Summary: The
Come Hell or High Water circle comes to a close with this final story following Hermione's rescue
Categories: Dark/Angsty Fics Characters: None
Warnings: Book 7 Disregarded
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 1
Completed: Yes
Word count: 1155
Read: 1855
Published: 07/29/07
Updated: 07/29/07
1. High Water by Slian Martreb
High Water by Slian Martreb
Author's Notes:
Many thanks to everyone who has been following the various stories. Also: thanks go to Ingrid Michaelson and her song, Keep Breathing for inspiration, the final kick in the pants, and lyrics used throughout.
High Water
The storm is coming but I don’t mind/ People are dying, I close my blinds/ All that I know is I’m breathing now.
This is how Harry counts the weeks after Ron’s passing: In days spent staring blankly at the walls that surround him, holding him prisoner. In nights spent in fitful dreams of innocence lost. He counts the meals he skips: breakfasts, lunches and dinners. The people he doesn’t speak to and the ones he avoids. The missions he doesn’t go on. The times when he ignores all conversation and offers for consolation around him.
He counts the times they try to stop in the hallway: Mr and Mrs Weasley. Professor McGonagall and Professor Lupin-tough it’s been years since he’s been anyone’s professor. He counts the pitying looks from Tonks and Kingsley, the mixed expressions of hate and pain on the twins’ faces. The utter sorrow on Ginny’s face would be enough to reduce him to tears if the reason for her sorrow wasn’t cause enough. They each wish to share their pain or to help divide his own. He brushes past them all without seeing them there. If he acknowledges their presence, he must acknowledge other things. Things that he is not yet ready to account for.
He counts the times that he sidesteps Mrs. Weasley in the hallways and the times he glances away from her eyes. Eyes that he is sure are accusing him of not doing more, of not doing better or not doing it fast enough. And so, though he knows that Mrs. Weasley’s pain should be far greater than his own (how the depths of a mother’s love has been hammered into his consciousness, always), he still cannot bear to look at her, to see Ron’s expression mirrored in the quirk of her mouth or the crease in her forehead.
He cannot bear to see the forgiveness he knows he will find there, if he will only look.
He counts the ways in which Ron will not be there for him anymore. The victories and losses they will not be able to share. The triumphs and the sorrows. The birthdays and birth-days. The Chudley Canon wins and the Order victories.
He numbers the days that he sits with Hermione in silence. The touches and sounds that they do not share, each locked in their own horrified universe with its new rules. He counts how many times that she rocks back and forth, her knees drawn up to her chest as though to protect her from attack. He loses count of how many times she jumps, each time that a door creaks. But it is an old house, an ancient house, and all of the doors make some noise of complaint. He counts each rage that passes through him, each wish to rip the doors off their hinges so that he doesn’t have to see the look of terror on her face as the doors strain against time itself.
He counts how many snips of the scissor it takes for Ginny to cut Hermione’s hair, how many minutes in time it takes. He counts each hair as it is burned; the curling tendrils of smoke that rise into the sky, taking their past away and bringing them into this new and horrible future. He marks each scar on her body, each as shocking as the one revealed before it.
He plots and devises, counting the ways in which he can kill Voldemort.
I want to change the world instead I sleep/ I want to believe in more than you and me/ All that I know is I’m breathing/ All I can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing now.
These are the ways in which Ginny measures the impact of her brother’s death: the volume of her mother’s tears each day and night. The weight of her father’s stoicism and his sighs. She sees the planes of Bill’s shoulders soften and fall, forced down by oppressive guilt. She calculates the length of the line of hurt that lives in the curve of Charlie’s spine and the panic in Percy’s eyes. She adds up the laughs and grins that will never leave George or Fred’s mouth, forever lost into oblivion.
She weighs the ways that Ron’s loss has changed her life; measuring this new truth within her universe, its value and implications. There are moments when she can almost believe it, almost believe that she’ll never see her big brother’s face again, the brother who saved her time and time again. But then her mind blanks, wanders off without her to a happier, more innocent place, and she forgets. Forgets until she sees Harry’s face, or Hermione’s scars and then the litany begins again: Ron is dead. Ron is dead. Ron is dead.
She measures the fear in the rest of the Order, their mistrust and fear. Their uneasiness in being in the same room as Hermione. She does not know what they could possibly have to fear from the far bravest person she has ever met, but fear they do. She measures their insignificance; afraid of Hermione or themselves, they do not deserve to enter.
She counts the times she sits with Harry and Hermione, feeling like an outsider to their loss; a third wheel that doesn’t quite fit. They sit vigil each day, a new trio of misfit sorts. They refuse to acknowledge his absence or discuss the moment he was lost to them. But in the same breaths that they each are silent, each is resolute never to forget.
She knows better than to think she can take his place and truly, she doesn’t wish to. She marks her place in their lives anyway: shearing away the knotted mat of Hermione’s hair and burning it, sealing off the horror of their past from the promise of this new future. She forces Hermione into taking a proper shower and then, once the water is running in clean rivulets down her body, a bath. Ginny holds her fragile form close, tight, as the salt-water tears slide down the slope of Hermione’s chest and into the bubbles.
She measures and she calculates, determining when the weight of this truth might finally crush her.
All that I know is I’m breathing/ All I can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing/ All we can do is keep breathing now.
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