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It started when he couldn’t save them. The strange, niggling feelings of loathing, those inexplicable pieces of doubt. Those had never been there before. He’d always been the type to bounce back well enough. But who can blame a person for not bouncing back from the decimation of a life he’d led since… it began? He’d loved her, Hermione, ever since it mattered, he’d stood with Harry before it was ever a question of loyalty. And how was he SUPPOSED to take it, when that existence was no longer an option?
Apparently he was supposed to take it lying down. Everyone was too weary to do anything but give up. Evidently years of giving everything, everything, and getting back next to nothing hadn’t hardened them when it was all over. Evidently life had kicked them just enough to let them feel justified at giving up. And really, come to think of it, he had been the one with the most chance of coming out okay.
Little forms of denial sometimes aren’t as harmful as people say they’re supposed to be. Sometimes the little forms of denial are the only ones keeping a person going, keeping a person optimistic. He’d had that kind of blindingly dogged belief in the power of good that once it had come true, once good had won, he barely knew what to do with himself. He’d wished for something so hard that, after it had stopped consuming all his days, his entire life, there was almost something missing.
He was confused. He thought he should feel happy that Harry had won. He thought other people should feel happy that Harry had won. And sure, the general public was happy, they were content, because it meant they didn’t have to get off their sorry asses and try to help. But Harry had been turned into an empty husk somewhere along the line, and Hermione was falling apart. Ron wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to him, but he assumed it couldn’t be good. Something had ruined them.
When every person starts to look at a group of mere children as though those children are their only hope, things start to unravel. The children begin to feel guilty for things that aren’t their fault; they take on problems that have nothing to do with them. They turn into haunted little creatures, worthy of every type of pity, if only they were afforded it. Their eyes hold shadows that cause them to jump, and their souls hold a fiery hunger that nothing can quench. They start to feel a certain bloodlust.
And once that’s gone, they’re spent. Their story is told. They are used, abused, and done for. They’ve served their purpose, and society is only too willing to do away with them now that they’ve saved the world. After the history books are written and the statues are built, people begin to forget. People begin to say “Oh, is he still alive?” Still alive? As if he could die. He’s notoriously good. He can beat anything. They all could, when they were immortal. But people want to put the story into its categorically-labeled, chronological box, and move on.
And there comes the undoing. Harry’s whole life was supposed to have been about the fighting. It was understandable that, after it all, he’d wanted an escape, a place of happiness. So he’d built it, he’d escaped to it, and he’d left everything behind. And who could blame him? No one had the courage, of those who still remembered.
And Hermione, the woman Ron loved, had lapsed into a strange catatonia. Ron became agitated merely at seeing her so passive. Anything passive should not describe Hermione. Doing, being, thinking, talking, moving: those sorts of words described Hermione. Ron, who’d spent his life loving her, didn’t know her like this. He felt guilty, seeing her in pain that even she was unwilling to admit. She must have been writhing inside, but her outside never showed it. Her outside was glazed. After Harry had left behind their friendship, her core, her support, has started to fissure. It had always been the three of them together, and Hermione was left listless and unable to cry.
Ron felt guilty. He felt enormous amounts of guilt about being the only one to not break down, freak out, or go on a rampage. He felt guilty about still being intact. Then he began to wonder about his sanity-- who feels guilty for feeling normal? The reason he hadn’t broken was because he had put up no resistance; there had been nothing to break. And he was the only one with any heart left.
When Harry left, Ron blamed himself. When Hermione took to her bed, Ron blamed himself. He begged her to get up, talk with him, nag him, walk with him, cook with him, read something, write something, fight with SOMEONE, but she wasn’t having it. She would merely look at him with a patronizing stare and then return her gaze to the wall. Hermione, of all people, had gone slack, doe-eyed, and weaker than anyone had ever seen her. She looked so thin. Ron winced to see the shadow of her veins peering through her pale skin. Ron tried to hold her together, tried to force her out of bed, tried to love her.
She would not let herself be loved. Her hair, always wild, had become completely untamable. When her eyes weren’t fixed and unmoving, they were painfully squeezed shut, as though over bad memories. Her nails became claws. Ron wondered how her bones still supported her body, after such a time of disuse. It physically hurt him to see her in such disrepair. He tried to get Harry to come back as well, but Harry was even harder to persuade. Harry barely let anyone into his house, let alone see him. Harry had become a legend in his own right, beyond fighting Voldemort, as a reclusive eccentric, and Hermione was steadily gaining on him.
Ron tried to find people to heal her. She would not let herself be healed. Ron got tired of people telling him she would eventually snap out of it. Ron knew his wife was stubborn, and if she did not want to snap out of it, she would not be coming back.
Ron did not want her to kill herself. He often thought that her presence, her need of him, was the thing keeping him sane as well. He had a purpose in caring for her; his fighting for Harry had shifted into a fighting for Hermione. And yet he still wasn’t sure he was enough of an adult to care for her.
He also wasn’t sure when exactly he had become an adult. In one sense, he’d always been one. Hell, he’d been fighting Voldemort since he was eleven, how much more grown up can you get? In another sense, when so much is expected of you, other parts of your maturity can decline or regress, in response to the intense needs required of you. Ron’s capabilities may have been adult, but he wasn’t sure his abilities were. He wasn’t sure he was able to take care of anyone.
And so many people had died because what had been asked of them was too much. So many “stable pillars” in his life had fallen to shambles, and the roof was caving in. Ron refused to plead with her. He would lay with her, lie with her, lying to himself that she was alright and the world would make sense tomorrow, as soon as they both woke up.
He would think of the things he missed. He missed seeing Harry’s hard, fast grins when he’d accomplished something. He missed the look of joy on Hermione’s face when she had figured out something magnificent. He missed his own innocence. He’d missed the opportunity for a childhood; they all had.
He hated the sad hardness that had formed out of his life. He hated the way the bones stuck out of his wife’s back, the way she wasn’t eating enough, the terrible listlessness in her eyes. He hated that he never heard her voice anymore. He hated the darkness. The darkness came when the curtains closed, because the light hurt Hermione’s eyes.
He couldn’t leave her. He wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t strong enough. Her definition of life was too weak, her purpose too shallow to allow him to leave. He would never leave her; he would never think to. He knew someone else might have. But someone else might have broken too, if they weren’t him. He was close to the edge, but he was not giving in. He wished he wasn’t made into a god by those statues. He wished he wasn’t forever reminded of what he used to be, by those statues. Those statues, instead of illuminating his triumphs, brought shame onto his failures for everything he couldn’t accomplish.
He couldn’t make Hermione feel. He couldn’t make her love, couldn’t make her see, couldn’t even make her bleed. Couldn’t make her less empty, couldn’t make her less tired. And he’d tried. He’d tried so fucking hard it hurt him inside just to see her.
Ron wanted to scream. Instead, he decided to lay down beside her, and began to stroke her hair. He was surprised when her back rose and fell quickly, a few times in succession. He thought she was having some sort of fit, an attack. He gently turned her face towards him, and she weakly complied. He saw her eyes were open. He saw tears. He heard her deep, angry breathing. He felt her begin to shake. He held her close. He rocked her back and forth as she cried.
She cried and she quietly called to him, in a voice that sounded husky with smoke. “Ron,” she said wearily. “Ron,” she cried quietly. Never sobbing, barely disturbing the still quiet that had long ago descended upon the room and plagued it with sickly serenity. “Ron,” she breathed.
“It’s alright,” he said. “Keep crying. I’ve got you,” he said. And lastly, “I won’t let go.”