Title: Empty Spaces

Author: The Treacle Tart

Pairing: Ron/Draco

Rating: R (ish)

Disclaimer: I am a sad little writer playing with someone else's toys.  She makes the money, I get neck cramps.

Summary: Ron and Draco subsist on hatred and anger because it is better to feel something than nothing at all.  After so much time, is it even possible to feel anything else?

Notes:  I apologize to anyone who loves Percy. Thanks to Diana for her invaluable help. Any mistakes you find - and I'm sure you will - belong to me.

Empty Spaces

It began with a fight, as these things often do.  One would mock, the other would sneer, one would curse, the other would hex. And when that failed to provide satisfaction, fists would sail through the air. Draco would remark how the blood pouring from Ron's lip was a lovely shade of red -- better than his ridiculous hair-- and he would look good covered in it.  Ron wouldn't bother with words, as they obstructed the glorious sound of his knuckles fracturing Draco's jaw, and was instead satisfied with a simple, "Fuck you, ferret boy."

They would be pulled apart, not by anyone in the mob of students too busy enjoying the spectacle, but by professors who always came upon the scene well after the first blood was spilt. Snape always allowed Draco to get in one last punch, and McGonagall always took the same amount of house points away without ever asking who swung first.   Even after seven years at Hogwarts and the end of the war, neither saw the need to alter their behavior.  It felt too much like normal.

There would be detention.  One could not allow such conduct to persist without some sort of punishment.  Unfortunately, it happened so often that the staff was running out of things for these two to do.  Polishing every single suit of armor didn't help. Scrubbing the floors of the Great Hall didn't either. Nor did cataloging potions ingredients, re-shelving library books, scouring the bathrooms, or babysitting Hagrid's menagerie. 

That was just this month.

It seemed as the date for their emancipation from Hogwarts neared, their altercations increased -- in frequency and intensity.  It seemed to most that they sought each other out, that they purposefully began bickering, and that it escalated to blinding violence all too quickly.  And as their bodies shook after every word snarled through clenched teeth, and sweat glistened off the tight muscles of their scowling faces, it seemed that they liked it, needed it even. It seemed natural.

Dumbledore called them into his office, and scrutinized them as they sat fidgeting and fuming across from him.  Minutes passed and tired blue eyes looked to one then the other, volleying back and forth slowly.  There was a sigh, more staring, and a slow deliberate nodding of the head.  Then he spoke:

"Seven years and you still haven't been able to put aside your differences.  You fought side by side in a war and have not managed to co-exist in a time of peace.  You have both suffered great losses, but still haven't managed to find mercy or forgiveness.  I remember another pair of students, much like yourselves, and I allowed the hatred to fester for decades because I thought they could overcome their differences.  I have learned my lesson from that mistake, boys, and I refuse to let it happen again.  You will talk out your differences. You will come to some form of understanding.  You will reach a cease fire or neither of you will be allowed to leave Hogwarts with any sort of certificate.  You will not be qualified wizards, and you will have wasted your tenure here.  Am I understood?"

A shocked silence filled the room and two reluctant heads nodded in agreement.  The detention was assigned:  twenty four hours, locked room, no way out.

___________________

They sat on their respective beds refusing to talk.  Hours were spent staring at blank walls.

"We'd better start," Ron said, his boredom laced with annoyance.

Draco huffed. "There's nothing to start, you twit.  All we need to do is manage not to kill each other for one day.  We avoid each other for the next two months, and then we are free.  Free from this place, free from interfering headmasters, and free to hate each other openly. If you can keep your hands off me, that is."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ron asked, the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand.

Draco smirked. "You always throw the first  punch, Weasley.  Tell me, do you like the feel of my skin?  Do you like to touch me?  Do you get off on playing rough?  Maybe what you need is to shag me hard against the wall to get out all your aggressions.  I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you?  Is that what you are thinking about when you pound into me with your fists?"

