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It’s Friday night, and a bottle of alcohol is lying on the floor next to their legs. It’s a relentless routine by now, mocked only by the echo of bubbling laughter lingering behind the closed door of the dorm. He can almost distinguish the voices of the people behind it, celebrating the last Quidditch match they won, all happy to move on from everything that happened, from everything that keeps happening.
The moon shines against the windows surrounding the room, almost oblivious to the world that keeps moving further away on the other side. And with the glare of the wandering star, Harry tries to bring back his focus on something that doesn’t bring him as much sorrow, as futile as it is to wish for.
Everything in this dorm feels like coming upon something that isn’t meant for him; the memories he made are still there, but they don’t belong to him the same way they did back then. He’s too close and, somehow, much too far away to begin unraveling any of these souvenirs. So, he tries not to linger on the past, on those memories of better times; tries not to look at the furnitures in the room that spent nights much too close to his cries, soaking his chagrin deep into their wood, overflowing with it.
His old shoes are still there, left at the foot of his four-poster bed; they don’t fit him anymore. He doesn’t think they ever really did. Everything reminds you of what it’s like to be alive when you’ve already died, he thinks.
He tries to pull his gaze away from the shadows of the room, letting his eyes drift over to the space beside him, trying to let these memories fade, as physical as they still are, and he settles on watching the reflection of the moonlight, settling on Ron’s pale lips, a silent habit he has fallen into deeper than anything else, lately. They don’t belong to the past, and they will never be part of his future, but they’re the only thing that brings him the slightest hint of comfort in the present. He knows they’re just another thing that doesn’t, that will never, belong to him, but he craves them anyway.
He’s built a life out of standing close enough to look but too far to touch; nevertheless, he still mourns the warmth and silhouette of Ron’s body, that he will never get to meet with his lips, his tongue and his hands. The familiarity with having to watch things he wants from afar will always be present; after all, the anguish that comes with the lack of having something is a constant that he’s used to; he feels it in everything he ever had to see being wrenched from him.
He learned to accept it, learned what it’s like to love Ron Weasley without being loved back, with all the pain that came with it. Through long train rides, chocolate wrappers, and adventures that were too big for children like them. Through the smell of their mingling sweat after Quidditch practice and the way Ron held his gaze when they were mad at each other. Because the world was ending back then, and Harry wanted it to end.
The sun kept rising anyway, and the end he so dearly and desperately wished for never came. Instead, the aftermath of war dragged on, and the days stretched without taking him away with them. Now, he spends his hours tucking the shame away beneath his ribs, continuing to look at the world from another point of view, one that doesn’t make him feel like mourning the landscapes of a burning town. Everything burnt. Everything is still burning.
Tonight, he continues to glance at the way Ron’s mouth moves against the cold surface of the glass bottle his friend picked up, the way the pinkish shade of his lip's contrasts with the bottle’s wrapper and the old, mismatched parquet of the dorm.
An ingrained dark stain covers the spot where Harry’s feet are resting, and the roughness of it reminds him of Ron’s hands, as much as something inanimate can resemble a person’s limb. He continues stroking the spot with the sole of his foot, pretending it’s not a floor, as dumb as it is to think about, pretending he’s simply anxious, and he is, in a way, anxious, about wounds that keep bleeding and bleeding after years of tending to them, about the hole that is death, and how he can never quite be the same person again–but none of it is comparable to what he feels in these moments, none of it compares with the want–the need to reach out for Ron’s flesh, for his bones, for anything his friend can bear to give him.
He tries to turn his eyes away, ashamed of his thoughts, and his gaze falls close by. He notices his wand sitting on one of the pillows, the light from the Lumos he performed earlier is still fluctuating every few seconds, and he cannot help but notice how his friend’s ivory body gleams under its influence. With each burst of burning light, Ron’s hair takes a resemblance to copper, until Harry can almost see the darker locks of auburn growing along Ron’s neck. Buried underneath the bright red that he has always associated with the feeling of something akin to awe.
That same warmth seems to spill over into the dusting of freckles on Ron’s face. And he wishes he could count them, to see what it’s like to be built with memories and love, to have its mark on your skin, in a way that doesn’t come with a hindrance.
