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In the days following the end of the final battle, Ronald Weasley sometimes can’t find his best friend.
He had tried, briefly, to return to the Burrow. But the Burrow had been… not good. Mum crying over the kitchen sink. Dad puttering listlessly in the back garden. The empty, empty space next to George’s side… Just, not good. And he’s been so used to living with his friends (on top of his friends, in the tiny wizarding space of an old tent), and in the aftermath of the Battle, he feels a visceral need to be near them.
They must feel the same, because in near-wordless agreement, they all end up back at Grimmauld Place, listening to Kreacher muttering in the hallways, sipping cold tea in silence, just existing in each other’s presence. Reveling in being alive.
They’re all quiet, strange, withdrawn. The Battle might have been won, but so much was lost in the effort that the victory seems pale and faded, like a weak Patronus Charm. And they’ve only really won the Battle, not the War. Voldemort might be dead, but so many followers are still at large… The victory that they’ve worked towards for so long seems somewhat hollow, in the aftermath.
So the first time Harry disappears, Ron tries very hard not to panic. It’s hard not to – the last time he didn’t know where Harry was, the bloke had been heading for the Forbidden Forest to get himself killed. Sure, he’d had good reason, but that’s not exactly comforting, is it?
Ron spends several hours playing Wizarding Chess against himself, fighting the urge to rampage through the house screaming Harry’s name. Hermione’s reading a dusty book on the couch, and occasionally they exchange a glance, a silent exchange of mutual worry, but neither of them goes searching.
Thankfully, an indeterminable number of chess matches later, Harry appears in the doorway to the parlour. He stands there silently for a moment, like a shadow, or a ghost (hell) and then he slides into the chair across from Ron and begins quietly ordering the white pieces into (terrible) formation.
Ron’s so relieved he almost lets Harry win. Almost.
It starts happening more frequently. Ron will turn away from setting his breakfast dishes in the sink, and Harry’s place will be empty, toast half eaten, a floorboard in the hallway creaking under soft footsteps moving away. They’ll be sitting listening to the Wireless, and he’ll glance over to realize that the armchair Harry normally claims as his own is vacant.
He always reappears, quietly sliding back as if he was never away, but it leaves a strange feeling winding in Ron’s chest, a bit like the effect of the locket Horcrux.
Paranoia, he tells himself, an echo from the War. But the other part of him sees the pale cast to Harry’s skin, the dark bruises under his green eyes, the uneaten plates of food, and worries.
One morning, Hermione slides into the chair next to him at the table at breakfast, and she doesn’t look much better, really. Harry’s not up yet, or just not coming to breakfast, one of the two.
“I’ve bought a plane ticket to Australia,” she tells him.
A brief flare of terror licks up his spine at the idea of her leaving, but he pushes it back. It’s her parents, she can’t just leave them, and he knows that. “You sure it’s safe?” There are Death Eaters still uncaptured, per the latest Wireless reports, though less and less every day.
She nods tiredly. “I thought about taking a Portkey, but I think a plane is safer. Muggle.”
She’s probably right – not many pure-bloods are going to know how to navigate a Muggle airport. “I still think flying without magic is just unnatural,” he says, purposefully lightly.
Hermione cracks a smile, and leans over to give him a dry peck on the lips. It’s nothing like their passionate embraces in the Battle, but nice, nonetheless.
“You don’t want one of us to go with you?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “I need to do this alone.” She pauses, bites her lip. “And I think you should stay and keep an eye on Harry.”
Ron pauses, careful. “You noticed too?”
A nod. “Just – take care of him, okay? I’d stay, but –”
“You need to find your parents,” Ron agrees.
She smiles tightly, in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’ll watch him,” Ron promises, catching one of her hands. “When he’s around, anyway.”
Hermione’s eyes scan the currently Harry-less vicinity, worriedly. “I don’t know where he goes.”
“Neither do I.”
They contemplate that in silence for a few minutes, hands squeezing together. Hermione leans into his shoulder, bushy brown hair tickling his jawline.
Eventually, she sighs. “My flight leaves in a few hours. I should go get my things.”
