Chapter Six “ P.S.
A/N; I don’t own anything you recognize.
“Bye!”
“Bye, dear,” replied Mrs. Weasley as Ron closed the door. She absentmindedly grabbed a towel off a nearby hook and dried her hands as she watched her son through the kitchen window. She sighed deeply, Ron was heading for the forest, again. It had become a habit in the last two weeks; he would leave right after lunch to go Merlin’s know where in the forest, only to come back for dinner. No one knew what he was doing and no one was allowed to come with him. Ginny had asked a few times, but he would always refuse.
Mrs. Weasley was worried; even when Ron was home, he would be quiet, talking very little. She wondered what was going on with her youngest son, and was playing with the idea of asking him point blank what the reason was for his odd behaviour. But she was also afraid that by doing so, he would only close up more. Her husband tried to reassure her the best he could, telling her Ron was grieving yet again because of Hermione’s letters, but it was no good. Her son was hurting and she was unable to ease his pain. Someone would have to do something soon; she couldn’t bear it much longer.
A good distance from the Burrow, Ron was still making his way through a familiar path in the forest. When he had started his little excursions, he was going anywhere his feet would lead him, following no precise direction and having no particular goal in mind. He just wanted to go deep into the forest, where everything was wild. He wasn’t afraid to get lost; he always had his wand with him to help him find his way back.
He liked walking in the heart of the forest because there was no order there, everything was confused. It was messy, just like him. There were tall trees with wide trunks growing amidst young ones, only two or three meters high, and bushes, plants, mud, rocks, dead branches, earth, bugs and so much more. You could smell the wildness too, especially after a good rain.
It was hard to walk this deep in the forest; you sometimes had to fight your way to go further, as if it was forbidden to keep going, as if it was protecting a secret. One particular afternoon, however, Ron came across a tiny clearing. It was about the size of a very small bedroom, small enough that there was no opening to see the sky overhead. The branches and leaves of the trees surrounding it were covering it, like a ceiling of emeralds.
Ever since he had discovered that little clearance, he had headed there every afternoon. He was somehow always able to find, but it was much easier now; a path was almost clearly visible through the trees.
He reached it yet again today and dropped his backpack on the ground. It was the type of day he liked; a few clouds in the sky and a nice wind to sweep everything. The wind was so much more interesting to listen to in a forest. You could hear the leaves ruffling, the trees brushing against one another and the very big ones cracking softly.
Ron sat on his favourite boulder, and after a moment, opened his backpack to take out something enveloped in a cloth. The cloth was an old piece of fabric, very dirty and ragged, but he opened it with extreme care; it was what was underneath that was important to him.
Tossing the cloth aside, he held its content with both hands. It was two small wooden pieces. He placed one on top of the other and carefully observed it to make sure that they were matching perfectly. He then took out a knife and some grinding paper and started to make small adjustments, so that the pieces would be perfectly aligned once assembled.
Ron was making a wooden box to hold Hermione’s wand, and he was making it the Muggle way. At first, it hadn’t looked like anything, and he had had to start over more than once, but this last try was looking pretty good.
He used two pieces of wood; one would be the box itself and the other would become the lid. He had carved it with knives, sanded it with paper and even bought tiny hinges that he was planning to use to join the two pieces.
When he had received her wand, Ron had wondered what he would do with it. He had been thinking about it while walking in the forest and decided that such an important object needed a special place to be stored; it couldn’t just lay on a shelf or at the bottom of a trunk.
Ron had finally chosen to make a box, and had opted for the Muggle way because it would keep his hands busy. This decision proved to be a hard and frustrating one to stick to, but it served its purpose well. It kept him active in a way, and doing something with one’s hands was a good way to clear their mind and to think calmly.
***
Mrs. Weasley’s head jerked up as she heard someone knocking on the door. She wondered who it was, since she wasn’t expecting anybody today. She set aside the Weasley sweater she was knitting and got up to answer the door.
Her face lit up instantly as she saw Harry on the doorstep.
“Harry, dear! What a pleasant surprise!”
