Loss
By Hpfan
Chapter VIII- Coping and Motorcycles
The following nights were some of the worst Harry had to deal with. Worse then any of his regular dreams, ten-fold; mostly because he knew that they were really happening. Every night, it was like clockwork. Harry would fall asleep, and suddenly, he would be infront of Ron's cell. He would walk through the door, and find Ron in horrible condition. He was rarely fed, and was deathly thin by the fifth night.
Ron would look up, his eyes giving off a very eerie gleam, and try to give him a smile. Harry would walk over to him, and give him a news briefing, sometimes lying just to keep his morale up, and would try to sooth him. Harry could see that his friend was halfway over the edge, but he still wouldn't give Voldemort what he wanted to know. Harry noticed that Ron had stopped flinching whenever he said the words Voldemort. He would talk to him for almost an hour, before Voldemort, or one of his followers would come in and perform his nightly torture. Ron's voice became hoarse with the screaming, and Harry was afraid that Ron would go mute if this was kept up.
One night, Harry was trying to convince him to just tell Voldemort the information he wanted. "Harry" he said in a weak, croaky voice, "What good would it do? I've tried his patience for far too long to be able to make any agreement with him. I'll tell him what he wants to know, and he'll dispose of me." He had said.
Harry tried to contradict him, but he realized, he was right. Voldemort had probably been planning it from the beginning. He sighed. "Maybe your right. Still, you should try to negotiate with him. Tell him that you know his plan, and that you won't tell him anything unless you can be assured that you know he will let you go." He said.
"Harry, haven't you figured it out yet? I'm not going to tell him anything. I don't care if he kills me. I'll tell you something. I don't really expect to make it out of here alive. I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to here, but when you're left alone in a cell for almost a week, you come to a lot of conclusions; namely, what you're value really is."
Harry shook his head, trying to convince his friend of what he was worth. "No, Harry, listen. You were always the one who everyone knew would be the savior of the world. You're the one who is going to get rid of Voldemort. What have I ever done? I'm just a nameless Weasley. The only thing that is special about me is that you're my best friend. I can afford to die; you can't.
"Ron, I don't give a damn about being the worlds savior. If I'm the one who is destined to save the world, that doesn't mean that because the rest of the world isn't, they can die. If all of the nameless people were killed off, there wouldn't be a world to save. Believe me, if the people I love weren't there to relish it with me, I don't think that I would want to bother saving the world. I wouldn't be able to function, knowing that you died because I was your friend. I just couldn't live with that. You have to keep up hope. I promise you, people out there are doing everything they can to get you out of here."
Ron just gave him an 'I'll try' look, and Harry smiled at him a bit. Just then, the door open, and Harry knew what that meant. But, it wasn't a hood figure, or Voldemort who came in, it was Snape.
Snape came in, looking as menacing as Voldemort, but not as violent. "I know you're in here Potter. I need to talk to Weasley alone." Harry, of course, had no intention of leaving.
"What's he going to do to me, take house points off?" he asked Ron. Ron gave him the closest thing to a smile that he could achieve. Ron repeated the comment to Snape, and his facial expression twisted into the scariest thing Harry had seen on his face so far.
"Tell him I'm leaving. I'm not going, but it should make him happy." Harry said. Ron repeated it to Snape, and Snape look unconvinced.
He took out his wand, muttered an unfamiliar spell, and said, "I'm waiting Potter."
Harry looked at Ron, and said, "I guess he has a tracking spell put on the room." Ron nodded at him, and he walked out of the cell. After about twenty minutes of them being in the cell alone together, he was beginning to get alarmed. He stuck his head through the door, and saw that Ron and Snape were still talking. Just as he was about to leave the room, he saw head toward the door. Snape left, and Harry went to go talk to Ron.
"What did he say?" Harry asked, hoping that Ron could talk about it.
