Chapter Text
The crumpled form on the wrecked tile floor didn’t move, not when the troll hit the floor followed by his club, not when Harry ran over and touched her neck, not even when Snape and McGonagall arrived. He and Harry were hurried back to Gryffindor tower by an oddly gentle Snape and left to Percy’s tender mercies. Ron didn’t say anything through Percy’s lecture nor as they joined their classmates for the makeshift feast nor as they made their way up to bed. Through his mind kept running, “My fault” and every time he opened his mouth to speak he thought, “Is it necessary?”
Hermione didn’t come back to the tower that day or any day after and no-one said anything about when she would be coming back. He woke swallowing his screams every time he went to sleep, her motionless bleeding form seared into his mind and “My fault, I killed her” repeating like a mantra through his mind. He didn’t say anything for days after not that anyone but Harry noticed. When he did his voice was hoarse and it was only after opening and closing his mouth several times asking himself mentally, “Is it necessary? Is it cruel?”
After the first time it was easier but still he couldn’t make himself say anything without checking if it needed to be said. It made him slow to talk, often one of the other boys would have said what he had thought while he was deciding if it needed to be said. He found there was more time for homework when he wasn’t suggesting a game of chess, exploding snap, or gobstones with the lads. More time to realise if he’d done his homework properly he would have known how to pronounce Wingardium Leviosa which made him even less likely to suggest a game when there was something that needed to be done.
It didn’t seem to affect Harry the same way, killing Hermione. He slept as well as he ever had. Did his homework with Ron when he wanted and played as many games as he ever had willingly, though he initiated more of them. Didn’t feel the need to study more and when Ron did he went and played a game of football with Dean and Seamus or took his Nimbus out for long solitary broomstick rides. Maybe it was because it wasn’t his fault. All Harry did was try to help, not send her to her death like Ron had. Only Neville seemed to notice she was gone, he would slink over when Ron was working alone and his quiet presence was calming. He didn’t expect Ron to speak quickly or lots and wasn’t quick to speak himself. It was a different type of conversation when you knew both of you had decided that this really needed to be said and that if there was nothing that needed to be said it wasn’t a judgment to be quiet, the silence didn’t need to be filled.
It’s surprising how little difference the absence of a girl and the trauma of a boy makes when you are caught within the plots of a chessmaster. Quirrell was still host to Voldemort, Hagrid had already let Flamel’s name slip before Hallowe’en which was still on Dumbledore’s chocolate frog card. Yes, they had given up looking in the library long before Harry opened the frog and there was no Hermione to have taken a massive tome out of the library for light reading but Neville grew up alone and bored in the Wizarding World and the Philosopher's Stone was not an unknown item. His rant about selfish wizards who create items that could have revolutionised medicine and then keeping them to themselves and their families was the longest Ron or Harry had heard him speak and covered a wide range of items from the Hopping Pot to Ceridwen's Cauldron. They were as quick to suspect Snape and try to bolster Quirrell’s spirits as they would have been otherwise but rather than Neville being an outsider watching and worrying he was bringing Ron his homework after he was bitten by Norbert and with them as they ran Dumbledore’s obstacle course. It was Neville who hesitantly puzzled his way through Snape’s logic to give Harry just enough potion to go through the flames to face Voldemort before running back to Ron’s prone form.