Author's Note: Ok, I'm really sorry it's taken so very long to get this chapter up, but that's what back to school will do to you. From now on it'll probably be pretty long between chapters so I apologize ahead of time. In any case, thanks to the lovelies for the reviews. I'm a glutton for input. Hope you like this next chapter.
chapter 25: DEPRESSION - the weight of all fears
Hermione was looking worried. So what else was new? Of course, when your best friend turns white and runs from the room looking like he's about to throw up, that tends to give you a license for looking worried. But then, Hermione was also biting her lip and looking almost guilty, which was making Harry worried. She'd found something, and, by the look on her face, Harry was pretty sure he didn't want to know what it was.
"Do you think we should go after him?" Harry couldn't tell if she meant it or was just stalling from saying whatever it was she was going to say. He shook his head.
"Let him be sick in private. Who wants an audience for that sort of thing?" Hermione still looked undecided and she made a helpless gesture with her hands but eventually subsided back into her seat. Harry tried to pretend his potatoes were interesting.
"This can't go on, Harry!" Hermione's voice had an almost frantic edge to it and Harry looked up, his brow twisted so closely together that he felt like he was going to get a headache if he couldn't relax soon. "I mean," Hermione's hands waved helplessly some more, "he's got to tell us what's going on! He can't expect us not to worry. Clearly something is wrong, and.." She stopped, looking just about ready to chew a hole through her bottom lip.
Harry sighed, bracing himself. "What did you find, Hermione?" he asked resignedly.
"I...I think I found the glamour Ron is using."
"Huh?" Harry was confused. Where had that come from? So far this didn't sound nearly as bad as Hermione's worried looks had been suggesting.
"Remember? When I found him in the library that night and he was looking up glamours?" Hermione was now back into her annoyed, informative persona. "I wasn't able to get a look at the page he was on, but yesterday I overheard Malfoy casting something on Ron."
"Malfoy cast a curse on Ron?!" Harry's voice came out louder than he had intended and he looked around guiltily to see if anyone had heard. Aside from a few raised eyebrows from Seamus and Dean his exclamation seemed to have gone mostly unnoticed.
"Harry!" Hermione hissed. "Malfoy didn't cast a curse on Ron! They were paired together in Transfiguration. Don't you remember?!" Harry did his best to look sheepish but was mostly still confused. Hermione sighed, exasperatedly. "In any case, I heard Malfoy cast some spell, though what Malfoy has to do with it I don't know, but I think it was the glamour Ron was looking up the other night. I wasn't able to hear all of it but I think I finally found it this morning before you came down." She reached into her bag and pulled out the book Harry had seen her reading at dinner the night before. This time the title wasn't so hard to make out and Harry saw "Glamours" written right across the top, followed by something else he didn't catch as Hermione was already turning to a marked page.
"Here it is." Hermione now had the book open flat in front of her and began reading intently. "'Valitudine Erroris: This spell, while not much used nowadays, was once commonly invoked to give the appearance of good health. It was most especially employed by soldiers before a battle in order to hide their wounds from the enemy, but found varied uses among others as well for any instance in which the appearance of good health was of importance.' There." Hermione looked at Harry sharply but he felt like he was missing something and knew the confusion was showing on his face. "He's sick! Don't you see?" It all fell into place and Harry felt a sick hurt take up residence in the pit of his stomach. "He's sick but he doesn't want us to know he's sick. That's why he's been looking so pale lately, and eating weird things. That's probably why he had to go talk to Snape this morning, not some stupid thing to do with his detentions with Malfoy."
"But why didn't you tell me this this morning, Hermione?" Hermione just bit her lip and Harry plowed ahead. "And if he's sick then why wouldn't he just go to Madam Pomfrey instead of Snape? And how do we know this has got nothing to do with Malfoy? How do we know that he's not the one who made Ron sick in the first place and is now trying to cover it up? Malfoy and Snape could be in on it together." By now Hermione looked to be almost in tears and Harry forcibly restrained himself from continuing his headlong ranting. Getting hysterical wasn't going to help anything.
