Six Days

The second day after it happened, the Weasleys and Hermione's parents arrived. It had taken them a whole day to get to St. Mungo's. Everything was down because of the War. Floo, Knight Bus, trains, major highways...

The Muggle world had been sucked into the War as well. They just didn't know it. They called it a "conflict of security" and "terrorism". But it was the same war and wizards and Muggles were simply fighting on different fronts. In any case, it had progressed far enough that transportation was an exceedingly difficult and lengthy process.

Dumbledore had escorted the Grangers to the hospital. It happened that the Weasleys arrived at the same time and as Harry watched Ron's mum and dad wrap their youngest son up in a tight embrace, he heard faint but anguished sobbing down the hall and knew it was Mrs. Granger. He heard her start to shout.

"You told us it was safe! When we got the letter, you said this world was okay for her to be in! That boy was supposed to have finished this years ago!" There was a pause and some low murmuring, then explosive shouting once more. "NO! That's not good enough! My little girl is dying because you people didn't protect her! Oh God..." The shouting dissolved into harsh sobs.

Harry felt like he was going to be sick. He was hot, too hot, and his legs felt flimsy under the weight of his body. He tore his eyes from the floor and looked to Ron.

Ron quickly looked away.

For a moment, Harry couldn't breathe, like he'd taken a bad spill on the pitch and a broom handle in the stomach. The guilt screamed through his mind and he felt himself starting to flail.

And then his arms were full, and he didn't know the who or why of it, but it didn't matter because they were hugging him tight enough to hurt and he needed someone to hurt him exactly like that. He squeezed back like his sanity depended on it, and maybe it did, because when the person in his arms relaxed their grip, he felt considerably more stable.

Ginny Weasley looked up at him, sadness on her face and worry in her eyes. She'd heard. Harry knew it as soon as he looked at her. She rubbed his back and he attempted a small smile, but it turned out more like a grimace.

The time dragged on. Harry couldn't help feeling left out, the only one with no family there, no one there just for him. But Remus was off in Romania on a mission for the Order. He probably didn't even know yet. Harry felt like a stranger, an intruder, separated from these people and their grief but somehow voyeuristically tuned into it. Blame circulated through his body with every beat of his heart. He couldn't even look at the Grangers.

And so Harry busied himself as much as possible all day. He fetched chairs when people arrived and blankets when someone was chilly and tea every three hours. More than once he felt Molly's scrutinizing gaze on him and when it would happen, he'd ask if anyone wanted anything and then scurry away. He didn't want to talk or be around people or relax. He wanted to be alone with Ron and cry and be terrified until he fell asleep from the exhaustion of it. He wanted Ron, who seemed adamant to always have at least two people around him who weren't Harry.

As night fell, Ron's family began to dissipate. Arthur and Molly had Order business that absolutely couldn't be delayed and Ginny had DA meetings, which she had taken over when Harry graduated. Fred and George had a refugee from Dumbledore on her way to their shop. They each hugged Ron and Harry again, and when Ginny hugged Harry, she held on longer than most and he was grateful.

Finally, Harry and Ron were alone. The Grangers were staying at the hospital, but had gone down to the mess hall for a break. Harry thought that was not a bad idea. Neither he nor Ron had eaten all day long and the last thing Harry would be able to handle was Ron getting sick, too. A house elf came by with some food that Harry had asked for and Harry fought down a lump in his throat as he took the trays from the elf and Hermione's voice rang out in his head.

"Save them, don't enslave them..."

He chased the voice away and set a plate down in front of Ron, who looked at it disinterestedly. His eyes were red, although Harry didn't notice him crying, and had large puffy bags underneath them. He looked like he'd never had a single emotion grace his features, not foolishly grinning happiness or billowing rage or even lost confusion. He was blank.

Harry lifted the cover of the plate with a weakly hopeful, "Ta da," hoping to emit a twitch of a smile.

Ron just looked away.

"Ron," Harry said, abandoning his attempt fairly early. "Come on. It's steak and kidney. You love steak and kidney."

"I don't want any," was the monotone reply.

"Just a little bit?"

"No."

"You need to eat."

"You know, you really don't have enough red hair to be my goddam mother." His remark was void of any angry inflection, but it made Harry draw his breath in like he'd been slapped all the same.

"I just-" he started, and put a hand on Ron's shoulder.

"I'm going for a walk," Ron said, and shook Harry's hand off as he stood. He left the room without another word, and suddenly, Harry wasn't very hungry either.

"We should have a plan," Hermione had said. "In case something happens to one of us."

