Brain Damage

Brain Damage

Chapter three

~*~*~

When Christmas approaches, Harry leaves for Grimmauld Place, and he asks if you want to come along as if he really wants you to say yes, but you shake your head, and you tell him you have too many assignments to work on, because you've been falling behind in your classes, and when he gives you a disbelieving look, you decide to work on finding a better excuse. You just tell Ginny that you're not ready when she asks why you aren't going home to the Burrow, and she glares and says you're starting to sound like Percy, and you glare back, but she's more persistent than Harry, probably because she doesn't want to deal with your mum alone, so you have to say it quite a lot. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready, and you say it one last time the night before Christmas-eve as you wave goodbye on the train platform, and as the Hogwarts Express speeds out of sight, you hear the sound of something sliding up behind you.

"We have a mission," Malfoy says when you turn to look at him, and you don't think he seems very happy about it. In fact, you think he looks like he might be sick. "Our first one, right now. W-we have to go." And he hands you another button, a blue one this time, and you hold it tight when you feel the tug that pulls you off the platform to the snow-covered front lawn of a house that looks strangely familiar, and you slip your mask out of your pocket and put it on. The house is a normal, boring Muggle house, surrounded by other normal, boring Muggle houses that all look exactly the same, except this one has a brass number four on the door, and the one to the left has a two, and the one to the right has a six, and the one across the way has a three, but this one is different, even if it looks the same as all the others, and you're not quite sure why.

"Take it off," Malfoy says, landing in the snow beside you.

"What?"

He points to your mask, shaking his head. "Take it off, Weasley. Your face isn't that horrible. Take it off."

"But we're--"

"Take it off."

You do, because you don't know why it should make any difference anyway, but you think you can see things just a bit better when you're not looking through its eye holes, and past the muddled thoughts and confused memories there's some spark of recognition that grows brighter. You really do know this place. You've been here. You've seen this house before, and after a few moments of thinking you realize why. "This-- this--"

"Come on, Weasley," Malfoy says, rubbing his face and looking even paler than usual. "Come on, the Muggles are inside."

"This-- this-- it's Harry's family."

"Potter doesn't have a family," he says as if that counts as another victory against Harry, "not unless your idiot parents have unofficially taken him in, and last I heard, you live in a complete dump somewhere in Devonshire."

You shake your head and stay rooted to the ground as Malfoy takes a few shaky steps towards the house. "No, this--"

"Weasley, you don't know what you're talking about-- the brains, remember? You're not right in the head."

"He lives here," you say as Malfoy reaches the door and waves his wand, casting a spell that rusts the latches and makes the doorknob fall to the snowy ground with a dull thud. "He does. He lives here-- every summer. He hates it. They used to keep him in a cupboard under the stairs and then in a tiny room with locks on the door and bars on the windows."

Malfoy turns back to you just for a second before pushing the door so it falls flat into the house. "Then you should want to do this, shouldn't you?" he asks, but he's fast to look away and wipe his hands on his robes.

You're still dizzy from the portkey and from the increasing pressure in your head that tries to force your thoughts away from Harry, but you don't let it. "I . . ."

"Who-- who's there?" you hear called from inside, and you rush through the yard and up the front steps to follow him.

"Hullo!" Malfoy shouts, stepping into the lounge and blinking at the odd pictures flashing on the telly-box and the huge pile of presents beneath the Christmas tree. "H-hullo! I-is everybody here?!"

"Who are you?" the voice calls again. "What are you doing here? I wasn't eating anything but vegetables, I swear!" You hear cabinets being slammed shut and dishes being dropped in the metal basin of a sink, and you follow Malfoy and the voice into a kitchen and see Harry's cousin, who looks bigger than you think you remember, sitting behind a square table piled high with puddings and cakes and sandwiches and everything but vegetables. He has a half-eaten hamburger in one hand and a fizzy drink in the other and ketchup smeared across his cheek and down his shirt. His eyes go wide when he sees you, and he swallows hard. "I--I know who you are," he says, standing up slowly and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "You're one of his freak friends-- you were in that flying car, and you got stuck in the fireplace. That candy-- your brothers-- you--"

"Are your parents here?" you ask, taking a step forward, and despite looking almost paralyzed, Malfoy moves to the side to let you in front of him, and you think you hear him mutter something about a family resemblance as you walk by. "Are they?!"

Harry's cousin drops his hamburger and his drink, and picks up a glass bottle of chocolate milk and throws it at you. "Get out of my house!" You duck away in time, and it shatters against the floor behind you. "Get out." You look up at him, and you watch his face turning redder by the second as he picks up another bottle, and you hate him. You hate him for hurting Harry, and you hate him for not having to worry about anything more than his food and his telly-box, and you hate him for being nasty and stupid and spoiled and for being a Muggle, and that thought makes you shiver, because you know you shouldn't think that, and you're not sure you really do, but the hate stays, no matter how you try to push it away, and it doesn't help that you can't really remember hating anything else anymore.

