Chapter Text
Winter of 1986, December 14th.
(The end is where we start from.)
Water claws into his lungs, forcing themselves past lips, teeth, throat, as if the river wants to root itself inside him. Like a god demanding sacrifice, rushing down his throat until his chest burns with a fire that drowns. His arms thrash but his body is heavy, small and slow, and is dragged under.
The winter chill of the river does not touch him, but dying of cold does not matter if he is to die either way, with a lungful of water. Light bends above him, a trembling sun fractured into shards on the water’s skin. He cannot reach it, he cannot breathe.
He kicks toward it but the river is heavier. He is a child, helpless, his body betraying him with every breath of liquid that isn’t air. His vision is fuzzy, black flecks dancing at the edges.
Somewhere in this panic, he notices colour. A strange bleed, a deep ember blue, storm breaking from sky at sunset. It is coming from him, he realises. He sees it threading the water, painting it holy. It’s like the river itself is lit from inside, humming, was it magic?
His body convulses, his chest seizes. He is suffocating, and yet, something in the current hums. The river sings, low and thrumming, like a dirge pressed against the bones of the world, like death itself with a voice.
He feels it in his ribs, feels it in his blood. It is not your time yet, something croons. A hand threads through his drowning hair with a gentleness that nearly hurts. Go back, child, the darkness tells him.
Ron wants to stay even as something inside him screams run run run, though his body is too water logged and too tired to obey.
Who? he wants to ask, but his throat is full of river, bubbles breaking from his lips. His lungs seize. Panic flays him raw, his chest screams for breath, every nerve howling in terror. His heart thrashes harder than his limbs. And yet, he does not want to leave. He would stay, if he could.
He is torn away from the river. He erupts back into the world of air in a violent gasp. Air shreds his throat as he vomits river water, gagging on its foulness, lungs clawing for air. His throat burns raw, his nose streaming. He coughs, he heaves, he retches.
A hand slams his back, forces the filth from him, more water, bile, snot. His body shudders like a dog wrung out in winter. Ron’s eyes open to a firework of colour. The world swims and bleeds into itself: sky blue searing crystalline, hot crimson sparking, violet heavy and royal, rose gold soft, ash grey smudged with dying silver.
His vision staggers, pulses, faces? Shapes? The blur steadies, belatedly, into red heads. Uncle Billius, his hand the anchor dragging Ron back into breath. Percy clutching him so tightly his ribs whine, as if holding him could stitch him alive again. Ginny’s wail cracks through like glass and the twins hover at the edges, their outlines splitting in his eyes, as if they too are two, then four, then none.
Ron gasps and gasps, shaking with cold, his lips split from coughing, river water still lodged somewhere deep inside him. He feels the ache of drowning even out of the river.
(We die with the dying.)
Ron is swaddled in blankets so tightly he feels more cocoon than boy, Molly’s hands fussing with frantic tenderness. Her voice is a murmur of tuts, her fear hidden in her sharp scoldings.
The river mud still clings to his hair, and she wipes at him with the edge of her apron as though she could scrub death away if she just rubbed hard enough. Percy is pressed against him, pale and trembling but trying to be stern, trying to be older than he is. His hand clutches Ron’s.
“It’s all right,” Percy says, though his voice trembles. “But really, Ron, you ought to know how to swim if you were going to play around the river. I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you properly.”
His words trip over themselves, fussing and chastising in the same breath. Percy fusses almost as much as their mother, smoothing the blanket higher. Uncle Bilius sits slouched at the edge of the room, his presence dragging the air heavy. He mutters under his breath, almost swallowed by the clatter and fussing, “That wasn’t the river, boy. That was the Crossing.”
Ron’s eyes snap to him, wide and blank, as if caught staring at a ghost. Molly thanks him with forced warmth, smile too bright and voice too brisk. She insists he stay for dinner, her voice sweet but stiff, brittle at the joints. He declines, of course. Ron knows why.
His mother’s invitation was sincere as much as she could force it to be, but sincerity does not dissolve unease. Ron sees it in the way Molly’s invitation was sincere but edged with unease, the way her eyes shift around him if she cannot quite meet them.
Ron knows because she sometimes looks at him the same way, as though he’s carrying something he should not, as though he makes her sad.
Uncle Bilius leaves.
(We are born with the dead.)
Ron stares blankly into the firelight, dazed, while Percy keeps on fussing, lecturing and fretting in the same breath, wrapping him tighter in blankets, his fingers clinging stubbornly to Ron’s wrist. Fred and George bicker, and soon enough, Molly’s attention veers, her fussing drawn to the twins’ chaos. And just like that, Ron is forgotten.
That night, Percy reads him to sleep, Ron drifts on the words and falls into dreams.
He dreams of chessboards, wide and yawning, of a crumbling castle, spires split and walls fractured, stone weeping fire, a school torn by a war fought by children too young.
That night, Ron dreams of a man with hair white as snow, his face young and loud yet old as time’s first breath.
That night, Ron dreams of the grin of a Grim, of death itself leaning close as the deal solidifies.
(All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.)