one point, but lack of interest and endless days of dull labor has erased it."
Hermione rose an eyebrow. "I can't imagine why you would need to know anything about that with this much urgency, but um." She glanced at him and saw the determination in his eyes. "I'm not going to ask. Let's see what I can remember, here." She paused and chewed on a fingernail for a moment, lost in thought.
"Okay, there are a lot of different versions of the story, but they all involve a woman named Pandora, obviously. In most versions, she was supposedly the first mortal woman ever created and was given a box full of all sorts of unpleasant things, plagues and pestilence and the like. There was only one good thing mixed in with all of those horrors, and that thing was hope. When she opened the box, hope was the only thing that she managed to save. According to the legend, that's why horrible things exist today, because they escaped from Pandora's box and flew out to inhabit the earth."
Ron drew his eyebrows together and pursed his lips. "Well...but how come it's a good thing that she trapped hope? Wouldn't it have been better if it had escaped too?"
Hermione shrugged. "Well, not really I suppose; if hope had escaped than no one would know where to find it, would they? With it safe in its box, people can be comforted, because hope is safe. It isn't fleeting. Or something, of course, it's just a story."
Ron nodded. "Yeah. Have you got any books about it or anything that I could borrow for awhile?"
"You want to borrow..." Hermione's eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hair. "I'll be damned, Ron, whatever this is, I hope you get to the bottom of it soon. It's really gone to your brain." She stood up and shuffled out of the room, calling "I'll be right back!" over her shoulder.
Left along, Ron tried to connect some of what he had just found out to what he knew. He cursed silently, wishing that he'd had more time to read the papers on that desk at Barty's. He really wanted to think that maybe the Death Eaters were going to go searching for the box itself, but he cast that idea off as silliness. It was just a myth, and while that was the most logical train of thought he could come up with, it didn't seem to make much sense. ~When has anything like this ever made sense, though?~
He heard Hermione coming back in, and turned to see if she needed any help. In her hands was a large book bag that looked mostly full. She plunked it down on the floor in front of Ron with a friendly smirk.
"Bit of light reading for you, there. I found all of my old textbooks and threw in some others I had lying around. Hope they help, at least some."
Ron jumped to his feet and gave her a tight hug. "Thank you so much! You're the greatest, you know that?"
He felt her laugh against his shoulder and pulled away. "Of course I do," she said lightly. "Where would you be without me, Mr. Weasley?"
"I'd be hopelessly lost, that's where," he replied with a grin. They stood together for a few minutes, both thinking about their old days in school. Finally, though, Hermione spoke.
"Well, Ron, I really am glad that you stopped by, but I'm going to go back to bed and I'm sure you'd like to get started right away on all that reading." He nodded and picked up the bag, grinning as his friend shooed him towards the door. They stopped on the porch, staring up at the hazy dawn light.
"Have you got a boyfriend these days?" Hermione asked suddenly, her eyes fixed on the pastel clouds above them.
Images of Draco bending over him flashed through Ron's mind. Draco's comfortable weight against him, his intoxicating smell, his fathomless gray eyes, his soft lips..."No, not really." Ron shook his head and glanced over at her. "You?"
She chuckled. "Nope. But that's all right." They nodded together, neither looking at the other. "Well, good luck with everything, Ron."
"Hey, thank you, you're a lifesaver. Really!"
She smiled and shook her head. "Bye!" He held his hand up and smiled as she shut the door, amazed at what wonderful friends he had been blessed with.
The trip back to Draco's was much less distressing, mostly because the sun was beginning to rise. The streets were beginning to come alive again; a coffee shop owner was standing in the window looking for customers, and a homeless man sat beside an old trashcan, soaking in the early morning light. Ron moved as quickly as he could down the empty streets, taking a slightly different route on the off chance that one of his nightmares with empty eyes was waiting along his previous one.
When Ron finally pushed open the apartment door, he saw Draco sitting on the couch holding the note. He looked up blearily and Ron had to hold back the urge to laugh. Draco looked like he had just woken up. His hair was mussed up, almost in a blonde parody of Harry's, and his features were dull with sleepiness.
Ron glanced at his watch; he'd been gone for nearly an hour. He set his bag down and walked over to his sleepy associate. "How sweet, you decided to wait up for me," he quipped with a grin.
Draco raised a bleary eyebrow. "You know, Weasley, I've had this little suspicion that there's someone else..." he trailed off and grinned. Ron just rolled his eyes and sat down next to Draco, his arms crossed over his knees. He stared blankly at the carpet for a few moments until Draco's voice broke into his thoughtless daze.
"Hey, Weasley?" Ron looked over at him his eyebrow quirked slightly in a silent invitation to continue. Draco made a very serious face and rested one hand comfortably on Ron's shoulder. "You look like shit." Ron stared at him for a moment and then burst into half-hysterical laughter.
"Yeah...go figure..." Ron shook his head and stood up, stretching. "I'm going to borrow your shower, 'k, Malfoy?" Draco nodded and waved at him somewhat dismissively.
"Yeah. You should probably sleep too; you can just use my bed. I haven't got any other spares; Creevey's on the couch right now." Draco pointed towards his room. "Just don't break anything, Weasley..."
Ron gave him a withering look and very eloquently flipped Draco off before heading into the bathroom. He carefully locked the door before stripping down and turning on the water. A glance in the mirror stopped him before he stepped into the tub, and he turned completely to face his reflection.
It seemed strange to him that his mental projection of himself was so completely different from what he saw in the mirror. He reached up and poked at his cheeks and eyebrows, and tangled a strand of bright red hair around his fingers. He didn't *look* like a murderer...
Even his eyes were different than he thought they should be. When he thought of them, he thought of something more...dull. Less interesting than the amber color that they were. Harry used to tell him that even his eyes were like fire, and they'd go a shade darker when he was angry or upset. Ron had just shrugged that off; after all, nothing about him was as interesting as that.
But...he noticed as he poked at his face that they were a slightly different shade than usual. With a sigh and a shake of his head he turned away and stepped under the heavy shower, wincing a little at first because of the hot temperature of the water. He made no move to turn it down, instead making sure that the heat beat at every inch of his skin. He wanted to be completely clean of everything that had happened, and he scrubbed frantically at his legs and abdomen, even after all the tiny spots of blood were gone.
He stayed in the shower until the hot water began to cool and his skin was practically numb from the heat and scrubbing. As he stepped out and began to towel off, his eyes traveled the length of his body slowly, taking in the bright red skin and white splotches where circulation had been interrupted. He looked awful, and felt awful, and needed to sleep before he fell over in the middle of the bathroom. Without another glance, he pulled on a pair of dark blue boxers and padded out of the bathroom, holding his clothes in a small bundle under his arm, and headed for Draco's room.
He tossed the bundle of clothing in the corner and glanced around the room, curious despite his need for sleep. On the wall hung an ornate picture of a tiger with Chinese lettering across the top, and a poster with five nuns holding shotguns and the words 'Rage Against the Machine' underneath them. He made a note to ask Draco about that when he woke up. The rest of the room was very uninteresting: a small dresser in the corner, and some other clothes scattered across the floor. The slight untidiness surprised Ron a little, he'd always taken Draco to be a blatant neat freak. Even his fingernails were clean, he remembered with a little grin.
Shrugging, he pushed the door shut and toppled onto the soft bed, pulled the comforter and sheets up to his chin and, for the first time in his life, he fell asleep wrapped completely and comfortably in someone else's scent.