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At some point after the both of them had eaten as much of the Trolley Lady’s food as they could manage without a break, Hattie found herself looking at Ron’s hair. It was up in a nice plait, tied up in the back and then plaited and tied again.
It was the sort of plait she had seen plenty of her classmates wearing in school last year, which was oddly comforting. Ron, despite growing up in the wizarding world, looked just as much like an ordinary girl as Hattie did.
“Did your mum do your hair?” she asked, for something to say.
“Huh? Oh, nah,” Ron said, absently reaching up to fiddle with the end of her plait, “I did it myself!”
“It looks nice,” Hattie told her. She would have assumed a parent did it for how nice and evenly done it was.
Ron grinned, pleased. Then she brightened. “You should plait your hair, too! We’ll match.”
“Uh,” said Hattie, feeling shy at having to admit this: “I never… learned how to braid? My aunt never bothered to teach me.”
“She didn’t!” Ron exclaimed, looking shocked at the very idea. Then, apparently seeing something in Hattie’s expression, she hurried to say, “Well, I’ll just do it for you, then! And then after we get to our dorms I’ll teach you how to braid before bed.”
"Okay!"
Hattie scooted closer to Ron, equally giddy about the girl’s casual confidence that they’d be in the same house together as her offer to do Hattie’s hair. Ron rummaged around in her pockets and dug out a small comb from somewhere within them.
“Here, turn around, I’ll brush your hair out first,” she said, and Hattie obeyed.
She tensed a little when Ron took up some of her hair, but it was really quite nice to have her hair combed. Hattie was used to Aunt Petunia forcefully raking a comb through her hair minutes before she dropped them off at school, but Ron was much slower and gentler about it.
The rhythm of it and the feel of Ron’s warm hand pressing on her head when she combed up to the topmost parts of her hair was almost soothing. She kind of wanted to lean into the cushioned backing of the seats and maybe close her eyes.
But then Ron stopped combing.
“I’m going to put your hair in two plaits,” she told Hattie. “It’s something my mum does, sometimes, and I can’t do it to myself yet but I’ve done it for Ginny.”
Hattie spent a bewildered moment imagining the matronly Mrs. Weasley in a set of girlish pigtails, but then Ron took only a section of her hair at the temple and above the ear and she understood it better. Ron was doing a half-up style Hattie had sometimes seen before, which was much more reasonable for an adult to wear.
They settled back into that soothing silence. Hattie was worried for a moment that now was when tugging and yanking might start—Aunt Petunia could sometimes look like she was wrestling her own hair when putting it up—but Ron remained as gentle as she had while combing.
The very beginning of where her hair and her scalp met still felt a little strange and achy with the hair being moved to a different position than usual, but it wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable. It started to fade as the hair was kept in its new position.
Soon enough, Ron tied off one side plait and started the other. Once she had finished that one too, she pulled both of them up around Hattie’s head and fastened them to the back. Her hair was only just long enough to allow it. Hattie was pretty sure the only reason Aunt Petunia had let her keep her hair down farther than her chin rather than just sheering it off was that she had strong ideas on hair lengths for young ladies, and also because the neighbors would tut.
“Done!” Ron declared, leaning back.
Hattie shifted back around in the seats so she wasn’t sitting facing away from Ron, reaching up to lightly pat the plaits as she did so. They certainly felt nice. The rest of her hair that had been left down felt nice too, though to Hattie’s consternation it didn’t feel any less unruly than usual, even having been nicely combed for once.
Ron, meanwhile, held her hands out like she intended to go fetch something, looking a little lost. “Er, I don’t really have a mirror to show you, it’s still in my trunk…”
Hattie just leaned closer to the window and studied her reflection there.
Her new plaits were undoubtedly done by another young girl, albeit a practiced one. The plaits were a little uneven compared to each other, one dipping a little low and one a little high. They were also a bit loose where they began, like Ron had forgotten to tighten up the plait when she started. The hair elastic Ron used was larger than it needed to be for smaller plaits, and she had to loop it in on itself until it was quite bulky-looking.
It was the first time since Hattie could remember—the first time in her life, ever, perhaps—that someone had done up Hattie’s hair because they wanted her to look nice.
“It’s brilliant,” she beamed, utterly sincere.
In the reflection of the glass, she could see Ron hurriedly turning away, her face a pleased red.
Later, in the Gryffindor Girls’ Dorms, Ron patiently taught Hattie how to plait hair by letting Hattie use her hair, and didn’t complain at all when Hattie kept accidentally tugging on uneven parts and leaving the plait too loose.
Out in the forest, a spell truly knocked Hattie onto her ass.
