Four Weddings and a Funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral: Why

1 July, 1998

He knows where to find Ron: sitting on the bench in the garden where he and Ginny had seen them share what Harry was fairly certain was their first kiss.

And there he is, looking out over the runner beans, his red hair giving off the faintest flame of color in the moonlight. Not wanting to startle his friend, Harry walks to the bench, leaning heavily on the damned cane, and sits down slowly beside him.

Ron doesn't move.

"Nervous about tomorrow?" Harry asks.

"Nervous," mutters Ron. "I'll tell you, Harry... I have no idea how I feel. I'm not feeling a bloody thing."

Harry finds himself putting his arm over his friend's shoulder, something that would never have occurred to him before. There are so many things that it occurs to him to say, and so many of them are just... wrong. Finally he settles on the one thing that he can think to say that seems appropriate. "You must miss her."

Ron gives a small start, and Harry can feel his shoulder muscles contract. "Miss?..." He gives a moan of such longing that it comes near to breaking Harry's heart, a heart that has been tested sorely of late. "Bloody hell, yes, I miss her. Merlin, I miss her!" Tears are beginning to well up in Ron's eyes, and Harry is split between being sorry he said a thing and being glad that his friend is letting some of the feelings boil over.

And if anyone knows how it feels to have too much emotion inside of you, it's Harry Potter.

Still staring out over the beans and the sunflowers, his voice quavering, Ron goes on. "She's at her parents'. I wish I could go down and see her, but... Tomorrow." He nods, and Harry joins him. "Did you know they were Catholic? The Grangers? I... didn't know that." Ron's chest begins to heave, and he is plainly bawling now. "I should have known that, Harry! How could I not have known that?"

"Ron," Harry says weakly, and his tall friend collapses against his shoulder. "Ron, it's okay, it's going to be okay..."

"NO!" Ron howls, his fingers bruising Harry's chest where he's clutching at Harry's jumper. "It's not bloody okay, it won't fucking be okay! There's all these things about her I don't know and won't know and now I'll never know!" He looses a wolfen howl into the still night, and Harry knows that Ginny is at her open window back at the Burrow, hearing this, knowing the grief that is pouring out of Ron as he wails into Harry's chest is twisting her heart as it is twisting his. He told her she shouldn't come out, that Ron would never allow himself to be weak in front of anyone in the family, not even her.

Now he's not so sure it was such a good idea.

Weeping women Harry has learned to deal with. But this is something different. His hulking, shaggy-haired friend, sobbing with abandon. Harry finds the tears beginning to spill , gobbets of fire, and he clutches Ron's head against him and adds his own grief.

He hasn't cried like this since the first time he and Ginny made love, and he can't imagine a more different circumstance, excepting, of course, that each occasion took place on a summer's night in Ottery St. Catchpole in the company of a red-headed Weasley that he dearly loved...

He sees her: brave Hermione; brilliant Hermione. Beautiful Hermione, though it had never occurred to him to think of her in that particular way before this night. The shy smile when she'd done something clever or naughty. The angry tears when he or Ron were being stupid. That time fourth year when he'd just played peek-a-boo with the dragon and Ron started talking to him again and she'd thrown her arms around the two of them and wept like a madwoman.

Watching her curled up on this very bench with Ron, feeling their first embrace like the subliminal tolling of some enormous bell.

It seems somehow impossible that someone that unique, that precious, could be gone. Could be dead.

But she is. Dead.

"Why?" Ron moans, and Harry has no answer. And they are both wailing again, and Harry can feel Ron's sorrow and his own pulling him, Harry, to shreds, the small pieces of him that had survived the past few days intact disintegrating.

Fuck you, he finds himself screaming. In his mind? Out loud? To himself? To Tom Riddle? To Draco Malfoy, who had died with the grin he'd worn killing her still on his face. Fuck you.

"Harry," Ron splutters, "you need to know. You need to know. We'd talked about it, her and me, we'd... we'd... known that one or both of us might die protecting your back and we were willing to do that, we'd do anything for you, you know that..." His face twists, and Harry feels like throwing up. Funny, he thinks. And here I always thought it would be me. "But why? Why did she have to.... Malfoy meant that curse for me! How could she bloody do that?"

"'Cause she loved you, you stupid bloody plank," Harry finds himself yelling. "Because she couldn't imagine the world without you. And because she knew you'd have done the same."

