Chapter Text
“I think I need to get out of here,” Ron says, fiddling with his glass of Butterbeer.
It’s after dinner that he says this, at a time when his siblings (the ones that survived, he means) are distracted by other things. George and Ginny are playing Exploding Snap in front of the fireplace; Percy is awkwardly reading in an armchair, half-listening to a conversation Dad is having with Charlie about Muggle flight. Bill and Fleur are being smothered by Mum, their announcement of her first grandbaby the news of the evening. No one is looking at him.
“What do you mean?” Harry asks, taken aback by his sudden seriousness, while Hermione only blinks and tilts her head at him. “Get out of here like…?”
“I don’t know,” Ron replies, his long fingers still moving on the glass. “Just—get away, I suppose. From everything. The war…”
“The war is over,” Harry reminds him.
“It’s still…” Ron shrugs. The war is over—the Battle of Hogwarts is more than half a year ago. But the war is still everywhere. At the Auror Training Academy, the losses of the First and Second Wizarding War is shown in the battle scars of their teachers, in the sharpness of their voices as they lecture, in the grim dark amusement of their war stories; in Diagon Alley, there are still empty storefronts, the remnants of people who were driven out by Death Eaters. The Daily Prophet reports daily on the Death Eater trials, barely even started as Dad and dozens of other Ministry workers trawl through the evidence and work out what charges can be laid; in the Wizengamot, politicians are arguing over the money needed for rebuilding.
Even in this room, the absence of Fred screams louder than his brother ever did.
The war is over but at the same time, it isn’t.
“I just need to get away,” he says again. He needs time away—away from the haunting spectres, away from the debris of the war, away from the guilt.
Maybe the decision to go for the Auror Training Academy had just been guilt. Harry had wanted to go—of course, Harry had wanted to go—and Ron had followed because that was what he did. He followed, and the only times he hadn’t, he had been eaten up by the guilt afterwards. When Harry’s name had come out of the Goblet of Fire, he hadn’t stood by his best friend; when he, Harry, and Hermione were in the woods, he had abandoned them to go home. No one had ever said anything about it, but he still felt the impact. He wasn’t supposed to have done that. He shouldn’t have done that.
And now he has a spot in the Auror Training Academy, one that he knows full well that he’s lucky to have, but one that he’s not entirely sure he even wants and that he’s definitely sure he doesn’t deserve. Harry’s in his element there, but Ron…
Ron isn’t. And where Hermione is, back at Hogwarts helping to rebuild while finishing her seventh year, doesn’t appeal to him either.
“Do you mean, you want to go home?” Hermione asks, reaching over to touch his hand. He likes her—ever since his sixth year, he’s liked her, and he’s pretty sure she likes him too, though he doesn’t know why. But the time was never right. Harry and the war had come first, and then afterwards it was the Auror Training Academy while Hermione went back to school, and what time did they have for them?
“No, I mean…” Ron sighs, taking a swig of his Butterbeer. “I want to get away from here. From everything. Not—not forever, or anything like that. Just, I need some time away, to think.”
“Okay,” Hermione says, and her hand is warm on his. “I understand. Well—why not get away?”
Harry shoots her a wide-eyed look of surprise. “But the Auror Training Academy—we’re back on in a week…”
“He can defer it,” Hermione replies, glaring back at Harry. “They won’t say no, not after the war. Not after what we’ve all been through.”
Harry hesitates, and Ron can read his thoughts in his eyes. Spots at the Auror Training Academy, even with the inflated class sizes after the war, are few. He and Ron don’t even have the qualifications, special war dispensation for the Chosen One and his best friend exempting them from the usual NEWT requirements and application process. And that’s a good thing, because Ron knows full well that his grades had never been high enough to get in.
Hermione’s voice softens as she looks between them. “Look—we’ve just spent a year at war, and we’ve spent our entire lives, it seems, fighting one bad thing after another. What time have we had to ourselves? Just to explore, or find ourselves, or to remember who we are when we’re not fighting a war.”
“But the Auror Training Academy—” Harry looks back at Ron, a slightly bewildered expression on his face. “You said that being an Auror was the most interesting thing you could think of doing.”
Ron shrugs, looking back down at his glass. He did say that—it was in fifth year, around the time of their Career Counselling with Professor McGonagall, and it is still true. But the Auror Training Academy feels wrong to him now, in a way he can’t explain. Harry likes it, prattles on every night about all the cool stuff they’re learning in a way he never did at Hogwarts, but Ron…
Ron doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter.
