Later
Harry couldn’t bring himself to move. He knew he must, that he couldn’t sit there forever, staring at the dead branch from an unknown tree that had, in a matter of milliseconds, ruined his life.
It wasn’t sinking in. He knew that straight away. Even when he thought about it, tried to force it to sink in, repeated over and over in his mind, “Ron is dead”, it didn’t. Harry didn’t know what would happen when he did finally absorb that he had lost his very best friend in the whole world. All he knew was that at that moment in time, there was an ache in his heart and throat and both were very painful, though in different ways. He wanted both feelings to leave him and he supposed it would only happen when the actuality of the situation sunk in.
This was unhealthy. He had a feeling that it was. He was just thinking, allowing his mind to wander, but not really trying to accept that Ron Weasly was truly dead. He was just pretending that he was. Faking it to make himself feel better, to pacify the small part of him that was scolding him, in Hermione’s voice. That small part made it all the more painful and he just wanted it to be silent. Every time he felt that both his mind and body were on the verge of allowing the grief to escape the dam it was trapped behind, he reinforced the dam, strengthened the wall.
There was no reason behind it. There was no one left to see his anguish. He had no reason to hide. Would the sky scorn him for crying? Or the birds, the snow, the sun? Perhaps the branch that sat in front of him?
He pushed the thought away, and immediately, more thoughts filled its place, none of them any more pleasant. He was finally alone. In this empty wilderness, with only trees and snow surrounding him, and the sky and sun above, Harry felt more alone than he had ever felt. He had never experienced such a feeling. It wasn’t that he had never been alone. He had spent nine years of his life pretty much on his own. His aunt, uncle and cousin were a technicality that could be ignored. They weren’t with him for the nine years he had spent in their presence. He was just living in their house, eating their food, and in their opinions, invading their privacy. They had told him, continually and clearly, that he was a nuisance to them and they’d rather he never existed or that he’d died with his parents. Oh, they never actually said it aloud. The proof was there though. In their actions and looks and in the way they treated him. But even that loneliness wasn’t true loneliness. At that time, he had only spent his very first living year with people who loved him, which he could hardly remember, and the other nine with people who openly despised him. He hadn’t known, really known, when he had been eleven what loneliness was, because he had never experienced not being alone. He had wished for friends early on, when he had started school, but it hadn’t taken him long to understand that he would never have friends and that he’d better get used to it. Afterwards, he realized that remaining in his own company was safer and easier than making himself sick with worry about being a friendless freak for the rest of his life. He’d just have to cope, and cope he did. There were, of course, times, over the years, when he did wish again that he had good friends to confide in, but it was natural and those moments were soon forgotten. He was used to solitude, and he thought of it as solitude, not loneliness. Some of his teachers had worried about the fact that he had no friends but one call to Uncle Vernon”
His mind was wandering again. Wandering instead of facing what had happened. Mulling over the far past, ignoring the present. It was comforting to not think “ or technically to think about unimportant things. The point of his thoughts had been, simply, that it was harder to lose something when you had had it for so long, than not to have something you had never ever had. He was alone now, and he felt it, because he had spent the last six and a half years in the company of close, close friends, people he considered as good as his family. Even when they were not at his side, they were with him, forever in his thoughts. Their faces in his mind’s eyes were comforting on long summer nights spent at his aunt and uncle’s. Memories of the good times he had shared with them brought a smile to his face even when he felt his lowest. He knew they were there, at home, somewhere, perhaps thinking of him. He had felt love and friendship, exemplary, out of the ordinary love and friendship. And losing it, after having experienced, was heart wrenching.
He was now, in the true sense of the word, alone.
His two best friends in the whole world were dead, gone away together, as he had, very, very deep in his heart feared they someday would.
Alone.
Now, sitting on the ice, still gazing at the damned arm of a tree, a breeze whistling past, shivering in his wet, icy clothes, his grief slammed at his throat painfully, squeezed his heart. He swallowed as hard as he possibly could, and finally looked up. The sun was hot on his face. It was, perhaps, a little after noon. The ice around him was broken. Large and small pieces were floating on the lake now. Water sloshed around them, jumping up onto the ice through the cracks, melting bits of snow on the broken pieces.
A tear slipped down his cheek unbidden, so suddenly that Harry thought momentarily that a rain drop had fallen on him. He brushed it away violently and looked around again. There was a leafy evergreen tree in the distance and Harry suspected that it was far away enough to be away from the lake. And of course, tree couldn’t grow in lakes or on ice. He needed to get there. He could Apparate.
Apparate.
Harry swallowed hard.
Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? When he had heard the ice crack, why hadn’t he shouted to Ron to Apparate a distance away instead of telling him to run? Why had all thought of magic completely escaped his mind? Why was it, that when he was in a dangerous situation, panicky, not thinking straight, he forgot the little piece of him that made him who he was today? Why did he forget magic? He had forgotten it during Hermione’s execution, and when she had been imprisoned and now… During all those times, they could have Apparated away. It didn’t matter if anyone saw them… using magic in front of muggles (magic-hating muggles even) was allowed in life or death situations.
Had he bothered to think Hermione and Ron would both be here today. Maybe all three of them would already be home, in their own time. Maybe they would have found a way out days ago. After all, with Hermione… she was the smartest of them, the cleverest in their year. And if he had thought, taken a few seconds to use his brain, she needn’t have died. And Ron would have been alive and he, Harry, wouldn’t be forced to face the guilt… he was the reason Ron was dead. Of course he was… there was no reason to deny it. It was so obvious. If he had just bothered to look around when he had been in the water stupidly clinging to a tree branch he would have seen, realized, and he might have seen Ron. Maybe Ron had seen Harry. He might have been conscious, he might have seen Harry in the water holding onto a piece of wood, as if for dear life and perhaps he had been calling out, waving, motioning with his hands, trying to catch the attention of his very best friend in the world. And when he realized that Harry was not looking at him, maybe he had tried to swim forward, but maybe the fall into the water had injured him and he wasn’t able to swim? Or, no, he had swam for Harry, even as Harry had gotten his second wind, but he had gotten stuck somewhere, his shirt had caught on a rock, and even as he pulled his clothes free, Harry had begun to swim away, further and further, until Ron, exhausted, stopped, his body resisting movement, but still he pushed, trying to get to surface, the will to survive stronger than the urge to breath and die… until he had been forced to stop… maybe lack of oxygen had paralyzed his brain and he had begun to see large black shadows, an omen of what was to come… and he had frozen, watching Harry swim forward, making for the surface, still dragging that branch, but moving, living… and his eyes had widened and maybe… had Ron known? Maybe… maybe he had just given up and breathed willingly, and drowned… drowned with time to think about it and watch his best friend swim away, leaving him to die. Or maybe he hadn’t even been conscious for very long and the cold water had literally frozen his heart and” NO!
Harry clutched his head. No, he had to stop thinking about this, thinking like this. He had to push it away.
He glanced back at that evergreen tree he had seen earlier, and stood up. His legs folded underneath him for so long were numb and wobbly and he almost collapsed back onto the ice immediately. Quickly he regained his balance, and stood. He did not look down at the branch, or the ice, or water. He turned to face that lone tree, turning his back to the glaring sun. Faced the try and closed his eyes, and spun slightly. The familiar suffocating feeling grew around him, and for the first time in his life Harry did not wish it to be over. Instead he wished it would continue for ever and ever until he was black and blue and dead.
But it didn’t go on. It stopped, quicker than Harry had been expecting, and he opened his eyes to see, in front of him, that evergreen tree, tall, straight and majestic. He knew that he was off the lake, even without looking, but he turned anyway, despite the fact that his mind was crying out for him not to look back.
Yes, he was off the lake.
He could see that thing sitting on the ice, even at this distance.
Just a few seconds ago he had been there.
Just a few hours ago, Ron had been there too.
Harry could see water sloshing up around the piece of ice he had been on.
Water.
Ron’s grave.
He should have said something, a prayer, a few words.
And that was when the dam finally broke. It hadn’t been able to hold in such painful anguish any longer, and it broke, fully and finally. Harry seemed to wilt as sank to his knees slowly; his head clutched in his hands, squeezing hard, his eyes scrunched up as large tears spilled down his cheeks. His mouth twisted with sorrow and finally, Harry didn’t hold back. He let the grief flow, as tears, as mournful cries. His shoulders shook with it, his back was arched and shuddering. The pain shook him, as if it had grabbed him by his shirt and was shaking him and shouting in his face and screaming in his ears. His throat felt like it was being ripped out but he didn’t or couldn’t stop the screaming, heart-wrenching sobs. Tears spilled onto half-dead grass blades peaking out from the snow, wetting them and melting the snow around them it, but if the tears had really been the pain emptying from Harry, the snow would have caught fire and screamed loudly, piercingly, and shriveled up and died a hard anguish-filled death. Harry gasped for breath, his teeth clenched tightly, but he couldn’t stop. He sobbed and tears streamed down his cheeks, trying but failing to freeze on his cheeks, but he couldn’t stop. His whole body ached and wailed with the pain, but he could not stop. And he didn’t really try.
After all, there was no one left to hear him.