Hermione sniffed and wiped the back of her hand over her eyes. She lifted her chin, trying to summon back some of her usual hauteur. "Don't be ridiculous, Harry." She sounded miserable. "Why would Snape and Malfoy plot to make Ron sick? You're just being paranoid." She looked down at her barely touched breakfast and began reorganizing her eggs with the end of her fork.
"But if he's sick, why won't he tell us?" Harry felt weak and frustrated. He found his strength in his friends and Ron was his best friend, but he seemed so distant this year, like he was slipping away to some other world where Harry could neither follow nor help.
"I don't know," Hermione whispered. And with that she stood, still worrying her lip, and began to gather up her books. Harry followed suit and a few minutes found them trudging silently down the hall to their first class. They passed Ginny on the way there and Harry thought about asking her what she knew. He decided she probably wouldn't tell them, especially if what Hermione said was true and she had shut the door in her face that last time she went looking for information. When they got to History of Magic Ron was already there and sitting in his seat. He looked pale.
When Ron was able to tear himself away from the soothing cool of the porcelain bowl he dragged himself over to the sink to wash his face. He felt like shit. Numb shit, but still shit. He turned on the faucet and cupped his hands beneath the water until they were brimming over. The water felt cool and real on his face. A bead of water dripped from his nose as he filled his hands again and he closed his eyes as he let the water run over his head and down the back of his neck. He turned off the water and picked up his books from the bench. His mouth still tasted sour and he was sure that his breath smelled bad, but he needed to get to class.
The halls seemed over-crowded with unrecognizable people as he made his way across the castle to History of Magic. Their faces were nothing more than pale blurs against the dark of their robes. Their eyes just black holes in their heads. Ron felt alone. He felt like he was swimming through a sea of nameless faces belonging to people who couldn't care less whether he lived or died. In many ways this was probably true. He felt sad and the weight he was coming to expect was settling heavily on his chest.
When he passed her in the hall, he almost didn't see her, but something inside of him noticed and he glanced up from the floor and into her dark eyes. His stomach lurched and, briefly, he squeezed his eyes shut, though against what he couldn't have said. Her smile was warm and her hand was cold on his as she brushed by him. "Don't forget me," she sang in a quiet whisper before disappearing into the crowd. The words, "I won't," sprang to his lips like obedient puppies, but he held them back. He wasn't sure why he would say them anyway. She was his sister.
When he got to the classroom he was mostly unsurprised to find that he was the first one there. He was never early to classes, but the strangeness of the change seemed to fit well with the day and his mood. Why shouldn't he be early, anyway? What did it matter? He felt tired and he slumped down into his seat with a weary sigh. What he really wanted was to go back to bed, back to that warm place where nothing mattered and he could just not exist for a few hours. That sounded nice. Resisting the urge to put his head down on the desk, he sat as straight as he could, stared at the blackboard, and concentrated on not falling asleep. It would be several minutes before class actually started, but it wasn't like it was going to get any more interesting than this anyway, and if he fell asleep now he knew the coming of others into the room would not wake him up.
When Harry and Hermione came into the room he did his best not to look at them. He didn't feel like talking to anyone. Besides, he knew what they would say: "Ron, are you alright?", "Ron, why won't you tell us what's going on?" He pushed away the guilt that began to gnaw its way up from inside. They were his friends and he should tell them, but he just didn't want to talk about it. For the thousandth time he wished he could just pretend that everything was normal and the most he had to worry about was who would win house cup this year.
Class was about to begin and the last of the class was filing in. Harry and Hermione were sitting behind him. He could hear small 'psst' sounds that meant they were trying to get his attention but he ignored them. Ron's mood had gone from gloomy to downright black and, as Binns walked up to the chalkboard and began methodically writing up the lecture notes for the day, Ron just sat slumped in his chair and brooded, not even bothering to lift his quill and scribble a few notes. He remembered the looks and the whispered conversations Harry had used to stir up, and still did on occasion. He had used to envy that. That attention and regard that meant Harry was someone special. But now he thought he knew it for the curse that it really was. He thought about people finding out, his secret, his handicap and leashing to the one person he had loathed for the past five years. He could practically hear the whispered remarks now, could almost see the looks, pitying, and calculating, and reproachful. Nothing he could think of seemed like it would be worse than that. He couldn't bare the thought. No one must know.
