Wanna Be Saved

- ELEVEN -

Chapter Eleven
The boy who apologised

Since the evening in the library, Bronwyn had yet to have another decent period of rest. Due to this, her already thin temper was running down to the point where it might as well have been see through. Her level of patience was also none existent. Therefore, she knew that anyone who approached her was walking on thin ice and she was unsure whether it would result in a physical fight or not. But she was leaning towards it would. After all, the biggest side of this emotional state she seemed unable to get herself out of was the constant simmering rage at everyone around her. It seemed as though many people had picked this up, especially those in the same school house as her. Most people were rightfully choosing to leave her alone, something she thought was a very good decision. Her older brothers had even chosen to avoid her, something they often did not do whenever she was in an irritable mood. George had gone to wave at her the other day but when she did not respond and gave him a grimace he had not tried again. Fred might have been older, but he was more of a wuss and therefore didn't even attempt to approach her. 

Yet the message did not seem to get to the one person she wished it would. For over the last 24 hours Harry Potter had been awkwardly hanging around her. To the point where Bronwyn was getting desperate to know just what he wanted. His mere presence had made her even angrier, as he had been trying to act as though they hadn't argued the last several times they had actually tried to talk to one another. Rather he resumed taking his prime position sat in the middle of his two female friends, as though he hadn't been avoiding sitting with them since the school term had restarted. He was trying to talk and joke about with them, with Bronwyn in particular, as if he hadn't called her names and made a mockery out of something she was interested in. She had had enough of the glasses wearing, unable to get his hair looking neat, boy wonder. She decided she needed answers from him, and so she would do the one thing he looked as though he had been wanting for a few days. She would finally talk to him, just not in the way he was probably expecting. After all, after every other fight they had during their years long friendship she had always given in first apologised and let him walk over her. But Bronwyn wasn't like that anymore, she didn't care enough to do that. Her tidal wave of a brain didn't care enough for Harry anymore to push those ideas into her head. 

Actually her subconscious was screaming at her that she didn't need him anymore. That she had found her true friend out of the group. That whatever friendship they had, was in the past. She had started to make new friends, she no longer needed the boy her mother had told her to befriend in her first year. She didn't need the boy who she had risked her own life for countless times without as much of a thank you. But there was also part of her which acknowledge that they had been friends for four years now and she at least owed him to hear it out and try once more. And if they really couldn't work it out and remain friends then she would finally call an end to their friendship. 

Bronwyn did not want another massively public argument to occur, and therefore she allowed Harry to continue to act as he had been. She allowed him to do whatever he thought he was doing to repair their friendship for the day of classes. And as the evening drew on, she braced herself for the conversation. One she wasn't exactly excited for, that would be a feeling she definitely did not have, but she wasn't dreading either. Things Harry had done seemed like he regretted their previous arguments, but she needed to hear it as well. Therefore, when classes had finally drawn to a close she was more prepared for a conversation. Wednesday afternoon was a good day to have picked, Harry only had limited time until the Quidditch team went out for practice and that way if things went horribly there was an out. 

Bronwyn allowed the younger boy to drag her in the direction away from the crowds and over towards the quieter part of the lake. She had waved Hermione off when the older girl had offered to come along. As she knew this was a conversation which had to happen between the two of them. Harry continued to pull her around the back of the lack to a very small patch of grass, grass of which was damp considering the nasty rain they had been having the previous few days. And she waited for him to make the first move. After all, she wasn't sure exactly where this was going to go. 

"Ron." Harry started and she fought the urge to roll her eyes in response.

"Bronwyn please, that is my name Harry I'd really prefer if you'd use it." Bronwyn tried to gently push the change onto him but she knew it would take a lot more than just asking nicely for him to change the specific way he called her. Especially because she hadn't really had a problem with the nickname Ron until this last summer. She had allowed him to call her by that nickname for a few years now, ever since he had first called her that just before her 12th birthday. 

But that was the thing Bronwyn didn't feel like the 'Ron' she was back then. She was no longer the mud-loving, chess maniac who hated anything to do with being feminine. She still loved chess, more than anything else in the world and she had got even better at it as the years had passed. But she didn't feel like the tomboy she was back then, she had grown, she had become a slightly better version of herself. One that she was starting to like and one she was excited to see grow further. Ron was her childhood and the beginning of her teen years. She was Bronwyn now and she loved her name. She was actually happy her parents had named her something a little unusual now. 

"But you're my Ron, that's always the way it's been." Harry's words eerily reflected upon those spoken to her in the dormitory, maybe there was something there that she really had missed, she hoped not. She could never think of Harry like that. 

"Please Harry, I'm not asking a lot from you please just follow my wishes regarding this." Bronwyn felt deflated for having to make this known, she had not had this difficulty with any of her family or other friends when she had asked, just with boy wonder. 

"It makes no sense your brothers still call you it."

"Because they are my brothers. Things are different because they are my brothers." Bronwyn emphasised the word 'brothers' because family was different. And she knew in the case of Fred and George it was something they'd been doing for many years and they could slip that was okay it was only a nickname. 

"But we're best friends."

"Are we really though? We've been arguing since last school year Harry. You insulted me in front of my family and our friends this summer. Best friends don't do that." Bronwyn let him in to her thoughts on the situation, she didn't see the boy as one of her best friends and wasn't sure she ever would again. 

"You're not innocent in it either." Harry tried to defend himself again and Bronwyn still felt like this was going to head in the same direction all their conversations did. And maybe it was too early to reconsider trying to patch things up. Sometimes things were better left in the past. Sometimes people were better left in the past. 

"I don't know what you want me to say Harry. I generally thought this time you were trying to apologise to me. Am I incorrect about this?" Bronwyn rubbed her forehead with her thumb and forefinger trying to prevent herself sighing. Her mind was screaming at her to turn around and forget about it all, that this wasn't worth it.

"Yeah, I was going to."

"Go on then?" Bronwyn pushed, irritation starting to lace her words, "Otherwise what is the reason I should stay here. I have to be in the library soon I don't want to waste my time here." Bronwyn tried to make it well known that she had better things to do, even if those better things was just heading down to the kitchen for a hot chocolate and some shortbread. 

"Look Ro-Bronwyn I am sorry for saying that stuff about you getting prefect. I know something has changed with you, I don't understand what I would just really like to go back to being as close as we were."

"We're not going to get there overnight Harry. It's going to take a while to build back up to where we were." Bronwyn tried to warn him, she knew herself that they would never be as close as they once were. She didn't want to let him in close enough again for him to hurt her, because that was what he had done. She might have been struggling to swim but his attitude towards her his words had been pushing her under. And at the moment she was in the safety of a life buoy and she didn't want to head back into that water.  

"I know. But I'm willing to try."

"This is your last chance Potter." She spoke like a liar, because she knew he would get chance and chance again to be her friend. Her mother would lose the plot if he was no longer friends with Harry and she was sure Ginny would make her pay big time if that link was lost.