It felt sort of like being slammed into by a very large, very enthusiastic dog, or maybe a pony, right in the middle of her torso. That would be bad enough, but she also ended up cracking her head on the cold, muddy forest ground. Hattie could feel the mud oozing into her hair and shirt.
She heard Hermes’ frantic footsteps and even more frantic muttering as she laid there, dazed and with a full-body ache that was new and unpleasant to experience. They were trying to practice more spells for attacks—it seemed like they were done for the day, because Hattie certainly didn’t feel like sparring like this.
“Hattie, I’m so sorry,” Hermes said, voice high and worried, “I should have thought before using that without cushioning, it’s sort of a huge thump to the stomach in the form of a jinx—”
Yeah, Hattie could tell. Her stomach ached something awful, even more than the rest of her.
“—but of course that’s going to make you go down, that can be damaging— Oh, there you are, Ron.”
Both Hermes and Ron’s worried faces came into view, and she blinked at them.
“Ow,” she went, because ow.
“I think that’s the end of practice,” said Ron. “Can you get up?”
She tried, winced, and immediately fell back to the ground. Which made the aching around her head and upper shoulder area much worse. The mud made an unfortunate squelching, sucking sort of sound.
Ron stooped down and slipped her arms under Hattie. “Well, you know it’s a good jinx now, that’s something.”
Then Hattie was up in the air and Hermes was crowding next to Ron, pointing his wand at Hattie again but quietly saying a diagnostic spell instead. He kept it up as Ron walked her back to the tent not too far away.
“Basically just bruising, it’s a variation on an impact spell with a pain-invoking element,” he declared. “That’s going to hurt like nothing else for a few hours, and then the spell will fade and I’ll be able to heal the remaining bruising.”
“Oh, good,” she managed to mutter, barely paying attention to anything but the throbbing of her head.
Ron ducked into the tent and made a bee-line for the small cot they kept for one of them getting hurt. She set Hattie down in a mostly upright position and then, without any ceremony or warning, started yanking Hattie’s muddy shirt off of her.
Hattie let her—she didn’t really want to be in a cold, muddied shirt for any longer than necessary.
“Er,” went Hermes.
He quickly turned around like he hadn’t already seen Hattie in a swimsuit that was about as revealing as the sports bra that was under her shirt, or like he wasn’t going to need her to be half undressed to heal the bruising later anyway. Hattie almost couldn’t refrain from rolling her eyes. Ron did it for her.
“Mate, just get over here and check the bruising again,” she said, utterly unsympathetic. “Or I can throw this at you.”
The threat of a muddy shirt was enough. Hermes came up to the cot and checked her torso with a frown and another spell. “Still seems like nothing but bruising, though it’ll be nasty-looking.”
“It’ll have to do,” Ron sighed, and let Hattie lay down.
Hattie was pretty grateful for that; it turned out some of the pain in her torso was from having to use the muscles to sit up. Laying down was much better. She listened distantly as Hermes and Ron shared a few more words near the entrance of the tent, and then Hermes left.
“He’s taking watch,” Ron said, sitting down beside the cot.
“Alright,” Hattie said.
The next minute or two passed sluggishly. Hattie was sort of stuck just looking up at the ceiling and feeling sore and sorry for herself, listening as Ron shifted and drummed her fingers on her leg next to her. An odd sort of mood came over Hattie that she was getting more and more used to in this tent, a cold and detached misery. Helplessness of a kind.
Finally, Ron seemed to come to a decision, standing up again.
"Hold on a mo'," she said, and disappeared into the cramped bedroom where Hermes tended to keep the bookbag when it wasn't on him.
She returned some minutes later, her arms full of a large bowl and a comb and shampoo, a pillow slung over her shoulder. She must have dropped Hattie’s shirt somewhere in the bedroom. The bowl and other things were set down near Hattie's head, and then Ron lifted her up by the shoulders so she could jam the extra pillow under Hattie's neck.
"You don't have to—" Hattie started, then broke off.
What didn't Ron have to do? Wash Hattie's hair? Take care of her? She wasn't sure, but felt the need to object all the same.
Ron moved the bowl up against Hattie's head. Her voice was resolute. "I want to."
What did Ron want to do? What was it that she wouldn't want to do?
What would be the last thing to make her turn away with that dark look that lingered in her eyes these days?
Hattie wasn't sure about that either. She couldn’t ask.
Ron gently wiggled Hattie's hair out from in between the pillow and her head, and once she had it all, she started combing out the tangles. Start at the bottom, work up to the top. That was what Ron always did—what she said her mother did—and she always despaired a little at the way Hattie dragged brushes through her own hair.
