Brain Damage (3)
Malfoy whispers, “I messed up.”
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.
“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.
“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.”
. “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 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.”
“
“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’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.”
“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’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.
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,
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.
“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.”
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.
. “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