Ron
3.
When Ron woke up on his birthday, he didn't have anything big planned. Breakfast with his closest friends, lunch with only Hermione, dinner with his closest and extended family. It was a full day itinerary, now that he thought about it, so maybe he did have something big planned.
When Ron woke up on his birthday, he didn't have anything big planned. Breakfast with his closest friends, lunch with only Hermione, dinner with his closest and extended family. It was a full-day itinerary, now that he thought about it, so maybe he did have something big planned.
He quickly realized that was not going to be the case, though.
"We need to cancel breakfast," he commented. The kitchen was almost empty, except for Draco, always a morning person, drinking tea with a book in his hands, reading glasses on. He looked like a teacher.
Draco looked at what Ron was holding, and comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, sorrowfully.
"It's not a big deal at all," Ron replied. And it wasn't.
He didn't like the looks that appeared on everyone's faces when this happened. He didn't like the "I'm sorry" they offered. He understood the feeling, but they truly didn't need to be sorry in his friend's name. Even Hermione, who was always the most supportive, had worn that expression on her face on some occasions, apologizing for Harry, and he hated it.
In his mind, Harry never had to be held guilty for this particular thing; it wasn't his fault. Neither he nor the others should have to apologize for that. If the others apologize that just made Harry thing that it was something to apologize for. And it wasn't.
It wasn't.
Besides, it was really okay. It's not like he hadn't celebrated his birthday with the people he was going to have breakfast with. There was a reason they all woke up in Harry's house, after all. Last midnight had been full of friends, music, more alcohol than he would've wanted, and they all crashed in Harry's extra rooms in his immense house.
It was barely dawn, maybe Draco hadn't slept at all, and Ron himself hadn't had more than two hours of rest. The others wouldn't wake up until the sun was up enough for breakfast to make sense.
He had woken up with the sole purpose of checking in with the café they were going to, to ensure that there wasn't any trouble with the reservation. And the precise moment he went to the fridge to get milk for his tea, he had seen the yellow post-it note on it. It wasn't signed, but he needn't be a genius to know who it was from.
Happy Birthday. I'm sorry.
"Maybe he'll be back before the others get up," Draco offered, still looking at him with sympathy.
"No," he replied with a half-smile, "he'll be in no shape to endure a whole breakfast, and I don't want to do it without him."
He sighed and got ready to go out, put on shoes, and a jacket over his pajamas. He had slept in jeans, crashing into bed without taking a look at what he was wearing, so he was ready to go out, and he'd take his tea to go.
"Happy birthday," Draco offered as a goodbye before he went away. "Bring him back."
"Thanks. I will."
As soon as he stepped out the door, he had his phone dialing. This didn't always help, but on some occasions, Harry would take the call, and that at least gave them a clue about how he was and where he might be. He didn't think the same way as Hermione did; he wasn't one to wait and let Harry come back when he felt safe. Ron was all for action; waiting was torture. If he needed Harry to know that it was safe to come back, he was going to go and tell him himself.
The problem with this was, however, that he didn't know any of his hiding places. Not like Hermione did. He was vaguely aware that Bill's house was one of them, and it only made sense that Godric's Hollow was another one. But that's all he knew. So if he wasn't in any of those places, he didn't have much to go on.
As expected, Harry didn't pick up. As he finished his tea and threw the plastic cup in the trash, he dialed again, another number this time.
"Happy birthday, bro, I was just about to call you myself. I'd never have imagined though, that you would be awake at such hours" Bill let out a laugh.
"Thank you" he said smiling, even if his brother couldn't see him "you didn't see Harry by any chance?"
"Oh," his brother said, and then paused "no, I'm sorry..."
There it was. Ron got a little irritated because his brother wasn't apologizing for not seeing Harry. No. He had the same tone as everyone else who apologized for his birthday being ''ruined'', as if it were Harry's intention, Harry's fault. It wasn't. But he kept calm and responded quickly.
"It's alright. Will you call me if he goes there?" he asked. His brother agreed, and he hung up without a fancy goodbye and a promise to see him later for dinner.
Godric's Hollow it is.
At first, he thought Harry wasn't there either. He was ready to call it a day and go back home. But then, for some strange reason, he decided to check the house. The ruins of the house were still there, protected by the charm, but Harry never entered there; he didn't like it. Now, however, Ron felt in his gut that he needed to check it.
There was no way he could get in silently, but that was fine. If Harry was there, he wanted to give him the chance to escape if he really didn't want to be found. The door chirped open, and he walked on the dirty floors, slowly, all the way to the bedroom upstairs.
"Hey, there you are," he said really, really quietly, almost whispering. Harry was on the floor, behind the remains of the crib that was once his. Knees to his chest, he was barely visible from the entrance.
Ron knew that a good percentage of the time Harry ran away, he had a good time wherever he was. Did not mean he hadn't run because something scared or upset him, but he usually was okay enough to block those emotions in favor of enjoying a random escape, maybe a cruise, not thinking about how much he not just wanted but needed to get away. This was why the times he actually was having a really bad time alone in somewhere were so difficult for Ron, and it was also why he could never be mad at him for running, not even if Harry seemed to be escaping to a cruise.
