Feedback: please

Notes: first time trying to write HP... newbie warning! Also - I can see this being gen *or* slash. If you've read my TPM fic, you know I tend to walk a line that's both. I'm a firm believer in you get from a fic what you want (and that saying I love you is just as much a friend thing as a lover thing, het or slash) - and you find what you take with you. I hope you enjoy it, either way.

Disclaimer: I'm not JKR, and she likes it that way I'm sure.

The first time I stood at King's Cross, searching in vain for something called Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, I was scared out of my mind. And confused, can't forget that. My adventures with Hagrid that summer had only compounded my confusion.

I wasn't anymore the "great" Harry Potter then than Dudley was a considerate human being. No, I was little more than a lost boy who had begun to fear Uncle Vernon might have been right in his taunting. Maybe there was no such thing as a Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. I wanted to see him proven right -- in anything -- only a little more than I wanted to return to Privet Drive.

That was when I met one of the most important people in my life. Maybe even the most important. Flaming red hair, standing out even among a family of red, he showed me that I didn't have to be scared or confused. That I didn't have to be alone.

Living with the Dursleys, friends were few and far between. Who am I trying to kid? I never had any real friends. Dudley hardly counted as more than a household pest.

So it was, on a train bound for parts unknown, I found someone who would become as much an extension of myself as another person. At least, it's felt like that over the years. I never stopped to question how it was that we fell into one another's lives that day. Was it panic, luck, a mix of both?

Truth is, I don't want to imagine how things might have gone if we hadn't. Everything was so strange after we left the Muggle world behind us. In a way, Ron was friend, guide and life preserver all in one. I don't know if I would have made it through that first year without him.

All of us struggled to find our place as first years. I had a legacy I hardly felt earned handed to me. Hermione was the top of our class, and proud of it. Ron... You would have to have been blind to miss how he felt. About his brothers, his grades, even how he felt about our friendship and me. There were days he all but stammered with insecurity -- especially early on.

In the transition from unwanted nephew to the "great" Harry Potter it was easy to overlook a lot of things. Throw in the ever-increasing workload over the years and it was far too easy. Some days you could have hit me over the head with my broomstick and I wouldn’t have noticed what was right in front of my eyes.

Maybe that means I was blind. For I didn't always see how he felt -- second best and last in line. It was a quite loud discussion with Hermione one evening that opened my eyes. And my mouth as well -- my jaw must have hit the floor. A thousand doubts crossed my mind at her words. Self-recrimination followed right on their heels.

My best friend, and I didn't even realize he felt as if he was disappearing in my shadow. Some friend, right?

At the time I didn't understand how someone who had defeated McGonagall's living chess set and done as many things as we had, could possibly think he didn't quite measure up to the rest of us. In truth, my heart stopped in that moment on the chessboard. Ron flying across the board to land in a heap, unconscious, replayed in my dreams for weeks afterwards.

I think that was the first time in my life I ever truly feared loss. My parents were taken from me when I was so little... I never had the chance to fear losing them. And in between there was Privet Drive and a life of repetition and neglect -- nothing much worth losing.

Hogwarts changed all of that. Suddenly I did have something to lose. Things -- friends -- precious and worth holding onto no matter what happened. Not those that awed who I was supposed to be -- but those who loved who I really was. Sirius, Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore.

But at the top of the list was Ron Weasley, my first and best friend. During the tournament... They were right. That of everything I have, everything I've found... I would miss him the most. I did miss him the most.

I still miss him the most.

Hogwarts was a very long time ago, now. We've all grown up, gone on to do what we were supposed to do. Most of us became respectable wizards and witches. New generations of students now fall under the stead of the very same children I once went to school with.

Some of us faded from sight. Others did merely what was asked. But a few... they achieved far more than was expected of them. I think of us all -- no matter how far or how high we went -- it was Ron who surprised everyone the most.

In the end he was second best to no one. Least of all to me. What none of our words could convince him of, he finally saw in himself. But as happy as I was for that realization, and the light it brought to his eyes, I would be happier still if he were here. With me.

I need him now, as I always needed him. He may have once thought his place in life was dependent on me and lost among everyone else, but he was mistaken. It was always I who needed him more. It is as simple and complex as that.

Years removed from my own stay at Hogwarts, I've been called back. Dumbledore -- after serving a surprisingly long stead as the head of the school -- has requested that I take his place. Me. Run a school. I can't seem to quite convince myself of the idea.

Were Ron here with me, I think he would have understood. He would have helped me to understand. Ron always did. Never mind that, he would have helped me to laugh about the whole situation. I think I loved him as much for that twisted sense of humor as anything.

No, to think that would be selling short the rest of him. And even now I wouldn’t want to do that. Too much of that happened when we were young to let it happen again.

I'm supposed to report to Hogwarts by the end of the day. Dumbledore and the other professors are waiting for me even now; there is little doubt of that. But I'm not there. Not yet. I had a stop to make first, along the way. And in my heart it is the far more important of the two.

Pushing my glasses up my nose, I blink quickly. Years worth of visits and it never grows any easier. Those same years filled wishing and regretting things that were said, things that were ignored. The chances that were thrown away in the rush to face the future. The next adventures, the next dangers. So eager to face the new that we forgot about the old. Forgot that sometimes what was really important was right at our fingertips all along.

Funny, at least if I'd lost my glasses I might have had an excuse for being blind.

Now all I can do is remember. Remember the laughter and the anger. The exploits and the fights. Good and bad, they were both who Ron and I were together. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I would, however, prefer to still have it. Even a fight is preferable to unending silence.

Instead, he was taken away -- from me, from his family, from the world. I was overseas, visiting several wizards in America when it happened. Everything had been quiet, peaceful. Maybe we should have seen something coming, but we didn't.

In the end, those few dark wizards that sought to create havoc were defeated. The cost? Only one wizard fell in the defense. Only one. My mind still scoffs at the idea. One who was only the dearest person in the world to me since that day on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

I rushed back as soon as news of the disturbance reached me. I thought I might be in time to help, but the crisis had past, the danger averted. The one to fall was also the one to save them all. There's a sense of irony that his last strategy was so similar to the first. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one to save the rest.

By the time I returned he was gone. He was lost to whatever beyond you care to believe in -- the Muggles have enough beliefs to choose from, after all.

I would have liked to have seen him, one last time. To have told him that I never saw him as just a shadow to the 'great' Harry Potter. He knew, I have no doubt, but still it would have been nice to actually say the words.

Perhaps I would have even made sure he knew how much he meant to me, always had and always will. Yes, I think I would have done that. He knew I loved him, same as I knew he returned the feeling. When it came to one another we always simply knew. Yet, not once did we say the words. I would liked to have said them.

Most of all, I would have liked to have said goodbye.

"I miss you." My whispered words are carried off by the winds and dampened by the steady mist that falls, but it doesn't matter. Only one person needed to hear them; if he was meant to, no wind or rain could stop him.

Turning away, I shake my head. He isn't here. I carry him with me -- in my heart and my memories. Where I intend to hold him close, for as long as I can.

End