Author's note: I actually added a chapter before this one, so please go to the previous chapter for the new chapter (Hair Dye and Hand Grenades). I just felt it needed a little more of a transition. Apologies. I guess that's what happens with a work in progress.
A week passed. Late in the evening, with four days remaining until the wedding, Harry and Ron were sitting opposite together in the living room of the Burrow. Harry sat wearily on the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him, his fingers pushed under his glasses, the heels of his hands grinding into his eyes. Ron was glaring intensely into the fireplace, as if it had done him some personal wrong, when Mrs. Weasley entered. She tutted, looking purposefully at the clock.
"Alright, now, boys. It's almost midnight. Time for-" but Ron cut her off abruptly, his tone strangely cold and indifferent.
"Not tired. You, Harry?"
He grunted noncommittally.
"Come on, now," Mrs. Weasley picked up a blanket tossed untidily across the back of Ron's chair and folded it against her body. "Lots to do tomorrow. Bed now."
Harry sighed and sat up but stilled immediately when Ron spoke again.
"I said I'm not tired, Mum. I'm going to sit up for awhile."
Harry watched Mrs. Weasley with only his eyes. Frozen like a animal in a trap, he waited for the explosion.
"Ronald Weas-" Mrs. Weasley began but Ron turned to her sharply, his eyes flashing.
"Why is this hard to understand?" Ron said tersely, "We're not children anymore, in case you hadn't noticed. We'll go to bed when we're ready. You go to bed if you like, but Harry and I need to talk." Harry sat there, his face mirroring Mrs. Weasley's, his mouth hanging open. In his peripheral vision, Harry saw Mr. Weasley step warily into the room.
"But, Ron . . . " Mrs. Weasley spluttered. She looked comically shocked, her mouth opening and closing with soft puffs of air as she fumbled for words. "It's late. You should-"
"Should what? Seems like bedtimes are for normal people and our lot hasn't been normal for a long time, Mum. Might as well get used to it." Resolutely, Ron turned his back on her to resume glowering into the fire.
"Harry?" Mrs. Weasley said, turning to him suddenly and pointedly, apparently deciding to try a different tack. There was something beseeching in the furrow of her brow, and Harry gaped at her helplessly. Harry eyes darted to Ron's brooding face, and back to Mrs. Weasley, where anger was quickly sliding away to hurt that tied his stomach into knots. He swallowed thickly.
"We'll be up soon," Harry said gently.
Mrs. Weasley's face fell, and Harry was horrified to see her lower lip start to tremble.
"I . . ." her attention flicked back and forth between what Harry hoped was an apologetic expression on his face and the back of Ron's head. Finally, Mr. Weasley stepped forward and laid a hand carefully on her shoulder. She jumped and turned to him imploringly.
"Goodnight, boys," Mr. Weasley said with a nod, and deftly maneuvered a still shocked Mrs. Weasley toward the stairs.
"Night Dad. Mum," Ron said vaguely. Harry echoed goodnights in a murmur, watching them disappear before rounding on Ron.
"Bloody hell, Ron. What was that about?"
Ron shrugged.
"Time we all grew up. Mum as well," he muttered darkly, but when he looked up at Harry, his expression had evened out. "Haven't heard from Lupin yet?" he asked flatly.
Harry sighed into the air and returned to his earlier position, his hands burrowing into his cheekbones.
"You know I haven't."
"Harry, we have to do something. What if something happened?" Ron said insistently, reminding Harry poignantly of Hermione.
"He's fine," Harry said sharply.
"How do we know that?"
"It's only been a week."
"But what if we don't hear from him? What if he's-"
"He's fine," Harry said firmly, jerking to sit upright. "He's delayed. That's all." There was a moment's silence in which Ron averted his eyes.
"What's Lupin doing for the Order right now anyway?"
"Last I knew he was trying to make nice with the werewolves," Harry said his spine sagging wearily, "But that was awhile ago."
"Lost cause, isn't it. He can't still be working on that."
"I don't know. I don't think so. Everything's different since . . ." Harry trailed off, frowning. He thought of smatterings of conversations he'd had with Remus- of his careful ambiguity and easy evasion. "I don't know," he said finally.
"So what do we do then, Harry?" Ron asked.
