Brain Damage

Brain Damage

Chapter one

~*~*~

It was cold on the floor, and it hurt, but you kept laughing and thinking of the strange room and the planets spinning wildly around a brightly burning model of the sun. There was a curse that hit you right between the eyes and the ground that hit you right in the back when you fell, and for a few seemingly endless moments, you laid there gasping for breath and seeing nothing but black and tiny points of pale light like stars or the hundreds of glowing prophesies you passed earlier that night. You remember voices and walking and falling again onto ground even harder than before, and when the colors return and your vision slowly swims back into focus, Harry's right in front of you, shining brighter than any of the other lights, and you grab at his robes, and you tell him he looks funny, and you reach out to touch his face, but your hand never quite makes it there.

He hoists you up somehow, and he drags you a few steps as you laugh and tell him about the things you see and the things you saw until something very different catches your attention-- a tank full of water that might not be water at all and some very odd looking fish that definitely aren't really fish. "Hey!" you shout, staggering to your feet and feeling a laugh well up past the blood that's filling your mouth. "Hey Harry, there are brains in here. Isn't that weird, Harry?"

"Ron," Harry says. "Get out of the way, get down--"

But Harry always thinks he's right, and he's wanted you out of the way more and more lately, and he's not even looking. You want him to believe you. "Brains," you whisper, but he doesn't hear you or pretends he doesn't, so you point your wand at the tank. "Honest, Harry, they're brains- look- Accio brain!" You watch as one of the brains lurches slowly out of the water and arches through the air, jolting from side to side, and Harry's hardly even glancing at it-- hardly even glancing at you. "Harry, look at it," you say. "Harry, come and touch it-- bet it's weird." And the words hardly find their way through your laughter, and the brain lands in your arms or on your arms, and you start to see bright memories flashing before your eyes, memories that aren't really yours.

"RON, NO!" Harry shouts and moves a few steps toward you, and the brain's tentacles reach out and wrap themselves around your arms, and its thoughts wrap themselves around your mind, gently at first and then harder and then so hard you can barely manage to breathe.

"Harry, look what's happen-- No-- no-- I don't like it-- no, stop-- stop!" Their grip on you tightens even more, and you feel like you're being suffocated, and you watch as Harry tries a spell, just one spell, and it should work, because that's why Harry had those lessons with Snape-- so he could learn to fight other brains-- so he could beat them, but his spell doesn't work. It doesn't change anything at all, and you watch as the Death Eaters come in a swirl of black robes and white masks and curses flying through the air.

And you fight the brain and its tentacles yourself, and you fall to the ground, still fighting and digging your fingernails in and trying to push and kick and scream them away, and Harry's gone, and the Death Eater's are gone with him, and you're alone on the floor of the brain room, and when the brain's grip is too strong around your arms, and when its thoughts are so evenly threaded through you mind that you can't shake them away, no matter how you try, and when you can't hold it off any longer, you pretend to keep fighting. You pretend incase anyone's watching. You pretend, because you don't want anyone to know that you shouldn't have come here or anyone to think that you're somehow less of whatever you should be than they are or anyone to realize that you've actually given up long ago, but that doesn't really matter, because there isn't anyone around to hear your choked screams or to watch as you're stabbed by the sharp points at the ends of the tentacles, and you scream one last time for Harry to come before a tentacle wraps itself around your neck to silence you, and you can't see anything except the stars blooming behind your eyelids or feel anything except the horrible pain in your head and the way the tentacles are pushing down through your skin.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There is white everywhere when you wake up, and the white bends along the lines of faint shadows and twists in towards you. You will remember these moments, you know, even dizzy from the discordant screaming in your mind and the speed of the blood rushing through you veins, you will remember the bright lights above your head and the tentacles throbbing and curling beneath your skin and a smell far too clean to be comfortable.

"Where's Potter?" you hear asked, and you will remember that voice too-- strained and scared and shaking. "Where's Potter?"

You blink, and you look from side to side and then lift up the sheet that covers your legs and peer under it. "Not here," you say, scratching at your bandages and feeling like you're about to laugh. "He's certainly not here, not like Ha--Harr--the bloody boy-who-lived to get hurt by Vol--Vold-- bloody you-know-who. That's not like him at all, is it?"

"I've just received a letter from one of the ministry owls," the voice says, and Malfoy steps in past the white and keeps talking, oblivious to the fact that he's just appeared out of nothing. "It says that says my father's being taken to Azkaban."

