Walking in Light and Shade - Moment by Moment Book #2 (Harry Potter, Drarry)

Revelations

The spoon slipped back into the half-full bowl, and Harry pushed the table on which it stood away from him, sinking back into the pillows. He was still hungry, but his stomach was churning with all that Moody had told him, and no more food was going to stay down. Self-consciously, his fingers found the constriction around his throat; the collar was still stubbornly marking him out from the crowd, separating him from his friends, and he hated it (it was better than hating anything else).

However much he disliked what his comrade had had to say, Harry couldn't deny the logic behind it. In the grips of his agonies, the prisoner hadn't thought about afterwards, the consequences of Voldemort's cruelty, or how others would treat him. There had only been the slim chance of escape, the smallest of hopes, and anything beyond that had not even entered his consciousness. Now he was in the midst of freedom, it felt strange, and daunting, and the young man was finding it difficult to deal with the complexities that Moody had laid before him. He wanted simple black and white, good and evil, but he was being faced with shades of grey, of which he was one. What had his incarceration done to him? How far had three years in exile taken him away from his colleagues and friends? Harry wasn't sure, and it showed in his discomfort, and he pulled at the collar. The leather just cut into his neck and he let go with a frustrated growl. He closed his eyes and tried to reign in the bundle of emotions which accompanied his new position.

Harry was drawn out of his cerebral mire by a knock at the observation window which looked in to his small, private room. The young man opened his eyes and wondered if he was dreaming. There were six figures standing at the long thin window, and half of them should have been dead. Tonks and Remus were no surprise; Hermione was a beautiful relief, the starkness of their previous encounter gone in the smile that lit her features. However, a beaming Ron Weasley with his arm around his wife made Harry's heart leap, and he nearly choked as beside him stood Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall. Harry pushed back the table even further as an instinct took him towards the edge of his bed, closer to the people whose absence he had grieved. Ron's face went from a slightly smug 'gotcha' grin, to concern and he waved frantically as the patient came dangerously close to the drop off the mattress. The door opened and a cry came through, "Stay where you are, you twit!"

Harry's joy bubbled over in a giggle as the years of grief suddenly felt very strange, but he obeyed the jibe as his best friend appeared in the doorway. Ron hadn't changed, he was still the man whose face could tell a joke or give an order in equal measure, a tall, broad figure, and now Harry could feel the excitement coming off him. In moments there were hands on his shoulders and the young man reached back to the thick set of his companion's torso.

"How?" he asked incredulously, staring into Ron's bright eyes, knowing that the dampness that was being fought back in them was mirrored in his own green gaze.

"Things went nuts after you got the kids out. Some of us escaped into the forest, but they kept us pinned down for weeks. After we were listed as MIA, it was safer to stay out of sight," came out in a rush, and then with a gasp of overwhelming emotion, Ron admitted, "Mate, I wanted to tell you so many times."

Harry couldn't find anything to say, all his emotions hit him in the now familiar train-wreck fashion as he fixated on his companion. This was really his best friend back from the dead, and his elation was incredible. Yet the years he had spent mourning Ron would not go away, in fact the piques of grief he had felt for his ex-partner came back, more powerful than when he had first experienced them. The young man could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears as his mind tried to handle the input, and he hoped the red-head could see the gladness in his face, because he couldn't express it any other way. Thought and feeling took away his power of speech, and Harry dragged in a breath, fighting the debilitating voicelessness.