Bittersweet

BITTERSWEET

Through the smoke enshrouded forest Harry walked like a man possessed. Though he was limping, he ignored the biting pain that was radiating up his leg with every step, anxious to find his erstwhile and currently missing companions. Bangs and shouts echoed ahead of him like the last cry of a lamentation and Harry quickened his pace, attempting to reach the disturbance and discover where his friends were. His wand was slick with the sweat and blood of his own hand, but the oozing gash on his forearm went unnoticed at he focused intently upon his goal.

Eventually, after dodging yet another volley of curses sent by unseen pursuers, Harry found what he was looking for. Someone was lying behind a nearby bramble of bushes with their arms and legs turned awkwardly akimbo, and Harry recognized the flaming red hair immediately - it was Ron. Ron was breathing shallowly as he lay uncomfortably on his side, and Harry gingerly flipped him on his back, cautiously inspecting him for further injuries. Harry had heard Ron's labored breathing and had been feeling carefully for broken ribs when the cloud cover abruptly shifted overhead, bathing the clearing with silvery moonlight and exposing a grisly scene.

The entire length of Ron's lanky torso had been ripped into and savaged ferociously, and Harry yanked his hand back in horror, realizing that it had already become coated in his best mate's blood. The sight of a snake's fangs dripping with venom involuntarily entered Harry's mind's eye, and he knew instinctively that it was Voldemort's last Horcrux that was responsible for his friend's predicament. Ron's breaths were beginning to take on an ominously bubbling sound now, but Harry denied what that had to mean as he raised his wand with a trembling hand.

"Ron, stay with me, okay. Stay with me, you'll be all right. Episkey!" he yelled commandingly, but the wounds continued to gape openly in the filtered light. Harry tried the spell again, feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach that he refused to acknowledge, but the blood staining the thick layers of Ron's clothing only seemed to leak out more persistently.

"No, Ron," Harry mouthed wildly, beginning to feel a small surge of anger. "You're not going anywhere! I can't do this without you!" At this Ron coughed and gagged horribly, and Harry froze as he gazed down at him, willing this terrible thing to stop - wishing he could change this, that he could go back and make sure that it never happened. Somehow, however, Ron found the strength to speak.

"You have to go on, Harry," he whispered, barely audible. "This has always been about you."

"But... but," Harry muttered incoherently, feeling powerless and hopeless and full of despair, but Ron was trying to say something else.

"T-tell Hermione I love her, okay," Ron mumbled, but Harry was shaking his head vehemently, adamantly protesting what was now becoming inevitable. "Tell her, Harry. You h-have to tell her."

"It's going to be fine, Ron. You're going to be fine," Harry said as though he hadn't heard him. He could not accept the enormity of the truth lying in front of him - it was simply too much to handle.

"Find G-Ginny. Go b-back to her and m-marry her, Harry," Ron continued unsteadily. "S-She loves you." Ron's voice dissolved into another violent coughing fit then, and Harry's heart clenched with the weight of the despair that was descending upon the both of them.

"Okay," Harry croaked out at last, as his eyes began to sting and a lump he could no longer ignore edged upwards in his throat. But Ron's pained gasps where growing further and further apart with each lapsing second, and Harry impulsively grabbed him by the shoulders as if by holding him down he could somehow keep him alive. "Ron, don't go..." Harry begged quietly, hating the pleading tone of his voice, "Ron?"

But Ron had fallen utterly silent. Harry eagerly touched his neck hoping to find a pulse, but his heartbeat had become still - his spirit, everything that had made Ron Ron was gone. From someplace deep inside, Harry felt a howl of rage, loss, and grief tearing its way out of him - and as the pent up tears started to course down his face Harry screamed louder than he had ever screamed before, giving voice to his misery and the agony he now had no choice but to feel.

"No... no... no... NO!"

"Harry?" someone was saying softly. "Harry, love, wake up. Wake up now - it's only a dream."

Harry nearly jumped out of the bed as a small warm hand touched his cold bare shoulder; but as soon as he realized it was Ginny, he grabbed onto her, holding her so tightly against him that Ginny took a sudden intake of breath.

"Are you all right, love?" she asked, as she looked him carefully in the face.

"Ginny?" Harry mumbled, unsure.

"Yes, Harry, it's me."

Seeing the familiar red hair and brown eyes that he loved so much, Harry felt his wife's presence and knew he should be comforted by it, but instead something awful happened. For the first time since that unspeakably horrendous night - the worst night of Harry's life, he felt the anguish and pain of Ron's loss overwhelm him, and he turned away from Ginny as he struggled to suppress it, literally shaking with the effort.

"Harry, look at me," she told him gently as she lifted his chin and noticed the tears that were getting ready to fall. "It's okay to cry, you know. Sometimes it's better to let go of whatever's bothering you."

Harry fought valiantly for a few more moments and then rapidly pushed his face into her shoulder - trying to muffle the noise of the wracking sobs that were shuddering their way through his body. And for some unknown reason, he began to realize that it would be useless to lie to Ginny or to try to protect her from this. Somehow his wife just knew - somehow, when it came to him, she had always known.

Two years before that night, Ron Weasley had fallen sacrificially on the battlefield - a casualty in a war that should never have been started. Harry had tracked down Hermione to find her severely wounded but amongst the living, and once she was safely ensconced at St. Mungo's, Harry had gone on to finish the fulfillment of his destiny. The end of Lord Voldemort had happened quickly considering the arduous journey leading up to it, but the resultant explosion had injured Harry so grievously that he had remained trapped within a coma for almost a month.

