and the future is scrawled on
the back of your tea leaf, which resembles your skin, which resembles your
heart
by Silvia
The thing about Ron was that Ron pretended better than anyone else Harry had ever known. He could fold the truth up in rice paper squares, to melt on the tip of his tongue, and kiss you in his head.
He seemed to want to taste everyone, slide into their open half-cracked mouths; he was that hungry.
He would promise hard enough to make it seem to have happened -- want that strong. Harry had a taste, once, under the staircase during a long week with breadcrumbs and a mouse attached to a tattered tail, and he couldn't imagine living it.
Harry thought, oftentimes, that Ron was the strongest person he knew.
**
"If you just stuck with it," Ron said, and curved the tip of his broom towards the ground, merging into a drive.
Practice was still curling in Harry's bones, but it was time to go inside, time for a crackling fire and something warm in his belly, and so he said no, they should just go in now.
"If you just stuck with it," Ron murmured, slack damp face, red and wood worn hands.
"You'll catch a cold," Hermione called from the grass, and she was right too, they were both right, and Harry was glad they'd stayed out as long as they had, but he wanted inside. The chill had worked too deep and he could be the best some other time.
The thing about Ron was that Ron had never learned what Harry had learned about being happy, how to decide to be wrong.
The thing was that Ron didn't decide anything. He flexed, and scissored his legs and his will and the breaths stealing in and piling up in his chest, and he pretended to himself first above everyone. Harry could see it in his smile.
Harry thought, oftentimes, that the strongest person he knew would have to be the saddest.
He thought it might be him someday, and he asked, "Do you think it's me, truly, who's going to. everything?" and he asked the right person.
"No," Ron lied.