The white spins, and Malfoy stays still, and you laugh, feeling like you've been flipped over and everything looks different and wrong. You manage to stop, though, when and catch the look in Malfoy's eyes, and you think maybe it's the whole world that has been turned upside-down, but that's rather silly too, or maybe it's terrifying, you're not sure which.

"Think it's funny, do you, Weasel? Think its funny what happened to my father?"

You wonder if maybe you couldn't see Malfoy at first because he's so pale and the hospital wing is so white. You don't know what it's like not to be seen-- your red hair and your freckles have always taken care of that, but you know what it's like not to be noticed. "Your father looks just like you. All Malfoys . . . all the same."

"What are you talking about?" he asks, climbing up onto your bed and pressing his wand into your neck, and you're still dizzy, and it's still funny, but there's pain in your arms that spikes when the tentacles move and a steady ache in your head that doesn't relent, no matter how you try to think of other things. "Tell me what happened. Tell me where Potter is."

"Potter makes pots," you say, counting your heartbeats on your fingers and counting every color you can see and every song you can remember through the pain that you can't ignore. Malfoy watches with his wand still against your neck, and you hum the school song to the tune of a lullaby, and you try to remember the exact words the sorting hat used months ago when it sung of Gryffindor and Slytherin and a betrayal between the best of friends and crumbling from within, and you laugh again.

"Go on keep it up, Weasel," he says, pushing his wand into your skin harder than before. "Keep laughing. See what I do to make you stop."

"There were brains," you say, letting your head flop back against the pillow. "There were brains swimming-- swimming in a sea of thoughts and memories. Swimming, swimming, the brains never get tired, but you're tired, Malfoy." You look up at him, and he slowly lets his wand and the hand that holds it down to his side and steps off the bed. "I'm getting tired too," you say a bit louder, "but you can't tell yourself I told you that. Promise?"

"You've cracked," Malfoy whispers. "You've lost your mind."

"Yes." You nod and try to sit up again. "I have! But I needed to, didn't I? There were so many of them-- the brains. I've lost mine, and the one I have now isn't so good-- just another hand-me-down." You think of things ugly and worn and stained black from where they were burnt by the twins' experiments or Charlie's dragons, and you try not to shiver. "There were brains swimming, swimming, swimming. Very funny at first. You're funny, Malfoy. Uranus is bigger than Pluto. I could do your star chat for Trelawney. There are ferrets in the sky. Were all in danger, and we have to laugh at something."

"Shut up!" Malfoy says, and his face doesn't look so white anymore. "Just shut up. You don't know what you're saying."

"No," you say, feeling too cold and too hot and scratching at your bandages again as you try not to think about the pain in your head and your arms, and your voice shakes as much as Malfoy's had earlier. "No, but I know what you're saying. Where's Potter? Where's Potter? Where's Potter? I--I don't know where he is- where Harry is. He left me. I followed him there, and he left me, and now it hurts to think and to move."

"Weasley?"

"He left me!" you say, louder than before and louder than you ever meant to. "Do you understand that?! He tried one measly spell, and then he left me to go after the Death Eaters or tried to get away from them. It doesn't matter." You're breathing hard, and your heart's beating too fast for you to keep count of. "He left me," you whisper. "Harry left me."

Malfoy takes a few quick steps backwards and nearly trips over a cart of potions. "What's wrong with you?"

You laugh. "Do you really want to see?" you ask, pulling off a bandage to reveal your arm crisscrossed with burns and scars and ugly black sores edged in traces of new blood and the strange, ropey tentacles moving fast under your skin.

"Oh-- ug," Malfoy says and throws up on the floor.

"You should see what it looks like inside my head," you say as he stumbles about to find a bedpan and starts throwing up in that, but you don't think he's heard you. There's a clock ticking somewhere, measuring each second as Malfoy retches and moans and curses under his breath, muttering about you and about Harry and about his father, and you think that for someone so thin, Malfoy must eat an awful lot to be throwing up as much as he is. "Malfoy? Are you done yet?"

"God, Weasel, I knew you were disgusting, but . . ."

"Yeah," you say, covering your arm quickly. "Yeah, I know?"

