The Road You Take Don't Always Lead You Home

Ron Weasley punched in the seven-digit combination and heard the buzz as the front door of the building opened. He pushed inside and hurried past the front desk.

"Old Red's out now too," someone grumbled as he passed, so he turned towards the stairs and hurried up ten flights.

"We've got to get a new flat," he puffed as he unlocked the door and let himself into the little flat he called home until he could find a better word for it, or a better flat.

Harry Potter, who was sprawled on a ratty old sofa with a book, looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Hello to you too."

"Hello, Harry." Ron collapsed onto the threadbare armchair. "Both the elevators are out. Again."

"Yeah, I noticed." Harry shook his head. "Maybe you're right--maybe it is time we thought about getting a new place. It feels like we've been here forever, though, doesn't it? And it's only been, what, two years?"

"'Only', he says."

"Have you ever talked to Mrs. Button?"

"Not if I can help it."

"She's been here since she was eighteen, and she's eighty-something now."

"Point taken." Ron sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess we had our reasons for moving in, huh?"

"Sure," Harry shrugged. "Just like we had our reasons for moving in anywhere else. But still, you have to change buses how many times to get back and forth?"

"Four--twice each way."

"You see my point then. We could probably find someplace closer to the university."

Ron sighed again. "This would be loads easier if I could just Apparate."

Harry didn't say anything. This was an old topic and one neither man discussed often. Ron had been hit by a spell that had rendered him unable to Apparate; the last time he had tried, he had wound up doubled over in pain, coughing up blood and unable to breathe. The experience had left him with silver strands in his flaming red hair. Harry, on the other hand, could Apparate--he had a license, anyway--and simply chose not to. The last time he had Apparated, it had been in the last few minutes of Dumbledore's life, when the two had returned from retrieving the false Horocrux. More and more the two men had come to rely on Muggle transportation; Harry had a broomstick, but his job was smack in the middle of the biggest Muggle city in England, and it was too much to hope he wouldn't be noticed. Ron took one of several buses to Moonshine University, or as near to it as he could get; Harry usually took the Underground into London. They had previously owned an old car, but it had bit the dust after only a few months and they hadn't bothered replacing it.

As he turned the page of his book, Harry reflected that life had thrown both of them an awful lot of curves. He and Ron were almost indistinguishable as the boys they had been years before. At fifteen, both had told Professor McGonagall they fancied being Aurors. After Voldemort's defeat, however, they had both quietly put such dreams behind them. Ron had helped out at Fred and George's joke shop for a couple of years; however, Fred, who had been crippled during the last battle, died two years later from complications and George had sold the shop. Ron had worked at the apothecary's for a few more years until he heard about Moonshine University, the world's first wizarding university. He'd scraped together some funds, applied for a scholarship, sat the entrance exams, and been accepted. He had spent three years studying the basics--one year catching up on his final year at Hogwarts, which he hadn't been able to take, and two years on the college frosh-soph program--then entered a Magizoology program, in honour of Hagrid. Harry, for his part, had worked at Flourish and Blott's for a few years while he went through training, then taken a job as a Healer at St. Mungo's. This was in part due to Remus Lupin, who was tied to a bed in the Janus Thickey ward, struggling with an insanity brought upon by a spell in the same battle that had crippled Fred and killed so many others, the battle in which Voldemort had been vanquished. By working in the hospital, Harry was able to be near the man, to take care of him the way Remus had taken care of Harry for so long.

Although neither man talked about it, they had both had enough of fighting evil to last them a lifetime. Harry, in fact, had had enough to last him several lifetimes. They desperately wanted to get back to a normal lifestyle.

Ron looked over at Harry, seeming as he often did to guess his friend's thoughts. "Far cry from the dreams we used to have as kids of our adult lives, huh?"

Harry half-chuckled. "Yeah...back when we thought we'd all be Aurors."

Ron gave a sad smile. "And back when it seemed like Hermione would always be there. I can't tell you how weird it is to come--in the door--and start doing homework without her nagging me to get it done."

Harry didn't fail to notice that Ron had deliberately refrained from referring to their flat as "home"; Harry didn't think it felt very much like a home either. "It's pretty weird watching you do homework and not really having any to do myself, and not having Hermione nag at me to do something productive, too."

