finifugal

My best friend told me things that were deeper than the breadth of my own experience. I fear that I have similar feelings, almost like I lived these things through his eyes. The discreet way I handled this discernment had me reeling in a strange sense of bewilderment. Sometimes, when he spoke, I felt a strange reflection stirring in me — as if his pain had found a home in my own chest before I even knew what it meant.

I had my own wife — another one of my best friends — but this doom-like feeling was hanging over my head like a twisted cathedral slowly choking my insides.

This feeling was something I had never felt before. My life growing up with my abusive aunt and uncle made me want to throw up thinking of “memories,” or the thought that my childhood with them was over — that was relief, not regret. This was a type of nostalgia that was handmade. The feeling of hatred against the idea of an ending.

An ending of not just anything. Not like actual death (I’ve brushed with actual death too many times to count) — the end of a good book, the end of a great movie. It was worse.

His red hair whipped from side to side as he sobbed. I put my hand on his back. I didn’t understand this whole situation at all until I saw the death of their relationship. Then it all came gushing out — literally.

We had gone into the old common room, decrepit by now from years of abandonment. The school had done away with the original Gryffindor house (and the other houses too, for renovation) after several incidents involving You-Know-Who and my godfather, Sirius. The Fat Lady was too traumatized to stay there after everything, too. There were newer buildings with the houses remodeled and modernized.

In a strange way, feelings of oddly placed nostalgia flooded me as Ron told me pieces of his life with him. The old common room was rotting now. It seemed fitting as my best friend grieved over his loss while we sat together.

“When we first, well, did it … it was as if all my stagnant, numb feelings broke down. It all gushed out — not to be gross, ha. Then warmer feelings soaked in, so much so, it was like ocean waves growing stronger inside of me…” Ron had detailed to me earlier that year. I made a gagging noise and he laughed, pushing me.

He first confessed these feelings to me just after my third child, Lily, came into the world. My wife Hermione, who was part of our group friendship, was worried about Ron.

“He always seems so alone. I don’t want him to think his single life isn’t worth more than a married or taken person. I think he internalizes all of his old relationships as a stored sort of pain…” she told me after Ron had visited us.

I sighed, “When he talks about how he feels, it really opens up a lot of things in me too. I really feel like the war changed us all.”

“I mean, it was debilitating for me to look at tattoos for so long after what happened with…” she shivered. I touched her arm softly. Bellatrix had tortured her before Dobby had sacrificed himself to save all of us.

“I think our loneliness is shared yet different. It’s all like we became fresh orphans. Well, I’ve always been an orphan. You know what I mean, hon.”

She lifted my hand up to kiss it gingerly. “I think it’s an identity crisis. We all needed to figure out who we were after the fight was over. And with Ron, he never really found himself. Not yet. Women always have been a struggle…”

“I think it’s more that he’s only had women go after him in an obsessive way… or the opposite, they’re indifferent. There’s no good middle ground for him,” I reasoned.

“And remember all those times Ron and I were at each other’s throats over Scabbers…” she laughed with a light scoff. “He always fought fiercely for who he loves. I really think that he’s lost a lot — like his brother Fred…”

“Yeah, except Scabbers wasn’t Scabbers. He was a disgusting old rat of a man who worked for Voldemort…” I groaned with an ugh sound. The disgust for that period of time dealing with the Death Eaters, Voldemort, and our fight against their tyranny and Muggle-targeted murders was enough to make me feel terribly ill. Hermione knew how to calm me down — usually with hot tea and a massage.

“And Ron typically won’t see things for how they are until it’s too late,” she added. “He is such a sweet person. I know someone else will see that one day…” she said, holding our daughter.

Three kids in, and I love her more and more each day. I kissed her cheek and she pressed her face against mine, sighing softly.

“I know it too…” I said. But it came even sooner than we had anticipated.

I thought of that conversation with her as Ron was sobbing next to me. How time flies, seeming to make fools of us, making me think that time itself was a trickster. Days dragged on so slowly as a kid. Minutes felt like an eternity. Now the years slide past me like an eternal wind whipping my brain, making me believe there is fire when there is rain.

Ron was an Auror alongside me after we defeated Voldemort for a few years, but now he co-runs his brother’s joke shop, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, with George.

Anyway, I feel like I’m dragging this story as I’m writing it. It’s infectious, this feeling of never wanting things to end — like how I felt with Sirius before he died. Thinking of how my life with my godfather was going to be was more magical than all my years as a wizard put together. The ending was a pitfall, a break in my euphoria. Maybe that’s why I can’t stop writing this — because some part of me still wants to stay in that room with him, before everything started to fade.

Now, I have my kids, my wife, and my best friend. I love them all. We’re all closer to twenty-seven years old now. I feel older.

“I’ll never love again the way he loved me,” Ron cried next to me.

Yes, this is really where the story began — in the rotting common room where my wizard education started. The room felt like it was closing in on us. Twisting, breathing — with each exhale, I felt more confused, trapped, and out of breath. Walls that looked collapsed seemed to speak as the wind outside climbed over its fallen ruins.

This was where I had my first Christmas. My first birthday. Well, not really, because Hagrid gave me that with his homemade, misspelled cake.