Ron's hands automatically balled tightly, his nails digging into his palms. "You always throw out the first insult.  You always start the fight. Do you like the way I look when I'm angry, Malfoy? Maybe you like it when I throw you against the wall?  Maybe you like getting pounded by me?"

They stared at each, letting the words swirl in the air around them.  Trying to pretend they weren't true.

________________

The room was dark when he woke up -- pitch black and cold -- and someone was screaming. 

He blindly reached for his wand and remembered it had been confiscated.  His confused, shaking fingers finally managed to switch on the lamp on the table next to his bed.  Its dim light revealed Draco, twisted in his sheets, sweating, crying and screaming. He was still asleep.

Ron leapt from his bed and onto Draco's, straddled the contorting body, grabbed his shoulders, and called out his name, "Draco! Draco!"

The body below him was convulsing and straining.  Indecipherable sounds and guttural moans were streaming from Draco's pale, stretched lips.

"Wake up, you idiot!. Wake up!" he nearly screamed.

Ron began to shake him harder, trying to stop the violent seizure.

"It's a dream.  It's just a dream," Ron said, almost softly.

A pair of grey, frenzied eyes popped wide open.  A flash of something passed through them --relief, maybe even joy – and then fury.  "What the hell are you doing?  Get off the fuck off me!"

"What the hell am I doing?!  I'm waking your sorry arse up to stop your bloody screaming, you ungrateful -"

"Well, I'm up so you can get off me now!" he rasped.

"What the hell were you screaming about anyway?"

"None of your damn business and why are you still on me?"  The anger and indignation could not hide the panic in his voice.

Ron stared down at Draco, lines of fallen tears still wet on his cheeks; his hair, wet and sticking to his face; his eyes, red-lined and sore looking. He looked terrified and so very, very young. And suddenly Ron didn't feel like fighting anymore.

He slowly rose and went back to his bed.  Ron turned one last time to face Draco, whose eyes never left the ceiling, before turning out the light.  In the darkness he could hear the steady breathing, and if he listened closely, a soft sob.  He didn't like the sound.  It was easier not to think of Draco as human.

He had some idea what Draco was going through.  He had a very good idea.  The thing about dreams is that you can't hide from them.  You can't stop them.  Every fear, every anxiety you ever wanted to forget comes to life during the long hours of darkness when you can't fight back.  Ron often woke up to screams, his friends' or his own.  Using silencing charms became common after the war. Muting charms were habitually used so you couldn't hear your own voice– it was the only way to get any sleep.  With their wands taken before they entered the room, there would be no silencing charms, no muting charms.  There would be no hiding.

A bitter chill ran over his skin, and he felt a familiar ache deep in his bones. Ron had a very good idea of what Draco was going through, and somehow, in the darkness of that room, he felt that Draco should know that.

"No one who visited it would know it is a cemetery," he began.  "The ground is always covered in a thick layer of grass that looks like no one ever walks on it. Sometimes, I think I'm the only one who ever goes there at all."

His fingers traced small circles in the bedspread.

"There's a small wooden cross with a dented and scorched prefect's badge in the center.  That was Dad's idea.  He wanted Percy to be remembered that way."

His nail ran along the worn threads.

"None of us saw it coming.  None of us were prepared.  There were rumors of course, but words don't really mean much when everyone was condemning everyone else of being a dark wizard.  Most of it was fear, I think.  Fear makes friends and family turn on one another faster than anything else.  No one wanted to be accused, so they accused everyone else."

His thumb and forefinger picked at the fabric.

"Mum still cries at night when she thinks we are all asleep.  I see her, sometimes, sitting in his room, still as he left it.  She sits huddled on his bed clutching the last sweater she knit him, the one he sent back. In the morning she goes back to being Molly Weasley - Mother to the World, cooking enormous amounts of food and telling her sons not to slouch and her daughter to stop picking at her fingernails."

