Title: And I Get By
Author: Amalin
Notes: Rated R. First line directly inspired by Michael Chabon. Post-war.



When Ron thinks of that summer, that awful, impossible summer, he thinks not of the frenzy of the war but of stolen time, of moments they couldn't have been allotted but took anyway--took, greedily, hungrily, as if they knew they would have no more. But then, back then, they couldn't have known. No one could have. They had thought Voldemort was the worst terror they would face.

Bloody pity, he thinks, staring into his empty glass, that it turned out to be ourselves.

Or each other. Maybe both.

When Ron thinks of that summer, of those last desperate months and their spiral of hope and despair, he thinks first of rain. It poured, those beginning days, rattling the windows, soaking them when they dared step outside--a message of sorts, it could have been. A warning. Perhaps he should have predicted, those first nights of deluges, that the coming season would be a disaster; perhaps he should have known.

They were all too busy to see, busy hating, loving, hoping, fearing. The Last Days, he thinks, like some sort of statement.

Harry sits down beside him. They don't look at each other.

It's always this way, come summer. Ron’s gotten better at predicting these things. He knows, now, that it's better to be prepared for loss. When it catches you off guard it takes a part of you that you don't expect to lose. Un-mendable. Un-whole.

"Hey," Harry says, after a long time.

Ron leaves.






They’d gotten a flat together just after seventh year, the three of them, and despite raised eyebrows and veiled comments had made a home of it, as much as they could. They were all too taken up with the war, anyway, and with a few awkward moments (how once, Hermione left the bathroom in nothing but a towel, and the next night, Ron forgot a Silencing Spell and woke both Harry and Hermione with a start) they got by. That was what it was about, those days: getting by.

And then one afternoon, Ron had come home from the Ministry early, robes slung over his shoulder, dashing to make the doorway and shaking the rain out of his papers on the lift. He'd stepped in the doorway without his usual noise, something hushed about the afternoon rain and the quiet hope none of them had dared express but had buoyed them all the same, ever since Bellatrix was caught; he'd heard some soft, unexpected sound and had moved towards Hermione's room, to which the door was flung open.

He'd stood there, the rain in rivulets outside, still holding his robes. He'd felt his heart beat a frenzied, unfamiliar rhythm as he watched Hermione move slowly against her own fingers, feet braced against the rail of her bed, thighs trembling. He'd remembered what it was to love her--not the hopeless, hormonal emotions of a fourth-year boy, but something that had flared in the middle of sixth year when Harry went home with Lupin for Christmas and Ron's parents thought it safer at Hogwarts.

Ron had turned away before she tensed; he didn't see her body coil, the way she bit her lip and arched on the sheets, but he heard the whimpering sound of release she made and took desperate, silent strides to the door. He'd counted to ten, then slammed it with all the force he could muster.

"Ron?" she'd called, immediately, only a trace of shock in her voice. "Is that you?"

He'd tossed his robe across the kitchen table, made an extravagant amount of noise opening the refrigerator. "'S me," he yelled back to her. "Got off work early. You want a drink?"

"Give me a minute," she'd said, not at all breathless. A moment later she'd appeared at the door of the kitchen, perfectly tidy except for the waywardness of her hair, cheeks flushed. "I knew it was you. Harry never slams the door like that. And you're going to turn into an alcoholic if you don't watch out. Drinking in the middle of the afternoon!" She reached to take the bottle away from him, and their fingers brushed.

Ron had wanted to take her hand, then, and pull it to his mouth; he'd wanted to kiss it, kiss her, taste the still-lingering tang of desire on her lips. Instead he'd said, perhaps a little too tersely to be joking, "Get your own, why don’t you?"

Hermione's eyes had flashed and she'd stalked into the other room, the line of her back rigid. "Stop drinking," she’d called back to him, irritated. "Get a real job. And for heaven's sakes, hang up your robes; I can't find anything in this mess!"

Ron loved her, then, and every day after until she died.