Ron gives her hand one last squeeze. “Go. We’ll be fine.”
She looks at him and he can tell she doesn’t believe him. She goes.
Grimmauld seems even stranger once the front door has closed behind her. Harry has done one of his disappearing acts yet again. Kreacher is banging around the kitchen in his version of cheer, muttering vague curses beneath his breath. The Wireless is crackling quietly in the corner. Ron stands uselessly in the foyer for a while, unsure of what to do next, and then goes to tune the Wireless again.
Harry appears again at dinner, a little paler, a little more drawn, picking listlessly at the delicious steak pie that Kreacher made them. Kreacher himself is muttering less-than-quiet complaints about his Master’s lack of appetite in the nearby kitchen. Harry doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hermione gone, then?”
Ron nods around a mouthful of pie. “Australia for her parents. Flight left this afternoon.”
“Good,” Harry says. He pushes his food around his plate for a few minutes while Ron watches, never taking a bite.
“Mate,” Ron tries carefully. “You know you can talk to us, right? About – anything.”
Harry gives him a smile that is a weird echo of the same look Hermione gave him that morning – it never reaches his eyes. “I know.”
He pretends to eat for a while longer, and then pushes back from the table, offers Ron a nod, and vanishes again.
Ron sighs quietly, grabs his best mate’s plate, and proceeds to eat the nearly full second portion of the amazing pie. He, at least, is not complaining about Kreacher’s increasingly creative attempts to tempt Harry’s appetite. He just wishes they were working.
Several days go by like that. Harry disappears for longer and longer lengths of time, until Ron’s heart is wound tight in his chest, and then reappears for brief interactions – quiet chess games, listening to the Wireless, picking at his food across the dinner table. Ron gets more and more worried.
One day, he finds his courage and goes back to the Burrow.
Mum gathers him into a hug as if he hasn’t been avoiding them, squeezing him tight enough that he feels tears start trying to form in the corners of his eyes.
“Where have you been?” she fusses, smoothing out the wrinkles in his sweater. “You look half-starved.”
Ron thinks this is probably a lie, given he’s been eating his food and Harry’s for several weeks, but he bears her need to fuss over him in good grace. “Been at Grimmauld with Harry and Hermione.”
Molly smooths out another non-existent wrinkle, patting his chest. “Oh, well, I’m glad you’re staying together, but I do like to see my boys sometimes, Ronald. A mother worries.”
Ron ducks his head. “Sorry, Mum.”
“And Harry! When’s the last time he had a decent meal?”
“Er –”
“Bring him with you next time, dear. Now come in, I’ve made biscuits.”
He spends the afternoon in his mother’s kitchen, eating the food of his childhood while Molly bustles busily between the countertops and the oven, baking in a way that suggests she’s using it as an outlet for all of her stress. It’s awful and wonderful all at once.
Eventually, he sets down his third mug of tea, and says: “Mum.”
“Hmm – yes, dear?”
“Does it ever go back to normal?”
She goes still over the counter where she’s been rolling out dough, and then tilts her head up to look at him. She’s a bit teary, and Ron regrets saying anything at all. He knows this is the second War his parents have been through, but it’s still all so fresh, so painful. Was it like this, for her, when both his uncles died in the First War? He wishes Hermione hadn’t left. He’s worried about Harry. He misses Fred.
“Oh, my boy,” she says, voice breaking, and then moves over to press flour handprints into his sweater with her hug.
Ron clings to her for a minute, breathing in the inherent scent of home.
“It’s more like – ‘normal’ changes,” his mum says quietly. “Eventually things calm down and it’s – different. But it takes time.”
Time – they have that now. Ron wonders if it’s enough.
He goes back to Grimmauld with a belly full of food and a heavy heart. Harry is absent and Kreacher is banging around the kitchen in a foul temper. The reason for his mood is evident in the still-full plate of Italian pasta cooling on the dining table.
Standing in the dining room looking at congealing tomato sauce, something in Ron snaps.
“Harry!” he shouts through the house, temper flaring.
The sound echoes hollowly through the townhouse, unanswered.