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

"The only sign that anything's changed in the house is the empty seat at the dinner table; the empty seat that she still sets a place for.  No one talks about it, not family, not guests; we just set a plate and utensils with a neatly folded napkin…with the blue glass he used to like to drink out of because he thought it looked noble.  Then the meal continues like it always does. Everyone goes about their lives, completely ignoring the empty space set with a plate and utensils and the blue glass.  We try to ignore it, anyway.  I don't think one of us is not painfully aware of it every moment of the day.  No one's sat there since he left the house."

He flattened his hand and ran it across the comforter.

"Dad took it the hardest.  He felt he should have seen the signs, that he should have known something wasn't right.  This was his son after all.  We tell him that no one could have known.  He just smiles, but I see it in this eyes.  Pain.  Helplessness.  Failure." 

He grabbed at the bedspread, bunching it in his hands.

"Ginny knew something, I think.  She knew Percy wasn't himself. She tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen.  Percy, who spent months measuring the thickness of cauldrons, was too boring to get into trouble, too careful to be in danger."

He balled his hands in fists leaving crescent shaped indentations in his palm.

"Charlie doesn't come home any more. He says it's because he is so busy trying to rejuvenate the dragon population to take the time.  He was never good at hiding his emotions. That's probably why they trust him so - dragons are very picky about their human handlers.  He hides nothing from them, or the rest of the world.  He can't.  He can't pretend that nothing is wrong and sit at a table next to an empty seat, a blue glass sitting untouched.  He can't pretend that he doesn't hurt, that he isn't dying inside, like the rest of us do."

He is perfectly still.

"Either everyone pretends Percy never existed or that he never changed.  Either forgetting or ignoring. Everyone but me.  I can't pretend nothing happened and I can't ignore it.  I can't pretend that he didn't turn. That he wasn't found in a Death Eaters robe and mask. That he didn't kill Seamus, Padma or Professor Sprout. That he isn't the reason Colin spent six months in St. Mungos; the reason that Hannah Abbot is an orphan.  I can't, because I saw it happen.  I saw it all.  I saw a steady hand point a wand and a cold voice mutter spells I never knew existed."

He is perfectly still.

"I had always thought it was the spot I wanted to be in, leading the charge like a brave soldier, wand drawn at the ready.  Illusions of triumph and victory shatter into dust when you realize you're fighting your own family. They shatter when you see him dead at the other end of your wand."

He is completely still.

There is silence.

Hours later when the door to the room was finally opened, they would be found in a peaceful sleep.

_________________

Ron still doesn't know what made him say all those things to Draco.  It was easy talking into darkness, saying aloud the things one needs to but was afraid to.  An odd sort of calm followed his admissions and the rest of the school year continued uneventfully.  At some point he realized he hit Malfoy because he needed to feel something other than the numbness he'd been living with, and even if he didn't understand what he was feeling, it didn't matter because he was feeling something.

For his part, Draco hasn't said a word since they were released from the room, not to Ron, not to anyone.  His need to fight had somehow vanished as well.

_______________

The leaves on the trees were beginning to dry and fall to the ground as a new autumn began, and a lone figure stood looking down at a small wooden cross with a dented and scorched prefect's badge in the center.

Ron stares at an empty space where no one will sit, set with a plate and utensils that no one will use, with a neatly folded napkin beneath, and a blue glass marking the last place where a family resided.  An emptiness will always be there, like a specter of a forgotten time looming, reminding him of his failures, his mortality, and the life he no longer lives.

He kneels down to run his hand over the ground and watches as a rain drop falls and splashes against the soft grass.  Drops of deliverance fall giving life to the pasture that holds the remnants of someone he once loved.  Sympathy perhaps from another place, or maybe just mercy, fall and cleanse the ground for those who died, and more so, for those left behind to comprehend it all.

"Time to go, Percy.  I'll be back soon."