Afterwards, Harry discovered that all the dead had been buried and memorialized, and he was left to pick up the shattered pieces of his life without any real sense of closure. For months and months, Harry refused to mourn Ron's loss, bottling it up inside of himself so thoroughly that it nearly destroyed him and everyone around him. Hermione had had to spend some time in the psychiatric ward of St. Mungo's before her depression became controllable enough for her to manage by herself, but even she had coped with Ron's death better than Harry had.

It was then that Harry discovered the true strength of the woman he loved. Although Ginny was mourning her youngest brother as well, she had insisted on staying stubbornly by Harry's side - keeping him sane and whole despite his own intentions to do otherwise. Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley became husband and wife within weeks of this initial breakthrough, but Harry was still having trouble learning to deal with his remaining demons.

After a good quarter of an hour, Harry's weeping began to subside a little, and he pulled back from his wife, feeling foolish and ashamed. No one else - besides Hermione, if he was honest, had had the same kind of difficulty coping with the repercussions of the war, and he felt like an emotional invalid sometimes - and worse, a bad husband. Ginny had held and soothed him until he was capable of settling down once more, but when he looked into her face and saw how red and swollen it was, he knew he had failed her - how could he have been so selfish?

"I'm sorry, Ginny," he muttered in low tones, wondering why in the world she would stay with someone as pathetic and flawed as he was. "I can't seem to do anything without hurting you." At these words, however, Ginny's eyes flashed menacingly at him and when she spoke it was in the same sharp voice that reminded him so much of her mother.

"You listen to me, Harry Potter, and you listen well," she ordered fiercely, looking like a tiger getting ready to pounce. "I love you more than anything and I'm never ever going to leave you, but would you please do me a favor and quit feeling so guilty about letting me help you?"

"But I made you cry," Harry began, apologetically, but Ginny interrupted him.

"So I'm not allowed to cry - is that it?"

"Of course you're allowed to cry, I just don't want to be the cause of it," Harry said, trying to clarify his meaning, but at that point, he didn't really know what his meaning was anyway.

"So I should express whatever emotion I want to without limit, but you can't - at least not without feeling bad about it afterwards?"

"Er..."

"I can have a raging tantrum, throw our dinner across the kitchen, kick in the back door, bewitch plates to demolish themselves, and jinx anyone I like as long as it's me acting the prat and not you?" Ginny shouted, her face furious.

"Well, no. I don't want..." Harry started again, but his wife wasn't about to give him leverage.

"Then why do you think you have to be so damned perfect?"

"I'm about as far from perfect as you can get," Harry contradicted her, and then shook his head. He had no idea why they were having this row.

"Well, so am I," Ginny said triumphantly, her eyes alight with significance, but Harry still didn't understand.

"I know you're trying to tell me something, Ginny, but for the life of me I can't figure what." Ginny gave him an irritated glance, but then relented.

"I'm trying to tell you to be human, you great git," she said, but without any real malice.

"I was human last time I checked," Harry put in.

"Then don't be so afraid to act like it. Life sucks sometimes. It's okay to express that. I think this is the first time you've openly cried in front of me since Dumbledore's funeral, and I don't want you to apologize for it."

"Oh," he mumbled. He thought he had done a better job of hiding his grief as that funeral than he actually had, apparently.

"I just want you to let me be there for you, Harry. I mean, we're in this together aren't we?"

"Yes," Harry agreed, feeling chastened and chagrined. Ginny then got up to go into the loo, and Harry laid back in the bed, noting the fact that his head was stuffy and his eyes felt as though he been out unprotected in a sandstorm. When she returned, she was carrying a couple of cool damp cloths in her hands, and Harry gazed at her inquisitively pondering what they were for.

"Here," she said, offering one to him, "put it across your eyes and the swelling will start to go away." Harry did as he was told and was rewarded by the temporary alleviation of the tightness around his eyes. He was just beginning to relax enough to fall back to sleep when Ginny spoke up once more, "I just wish you would trust me sometimes. It would make things so much easier."

Harry sat up briskly and squinted at her, letting the cloth fall off the bed. "But I do trust you."

"You have nightmares all the time, though I think this one was worse than most - but you've never even once told me what's in them."

"I didn't want to upset you," he countered, quietly.

"Well, upset or not, I would feel better if you would share what's going on inside of that vastly frustrating head of yours," she maintained, pressing her own cloth across her face with more force than was strictly necessary.

"I thought you could read my mind," he offered jokingly, trying to lighten the mood slightly.

"I'll admit I'm pretty good at reading you, Harry, but things like this usually have to be discussed before you can make your peace with them," Ginny replied seriously, still under the cloth. Harry swallowed and then sighed heavily.

"It's about Ron, Ginny." His wife sat up and stared at him with a familiarly blazing look on her face.

"Will you tell me?"

That night Harry and Ginny Potter stayed up until dawn as Harry recounted his memory in sordid and unpleasant detail. More than once he had to slow down or stop to gather himself together and more than once Ginny's eyes streamed with tears again, but in the end they both felt a sense of relief - even if the pain would probably never dull entirely. The next morning as the sun rose pink within a purple sky, they each realized that everything would ultimately be all right and took comfort in the knowledge that wherever he was, Ron Weasley was smiling down upon them.

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