He takes a few more steps back and stares at you with an odd, unplaceable look on his face for a few minutes. Neither of you say anything else, and after he leaves, you lay back and watch the door, hoping Harry will walk through it, but he never does, and eventually you fall asleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You ride the train home, and your ride the train back. The summer passes fast, this year, and fall comes quick on its heels. The days are dark-- overcast and sunless, and the nights are darker, practically black save for the faint shining of the stars overhead and the glow of Harry's Lumos charms as he sneaks through the halls and out onto the grounds. You wonder how the professors can't see him and how it's always you caught and thrown in detention when you try to follow. There are some things even invisibility cloaks can't hide, and Harry's always shone the brightest.

He doesn't come to visit you when you spend a week helping the house elves cleaning dishes in the kitchens, and maybe that's because he wasn't listening when you complained that Dobby insists on calling you Wheezy and Winky hits your feet with a rolling pin whenever you drop things, or maybe it's because you forgot to tell him, because he would come if you asked, and you've been forgetting more and more lately. You tell yourself this over and over again, willing it to be true, because you know how Harry thinks and how Harry moves in the dark and how Harry screams at night when his bed curtains are shut tight and he thinks no one can hear. The tentacles move under your skin, rising and falling beneath the lingering scars from where they dug their way in, and you curse the pain in your head for causing your forgetfulness.

"Bloody Dobby," you say, when you walk into the common room and Harry looks up from his book on Advanced Occlumency and Legilimency and rolls his eyes, muttering, "not again," to Hermione, who sits beside him, and the tentacles twist themselves tighter around your wrists and stretch all the way up your arms until they brush the base of your neck, making you shiver and laugh and want to fall down and never get up again. Hermione keeps staring into the fireplace, repeating Arithmancy theorems to herself, and Harry turns another page of his book.

Slowly, you begin to understand what happened to you alone in the brain room at the department of mysteries. You begin to understand that there are some things far too dark and dangerous to be held in pensieves-- shallow bowls with nothing more than a few ladles full of shimmering binding potion. You begin to understand where those things were held instead and how they've found their way inside you. Slowly, you begin to forget the things you once knew and remember things that never really happened, and after a few weeks, you can't tell the difference between them anymore. The memories come and the memories go, and some are gorgeous- brilliant and freeing, and others are terrible-- dark and gruesome, and they all hurt.

In divination, Trelawney whispers to the whole class of a prophesy she made long ago and had all but forgotten about Harry being the only one with the power to vanquish He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and when he throws his crystal ball down against the floor, she only gives a solemn nod and returns to her scrying stones. You watch the thin fog rising up from shattered glass, and you wonder why he's so mad, and you wonder if he notices that Trelawney doesn't foretell his death any longer or that she's always casting strange glances in your direction. But Hermione's mad too, and you sit beside her in the great hall, wondering where Harry went the night before and where he is now, and a part of you keeps wondering, even after you learn that the Slytherins have found a new song to sing.

"Weasley cannot save a thing.
And when he falls it sure will sting.
That's why Slytherins all sing.
Weasley is our King!"

"They've started early this year," Hermione says. "There aren't any Quidditch games for weeks. You'd think they'd have better things to do than make up those ridiculous songs about you." You glance up at the Slytherin table to see Malfoy's staring right at you with a smile that looks pained, and you at least hope it's hurting him to hold his face like that, and then the song starts again, and you stare down at your murky reflection in a goblet of pumpkin juice and try not to shiver. You never tell Hermione that you don't think they're singing about Quidditch.

"Weasley was born in a bin.
His brain is starting to wear thin.
Weasley will make sure we win.
Weasley is our King!"

"Just stop paying attention to them," she says as if it's the simplest thing in the world to do. "Malfoy's just a slimy little slug. Block him out."

"I can't," you say through clenched teeth.

"Oh, honestly, of course you--"

"I can't!" you say, digging your fingernails into the underside of the table and trying to ignore the way your head feels like it's being split open. "I don't know how! Why did they only teach him, huh?"

Hermione picks up a napkin from her side and wipes away the water that's collected under her cup of coffee. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Harry," you whisper, even though you shouldn't be saying it at all. "Why did they only teach him? Why did he quit?"

"Teach him what?" Hermione says, glancing at the door, and you wonder if she hopes Harry will come through it or if she just wants to get away.

"Occlumency," you say, thinking that you want to get farther away than any door in the castle can take you. "They didn't teach us, and you probably didn't need it anyway. You're so smart, you probably know dozens of other things just as good, but I--"

"He was learning it because of Voldemort," she whispers, giving you an odd look. "You know that. He told us both."