The first Friday of every month, they go out for drinks: Ron, Harry, Remus, any others who want to come along. This Friday it's Ernie MacMillan, whose Ministry career is finally looking up, and halfway through the night Pansy Parkinson walks in with Padma Patil. Ron's heard the rumors, but he's never seen them together until now, and it takes his mind off where he last saw Pansy. He watches Pansy feed Padma chocolate and lick her lips like she's still young, like they're all young, still haven't seen the world.

Ron knows better than that and, when he hears Harry mutter to Remus, "From the battlefield to this?" he knows that Harry knows, too. He remembers Pansy all too well, flinging spells everywhere, eyes glowing with the frenzy of battle; even wounded, she fought on, with nails and teeth when she'd lost her wand. He remembers watching her launch herself on a robed Death Eater; she would have won, even if he hadn't stood over the man and said a cold Avada Kedavra as she held him down.

Hermione was the last one to forgive Pansy. Ron remembers that.

When Remus returns with another pint for all of them--except for Pansy and Padma, who are twining hands across the table--he says, with raised eyebrows, "Don't you have anything better to be doing? You’re young; you don't have to hang out with old werewolves and drink to days gone by."

Harry scowls. "We’re all old," he snaps, "remember?"

Ron thinks of battlefield scars, tattered flags and the dreams he has now, spells flashing everywhere and the acrid smell of too much magic intersecting, the dreams he wakes up from with sweat in his eyes, sweat or maybe tears. Before he can speak, Ernie MacMillan says rather loudly, "Well, to the future, then!" and raises his glass, and Remus is too busy toasting him and Harry too busy hating him for Ron to be heard.

Maybe it's better that way.






Memory:

"I'm sorry," Ron says, choking. They are the only words that will rise to his lips. He can't make sense of them, but they are the only words that will fit through the hole his mouth is forming, the hole the shape of Hermione's name. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Harry looks at him, full of anger he can't help but feel and apology that he can help but doesn't; he says, quietly intense, "You were supposed to--you were--"

"I'm sorry," says Ron, like one of those dolls Ginny used to have that said the same thing again and again: "Hi, what's your name?" and "Will you be my friend?" His mouth feels numb, his heart quiet. "I'm sorry."

"It should have been me," Harry whispers. He turns, as if to walk away.

"Fuck you," Ron yells, his voice so loud it should echo. But the dead don't mimic him and the sky is too wide. "I couldn't have--I never saw--What d'you mean, it should have been you? You watching her back? You dying in her place? You fucking her?"

Questions like these aren't meant to be asked so soon. He can see it in Harry's face, the raw, broken fury that smashes against him like a storm. Ron leaps sideways as the dirt explodes beside his feet--not purposeful, Harry wouldn't do that even pushed to these limits, but he loses control sometimes--and wishes, for a moment, that he doesn't know Harry as well as he does.

"She's dead," Harry screams after him as he runs, tripping and scrabbling in the dirt and not looking back. "She's dead, she’s . . . "

"Dead," Ron whispers, coming to a standstill and realizing he's dropped his wand somewhere between Harry and himself, wishing he didn't care.

The world can change in an instant. He doesn't recognize it anymore.






Sometimes Ron wakes in the night and it's Harry sitting beside him, cloaked in the darkness and unspoken words, his quiet feral gaze guarding Ron's sleep. They don't speak, then; once, Ron pulled Harry down beside him and they'd fucked, carefully and silently, but more often than not he merely slips back into dreaming. When he wakes up, Harry is always gone.






The first time they touch after the war. Rain, a cold and sodden October night, Harry coming home for the first night in a week. He's dripping when he stomps in the door, rain running down his neck and leaving his threadbare T-shirt clinging. Ron can see the line of his spine when he turns to shut the door.

"There are charms for the rain," he snaps from the couch, hating himself for being the responsible one, for trying to be Hermione. "Where were you all week?"

"Out."

