Promises to Keep

"Avada Kedavra!"

Ron stared as his best friend simply stood there as the terrible killing curse was thrown at him. Harry didn't try to duck out of the way, or block it with one of the defense spells he was so good at. He almost smiled as the green light sped toward him. What did he think he was doing?

Ron opened his mouth to cry out to Harry "Duck!" but no words came out. Harry crumpled, lifelessly, to the ground. However, the green light that had so swiftly delivered him to his end was not finished. The curse reflected away from the scar on Harry's forehead back to the one who had sent it. Only as the evil that had represented everything Ron had ever come to fear fell dead upon the ground, did Ron realize that Harry had sacrificed himself to kill Voldemort through the scar that connected them.

It was then that he realized he was screaming.

His last image was one of a masked man pointing a wand at him. Then there was a flash of bright green light, and the world spun away from beneath his feet.

Ron trudged through the snow, starting to feel fatigued, although he hadn't been walking all that long. His legs felt heavy and out of shape, as if he hadn't used them in about twenty years. Which, he reminded himself, he hadn't. He hadn't even had legs for the last twenty years.

The more steps he took, the more Ron understood why most people chose to remain spirits after their death. Very few of them felt that what they had to go back to was worth the trouble of getting back. Being a spirit was so much easier, as you could go anywhere at will-- so long as it was in the confines of the underworld. This confinement was why he'd tried to do the impossible and escape the underworld to be a mortal again. He couldn't just sit there and enjoy being dead while Hermione was out there, waiting for him to keep his promise.

Or was she? A sudden flicker of doubt passed through Ron's mind. He had every bit of faith that Hermione still loved him, but even she wouldn't sit around for two decades waiting for someone she knew to be dead to come back and keep a promise. She would have moved on by now, certainly. She wasn't stupid. Ron placed his hand on the nearest tree trunk and slumped against it. What had he been thinking? Why had he put all this effort into coming back to someone who wouldn't even been waiting for him?

He stared into the softly falling snow blankly for what seemed like hours, never taking a step forward. Finally, fatigue and sorrow overcame him, and he drifted off into a restless sleep.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
-Robert Frost, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening

Hermione sighed. It was going to have to go. She'd made Michael stay after class that afternoon to explain his senseless and continual graffitting of Hogwarts property. His only response had been to calmly and respectfully explain to her that "Professor Granger, I've been sitting at this desk for six years. Every time I come back to class, my carving on the desk is gone, but the other one isn't. I'll stop, when you correct what someone else did, not just my doings."

It had mystified her that someone who she'd always considered her problem student had such a strong sense of justice, and claimed this as his only motivation for breaking the rules, and while she didn't entirely believe this, she had to admit that he had a point. Still, she'd tried to justify leaving Ron's carving there, but her own strong sense of justice had convinced her that she had to get rid of the heart.

She touched her wand to the desk. It was pointless to cry over something so stupid as getting rid of a carving- no, grafitti, it was easier to get rid of it if she thought of it that way- on a desk. And yet, she was. This was the only piece of Ron she had left. She murmured the erasure spell, and it disappeared.