He sighed, shifting in his chair, and tried to concentrate on the lecture. It was even more boring than anticipated and Ron marveled distantly that Hermione never fell asleep in this class. Really, you could only listen to so many accounts of this goblin war or that before they just all blurred together. Ron decided to try jotting down every fifth word Binns said to see if it would keep him awake. It would at least make for some interesting notes.
He picked up his quill but then just stared at the parchment in front of him listlessly. It seemed like it was mocking him, a tiny, sarcastic laugh bubbling up from the edges of the paper, so quiet that only Ron could hear it, but insistent and creepy, getting under his skin. He shook his head and told it to stop playing tricks on him. The mental laughter stilled but the mocked feeling continued with a new element of pity thrown in. He seemed to see eyes, then, staring up at him from his parchment, a hard, cold gaze accompanied by a strong sense of familiarity. The weight pressing against his chest grew stronger, began to squeeze his heart and he shut his eyes tight, choking back a sob. Such sorrow and despair washed over him then, that he almost couldn't breathe.
He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, trying to steady himself. When he looked down at his parchment once more he was relieved to find it empty of any ghosts or bad feelings. But then it hit him. Empty. Missing. Something was missing, but it took him a moment to figure out what it was. The realization, when it hit, jerked him to his feet. His chair spilled backwards behind him and crashed to the floor with a loud bang, drawing the attention of the entire class, including a befuddled and owlishly blinking Professor Binns.
"Umm...Ah..." Ron stammered, his mind fighting against his panic. "May I be excused?" he finally choked out. Before Binns could frame a reply, and catching a small "Ron, are you ok?" from Hermione, he turned and stumbled as quickly as his shaky legs would take him out of the room. As soon as he got into the hall, he dropped all pretense of calm and began sprinting toward the dungeons. Once there he burst without knocking into Snape's classroom, scaring several first years and initiating the spilling of two of the brewing potions across the dungeon floor. "Where is he?"
Snape turned from his place at the head of the classroom, clearly irritated. He was scowling fiercely and looked fit to take out his temper on the nearest person on hand. "Mr. Weasley," he barked, "Wait in my office," before wading in amongst the milling first years and shouting instructions for cleaning up the spilled mess.
chapter 25: DEPRESSION - the weight of all fears
Hermione was looking worried. So what else was new? Of course, when your best friend turns white and runs from the room looking like he's about to throw up, that tends to give you a license for looking worried. But then, Hermione was also biting her lip and looking almost guilty, which was making Harry worried. She'd found something, and, by the look on her face, Harry was pretty sure he didn't want to know what it was.
"Do you think we should go after him?" Harry couldn't tell if she meant it or was just stalling from saying whatever it was she was going to say. He shook his head.
"Let him be sick in private. Who wants an audience for that sort of thing?" Hermione still looked undecided and she made a helpless gesture with her hands but eventually subsided back into her seat. Harry tried to pretend his potatoes were interesting.
"This can't go on, Harry!" Hermione's voice had an almost frantic edge to it and Harry looked up, his brow twisted so closely together that he felt like he was going to get a headache if he couldn't relax soon. "I mean," Hermione's hands waved helplessly some more, "he's got to tell us what's going on! He can't expect us not to worry. Clearly something is wrong, and.." She stopped, looking just about ready to chew a hole through her bottom lip.
Harry sighed, bracing himself. "What did you find, Hermione?" he asked resignedly.
"I...I think I found the glamour Ron is using."
"Huh?" Harry was confused. Where had that come from? So far this didn't sound nearly as bad as Hermione's worried looks had been suggesting.
"Remember? When I found him in the library that night and he was looking up glamours?" Hermione was now back into her annoyed, informative persona. "I wasn't able to get a look at the page he was on, but yesterday I overheard Malfoy casting something on Ron."
"Malfoy cast a curse on Ron?!" Harry's voice came out louder than he had intended and he looked around guiltily to see if anyone had heard. Aside from a few raised eyebrows from Seamus and Dean his exclamation seemed to have gone mostly unnoticed.