"I asked if your parents were here!" You shout, drawing your wand, and he overturns the table between you and hurls a plate at Malfoy. "Where are they?!"

"Get out of my house-- You're not allowed here, you freaks! Get out and don't ever come back!" Another bottle of milk shatters against the wall just behind your head, and a huge glass custard bowl knocks Malfoy in the chest with an odd squish.

"Answer the question!" You try to keep your wand trained on him, but he moves faster than he should be able to, and you keep having to jump out of the path of the things he throws, and the tentacles in your arms move, upsetting your balance and your aim. "Are your parents here?!"

"No, they're out," he screams, grabbing a chair and hurling it in your direction, but you duck out of the way, and it hits the sink, snapping the faucet off and sending a hard spray of water shooting up into the air and across the floor. "They're out-- they're buying me presents. Forty was hardly enough, was it? Not for Christmas? Now get out! I'll hurt you if you don't get out!"

"You'll hurt us?" Malfoy asks, smirking and rolling his eyes, but he's wheezing and shivering, and his arms are wrapped tight around his chest where the bowl hit, and when he tries to take a step forward, he slips on the rapidly growing puddle or on his own sliminess and has to grab at the cabinets to stay upright.

"I could always pound Harry easily enough," Harry's cousin says, throwing a frying pan at Malfoy and nailing him in the back of the knees, so he falls to the floor flat on his face. "I don't care if you're freaks. That just means you're nothing without those stupid m-m-magic sticks you have."

"Don't," you say, taking a slow step forward and using both hands to point your wand right at his forehead. "Don't hurt him, you hear? Don't you ever hurt Harry again."

"Finish him," Malfoy hisses, struggling to stand and not quite making it before falling again, but his eyes are shut tight, and his voice is as unsteady as the rest of him, and you know he doesn't really mean it. "Weasley, just-- just . . ."

"Get out!" Harry's cousin screams, voice breaking, and he's suddenly gone very still, except for a few nervous shivers that make his whole body shake, and you think they might make the kitchen floor shake a bit too, and you can feel the curses rise up in your throat and taste them in your mouth, curses you never learned on your own, but you feel as if you've known them all your life and were meant to do nothing but use them-- one to stop a live heart from beating, one to peel skin from muscle and muscle from bone, one to burn a body from the inside, one to control a mind, one to cause pain worse than any other, and one to kill-- simply and perfectly, and you bite your lip hard as the taste turns unbearably sour.

The tentacles move faster and the pain in your head worsens, and you begin to lower your wand, but it never quite makes it to your pocket, because a well aimed plate of biscuits knocks it out of your hand and onto the floor, and Malfoy squirms through the water to grab it, but it slips away right before he's hit square in the face by a thrown toaster, and Harry's cousin jumps over the table and punches you hard in the shoulder and then again right in the eye and then his fists come at you faster and with hardly any control, and when you slip and land on your back with a splash into the still rising water, he falls on top of you still punching, and you feel him clip your ear and split your lip, and you feel him get up and start kicking you in the ribs.

"Stop it!" you hear Malfoy shout as you cough up a mouthful of blood. "Stop it! Get off him! Just stop it!" And he must have somehow managed to stand, because you see him walk slowly up behind Harry's cousin with his wand drawn, but Harry's cousin turns at him quickly, and you take the chance to crawl across the floor and use the overturned table to pull yourself up.

"Ewww! What's wrong with you?" you hear Harry's cousin say, just as you turn to see Malfoy whimpering with a fork stuck in his arm. "I didn't-- I just sort of poked him-- I didn't! GET OUT!"

"Catch!" Malfoy shouts, tossing you your wand, and you're not sure when he managed to grab it or what he expects you to do with it, but he and Harry's cousin stare at you with matching expressions of shock when you cast a Repario on the sink before putting it in your pocket.

"We're leaving," you say, looking at them both, and they both nod. You try to grab Malfoy by the arm, and he won't let you, but he follows you out into the lounge, and he pauses to stare at the telly-box.

"Hey," you hear Harry's cousin say. "If I ever see you freaks again, I'll kill you."

"Same to you, Muggle," Malfoy says with a shaky smirk.

"Get out," he says, throwing each of you a candy bar and smirking back, and you blink for second, trying to figure out what just happened and wondering if he thinks that giving you food would be a good way to keep you from turning violent when it obviously hasn't worked on him, but you don't think on it long before rushing out the door.