"I can leave if you want," he said, getting closer. Harry didn't indicate that he was hearing in any way, and Ron was afraid that maybe he should listen to Hermione more and let him sort it out and come back on his own. "If you tell me to leave, I will. But maybe..." he sat right in front of him, still not touching him, "maybe you could tell me what happened, and we could go back together."
Harry then raised his head, looked at him... and he was crying. He was silently and weakly crying. And it broke Ron's heart because Harry didn't cry. Harry didn't ever cry. He didn't cry, so something horrible must have happened to get Harry crying, and Ron suddenly felt really scared.
But he was an Auror, a war hero, he worked side to side with the Minister of Magic, so he pulled himself together and pushed the fear deep down, locked it until he had time to feel it.
"Har... what is it?" Harry shook his head, and a tiny sob escaped him, and Ronald could count on one hand the times he had heard an actual sob escape Harry's chest that way.
"I am sorry," he said with a muffled voice.
"What happened?" he asked again, not acknowledging the apology because it was not the time to tell him that he had no reason to be sorry.
"I'm so sorry I ruined your birthday," he said again, his voice shaking.
"You didn't ruin my birthday," he assured softly. "My birthday is fine. I'd like to know what happened that made you feel like you needed to come so far away to have a little privacy, though."
Several seconds passed until Harry spoke again, which was fine; Ron was good with silence.
"I don't know what to do," his friend confessed. He hadn't stopped crying, but he hadn't let out another sob. Ron didn't respond, just waited patiently for Harry to keep going. "I have no gift for you."
He frowned and then waited. When Harry didn't continue, he pushed a little.
"You might have to explain yourself a little further," he said.
"I didn't know what to gift you," Harry said, looking nervous and exasperated, half at Ron because he couldn't understand him, half at himself for not being able to express. "So I made you a cake, but this morning I dropped it, and I..." He sobbed and gestured with his hands. "I ruined it, so I have nothing to give you."
"Oh," it escaped Ron's mouth. There was nothing he could have done to keep it in. He felt the need to laugh, he didn't, of course, but he felt like it. This was... it was so unimportant. So simple. So fixable, so undoable. And here was Harry, crouched like a kid, crying inconsolably because he dropped a cake, and in his mind, he had ruined his best friend's birthday.
Ron thought that if the world saw their great hero right now at this moment, maybe they'd understand how... human he was. How much of a kid he still had in himself. How breakable, how precious a being he was.
Ron himself often needed a reminder of Harry's mortality. Sometimes he could really look at Harry and see exactly why the world considered him invincible, unperturbed. The reminder, however, always hurt; because he felt the need to terminate whomever had fault for his friend being in pain. But in this case, he could only fistfight a cake, and it'd probably make Harry even more upset.
"Alright," he said easily, calmly, after a moment of silence. He couldn't help the little sad smile that he put on his face. "It's alright, Har; we'll make a new cake."
Harry shook his head again.
"But it's already ruined. I ruined it"
This isn't about the cake, Ron thought. It made sense in his head, and it sure made sense in Harry's. The cake was ruined, he panicked and ran. Now the cake didn't matter anymore; it mattered that he panicked and ran, and he ruined the breakfast. Harry probably could think of a million different solutions to the problem with the cake, but he was able to think about them only after he had panicked and run, so there was no way back. He probably felt stupid, sitting there crying about a cake.
But it wasn't about the cake anymore.
Ron understood his train of thought, didn't mean he shared it though.
"I don't think you ruined anything," he said thoughtfully. "I just wanted to spend the day with friends, and I'm here with a friend, trying to help you. It counts as a thousand birthdays to me," he said.
Harry smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. He wasn't crying anymore; however, he looked exhausted, and Ron knew there was very little chance that he would sit through a dinner at a table full of family and friends the whole night. When a few very long minutes had passed, and Harry's breathing was slow enough for him to be sure that the cry didn't affect his breath anymore, Ron thought that maybe it was time to set a few options on the table.
"Here's what we're going to do," he said, and he wasn't a leader, and Harry wasn't a follower, but in that moment, his friend looked at him like he painted the moon and the stars in the night sky. Like he completely trusted Ron to tell him what he needed to do next. "I'll text Hermione to let her know we're okay, and then we'll stay here for as long as you want. And then we'll go back, and the house will be empty, and you'll take a shower and then a sleeping potion..."
"But what about your birthday?"
"And then," Ron continued, "at night, we'll go to my mother's, and we'll have dinner, and you can go up to my bedroom whenever you feel tired, and you don't have to come back down unless you want to. We'll still celebrate my birthday, I promise. Sounds alright?"
Harry nodded. They stood in silence for a long time before Harry indicated that he wanted to go home. Harry didn't take a sleeping potion; Ron couldn't convince him. But he took a shower, and they played chess and watched a movie with Hermione for the rest of the day.
Ron ended up missing breakfast and lunch with Hermione, but he baked a cake with Harry instead, with Hermione reading the instructions compulsively and complaining when they did something out of the script. At night, after dinner, his mother took the cake out and put candles on it for him to make three wishes.
And he got to spend the night drinking and chatting with friends and family, and he waved Harry goodbye when he went upstairs after unsuccessfully trying to eat a piece of cake. The next morning, Ron would throw the empty vial containing the sleeping potion in the trash. Maybe, he thought, they would be fine tomorrow. Not his birthday, but equally good.