"Fine," Ron says, bitter, "fine, just don't--"

Harry kisses him then, slides down next to him and puts shaking hands on his shoulders and it's imperfect, about as imperfect as it can be, wet clothes and the television in the background and Ron's packet of crisps crushed under him as they move clumsily together. It feels like the first time they've ever touched, though Ron knows better, knows it shouldn't be so hard without--without her.

Harry's never been a particularly good kisser; he's reckless, sometimes scrapes Ron's lips with his teeth, always pulls back to mutter, "Sorry," after he does. Ron wonders if Hermione ever cared. He tries not to think about Hermione between them.

"You don't have to--" Ron begins, when Harry fumbles between them at Ron's trousers; Harry has his eyes closed and they fly open when Ron speaks, expectantly, surprised. Lamely, somehow ashamed that he cannot finish his own sentence, Ron says again, "You don't have to."

"I know," Harry whispers, as if he's telling someone else. He doesn't look at Ron when he slides his thumbs over Ron's hips and Ron tries, tries not to look at him either. He feels self-conscious sitting there, trousers undone and his cock in Harry's mouth, hands balled beside him; he closes his eyes, something like a groan trapped between his lips, when Harry stops abruptly and pulls back.

"Damn it, Harry," Ron starts, when he sees that sharpness in Harry's eyes and has to choke on his own words.

"You shut your eyes," Harry says, voice strange. And, "Who're you thinking about, then?" with his tone dangerous and low, the kind of icy whisper they all used on the battlefield, crouched between dead companions, wands in their hands. He looks up, defiant and angry and the Harry Ron remembers best, but in that moment his eyes turn shuttered, he turns away, says, "Never--no, sorry, you. You. I wasn’t--" and wraps his hand around Ron's cock, jerks and leans in with his mouth and it's angry, it's rough and angry and Ron shouldn't be as desperate as he is, shouldn't be coming as his hips jerk forward, but there, for a moment, everything dissolves: even the night, the season, even Harry.

He's tired when Harry looks up at him but says "Hey," more softly than he means to, reaching down to touch Harry's shoulder. "I'll--"

"Don't touch me," Harry snaps, like an angry teenager, but his voice is lower, more guarded, and he flings himself backward as he stands, one fluid motion of frustration that turns into his storming into the bathroom. Ron thinks about following, shuts his eyes. Doesn't.

He's still on the couch half an hour later when Harry comes out, hair wet and in different clothes. "Where're you going," Ron says, flatly, without looking up from the crackling television. Harry's the one who bought it, but only Ron uses it anymore.

"Out," Harry says, vaguely, tightly.

The door slams and Ron shouts, inexplicably furious, "It's fucking raining," but Harry’s gone already, gone.







"We were supposed to be invincible," Ron tells Harry once, halfway to drunkenness, far gone enough not to care if Harry leaves. "We. I, I thought--"

Harry: sober, pragmatic, looking away. His voice is as tired as his eyes. "Nobody's invincible, Ron."

Ron tries to say, "I always thought you were," but it doesn't come out. He downs the rest of his pint instead and, by the time he looks up, Harry's already ordered him another. Sometimes he doesn't know if he hates or loves Harry more. Sometimes he doesn't know if he loves Harry at all.






Harry doesn't cry anymore. Ron never recalled him crying often, but there were times, tears of frustration and adolescent anger and though he never saw him do it, Ron knew he cried after Sirius, knew. There was one night that summer when the rain had poured down and the owl had come about Azkaban, all three of them laughing over takeout Chinese and Hermione's foot sliding up Ron's calf; it had changed in an instant, in the middle of the quick Auror correspondence of Seventeen dead, thirty wounded, Azkaban lost, and Harry had left, then. Left Ron and Hermione with the dishes and the emptiness of an apartment in the rain; in the end, all the candles had blown out and they'd sat there in the darkness, waiting. When Harry came in he was dripping and he'd yelled, "I should have been there," and he'd finally given in to Hermione's arms. Ron had watched the two of them, Harry crying silently and Hermione holding him, and right there, for a moment, it was enough just to be there, to love them and not feel the slippery holds of jealousy and doubt. It had been enough.