"He was telling me plans for escape. He didn't want you listening in. He knew if you knew the plans, you would want to go out and risk your life trying to save me. And you and I know that you probably would." He said.
"So, how did Snape get in here? He's one of the spies right?" he asked. It wasn't really news. He had suspected Snape of going back to Voldemort as a spy for a while.
"Yeah. He didn't go into detail, but I would bet that he was suppose to come in here and torture me." Ron flinched at the word torture.
"Well, see, you're going to be rescued. I told you that you would." Harry said. "It's probably about time for me to wake up. I guess I'll see you tomorrow night. Keep your chin up Ron."
After Harry woke up, it was usually about one in the morning, and Harry would usually go down to the living room, and watch TV until he fell asleep on the couch. Most nights, Sirius would join him, when he heard him get up in the middle of the night, and they would watch stupid old movies and reruns of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And who's line is it anyway.
Occasionally, he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, and would have to take the dreamless sleep potion, but usually, he would go back to sleep by two or three.
During normal hours, Harry was somewhat withdrawn. He couldn't help but feel guilty. Whenever he ate lunch, he would think, 'I bet Ron isn't eating lunch. I bet Ron doesn't even get a lunch. He probably doesn't even know that it's lunchtime!'. When he would ride his broom, he would remind himself that Ron could only dream of playing Quidditch. When he fell asleep, he remembered that Ron didn't have a bed to sleep in; he had a piece of plywood.
Sirius was being sympathetic to him constantly. He didn't ask for anything; not that he ever really asked him for anything, but he didn't press him to do anything that he didn't want to, or just wasn't doing.
Sirius stopped with his corny jokes that Harry would usually laugh at, if not just to be polite. He seemed to realize that Harry wasn't in a good mood, and didn't try to push him to do something fun to try to try to snap himself out of it.
Harry almost wished that Sirius would try to tell him that he had to so something; he wanted to play quidditch, and to do all of the things that he would normally do. He frequently told himself that he shouldn't have fun; 'Ron is a prisoner, I can't just go out and play Quidditch and act like he's just going to come back.' But he wanted to have fun. He wanted an excuse to enjoy the rest of the holiday.
Finally, Sirius just snapped at him. They were sitting at the kitchen table, after Harry had made dinner, eating in silence, when Sirius started. "Harry, you have to stop acting like this! It isn't healthy. You shouldn't be moping around the house this way! It's not good for Ron, and it's definitely not good for you. If you want to help Ron, you should try and be optimistic. You're acting like he's already dead; well he isn't, so you should stop acting like he is, and start acting like his best friend." Sirius said this as polite as he could, but Harry still flinched at his words.
"How would having a great time and playing Quidditch, and watching TV be helping Ron? He's suffering in a cell in who knows where, and I'm playing, and eating sweets! It's not helping Ron either way, so why should I be happy, or sad? It doesn't matter." Harry hadn't meant for his words to come out so loudly, but they did.
Sirius kept his calm. Harry, however, wished he had yelled at him. "It matters to me! I hate seeing you like this. And it should matter to you, and it would matter to Ron, Hermione, and the Weasleys, and all of your friends if they knew how you were reacting to this. I'm not asking you to be cheerful, just smile occasionally, in order for me to make sure that you aren't going over the edge."
"Come on, just a smile! It's not that hard. It's completely painless too! See." He demonstrated by giving him a cheesy smile. "And it took little to no muscle strength too." He said in a tacky infomercial type voice.
Harry rolled his eyes. "And you're worried about me going over the edge."
"Well, at least your rude wit is back. If it would cheer you up, I'll let you drive my motorcycle." He said. Harry looked up at him.
"Really?" he said tentatively, like expecting it to be a joke.
"Sure, why not?" he said indolently.
"Cool!" he exclaimed.
"Well, it's too late tonight, but I'll show you how to steer it tomorrow." He said, getting up from the table. Harry, decided he was full enough, and went to the library to get something to read. After the Animagus book, he wanted to know more about Transfiguration; the subject was interesting.
