fictionkill
harry potter, g, postwar.
characters: harry,
ron.
Summary: This is all the friendship in your life, ever.
ooooooo
His hand is against the glass, still and cold.
oo
Some moments are like that. Moments after death.
Ron's face was pale and frozen in a horrified expression.
Most things that are still are also quiet. Ron never said a word.
So much death. Harry knows.
oo
He's kidding himself. He thinks of the time when his palm was against something warm. Another palm; Ron's. And they'd just stay like that. In understanding silence.
Maybe it was summer, in the Burrow, green grass and sunshine. It's always like that. It should be like that.
And it was comfortable and nice. Ron smiled. Harry smiled back at him.
oo
He doesn't feel the glass beneath his hand anymore.
"Harry," Ron says, opening the car door. "Get out. Come on."
Ford Anglia. Harry still remembers.
They walk through the yard, hands in their pockets and Ginny says hello as she passes them by.
"Pretty girl," Harry comments once they're inside. Ron just frowns.
oo
Harry doesn't see Hermione often anymore. He asks Ron about it.
"She's tired," Ron says.
"You're not?" Harry looks at Ron, tilts his head just the slightest bit.
Ron shakes his head. "Of course not, mate. Of course not."
oo
It feels like the entire world has gone just an inch toward greyscale. Colours fading. Greys becoming more prominent. Harry watches the world a lot these days. He doesn't seem to have anything else to do these days.
"We wanted to be Aurors," he tells Ron and Ron nods.
"That was then."
Ron seems to be just as colourful as always.
oo
Always.
It hasn't been that long since it's been just two of them, just Ron and him, in this apartment with the car that's now theirs and with everyone too busy to visit them.
"It's been six years," Ron says.
"Six," he repeats but it comes out a question.
"It feels like a month because you don't remember." Ron turns away and sighs, stretches his hand to lean against a cupboard door as if he's doing his everything not to say what he wants to.
Harry remembers. Ford Anglia. Moments after death. Reading about Aurors in the Hogwarts Library.
Ron's morning hair and dress robes and face red from anger.
oo
One night he wanders to Ron's bedroom and presses his palm against Ron's.
Ron stirs.
"Remember when we did this? That summer in the Burrow." Harry presses Ron's hand between his own. Ron's fingers are longer than his.
"We never did this."
"Oh."
Ron falls back to sleep but Harry stays there that night, feeling Ron's hand against his.
Even more of his memories turn greyscale.
oo
Hermione visits. Her smile is forced, and she seems constantly close to tears. She talks to him but he doesn't answer. Can't.
When Harry is in the bathroom, he hears her conversation with Ron.
"I've researched it, Ron, he's not going to get better! He's not who he was, he doesn't know who he is and he's not going to be the Harry we knew, Ron, ever. That's why the Healers let him stay here with you, even they've given up. He doesn't even remember Ginny and he loved Ginny."
"He remembers certain things, he talks to me and –"
"It's not enough, Ron, you know it isn't."
Harry finds it difficult concentrate that night because certain things are slipping away.
He holds onto what he knows he's got.
oo
Ron tells him stories one night, stories about things they've done and he sounds like he's repeating someone's last words. Repeating.
When Harry asks about the girl in the story about the three-headed dog, Ron goes to bed.
Harry feels sorry and sits next to the sleeping Ron, holding his hand.
He's forgotten why he does that. Or when he started.
oo
Harry knows he's dying even if Ron won't say it.
His body is young but his mind deteriorates along with his vision.
Sometimes, when the world is still and quiet, and Ron is sleeping, he doesn't mind it. Then he just thinks about some of things he has experienced.
The best memories are fiction.
oooooo