“Ron’s not you, Harry,” Hermione is saying, keeping her voice down even if she’s starting to sound heated. “Ron doesn’t have to be on the same path as you. The war is over—why shouldn’t he take some time off and get away?”
“The money,” Ron says quietly, looking away. “Getting away—it takes money. A lot of it.”
“We all got the awards from the Ministry of Magic,” Hermione points out, and they had. Five hundred Galleons each, more money that Ron has ever personally had his entire life—but not exactly enough for him to go on a long trip.
“It’s not enough,” Ron mutters awkwardly. “Anyway, I spent a bit of it—a new broomstick, so Ginny could have my Cleansweep Seven, and some other things.”
“Well, how much would you need?” Hermione asks, and he looks up at her in surprise. Her dark brown eyes are entirely serious, and her lips are quirked in a small smile. “Harry and I can lend you the money. I don’t need anything since I’m at Hogwarts and already have a job lined up, and Harry has more than he needs. Isn’t that right, Harry?”
“That’s right,” Harry says, though the quick grimace on his face tells Ron that Hermione probably kicked him when Ron wasn’t looking. “Yeah. If Auror training isn’t for you, then it’s not for you. Whatever you need, Ron, you can count on us.”
“So?” Hermione is smiling now, her even white teeth flashing against her dark skin. “How much do you think you’d need?”
He catches Hermione later outside. She’s sitting on the back stoop, staring up at the stars, with a blanket draped around her shoulders and a mug of hot chocolate in her hands.
“Hey,” he says, dropping one arm around her shoulders. This is what their relationship is right now—light and easy affection, and they don’t talk about it. Hermione isn’t Lavender. Ron cares about Hermione, and he’s too afraid of fucking it up to make a bigger move.
This is easy, and this is comfortable, and he’s content with it. Or so he tells himself.
“Hey,” she replies, somewhat listlessly.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, you know…” Hermione fiddles with the teaspoon sitting in her hot chocolate. “Just thinking. About my parents.”
Ron makes a gruff noise of some sort—he doesn’t know what to say about that. Part of Hermione’s summer project had been to go and find her parents in Australia where she’d sent them and restore their memories, and while she hadn’t said much about it to him or Harry, they both knew that her parents hadn’t come back. They’d chosen to stay in Australia with their new lives instead of returning.
“I knew that was a possibility,” Hermione says suddenly, a fire lighting in her eyes. “I knew—I knew it was possible they’d never forgive me for using magic against them. I’m lucky they even want to have a relationship with me, really, even if it’s an ocean away. But I had to do it. I was too close to Harry, see, and my parents…”
“They’re Muggles.” That comes out more dismissive than Ron intends. “I mean—”
“No, I know what you meant.” Hermione sighs. “Your family, they could protect themselves. I couldn’t even explain to mine why they needed to protect themselves. I did what I had to do, and I don’t regret it. But the holidays…”
“Yeah,” Ron says. He doesn’t understand—but he does understand that maybe he can’t understand. “You know, ‘Mione… if you needed me here…”
“No.” Hermione turns to him with a smile. “I’m at school, Ron—what would you do, hang around being unhappy about the Auror Training Academy?”
“I’m not unhappy,” Ron tries. He’s not. He’s really not unhappy. He’s just… he doesn’t know. He isn’t happy, but he isn’t unhappy. It just is, everything just is, and it all bleeds into a sort of sameness. It’s livable.
Hermione snorts.
“Mum would be happy if I stayed,” Ron adds, the thought having occurred to him since Harry and Hermione had suggested he go away. “She’s going to think I’m throwing it away. You know.”
Hermione shrugs. “You’re your own person,” she says. “I think it’s a good idea for you, Ron. Going away and seeing the world. Finding yourself. It’s a chance you never got before—you more than anyone else.”
She falls silent, looking out across the fields.
“What do you mean?” Ron can’t help asking, frowning at her. “Me more than anyone else?”
Hermione doesn’t answer for a little while, but she’s thinking over what to say. When she starts, her voice is low. “I love Harry—as a brother, I mean. But you and I… everything we did was for Harry. Harry and Voldemort, Harry and the next bad thing that was coming for us. Everything about us, even our relationship, it’s about how we’re the only two people in the world who can understand what we’ve gone through to support Harry. As a girl, as a know-it-all, I was always a little out of it and it was easier, I think, for me to do other things. But you—at home, with all your brothers, and with Harry as your best friend, when do you have a chance?”