After selecting a book about Transfiguration, he went to bed.
That night was one of the worst visions he had had with Ron so far.
_____
He arrived before the cell, and instantly he could smell a putrid smell in the air. It was the metallic, acrid smell of blood. Harry would feel the pungent smell overwhelm his sinuses, and his eyes began to water. He feared going through the door, knowing what he would see.
At first, he could see nothing but a huge pile of bloody flesh, but he soon realized that it was Ron. The shock of seeing him like that made him impulsively flee the room, and lean against the wall for almost a minute, getting his bearing together. He knew that he shouldn't be out there; he should be helping his friend, but he couldn't bring himself to see Ron like that. The blood was bad enough, but Ron's body lying on the floor was too much.
Finally, he sucked up his resolve, and walked through the door. He tried to ignore the strong tangy odor from all of the blood, and he walked over to Ron's side to examine the extent of the damage. He didn't see a knife anywhere around the area, or; he shuddered to think this, sticking out of Ron's flesh.
"Ron? Ron, please wake up! Please don't be dead! I can't check to see if you're dead or not! Wake up! Oh, please wake up!" He could feel the tears streaming down his face as he looked over the damage. He reached out to try and touch him, sub-consciously knowing that he couldn't, and was surprised when he could.
Harry instantly felt for a pulse, and sighed heavily when he felt a weak one. "Ron, wake up! You have to wake up Ron! Please!" Harry felt to make sure he wasn't choking on blood, and was relieved to see that he wasn't. The blood must have already clotted because there wasn't any blood flowing out of the open wound.
"Ron, wake up, please, wake up! You have to wake up. Please!" he felt the tears flowing faster and faster, and they ran down his face, and onto Ron's arms, where the injury was. He saw no blood coming from his stomach, and was happy to know that none of his internal organs had been damaged.
Ron moved suddenly, and his eyes fluttered open. He looked utterly confused, and had no idea where he was. He raised his head to look at Harry. "Wha- what's going on, why do my arms hurt so much?" He looked down to the mutilated things that where his limbs.
"Ron, you must have been stabbed or something. I couldn't wake you up at first; I thought that you were dead." Harry couldn't stop the tears from coursing steadily down his face. "I'm so sorry Ron, this is all my fault!" he sobbed.
"Harry, it's not your fault! Please, I'm sorry, Harry, but I can't deal with your guilt right now! I've been stabbed repeatedly, and I'm sorry if you feel bad, but you're just going to have to believe me when I say that this isn't your fault! Please, help me!" Harry bit his lip, ignoring his friend's behavior, and he helped lift him up. He couldn't exactly remember muggle first aid, so he ripped off the sleeves of his shirt, and tried to soak up the blood with it.
Harry ripped off Ron's own pajama sleeves, knowing that it was summer, and although it was common knowledge that people who have lost blood should stay warm, he didn't think that it would go below seventy degrees in Ron's jail cell, unless it was deliberate.
"Ron, I don't think that there is anything else I can do for you, unless you want the rest of my shirt." That's when Harry realized. His arms where revealed. Unless Ron was totally delusional, and Harry doubted he was, as he had proven from his last statement that he was mentally stable, he was going to see what had happened to his arms.
"Harry? Wha- what happened to your arms?" he whispered.
"It's nothing. Ron, let's just deal with your arms." He said.
"No, there is nothing more that I can do about my arms, but I want to know how your arms got that cut up. It doesn't look like you ran through a bush, because they're only on the upper part of your arms, the part that can be covered by a tee shirt." Harry could tell that he was beating around the bush; he knew that Ron realized what had happened; he just wanted Harry to be the one who admitted it.
"Ron, don't worry about it. It's just a couple of cuts!"
"In the same places on each arm? Come on Harry, anyone could tell you did it to yourself. But why?" Ron finally asked him the question Harry had been dreading.