“Hello, Mrs. Weasley. How are you?” he asked as they were hugging.
“Very well, thank you. And you? Not starving yourself in your new flat, I hope.”
Harry laughed. “Not at all. Everything’s good, you don’t need to worry.”
“Sit, sit my dear. Why are you here today?”
“I came to see Ron. Is he here?”
Mrs. Weasley’s smile faded slightly. “He went for a walk in the woods, but he should be back for dinner. You could wait for him, if you’d like to.”
“I think I’ll go and look for him, if you don’t mind,” he replied.
“He goes deep into the forest. Do you think you’ll be able to find him?”
“I’m sure of it,” he assured her, rising slowly from his chair. “See you later,” he added as he headed for the backdoor.
Mrs. Weasley seemed to hesitate for a second.
“Harry, dear?”
“Yes?”
“Could you… Look, I don’t know what he does or where he goes in that forest and he almost doesn’t talk to us when he’s home. Could you, maybe, try to talk to him, and find out what’s wrong? I’m worried about him,” she finished, the plea clearly visible in her eyes.
“To be honest, that’s what I was planning to do this afternoon. I invited him to visit my flat three times last week and he always found some excuse. I want to know what’s going on too. That’s not the Ron I know.”
“Thank you. And you ’re welcome to stay for dinner when you come back, too.”
“Of course, Mrs. Weasley,” he replied, smiling.
***
Ron blew on the piece of wood he was holding. He was finally done. The two pieces were perfectly matching; the wood was smooth and it was as good as he could manage. He then picked the cloth up off the ground and laid it on a nearby boulder, placing the box and the lid on it. Next, he dug in his bag and took out a can of varnish along with a brush.
He was just finishing applying the varnish on the second piece of wood, when he heard odd sounds nearby. Nevertheless, he continued his work; it was probably just a small animal.
After a last stroke of the brush, he put the lid on the cloth to let it dry and stood to try to see the animal making the noise. It was louder now, and somehow different than the sounds he was used to hearing in the forest. It seemed that it was made by something with two legs rather than the usual four.
Ron took out his wand, just in case, and faced the source of the noise.
“Don’t attack, Ron. It’s me, Harry.”
Ron dropped his arm and sat back on his boulder, waiting for Harry to emerge from the thick branches and bushes.
“Hello,” Harry said as he saw his friend.
“Hi,” the other replied. “How did you find me?”
“If we were able to find Voledmort’s hiding place, finding you in a forest shouldn’t be a real challenge, Ron.
“Great! Tell me I stupid too, while you’re at it.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. Don’t try to push me away; I won’t go before we talk.”
“Talk about what?” the red haired boy enquired.
“You.”
“You’re just wasting your time then. There’s nothing to say about me.”
“Why didn’t you come to visit me at my flat? I asked you over at least three times,” Harry said.
“I had other things to do,” Ron answered.
“May I sit?”
“Hey, it’s not my forest, you can do what you want,” he replied nonchalantly.
Harry looked around for a boulder without any sharp edges and saw the wooden pieces drying on the cloth. Looking down, he also noticed little bits of wood littering the ground surrounding Ron’s feet. He finally sat on a small boulder, about one foot high, and pointed with his chin to the box.
“Is that what you were doing?”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t matter, Harry. Why are you here?”
“I told you,” Harry said, “we need to talk.” Ron scoffed. “What is going on with you, Ron? You’ve been acting very odd, lately.”
“I’m not acting odd!” he exclaimed. “I’m just minding my own business, and I’d wish other people would do the same,” he added in an undertone.
“Don’t give me that stuff. I already told you I’m not going away, so you might as well tell me what’s really bothering you. Is something wrong with your family?”
“No.”
“Do you have health problems?”
“No.”
Harry was slightly annoyed now. Mrs. Weasley was right; Ron was really closing up to people. He decided to take another approach.
“So, what is this thing?” Harry asked, pointing to the box and lid.
Ron eyed his friend for a second before answering, “A box.”
“You made it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“What is it for?”
“Storage.”