Ron laughed, but neither man felt very jolly at the moment. Hermione wasn't dead, although sometimes Harry privately thought it would be better if she was. In the final battle with Voldemort, Harry had been pretty badly injured and fallen into a coma that had lasted several days. Ron had lost almost his entire family; only Percy, George, and for a brief time Fred had survived. While Ron groped around, lost and desperately frightened, and Harry had walked the fine line between life and death, sometimes tottering one way and sometimes the other, Hermione had vanished. No one was sure where she had gone or why; the only clue was a note she had left for Ron and Harry, telling them she loved them both but needed to be on her own for a while. They hadn't seen her since.

Ron sighed and pulled a book out of his school bag, then slid to the floor and began setting his things out on the low coffee table between the armchair and the sofa. All the furniture had come with the flat; there simply wasn't room to squeeze anything else in. Besides the living room set, there was a single bed, one dresser, a small closet, and a kitchenette with just enough room for a sink, a small counter, a mini fridge, and a microwave oven. There was an old-fashioned record player George had given them for Christmas the year they turned twenty in the living room, sitting on a small side-table; under the table were two boxes: one mostly filled with John Denver records, the other with musicals.

After a few minutes, Ron looked up. "Can you put something in, Harry?"

"Sure." Harry placed his book face down on the coffee table. "What are you in the mood for?"

"John Denver?"

"Coming right up." Harry busied himself with the record player. A few moments later, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" began playing. Ron nodded, smiled, and returned to his assignment. Harry picked his book up again, resumed his place on the sofa, and continued reading.

Finally, Harry looked up again. "I meant to ask...how was your day?"

Ron looked up from his papers. "Not bad. I ran into Justin between classes and he asked me to remind you that we're meeting at the rink at three tomorrow. We had lunch--yes, Harry, I actually had time for lunch today--and then he went off to his Transfiguration class." He rolled his shoulders to loosen them. "Rugen was an arse again, but that's hardly unusual...what about you? How was yours?"

Harry shrugged. "Same as usual. I worked with Neville in Dai Llewellyn today."

"That's creature bites, right?"

"Right. Not much chance for idle chit-chat, but he reminded me about the skating rink too." Harry shook his head, a slightly faraway look coming into his emerald green eyes. "There was this little girl...couldn't have been more than five, six years old. She'd been bitten by a doxy...God, she was terrified. While I was helping her, she looked up at me and asked if she was going to die. I told her no, doxy bites aren't fatal, and that we'd take care of her. Cute little thing."

Ron bit back a smile. Harry had a soft spot for kids. "Is she still there?"

"In Dai Llewellyn?" Harry shook his head. "They moved her down to Orla Quirke."

Ron frowned. "That's..."

"The children's ward."

"Oh. Right."

They fell silent for a while longer. Harry turned the record over and resumed his place in his book. Ron, armed with a highlighter and quill pen, marked relevant passages in his book and took notes on a sheet of parchment. As the third song on the record started up, Ron looked up from his work again.

"Do you ever feel like she betrayed us?" he asked suddenly.

"Like who betrayed us?" Harry asked, only half-listening as he turned the page.

"Hermione."

Harry looked up sharply, interest in the book forgotten. "What brings that up?"

Ron bit his lip and looked down at his work. "It's just...I came across something we found that time we were researching hippogriff mauling cases, to help Buckbeak. I just wondered."

Harry hesitated. "I'm not sure. Why, do you?"

Ron hesitated as well, then nodded. "I mean...all those years...we both knew how insecure she was. She tried to cover it up by being the best, always climbing higher...and dragging us along after her. But sometimes...sometimes she fell, but we were always there to catch her and get her on her feet again, remember?" Harry nodded. "We were always there when she needed us. It just seems like...I dunno..."

"Like right when we needed her the most, she vanished," Harry completed quietly. Ron nodded. "I understand how you feel, Ron. And I do feel the same way. I'd just never thought about it before, not really." He half-smiled. "Interesting, isn't it? Here we are, nearly thirty years old, having spent a significant part of the last few years rebuilding our lives without her...and we're only just now getting around to admitting what shook our lives apart all those years ago."

Ron chuckled. "I guess we felt like we didn't need to discuss it very much...we kind of understood that neither of us was really ready to talk about it."

"I guess so." Harry picked his book up again. "Still, I'd say we're doing pretty well without her."

"I guess so." Ron bent his head and returned to his homework.