So, one of my best friends found love at twenty-four years old with a person about twenty years older. His parents and brother George were super concerned about this. Age gaps can be hard. But it was odd, because I never got the impression that Ron liked guys — yet when we were introduced to him, I was beyond shocked. Not only was it a man, but an older man.

He had rough features, not super attractive, but he had this charisma and energy. I think that’s what attracted Ron. I knew they had met before at our office when we worked for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was so weird, and I now realize they’d had moments of strange connection before they ever dated.

“Your dad likes Muggle stuff, huh?” Humboldt said to Ron as he was sorting through paperwork. Ron looked up, his long red hair a mess over his face.

“Uh, yeah. My dad’s a funny duck that way,” Ron answered, messing with his hair to fix it.

“Ever heard of a yo-yo?” he asked, as I laughed.

They had crazy eye contact every time he came by to say hello to our station in particular. He worked in another part of our offices — mainly administrative (Wizengamot Administration Services).

“Yo-yos are elementary. My dad studied that when I was a kid,” Ron answered. “Anyway, you might wanna ask Harry since he lived with Muggles!”

“Muggles like all sorts of funny things,” I said. “I don’t care much for most of it.”

“I practiced walking the dog,” he said, and I nodded as I’d seen it before — but Ron looked confused. He took out a colorful yo-yo suddenly, let it sleep (basically let it spin at the end of the string for a few seconds). Then, with a firm wrist flick, he let it float along the ground smoothly. He let out a well-placed bark, making Ron jump — then laughed.

“Don’t act so gobsmacked over such a little thing!” I teased Ron, but he looked bright red, still maintaining eye contact with the guy. I wondered what the heck that was about. I thought it was because he was embarrassed to jump over a small thing, but obviously it was way more.

More and more, Humboldt would come to visit us. Well, not us — Ron.

“You like card tricks? We should go to a Muggle bar one night just for fun. I’ll show you some tricks I learned,” Humboldt offered to us. I knew he really meant Ron. He gave me a side-eye, trying to see my answer. I nodded just slightly.

“Oh yeah, sure! Me and Harry like to go out on the town here and there to see what’s going on,” Ron answered with enthusiasm. I held in my chuckle.

Ron gave me a dirty look and I said, “Oh. Oh, yeah! We go out all the time…”

Literally, all we ever did was have bonfires with Hermione and Luna. We didn’t do “nights on the town,” especially being so fresh out of that ravaged war.

That night was all about them getting to know each other. It was mind-numbing. They kept chatting and Humboldt kept putting more drinks on the tab (he paid). Though, he did seem trustworthy, as he bought us a cab to go home safely. He took his own ride home.

I don’t know what happened between that night and when Ron confessed to me he felt something off about the man. The rising tension corresponded to my proposal to Hermione, marriage, and our subsequent children after. It seemed they were doing something called a “slow burn” — I didn’t know what that was until Luna explained that word to me.

“Slow burn. Like how long it took you and Hermione to realize you were madly in love!” Luna whispered to me with a wry grin. I was blushing madly at that, laughing nervously. “I thought you two would never get it together!” She added.

It took a few years of them talking, hanging out, and Ron acting like a red tomato that couldn’t utter an intelligible syllable around him before we all sat down and asked him flat out if he fancied the man.

“Huh—-wha-what? Are you all mad? I don’t fancy him. He’s just a mate,” Ron looked completely taken aback but his body language was eating at him to just say it. “You’re all bloody mad!”

Let’s go ahead a year later. He is working at the joke shop now. Hanging with Humboldt every bloody day now. When we’re hanging out, he’s talking about him.

Then, he tells me this crazy revelation: “I think he wants to snog me, Harry. You can’t even begin to understand how mortified I feel!”

“Do ya want to snog him?” I asked outright. I was tired of this fake disbelief he was putting on. He shook his head no immediately.

Next week, same thing, but this time—-this time, he finally says it, “Harry, I’m gutted about this bloke—-I don’t know what to do. I’m fearing I’m getting dodgy around him. Not answering his calls and what not.”

“Do the first thing that comes to mind when you see him…” I suggest. His whole face turns bright red.

“Oh no! Harry!” He puts his face in his hands. I give him a side hug.

I come to find out they’re already dating. It’s really hard to get Ron to talk about his feelings in a way that feels natural or emotionally viable. He doesn’t come out or say anything about himself either. I don’t think he needed to. He just said, “This is my person,” and we all carried on.

They dated for almost two years.

I saw the beginning, the middle and now the end.

I don’t know what happened. I wish I could understand it. Either way, my best friend is grieving and as that’s happening, I’m grieving too. For a life once so vibrant, beautiful, scary, horrific and new. The newness of my life changing from a scared, lonely, abused orphan into a friend-filled, magical adventure that tossed me directly into a pit of wonder, terror and guts. This all categorically defines me yet I realized in this decaying old common area, that this chapter was over. This feeling of not wanting things to end extend to people, something ineffable I am still trying to put a name to.

I’m holding onto my best friend, trying to not cry. The ruins around us struggle to exist as I lift up my best mate. I tell him we need to go. This all had to end sometime.