You think that there are things in the world worse thinks than Voldemort, and you say, "He could have saved me." But she doesn't seem to hear you, so you take a deep breath and slam your fist down into the table. "He could have saved me, Hermione!"

"You're fine," she says, standing up to leave as the Slytherins start to sing louder than before, and what she means is that no one is fine, and Harry's the only one important enough to worry after, and the world shifts so fast, these days, from devastating to funny and back again, so you laugh around a piece of toast shoved into your mouth all at once, and when Neville shoots you a concerned look from down the table, you take it as a victory.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You're still laughing in potions that afternoon, and the look Hermione gives you tells you to stop as clearly as her voice ever could, but you watch Malfoy in the front of the room, posing and posturing for Snape until he slips on nothing and falls flat on his back, and you watch Harry beside you as he removes the hearts or three toads and chops the tails of nine rats, and you wonder what it would feel like to be cut wide open, and you keep laughing behind your hands when you drop a whole jar of dragonfly wings into the cauldron and tiny specks of light start to flash and flicker on the potion's dark surface like a thousand stars or a magic mirror shattered against the black of the cauldron. You jab Harry with your elbow to steal his attention away from the salamanders he's disemboweling. "Look, 's pretty."

"The potion!" Harry nearly shouts. "What have you done to it?!"

"The wings fell," you say. "I guess they couldn't fly anymore-- didn't have what they needed to stay up in the air." You do a little flapping motion with your hands to show what you mean, but he just glares at you.

Harry's angry, but that's not such a surprise, because he usually is, and you're still laughing when Snape swoops down over your table and starts taking points from Gryffindor, and you can hear the wind blowing over the lake and birds giving their warning calls deep in the forest and a clock in one of the tower rooms chiming the hour four and a half minutes early. The tentacles under your skin twist to the rhythm of Snape's low voice and then faster as Harry's voice rises above it. "I didn't do it!" he says. "I was doing everything perfectly." And you nod along side him, because Harry doesn't tell lies, and Harry doesn't mistake right and wrong, and Harry always does everything perfectly.

"It was my fault," you say, swallowing your laughter and looking up at Snape, and you'd say the same even if it really was Harry's fault, even if it really is, and Snape only sneers at you for a second before he's called to the front of the room by Malfoy nearly cutting off Crabbe's finger when his knife slips, and you sneak a glance, but he doesn't seem to be bleeding at all, not like a normal person would, and you try to laugh again, but only manage to cough up a mouthful of blood into the cauldron, and it explodes, spilling the shimmering, dark potion across the floor, and you really laugh as it seeps into your worn, too-small shoes. "Just a new formula for nosebleed nougats," you say, wiping your mouth on the sleeve of your robe. "I'm testing it for the twins, is all. I should tell them it doesn't quite work." But Harry's shoving books and parchments into his bag as if they've somehow offended him, and if he's heard you speak, he shows no sign of it. Hermione sighs and casts a drying charm over your shoes, and you think it makes them just a bit tighter, and in the front of the room, Snape's still trying to find out what's wrong with Malfoy or Crabbe or both of them, and you don't really care about that.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry and Hermione are out of the room before you are-- out of the room and out of the nearby hallways and out of your sight. They've made it into the advanced Defense of Against the Dark Arts classes, and you haven't, and it's funny, really, how they'll only teach those who have already proven themselves best, so funny that you laugh about it sometimes when you're alone and have nothing else to do, but that kind of laughter always leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You always follow them to the classroom after double potions and steal brief glances at the new professor and at all the strange, magical implements she keeps on her desk and at the way Harry's eyes light up right before he closes the door between you. You would follow them further, if you could, and you'll keep following them other places, even though there's still so much you don't know and so much you don't trust, and you tell yourself that they didn't mean to leave you behind and that you just got distracted for a second and that it won't happen again, but you don't really believe any of it, so you sigh and tell yourself that Harry can't stay mad forever.

You keep thinking about Harry, even though thinking makes you dizzy and tired, and you want to lie down on the floor, but you keep walking until you hear a voice you'll remember, even if you forget nearly everything else. "I say, Weasley. You should be able to watch where you're going, even with that ridiculous nose of yours in the way." You blink at Malfoy, standing there right in front of you, looking somehow bigger than he had that night in the hospital wing, and you wonder if he got splashed with something too, because his shirt looks wet and his skin looks slick like it's covered in oil. "I think that potion made you even stupider than before," he says with a sneer, and you're fast to shake your head.

