A Dark Time For The Light

12

They convened at dinnertime. The girls were bright. Draco and Harry had gleams in their eyes. Ron was pale and drawn. He wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye, until Hermione roughly grabbed his chin and looked squarely into his eyes. Saw the pinned pupils and knew.

With practiced hands, she searched him and discovered the last hit hidden about his person, “He nicked the last bit of my gear”, she straddled him as she found it. Ron tried to press her into his groin. She knelt over him and slapped him several times across the face. She pressed the hit into a random pair of hands, “Go down to the platform and scatter it on the rails”. She took Ron’s face in her hands, “How long, baby?. Can we get you off this. too?”. Ron’s voice was slurred, but he answered, “Sorry, ‘Mione. I should have said”,. In a sleepy, drawled tone that worried everybody. He shook his shaggy red hair and tried to come back to himself.

He tried to explain but failed, nodding out instead. His smile was lopsided, “Sometimes, ‘Mione, I need to forget too”.

Hermione leaned down and their foreheads touched. Then Ron moved his head, pitching backwards a little. His mouth was aligned with his best friend’s. In a heartbeat, he covered her mouth with his own, a tongue seeking gentle entry. She resisted, then capitulated. Then pushed him away. “Get real, Ron. This is nothing to do with how we really feel, who we feel for. It’s not you, Ron. It’s your sister. It always has been for me whatever we’ve been through, gear or no gear. It was always her. I love you, but I’m in love with her”.

Ron mewled his regret, then murmured his apology. “I’m going to regret this tomorrow, aren’t I?”. Hermione stroked his face, his shaggy head in her arms, and giggled, “Probably, you idiot. I wish you’d said something, is all. I would never have given you that box otherwise. Now eat some dinner if you can, dilute the hit, then crawl off and sleep”.

He largely passed on the main course, but with ice cream for afters, he ate his own and two more portions. Hermione shook her head. They would have to talk in the morning. Ron was fit for nothing now. He was put to bed and the others gathered again. Hermione was shaking with rage, “Did no-one know of this?” To a general shaking of heads. Minerva approached their table and sank into a chair, “I did. Ron needed an escape valve when he first started the Underground, particularly when Neville left to start the new cadre. He wasn’t using long, then he needed to be clean again to do the Gravidas working. I didn’t think he could be tempted again so readily. I’m beginning to realise the insidious nature of this drug, even while it is one of the strongest known Muggle painkillers”. Harry turned to her, “I was given Morphine in the hospital, but I have no particular desire to sample it again, and I know it is a weaker cousin to heroin, though just as addictive”.

She continued, her voice a monotone, “I was afraid he might go back to it when Blaise left. He was destroyed. You cannot imagine”, she cast her eyes around the table, “Well, perhaps you can”, she coughed. “He stayed clear. It was probably the fact that it fell into his lap and the letter he had from Blaise. I wouldn’t worry too much. Hermione, you are in the grip of the same situation, what do you think?”

Hermione chewed her lip, clearly embarrassed by her ex- House-Head’s scrutiny, but she probably was the expert here. “Keep him away from money for a while and don’t let him out on his own. His habit probably isn’t as, er, developed as mine is, and he’s been off for a year or so, shouldn’t be too difficult to sit on him. Perhaps he needs someone to share the responsibility with. There seems to be a lot resting on his shoulders. I think we need to get him to Italy, to see his daughter and his lover. We’re all together again and that must hurt him, especially as he now has a child he’s never met. The poor boy is dying from the inside out”, her last words were on the edge of tears.

“That’s why it helps; the smack. It just blots the shite out. When you finally emerge, it’s to realise you’ve done vast wrongs. I set up a burglary at my own parents’ house, for fucks sake. I sold the car they bought me for my eighteenth birthday, the watch they bought me for graduating from school with honours. I’ve broken into chemist’s shops. It takes two minutes with the right tools to get the DDA box off the wall and out before the law arrive, the alarm shrilling in your ears. You haven’t got smack, but a few bottles of Methadone to take the edge off, and a whole raft of pills you can get rid of easily in the clubs, pure pharmaceutical speed and downers. You can feed a habit for a week from the proceeds of a good DDA cabinet”.

She looked down, “So you see, the life of a junkie ain’t pretty. I even stole from people who tried to help me. There was a pastor at College. I nicked her credit cards and some wee ornaments. The proceeds were up my arms in no time. I think she was gonna get me sectioned. She ran off to the phone and I vanished”.

Ginny hesitantly finished the tale, “She said you didn’t take much money and she wouldn’t begrudge anyone food and shelter. She didn’t report the loss to the police, just cancelled her cards. We tried to pay her back and she wouldn’t accept it. She called Father Anselm that night who arranged for Mad-Eye Moody to dowse you, but you were gone when she returned. The Community that we stayed with were aware of Magical folk even though she wasn’t”.

Hermione raked her hands through her hair. “I still want it, all the time. It calls to me. One hit and the nightmare will fade. I can only hope that Ron isn’t as bad”, her voice was a strained whisper. Her eyes teared and she sank her head to the table-top. She could barely stammer, “I’m sorry”, before dissolving into sobs.

She felt hands reaching out to her, her friends, people she loved and respected. Ginny to one side, Harry to the other. Minerva held one hand. Draco the other. She clutched the hands before her and melted in the arms around her.

Eventually the girls tottered off, Ginny in control of the timetable, the watch and the torch. She got them back to their rooms in one piece, collecting their now dry bedding, to be claimed, possessed, owned by her lover. Made to moan and cry out. Made to beg. Taken. Screaming as she came. Needed. Wanted. Desired above all else, until Hermione moaned her trembling climax into her beloved’s mouth.

As they drifted towards sleep, Hermione murmured, “You’re better than any drug, lover. I’m back. Back with my lover who I love beyond reason. Don’t ever leave me again. Please. I couldn’t take it”. Ginny could do no more than plant kisses in Hermione’s hair and mutter, “Never again will I leave you. As before, only force can separate us, and I will fight to my last breath, love. I love you so much”, this last spoken in a whisper. “This time I will die if we are put asunder”. Hermione held tight and nodded, “This time, they’ll have to prise you from my cold dead fingers before I’ll let you go. I need you and only you”.
They twined closely together and slept.