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Hermione sat at the trunk of the oak tree and put her head in her hands. She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob until she passed out. But she could only sit there, letting the occasional tear fall out of her eyes, like the grief was too big for her body, like her body was bursting at the seams.
She couldn’t believe he had left.
It had been three days. It was becoming more real. She rationalized everything in her head. She thought perhaps the Horcrux was worse for Ron — all of them, really — than she had initially understood, and that once he was removed from the presence of the Horcrux he would understand that they needed him and that they loved him.
Then, he would come back.
But he had not come back.
Which did not fit with Hermione’s understanding of the psyche of Ron Weasley. And that disturbed her to no end. She thought that she knew him — not all of him, but every essential component part — and if someone had asked her to bet on the likelihood of Ron ever leaving she would say, sure, fine, maybe. Maybe if things got very, very hard, and he felt unloved and unwanted. Maybe.
But if someone asked her whether he would come back, she would’ve said yes, of course yes, a thousand times yes.
And now she was not so sure.
She put a hand to her mouth and stifled a sob. Harry had enough to worry about without her falling apart. She had to not fall apart. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to avoid it while missing a piece of her soul, but she had to move forward and be everything that Harry needed now that Ron was not there to shoulder his part of the weight.
It was crushing and terrifying but she could not imagine anything else. She loved Harry just as much as she loved Ron — in a way that confused her, sometimes, when she fantasized about walking down the aisle next to either or both of them, when she couldn’t imagine committing to one if it meant sacrificing the other. But now, things had become less confusing.
She loved Harry just as much as she loved Ron, and only one of them had left her behind.
***
Harry kept watch outside the tent in the middle of the night. Hermione needed her sleep — her eyes were constantly red-rimmed, purpleish bags growing bigger each day that Ron did not come home. Thinking of Hermione’s obvious distress, Harry felt the weight of anger in his chest grow heavier. He pushed it down. It was not productive to be angry right now.
But how dare Ron leave? How dare he? Harry had told them not to come. He had genuinely thought, at the time, that it would be better to go alone. He thought that if he loved Ron and Hermione, he could not in good conscience subject them to this. But if he loved Ron and Hermione, he was beginning to realize, he could not do this without them either.
And now Ron had left, and Harry had to wonder if the prick had ever really loved him at all.
Next to the anger — which was a pulsing, fiery ball, something Harry wanted to hold and let fester and launch at Ron Weasley the next time he saw his face — there was what felt like a legitimate hole in his heart, what felt like unbearable pain, what felt like dying; he might be dying. It would be ironic to die of heartache instead of Voldemort. The power the Dark Lord knows not.
He loved Ron Weasley, and he was sorry he did.
He heard a twig snap and his head jerked up.
A rabbit.
It took a couple minutes for his heartbeat to calm down, for his sweaty grip on Hermione’s wand to relax. Still, he found it funny that existential dread, when not immediate, could fade in the presence of grief and anger and sadness. He was not nearly as scared of Voldemort as he was of this — being alone, being unloved.
It’s not as though he had the option to leave. That luxury was reserved for people with mothers and fathers and without names in prophecies. It was his destiny. He would never get rid of the guilt he felt at dragging anyone else along.
It was his destiny. But if Ron had been the one in the prophecy, instead, Harry knew that he would’ve died before he would’ve even thought of leaving.
He licked the salty tear wobbling on the corner of his lips and recast the wards.
***
Ron laid in his bed in Shell Cottage, very conscious of the comfort and warmth that Harry and Hermione were surely not experiencing, and felt waves of self-hatred consume his body.
He was heavy, and sinking, and he did not know how to move.
He had left them. He had left them. He had looked in the mirror, way, way back in the summer and promised to himself that the only things he would allow to matter anymore were Harry and Hermione. In the moment, he could not imagine any feeling stronger than that conviction. All his life, he had not felt anything stronger than this love. And yet, he had left them.
Was nothing sacred to him? How could he possibly do this? If Harry and Hermione ever forgave him, how could he ever forgive himself?
He needed to go back, and yet he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t find them. Say what you will about his Hermione; she was good at hiding. He was glad for it. It meant they were probably safe. And perhaps he was horribly selfish for wanting to go back anyway — clearly, he was of no use to them there. He was another mouth to struggle to feed and, more recently, another mouth to complain about not being well-fed. He was a burden on two people he loved more than anything. And when he realized that, instead of shaping the fuck up like he ought have, he turned his insecurities into hurt and anger and used them to pretend it was okay to leave.
The Sorting Hat had asked him seven years ago what he was afraid of. “Spiders,” he had thought, and the Hat said, “well, if one of your brothers were attacked by spiders, what would you do?”
“Save them,” he had thought, genuine and earnest in the way that only twelve year olds could be. “As quick as I could, from those horrible things.”
At twelve he had known that the worst thing he could be was a coward. Now he was a disgrace to the House of Gryffindor. Even the Horcrux was not as awful as this guilt.
He scratched at his forearms; he pulled his hair; he rolled over in bed despite knowing that sleep was very likely a lost cause. He was restless. He could not live with this.
And then he heard it.
Whispered, fearful, but distinctly Hermione, and distinctly coming from the Deluminator in his pocket.
“Ron.”
He sat up straight in his bed.