A/N: Thanks to all who have reviewed so far, and especially to those who have reviewed since the last posting:
A/N II: All you have to do is look at my stuff to figure out whether or not I own Harry Potter. I'm guessing it's a no…
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Apathy.
He stared down at her, and she did not look away. For a moment, he thought her eyes had locked with his own, but when he glanced again to be certain they were simply unfocused, aimed in his general direction but not really looking at him. He sighed and then scowled. How long was this going to go on?
"I brought you your lunch," Harry said briefly, pulling the wooden chair over to her bedside and placing the tin tray upon it, making sure it was steady before turning away to help his friend sit up. "Why don't you sit up and eat it?" She didn't move, didn't even change the way she was breathing. He might as well have not spoken at all.
He leaned over and moved her into what he assumed would be a comfortable position for eating, grunting slightly as he struggled to adjust her. He placed the tray in her lap as Ron had instructed him to, and watched as she moved the food from the dishes to her lips. She took so little interest in the food or where it was going that he assumed he would have a terrible mess to clean after she had finished with the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches Mrs. Weasley had prepared. He was surprised to see Hermione and the surrounding bed as spotless as they had been when he had first arranged her after she dropped the spoon into the bowl for the final time and wiped her upper lip with the yellowing cloth napkin.
She didn't say thank you, didn't so much as look away from the tray to acknowledge she was finished. She continued staring at the same spot on the wall that she had through her entire meal, as though she were thinking of beginning again despite the fact that there was nothing left to start on.
"Did you want some more?" Nothing.
He sighed again, staring at her as she sat. She was quiet, but there was no placid aura of serenity surrounding her. She had a hard look in her eyes, a frigid air about her that led Harry to believe that there still was something there. Deep down, maybe, but still there.
"I guess I'll be going then," he said glumly, picking up the tray and moving the chair he had sat upon back to the opposite corner of the room. She said nothing.
He grabbed the handle of the door and moved to pull it shut. For a moment he stopped and stared as though trying to catch her in a private display of humanity. "You know Hermione," he said at last, "you can only hide for so long."
He waited a moment longer before shutting the door heavily to block out the terrible sound of her silence.
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"Ron, are you going to eat something or are you just going to sit around and mope again all day?" Ginny sat down at the foot of the couch, squashing her brother's feet as she did so.
"Ouch! Move your arse, Ginny."
"I asked you a question."
Ron lifted his head from the pillow, his hair rumbled and slightly oily looking. There were red marks slashed across his face where the pillowcase had creased and shoved into him while he had pretended to sleep. "Shove off, Ginny," he said angrily, dropping his head down again, careful to avoid the large damp spot that was a mixture of both silent tears and drool.
"Mum made tomato soup."
"Mum always makes tomato soup," he growled into the pillow. "I'm sick of tomato soup. Go away."
She clicked her tongue disapprovingly in a manner that reminded him so much of Hermione he thought for a moment to look up and see if it was her. "I think you should eat something," she repeated at last, a note of petulance in her voice.
"Would you please just leave!" He sat up and punched at the back of the sofa, missing and striking his knuckles upon the wall. "Dammit, Ginny," he cursed her, looking at the bloody scrapes upon his hand. "Look at what you made me do."
"Watch your mouth, Ron," Harry said coolly, coming from the foot of the stairs and dropping the tin lunch tray he had carried up to Hermione on the battered coffee table that fronted the couch that had become Ron's bed.
"Sod off, Harry," Ron said trying to fight the temptation to scream as he felt the anger rising hot and red in his face. What did they know anyway? Why should he have to eat that disgusting soup just because Ginny told him to? Who was she to ask him for anything anyway? Traitorous thing she was, having been in Hermione's wedding.
"Ron," Ginny said, almost pleadingly, the anger in her voice having been replaced by a note of alarm, "please, calm down. If you don't want to eat anything, it's okay, I just thought…"
Harry waved her off, shaking his head. "It's not about the bloody soup, Ginny," he said, pounding his right fist into his open left hand. "He just wants us to feel sorry for him is all." He glared at Ron with an expression of pity mixed with utmost contempt. "Let's go."
"Fine," Ron said, a note of sadness creeping through his bad temper as he shouted at Harry who had picked up the remnants of Hermione's lunch and was heading towards the kitchen to eat his own meal. Ginny looked torn between following her boyfriend and staying with her brother, despite the nasty words he had spoken. "Just walk out on me and do whatever you want. You always do, anyway."