They were seated around the sitting room table at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. It was covered in maps and schematics and everything else the Order's intelligence had been able to gather for the upcoming mission.

"Nothing is going to happen," replied a terse Harry, who was rather testy being in Grimmauld Place at all, with its memories of Kreacher and Sirius' mother's portrait screaming obscenities, which he wanted sorely to take a match to every time he passed it.

"You know you can't guarantee that," Hermione said, ever the voice of reason.

Harry scowled. "I don't see why it has to be you two at all."

Ron sighed. "We've been over this, Harry. Hermione is the cleverest witch we've got. If something goes wrong, we'll need her skills. And you'll never in a million years make it through Chalfant Castle without me."

Ron was the only non-Death Eater who'd ever seen the inside of Chalfant Castle and lived. He bore a permanent limp from his captors' amusements, where his Achilles heel had been repeatedly severed and had healed improperly.

"It's a retrieval mission, not the bloody cavalry. We're there for a book, for Merlin's sake. We don't need the cleverest. In fact, it's probably a liability. And I'm sure there's a way to maneuver the castle without you." Harry had started off with snippy statements, but by the end, his voice was nearing contemptuous.

"Harry," Ron said tightly. "I love you, and I mean this in the nicest possible way. If you think that I am going to just sit back while you traipse off into Chalfant Castle, which, if I remember correctly, does a more than adequate impression of Hell, you are a total fucking moron."

"I don't want you there!" Harry had snapped.

Ron had slammed his hand down on the table so hard, Hermione jumped. "Yeah, well I don't want you there either!"

There was a long pause while the two of them simply glared at each other. Harry was so furious he could've strangled somebody and he wished fervently that Malfoy was still alive.

"So... a plan." Hermione's voice pulled him from glaring murderous daggers at Ron and he seemed to collapse in on himself.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked, feeling hollow and defeated, appalled at his own inability to keep the ones closest to him safe, even from themselves.

"You're not going to like it," she warned.

"What else is new?"

Hermione was quiet for a moment, as if she was unsure quite how to proceed. "If one of us gets hurt, badly I mean, enough so that we're dead weight..." She trailed off and when she spoke again, it was with a cold, detached, and professional air. "I think the other two should go."

Harry stared at her in shock and confusion for a long moment. He heard her words, but couldn't make sense of them. They were that ludicrous. "What?" His voice was saturated in disbelief.

"Anyone who falls behind gets left behind."

Harry had stood up abruptly and began to walk away.

"Think about it, Harry," Hermione had insisted. "We're going into Chalfant Castle. 'Death Eater Headquarters' ring any bells? Heroics aren't going to accomplish anything except getting all three of us killed. When it comes down to numbers, Harry, one is better than two or three."

"So if it was you, if you got hit and we couldn't fix you right away, you'd want us to run? To leave you there?" Harry was well aware that he was yelling by now and he honestly did not care in the slightest.

"Yes," she said very quietly.

It was her lack of volume that reigned in Harry's temper and he paused in his fury. She raised her eyes from the table and locked them, almost defiantly, with his. In that gesture, in that moment, he could see everything- her fear, her pain, her dread... Everything he'd ever wanted to keep away from her he saw in her eyes and it made him feel a tremendous failure.

"Just like I'd leave you." Her voice was thick and didn't match the cruelty of her words.

Harry looked at her, unable to absorb what he was hearing. He looked to desperately to Ron. Ron, who never passed up a chance to disagree with Hermione. Who lived to bicker with her. Who understood things about Harry that occasionally, Hermione just couldn't. Who nine times out of ten, backed Harry up, on principle if not merit.

This wasn't one of those times, though, and Ron simply shook his head sadly. "I think she's right, mate. Sticking around... It'll be suicide."

He spoke in the same thick voice Hermione had used, but the mix of emotions in his eyes was different. Pain and dread were there in spades, but also something that looked vaguely like beaten acceptance. Harry tried to remember a time before when the fire had been snuffed out of Ron, when he had last looked this despondent, and found that such a time didn't exist. Harry wondered how much hope any of them could possibly have if it had come to the point where Ron Weasley hadn't the strength to be angry.

Harry blinked several times, then slowly and woodenly sunk back into his chair. He ran a hand wearily over his face and sighed.

"Harry?" Hermione said gently, and Harry thought for one insane moment that he might start bawling hysterically all over the maps that Kingsley Shacklebolt had drawn up.

"I hate this," he said instead.

Hermione laced her fingers with his and squeezed his hand. Ron did the same with the hand that was resting on his knee, and reached for Hermione's other hand across the table. Harry closed his eyes and squeezed back, and the three of them sat there like that for quite some time.