Ron's face screwed up in torment. "I... I... would have. But... I didn't. I didn't. And she's dead, she's fucking dead and I can't stand it, Harry, how can I live?"

Harry grabs his friend's huge ears and pulls his head up. "Because that's what you do, Ron. Trust me. I know this. It's horrible and miserable and you don't think you'll ever be able to do anything. But in a few months you'll find yourself doing something for a whole five minutes before you even think, 'Hermione would have hated this' or 'I can't believe she's dead.' Another six months and it'll be a half hour. A year or so, and you'll go a couple of days between moments that smack you on the side of the head like a Beater's bat."

Ron looks up, but he's not looking at Harry. "It's not going to go away, Harry. I'm never going to forget."

"No," Harry sighs, recognizing the set of Ron's chin for the warning it is. "No, you're not."

Scorpio is clearing the top of Stoatshead Hill on the horizon.

"Ron," Harry says, sudden inspiration coming to him, "you should talk to Luna."

His friend screws up his features in frank disbelief.

"I know," Harry says, "I know she seems odd, but she's really nice. She was the one person who I could talk to after... after Sirius died. Her mum died when she was a kid..."

"I remember," Ron says, barely above a whisper. "She was over here a lot in those days. Used to sit up in Ginny's room like a ghost. It was horrible."

"Yeah, well, she understands, Ron. She knows what it's like to have to deal with death. And she was really... helpful."

"The way she looks at me sometimes gives me the wobbles."

"Talk to her, Ron. She'll help, I promise."

Ron sniffs. His head is resting in Harry's lap, and Harry finds himself stroking his friend's hair, just as he has Ginny's for the past couple of days, trying to still her tears. Ron barely seems to notice. Perhaps it helps Harry more than either redhead. "When did you fall in love with Ginny, Harry?" Ron asks, his eyes back on the flowers.

"I... you mean really, or when did I notice?"

"Both, I guess."

"It really happened when she told bloody Draco off at Flourish and Blotts , before her first year. It was the first time I'd heard her voice since we got on the train the previous year, and she was just... something, you know? It might even have been first year, watching her run after the train, waving at you and the twins...."

"She was waving at you," Ron muttered.

"Me? Go on."

"You. The twins told me about it--I wasn't even in the compartment yet. But she was running ahead of where they were. It was you."

Looking up at the Pleiades, Harry can feel his chest suddenly become too small. "Bloody hell. What a berk I am. Any way, I came to my senses in slow increments during fifth and sixth year. While she was dating Michael Corner and Dean. And I found myself thinking how bloody lucky they were. By the time we watched you and Hermione snogging out here on the bench the summer before sixth year..."

"You watched us?" Ron groans.

For the first time in what feels like years, Harry laughs. "Yeah, from the kitchen. And I looked over at your sister, Ron, and I... don't get offended here, but I realized she was the most beautiful girl in the world, standing there in her shredded bathrobe, and I hoped I could find with her what you and Hermione had found..."

Ron is crying again, but not sobbing. Just tears flowing down his nose and onto Harry's trousers.

"Ron," Harry says, when he realizes just what Ron wants him to ask, "when did you fall in love with Hermione?"

Ron smiles sadly. "Not first year, I can tell you that. No, it must have happened some time during second year, but when I realized, it was when I brought that Lockheart git up to the Hospital Wing after we... you got Ginny up from that Chamber mess. I went in with him, and Mum and Dad were settling Ginny, and Percy was with Penny, who was awake and babbling away. But I realized the only person I wanted to see was the girl with the fluffy hair and the buck teeth. I shoved old Gilderoy down into a chair and ran over to her. I was worried because the other victims were all awake, and I was about to call Madame Pomfrey over, when I felt her hand tighten around mine, and she looked up and said--didn't ask, said--'You figured it out!' And all of a sudden we were hugging each other right there in the middle of the ward, but I didn't care, because I was so happy that she was okay." Now Ron is sobbing again, and Harry can only keep running his hands through his friend's hair.

"I know, Ron." There's not a whole lot else to say.

When the sobbing has subsided again, they sit there silently for a while, Ron's head in Harry's lap. After some time, Harry asks the logical next question: "What took you so long?"

Ron's face twists again in confusion. "What, you mean, to tell Hermy?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Harry... I mean, come on."

"It's okay, Ron. I've admitted I was a stupid bloody plod. But you knew. So... for instance, why didn't you ask her to the Yule Ball fourth year?"