Malfoy stomps through the snow, looking at his watch and sighs, and while he's not paying you any attention, you yank the fork out of his arm, and you blink again. "You're not bleeding," you whisper, staring at the fork and then at Malfoy. They're both very wet, but you're wet too, and that's hardly a surprise. You try to grab his arm again, and again he pulls back.

"So?"

Your head hurts from whatever the brain did to you, and your arms hurt from the tentacles twisting inside them, and the rest of your body hurts from being punched and kicked so many times. Your lip is bleeding, and your knees are scraped, and there's a gash across your shoulder, but Malfoy doesn't seem to be bleeding anywhere, no matter how many times he fell hard to a floor covered in splintered furniture and broken glass. "It was stuck halfway through your arm. How are you not bleeding?"

"I'm just not, alright."

You touch the tip of the fork and it seems to be covered in something clear and slippery and thicker than water, and you turn back to Malfoy and narrow your eyes, trying to see him better. "What's this stuff all over it?"

"Nothing-- I don't know-- probably whatever that disgusting Muggle was eating-- Shut up."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes it hurt-- it hurts."

"Are you sure?" You rub your head and shiver and pull your cloak tighter around your shoulders. "This seems weird--"

"I messed up," Malfoy says, because it's easier for him to avoid your questions, and it's easier for you to not think of any real questions to ask.

"What's wrong?"

"This was all a mistake," he says, rubbing his arm and glancing at his watch again and sitting down in the snow by the side of the road. "I thought he would make you better."

"He didn't," you say, looking up at the sky, but the brightness of the streetlights and the reflection of the snow make it impossible to see any stars.

"I know. I messed up, and now you're going to get killed because of me."

"No, Malfoy," you say, shaking your head. "Why would I get killed?"

He wipes his hands hard on his robe. "When you try to get out he'll--"

"Why would I try to get out?"

"You're joking," Malfoy says, and you laugh and hand him the fork, and he hands you a button, and you sit down beside him to wait.

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

The holiday's pass quickly, as all time does, and soon enough Harry is back. The looks he gives you are worse now than before, but that doesn't matter as much as it once would, because you're getting better at looking away. The meetings go on, and Malfoy always seems to find you just in time with a different button, but they always land you the same place-- the old house that leads out onto the field, and school goes on, and Snape demands that you be removed from his class because of your poor attendance and failing marks, but from the look on his face, you suspect the real reason is something else entirely.

They days grow longer, and the snow begins to melt, but the air stays cold. The next time you meet, there is news of more successful attacks than ever before and of more captures and failures than ever before, and there are plans made as you kneel on the ground and stand in the circle and whisper promises and incantations. "It will be the perfect end," the Dark Lord--Voldemort says, "perfect and practically written in the stars." And there is agreement and mad laughter, and beside you Malfoy whispers, "I messed up." But you bite your lip and don't say anything back.

"He suspects something," Malfoy whispers after the others disapparate away, and you're left to wait for your portkeys to take effect. The sparks from their wands are still falling around you, and as you look out over the hills and the field you stand in, you can just barely see the green edges of a Dark Mark rising up from one of the nearby houses. Malfoy shivers and rips his mask off his face as if it's been suffocating him.

"Why should he?" you blink and pull your hood tighter to keep it from falling. "We've been doing everything asked of us-- sort of. He thinks so, anyway." And you know he does. You know you he didn't question you when you told him you killed Harry's family, and you know your thoughts and memories are so strange and jumbled that he has no hope of really looking into them.

"Not the Dark Lord, you idiot," Malfoy says, digging his foot into the ground and wiping his hands on his robes and looking hopelessly serious. "Potter-- your best friend. He asked me if I did anything to you, and I was about to tell him. He said Longbottom mentioned something-- Longbottom-- can you imagine?"

You always think clearest after Cruciatus, and things fall into place that should have long ago-- hundreds of days before and to hundreds of people before you, and whatever Malfoy expected you to do, you're sure it wasn't laugh, but you laugh anyway, and you keep laughing when he wipes his slimy face on his robe and flattens it with his clumsy, too-big hands. "You're still a slug!"

Malfoy stiffens instantly, and then puts on a face that must be intended to pass for shock. "What?"

"You are!"

"Shut up, Weasley," he hisses, and you keep laughing, because when you listen right, even his voice sounds squishy.

"I mean even being a ferret is better than a slug. I was just thinking-- I mean-- I just thought-- it's just-- well, you were always slimy and disgusting-- you and Crabbe and Goyle. Has anyone figured it out yet?"