A week after Harry killed Voldemort, Ron had woken in the night to find Harry beside him; that alone had been a surprise, as he hadn't heard him come in. Harry was hunched on the edge of the bed, and the curve of his naked back in the moonlight somehow reminded Ron of the way they'd piled the corpses after that last day, the stark, morbid paleness of it. Still skinny, ribs jutting and his breath coming harsh, Harry was crying.

Ron wanted to touch him, then, slide his palms up Harry’s shaking back and pull him down to the bed, wanted to hold him while he shuddered and made helpless, frustrated noises, wanted to say nothing at all while Harry wiped his face and apologized, and wanted to maybe kiss him, maybe, if Harry didn't pull away. Ron wanted that, wanted Harry to turn to him and put his face into Ron's shoulder and cry the way he'd cried for Hermione.

He had lain there in the darkness, hating himself, listening to Harry cry, powerless to sit up and say anything at all, powerless to move. He'd lain there, wanting to cry himself, not knowing how, listening to the darkness. Eventually Harry had stopped and walked out of the room; Ron heard the tap running in the kitchen, the scrape of a chair and then nothing.

The other side of the bed was still warm. Ron leaned into Harry's pillow, wrapped his arms around it, thought about a ragged, skinny boy with threadbare T-shirts and eyes too cold to meet. He hadn't meant to fall asleep that way but did, and he was still sprawled that way when Harry woke him up the next morning, dropping the Daily Prophet on his face to say roughly, "They've got the nerve to hold Neville for using the Killing Curse, there's going to be a fucking trial, I've got to go," and Ron hadn't had the energy to say, "Wait."

Harry doesn't cry, hasn't cried after that. Ron had prepared himself, had thought it through, known that the next time he'd wrap his arms around Harry and not let him go, even if he struggled. He'd set his mind to it, but the opportunity had never arisen.

Ron doesn't know if he should be glad.







A thin, crouching figure is at Hermione's grave when Ron reaches the hilltop and begins to start down towards her plot: he knows, immediately, and despite himself hangs back, hears Harry’s muffled words carried to him on the wind.

". . . don't remember you anymore," Harry's voice says, "sometimes I forget what your smile looked like, your voice when you'd say goodnight, your . . . I'm afraid to lose them, I can't remember anymore what's real and what I'm imagining, I'm afraid I'll wake up one day and all the things I remember about you won't even be true . . ."

Ron thinks he should go to him. He doesn't move.

". . . don't know what to do, it's Ron now, always Ron, it feels like you were never there . . . wonder if you'd be here now if I'd been there, if I didn't . . . left you with Ron . . .”

The trees shudder. Ron crouches there for a few moments, grass damp on his knees, a pain throbbing in his shoulder. After the silence stretches on, he stands, brushes off his knees, turns away from the figure down the hill who's crouched and might be crying. Had he promised himself to care next time? He can't remember. He'd promised to keep Hermione safe, he knows that much; Harry had leaned into him that morning, had bent in towards Ron's ear with hot breath and the urgency of war mornings, had said, "Keep her safe." Or had he said, "Be safe?" Ron can't remember. Ron can't remember if it should matter.

He Apparates home, and when Harry appears at the door he has to swallow before he can ask, "Where were you?"

"Looking for forgiveness," Harry says.

Ron says, then, "You’re home early." For his part, he's stopped looking: the only thing the dead can give him is guilt.

The air smells of rain. Ron thinks, Summer. Ron thinks, Hermione, only he doesn't think that at all.

"She used to turn around at the stairs," he says, suddenly loud. "At school. She'd have her knitting in her hands and a bundle of schoolbooks and the fire'd be on her cheeks and she'd have helped us for what she said was the last time, and she’d say, 'well, goodnight,' which meant, 'don't stay up too late and don't do anything stupid,' and maybe a little bit of 'I love you.'" His voice is getting louder. "I loved her, I always loved her."