"Harry!" Hermione hissed. "Malfoy didn't cast a curse on Ron! They were paired together in Transfiguration. Don't you remember?!" Harry did his best to look sheepish but was mostly still confused. Hermione sighed, exasperatedly. "In any case, I heard Malfoy cast some spell, though what Malfoy has to do with it I don't know, but I think it was the glamour Ron was looking up the other night. I wasn't able to hear all of it but I think I finally found it this morning before you came down." She reached into her bag and pulled out the book Harry had seen her reading at dinner the night before. This time the title wasn't so hard to make out and Harry saw "Glamours" written right across the top, followed by something else he didn't catch as Hermione was already turning to a marked page.
"Here it is." Hermione now had the book open flat in front of her and began reading intently. "'Valitudine Erroris: This spell, while not much used nowadays, was once commonly invoked to give the appearance of good health. It was most especially employed by soldiers before a battle in order to hide their wounds from the enemy, but found varied uses among others as well for any instance in which the appearance of good health was of importance.' There." Hermione looked at Harry sharply but he felt like he was missing something and knew the confusion was showing on his face. "He's sick! Don't you see?" It all fell into place and Harry felt a sick hurt take up residence in the pit of his stomach. "He's sick but he doesn't want us to know he's sick. That's why he's been looking so pale lately, and eating weird things. That's probably why he had to go talk to Snape this morning, not some stupid thing to do with his detentions with Malfoy."
"But why didn't you tell me this this morning, Hermione?" Hermione just bit her lip and Harry plowed ahead. "And if he's sick then why wouldn't he just go to Madam Pomfrey instead of Snape? And how do we know this has got nothing to do with Malfoy? How do we know that he's not the one who made Ron sick in the first place and is now trying to cover it up? Malfoy and Snape could be in on it together." By now Hermione looked to be almost in tears and Harry forcibly restrained himself from continuing his headlong ranting. Getting hysterical wasn't going to help anything.
Hermione sniffed and wiped the back of her hand over her eyes. She lifted her chin, trying to summon back some of her usual hauteur. "Don't be ridiculous, Harry." She sounded miserable. "Why would Snape and Malfoy plot to make Ron sick? You're just being paranoid." She looked down at her barely touched breakfast and began reorganizing her eggs with the end of her fork.
"But if he's sick, why won't he tell us?" Harry felt weak and frustrated. He found his strength in his friends and Ron was his best friend, but he seemed so distant this year, like he was slipping away to some other world where Harry could neither follow nor help.
"I don't know," Hermione whispered. And with that she stood, still worrying her lip, and began to gather up her books. Harry followed suit and a few minutes found them trudging silently down the hall to their first class. They passed Ginny on the way there and Harry thought about asking her what she knew. He decided she probably wouldn't tell them, especially if what Hermione said was true and she had shut the door in her face that last time she went looking for information. When they got to History of Magic Ron was already there and sitting in his seat. He looked pale.
When Ron was able to tear himself away from the soothing cool of the porcelain bowl he dragged himself over to the sink to wash his face. He felt like shit. Numb shit, but still shit. He turned on the faucet and cupped his hands beneath the water until they were brimming over. The water felt cool and real on his face. A bead of water dripped from his nose as he filled his hands again and he closed his eyes as he let the water run over his head and down the back of his neck. He turned off the water and picked up his books from the bench. His mouth still tasted sour and he was sure that his breath smelled bad, but he needed to get to class.
The halls seemed over-crowded with unrecognizable people as he made his way across the castle to History of Magic. Their faces were nothing more than pale blurs against the dark of their robes. Their eyes just black holes in their heads. Ron felt alone. He felt like he was swimming through a sea of nameless faces belonging to people who couldn't care less whether he lived or died. In many ways this was probably true. He felt sad and the weight he was coming to expect was settling heavily on his chest.
When he passed her in the hall, he almost didn't see her, but something inside of him noticed and he glanced up from the floor and into her dark eyes. His stomach lurched and, briefly, he squeezed his eyes shut, though against what he couldn't have said. Her smile was warm and her hand was cold on his as she brushed by him. "Don't forget me," she sang in a quiet whisper before disappearing into the crowd. The words, "I won't," sprang to his lips like obedient puppies, but he held them back. He wasn't sure why he would say them anyway. She was his sister.