"I'm not a slug!" he shouts, and from the look on his face, you start to think that you really are the first to notice-- before his mother and before Snape who's watched him spill and ruin potion after potion and before all the Slytherins who've seen the snitch slip easily away from him again and again, but you can't make fun of that. You know what it's like to go unnoticed-- at least, you did, and it's funny, really-- you're not quite sure what makes it so funny, but you laugh.

"I bet you feel weird," you say, swaying slightly on your feet, and you're not sure if you grab his arm to find out just how weird he feels or because you might fall over if you don't."

"Get off!" he shouts, but instead you give a few light squeezes and poke around his Dark Mark, which is sharp and clear and unlikely to come off on your fingers no matter how hard you rub. His skin feels puffy and damp and warm and very strange, and you keep laughing as he kicks you in the shins and pushes you away.

"You'll get better," you say, and you're not sure whether it's a question or an order. "You'll get better."

He nods and gives a weak shrug. "They say it's best to dry out naturally, and I don't need any glamour charms to look like myself anymore."

"You mean you used to look like--"

"I messed up," Malfoy says, starting his favorite conversation all over again, if only so you can't finish what you were about to say.

"What's wrong?" you ask, and all traces of laughter fade from your voice as soon as the words are spoken.

"This was all a mistake. I thought he would make you better."

"He didn't."

"I know," he says. "I messed up, and now you're going to get killed because of me."

"No, Malfoy," you say, and your voice is different this time. "No, we're both going to get killed because of you and probably before you're properly human again."

Malfoy looks hopeful just for a second, and it passes as fast as a spark flashing up from a wand or Harry darting in front of him to grab the snitch. "You're going to try, then?" he asks, voice soft and slow as if you're stupid or dangerous or both. "You're going to try to get out?"

"No," you say, "but Harry will win. Harry always wins."

"You're wrong," Mafoy says, and you're not sure if he's trying to make you feel better or worse. "Weren't you listening? Potter can't fight the Dark Lord with that wand of his."

You swallow hard and turn your eyes to the sky, and you imagine Harry on his broom, darting between the stars brighter and closer than any of them, and you don't reach up as you did once. Malfoy's too close, and you know Harry's not yours to catch, and he never really was.

"You're looking up, Weasley," Malfoy says, and you nod without looking down, because you don't need to see his face to know it's twisted in a scowl. "Do you want to know the truth about those stars you're staring at as if they mean something?" he asks, voice shaking slightly, and he answers himself before you can tell him that you really don't care and aren't in the mood for an astronomy lesson. "They're not there-- not now. They're just a picture of the past that we trust, like I trusted that my father would always be right and Potter trusted that you were still normal, because the signs you gave that you were fading weren't big enough for his blind eyes to see. They die and we never even know it, because to us they just keep shining. You're just as much of a fool as he is-- as I am, and what you're looking at . . . what you're looking at isn't real. We just trust that it is, and most of the time we're wrong."

You take off your mask and hold it at your side, worrying that it's felt far too comfortable lately, and the night air against your face is so cold it burns. "What's your point, Malfoy?"

"Just that you don't trust anything anymore," he says, folding his arms over his chest and shivering. "So I want to know why you keep looking up?" And for all his talk of death and failure, you know that Malfoy really believes in a dry, warm summer to come after the war and the winter pass, and what he fears most is that his beliefs will fail him again as they always have before, so he holds his hopes tight in his swollen, slippery hands, and he tries his best to keep the world from knowing they're there at all, so no one can laugh when they're lost, and you think that to take them away from him now would be the worst thing you could ever do.

"It'll be okay," you say, and he looks at you surprised, probably because, moments ago, you were saying that you would both be killed, and you still might, but you say it again. "It'll be okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay." And you keep saying it until the words dissolve into more laughter, and when the pain comes back or when you finally realize again that it's been there all along, you think of Harry.

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

You're getting better at making yourself steady after meetings, and you walk easily away from dark spot in the hallway that the portkey takes you to-- the place you and Malfoy slept the night after the first meeting, and when you stumble through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room, Harry's waiting there on one of the couches, glaring at first and then looking blank and confused and lost. "Why?" he whispers.

You shrug and force a smile. "What?"

He stands up and takes his wand from his pocket and waves it in a long curving arch, and the air around you shimmers with his silencing spell, and then he walks slowly over to you and rips the white mask out of your pocket and throws it down onto the floor, and you watch as it breaks into three large, smooth pieces. "HOW?!" he shouts, and his voice keeps echoing, bouncing off the walls of tower room, changing, and it's your mother's and you father's, and you think you can see their faint outlines just behind him. "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!" he screams, pressing his wand to your throat, just as the Dark Lord did once and as Malfoy did in the hospital wing, nearly a year ago, and his voice is your sister's and all your brothers', and his wand falls from his shaking hand onto the pieces of your mask, and he sways on his feet, looking, for a second, like he might fall too. "How could you do this to us?" he asks, and this time, all you hear is Harry.