“Harry!” he calls again, mouth twisting. “You can’t keep –”
He cuts himself off, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose and taking a deep breath. Tears are prickling behind his eyes. Getting mad isn’t going to fix this – Merlin knows losing his temper didn’t get him anywhere good during the War. Dammit, he wishes Hermione was here.
He blows out the breath, and takes another, and then quietly begins mapping the inside of the townhouse in his head, like a massive, multi-leveled chess board. Strategically, he plans a route that will allow him to search the entire house, and then strides to the starting point.
“Ron to E5,” he mutters, somewhat hysterically, and then begins.
He methodically sweeps the first floor, then the second, checking every nook and cranny, casting Lumos on every corner.
It’s not until the third floor, standing with his hand on the doorhandle of the linen closet, that he knows. He opens the door, and for a moment thinks he’s mistaken. The tiny, dark space looks entirely empty. But then there’s a slight sound, like fabric dragging against wood, and he realizes.
“Oh, Harry,” he cracks out, and kneels down into the cramped closet.
He reaches out, gentle, and catches his fingers on the edge of the Invisibility Cloak.
He pulls, and the fabric drifts down, revealing messy black hair, fading lightning scar, and green eyes. Red-rimmed green eyes. Tear stained cheeks.
Harry makes a choked sound, looking at him. His hands are fisted in the Cloak, and he fights Ron for a second, like a kind of tug of war, and then releases. The Cloak slides away in entirety, revealing the cramped way Harry is curled into the corner of the linen closet.
“Harry,” Ron says, chest tightening unbearably.
His best mate’s shoulders shudder in a silent sob. He’s crying, completely quiet, and Ron hates that he knows how to do this, to hide, to not let people hear him.
“R – Ron,” he manages, and that’s all Ron can handle.
He folds his tall, lanky frame down under the linen closet’s lowest shelf, cramming himself into the tiny space. One hand goes to the nape of Harry’s neck, the other around his shoulder, and he tugs Harry into his chest in an insistent hug, uncaring of the way his neck is bent at an unnatural angle and the knock of their knees.
Harry’s hands go up to Ron’s chest for a moment, as if he’s going to push him away, and then his fingers fist weakly in the other man’s sweater.
“Harry,” Ron cracks out, squeezing him to his chest, black hair tickling his chin. “It’s okay.”
At this, Harry breaks. His breath forces out of his lungs in a horrible gasp, and then he starts crying in earnest, shaking against Ron's chest.
“It’s not – It’s not okay,” he says, voice broken and ragged. “It’s not – it’s all my fault.”
Ron squeezes him tighter. “It’s not.”
“Fred,” Harry cracks out. “Remus. Tonks. C – Colin –” He breaks off in another sob, his body trembling in Ron’s arms.
Tears squeeze out from under Ron’s eyelids as he clenches them closed. “It’s not your fault, Harry.”
They don’t say anything else – Harry cries himself out into Ron’s sweater, at which point Ron tugs him gently out of the linen closet and down to the parlour. He settles Harry on the couch with the Wireless and a cup of tea, and then goes back upstairs.
He stands in front of the closet door for a long moment, fingers tight on his wand, chest tight, and then raises it decisively.
“Colloportus.”
He stares at the sealed doorway a second longer, and then goes back downstairs.
They both sleep on the couches that night, just like they did during the War.
In the morning, Ron won’t let the other man out of his sight, and Harry doesn’t try to disappear. He follows Ron like a shadow, looking sadder than a kicked Crup. Kreacher offers them a full English breakfast, spread out across the table, with an especially full plate set in front of Harry.
Harry pokes aimlessly at his eggs, making the yolk bleed over the rest of the plate, but the fork never lifts to his mouth.
“Harry,” Ron says, “You have to eat something.”
His best friend looks up at him through bloodshot eyes. His hair is a bird’s nest, and there’s a couple days stubble on his jaw. His shirt is rumpled from restless sleep and his skin is pale enough to resemble a vampire.
“I can’t,” he says quietly.
Ron takes a deep breath to check his temper. “You need to eat, Harry.”
Harry glances down at the plate and makes no effort to feed himself. The yolk begins to soak into the neighbouring toast.
