Author: Jadea

Chapter 2: Interlude

Notes: Thanks to everyone who reviewed Chapter 1 and told me what they thought. . .I'm anxious about making Ron as IC as possible, and I *don't* want to turn this whole series into a cliche. Thanks again, for the reviews, and the advice.

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Wide blue eyes watched him, startled, above their joined hands.

"Don't do that, Ron. Don't *ever* do that."

As gently as he could, Harry examined the hand he held to his lips. All four fingers probably broken, thumb probably jammed. The pain must be exquisite; but the only emotion Ron showed was the tears sparkling at the corners of his eyes.

Still, Harry knew why Ron had done it. Knew exactly why Ron had done it. The need had been coursing through him forever now. . .the need to strike, to hit *something,* to release the pent up anger and guilt that consumed him. Harry had sixteen years experience with controlling his emotions, with forcing them down, hiding them away. Ron had none.

If he didn't do something soon, he was going to explode.

//I swear, Malfoy. . .you'll pay for this. Pay for what you did to me, and double for what you did to Ron//

"Ron. . .Your hand is broken. We need to get you back to the infirmary. . .to Madame Pomf--"

Fear flashed through those familiar eyes and Ron wrenched his hand away.

"No. No, Harry. I d-don't want to go back. Not to Hogwarts. Not yet."

The other boy refused to look at him, cradling his wounded hand in his lap. Long red locks fell over his face, obscuring his eyes.

Moving cautiously, not wanting to startle his best friend, Harry shifted closer to the other boy, hands once again resting on Ron's naked shoulders.

"Ron. . .we can't stay here. It's not safe. My elbow is probably broken, and so's your hand. . .you've been --"

Harry just stopped himself from saying "hurt." He could not speak the other word. He could not.

"No! I don't want to go back! Don't you understand? Look at me, Harry!"

Ron's voice was rough, jagged, words echoing through the cave. He forced Harry's hands off his shoulders, flinging his arms wide.

"Damn it, *look at me,* Harry."

Bruises marked the other boy's naked body; his wrists, his neck, his hips. Bite marks trailed down his throat, fading from sight as the shadows hit Ron's body. Sweaty, disheveled, frantic. Emotions laid completely bare.

He looked. . .

Scared.

Furious.

*Well fucked*

"What are we supposed to tell Madame Pomfrey, Harry? Eh? What are we gonna tell the rest of our roommates? Or *Hermione?* What are we supposed to say when they ask why my robes are all ripped, or why I have a bloody bite mark on my neck, or why the *fuck* your elbow's broke?"

A thread of panic ran through Ron's words, not quite hidden by the frenzied tone with which he spat the words out.

"They're not stupid, Harry. Not Madame Pomfrey, not Seamus and Dean, and *certainly* not Hermione. All they'll have to do is take one look, and. . ."

Unwittingly, Harry found his hands gripping Ron's fists tightly, felt the large hands clenched tight within the circle of his palms. The anger had bled out of Ron's voice for now but the thread of panic remained, pulsing through Ron's words.

"They can't know, Harry. No one. . .no one can know. Please. . ."

Blue eyes, half hidden by crimson strands, flickered up to meet his own. Pleading.

Harry felt something inside him shatter.

Malfoy was going to die.

In a screaming, sobbing, wailing, unbearable arc of pain, Malfoy was going to pay, and pay, and pay.

For putting *that look* in those eyes.

Ron's eyes had always conveyed every single emotion the boy felt, from scalding fury to dazed pleasure, as clearly as if every emotion or thought was stamped on his forehead in bright red letters. Harry would have thought he'd seen every emotion pass, at one time or another, through those expressive eyes.

But this. . .

There was one emotion, Harry now knew, that he had never seen before.

Shame.

His hands had moved from gripping Ron's fists to the back of the other boy's head, one smoothing through the red hair, the other palm pressing against Ron's cheek; holding Ron's blue eyes on his own green ones.

"What Malfoy did. . .That was not your fault, Ron. Do you understand me? That was *not your fault.*"

//It was mine//

"Ron. . .we have to get out of here."

He felt the other boy tense under his hands, shoulders tightening, saw the flash of despair in those eyes.

//God, Malfoy. . .I fucking *hate* you.//

"Harry. . .I can't go back like this."

"I know. You're right. . .neither of us can go back to Hogwarts right now. I look like I got in the wrong end of a fight with a blast-ended skrewt, and you. . .couldn't lie if someone put a wand to your head."

For the first time in ages, a ghost of a smile flitted across Ron's face. Tentative and disappearing almost instantly, but Harry latched on to it.

His hands had slipped back down to Ron's shoulders now, kneading the tense muscles with his fingers. Ron's eyes slipped half shut, and Harry spoke in soft, soothing tones, the way he talked to Hedwig when she returned from a delivery bedraggled and frantic. Ron's mood had understandably been swinging from one extreme to another ever since Malfoy left, from blistering anger to fear to shame and anxiety, and Harry needed Ron to be as calm as possible.

"We'll go the Shrieking Shack, tonight. No one but us knows how to get in. . .it'll be safe. I'll wait a while until everyone's asleep, and then go get the invisibility cloak. We can sneak back early tomorrow morning. . ."

Ron's eyes were completely closed now, head tilted back. Harry's hand stroked through the other boys hair, gently tugging on the short strands. His other hand drifted over his friend's collarbone, smoothing upward to cup the back of his neck--

There.

A vivid bruise marred his best friend's throat less then an inch under his jaw. An ugly, reddish-blue bruise with small teeth marks.

"Then what?"

Tearing his eyes away from the mark on Ron's throat, Harry answered, speaking calmly only through a great effort:

"We'll go to Madame Pomfrey. She'll fix my elbow and your hand."

"And what do we tell her?"

