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“You think I don’t know how this feels?!”
“No, you don’t know how it feels!” Ron’s shout is so vicious, so hateful, that it sends spit flying from his bottom lip as his face begins to burn an angrier shade of red. “Your parents are dead!” he yells. “You have no family!”
Harry’s heart seizes in his chest, his stomach twists and curdles and drops, he feels sick and awful, yet he still flings out an arm to gesture at Ron wildly and exclaims, “I have you, don’t I?!”
Maybe it’s the tinge of hysteria in his tone, maybe it’s the words themselves, but something about Harry’s response finally makes Ron stop, lips pressed together and chest stuttering on a shakily sharp inhale.
“I’ve got you,” Harry says, trying to sound a bit more calm, though his words shake, his voice cracks, his heart continues to chip away within his chest. “You, and Hermione, and—and they may not be my family, but I still love everyone you just mentioned like they are, ‘cause that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to having one. And everyone, everyone at Hogwarts—Neville, Seamus, Dean, even bloody Malfoy, whatever side he’s on—everyone’s life is on the line here, every single day. You aren’t the only one here who’s bloody terrified to hear a familiar name from that radio, Ron. Just ‘cause I’ve got no family doesn’t mean I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Ron is frozen, all anger drained from his features, something twisted and devastated resting there instead. Hermione looks heartbroken as well, murmurs, “Harry...”
But Harry has just loosened the lock to the box he’s kept shut for far too long, and there’s no ending the tidal wave that flows past his lips. “I know I’ve got no family,” he says, looking away from Ron because he just knows he’s going to start crying and he refuses to maintain that eye contact when he does, instead stares over Ron’s shoulder rather unseeingly. “I know that, alright? The only bit I had left was Sirius, and now it’s my fault that he’s gone, too. I don’t need the reminder that everyone who ever loved me was killed because of me, Ron. I don’t need you making me remember that I’m a curse and that neither of you should be here or there’s a bloody good chance that you’ll die because of me, too. I remind myself of that enough as it is.”
There’s a wounded sort of noise, one that seems to rumble from somewhere in the center of Ron’s chest without him meaning for it to, as Harry brings up a hand to angrily wipe at the lone tear that rolls through the grime on his cheek. Hermione is staring upwards, blinking harshly and clenching her jaw, as Ron’s finger twitches at his side, like he wants to reach forward but can’t bring himself to move.
“Believe it or not, this isn’t a walk in the park for me, either,” Harry goes on, voice more hushed, now, raspy and weak. “There’s a reason I wanted to do this alone, alright? I know realistically that I wouldn’t be able to do it, I know that I’m nothing without the help I get, help that I don’t even deserve, but it’s bloody petrifying, having you here. Both of you. And then there are times where you act like I wanted this, all of—all of what being Harry Potter means. The attention, the looks, all of it, when I never wanted any of this. I’d give everything I’ve got, all the money I inherited, all the fame and the way people look at my like I’m some otherworldly being—I’d give up all of it to just be normal, for just a day or two. I...”
Finally, the outpouring of words seems to trickle to an end, and he snaps his jaw shut up an audible click, squeezes his eyes closed and lets out a shaky breath that makes his lungs ache. “Harry,” Ron croaks out. “Mate, I...”
Harry sniffs, rubs at his nose and shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Think what you want, I suppose. I’m going for a walk.”
Before either of them can respond, Harry spins around and ducks out of the tent, hands trembling at his sides as he stalks away, bile rising in his throat that he has to swallow down.
The moment that Harry’s gone, Hermione is letting out a squeak of a sob, a sound she muffles with the palm of her hand. Ron can’t seem to move, can’t do much more than stare at the flap of the tent, still shifting back into place from Harry having to push it out of the way during his departure. His mouth is dry, a feeling like lead settling in his gut.
“Ronald Weasley,” Hermione says, tone firm yet wobbly as she steps in front of his with a hand outstretched, her palm held up. “You give me that horcrux before you say another word!”
Robotically, Ron juts his chin in a nod, shaking hands rising and trembling fingers fumbling with the chain of the locket, struggling for a moment to get a proper grasp before he’s able to tug it over her head and drop it in her awaiting hand. The moment that it’s gone, that his skin is no longer in contact with the cool metal, that fog that had been holding him in place clears away and his features scrunch up, tears instantly burning his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. “Hermione,” he manages to choke out. “I didn’t—‘Mione, I didn’t mean—”
Features softening, Hermione nods, maneuvering the locket until it’s hanging around her neck. “I know,” she says. “And Harry knows, too. It’s what the horcrux does, and why you shouldn’t have been wearing it all day.”
“But I said—I just said—I told him—” Ron cuts off with a frustrated sort of noise, half groan and half sob, as he brings his hands to his face and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, shaking his head wildly. “That was awful,” he tells her wetly. “What I said was bloody awful, Hermione. How am I supposed to take that back, huh? Merlin, how do I fix this?”