"No," you say. "It just makes everything smell shiny, and it makes the colors swirl about." You wave a hand through the air, because maybe he can see the colors too, but he only crosses his arms over his chest and sneers. "You don't seem to be any color at all," you say, and he steps back fast when your fingers nearly brush his robe. "Oh wait, you're turning pink."

"I can't believe it," he says. "I can't believe you tried to take the blame for Potter."

You blink, and the colors fade and slow their swirling. "Why not?"

"Because he's an idiot."

"He's not," you say. "Don't talk like that about Harry."

"Oh, he is," Malfoy says, and you wonder why he isn't laughing, because there's usually nothing that Malfoy finds funnier than making fun of Harry unless it's making fun of you to make Harry mad, but Harry's not here, and if he was, he wouldn't risk the trouble of starting a fight, and you tell yourself that's because Malfoy's isn't worth fighting and not because you aren't worth defending, and you know you would fight for Harry. For him, you would fight until you had nothing left, even when you're fast to surrender your own battles. "He is," Malfoy says again. "Anyone who hasn't noticed that you're completely out of your mind by now is definitely stupid."

Your tongue feels thick in your mouth when you try to speak, and the words resonate in your head until you think you might black out from the pain. "Her-my-one-mione-- Hermy doesn't know."

"Granger hasn't realized that you've lost the ability to pronounce her name?" Malfoy asks, raking a slimy hand through his slimy hair.

You shrug. "Well, she doesn't know about that." You think that Malfoy's quite good at pretending he's fine when he's not, or maybe you're just extraordinarily bad at it. There are times you can't stop yourself from laughing, and there are others you can't bring yourself to smile, no matter how you try, and now you can't bother to stay standing, even as Malfoy glares at you, daring you to fall and prove him right, so you lean your back against the wall and hold your head in your hands, and when you look up, Malfoy is gone, leaving only a filmy puddle where he had been standing and a few wet footprints leading back towards the dungeons.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It's bright out, for once. You stare up at the white clouds drifting through the white sky, and they begin to take on strange shapes, and you think you see people in the stands and by the lake, but they're always gone in the blink of an eye or a sharp dive of Harry's firebolt, and the nervousness that always came before Quidditch games is now there with every practice, but you swallow your worry and your fear and the blood that floods your mouth until all that's left is your own meager ability and so much reckless courage, and in the glare of the still unseen sun, you loose track of where you are and do a clumsy flip through the center hoop, barely managing to catch yourself and slide down the pole as your broom ricochets off in the opposite direction.

You fall in the grass, and above you, the white of then sky turns black and dots with stars, and you watch them move and listen to the strange voices coming from all around you. You can't hear the words they say, not clearly through the wind and the air that separates you from the rest of your team, but their voices change, and you think it's because they notice you're not flying with them anymore, and there's someone in front of you, and then behind, and then in front again but never touching the ground.

"What are you doing?" you hear a voice ask-- Harry's voice.

"I--I'm not really sure." You hear Ginny complaining, and you hear the sound of a bludger hit with a bat and then with the back end of a broomstick, but you don't care about any of that.

"Get up," Harry says, landing softly beside you, and he's so bright it almost hurts to look at him.

"Look, Harry," you whisper, pointing to the sky. "It's amazing, isn't it? All the stars spinning like that, you standing right there-- it's perfect, so perfect."

"Get up, Ron."

"Why?" you ask, laughing. "No reason to. Everything's perfect."

"Up. Malfoy's watching us."

It's strange that Harry looks so solid and whole against the stars that aren't real at all, and you look away, just for a second to Malfoy and his two cronies behind him, and he looks cut out and pasted over the night sky you see, even when looking at the ground, but you know he's real too, and he gives you a strange sort of wave that looks more like he's fanning himself from the heat or the brightness or one of the thousand other things that makes him squeamish, and you think his hand looks a bit swollen, but it's hard to tell. "I could die right here," you say, turning back to Harry and laughing harder than before, "just die just like that."

"Ron, get up. You're embarrassing yourself. You're embarrassing the whole team." Crabbe and Goyle start to sing Weasley is our King, and without fully realizing it, you start to hum along. In front of them, Malfoy stands still with his hands buried in his pockets.