Ron tries a different tactic. “Do you want something different?”
(He can almost hear Kreacher’s ears perk up in the kitchen.)
Harry looks up, eyes wet. “No – it’s – I can’t, Ron.”
He takes another breath, keeps his voice even: “Why can’t you eat, Harry?”
“It’s like – it’s like I’m back there.”
“…Back where?” There’s a deep sense of dread pooling in the base of Ron’s spine. At this rate, he’s not going to have any appetite either.
“The Dursley’s.”
There is a vicious second of time where several significant memories slam into Ron’s mind all at once. Bars on the windows. Letters asking for food. Harry’s tiny, Seeker’s frame, skinny and small. George’s voice: “They were starving him, Mum!”
Ron has to take a deep breath for an entirely different reason: to dispel murderous rage. He tries his best to keep his tone entirely even, though he’s not sure he succeeds. “The Dursley’s,” he repeats.
“They used to – when I messed up – Food was the first thing to go.”
Yeah, Ron loses his temper. “They STARVED YOU AS PUNISHMENT?”
Harry flinches, and Ron pinches the bridge of his nose, takes another breath.
“Sorry, no, just – Harry – what else did they do?”
Harry’s knuckles are white on the edge of the table, and he doesn’t make eye contact. “Closet under the stairs. Locked me in. Was my bedroom until I was eleven.”
Anger blasts through Ron’s entire body like a Confringo curse. He knows his ears, his face, his neck, are all bright red. His glass of pumpkin juice shatters and spills over the table, his magic bubbling up violently in response.
The fucking linen closet.
Ron’s going to seal every small space in the entirety of the house.
“Have you been –” He grinds the words out, trying to soften them. “Have you been doing this as some kind of – punishment – for the War?”
Harry doesn’t answer him, which is answer enough.
“Harry,” Ron despairs, chest tight and painful. “You can’t – none of it was your bloody fault! It was fucking Voldemort, and fucking Death Eaters!”
“If I’d – been faster, better –”
Ron is standing before he registers the movement. “SHUT. UP!” he roars.
Ron is shaking, he’s so angry. There’s pumpkin juice leaking down the table leg. He can hear Kreacher muttering obscenities. Harry’s eyes are red, and he’s hunched in on himself, tired and small in his chair. Bloody hell, he wishes Hermione was here.
He takes another deep breath, and then takes two swift steps to Harry’s side, hand clamping down on his friend’s shoulder. “Harry,” he bites out, “I love you, mate, but you’re an idiot.”
This makes Harry choke out a laugh.
“Look at me.”
Harry closes his eyes tightly, and then opens them and turns to look at him. He’s crying again. Ron puts his other hand on the man’s other shoulder, feeling the warm, alive existence of him.
“Harry,” he says, crouching down so they’re at the same level. “We did everything we could. We’re – we’re bloody teenagers, mate. You killed Voldemort. You fucking died and came back just so you could. Stuff you never should have had to do. But you did! And we won!” He shakes his friend a little. “And no – we didn’t, we didn’t – save everyone.” Fred, he misses Fred, so much. “But we owe it to them, to keep going, to live the lives they should have had the chance to have. You can’t – starve yourself, or lock yourself up.”
He pauses, looking his best mate directly in the eyes. “Harry – we have to live.”
Harry’s face twists, and then he slowly leans forward, and rests his forehead against Ron’s shoulder. Ron clutches him tightly, feeling the tremble in his shoulders.
“You hear me?” he asks, a bit desperately. “You have to live.”
Harry reaches up and wraps his fingers around Ron’s bicep.
There is a long, seemingly endless pause, and then: “Okay.”
“Okay, Ron,” Harry says, voice hitching as he leans his forehead more solidly into Ron’s shoulder. “Okay.”
They stay that way for a long minute, and then Harry pulls back, sniffling a little.
Ron shuffles back into his seat, feeling raw on the inside.
Ron picks up his fork.
Harry does the same.
Ron takes a bite of cold, rubbery egg.
Harry does the same.
Ron smiles.
Harry does the same.
It feels like a victory.