Harry sits down next to him to say nothing at all. They sit like that for nearly an hour, until Ron says hoarsely, "I'm going to bed, then," and Harry follows him wordlessly, lies down beside him in the dark. Outside, the rain starts up.

Ron thinks, Harry, when Harry touches his hip and rubs their knees together, this awkward pilgrimage; in the dark, he can feel the warm weight of Harry's arm splayed across his chest and Harry's breath on his shoulder and maybe, maybe that's the meaning of forgiveness, living with yourself. Maybe that's enough.







Three years to the day and Ron's trying to get pissed and Harry has said three words all night. "You can talk to me, you know," Ron tries, feeling old and lonely. For a moment, he’s grateful for Harry. But it's Harry, sitting silent and turned away, and he slams his hand down, winces. "I was there, I--"

"Yeah," Harry says tightly, "yeah, you were, and I wasn't, I remember." In the background, someone is gesturing on the television and Ron sinks a little bit more into the couch. "But she’s still--"

Ron waits until the silence stretches and he's suddenly angrier than he's been in years. Says, "Still? Go on, then, say it!" On his feet now, says, "Go on, tell me I'm the one who killed her. Tell me it's my fault after all this time, you would've saved her, you, tell me you loved her more or would have done it better and how much of a fuckup I am because Merlin knows you've been waiting to tell me every time you look at me like you're expecting somebody else, well you know what? You know what, I think you're mad, you go out all hours of the night and go whole days without speaking and you know, I miss her too, don't you think I do?"

Harry says, quiet, "Ron."

"You think I don't know? You think maybe I'm happy with this, the way you disappear and I'm supposed to forget everything and the way we pretend we're normal people when even Ernie can't go to the Ministry unless he Apparates because after being prisoner he's claustrophobic and Remus still twitches when people say the word black and--"

"Ron."

"No, look, because she's the one who left us," Ron yells raggedly, "just left us here, how are we supposed to go on, look at us, you're a fucking maniac and I'm--"

"A drunk," Harry puts in then, more amused than anything.

"I am not a drunk," Ron shouts, "I'm. I'm." He stands there, feeling ridiculous, hating August and Harry and Hermione and himself, hating all the years he's tried to put between his life and the past. "Well, maybe a bit of a drunk," he concedes, sitting down next to Harry. Then, sullenly, "Hermione wouldn't have cared."

"Yes, she would have," Harry answers, and Ron listens for the bitterness, listens, doesn't hear it, frowns. Harry raises a skeptical eyebrow at him and there is still no trace of hurt. "You know she would have."

"Yeah, well," says Ron. "Well."

Harry looks at him. "I don't care," he says after a moment, earnestly, as if it's supposed to mean something earth-shattering. When Ron just stares, Harry leans over and kisses him, hands still in his own lap, an awkward sort of kiss where their mouths touch and nothing more. When Harry pulls away, Ron makes a soft sort of sound, a back-of-the-throat acknowledgement. Harry gives him a sad, sorry sort of grin, the same grin he's had for ten years. "You're more of a drunk than I am mad," he insists, upon which Ron pulls their mouths together again and this time touches Harry, the weight of his palm on Harry's thigh, the heat of Harry's hand as Harry clutches at Ron's back.

Later, when they're lying in bed and the hush of the night after the rain has gone is settling around them, Harry says quietly, "It would have been the same, you know, if it'd been you. Worse, maybe. Hermione and I couldn't have--we. It wouldn't--"

Ron says, "I know," and kisses him, a kiss of old nights and moments they've both forgotten. Harry had stuttered on Hermione's name and Ron loves him for that, irrationally, unpredictably. He puts his hands behind his head and watches as Harry sits up, says a cautious Lumos to check his watch.

"It's morning," Harry tells him. Outside, it's still dark, wet and quiet like some secret world, but yes, Harry tells him, it's morning.

"Is it?" Ron yawns. Like he's thought about denying it, like he's giving time permission to keep moving, he says finally, as Harry lies down beside him and he stares into the darkness of this unexpected, unfathomable tomorrow that he suddenly, desperately wants,

"All right."