His pained fingers slowly run through his wet hair, and his weary body turns to find another person in the distance. In the year he's been coming here, this is the first time he'd ever seen another person visiting a grave.  Evidently, Percy was not the only person people wanted to forget.  This was a graveyard full of empty chairs and specters.

Solemn footsteps, muffled by moist leaves, lead him to a figure standing rigidly on a plot of land marked by a battered cane with a silver top.  There is something familiar about the form but it isn't until he turns slightly that Ron realizes he is looking at Draco Malfoy.  His hair is not tight to his head, as he used to wear it, but falls gracelessly in front of his eyes.  His shoulders once squared and defiant, seem fallen.

Ron stared in silence as the stoic figure falls onto his knees in front of the battered cane and a steady stream of tears flows freely from his stone gray eyes.  He makes no sound, not a sob or a cry.  His body doesn't betray his mourning; it remains immobile and inexplicably still.

The rain continues to fall in large drops to where they both remain frozen. Ron felt something stir deep in his belly, a sadness even more profound than the one he had been living with for the past year, the only feeling that has managed to get through the numbness. It wasn't difficult to see why. As Percy was his brother, Lucius was Draco's father -- and Draco's father was dead. Not Death Eaters, or criminals, but a father, a brother, a son. Ron couldn't bring himself to grieve for Lucius.  No, he did not mourn his death, he celebrated it, but it didn't escape him that people could say the same about Percy.

Ron watched Draco's silent memorial and the stream of tears that fell from his red-rimmed eyes onto his an unresponsive body.  He studied the lines in Draco's face that aged him well beyond his years, the thin frame and hard angles that showed the remnants of a warrior and the consequences of war.  Despite it all, he was still beautiful.

His mind was blank and as he walked over to Draco, feeling a need to let the other know he was there, but unsure as to why.  Ron gently places a doubtful hand on his shoulder.

"He wasn't always bad you know," uttered a voice much too small to be Malfoy's.  "He was a good father once.  Hard, but good….and he loved me.

"He changed when Voldemort came back.  He became this other thing.  You couldn't talk to him, you couldn't reason with him.  He was obsessed. Possessed. Insane.  My mother left … I tried…" Draco blinked away a tear.  "In the end, I suppose I just couldn't be what he wanted me to be. I just couldn't do it."

"You did what you had to do.  You had no choice, really.  You did what was right, what saved lives," Ron remarked, almost to himself, as if understanding the words for the first time.  Understanding what it means to move on.  Understanding it is not about forgetting or ignoring, but about acceptance and forgiveness, about reaching out. 

"Do you want to get a drink or something?" he asked.

___________________

It began with a fight, as these things often do.  They reached out the only way they knew how, because violence was more acceptable than need, fury better than fear.  Hate was easier than love.

They found each other again in the darkness, this time without words.   They touched, not with fists, but with tentative fingers and hesitant lips.

A freckled hand slid over a pale form, caressing the hot skin with soft fingertips. Cheek to chin to collarbone to chest. Navel to hip to thigh to knee.  Up and over and back again.

Ron smiled at Draco's small gasps.  At the way his breath hitched when Ron bit his neck. At the quick intake of breath when he discovered that spot along the inside of Draco's thigh that covered him in gooseflesh.  At his moans.

He tasted like a new morning, clean and sweet and hopeful.

Ron took him in his arms as he gently rocked against this body, whispering in his ears, sinking deeper and deeper into Draco's heat. And when he felt his own climax coming, slowly lowered his hand to grasp Draco's erection and tenderly rub him with the same soft rhythms.

It was tender.  It was gentle. It was nothing he thought it would be, but exactly as it should be.

___________________________________

"What do you suppose it means," Draco asked, his fingers tracing constellations in Ron's freckles. "Two half souls equal one whole one?"

Ron smiled, wrapping his arms tightly around his lover. "Maybe.  Maybe it's the only way to feel whole again."

Finis