"I did it a while ago." Harry said.
"Those aren't scars. They look pretty new to me!" Ron said. By the look on his face, he knew that he was being annoying.
"So what? You know, I'm not going to tell you anything. It's my own damn business!" Harry said forcefully.
Ron looked angered at him, than shocked, then grudgingly. "Fine, don't tell me. I swear to god though Harry, if I get out of here, I'm telling everyone. I'll tell Sirius, and Hermione, and Dumbledore. Heck, I'll tell Snape the next time he comes to my cell!"
Harry's eyes got large, "You wouldn't! You- you can't! Please Ron!" He yelped.
"Tell me why you did this to your self." He said; Harry knew that if his arms hadn't been mutilated, he would have been crossing them.
"Ron, it's a long story!"
"I have nothing but time on my hands." He said.
"Fine, you wanted to know though… Well, you know when we met up at Diagon Ally? Hermione mentioned that the Dursleys had died, and you said-" Ron cut him off
"I asked why you would care. They were horrible to you." Ron completed.
"Yeah, well see Ron, I do care! I know they didn't treat me good, but they're my relatives, and, like it or not, they died because they're my family. That's why I cut myself!" Harry said vehemently. "I know that you probably can't understand that, but- but think about if it were Percy? I don't care how much you don't like each other, if he died from something relating somehow to you, you wouldn't just care, you would hate yourself!" Harry said, with building fervor. He had been waiting so long to say these words.
"They died because they're related to me! Heck, it doesn't even mater that we're related, they died because of me. I don't care who it is, their death was on my hands, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, I watched it. And I heard their screams, just like I hear your screams, and I can't do a damn thing about it! I can't even get revenge. This whole thing is like a huge mistake that I made that was blown way out of proportion, causing hundreds of deaths. Do you know what that feels like? My mistake was being born! It was my fault that all of this happened! A freak accident; my birth! And there is nothing I could do to stop it, so I thought, maybe if I take some of this out on myself, than I would feel better. And you know what, I did feel better."
Harry wanted to continue his rant, and he knew he could for hours, and he didn't care who heard it. In his irrational state, Harry would have carried on until he woke up, but he looked over at Ron, and a spark of decency returned to him, as he saw Ron in his weaken state trying to take all this in. Harry's sensibility kicked in, and he realized that he had taken his maimed friends concern for him, and turned it into an all out assault on him.
"Ron, I'm sorry; I'm really sorry! It's just that you're the first person who knows about this," he gestured toward his arms, "And now that you know, all of the things that I've kept to myself since I first started just kind of came spilling from my mouth at the first target I could find, and it's just happened to be you." He looked deeply remorseful.
"I know Harry. I know exactly how you feel. You know, I've never really understood how you can always deal with all of the things that you go through. It just seems like a fifteen-year-old shouldn't have to deal with this, and I always felt like I was being stupid because I had problems with potions homework, and I had a tantrum. I always wondered how you could deal with the threat of Voldemort, and fact that you lost your parents, and didn't have the best home to return to, and not react to this like I would. It's taken until now to realize that you don't'! You don't deal with these problems. You just seem to shake these things off like they don't matter, instead of getting things out of your system.
"It didn't always use to be like this. I use to freak out when these things happened, but I realized after a while that there was nothing that I could do. Showing emotion was like a weakness. It was like a sign of strength that I couldn't keep these things in, and then walk away, but well, this is the result of doing that I guess! You take all that anger and aggression and bring it back on yourself." He was referring to the cutting. He looked down at his lap where he sat against he wall with his knees to his chest.
Ron just looked at him with a sad smile. They sat in a silent peace for about fifteen minutes, when Harry realized that it would soon be time for him to go. "Look Ron, I will make sure that they double their effort at getting you out of here. You just take care of your arms." Harry gave him a nod, biting his lip as he looked at his friend's injuries. He walked over to give Ron's shoulder a squeeze before he drifted out of his dream.