Harry snorted. “Look,” he exclaimed, “I know you don’t want to talk, but it would be really great if you could issue more than a single word at a time.”
Ron was looking down at his shoes. He extended his arm and touched the varnish with one finger to see if it was dry. Harry followed this movement with his eyes and noticed a tiny HG carved on the lid.
“Is this about Hermione?” Harry asked, his voice softer.
His friend didn’t even look at him as he picked up the pieces and placed them on his knees. He then bent down and took out two tiny hinges, four small screws and a screwdriver from his bag. Harry remained quiet as he observed Ron installing the hinges. Once he was done, he closed and opened the box a few times to test it and dived yet again for his backpack. This time, his hand was holding a small bag as it came out of the backpack.
Ron gently emptied its content in the box. It was petals of little wild flowers that he had picked up the week before and left to dry in his bedroom. They covered the bottom of the box, so that it was now filled with what looked like tiny drops of purple. Looking at it, Ron frowned a little as he noticed that the petals had lost most of their scent.
Lastly, he extracted Hermione’s wand from a pocket of his backpack and placed it carefully in the box.
Harry’s eyebrows shot up when he saw this.
“Is that… That’s Hermione’s wand,” he said, looking both confused and shocked.
“Yes,” Ron confirmed.
“How did you get it?”
“She gave it to me.” Harry was looking even more confused now. Ron finally looked up and saw the expression on the face of his friend. “Remember those letters you noticed on my desk a few weeks back?”
Harry nodded slightly.
“There were four of them. One from fourth year at school, one from fifth year, another from sixth year and the last one from the day before we left for the Malfoy Mansion.”
Harry’s eyes widened a little. This wasn’t what he had been expecting.
Ron kept on talking. “The last one was written specifically for the unfortunate case in which she would die during our chase to destroy Horcruxes. I was meant to receive the letters only if it happened and apparently, she wanted to give me something to remember her by. I have no idea what spell she used or how it worked; all I know is that I read what was written on a piece of parchment and the next moment her wand was in my hand.”
Ron had said all this without any pause and in a voice that was devoid of any real emotion. It was as if he was just saying facts for Harry to understand. The latter was listening to all this, trying to take it in.
“So, this is about her?” Harry hesitantly questioned.
The other rolled his eyes before he replied. “How could it not be! How would you react if, say Ginny, died and that later on you get letters from her telling you that… telling you… all of these things. And you’re just sitting here thinking that you never had the chance to tell her how you felt about her, how important she was to you, and that you miss her and that you…” Ron sighed and then opened the box to take out Hermione’s wand.
“And just when you thought you couldn’t take anything more,” he continued very low, “she gives you her wand. Do you know how important a wand is? Well, of course you do,” he added, more for himself than for his friend. Harry was listening very closely to all of this, carefully following Ron’s every move with his eyes.
“I would give anything to go back in time to tell her everything I never had the chance to, or the guts to.”
“I know what you mean,” Harry finally managed to say. Ron looked at him a little suspiciously, as if he somehow doubted this statement. “Okay, maybe I don’t know exactly how you feel, but I think I got the gist of it when Sirius passed away. And, Hermione was my friend too.”
“I know, but you seem to be taking it so much better,” Ron explained.
“Well, it’s been over a year now and in case you don’t remember, I was in no better state than you just after it happened. Especially after we brought her body back to her parents.”
“Please, don’t talk about that day,” Ron requested with a frown. That day would be engraved in his mind forever. It had been horrible, and he was sure that something had died inside of him back then. Maybe a last trace of innocence from childhood, he wasn’t sure, but what he did know is that you couldn’t explain to a mother that her child was dead without seeing the total devastation in her eyes.
“Do you think about her often?” Ron asked his friend.
“Some days more than the others; when I see something that reminds me of her, for example. I miss her a lot too.”
“I’m sure you do. Everybody misses her. Ginny wanted to talk about her, but I’ve always avoided it.”
“I know, she told me when she came to visit my flat.” Ron raised an eyebrow and looked sideways at Harry. “Hey, don’t give me that look! I invited you to come along too, but you declined the invitation.”