Harry felt a intense flare of annoyance.
"How should I know?" he snapped, "I know it seems like I should have some kind of profound insight, Ron, but I don't." An uneasy feeling crept up Harry's neck. It was not Ron's fault, he knew, that he felt so lost, so powerless, but pressure was pushing down on Harry like an anvil weight.
A long pause followed before Ron got up abruptly and crossed to a cabinet in the far corner of the room. He removed a crystal beaker and two glasses. Harry leaned forward, interested, as Ron poured. The liquid was a deep amber brown and sloshed pleasantly as Ron crossed back to the couch again and sat beside Harry, handing him a glass.
"Cheers," he said, and clinked Harry's glass before tossing the liquid back. Harry spared only one brief glance toward the stairs before following suit. It burned down his throat in a manner that rather suited Harry's pinprick mood. He felt his eyebrows raise slightly as he held his glass out to be refilled. Ron smirked.
"Accio Firewhiskey," he said, and the beaker flew from the cabinet to his hand. Wordlessly he poured some into Harry's glass and his own.
"You know," Ron said abruptly, "we could just tell them."
"What?" Harry choked on his whiskey. It was starting to make his brain feel warm, and he felt like he had maybe missed a beat in the sensation.
"About, you know, what we're doing," Ron said, and looked steadily at Harry over the rim of his rumbler as he took a sip. "About the Horcruxes."
Harry shifted uncomfortably, contemplating the liquid in his glass.
"We could," he said carefully.
"But you don't want to."
"I," Harry kept his interest firmly on the crystal in his hand, "thought you would understand this." Harry looked up from under his fringe and met Ron's cobalt gaze, so like his sister's.
"I do," Ron sighed heavily. "I do, Harry. But I'm not sure I should. Not sure you should either."
"What do you mean?"
"I know," Ron said slowly, "that you don't want anyone else to get hurt, mate, so you don't want them involved. I don't want anyone hurt either."
"Right . . ." Harry drew out the word hoping to coax his friend to a point.
"It's just," Ron turned his glass absently in his hand, letting the liquid run thickly around the sides, "seems like that hasn't worked that well before."
"What hasn't?"
"Keeping people in the dark," Ron looked up at Harry, something intense and sad and probing in his eyes, "When has that every worked for us, Harry? It made you miserable."
Harry frowned. The sharp bitter edge of isolations on Privet Drive, cut off from contact and information and reality, still ached when Harry thought about it.
"It's not the same Ron, and you know it."
"No I don't," Ron said, sounding surprised. "How's it different?"
"Because . . . that was me," Harry shook his head, but a shadow crossed Ron's face.
"That was you," he repeated stiffly.
"I don't mean it like that," Harry grimaced, and threw back a large swallow of the burning liquid in his frustration, which caused him to cough a little. "Trouble finds me, Ron," he choked out, "That happens no matter what I know or don't know."
Ron made a derisive sound.
"Oh right," his lip curled as he spoke, "Trouble only finds you. I forgot. It's your cross to bear. 'The Chosen One,' and all that." He shook his head and sipped his whiskey. Harry's eyes narrowed.
"You sound like Snape, you know," he snarled. Ron gave a humorless laugh.
"Reckon I do," he said.
Harry felt fit to snap. A rush of warmth ran down his arms that was not from the drink. He got to his feet.
"You're a bastard."
"Yeah," Ron said resignedly but reached out a hand that hung, palm up, in midair. "Harry wait."
Ron's voice was low, but Harry halted, his head bowing. A forced breath expelled in a stream from his lips. He turned and sat on the arm of the sofa near Ron's chair.
"It's not your fault that all that shit has happened to you," Ron said and Harry rolled his eyes to the ceiling incredulously. "It's not," Ron said softly. Harry tried to smile but it was thin and disbelieving.
"That's nice of you to say, mate, after the number of times I've almost gotten you and Hermione killed."
"Oh, that's just bollocks," Ron waved a hand dismissively. Harry started counting of points on his fingers.
"The Forbidden Forest when we met Aragog. Hermione getting petrified by a basilisk. That night in the Shrieking Shack where you broke your leg and were chained to a bloody werewolf."
"Good times," Ron quirked a crooked smile at Harry from the corner of his eyes.
