The Corresponding Emotion

"Happy - smile! Sad - frown! Use the corresponding face for the corresponding emotion! -- French Kiss

"I don't reckon I'm going to get to go with you, then," said Ron, watching morosely as Harry haphazardly tossed clothes into his suitcase. A green shirt, a pair of trousers that had seen better days, some socks that Ron knew had a hole in the left toe, a pair of shoes that he probably had while they were in school.

"It's just a plane, Ron," Harry said. A faded Cannons shirt joined the pile of clothes in the suitcase. "You can do it. Muggles do it all the time – and even wizards for transatlantic trips."

"No way." He had a momentary flash of what might happen if a spider sneaked on board one of those flying tin cans. How could you get rid of it? Even if you killed it, it would still be there. And unlike a broom or an enchanted car, there was no controlling a plane.

Ugh.

Harry stuffed a pair of jeans into the suitcase and zipped it. "Look, I'll give you a slug of Dreamless Sleep and a shot of Firewhisky and we'll be there before you know it, I promise."

Ron considered it for about thirty-two seconds. Then Harry's hands snaked around his waist, distracting him as they inched under his shirt and made shivery trails along his skin, and he didn't think about it anymore.

"Don't want to go without you," Harry said.

"Why do you have to go, anyway?" Ron knew he sounded pathetic, but he didn't care. "Can't you just tell them no, and to use the reserve Seeker till this is over?"

Harry's lips brushed across that place on Ron's neck that always made him weak-kneed. "You know it doesn't work that way, Ron. Just get on the plane and come with me, okay? Please?"

I can't, Ron tried to say, but Harry did that brilliant thing with his mouth again and he couldn't say much of anything else.

In the end, he saw Harry off at Heathrow before sulking back to their flat alone.

Ron was waiting by the fireplace when the green Floo fire flashed to life at exactly ten o'clock.

"Hey, mate," Harry said, his face hovering in the flames. "It's brilliant here, really. Wish you were here – the flying's great. And oh – Quodpot – almost as good as Quidditch. I swear. Didn't think it could be all that fun without a Snitch, but it's incredible."

"Really?" Ron didn't think Quodpot sounded like much fun from the description in Quidditch Through The Ages, but he'd take Harry's word for it. "Look, Harry, the Prophet owled again about another interview, I told them you would talk to them when you got back – "

"Sorry," said Harry, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "The rest of the team wants to go out for a bit, they're dragging me off, gotta go – love you –" and then his face disappeared from the flames with a small pop that left Ron feeling strangely empty.

"Sorry," said Harry, when his face appeared in the fireplace. "I was downstairs with the team and lost track of time. All right?"

"Yeah," said Ron, not wanting to admit he'd been picking at the mortar in the bricks beside the fireplace for the last twenty minutes, waiting for Harry. "Er, about that Prophet interview, they owled again today, and I told them you'd be home next week and not to owl again till then. And Hermione says hullo, and so does Ginny."

"Next week, yeah," said Harry. He turned around and yelled something over his shoulder to someone behind him that Ron couldn't quite see, then turned back around. "Look, I've got to run, but I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

"But –"

Harry was already gone.

When the fireplace finally whooshed to life, Ron nearly fell off his chair.

"Harry?" he said, kneeling in front of the fireplace. "Harry – what's wrong?"

Harry looked awful. To be more precise, he looked like he was having the time of his life, but felt incredibly guilty for it. His hair was tousled, his glasses askew, and his robes crooked, but there was a slightly giddy air about him that was very disorienting. Ron couldn't remember a time when he'd seen Harry giddy. "I – I fucked up. Ron, I really fucked up."

"What? You fucked up? What do you mean, you fucked up?" Ron stuck his head into the fire as much as possible, not sure he'd heard Harry correctly. "What happened?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. He looked like he was trying not to vomit. "I – er – I met someone. She's brilliant, Ron. And I'm in love with her."