A smile, cold and hard, flickered across Harry's face.

"Whatever the hell we want."

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Bluebell fires were Hermione's specialty, but that didn't mean Harry couldn't conjure them.

The medium sized flame burned quietly in the dust choked fireplace, casting light that flickered throughout the room, and Harry watched as the shadows danced on the walls.

He knew he would have to go back for his invisibility cloak soon, but he didn't want to leave Ron yet.

The fire snapped; the flames gushing upwards with a hiss, illuminating the room in a flash of brightness before fading back to its former muted glow. The light pooled over by the fireplace where the flames licked at the stone crevices trapping them; hungry fingers of heat seeking to escape and destroy.

As a child, he had always been fascinated with fire. The Dursley's rarely built them; they were messy and dangerous and primitive. Besides, Harry liked them, which obviously meant they were useless, annoying things. He remembered the few times that they'd build one, the way the flames had seemed to. . .sing to him. Hum. The way the colors--red, yellow, orange and blue--had fused together. The way they were so brilliant, so bright to look at it.

A soft murmur, and the figure in his arms clutched his robes tighter, burrowing their face deeper into his chest. By the time they had reached the inside of the Shack Ron had been exhausted, stumbling up the steps with Harry's arm around him before collapsing on the old four poster bed. Unconsciously, his fingers stroked through the banked fire that rested against him, watching as the light caught strands of copper and gold, gleaming under his hands.

//White hands twisted in scarlet hair//

Another mutter, this one slightly louder, and Harry realized the hand resting on Ron's head had clenched rather tightly, gripping the red strands almost painfully. As gently as he could he stroked the back of the other boy's head, soothing the area, whispering soft words to the sleeping figure curled around him.

The Shrieking Shack was deathly silent in the middle of the night; the only sounds that of their breathing and Ron's soft mutters. And the song of the fire.

His hands had drifted down now, lightly brushing the strands of hair at the base of Ron's neck. Soft and short, they whispered through his fingers. Down, down his fingers slipped, ghosting over the bruise on Ron's neck.

//Harry. . .my robes--they're ruined.//

He blinked furiously against the tears suddenly stinging his eyes.

He remembered the way Ron had moved, in the cave--slowly, reluctantly, exhaustion dragging his movements. The other boy had tried to remain impassive, but Ron was no more capable of masking his feelings then Harry was of impetuously revealing his own. Dressing himself as carefully as possible. His torn robes, the orange Chudley Cannons shirt that Harry had given him that Malfoy had so despised--

*Great God, Weasley! That's the most hideous thing I've ever *seen!**

Harry had seen Ron dress countless times, just as Ron had him. . .they shared the same room, after all. But this time, he hadn't looked. It seemed. . .different, now.

This time the mutter was more of a moan; a soft exhalation of breath he felt through the fabric of his own robes. The hands clenching his robes were white knuckled, and Harry felt a slow surge of familiar anger as he saw the frown on the other boy's sleeping face, the anxiety and tension obvious.

Ron was having a nightmare.

Well, no bloody wonder.

Propping his hurt elbow on the headboard of the four-poster bed, Harry slipped his other hand tighter around Ron's back, rubbing the material of the robe against the smooth, muscled back. One summer night, when he had been staying at the Burrow, Ginny had had a stomach ache. He remembered the way Mrs. Weasley had held her, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair. Comforting her. Holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the entire world.

Slowly, Harry felt the body in his arms relax, the tension ease. Still, his hand rubbed the other boy's back in slowly expanding circles. He watched carefully as the white-knuckled grip on his robes relaxed and Ron muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'chocolate' in his sleep.

For the first time in hours, Harry smiled.

Ron lay half on top of Harry, who half-sat, half-lay propped up against the wooden headboard. Legs tangled together, the comforting weight of the other boy's body on his. Face resting on his chest; raising and falling gently with his very breath. Golden lashes brushing those lightly freckled cheeks.

"I love you."

The boy in his arms slept on.

Another cough from the fire sent a rush of sparks into the air. It was after one o clock in the morning, now. He needed to get the invisibility cloak, and soon. Hermione was probably frantic. He could only hope she wouldn't go to McGonnagal. . .He didn't know if he was capable of lying convincingly to his head of house, and she would be furious with both him and Ron if she knew they had been gone for an entire night.

It was a moot point, either way. Whether or not Hermione went to McGonnagal, neither would ever hear a word of what had happened. Not from him, not from Ron. That bastard Malfoy had made Ron swear, as a part of their deal to save Harry's life, that Ron would never tell anyone what Malfoy had done to him.

Harry hadn't sworn.

But as he watched the firelight flicker, glinting in the copper threads in Ron's fiery hair, he knew he wasn't going to tell.

Not McGonnagal. Not Dumbeldore. Not even Hermione.

He could picture it, as easily as if he had seen it in a Pensieve. They accused Malfoy. . .

And then?

One of two things. The bloody git used his wealth, his connections, his daddy's power, and walked.

No *fucking* way.

Or he lost the trial. Wound up being jailed, serving time in a wizarding prison. Azkahban, maybe.

Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Neither of them were good enough.

Malfoy could not get off. He would not get away with what he had done to him. . .done to Ron.

And Harry would not allow anyone else to take what was rightfully theirs.

No. The pain had been theirs--his and Ron's.

The justice would be, too.

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Thank Heaven! "Interlude" is finished! Thanks ever so much to everyone who reviewed, especially Rose and Kim who took the time to e-mail me. Your comments nudged me in the direction I knew was right. Dang it, I wanted Harry and Ron to have sex. Oh well, that's for the actual sequel. ; ) And now. . .I know. I had an epiphany while typing this, and I know *exactly* what's going to happen to that little bugger, Malfoy. Trust me, the boys gonna pay.