"The Department of Mysteries." That hung in the air like a slimy stench.
"And how were any of those your fault?" Ron said. "No one forced me to be there. Nor Hermione." His brow furrowed suddenly as if he was concentrating. "I keep thinking about her, you know."
"Hermione?"
"Yeah."
"What about her?"
Ron's jaw tightened, his neck stiff, his hands restless.
"Do you remember, before fifth year, when we were all staying at Grimmauld Place and mum tried to banish that boggart?" Harry's mind stiffened in reflex, as it always did at the mention of Grimmauld Place.
"Yeah," he said, through gritted teeth.
"Her biggest fear was that we were all dead. Lupin said she didn't have to worry. That the Order was loads more prepared this time. He said that before people were picking them off one by one-"
"I remember," Harry said.
"He said it was different than that this time, but it doesn't feel like it is, does it? Doubting everyone all the time, sneaking around to get information, second guessing everybody we meet and know and love. Even if we say it's for their own protection, it still feels like stabbing them in the back doesn't it? It's fucking wretched."
Harry blinked, something unfurling slowly as he looked at his friend. In truth, 'fucking wretched' was a pretty apt description of what Harry had been feeling the last several weeks, but he had assumed his feelings were only his own.
"Yeah," he agreed, "It is"
"But what I keep thinking about is how so much of it could have been avoided," Ron raised a hand and rested his chin in the palm, his eyes taking on disturbed far off quality. "How would things have been different if Ginny had told us about Tom Riddle's diary in second year. Or if anyone had told you Sirius even existed before he broke out of Azkaban. Or about Lupin for that matter. Or if your parents had told Dumbledore that they'd switched secret keepers back then."
"It doesn't do any good to think about it, Ron," Harry said, his voice feeling shaky in his throat. Ron's eyes swung back to Harry's and pinned him unexpectedly.
"If Dumbledore had told you what he thought your visions were in fifth year, we never would have gone to the Ministry. And if we hadn't, then Sirius wouldn't have either."
Harry swallowed several times in succession. His hands were gripping his knees so hard he could feel his nails digging into skin through his jeans. Ron shook his head.
"Those secrets cost a lot, and for what? What did we get out of any of it? I just think that maybe we should be more wary about what we keep from the people we care about than what we tell them. What have we got if we can't trust each other? We're all supposed to be in this together, right?"
"That's what my parents thought about Pettigrew," Harry said, his voice sounding like cracks in granite. "And I told Dumbledore everything I found out about Snape and he trusted him anyway."
"Fair points," Ron's face made a concillatory movement, then turned inquisitive. "Is that why you broke up with Ginny? Because you're afraid she'll betray us?"
Harry's eyes widened immediately.
"What? No!"
"Well, what then?"
Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and looked away.
"You're really in rare form tonight, aren't you, Ronald?" Harry said, not unkindly, and Ron chuckled.
"Sorry."
"No," Harry lifted a hand to the back of his neck, his muscles feeling strained and aching from tension. "No, it's fine." His hand fell to rest against his hip as he looked down at the floor pensively.
"I just need to think about-" but they both started as a brisk tap on the window near the door floated through the room. Hedwig hovered indignantly outside, her wide white wings disheveled. Harry jumped to his feet and, crossing the room quickly, opened the window for her. She swooped in, circled the room once regally and settled herself on Harry's shoulder He twisted around to untie the small scroll secured tidily to her leg. Ron stood up and peered over Harry's shoulder.
Dear Harry,
My apologies for the tardiness of this letter. I have been out of the country on assorted business related to the matter we discussed, but I will be returning in time for the wedding. If you could be so kind as to inform Molly that I will be bringing a guest with me, if the Weasley's are able to accomodate one more. Until then, I will be hoping that you are and continue to be well.
Sincerely,
Remus
"Well," Ron said as Harry handed the letter over his shoulder to him absently. "Rather anticlimactic isn't it?"
"At least we know he's alright," Harry mused, offering Hedwig a few owl treats from his pocket.
"True," Ron laid his palms flat against the back of the sofa and rocked back and forth on his heels, stretching. "So, I guess we wait until the wedding."
Harry stroked Hedwig's feather's thoughtfully.
"I guess so."