"Her? What? Met someone? A girl? What?" Ron stuck a finger in his ear, trying to dig out what he thought surely must be soot or earwax or maybe even a root beer Every Flavour Bean, because he could not have possibly heard Harry say he'd just met a girl. "Harry, talk to me. What did you just say?"

"I'm in love, Ron. And I'm not coming back to England." Harry opened his eyes, looking right at Ron, and his eyes were full of this slightly crazed light that Ron didn't think was entirely attributable to the Floo flames. "I have to get away from it all... and this girl... Jennifer... she's amazing. D'you know she has no idea who I am? She's never heard of Voldemort – stop that, it's just a name and he's dead, anyway! – or Harry Potter, or anything else. She just likes me for me, you know? And... oh God, it's fucking brilliant."

Ron's eyes started burning, and he ducked his head out of the fireplace for a moment.

"Ron... you okay?"

"Soot in my eye," said Ron, rubbing it fiercely.

Harry pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Look, I have to go... I'm sorry..."

Ron bent over, pressing his forehead to the rough brick of the hearth for a very long time.

Ron watched the smiling woman in the uniform at the front of the plane with a growing sense of panic. He was crammed into the tiny space allocated to his seat, with his knees smushed into the back of the seat in front of him and his elbows sticking out everywhere they shouldn't be. He couldn't make out a word she was saying, even though he knew it had to be seven shades of important, because he was so far at the back of the plane and everyone was talking and no one would just shut up. Finally he gave up and leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes and wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans.

"Oh no, I'm not sitting there," said an all-too-familiar voice.

Ron opened his eyes to see the pale, pointed face of Draco Malfoy sneering down at him.

As if this day could not get any worse, he thought miserably.

"I'm sorry, sir, this is the last seat available," said the stewardess. "Please have a seat; we're next in line for takeoff."

"But this is coach!" said Malfoy furiously. "I paid for first class!"

"First class is booked," said the stewardess, obviously ready to get on with things. "You'll get a refund as soon as we land, but please, sir, have a seat or I will be forced to call security."

Ron could not summon up the energy to be nasty to Malfoy, or to wonder why Malfoy was even on a Muggle airplane in the first place because he was too busy thinking about the 'next in line for takeoff' part. He was really on a plane, smushed in this tiny little space with all these strangers and worst of all Draco Malfoy, and a thick, hot panic was weighing down on his chest and threatening to smother him. There was no way he was going to make it through this, he was going to have to get off the plane and go and beg Hermione to figure out how to make a transatlantic Portkey, he was just not going to be able to do this –

"You're not scared to fly, are you, Weasley?" Malfoy smirked, sliding into the seat next to Ron.

"No," Ron lied. He pulled down the little shade over the window to block out the sight of the scenery moving by as they taxied out onto the runway.

"You look scared to me." Malfoy reached over him and flipped the shade back up. "You're all white under those disgusting freckles, and your nose is twitching."

Ron rubbed his nose. "It is not!"

"So your nose always looks like that?"

"Yes," said Ron angrily. "I mean, no, it doesn't, because it's not twitching."

"Whatever, Weaselby." Malfoy stretched a bit, getting comfortable in his seat. "I think you're scared. You haven't got Potter here to look after you, have you? So of course you're scared. Not surprising you're afraid of flying, really, as bad a Quidditch player as you were in school."

"Shut the fuck up, Malfoy," said Ron, clutching his knees until his knuckles turned white.

Malfoy closed his eyes, leaning back in his seat and humming "Weasley is Our King" under his breath. Ron was pretty sure it was the Slytherin version of that particular ditty, and he could see little black spots forming at the corners of his vision from his anger.

"Look, if I have to sit beside you all the way to the United Fucking States, then you better just keep your mouth to yourself before you find it hexed off," Ron spat. "I'm not listening to your shit for the next nine hours, so you might as well –"

Malfoy sat straight up and pointed to the window. "Look."

They were in the air.

And it actually wasn't too bad.