For a moment, Harry flinches, thinking he's gone too far. Why did he ask that? Ron goggles at him. Slowly, his friend answers, "You're joking, right? I mean, you know why I didn't ask her till it was too late, don't you?"

Knowing he is walking through a minefield, Harry offers what he has always thought was the truth: "You were scared she'd say no?"

Again, Ron stares at him, face slack with astonishment. "Harry... You didn't know?"

"Know?" Now Harry is worried--where is this headed, and can he duck fast enough if Ron explodes? "Know... what?"

"Harry...." Ron peers at him intently. "You... you really didn't know what was going on?"

Now Harry feels his temper beginning to flare. Ron has lost a lot in the last few days, but so has he, and he has to swallow the urge to snap at his friend. "No. Ron. I. Guess. I. Didn't."

In the silver-blue evening light, Ron loses what little coloration that his face had held; his freckles and the circles under his eyes stand out in relief. "Bloody hell, Harry. I... I always thought you were just being a good friend, you know... and a gent, the way you always were to Ginny and all the others...."

"What are you talking about, Ron?" It is becoming difficult to keep the dragon at bay. "A gent? I have no fucking clue..." Suddenly it all comes to him, clear and cold as the starlight that etches the garden in stark relief around them. "Oh, bloody hell."

"You really didn't know?" Ron is sitting up against the arm of the bench, staring at Harry. "I... Un-fucking-believable. I always knew. And she knew I knew. She... she told me you hadn't a clue, but I always thought she was being, I dunno, daft and modest. You really didn't know she had a thing for you?"

"NO," Harry moans. "I wouldn't have... Oh, god, Ron, I feel... I'm so sorry..." Harry's stomach is roiling dangerously. After everything that has happened in the past week--not to mention all of the potions he's been forced to drink--this new revelation has him very close to vomiting all over Molly Weasley's beautiful beans. He tries to regulate his breath. "Bloody hell, Ron. I didn't... I feel horrible."

His friend swats him gently with a huge hand. "Don't. She'd gotten over that long before I ever asked her out. And it's not like she ever stopped caring for you."

Harry has managed to slow his breath, but now he is getting light-headed from breathing so deeply. "How... could I not know that... about my best friend... other than you?" he gasped. "But... you knew?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean, the first time you landed in hospital, the end of first year, first time we were allowed to visit, she threw herself on top of you. I had to pull her off you before Madam Pomfrey tossed us out. And then she started blubbering about how wonderful you were and all that, and, you know, stuff I could understand, but then it turned in to talking about how beautiful you were and all the rest of it. Kind of embarrassing, you know? I mean, bloody hell, we were what? Twelve?"

Harry let out a sad laugh. "I can't believe I never noticed." Suddenly he remembers something Ron said. "Wait.... You said I was a gent to 'Ginny and all the others...' But there was only Cho before Ginny, right? And I didn't exactly act like a gent toward her, did I?"

"Well, as much as she deserved..." Ron squints. "Merlin, Harry, Hermione said you were thick, but... Uh, you were a quite a heartbreaker these last four years. I mean, you'd known about Ginny, right?"

Harry groaned. "Right. But only because you told me."

"Oh. Well, you were always so respectful to her, and the others, you were the same, so I figured..."

It seems as if Harry's only appropriate response involves cradling his head in his arms. "Who?"

"Well, there were a bunch... But the ones who actually came and talked to me and Hermy... Um. Susan all through fifth year, before she and Neville started up. And Orla Quirke and Daphne Greengrass sixth and seventh. Eloise Midgen. Padma and Parvati had a regular catfight one night while you were training with Dumbledore sixth year. And... uh... yeah. Most of the younger girls in the DA. And a couple of the boys. Theo Nott. Colin."

Harry collapses beneath his own arms, moaning. "Oh, hell. Why didn't the two of you just... I dunno... kick me or something? God! What did Hermione think? What did Ginny think?"

A low grunt of amusement rumbles up from Ron's gut. "Hermione loved it. She got to tell them all what a berk you are." When Harry looks up, pained astonishment on his face, Ron actually laughs. "Come on, of course not. She told them all you were a bit.... distracted. Fighting the Dark Bunghole. And from the time you and Cho had your dust-up about Marietta--oh, she was another one--we both started telling everyone you were in love with someone, but we couldn't say who."

"You what?"