Harry stopped just inside the kitchen and turned around, facing Ron. "Do I?' He said in a challenging voice. Ron said nothing. "I asked you a question, Ron," he hissed a moment later.
"You were always the one breaking the rules, Harry."
"You did it right along with me. You and Hermione."
"Only because you asked us to." Ron's voice was quieter now. He chided himself for his outburst and wished he could take it back. The anger that had welled inside of him had fueled his response, and he hadn't really meant what he said. He had just chosen the knife he knew would inflict the most pain. "We did it because you wanted us to."
"Fine," Harry's fury hadn't tuned down at all. It had simply become the quieter, more dangerous kind of rage. "Everything's my fault. You don't have to remind me of that, Ron."
"Harry, I didn't mean that." Ron felt all of the anger that he had directed at Harry seeping back inside and aiming towards himself once again. Like a poison, it had been there for years now, eating away at him, killing him from the inside out. He was never enough. He had never been good enough. Like everything he owned, he was second rate. When Hermione had chosen Snape, it had simply exacerbated everything he had always hated about himself and driven him nearly mad with fury at what a loser he had allowed himself to become. The only way to stop the pain was to stop trying to make a decent life, he had reasoned. If he never tried, he could never fail and he would never again have to feel the cold, iron grip of the mediocrity that he seemed destined for again.
"Harry," Ginny said, half scolding, half pleading, "Please, stop it. Both of you, don't do this to yourselves," she said, turning slightly to include Ron in her gaze as well. The two boys stared coldly at one another, but some of the hostility that divided them seemed to have disappeared.
"I'm sorry, mate," Ron said finally, standing up from the heap of blankets he had buried himself beneath in a most awkward and clumsy manner. He stuck out his hand.
Harry glared at him, and then softened a bit when he saw the sincerity in his friend's eyes. "I'm sorry, too, Ron." He shook the red head's hand, and then embraced him in a tight hug. "Mates?"
Ron nodded.
"Good then," said Harry, rubbing his hands together briskly. Ron could hear the false note of cheer in the boy's voice and wondered if he had just experienced the brunt of whatever personal wrath Harry likewise held for himself. Harry smiled slightly, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. Ron returned the expression, knowing that haunted look all too well. He saw it in the mirror every morning. "Let's have some lunch then, shall we? Your mum makes a mean tomato soup."
Ron huffed slightly. "I'm still not hungry."
Harry put his hand on Ron's shoulder. "Come sit with us anyway, Ron. Just because Hermione's temporarily given up on the land of the living doesn't mean that you have to too." He squeezed his friend's shoulder slightly and turned away, leaving Ron to decide his own course of action.
Ron looked back at the couch and then towards the doorway to the kitchen. From within, he could hear the scraping sounds of food being served. Ginny was laughing at something a little too loudly, obviously still discomforted by Ron and Harry's row. His mum was asking about the shouting and then inquiring after him.
He glanced up the stairs and sighed, still wishing that it were he in that bed and not Hermione, or that he had simply been brave enough to tell her how he loved her when there had been someone inside that shell of a body that was lying between his sheets that might have cared. He thought for a moment of peeking in on her, but decided against it. The pain it caused him was nearly unbearable.
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed as he always did when faced with difficulty. They didn't understand how hard it was for him to share in their complacency, to be a part of their normality. They couldn't see how hard it was for him just to go on, couldn't see how he had to force himself to live.
He took a deep breath in and headed for the kitchen, towards the light and warmth that made him so very uncomfortable these days, towards the friends and family that he had succeeded in pushing away once and had now returned to him when he wanted to be left alone more than ever.
He stepped through the doorway and sat down at the table next to Ginny, greeting his mum and trying to wave away the bowl of soup that was now descending towards him after having served itself from the giant pot on the stovetop. Mrs. Weasley admonished him to eat and rid himself of the nasty unhealthy pallor he had developed over the past two weeks. Ginny giggled slightly, telling him that he was starting to look like Professor Snape with red hair.
"Good," he said glumly, spooning up the soup and then turning the handle over and letting the contents fall back in to the waiting bowl. "Hermione will like that."
"Oh, Ron," said Ginny in a tired voice. "I was just kidding."
"I wasn't."
Mrs. Weasly looked around uncomfortably. "Ron, that's enough of that. Finish your soup."
"I'm not hungry," he said, pushing away from the table and heading off through the door and into the living room where he flopped down upon his couch again, thwarted from further activity by the agony in his heart.
He only had one thing left to live for:
The hope that one day he wouldn't be able to hold on anymore.
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