“You don’t,” Hermione murmurs, bringing a hand to his upper arm, features vulnerable and sad. “Not tonight, anyway. Not just yet.”
Lifting his head, Ron looks at her helplessly, eyes red, cheeks tear stained. “What do I do?”
With a sigh, the hand not resting on Ron’s arm coming up to scrub at her own trail of tears, Hermione tells him, “For now, you go to bed, and I’ll wait to make sure Harry gets back alright. We can worry about the rest tomorrow.”
There’s no way to know how much time has passed by the time Harry returns to the tent, but it’s nearly pitch black out by the time he does, clearly closer to sunrise than sunset. His eyes feel dry and itchy from being bloodshot, cheeks sticky from drying tears, and he feels vacant, empty in a way that he couldn’t possibly manage to put into words.
Hermione stands when he enters the tent, features open and pained. “Harry.”
“It’s alright, Hermione,” he tells her, though he knows that she can see how broken he really is, can see the red of the eyes, the remnants of his tears, the way his hands have yet to stop trembling by his sides. He curls his fingers into his palms, creates two fists to try and conceal the shaking, and tries for a forced, tight lipped smile. “It’s not a big deal. Really.”
“Harry, we both know that isn’t true,” she says, stepping forward. “We should talk about this. You can’t keep living with the belief that everything that’s happened is your fault.”
“It is, though, isn’t it?” He questions, more rhetorical than anything else. “Most everything that’s happened is because of me. I didn’t make Voldemort, but my parents died protecting me from him, Sirius died fighting with me, for me. Moody’s gotten himself killed, as well, and all the others, people I don’t even know the name of, all dead because I haven’t stopped this yet. And so many more will die, Hermione. That’s not even a question, is it? It’s fact. People are going to die trying to finish something that they didn’t start, fighting for something they shouldn’t have to fight for. It could be you, Hermione. You and Ron. I could lose—”
He knees go weak with the thought, like they always do whenever he thinks it, and he’s far too exhausted, too put out from everything, to hold himself up. Collapses to his knees right then and there, has to catch himself with his hands to keep from properly crumbling to a heap on the ground. Hermione yelps, lurches forward, but she isn’t the one who gets there first, Ron appearing out of seemingly thin air and resting his hands on Harry’s shoulders.
Harry is just as surprised as Hermione appears, looks up at Ron with a wobbly lower lip. “Ron.”
“Blimey, Harry,” Ron says, breathes it out with the shake of his head and a harsh sniffle, fingers curling around Harry’s shoulders even tighter. “Don’t be such a git, will you? Even if any of this could really be blamed on you, there’s no way in hell that Hermione and I are going anywhere that you aren’t going, too. You must know that by now, right? You’re not losing us. You’re bloody hell not losing me any time soon if I’ve got any say about it, hear that?”
Harry brings up a fist, unfurls it in order to curl his shaking fingers around one of Ron’s wrists, tears already burning his eyes again. “Ron,” he repeats, voice more a croak now. “M’sorry.”
Incredulously, Ron shakes his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, mate. I’m sorry, alright? What I said, what I told you, I—Merlin, Harry, I would never say that. You’ve got family, alright? You’ve got me. Hermione, Ginny, Fred, George, Mum and Dad—far as I’m concerned, they’ve all thought of you as one of us since first year, they’re just placing bets on which one of us you’ll end up marrying one day. Percy’s been saying for years that it’ll be George, and it’ll be from a prank gone wrong, you know that?”
The ends of Harry’s lips twitch, just slightly, upwards. “You can’t be serious.”
“Cross my heart,” Ron grins, before sobering again, moving his hands—healing arm ignored completely, despite any remaining ache that moving it around brings—until they’ve gone from clutching Harry’s shoulders to resting along the sides of his neck, thumbs brushing lightly against the hinges of his jaw. “I mean it, Harry,” he mumbles. “I’m a right prick for saying all that, even if I didn’t mean it when I said it. You’ve never got to worry about family, alright? You’ve got all of us. You’ve got me.”
Harry isn’t sure he believes it—after all, he’s the last one to know what family is, anyway—but he wants it to be true, and he trusts Ron more than anyone else, above anything that anyone else may tell him, and because of that, he nods.
Ron smiles, small and sad. “And it isn’t your fault,” he says. “Even if you think that it is.”
He doesn’t specify, because it’s impossible to. Harry blames himself for everything, all the hardships and the deaths. Though he sinks his teeth into his lower lip to hide it’s wobble, that does nothing to keep his crying as bay, and soon his shoulders are shaking with painful sobs that he keeps trying to push back down.
“Oh, Harry,” Ron murmurs brokenly, pulling him in and enveloping him in his arms, hooking his chin over Harry’s shoulder and tightening his grip when Harry’s unable to hold back a wail.
Hermione makes her presence known again at that moment, joins their hug and whispers gentle words to the both of them, reassurances and promises and loyalty, of honesty.
It doesn’t fix anything—no, not in the slightest does it do that—but by the time they’ve all shed the last of their tears, Harry feels a little less empty and a little more light.