“Well, I…”
“Look, mate, you don’t have to explain or justify what you do. It’s just that we, your family and your friends, care about you and we’re worried. You disappear everyday, you talk as little as you can and you avoid people. That’s not something the Ron I know would do.”
“It’s true that I’ve been quieter than usual lately, but it’s just that I need to deal with this alone. Like if it was only between her and me. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah, I think I can. But dealing with your own things doesn’t mean you have to shut yourself away from the rest of the world.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Harry asked.
“About what?”
“About your situation.”
“Go ahead.”
“It may sound stupid, but if part of the problem is that you never got to tell her how you feel, why don’t you visit her grave to tell her everything? I know she won’t be able to hear you, but I know for a fact that it helps. I went to visit her grave on the anniversary of her death and I think this could help you, even if it’s only a little bit.”
Ron was looking directly into the face of his best friend, thinking. He then lowered his gaze onto the box in his lap and breathed deeply.
“It might be a good idea. I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Well, I think that would be smart of you. Now, let’s go back to your house. Your mum invited me to dinner and I can’t wait for it. And it would lift some weight off her shoulders if you could start to act a little more like your old self. She is worried sick.”
A hint of a smile appeared on Ron’s features as he got up.
“I’ll try,” he agreed, “but no talking about Hermione over dinner.”
“Ok,” Harry said.
Harry got up too and handed the cloth for Ron to put back in his bag.
“Now, will you finally come to see my flat next week? I have a few things that I think you’ll want to see.”
“Maybe,” Ron said hesitantly, but quickly changed his answer under the stare of the green eyes he knew so well. “Alright! Is Tuesday okay?”
“Tuesday’s perfect, mate!”
***
A few weeks later, Ron had finally built up the courage to visit Hermione’s grave. He was walking along one of the alleys of the small cemetery where her body had been laid to rest. He squinted at every grave he passed, searching for hers.
He soon found it- simple and elegant. It was a dark grey rectangular model engraved with her name, date of birth and death, and an angel, which was carved in one of the upper corners. It was very traditional.
It was now the evening of a beautiful end-of-August day and the light was slowly starting to fade. Ron needed to go on or he would soon be unable to read his parchment.
He looked around carefully, making sure he was completely alone, and sat down on the grass, a good six feet away from the actual stone, just to be sure he wasn’t sitting on her. He took out a roll of parchment from an inside pocket of his Muggle jacket and stretched it between his hands.
He sighed. This was hard. He had been expecting it, but now was the time to do it and a part of him just wanted to go back home and forget this idea. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He closed his eyes for a second or two, straightened his back, took yet another deep breath, and started to read aloud.
“Dear Hermione,”
“I’m here today because I need to tell you some things. To be honest, this isn’t my idea; it was Harry who suggested it after a talk we had a while ago. He seemed to think that telling you everything I didn’t get to say to you while you were alive would help me heal. Well, he didn’t say it exactly like that, but that’s close enough.”
“I thought at first that this wasn’t a particularly good idea, but the more I toyed with it, the more it appeared to be something worth trying. To tell the truth, I was kind of in a dead end before Harry suggested it. I didn’t really know what to do with my feelings.”
“I know I am not as gifted as you were with words, so don’t expect this to be a work of art; I just want to tell you a few things.”
“First, I want to thank you for all those great letters. They told me what I wanted, and needed, to know. Even though I thought at first that they wouldn’t help me, I changed my mind later on. When I read them, it felt like I was reopening a wound I thought had healed. In fact, it was just the skin that was healed; the inside was still a bloody mess. In a way, it was good to expose it and to go to the bottom of it. Maybe this way, the wound will heal better and the scar that’s left will be less harsh on the eyes.
“You said some really nice things in those letters. Well, not in all of them, but in the last one at least. You described me in such a way that I wasn’t sure if you were actually talking about me. On the other hand, I was glad you perceived me in such a nice way. It made me think I was important to you, that I mattered in your life.”