"Harry, you didn't see yourself looking at Ginny. You didn't see the way your face got all white when she invited herself down to the Department of Mysteries. If I hadn't been scared out of my nut, I'd have been dancing for joy."

Now it is Harry's turn to laugh. "Yeah, well, Ginny wasn't exactly dancing, was she? Nearly bit my head off when I tried to tell her..."

"Can you blame her?"

"No. I can't blame her at all." Harry looks over to his friend. "Ron... was, you know, that why you were so angry with me during the whole tournament thing fourth year?"

Shaking his head, Ron still can't manage actually to deny what Harry is saying. "Well...." The eyes look as if they might well up again. Well done, Potter. "Not at first. But yeah, after a bit. It was watching the two of you... I mean, she talked with me too, but she wasn't taking long, cozy walks around the lake with me. I'd sit up in the tower, watching you till you'd go behind the trees, knowing for a fact that she would have done anything for you if you only asked. Wanting to kill you. Wanting to kill her. Wanting to kill myself."

"Ron, god."

"And then that dragon, watching you fly, and she was climbing into my shirt, and--terrified for you, yeah--but really having to concentrate on not wanting to climb into her shirt..." Ron looks up and lets out a long breath. "That's why I couldn't ask her to the Ball. 'Cause I felt like an utter arse as it was. And I knew she... liked you. I figured she'd go with you."

"Ron..."

"I wasn't ready, Harry. Neither was she. By the time we came together... Well, it was time, you know?" With his large mitts he rubs his face emphatically. "Harry... Um. Something stupid. I need you to know."

Steeling himself again for whatever may come, Harry says, "Sure, Ron. What?"

"The ring." A diamond set with rubies on gold: Gryffindor colors. "I asked the Grangers if... if she could be wearing it."

Why is it that, having been weeping at the idea of Hermione's death for the past half hour, the idea of her being lowered into the ground still seems somehow unreal? "Good," Harry mutters.

Ron's hands are working together now, as if trying to clean something from them. "I'll still pay you back."

Oh. Bloody hell. "Ron. You... Don't. The ring is something between you. I don't need the gold."

Ron suddenly seems to swell without having actually moved, as if an engorgement charm has been placed on him. "I pay my debts."

"Of course you bloody do. But Ron, I owe you and Hermione more than all the gold my parents and Sirius left me could ever possibly repay." Harry finds himself talking to his knees now, but he knows his friend is listening intently. "I owe you my life. I owe you more."

The air seems to have leaked out of the gangly redhead again, leaving him lank against the bench. He's staring at an ant that's making it's way through the gravel of the path with a crumb of some sort in its mouth. "Yeah," he says. "Well."

The ant is joined by several others. Someone must have been eating out here on the bench.

With a long sigh, Ron changes the subject. "I feel rotten that I've been so wound up about Hermy that I can't even be fussed to worry about my own brother."

"Ginny's been crying about the same thing, about how she's been so upset about Fred that she hasn't had the room to grieve for Hermione. Or Neville." Only so much room in a human heart, Harry thinks. Even a Weasley heart.

"Merlin," Ron mutters wetly. "Neville. He was bloody brilliant." Thrusting his broken wand through Bellatrix Lestrange's throat before she could cast the Killing Curse on Harry.

Together they watch the ants, dozens of them now, ferrying away miniscule portions of someone's spilled bit of teacake.

So many dead. Not just Hermione, though that's the one that is killing Harry, or Neville, poor brilliant sod. Remus, who died at his old friend Wormtail's silver hand. Peter himself, last of the Marauders, repaying his life debt to Harry by stepping in front of a blast of green light. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Snape, whom Harry had learned to trust too late. Hannah and Dennis and Orla and Blaise from the DA. Greg Goyle, who'd shocked everyone by fighting against his former companions. Even Draco, whom Ron had disemboweled in his moment of glory. And that sick bastard Tom.

Fred, hanging on to life by a thread at St. Mungo's. It's all too much. "Weren't we supposed to be happy?" Harry sighs. "I mean, we won, right?"

"Yeah, we won," Ron says, standing and stretching. "Reckon we'll celebrate some day. But it doesn't seem like the time for it, just now. We'll let other people be happy."

"But we'll be happy later. We will." He stands, feeling the scar on his hip screaming, and Ron looks at him glumly for a moment, then nods. "Come on, Ron," he says, "let's go in. We've got an early morning, tomorrow."