"I--"

"Why, Ron?" He grabs the front of your hooded robes, and at first, you think he might use them to choke you, but instead he starts tearing them apart with is fingers or at least trying to, but he only makes a few small rips along the seams. "Don't you dare," he says. "Don't you dare wear this in front of me. This isn't you." And when his hands shake too much to manage anymore, he balls them into fists and punches you once in the face and once in the stomach before you can take a step back.

"Harry--"

"Why?" he asks, staring at his hands and walking backwards away from you.

The distance between you grows until your back is pressed against the wall, against Dean's mural, and from the corner of your eye you can see the snake flail helplessly one last time before going still, and Harry's on the opposite side of the room behind the couches and the overstuffed chairs and just in front of windows that look out on to the lake and the forest and the stars. "Last year," you say, raising your voice to make sure he can hear you. "Last year-- the brains-- I followed you, and-- and it hurt. I didn't like it, and-- and you left me. I--I tried to fight it, but-- I couldn't, and you just left me there."

"I had to go after the Death Eaters," Harry shouts from across the room, and his voice is shaking, and one of the small lamps crashes into the wall right beside your head followed by a much larger side table, but you duck out of the way just in time to avoid being speared by a jagged piece of wood. "They were trying attack all of us I-- I had to!"

"I know!" you scream, batting the fire poker that shoots straight for your chest away with a table leg. "I know. I don't think it was your fault-- I'm not blaming you-- I don't-- I wanted to make it better-- I wanted you to stop it from happening. And maybe I wanted you to come after me for once."

"You wanted me to come after you?" Harry asks with an unpleasant smile. "That's what I'm doing now, isn't it?" A chandelier swings down from the ceiling and flies right at you, and you jump to the side with your hands over your head to avoid the falling glass.

"Bloody hell! Get a hold of yourself, Harry!"

"I do have a hold of myself," Harry shouts, and you think you can see his face screw in concentration before a chair crashes low against the wall in front of you, and you have to time your jump just right to avoid having your legs broken. "Don't lie, Ron. You do blame me! I know you do."

In your arms the tentacles spring to life, and the odd voices in your thoughts scream and whisper that you can fight Harry the way he's fighting you if you let go just a bit more, but you shake your head fast despite the dizziness it causes. "No, I--"

"You do, Ron." A stone from the wall slides forward and knocks you in the back of the head, and a few hot coals jump at you from the fire, spreading flames across the carpet, and the couch Harry was sitting on earlier levitates above you, and you run out of its path just before it crashes to the floor. "I just want to know if you're blaming me because you think it was my fault you were there or if you're blaming me because I'm Harry Potter?"

"Both!" you shout, ducking a candelabra. "Neither!" as books from the floor fly towards you. "I'm not. Actually, this isn't about you at all, I don't think."

"Yes, it is!" Harry screams, but his voice is breaking, and the fire around you is crackling so loud that you can hardly hear it.

"It's not," you say. "I don't think-- I don't remember." The glass of the windows shatters all at once, and the floor begins to shake slowly and first and then faster, and the flames rise higher, and you feel like the tentacles in your arms have pushed out through your skin, tearing it apart as they move, but when you look down at them, you see your arms as they've always been, pale and freckled, and you fight your mind and your false memories to make your voice loud enough for Harry to hear. "I can't remember much anymore."

"Don't." Harry ducks away from the still falling glass and lands to the floor with a heavy thunk. "Don't make this like I failed you!"

"Yes," you say, picking up Harry's wand and the pieces of your mask and putting it all in your pocket as you walk forward. "Yes, that's it. That's exactly it, Harry. You've failed or you will fail, and it doesn't really matter-- NO," you shout, shaking your head faster and pushing away the thoughts that tell you to leave Harry to the fire and see if his scar and his specialness can save him from that. "I--I don't mean you failed-- you didn't-- you won't!" You try to use your wand to douse the flames, but all you can remember is the flame freeze charm, so you cast that over the fire and hold your hand in it, trying to see if there's any soft, prickling tickle to show that it worked, but all you can feel is the pain of the tentacles moving fast.

"Damn it, Ron," Harry says, looking up at you. "Damn it-- how could you?" But you only smile and shake your head, and if you have betrayed Harry-- if you really have, it's no worse than your mind and your body are betraying you."

"It doesn't matter," you say as the room stops shaking and the last few pieces of crumbling mortar rain down from the ceiling, and you sit on the floor between the flames just beside Harry.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter," you say again, forcing a smile and coughing from the smoke in the air. "You shouldn't care about me, not now. This way you'll be glad when I die."