You don't get up like Harry wants you to, instead you grab his robes and tell him he looks funny, and when he pulls away, you point up at the sky. "Come on, look-- the stars, Harry. You have to see them," you say, pointing to a different one with every passing second. "It's like you could reach out and touch each of them one by one by one." And you keep pointing until your hand lands on Harry's nose, and he gives an annoyed snort. "Sorry."

"You didn't get hit on the head, did you?" Harry asks, and you wonder if there's a difference between on the head and in the head, and you wonder if it matters, and you close your eyes so tight that the stars are forced away, leaving only a faint glimmer the next time you open them.

"No," you say. "No, I'm fine, just feeling a little funny today-- that potion and all." You sit up and smile and try not to think about the tentacles twisting in your arms, and when Harry leads the rest of the team inside, you let your head flop down onto the grass. The stars come back, brighter than they had been, and watch them spinning, and for a few minutes, nothing hurts as bad as it did before, and through it all, you think you can see Malfoy giving you an odd look before heading back towards the castle.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Are you okay?" Hermione asks, dropping her book and jumping up from her armchair as soon as you walk through the portrait hole.

"Course," you say, and you flop down onto one of the sofas, and you try not to think about ever getting up again. "Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

Hermione sighs. "You got splashed with whatever it was in that potion of yours," she says frowning. "You fell off your broom. You're rather badly sunburned. From what I've heard, you've been lying out on the grass, talking nonsense for the last three hours, and you appear to be dehydrated."

"Is that all?" you mutter, forcing a smile and trying to ignore the pain in your head and your arms. "Anyway, I couldn't be sunburned. It's too cloudy out for that."

"You are," she says, waving her wand in front of your face until he tip glows blue. "The sun can burn you, you know, even on cloudy days." She prods her wand against your forehead and behind your ears. "Harry should be more careful holding practice on days like this. I got him that book."

"Too bloody bright," you mutter, and you're not sure whether you mean the sun or her wand or Harry, but you don't like the way the light is shining in your eyes, and you like how close she's looking at you. She's always been good at noticing things no one else does, and you don't want to think about what she might find.

"It's not the brightest," she says, looking out the high window to where the sun sets over the forest, and she looks so happy you decide not to tell her that you're in no mood for an astronomy lesson. The tentacles coil around each other, and you bite your bottom lip and wonder where Harry is. "It's just the closest. There are thousands of stars bigger and brighter. You'd know that if you didn't listen to Trelawney's nonsense about horoscopes and sun-signs.

"I don't listen to her," you say, closing your eyes and forcing a smile. "I'm just in her class." And you can tell she's caught somewhere between disappointed and amused, because if it was anyone other than Trelawney, admitting to not listening in class would earn you one of her longer lectures, so you keep smiling, and you think of Harry, and you think about how he shines and how people revolve around him like so many insignificant planets, and maybe that's only because of where he is or when he is, but that doesn't really matter, because he's Harry, and he could always burn you the most. Softly, you begin to hum the song the Slytherins sang this morning, even though it feels like years ago and then another song your Mum sang before she would tuck you in at night and whisper to you that your nightmares weren't real, and you wish you could believe that now, and you wish Harry had the chance to believe that even once, and you keep humming.

"Have you been talking to Malfoy lately?" Hermione asks after your song dies away, and by then you can't even remember why you knew it at all, and your thoughts of Harry can never fade, but you push them to the side as well as you can manage.

"Malfoy?"

"Yes," she says, poking her wand against your chin and whispering an incantation that makes every inch of your face feel like it's being pricked by tiny pins. "He says he's been talking to you."

You open your eyes fast and sit up. "He--he does?"

"He says you're mad."

"No," you say, shaking your head. "No, that's Harry."

Hermione narrows her eyes and puts her wand away, and eventually the pins stop pricking, and the pain in your head comes back stronger than before. "What?"

"You know," you say with a broken, painful laugh, "bloke with glasses, messy hair-- our best friend-- always screaming about things and throwing stuff around-- you know-- mad."

"No, Ron." Hermione sighs again, and looks back to the window. "Malfoy says you're insane."

"You mean like crazy?" you ask, sitting a bit straighter. "And you believe him? Malfoy? The ferret?"

"I'm starting to wonder if I should. He looked worried and rather puffy, have you noticed that? Anyway, he says you're-- well, off-- not quite yourself."

