She Was the Glue

She was the glue.

He'd never noticed it until she was gone, but she was: she was glue, she was rubber cement, she was the mortar that made their friendship strong. And she was gone.

For some reason, he'd never expected it, not in a million years; it was Harry's fight, Harry's battle, and he was Harry's second in everything. She was the background witch, the researcher, the person who connected all the cogs and wheels and kept them nicely greased so the watch would tick. And, without her, the watch had stopped.

Who knew? Who knew that it would take a girl's sacrifice to defeat the Dark Lord? No, not a girl; never a girl. She was a woman. He closed his eyes. Definitely a woman. But when they all thought about it, it was a woman's sacrifice that had first defeated him--and stories look for ways to circle back. She had no child (she was not far gone from childhood herself), but she fought to the death to protect ones she loved. She was Muggleborn, as was her predecessor; she was clever, and vibrant, and intense, and overflowing with life... and too young.

Too young. He still felt too young, after--what? Forty years? More? He was an old man now, an old man lost and stranded. "No man is an island..." He was an island. She was his landbridge, the isthmus to connect his life to Harry's; she was glue, and mortar, and bridge, and a hundred other connective things. And she was gone. He hadn't talked to Harry in years; not since the funeral. He knew where Harry lived, knew that, like himself, Harry spent his days pacing creaking floorboards in a lonely house, brooding over a life that should have been his.

Harry had been married for a time; no children. Ginny stopped by every now and then, or sent pictures of her red-haired grandchildren by mail. The older she grew, the more absent-minded she became, until the photographs had the wrong name written on the back, scratched out and replaced by her second husband's moniker. He had died, too, years before. It was just as well. Her brother knew she couldn't bear the thought of growing old with someone who was not He. Ginny rarely referred to Harry by name; it was He, or Him, or a pause spent staring into space.

Now Ginny spent her days housekeeping at the Burrow for her aging father and a widowed brother. She was thinner than their mother had been, and less jolly. Harry could have given her that, maybe.

He tore his thoughts away from his sister and returned to the photograph in his hand: a young woman with bouncy curls and a quiet, confident air. The glue. He turned an aging head to look out the window. He was getting too old for this. She always wanted him to be strong; she showed him how every day of her life, until her last. It was time for his story to come full circle. It was long past time.

The door shuddered as he knocked. Overgrown poppies sprawled on the garden path, and unchecked ivy left cracks in the brick. No one answered. He knocked again.

"Go away."

He knocked again. The picture in his hand gave him strength.

The door creaked open.

"Go away."

He shook his head.

"Go. Away."

He pushed past this man, this man who had been his best friend, this man whose life was inextricably intwined with his own, this man who was now more of a stranger than the most foreign Tibetan monk.

He held up the picture. "Look, Harry."

"Stop!" Harry screamed, his lined face livid with rage. "Demon!"

He was still taller; it was the work of a moment to twist Harry's arm behind his back and force the picture in front of his face.

"Look, goddammit!"

Harry looked. Suddenly, they were embracing like brothers, both of them crying.

"What have I done?" the dark-haired man wailed. Yes, it was still dark, he noted. His own hair was graying, silvery. But Harry's was still dark.

"Tea?"

Harry nodded.

"She was the last one..."

"Hmm?" He filled the kettle with water.

"I never expected her." He closed his eyes and shook his head fervently. "Me, I thought. You, maybe. But she would still be there, we'd have her no matter what..."

"She was the glue."

"Eh?"

"Chamomile?"

Nod.

"She was the glue."

Harry leaned back on the dusty couch and stared at his cracked ceiling, thinking of a friendship full of tiny cracks.

"None of that mattered," he said, guessing Harry's thoughts. "She held it together. She was the glue."

Harry closed his eyes. "Why?"

He brought tea to Harry, and each sipped his drink. "Because you were the leader. Because I was the follower. Because she had her own gift. Because we never could have done any of it without her, and when she was gone we didn't want to try to make life work again, because we were too used to her reconciling our egos and holding us together, and it was all too soon, and too fast, and too raw."

Harry looked in his cup. "I'm sorry about Ginny."

"Me, too. Why don't you visit?"

"I will. I wish I could make it up to her..."

"You can't. No one can. But you can start over."

"I've missed you, Ron."

"I've missed you, too."

Two old men sat in silence, sipping chamomile tea. They sat a little bit apart, across the sofa from each other, but it was all right. Between them, filling in the cracks, lay the photograph of a young woman with bouncy curls and a quiet, confident air as yet another story found its circle. And she was the glue.