Instead, he, once again, continues watching his friend, like a stalker in the same piece as his muse, see how Ron’s jaw flexes against the words spilling out from his mouth, the way his eyelashes melt with his flesh, as if reaching for Harry's heart. It’s almost as if he cannot stop himself from looking into Ron’s eyes, lunging so deep he can almost see the remains of the locket’s smoke. And he becomes lost, lost in the memories of Voldemort, of the war, of Tom Riddle, but most importantly, he’s lost in Ron, like he’s always been, with hands grasping cold skin underwater, and wishing. Lost inside the bluish shade of Ron’s irises, where he could spend the rest of his life swimming in a sea of azure.
But the bedroom floor is still hard beneath him, and the air feels too thick to the point where he can almost feel the uncertainty clutching his lungs, overflowing with the thought of sinning, of hate, as potent as it always is towards himself. An old reminder of his childhood that he has never quite been able to let go of. With knees scraping on the hard wood floor, and cheeks burning red with something akin to shame. Petunia’s voice is still ringing in his head.
“Harry?”
But the words aren’t from a woman’s voice this time; they’re cracked and uneven from the effects of alcohol, sounding rougher inside the quiet of the room. And when he looks up, he can see Ron’s head turned toward Harry’s own, as if asking a question none of them know the answer to.
“Are you good, mate?” Ron breathes out, with a hint of concern making its way into his tone, “you’re staring again.”
Harry tries to let the words spill from his mouth, the same way Ron often does, almost like it’s effortless. He reins his voice in, but the liquor makes it come out slightly high pitched, “I’m not staring.”
Ron’s gaze seems to soften, highlighted by a dose of something he cannot name, his friend turns his eyes away, looking faintly abashed and opens his mouth, with words at the tip of his tongue.
“I don’t like it when you go quiet like that, you know?” He whispers as if embarrassed, Harry notices the sounds of feet shuffling lightly on the ground next to him, “I wish you could talk to me, tell me what’s wrong, like before.”
Before.
He thinks about the horcruxes hunt, their argument in that tent. Sometimes, he thinks they all left pieces of themselves back in it. Harry lost one more, back in Hogwarts, in a blood stained forest; under a white bench, he doesn’t think he can move away from there. The train is still waiting for him, maybe forever.
Is that what it’s like to grow up and leave things behind?
He swallows against the thickness in his throat, leaving dreams of whiteness far away. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, almost immediately. The words sound rusted from constant reuse. “I still talk to you,” he mutters, this time less abruptly.
Ron shakes his head, “No. Not really,” he continues after a sigh, “You haven’t said a word in thirty minutes, I tried to see if you would say anything,” his eyes close, almost in numbness and he breathes out, “but you didn’t.”
And this feels wrong in ways Harry can’t begin to fathom. Because he talks to Ron more than anyone, because they’ve been together for what feels like Harry’s entire life. Because Ron is hidden between every corner of his sick mind.
He still remembers the way Snape’s thin lips curled in disgust when intruding his thoughts. The way his professor’s nose wrinkled under each memory of Harry’s obsession, yearning for a man. He thinks about Ron so often it feels like a disease, some incurable thing stretching betwixt his ribs, feeding itself from his longing, constantly. He reminisces over how Ron’s back feels against his so frequently. Memories of nights at the burrow, when his dreams took too much space inside his head, and Ron held him like porcelain. He remembers how envy took up a space in his heart, when seeing Hermione kissing Ron, knowing he shouldn’t feel this way. It felt like betraying them.
He can still recall the way Ron’s hand held Hermione’s neck back when they were still together, so lovingly, and so disgustingly beautiful to the point where he couldn’t even hate them. He could never bring himself to do this with Ginny; her red hair was too long, and her eyes were a different shade than the ones he liked so badly. He still yearns for the moments his heart keeps tucked away, yearns for pressed flowers, forever trying to bloom.
Ron’s voice drops softer, as if seeing the torn expression set on Harry’s face, “I miss you sometimes,” he admits, like it’s a secret. And his fingers tighten faintly around the neck of the bottle in his hand, knuckles paling beneath scattered freckles, as if the words themselves had cost him something.
They sit in silence for a while, because Harry is unable to respond to his friend. Because Ron refuses to look at him afterwards, staring far away instead of matching Harry’s gaze, like he’s disgusted.
Harry knows he has never quite been an easy person to talk to, to enjoy talking to. Snape often liked to call him arrogant, but Harry has never felt the need to be close enough with anyone to act this way. It’s always been him, alone, until Ron and Hermione came along. He doesn’t want to lose them; to lose Ron, but maybe it was always meant to be this way. Them sitting in their dorm room, outgrowing it the same way they did with each memory. The same way they did with each other.