“I want you to know that you mattered in mine too, probably more than you realized. I won’t start to describe how beautiful you were, or how much of an inspiration you were for me, but I will tell you this: I came to think you were the one for me. You know, that special someone you seem to be destined to spend the rest of your life with.”
“It hurt me to read about how you felt for me when I knew I was feeling the same. It made me want to go back in time and seize the opportunities I didn’t back then. It’s frustrating to think we could have had a chance at a happy life together and that we were there, mulling each on our side.”
“Do you remember how you told me you sometimes imagined what our first kiss could have been like? Well, I did that too, but in a different way. It came to me in flashes. We would be doing something, somewhere, and an image would flash in front of my eyes; the image of me kissing you, right here and there. It was gone as soon as it came but it always left a ‘what if’ in my head. ‘What if I kiss her now?’ But I’d always shy away for some reason and that left me with this heat boiling inside of me. I came to think that it was because of that feeling that I fought with you so often.”
“There’s so much I’d like to tell you, and now that it’s finally the right time my mind is going blank. I was planning to tell you how guilty I feel for letting you down when you were duelling with Malfoy, for failing to protect you when I swore to myself when we left to help Harry that I would protect you with my own life. I wanted to explain how I was feeling towards you when you were alive and how I feel now… And I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“In your last letter, you told me that I will have to move on and that you hope that your memory won’t hold me back in life. Of that, you can be sure. It will help me go further, because I want to live up to all the things you said about me. I won’t let you down.”
“The main thing is that I don’t want to let you go, Hermione. Yet, I don’t have a choice; you’ve already left. I think it was cruel that the brightest witch of her age only got to live a few short years. It’s cruel that she isn’t there to enjoy the peaceful days she helped to bring back, now that Voldemort is gone for good.”
“It’s not easy letting go of someone you thought you could, and even should, end up with. I miss you tremendously, more than I ever thought I could miss someone. It’s strange how you sometimes don’t realize just how much you’re attached to someone until they leave. I knew all along what you were for me and how I felt towards you, but your death and your letters exposed just how much of a hold you had in my life.”
“Finally, I wanted to thank you for your present. You couldn’t have picked anything better. It means a lot to me, more than you probably thought it would.”
“I don’t want to say goodbye, because even if you are no longer by my side, you will always remain with me. You will be a part of me forever since nothing can erase the past, and even if something could, I wouldn’t erase you. It’s better to have had only a few years with you than no time at all. If, if, I ever do move on from you,
Hermione, know that you will always remain the one for me. You were an inspiration, a friend and so much more to me.”
“I miss you and I’ll never forget you.”
“Ron”
“P.S…”
But Ron couldn’t read the last sentence. He let his chin fall down on his chest and rolled up the parchment without looking at it. He then rose up and after carefully looking around him once more, took out his wand.
Stepping beside the grave, he placed the parchment on its side and performed a transfiguration charm. What had been a roll of parchment an instant before, was now a little bunch of purple wildflowers; the same as the dried petals he had used as a bed for Hermione’s wand in the wooden box.
He next made a move to leave, but turned back on his heels to face the grave once more. He raised his right arm slowly, and lightly put his three middle fingers on the stone for a moment.
Ron removed his hand and wiped his cheeks with his palms before resolutely turning to walk over to a safe place to Dissapparate. He left the cemetery shortly after, leaving it silent in the night’s air. The last line of his letter would remain forever a secret, even to an undetected eavesdropper, as a delicate wind ruffled the leaves of the purple wildflower, almost as if it was caressing it.
“P.S. I love you.”
A/N; There it is! A humongous thank you to Melissa for the great beta job on this one! And as always, I’d like to know your thoughts on this chapter and on the whole story too. If you have any questions or if you think there something I haven’t addressed that I should have, feel free to remind me about it. The only thing I won’t explain is how Ron got hold of Malfoy’s wand. The curse is lifted! The chapter is here! (That’s for those who were following the chapter six saga)
Thanks to all those who took the time to read and thank you to all who reviewed. *hugs reviewers* You’re great!