"Off, he said. Aren't we all, eh? Have to be bloody crazy to be taking Snape's class when we don't really have to."

"Ron--"

"Is that why you're doing this?" you ask, glaring down at her wand in her robe pocket and blinking hard as the dizziness you feel becomes worse. "You believe bloody Malfoy? What? Are you scared? Do you think I'll become a danger to myself-- to Harry?"

"No, Ron--" she begins, looking as worried as Malfoy must have looked but nowhere near as puffy.

You sigh, and you shake your head again. "It doesn't matter," you say, and she looks like she wants to argue, but you get up as fast as you can manage and stumble back through the portrait hole and out into the hallway.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You begin to see shapes and silhouettes of monsters in the flat, dark clouds you watch moving over the grounds and the castle towers. You begin to see ghosts of people, still alive-- Harry on the Quidditch pitch, going through his seeker drills without a broom, Hermione in the library, reading over the shoulder of the Hufflepuff head girl, your brothers and your parents drifting above you at night when you're trying to sleep.

You begin to see the dead walking through the halls as solid and real as the stones of the castle that surrounds them. You watch Cedric Diggory follow Cho Chang, catching the parchments and quills that she drops all at once, when Michael Corner leans in to kiss her. You see a man sitting next to Dumbledore who must be 600 years old and a boy with black hair and dark blue eyes that flash red, who can't be any older than you are, standing right behind Ginny.

And you begin to see someone you don't recognize when you look in the mirror each morning.

The days pass quickly-- all time does, no matter how the hours of your classes drag on, and you wish you could catch them in a net and save them-- all the minutes and the seconds that you might want to keep for later-- a flash of a smile there, a relieved sigh here, the clean feeling that comes after the rain on a spring day, when worms rise up out of the grass and slugs dot the leaves of your mother's flowerbeds, a moment of sunlight kept for when it's darkest. But there is no sunlight, you remember, at least not much since the last bright day that burned you, and you can't catch time anymore than you can catch the stars in the sky or suppress the sick, dizzy feeling that you're speeding towards something that would frighten you if you knew what it was, and sometimes the thought of it makes you laugh, and sometimes it makes you as angry as Harry always seems, and the pain in your head gets worse with the passing days and the twisting beneath your arms more violent, and you try to remember what you can from the time before you felt this unsure of yourself, but it's getting harder.

In potions, Harry partners with Hermione and keeps to the back of the room, and you're left to work with Goyle, who smells like a damp basement and can't even keep hold of his notebooks and drops them into the cauldron, causing huge purple flames to shoot from it before you're even given your assignment. He grunts something that might be an apology and might be an insult, and you turn back and watch Harry cutting the legs off a newt, and just for a second, you think you see its tail give a weak twitch as his knife snaps down against the table.

You and Goyle don't receive any marks for the day, and you're relieved that he doesn't seem upset about it. You leave him to dig the remains of his things out of the cauldron and try to catch Harry and Hermione as they head to their defense lessons, but they're gone from you again, and again you nearly run into Malfoy, who seems to be sliding down the hallway on the soles of his feet. "Alone again, Weasel?" He sneers and wipes some sweat from his forehead. "And I thought after my little chat with Granger she might start feeling sorry for you again."

"Why'd you do that?" you ask, pointing your wand to his neck, just as he did to you months ago in the hospital wing, but even your wand feels wrong in your hand, now, and you don't want to think about what that means, so you press it down harder, and you make your voice louder than before. "Why did you tell Hermione I was crazy?"

"No," Malfoy says, sneering. "I forgot, you're perfectly sane." He nods down at your wand, rolling his eyes, and you notice it's the handle that faces him. "If you want to point that thing at me, you might want to turn it the other way 'round, not that belching up another batch of slugs could make you any more revolting than you are now."

"Speaking of slugs," you say, flipping your wand between your fingers with barely a fumble, "how as the luggage rack? And how did your mother take it? Ernie thought she'd be appalled, but I was betting she wouldn't notice the difference."

Malfoy looks angrier than you think you could be and angrier than Harry and angrier than you've ever seen him before, and you wonder briefly if you might have been right. "SHUT UP!" he shouts, and his face flashes pink only for a second before turning paler than usual, and you think he must be sweating an awful lot or he must be wet from rain or a shower, because he's dripping all over the floor. "Think you're funny, do you, Weasel?" he hisses furiously. "Well, Potter doesn't think you're funny. Potter couldn't care less about you or I might have told him, too."

