The Lost Boys

Absence of Faith

When Ron was eight his mother forgot him in Diagon Alley and did not realize for three hours he had been left behind. That was when they got the clock that pinpointed everyone's locations. When he was nine he ran away for three days and hid in a shed in the back of the yard and Fred and George snuck him food. In the end he got tired and came back and there was no hero's welcome waiting for him; the note on his desk was unopened, and no one had even noticed his bed had not been slept in. He is not surprised, really, that they did not miss him: he has always been rather on the edge of things. Bill is the oldest and Charlie is a drama queen and Percy is perfect and the twins have each other and Ginny is the only girl. Ron is just another face at meal times, no more conspicuous by his absence than for his presence.

Ron had hoped that when he got old enough to go to Hogwarts things would be different but they weren't. His parents seemed to have forgotten he existed. At the last minute there was a desperate scramble to put together a trunk for him--secondhand robes, secondhand wand, secondhand rat even--before they packed him off. And how is it that they have managed to make him feel guilty for wanting the same things the others had had?

Neglect can be as much a form of abuse as any violence, as the cruelest words. The day Ron began to realize this was the third day of summer after his fifth year, when his father came home from the office with a scowling Snape and a silent Draco Malfoy, and Fred said something rude about strays and his mother sent them all to their rooms. After that Draco lived with them. He was given Ron's room, and Ron was made to bunk in with Percy. ("Honestly, Ron," his mother snapped when he dared to complain, "Draco's been through a lot and he needs his privacy, and besides Percy's hardly ever here.") In truth, if Draco had been anyone else, and if Ron's parents had not spent so much time fussing over their newest child, Ron might have been rather sorry for him.

Draco drifted through their house like a ghost of himself, polite and quiet, and Ron's mother made him special meals he did not eat and ironed his clothes with lavender and plied him with tea and cushions and sweets. His father said she clucked over him like a hen with one chick but she wasn't a hen and she had she had Ron and Ginny, Fred and George, and Percy on weekends. Ron rather hated himself, sometimes, for being so jealous. The truth, though, was that she had never shown so much interest in him. Often, in fact, she called him by the wrong name--Fred-Percy-Charlie-Ron, and once or twice, George-Ginny-Ron. It was as if the mere fact of his existence somehow surprised her.

Midway through the summer, on what was surely the hottest day yet, Ron's mother sent Ron and Draco out to do their homework in the sun. Ron complained bitterly, and even Draco ventured some slight protest (by saying that he'd done his homework the first week, but still) and she sent them out anyway. By the time they came back, sunburnt and miserable and on the verge of quarreling, Harry had been installed in Ron's father's study. Ron's mother was too busy to make them dinner, too busy to look over their Potions essays, to help them find the aloe, to even look them in the face. When she had gone, Draco looked at Ron, and for the first time there was sympathy on his face. "She's something else," he said softly, and Ron had the feeling he should be defending her but he was suddenly too sad to bother.