_____
Harry woke up after that to find that his sleeves were torn in reality. He was going to have to change his shirt before he went down stairs to meet Sirius. He walked into the bathroom to look at his reflection. His torn sleeves, tousled hair, and discoloration under his eyes, made him look scruffy, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He couldn't get Ron off of his mind, and he knew that things weren't going to get any easier.
Before he could even think rationally about it, he had grabbed a razor that had been sitting on the top shelf of the cabinet, and made a deep gash going straight down the upper part of his arm. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his blood as he realized what he had done. A scary thought past through his head at that moment; 'I like this feeling!'
He cut again: the pain giving him a sudden rush running through his veins. It felt like the blood vessels in his body were being squeezed tightly, but the pain was pleasurable. He shuddered at the pure force of it all. After a few more horizontal cuts, he stopped, and breathed heavily. When he had come to his senses, he threw the razor down, internally yelling at himself for his stupidity.
'I can't believe I'm doing this! Ron is being mutilated, and I'm here dong it to myself, and finding pleasure out of it! How can I feel bliss out of pain? Maybe I really am becoming like Voldemort!' He shook his head forcibly. 'NO' he had almost shouted out loud, 'I'm not like him! I don't want people to die!' He shook his head.
'This is going to stop!' he thought. But it had felt so good! How could something that caused so much pleasure turn out to be so wrong? Then a notion crossed his mind. Drugs give you the same feeling but you can kill yourself doing them. He set his jaw in determination.
He looked back to his new self-inflicted wound, and cringed, as he saw the blood running down his arm and leaking on the floor. He winced when he saw that it had dripped on the floor mat. Harry hasted to clean the blood off his arm, but it kept flowing. His eyes winded as the cuts continued to bleed profusely, and he grabbed his ripped shirt of his back, balled it up, and held it to the incisions.
The blood finally stopped flowing. He sighed in relief. He looked at the shirt. It was covered with blood. He leaned against the wall and sank down against it. The newest scratch stood out vividly against his pale skin.
"Harry?" he heard Sirius knock from the other side of the door. "You okay?" he asked.
Harry tried to remain calm, but Sirius had scared him. He took a deep breath, trying not to sound frantic. "Yeah, I'm fine." He cringed as he heard his voice squeak.
"Come on out." Sirius sounded suspicious.
"Uh, you go ahead downstairs without me, I'll be there soon." He knew if he could see Sirius right now, he would have his eyebrow raised.
"Alright then." He said, and Harry listened to his footsteps descending down the stair, waited a minute, and stuck his head out the door. The hallway was clear. He snuck back into his room and threw his shirt in the garbage, changed into a new one, and headed downstairs for the living room.
End Chapter VIII- Coping and Motorcycles
End notes: Well, how was that? I was thinking of calling that chapter, 'The Return of the Razor', but that seemed like it would give too much away. So, know Ron knows. I'm only halfway done the next chapter, but I'm putting this up because I haven't updated for a while. Never fear though, it will be summer soon (Though OOTP will be out, and after that know one will really care about the story's written before the fifth book, I'm still going to update.)
Notes to the reviewers:
Adenara Yatman: Thank you.
Sarahpeach: Did I give you a hint? Opps. Oh, you will understand in due time. You really don't have any patience at all do you? I don't blame you. It's not like I like seeing you this frustrated, there is nothing I can do with out ruining the whole story. If I could tell just you… well, I wouldn't. This brunet will be revealed around the time Harry enters Hogwarts, but don't press me.
BlackLupin: Thank you for you reviews. I love my story too. JK. I like my story, but not to the point where it's conceited, or unhealthy.
Next chapter: I'll tentatively
call it 'Love' but that might change. You'll read it and find out what happens,
but it's a keystone chapter. *Cheesy commercial voice* You don't want to miss,
the next chapter of, 'Loss'.