"Why?" you ask again. "Why did you tell Hermione?"

Malfoy takes a deep breath and slides a step back away from your wand. "Because she might know how to fix you, you imbecile,"

"What?"

He shakes his head and rolls his eyes and wipes his hands against his robe. "You're just as messed up as you were right after it happed," he says, "whatever it was that happened."

You put your wand down but not away. "They said it would get better-- better with time. Everything takes time." And you don't tell him that you don't like the way time is passing, but you think he might understand that anyway when he gives a strange little nod.

"And it hasn't."

You try to laugh, but you can only cough up a mouthful of blood and spit it on the floor as Malfoy cringes and bites his lip and takes another step back. "Does better mean a lot worse?"

"No," he says. "No, it doesn't."

"Well then," you say, wiping your mouth on the collar of your robes. "Why do you care, Malfoy?"

Malfoy blinks. "What?"

"Why do you care?" you repeat, wondering if Malfoy has always been this slow. "Why does any of this matter to you?"

Malfoy looks down at his hands, and you think they must be nearly the size of Goyle's, but he shows no sign of being put off by them or of paying attention to you. "I say, Weasley, you're being unusually coherent today. Is it too much to hope that soon you'll no longer try to blow up the potions room?"

"Answer the question!" you shout, and this time he looks up.

"I don't see why--" he begins, but you don't let him finish.

"Tell me why you're talking to me like this!" you shout, even louder than before, and for just a second you wonder if there's anyone on the hallway to hear you besides Malfoy. You wonder what it is that makes Harry's voice carry the way it does so it can always be noticed over the droning on of professors and the hum of conversations in the great hall and the screaming of your thoughts, because if he were here, even whispering, it would certainly draw a crowd, but it's just you and Malfoy, and neither of you particularly matter, especially not to the sixth year defense class just a few doors down, and you think there might be some freedom in that. So you don't force yourself to quiet down as Hermione has told you to so often, and you don't try to reign you anger as Harry so often tells himself, and you push Malfoy back into the wall and listen as he makes the sound of a jelly being hit with a spoon. "Tell me-- tell me why I should believe anything you say!"

"Because it could have been me!" he screams, furiously wiping his hands on his robes. "Because you could have been me!"

You blink, and your voice falls softer against your will. "What?"

"I-- wanted," Malfoy stammers. "I wanted to be his friend, remember? And it could have been me-- whatever happened to you-- it could have happened to me just as easily-- but I'm glad I'm not! I'm glad, Weasley, because he's a stupid, selfish little git, and I got of easy compared to you." He pauses to cringe and to catch his breath. "And if he's going to kill me, at least I'll be fighting back and not just standing there and telling him not to worry, but you don't even need to tell him that, do you? He doesn't worry about anyone but himself."

"Don't say that!" Malfoy has hardly moved from the wall, but you push him back into it again. "Don't you dare say that about Harry!"

"How can you stand up for him?" Malfoy asks, forcing himself upright. "You told me he left, remember that?" And you do, and you always will, but you keep your face blank, and Malfoy keeps talking, looking at his hands again. "You told me he left you to go after the Death Eaters-- he left you to the brains. Maybe it's time you leave him." And Malfoy still isn't looking at you, but you shake your head.

"I can't. He's Harry."

"He doesn't even want you around anymore."

"He needs me."

"Does he?" Malfoy asks. "He hasn't been acting like it. And what possible good could you do him like this? Curse yourself straight in the chest? At least you had a broken wand to blame it on the first time. If you get killed because of-- you don't have to. You're worth more than that."

"I'm poor, incase you've forgotten," you say, shaking your head again but not much, because Malfoy still hasn't looked up at you, and you're already starting to get dizzy. "But you don't forget things like that, do you, Malfoy?"

"You're not much," he says with a sharp nod, "especially now, but he doesn't deserve you."

"He deserves better," you say, starting to walk away, but you don't get far.

Malfoy grabs you by the wrist with a wet hand, and when he sees the tentacles give an unsteady jerk beneath your robe sleeve, he gasps and moves his hand up to your shoulder. You want to tell him that they can get him there, too-- that there's no telling how far they can reach, but they only wind themselves tight around your forearms, and through the sharp spike of pain, you feel Malfoy dig his fingernails into your skin, and you hear him whisper, "Then get better, Weasley, even if you're only doing it for him."

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