Amnesia is like. . .

Ron struggles for words. Mild aphasia was one of the side-effects of his amnesia, and it's a strange thing when you wake up and not only don't know who you are but can't find the words to tell people that you don't remember. It's not only that your tongue is this thick, foreign thing in your mouth because you haven't talked for days and have been lying, belly-up, in the Infirmary, but you have problems even thinking about the words. He struggles for them even inside his own head.

Ron can still play chess though; people tell him his flying's gotten better too.

*

Ron still remembers how to read and write and cast spells, though he's not so good at the first two anymore. He can do them; it just takes him a little more time to do them, so Professor McGonagall gives him a little Listen-O-Cube that he keeps in his schoolbag. It records the classes he goes to and spits them back out to him as text on a thin little sheet of paper since Ron's reading is a lot better than his listening, and he gets along. History of Magic is now his favorite class because Binns talks so slow, but Care of Creatures is an everlasting torment because he has enough problems understanding standard English, and Hagrid's accent and mumbling are an absolute torment. That beard he has keeps Ron from reading his lips very well, too; he tried carrying the Listen-O-Cube in his pocket, but since it's outdoors, the Cube has problems figuring out who it ought to be listening to.

Also, Care of Magical Creatures is the kind of class where paying attention to the teacher's instructions are kinda important. Once, Ron pulled the Listen-O-Cube out of his pocket and was struggling through the words when Malfoy came and knocked it out of his hand -- that turned into an out and out Gryffinidor versus Slytherin brawl on the lawn, with Hagrid rather impartially cheering Gryffinidor on.

Some things you never forget, like one-twoing Malfoy with a Jelly Hex, then punching him in the lung, courtesy of his newly liquefied rib cage.

It's the habits of poverty that are the hardest thing to learn. Ron doesn't know that he only has one change of bedding to last him all through the term and ends up sleeping on the bare mattress because he uses both sets within a week and sent them off to the elf-laundry before checking to make sure he had another set. Harry offered to lend him his extra sheets. Also offered, casually, to let Ron come and sleep in his bed that night.

Ron had blinked at him then, too startled to even feel like he couldn't talk or to feel frustrated at the aphasia, and thankfully, Neville Longbottom came into the boy's room then, bright bottleberry blue.

*

Alpha. "I'm taking Greek," Hermione explains, spreading the book out across their laps. "Professor Argwhite has been sick these past couple weeks, so the class is still learning the alphabet. We're a week and a half behind last year's class. But this is the first letter. Alpha."

Ron blinks at it for a while, and Hermione turns her head to admire her handwriting. "It looks like a fish lying on its side, doesn't it?"

The fire next to them pops: the air's dry, and Ron struggles for words

*

Ron tries out for the Quidditch team that year. His older brothers all chipped in and got him a secondhand Nimbus 2000, and it arrived the afternoon before tryouts. That night, he spent hours on the pitch, trying to get the hang of it with Harry and Hermione on the stands, Hermione's wand wedged against the books in her schoolbag as she squinted at her homework and Harry shouted encouraging things that Ron couldn't hear because the Nimbus was flying too fast. It was about as far from school brooms as he could possibly imagine, actually, and after tryouts, Ron wanted to do nothing so much as sleep with it in his bed. A broom like the Nimbus purrs and arches and gets warm just like a cat, and if Hermione can have the wretched, spitting, mangy mess of a cat in her bed at night, he certainly ought to be able to keep something as beautiful as the Nimbus next to him.

Flying through hoops, nothing. The Nimbus turns on a chipped Knut, and the night before tryouts, Ron realized that with a broom like this, he could play Keeper. It was a refurbished model and wasn't the greatest at high speeds; Ron also didn't trust himself to fly that fast anyway, because that was how he'd run into trouble the first place -- he pushed the school Cleansweep he was on too fast, and it shook him into the ground and knocked a plate loose.

Two days later, Ron's sitting on his newly re-sheeted bed, looking at a pamphlet on aphasia that Madame Pomfrey gave him. The thing's a solid mass of tiny print, and all he can do is trace the letters he recognizes. Spell the words out to himself. A for a-noma. A for a-graphia. He can't puzzle out enough of the explanations to make sense of them, but Ron traces the bold capitals on the page.

The English letter for the little A looks like the Greek one, but part of the fish's tail got chopped off. After a bit of thinking, Ron supposes a fish can swim with half its tail just like a boy can get along with only half of his words.

Harry comes up running, then, with the team results in his hand. "Here," he says, holding the papers out to Ron, his hand shaking so that Ron has to grab the sheet out of Harry's hand and put it on the bed because his hands are shaking too. Ron looks down, then. Scans the sheet twice and tries to will the letters to make sense until Harry points out the where Ron's name is written in the slot for first-team Keeper.

Ron chokes. He's not even Reserve -- he's made the team, and in such a way, too. There's a brief flicker in the bottom of Ron's stomach over replacing Oliver Wood, but then he looks up, and Harry's eyes are bright behind his glasses. "You've done it, Ron," he says, grinning, while Ron just stares the sheet again, then at Harry. Again.

Ron might be amnesiac but he also remembers Harry inviting him to sleep in his bed that night he didn't have sheets, and shaking a little in excitement, shaking a little in fear, he leans forward and presses his mouth to Harry's.

Harry struggles for words for a moment, then just goes quiet and kisses Ron back.

*

A

*

Amnesia's like water, Ron finally decides as he's standing in the gate, next to Harry and waiting for the door to lift so they can go out and play Hufflepuff in the first game of the year. Like water. At first, he felt like he was drowning, but now he realizes that he can breathe for the first time in his life.

Fish. Water. Alpha.

Harry.

The gate goes up, and over the roar of the crowd and the announcer's voice, Norwood screams for Gryffinidor to mount brooms.