It comes out all in a jumble, stuttered half-phrases which are unlike Hermione. “I don’t understand,” he says, after a moment of frowning. “I don’t get it.”
Hermione sighs. “Basically, your life—my life—everything about it until now has basically been about Harry. Even our relationship is about Harry. When we’re alone, we talk about Harry. I want to know who Ron is. What do you like to do when you’re alone? What do you think about when it’s not about Harry or Voldemort or the war or your family? What do you do for you?”
Ron blinks. “I…”
He doesn’t really know. Most of the time after classes, he and Harry go home to their shared flat. Harry talks about whatever they learned that day, and Ron teases him for turning into Hermione. Sometimes they play Exploding Snap or something, or they head out to Diagon Alley to see George at the Weasley Wizarding Wheezes. And if he’s not with Harry, he’s at home at the Burrow, where there is Mum, and there is Dad, and there are his siblings.
He’s never alone.
And that’s Hermione’s point, he realizes.
“But…” He hesitates. “What about… us?”
“Us?” Hermione gives him a tired smile.
“I mean, we’ve been dancing around it for a while…”
“And we can dance around it for a while longer.” Hermione leans her head on his shoulder. “Ron, we need to figure out who we are without Harry—not that he won’t always be our closest friend, but our lives can’t always revolve around him. I’ll just be at school anyway. We can figure things out when you’re back.”
“But—” Ron takes a deep breath. “You… I don’t want to come back and find you’ve moved on—”
“Who’s to say I’ll be the one who’s moved on by then?” Hermione shoves him playfully. “Do you know what Hogwarts is like this year? It’s not like when you were there—too much happened when we were in the woods. The second through fourth years travel in packs, half of them terrified to go around corners because of what the Carrows did last year. Everyone else is dealing with war trauma, on both sides. It’s not great, Ron. It’s quite awful, actually. And you’ll be off travelling, meeting new people, having new experiences—if anyone’s going to move on, it’ll be you.”
“Never.” Ron grins, though it’s a little shaky. He’s never thought of it that way—his fears have always been that Hermione will leave him, not the other way around. He thinks that would be most people’s fears, because Hermione is so much better than he is in every way. She’s smarter, she works harder, she’s Hermione, and he’s just Ron.
“You’ll write, won’t you?” Hermione’s asking.
“I’ve always been rubbish at writing,” Ron says with a small laugh. “But yeah. Yeah, of course I’ll write.”
Leaving is so much easier than he expected.
One word with the Auror Training Academy with Harry hovering over his shoulder, has a bunch of forms deferring his place in training signed and handed in. The Aurors had barely blinked—or rather, they had nodded in understanding, said something about the war taking its toll on everyone, and told him to enjoy his gap year. Even Harry had been stunned at how blasé the Academy had been, but Ron didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Hermione had handed him almost the entirety of her Ministry award, which pooled with Ron’s still wasn’t anywhere near enough for a Grand Tour around the world. Harry, though, basically let him into his vault at Gringotts and told him to take what he needed.
“You sure?” Ron had asked, flabbergasted once again at the sheer amount of money that Harry had in his vault. It was thousands upon thousands of Galleons—more Galleons than Ron could count in one small stone vault—but Harry simply shrugged and looked awkward. “This is…”
“Look, Ron, if your family would have let me, I’d have shared the whole thing with you all in second year,” he mutters, embarrassed. “I have more than enough. I won’t notice the difference.”
It’s on Ron’s lips to say something—anything—about the money, but then he remembers that this is Harry’s inheritance from his parents. Harry might have money, but he never had his Mum and Dad, and Ron’s heard Mum talking about Harry’s aunt and uncle in a less than complimentary tone enough times. Another look in the vault, and he realizes that he’d trade every Galleon in there to have Fred back, and whatever he was about to say dies on his lips.
He clears his throat. “Thanks,” he mutters in reply, carefully counting out enough Galleons to match the budget that Hermione helped him put together for a gap year abroad. “I appreciate it. I’ll pay you back, Harry, I swear.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Harry replies, with a sad smile and another look inside his vault. “As I said—I won’t notice the difference.”
At home, Dad’s confused by Ron’s decision, but finds himself easily distracted by the many, many things that Ron is going to see. Ticketing machines! Underground trains! Music machines, and ballpoint pens that click, and dozens of other mundane Muggle objects. Ginny thinks the whole Grand Tour thing is thrilling, and Bill agrees; Charlie invites him for a week in Romania. Percy admonishes him on paying Harry back later and taking care of himself while he’s away, while George only wishes him luck.
