Triptych

"Harry?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you just going to lay here all day, or what?"

Harry wishes Ron would move so that he could see the sky again, though when Ron shifts slightly where he stands above Harry his red hair seems to burn with the corona halo of the sun all around his head. It makes him beautiful until he shifts and is just Ron again, lanky and lean with skin summer-peeling. Lying on his back in the long grass Harry smiles and lashes out with Seeker's reflexes to grab his friend by the wrist, yanking hard to topple him to the ground in a tangle of limbs and laughing protestations. "Harry!"

"Just look, Ron," and a hand waves expressively at the trees that curve softly around the bowl of the sky above them, around the edges of the sweet-scented meadow, their leaves rustling in the breeze like far-off conversations. "It's lovely here."

The redhead's mouth opens as though to say something, then shuts again, and a considering look comes over the familiar face. "It is, isn't it."

Harry smiles at that, then yells as Ron shoves a piece of bristly grass up his nose. "Hey!"

~

Ron can feel the blood dripping from his fingertips, drenching his clothes in places from the thick hot spurts and clotting tightly to pull across his face as though his skin is getting smaller. The hand which clutches his wand is quivering, the muscles of his palm twitching and jumping in a nervous tic he can't get rid of.

Most of the blood isn't his.

Five metres in front of him Harry kneels on the ground, shaking and weeping and sick from apparating. Together they wait in the quiet meadow, staining the grass a sullen brown as they wait to see if anyone else makes it out alive from that den of horrors.

Ron thinks that if he ever sees another battle again it will be too soon, but he's pretty sure that, whatever he wants, he'll see another battle. If only to try and help keep Harry safe. He moves to sit next to Harry and feels awkward just bumping shoulders to let him know he's there, Harry's arm quivering where they touch just as he is all over. Harry sobs harder at the contact and, eventually, Ron slings an arm around his shoulders and holds him, because he saw what Harry had to do and what he himself had to do. He's better at repressing things than Harry. Ron will cry later, when nobody can see or hear him, and things will be alright. Maybe. Eventually.

"It's still lovely here, Harry," says Ron, and then Harry looks up at the trees and takes a big, rattling breath to say, "It is, isn't it."

~

Harry lies on his back in the long grass with his eyes closed and a stalk of grass sticking out of his mouth like he saw in some old muggle movie or other once. He pretends to be asleep when Ron smoothes back his hair from his forehead, then smothers a smile when nimble fingers pull a lock back over his scar again, a small snort of self-derision from that freckled nose almost hidden in the sound of the breeze.

"The muggles will build right over this some day," Ron says quietly, his rasping voice soothing in the quiet. He never quite sounded the same after the war, when Bellatrix Lestrange had almost managed to slit his throat. Harry still isn't quite used to it, but he's sure that eventually he will be, just like eventually he'll get used to Hermione being dead and Remus crippled.

"I guess it's ours for now, though," Ron continues, and Harry can smell the grass being crushed as Ron lies back beside Harry, probably propping his head up with arms folded behind like a pillow. "No-one else ever comes here."

"We saved it, didn't we," says Harry eventually, opening his eyes to the beautiful sky with its feather-white clouds floating idly by. "This beautiful world."

Ron smiles, eyes creasing at the corners with a sort of pleasure. "I guess we did."

It was enough.