Rating:
PG-13
House:
The Dark Arts
Ships:
Harry Potter/Ron Weasley
Characters:
Harry Potter Ron Weasley
Genres:
Angst Romance
Era:
Harry and Classmates Post-Hogwarts
Spoilers:
Half-Blood Prince
Stats:
Published: 12/15/2005
Updated: 12/15/2005
Words: 1,009
Chapters: 1
Hits: 740

Love Says Nothing

Evette

Story Summary:
The war is over, but life keeps on going. [Harry & Ron after the war. Ten exactly 100 word drabbles]

Chapter 01 - Love Says Nothing

Posted:
12/15/2005
Hits:
740
Author's Note:
Many thanks to netweight, claudia79ad, and fabricatedvoice for the beta work


Harry stands across from him at the graveside. The sunlight seems to be mocking them. Harry puts his hand over his eyes and looks at the grave simply marked 'Hermione Jane Granger.' Everyone is pale and silent.

Hours later he finds Ron standing there.

"It's getting dark," Harry says, fumbling for words that don't seem to exist.

Ron nods and turns to walk up the hill. Harry hears the pop a few seconds later. When he finally returns to The Burrow, Ron is already in his bed, facing the wall with the bright orange blanket pulled up over his head.

***

The night after the funeral, Ron stops sleeping. Sometimes, Harry hears hard sobs coming from his friend's bed. It's just the two of them now, alone together, sitting up and staring at the ceiling. He pretends he doesn't hear him; there's nothing he can do. He waits until morning, as Ron is pulling on his robes. Harry stands in the doorway looking at his friend's pale face, dark circles beneath his blue eyes.

"I'm sorry," he says plainly. It's something he thinks a lot lately. Ron doesn't respond; he just looks at Harry for a second and walks past him.

***

Luna, Ginny, and Neville visit, but it seems wrong to celebrate. They sit in Harry and Ron's small apartment listening to the wireless. They don't speak, the words are too hard to find and come out sharp and painful.

Harry can't look at them; Ginny with her hand on Neville's lap and Neville sitting in a wheel chair. Luna's slightly dazed look drinking everything in makes him hyperaware. His eyes get hot with tears and he sits in his bedroom until they leave. Ron talks to them.

There's so much space between them; he thinks that's what hurts the most.

***

They manage to exist around each other. Ron passes his Auror training and Harry takes a job at a grocer's. They leave stains from pizza sauce and beer on the sofa. Somehow they manage to pretend there's life going on in between their four walls.

Harry watches Ron, the way his entire body takes over the sofa and how his lips move as he reads. He can watch Ron, be near Ron and not think of all these other things. He can exist around Ron and not be Harry anymore. Maybe, in time, Ron will forget that Harry exists, too.

***

Ron looks at him, throwing the bottle of firewhiskey down on the table so hard it cracks, spilling what remains all over the living room floor.

"She loved me," Ron says, his voice cracking.

Harry wants to fix all these broken things. Ron's mouth opens and Harry leans in. He presses hard against Ron's lips, soft and hot. He doesn't know what he's doing, but this makes Ron stop talking and it lets Harry stop thinking.

"I love you," he whispers as he slides his hand beneath Ron's shirt. He knows that it's not the same; he wishes it was.

***

They both feel more alive when they've got their bodies tangled up together. Ron's long legs wrap around Harry, his chin pressing into his shoulder. They just lay in silence staring out the window.

"Sometimes you talk in your sleep," Ron says softly.

Harry never remembers sleeping; he feels like he never rests.

"I bet I'm bloody fascinating when I'm unconscious," Harry says, and Ron plants a kiss on his shoulder.

"Yeah, mate." In the morning, he wakes up with Ron's arms wrapped around him, but it's someone else's name that slips from Ron's sleeping mouth.

Harry never mentions this.

***

Ron comes with a harsh moan, his hips bucking. Harry leaves bruises on freckled skin. It's not just in bed, in the daytime it's a constant battle. Each one fighting off all the ghosts the other one's dragging behind him.

Ron will never see that people other than Hermione can love him too, that he can survive with an empty hole inside him. Harry wants to fill that up, to make better at least one of his mistakes. Instead, they just move around one another, trying to fill the desperate silence and to feel alive with what's left of them.

***

It's hard sometimes when they sit together to not pretend that this isn't how it's supposed to be. That the five of them aren't missing things, that they're not defined by absence and negative space.

Harry holds Ron's hand beneath the table and they even manage big smiles and loud laughter. Ginny and Neville buy them drinks and during coffee Luna has Ron rolling with a story about a man in Africa that had been attacked by a gang of wild Pixies.

It's not until they get home and it's just them again that they remember how wrong everything is.

***

Ginny wants to know if Harry loves him, and without doubt he answers yes. Harry loves Ron. He's his friend, he's his, he's there. Yet, when they sit alone at night watching television and hardly exchange a word, or fuck so hard that Harry has bruises the next morning, it feels strange to call this love. Ginny looks at him hard for a moment.

"Things never get better do they?" she says biting her lip. Her eyes wander to Ron and Neville. Harry nods a bit. He supposes that's the problem. The war is over, but life keeps on going.

***

Years go by and this is their ritual now.

Harry finds Ron standing at her graveside.

"It's not just her, you know?" Ron says as Harry comes next to him. He nods. They stand there for a while and Ron's hand tightens around Harry's.

"She was just different. She was..." in his head Harry finishes 'ours.' She was their friend. She loved them and they loved her and it left them void and hurting.

Harry leans against Ron, his chin resting against Ron's chest and this is how they exist, propping the other up and reminding the other to breathe.