George is quieter now. Fred’s been gone less than a year, and they all work through it in their own ways.
It is, instead, Mum who argues the most with him about his plans. She stands in his doorway as he packs his old knapsack, newly charmed with an Undetectable Extension Charm, with all the things he’ll need for a year of travel, and she’s sighing. She’s had this conversation with him a dozen times.
“Ron,” Mum is saying, “Think this through. It’s hard to get into the Auror Training Academy. You have a good career, a good future, in the making—why leave?”
“I haven’t left it,” Ron replies, for the umpteenth time. “I’ve only deferred it for a year. If I decide I want to go back—”
“If you decide?” Mum asks sharply. “What do you mean, if you decide to go back?”
Ron isn’t going to lie. “I don’t know yet,” he says. “I don’t know what I want, Mum. I don’t know if I want to be an Auror at all.”
“You can decide that here,” she insists, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can even complete your training while you decide—and that would be prudent, would save you time and money if you do decide to be an Auror. No one says you have to be an Auror after finishing at the Academy—why, one of Bill’s friends—”
“I’m not one of Bill’s friends, either,” Ron cuts in. “Look, Mum—I need to get away. I need to find myself, and then I’ll see where things are at.”
“What a load of rubbish,” Mum says, but Ron’s heard it before. He’s heard it a dozen times by now because Mum has never been quiet about her opinions, but he’s already decided. Everything’s already been done.
“It can be rubbish, Mum,” Ron replies, sounding final. “But I’m still going. I’ll write.”
His Portkey leaves from London the next day.
He starts in the south of France. Hermione helped him plan this first part of his trip, telling him about the sights that she’d liked in both magical and non-magical areas, and walking him through so many of the basic skills that he didn’t have. Using foreign money; booking seats on coach buses, or trains, or even aeroplanes; finding good hostels to sleep in that have kitchens where he can make every Galleon stretch. Buying food and cooking it for himself to eat—he isn’t Mum, but he can throw together basic dried pasta as well as anyone else.
Sometimes, he does Portkey, or take his broomstick, or Apparate. But it depends on where his next destination is—he isn’t going to Apparate anywhere he hasn’t been, and over long distances his broomstick is just too cold and uncomfortable. He can sleep on buses, or on trains, leaning on his backpack that Hermione spelled for him—and that saves him a night of paying for a bed.
He wanders France for a while—it’s a touristy sort of place, a little too expensive for him, but the beaches are nice. Marseilles is gritty in a way that he thinks he likes, and he loves Eze, or at least the magical Eze that is still a multicultural, medieval city rather than a tourist trap. The mountains of the Alps are stunning, and he joins a group of Muggle students who are trekking a part of it; and then he meanders on through Italy.
It’s… nice, after the war. He’s bad at writing, but he writes more than he thought he ever would. He’s always picking up postcards for Hermione, for Harry, sometimes for Ginny and Mum and the rest of his family. Travelling is nice, but it’s also lonely. He sees something new, and he wants to tell Harry; he sees something that he knows Hermione would like, and he wishes she was there with him. He’s meeting people, with new dorm-mates every night in his hostel and people to talk to and spend time with, but it’s a very temporary sort of connection—they are fast friends, the best of friends, for one night, until they each and all move on.
He spends most of January in France and Italy, then he loiters for three weeks in Slovenia. It’s a beautiful country, filled with mountains and crystal-clear lakes that he finds peaceful, while Ljubljana is bustling and friendly. It’s late February when he swings north through Hungary, and then it’s March when he crashes with Charlie for a week and sees Romanian Longhorns in their natural habitat.
After Romania, he swings southwards, passing through Bulgaria, which just makes him think of Krum. He doesn’t linger, barely passing two days there, before heading on to Greece. In Greece, he joins another group of Muggle students touring the islands and tags along for a week, thinking about how Hermione would squeal over all the sights, and then he heads for Athens.
Athens is nice. It’s old, the feeling of history pressing in on him wherever he goes, and it doesn’t take long before he tires of it. Athens is Hermione’s sort of place, where she can dive into books and history and come out fully satisfied, but for Ron, he’s looking for something different. Athens—or Europe—are not different, or maybe it’s that they’re not different enough. He still has that feeling—that sense of things being fine, but not right, or maybe it’s a sense of being apart and disconnected from everything that he does. He’s supposed to find himself, but he’s as lost here as he was in Britain.
So, just after his birthday, for which Mum and Dad send him a few more Galleons, he marches into the airport and buys himself a ticket to New York City.
