Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Nor do I make any money.
A/N – This is what happens when I want to play. Somehow I started channeling Faulkner – so you should forgive me; everyone goes through this stage. At least that's what I like to believe. Especially when one has been reading Joyce and Neruda while drinking bourbon. – Seraph 0:)
Eyes
Harry's eyes saw the fear in Ron as he ran to Pansy.
It reminded him of the look in Ron's eyes as he tried to desperately get to Hermione that awful evening in the Malfoy Manor: the loss of control radiating in the way he managed to lengthen his limbs to cover the distance faster; the panic revealed in paleness in his already fair complexion; the lips that moved without a sound in his desperation; the panicked eyes that screamed silently. Harry watched as his mate once again put himself aside: his needs, his desires – everything that made him Ron and transformed into the black knight of Hogwarts. Harry knew that Ron didn't mind in those times he was needed. Harry just wished that Ron didn't have to always be the knight in shining armour.
Hermione's eyes glazed over in jealousy.
Ron was her boyfriend but he was going to her rescue. Though Hermione knew Pansy needed it, it didn't make the jealousy go away. She had waited so long for Ron to see her not as his best mate but as a women who was worthy of his love. For him to love her as much as she loved him. Hermione thought she finally had what she wanted, but she wasn't in trouble now. Pansy was, so Hermione's knight became Pansy's. Her tears weren't for Pansy. They were for herself; because she was losing her knight and there wasn't anything she could do about it. Ron wasn't going anywhere. He was already gone.
Draco's eyes widened as he watched the Pansy he knew disappear.
The Pansy he knew was a bitch. He should know, he created her. He had cruelly broken her heart after the Yule Ball in fourth year; destroying the sweet, playful girl that she had once been. When her tears had finally dried all that was left of the girl he grew up with was the bitch he had come to know and actually love. The bitch who had become his best friend; the one that had stood by him during the hell he went through last year. Now, he felt so small, as he watched his best friend fall away to the innocent, sweet girl who had loved him and then horribly to an empty shell. There in front of his eyes, he had watched her disappear. Draco knew he should be the one racing to her but yet once again he hadn't done what was right – he had done what he was told.
Professor Slughorn's eyes studied his students as their eyes focused on Ron and Pansy.
He saw sadness in Harry's eyes, loss in Hermone's, and pain in Draco's. The sadness in Harry's he had expected. The young boy had always carried so much on his shoulders in a war that he shouldn't have had to fight as a child. The loss in Hermione's took him by surprise. She was always so on top of things and put together; he wondered what was behind that look. The pain in Draco's, though it surprised him; he found it reassuring. He had been so disappointed in his house and in Draco but now, watching him experience just what Pansy had gone through, and had survived, he found hope: hope that Draco would finally do the right thing. Now that he was learning what it was the hard way.
Ginny's eyes looked in disbelief as she watched her brother run up the stairs with a shaking Pansy wrapped tightly in his arms.
Her feet took off running in the other direction, towards the Headmistress' classroom. Ginny hated to think of what her brother was going through right now. The hours she spent talking to Harry this past summer had told her of what Ron had gone through at Malfoy Manor and then after at Shell Cottage. How he had fought so hard to get to Hermione in the Manor and how he didn't sleep for days once they were in the safety of Shell Cottage. All because he refused to sleep until he knew Hermione was okay. She and Harry had always teasingly called him the black knight of Hogwarts and as she ran into the third year Transfiguation class, she realized that maybe they were right. That's where Ron fit in amongst the sea of brothers: Bill was the rebel; Charlie, the daredevil; Percy, the brains; George, the joker; and Ron, the knight – possibly the best of them all because he always thought of himself last in times people needed him the most.
Headmistress McGonagall's eyes reddened and watered at the sadness they beheld as she stood amongst the other eighth years.
For in the glow of the fireplace, lay Mr. Weasley and Miss Parkinson both asleep on the couch, fiercely intertwined. Her fingers in a death grip on his shirt. His arms tightly wrapped around her. Her face buried into his neck. His body sheltering hers. And though the tears had stopped, the residue of their presence glistened on their reddened faces.