"What?" Harry rubs his head and tries to sit just a bit straighter and gives you a hard look.

You point down at your left arm, knowing that the Dark Mark is all he can see. "If-- if this kills me, you should be glad, because it'll mean another Death Eater gone, just like Scabbers-- that's what I am, now. That's what I have to be, and you have to be you-- perfect-- everything will be perfect." You want to touch his face, but you turn away just a bit and stick your hand into the cool fire to stop yourself, because even looking at him hurts, now, and you know that he shines brighter than any flames, and you know that even if it wasn't charmed, he would burn you more than the fire ever could.

"You're an idiot, Ron," Harry says with what could be a chuckle or a broken sob, and he traces the flames with his fingers and laughs with tears in his eyes. "You're such an idiot."

"Yeah," you say with a shrug. "Yeah, everyone seems to think so."

He punches you hard in the shoulder and then again right in the eye and then and then his fists come at you faster and with hardly any control, and he falls on top of you, still punching, and you feel him clip your ear and split your lip, and you think something like this has happened to you once before, but not quite, because Harry pulls himself up and scoots away, taking short, shallow breaths. "You," he says, reaching over and wiping a few drops of blood from the corner of your mouth. "You're the stupidest idiot I've ever met if you think this makes you not matter-- this doesn't change anything."

"It does." You point to your Dark Mark again, but he grabs your shirt sleeve and pulls it down to cover your arm.

"Not to me, it doesn't," he says, looking away from you into the fire. "You're my best friend."

"I'm not. I chose against you."

"I don't care," he hisses, touching the flames again. "Hermione knows-- or at least she's starting to suspect-- she doesn't care either."

"Why not?" you ask, getting to your feet with only a slight tremble. "You shouldn't-- neither of you! That's the whole bloody point!"

"Have you gone crazy?" Harry asks, blinking up at you, and you swallow hard. "Are you insane, Ron? What on earth is wrong with you?" You want to say that nothing is and that things are fine, and you want to wipe your Dark Mark away and say it was all a big joke, and you know it's getting worse because you can't make yourself laugh, and nothing seems funny anymore. You take his wand out of your pocket and hold it out to him, and he blinks and gives another sob-laugh. "Ron, you're pointing it the wrong way."

You blink, and you take a deep, shaky breath when you realize what he means by it. "No-- I-- it's yours, and you'll need it. You'll need it to clean up this mess." And you don't know if you mean the mess of the still burning common room filled with shattered glass and broken furniture or another kind of mess entirely-- the kind where it's people who are broken and the damage is sometimes impossible to see. "It'll be okay," you whisper as he grabs his wand away fast as if you might change your mind and really use it to curse him-- as if you actually could.

"What?"

"It'll be okay." You nod as he puts out the fire and banishes the smoke, and you give a weak smile before walking out the portrait hole and into the hallway.

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

You spend your days avoiding Harry and turning away from his glances in the few classes you still share, and you spend your nights wandering the secret passages behind portraits and under loose stones, and the air gets warmer as the sun's time in the sky lengthens, and you pack your heaviest jumpers away at the bottom of your trunk, because you don't need them anymore and because they're starting to feel too small, and your toes poke holes in your old shoes, and time continues to speed by.

You don't know how it happened-- how the grounds of Hogwarts became a battlefield, and at first you wonder if it's real. You wonder if it's only your nightmares that have grown so huge and horrible they can no longer fit in your head. Parts of the castle are burning and the lake has overflowed its shores, leaving the ground so thick with mud that it swallowed one of your shoes, and the sky is so full of Dark Marks that you can't tell make out where one skull ends and one coiled serpent begins. You walk along the Quidditch pitch with Malfoy. He's not wearing his mask anymore, because he never liked it as much as he expected, and yours is still broken and held together with spello-tape.

There's an explosion by the stands, and you watch Cho Chang fall forward into Cedric as Michael Corner runs for cover, and she's leaning on him as if he's really there, but when you blink all you see is a screen of black smoke where they had been standing. "Take that stupid thing off," Malfoy says, grabbing your mask and throwing in at Corner. "I messed up."

There's a pattern that you can't find no matter how you search. There's something you should say, and something you should wait for and something you should say after that, but you can't remember any of it, so you nod, and you wince as you step on something sharp with your bare foot, and your head feels like its being squeezed from the inside.

"We're all the same, you know?" Malfoy says after stumbling over his tongue for a few seconds. "Me, you, Potter's fat cousin-- killing him would have been doing him a favor. Probably for the best that we didn't, because that's what Potter can do to a person, even if he doesn't realize it. It wouldn't have been worth it if we did. That's why you wanted to get out of there, isn't it?"