When Ron steps off the plane, even the air smells different.
It smells stale, mostly. Mechanical. The airport is busy, bustling with hundreds of people crowding the terminal walking every which way with no regard for each other. Everyone has luggage, small rolling luggage cases that they’re pulling along behind them, and the air is thick with chatter. It takes a few minutes for Ron to begin understanding people when they speak—he’s heard American accents before, mostly in the south of France, but never this many conflicting voices at once. There’s happiness, annoyance, excitement everywhere he can see.
He’s tired, even after a nap on the plane, but it’s still bright afternoon in New York City. He stops a security officer, asks directions to the downtown, and after some minutes deciphering an accent that is vaguely American but entirely something else, manages to get himself on the right train.
Outside, the buildings taller than Ron has ever seen dominate the skyline. There are more towers than he’s ever seen in his life. Most of them are just residential, he thinks, judging by the variety of curtains hanging in the windows, but as he gets downtown, he sees more that he guesses might be office towers. These ones aren’t brick, but made of glass and steel, and they reflect sharp flashes of sunlight into his eyes.
The hostel here, run by the YMCA, has rooms that are a lot smaller than the ones that he’s used to in Britain. They also have fewer beds per room, and the rooms get hot and close at night. In some ways, the privacy is nice; in other ways, it’s awful, because he’s gotten used to meeting people through mutually shared housing arrangements. Without a roommate to introduce himself to, it suddenly becomes much harder to meet anyone.
He shrugs it off—a bit of privacy is nice, after months of being with strangers, and he makes his own plans. Central Park and Times Square are worth seeing, and while he skips the numerous museums that Hermione would have hit and he has no money to watch any of the famed Broadway shows, he spends hours just walking around the city.
He likes New York City. There’s a vibrant, almost frenetic energy to the city. Lower Manhattan is full of business towers, businessmen striding every which way and clearly on business; Broadway is filled with actors and other performers hustling. Fifth Avenue has shoppers, and there are people everywhere talking fast and walking faster, and it’s all Ron can do sometimes to get out of the way.
Every neighbourhood has its own character. The Upper West Side is not the Lower East Side, let alone Midtown, or Chinatown. The other borough, though he doesn’t get out there much, are still different—Brooklyn natives speak with yet another accent, and in Queens they speak English mixed with a hundred other languages. He spends an afternoon there, eating food he’s never seen anywhere before, but it’s mostly too far out for him to want to go more than a few times.
He particularly likes Greenwich Village. There’s something that’s loose about Greenwich Village, loose and easygoing and free, which is at odds with the rest of New York City. New York City is big, booming, excited; Greenwich Village isn’t not those things, but there’s something different about it all the same.
There are a lot of artists in Greenwich Village, artists and musicians and other performers. There are also students, easily picked out by their age, their backpacks, their textbooks. Sometimes, there are political rallies, in a park dominated by a big, square arch that that Ron thinks is supposed to be reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He likes the park, too—it’s always busy, but there’s a nice fountain and there are in-built outdoor chess tables in the southwest corner.
It’s spring, so the table are filling up with old men and boys. Old men during the day; boys and girls sometimes join them in the afternoons and evenings. The old men are always there, timer clocks sitting beside them, and Ron can’t help but stop and watch whenever he’s there.
The chess they play is so familiar to him—familiar and yet different. They move their pieces by hand, there is no argument with their pieces, but the strategies that they use and the games that they play look so familiar to him. There’s the classic opening, pawn to E4, and then any of a number of openings that Ron has played before. He knows the knight, he knows the bishop, and then sometimes a player does something that he doesn’t know and that he hasn’t seen. The clocks are new to him, but he can tell that they record how long someone takes to make their moves.
It’s mesmerizing. Wizarding chess, meant to mimic a general commanding his troops, has a quality of argument—Ron is always arguing with his pieces, having to justify why he’s making the moves he is, and his opponent necessarily hears everything. But muggle chess, played out on the tables of the park, is done in silence. Ron doesn’t know why someone makes the move that they do, doesn’t always see the connections right away, and he takes the games home in his head to think about in his tiny hostel bunk. He invests in a notebook, after a couple days, and takes notes on the games to think over later. It’s strange, but there’s no one here to tell him he’s being weird.
It’s about a week of showing up, notebook in hand, when an old man looks him in the eye.
“Boy,” he says, and his accent is thick with another language. Eastern Europe, maybe—something about his consonants sounds like Krum. “If you’re going to be there taking notes anyway, come give an old man some sport and play.”