Not Even That

Not Even That

The summer after seventh year passed in what could only be described as a daze. Every Sunday morning we went down to the cemetery at Hogwarts and spent the day with each other--sometimes talking about menial things like whose turn it was to go grocery shopping. But more often than not, we didn't say anything at all.

Hermione and Ron usually sat under a tree. They held hands. They leaned into each other. They simply sat next to each other so that her shoulder his arm.

"I miss him," she would say sometimes.

"Me too," he would reply. And a butterfly would flutter by. They both turn to watch, mostly because butterflies were normal--and that wasn't something they were used to anymore.

And as the butterfly would fly away up into the leafy branches of their tree, they would continue to sit in silence, watching the slender man who left childhood a bit too soon weave his way through the rows of tombstones, stopping to touch the names of a few and cry at others.

I couldn't help but think that we had all left childhood behind a bit too soon.

Besides those Sunday mornings, I don't remember much else of that summer, but I guess that the other days weren't so important.

I don't remember one smile.

But when summer had finally ended, so had the quietly poetic way that we had been going about our business.

Hermione had begun studying to be a psychiatrist. And Ron, to everyone's surprise, began training to become an auror.

Harry, however, decided not to move into the flat that the four of us had bought together, and instead bought his own in London.

He complained of loneliness. And I guess that years of communal living at Hogwarts could make you a bit shocked when turned out into the real world. But I think it was more than that.

I went to go see him twice in September and found myself calling up old friends and telling them that I miss him, although they've all heard it before. They always replied by saying that they all did as well.

Towards the end of October I saw Draco Malfoy in Diagon Alley. He nodded to me, as if he hadn't ever hurt me in any way unforgivable, and I hurried to tell Luna what had happened. I shook my head and told her that we had all grown up too fast, even Malfoy.

Yes, she agreed. Maybe if we hadn't been so close to Harry we could've held on a bit longer to normalcy. And I didn't know what to say because I was surprised she would ever say something like that.

I thought about it for many days afterwards. And the next time I saw Lupin and Tonks, they were having lunch with Hermione and Ron. I told them all about what Luna had said.

Ron became upset, but I felt that Luna had only said what everyone had thought at some point in time.

But Harry had been a light back then--a savior. And, of course, everyone had wanted to be by his side. Now he was just a black hole--an ugly vacuum sucking everyone into concern for him.

We had all grown up too fast--him most unwillingly of all, and I was afraid for him.

I didn't see Harry for the rest of October or November but during the first week of December I stopped over at his flat. When he saw me at the door he put his arms around me and didn't let go for a long time.

We talked about Fluer and Bill's new baby and he made me dinner--bacon and eggs and pankcakes. He didn't have anything else.

"I miss you," I told him, and he didn't say anything. But later on that night, he asked me to stay.

And in his fingers I felt the ghost of a fight that would never really leave him. A fight that would continue to change him until I could no longer remember what I had missed in the first place.

Later when he was asleep I imagined him as he was at sixteen, when he was last a child. And I wished we could have stayed like that a while longer.

When he whispered my name, I could almost remember how it felt like to know that his weakness was a strength.

But, of course, now he was just weakness. And, maybe, not even that.