Malfoy's not making sense, but he never really did, so you shrug and force a smile. "And because he beat me up and stabbed you with a fork, and I don't think you can really hurt anyone, even if you try to pretend."

"Yeah," Malfoy says, frowning and rubbing his arm where the fork went in. "Yeah, and because of that." A spell hits him-- a spell that was aimed right for you, but he steps in its path, and the orange-red light seems to slide right off him, and you shiver. "I messed up," he begins again, and he looks at you, waiting for something you can't give and then rolls his eyes and shakes his head and mutters, "never mind" under his breath. "I don't even know who I'm supposed to be going after," he says. "I don't know anymore."

"Not me, okay?"

He rolls his eyes again and sighs and shakes his head. "That would be doing you a favor."

You're not sure how long you spend walking around the edges of the fighting and trying to avoid any stray spells, but the sky lightens a few shades, and Malfoy throws up a few times and starts to cast the few simple healing charms he knows at the bodies on the ground without really looking at them, and you want to tell him that it's too late for most, but you see some bleeding wounds scab over and an arm twitch here and an eye open there, and you let yourself hope.

The sounds of screams and spells and smashes continue until, from somewhere by the forbidden forest, one silencing spell collides with another and is amplified a thousand fold, spreading outward like ripples on the surface of the overflowing lake, engulfing the whole of the grounds in an eerie quietness and a stillness that follows unlike anything you can remember in the thoughts that are your own or in the thoughts that aren't, and as if the world and everyone in it are taking a deep breath before diving into something truly horrible, students and Death Eaters and Ministry workers and shopkeepers and all the normal, extraordinary people you've lived your life surrounded by bend their knees to prepare for motion and steady their wands and force away all thoughts of failure, and when the sound comes back, it's deafening, and when the movement begins, it's frantic.

Above the fray, you think you can hear faint rumblings of thunder off in the distance, and you can smell smoke and dampness and the sizzling burn of the particularly nasty hexes that makes you sneeze and cough up blood, and you can see Harry dueling with the Dark Lord-- with Voldemort surrounded by a brilliant web of golden light. They each have their wands trained on each other, and they're each screaming curses and counter curses, but none of them seem to work. Beside you, Malfoy tries to mutter something about Potter being pathetic, but he can't stop shivering enough to get the words out, and he grabs you by the arm when you start to rush towards them, but you know that he won't be able to hold on long, and after a few jolts forward, you slip away.

When you reach Harry's side, Voldemort gives what must pass for a smile on his pale, snake-like face, and Harry tilts his head just a bit to look at you and then look down at your hand and the wand you hold out towards him. He swallows hard. "It's-- Ron, it's pointing the wrong-- OH."

"It's yours," you say, pressing it into his free hand. "I mean, it's mine-- I mean, just bloody take it." And he does, slower this time than before, and you think that if he trusts you, you might be able to let yourself trust something again and that for all his destiny and training, you were there next to him, and he needed you, and maybe that's the way it always was, and you're so busy thinking it that you miss the spell Harry casts that makes Voldemort dissolve to ash and the spell that Hermione casts afterward to make the ashes pop out of existence, but you think it sounds a lot like the one your mum uses to clean the fireplace.

"Ron," Harry says, turning to you. "Ron, I . . ." But then he looks down at your arms, and his eyes go wide at first and then shut tight, and when he opens them again, he can't stop shaking his head. Voldemort's glamour charms and concealment spells ended when he did, and the tentacles really have broken through the skin of your arms and are shredding the sleeves of your robes with their sharp points and twisting wildly in the cool air, and you can feel them as if they're part of you, and you can feel as they hurt you, and it hurts more than it ever has before. Hermione covers her mouth with her hand, and Malfoy stops walking over to throw up again, and Harry keeps his eyes fixed on your arms and takes a slow step forward. "This is-- this is-- what is this? What did this to you?"

"The brains," you try to say, coughing up another mouthful of blood, and it hurts too much to turn your thoughts to words, but you keep trying. "The one brain-- you-- you left, and I thought you would know-- No! Not you. Not you, Harry. I-- I don't mean that--"

Malfoy swallows hard and starts to mutter something, and Hermione slaps him hard in the face and then wipes her hand on her robe and gives him an odd look.

Harry keeps staring at your arms and the flailing tentacles, trying to look like he's not disgusted by them. "It'll be okay," he says, reaching out to touch the top of your shoulder, where they're still buried beneath your skin, and he doesn't back away when the tentacles start jolt and twist and wrap themselves around his hand, trying to push it away. He waits as they start moving faster, and he tightens his grip until their struggling weakens. "It'll be okay," he says again, looking right at you as if he can really see every horrible and strange and excited thing that's going on in your head, and you think you might really believe him.