She could hear bits of half-dried mud and forest floor loosen from her hair and drop into the bowl, little thuds of impact. There was no pain or yanking at all, because Ron always kept a tight hold between the part she was combing and where the hair came out of Hattie's head.
Up, and up, and up she combed until she had to press a warm, calloused hand to the crown of Hattie's head to keep combing. The last of the mud broke apart and fell away.
Ron moved the bowl away for a banishment charm on the mud and then an aguamenti, filling it with water and dipping Hattie's hair in. Hattie winced a little when she scooped up water to soak the top of her head with it. It was rather cold.
"Sorry," Ron said quietly, as if reluctant to break the silence they had fallen into. It was one of the better silences, comforting instead of tense. "'m sure Hermes knows how to make it give warm water or something, but I can't."
Hattie wasn't sure he would, but was too lulled by Ron starting to work water into all of her hair to say anything. She realized, quite suddenly, that it was sort of like she was having a treatment at a Muggle salon they had passed by recently while getting supplies.
It was strange, thinking of that salon, thinking of the women sitting in those chairs getting their hair done with no knowledge at all of the secret world living squashed in between buildings and neighborhoods, where terror reigned with a tight grip. They didn't know about witches and wizards. They didn't know the name Voldemort.
There had been a feeling that came over Hattie when they went down muggle streets, now, below the constant worry and fear. Something like jealousy, something like relief, or perhaps it was both of them mixing together.
When Hattie had been younger, she had wished desperately that she would get to leave Privet Drive. The Dursleys forbade any fairy tales or fantasy in their house, but Hattie had read them in the school library during lunch or recess.
She had read tales of girls who worked hard labor, who suffered terribly under the hands of their family, who escaped, finally, when a wonderful magical person came to sweep them away. Hattie had wished to be among them.
She'd whisper her dreams to the spiders as she lay in her cot.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Hattie who lived in a cupboard. Her family hated her, but one day, on her 6th birthday, a fairy godmother came—
Once, there was a girl named Hattie who lived in a cupboard, until on her 7th birthday, her parents appeared at the doorstep, for they were really alive—
(Back then, she had pictured a man with black hair and green eyes, and a woman with vague hair and Aunt Petunia's pale blue eyes, as she hadn't a single picture of her parents.)
Once, there was a girl named Hattie who lived in a cupboard, until her 8th birthday, when a man on a flying motorcycle with a green headlight roared down the street and told her he was her uncle—
(The year kept changing, because no one ever saved Hattie Potter. It was still changing.)
Once, there was a girl named Hattie who lived in a cupboard until her 11th birthday, when a half-giant knocked on the door and promised to take her away to a wonderful castle with magic and food and friends and people just like her.
And now that girl was older and living in a tent in the forest and sometimes found herself wondering what would have happened if the half-giant had never come at all. If she had waited out her years and run away on her own, far from families bound by blood instead of love and magical castles and fear.
Ron had started shampooing her hair at some point. What had Hattie wanted to say to her?
"This is a bit like a muggle hair salon," she told her.
"Is it?" said Ron, massaging the shampoo around her temples.
"Mhm." An urge to continue speaking struck her, and she struggled for what to say. "When we go to the muggle world for a bit... do you ever look around and just want to stay put?"
The massaging of her head slowed.
"Yeah," Ron said distantly. "It's funny—Dad liked to take us on day trips to the local village, so we'd know how to handle ourselves if we were there for a while, and it never felt comfortable being there like going to the Diggories or something. But now with everything so awful everywhere… home isn't the same any more."
There was another long moment of quiet as Ron started to lather the shampoo. Hattie thought that might be the end of it.
Ron spoke again, still quiet. "If, after this, you decide to leave—I wouldn't blame you. Everyone—the wizarding world—you shouldn't have to do this. Every year... you shouldn't have to do this for us."
"You shouldn't either," Hattie said, reaching up to touch Ron's arm, not liking the word 'us' in that sentence at all. "You and Hermes end up in as much trouble as I do."
"We could walk away." Ron's eyes were dark. "We could walk away, and no one would care. I don't know if you can do that."
Silence fell. Ron cast aguamenti again to rinse out Hattie's hair, and left to go find the towel she had forgotten.
She dried Hattie's hair, took the bowl and shampoo and comb away, and then when Hermes walked in she took over patrol. Hattie watched as she clasped the locket around her neck like a noose and walked out of the entrance, disappearing into the trees. She didn’t look back at either of them as she left.
There was nothing Hattie could do but trust for her to come back.