When he got to the classroom he was mostly unsurprised to find that he was the first one there. He was never early to classes, but the strangeness of the change seemed to fit well with the day and his mood. Why shouldn't he be early, anyway? What did it matter? He felt tired and he slumped down into his seat with a weary sigh. What he really wanted was to go back to bed, back to that warm place where nothing mattered and he could just not exist for a few hours. That sounded nice. Resisting the urge to put his head down on the desk, he sat as straight as he could, stared at the blackboard, and concentrated on not falling asleep. It would be several minutes before class actually started, but it wasn't like it was going to get any more interesting than this anyway, and if he fell asleep now he knew the coming of others into the room would not wake him up.
When Harry and Hermione came into the room he did his best not to look at them. He didn't feel like talking to anyone. Besides, he knew what they would say: "Ron, are you alright?", "Ron, why won't you tell us what's going on?" He pushed away the guilt that began to gnaw its way up from inside. They were his friends and he should tell them, but he just didn't want to talk about it. For the thousandth time he wished he could just pretend that everything was normal and the most he had to worry about was who would win house cup this year.
Class was about to begin and the last of the class was filing in. Harry and Hermione were sitting behind him. He could hear small 'psst' sounds that meant they were trying to get his attention but he ignored them. Ron's mood had gone from gloomy to downright black and, as Binns walked up to the chalkboard and began methodically writing up the lecture notes for the day, Ron just sat slumped in his chair and brooded, not even bothering to lift his quill and scribble a few notes. He remembered the looks and the whispered conversations Harry had used to stir up, and still did on occasion. He had used to envy that. That attention and regard that meant Harry was someone special. But now he thought he knew it for the curse that it really was. He thought about people finding out, his secret, his handicap and leashing to the one person he had loathed for the past five years. He could practically hear the whispered remarks now, could almost see the looks, pitying, and calculating, and reproachful. Nothing he could think of seemed like it would be worse than that. He couldn't bare the thought. No one must know.
He sighed, shifting in his chair, and tried to concentrate on the lecture. It was even more boring than anticipated and Ron marveled distantly that Hermione never fell asleep in this class. Really, you could only listen to so many accounts of this goblin war or that before they just all blurred together. Ron decided to try jotting down every fifth word Binns said to see if it would keep him awake. It would at least make for some interesting notes.
He picked up his quill but then just stared at the parchment in front of him listlessly. It seemed like it was mocking him, a tiny, sarcastic laugh bubbling up from the edges of the paper, so quiet that only Ron could hear it, but insistent and creepy, getting under his skin. He shook his head and told it to stop playing tricks on him. The mental laughter stilled but the mocked feeling continued with a new element of pity thrown in. He seemed to see eyes, then, staring up at him from his parchment, a hard, cold gaze accompanied by a strong sense of familiarity. The weight pressing against his chest grew stronger, began to squeeze his heart and he shut his eyes tight, choking back a sob. Such sorrow and despair washed over him then, that he almost couldn't breathe.
He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, trying to steady himself. When he looked down at his parchment once more he was relieved to find it empty of any ghosts or bad feelings. But then it hit him. Empty. Missing. Something was missing, but it took him a moment to figure out what it was. The realization, when it hit, jerked him to his feet. His chair spilled backwards behind him and crashed to the floor with a loud bang, drawing the attention of the entire class, including a befuddled and owlishly blinking Professor Binns.
"Umm...Ah..." Ron stammered, his mind fighting against his panic. "May I be excused?" he finally choked out. Before Binns could frame a reply, and catching a small "Ron, are you ok?" from Hermione, he turned and stumbled as quickly as his shaky legs would take him out of the room. As soon as he got into the hall, he dropped all pretense of calm and began sprinting toward the dungeons. Once there he burst without knocking into Snape's classroom, scaring several first years and initiating the spilling of two of the brewing potions across the dungeon floor. "Where is he?"
Snape turned from his place at the head of the classroom, clearly irritated. He was scowling fiercely and looked fit to take out his temper on the nearest person on hand. "Mr. Weasley," he barked, "Wait in my office," before wading in amongst the milling first years and shouting instructions for cleaning up the spilled mess.