He doesn't stay long, and you're not worried when he leaves to chase after a few Death Eaters. You nod, knowing he'll be back, and you watch as he disappears into the soot and the sparks flying through the air and flashes of the brightest green you've ever seen against the dark morning sky. Then you fall back into the pole of one of the goal hoops and slide down into the mud. There's music coming from somewhere nearby, either that or the Death Eater's have added rhythm to their coordinated attacks, and you hum softly, changing the beat as you go along to make it just a bit more cheerful.

In the forest, a bird gives a shrill cry and spreads its wings to take flight, and in the castle, a bell rings signaling the end of an uneaten breakfast and the beginning of classes that will never be held, and lightning flashes through the flat, monstrous clouds above you, and thunder rips through the air, signaling the coming rain. In the mud, rats crawl over you, until a particularly grubby one with watery eyes and a missing front paw drives all the others away, and as the first drops of water fall from the sky, you think that this is the time when worms and slugs rise up to the surface and the time when things start to feel clean, and you think of Harry, and you think of your mother's garden, and you think that you're ready to go home.

Your life or what you can remember of it flashes before you in a sudden rush of clear thought, and some of your memories are gorgeous-- brilliant and freeing, and others are terrible-- dark and gruesome, and they're all real, and they're all brighter than the ones you saw that day in the Department of Mysteries, and they're all yours, and you wonder if some curse must have hit you, because you can finally tell your own thoughts from the false ones, and you struggle to push everything that isn't yours away into some small empty corner of your mind where easily forgettable things like Divination assignments and potions brewing techniques are usually stored for the few minutes before they disappear, and when the struggle is over, you close your eyes, exhausted, and the pain evaporates away like puddles on a dry summer day. You can feel the tentacles still moving slowly with the rhythm of your heartbeats and reaching out to explore the ground beneath you and the air thick with smoke and magic and a thousand voices screaming.

When you force your eyes opened the noises fade, and the colors look false and washed-out, but you think you can see Cho looking at Cedric and talking to him as if he's really there, and when he reaches out for her hand and she curls her fingers around his, you think he flashes a stupid, perfect smile in your direction before looking up at the sky, and you watch as Ginny waves her wand and shouts a spell to get the mud off her robes and the only people beside her are Neville with his bright red hair and Luna with her badger hat and turnip earrings, and they laugh when her robe vanishes along with the mud, leaving her wearing a frilly, pink night shirt, and all the ghosts you see start to fade away except for the Fat Friar, leading first years to the passage under the Whomping Willow and the Grey Lady, whispering something in Marietta Edgecombe's ear right before she starts to cast a complicated looking shielding spell. You feel a rush of air above you, and you let yourself sink further into the mud.

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

"I--I'm not really sure." You hear spells being screamed from the broomsticks flying above you, and you hear the sound of a cursed explosion go off to your left and then to your right, but you don't care about any of that.

"Get up," Harry says with a smile, stepping softly through the mud to get closer to you.

"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."

You turn your head to see Malfoy standing in front of Crabbe and Goyle and beside Hermione, who pokes him with her wand and pulls it back to find a thin stream of clear slime trailing behind. She casts a charm over him that makes him sneeze and then one over Crabbe that makes him glow purple for a second, and she stares at them all like they're fascinating before Malfoy whispers something to her and shakes his head and points at you with a wince. She turns quickly and starts to run forward towards you until Malfoy grabs her by the arm to hold her back, and you think she looks upset, but you can't tell, because they hardly look real at all, and Malfoy gives you a strange sort of wave that looks more like he's fanning smoke away from his face, and you think his hand looks a bit less swollen than it had been, and you wave back. "Don't worry about him. He's alright."

"You are crazy," Harry says, shaking his head so fast it makes you dizzy to watch. "If you think Malfoy's alright, you must really be crazy." But Malfoy and Hermione and the castle fade until you can hardly see them at all, and the stars come back brighter and closer than they've ever been before, and you watch them spinning.

"I could," you say. "I could-- right here, just like that." And Harry keeps shaking his head.

"Up, Ron."

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 this time, he doesn't give an annoyed snort, and this time, you don't apologize. "Look up, Harry." Harry grabs your arm, and he lets the tentacles thread themselves through his fingers and pull him down beside you, laughing. "Look up," you whisper, and the world seems very far away. "Look up." And he does, and he follows your finger with his eyes and your arm with his attached hand. "Look up." And the sky seems both brighter and darker than it's ever been before. "The stars," you say, "perfect." And Harry smiles, and you know that he can see them too.

The End

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