Though his body felt heavy and his aching head begged for rest, Ron found that he couldn’t quite get comfortable enough for sleep to take him. Blinking groggily, he looked around his room, feeling something wasn’t quite right.
His bedroom door was open.
For a split second Ron wondered whether someone had been in his room, but, aside from the door, nothing else seemed strange; perhaps he had gotten up to use the restroom during the night, and was just too out of it to remember. Nodding to himself, Ron staggered out of bed and over to his dresser, slamming shut the sock drawer. He found a set of plain black robes and tugged them on, jumping at the light POP! his B.O.G.I.E.S badge made when it reappeared on his chest. “Too right you are…” he mumbled at the badge, plucking it in a grumpy sort of way. Having removed the necklace from his wrist and tucked it into an inside pocket of his robes ( he did his best not to glance at the engraved side; doing so would only depress him), Ron pulled on a dirty pair of socks and headed out into the stairwell, taking care to close the door behind him.
In the time it took him to climb down the stairs, accidentally knock over a vase of dead flowers, and accidentally on purpose drop the peppershaker his mum had asked him to get from the pantry, Ron had changed his mind yet again. He was going to do it. What did he have to lose? Nothing. After breakfast, he’d take Hermione out to the garden on the pre-tense of apologizing, and instead explain the past few days to her, finally revealing the necklace in his pocket”just as he had planned last night. If it went well, then great; it went well. If it went bad, then, well, okay; he could sell the necklace back to the store, and he’d have 13 galleons to spend however he wanted.
Optimism, though, wasn’t Ron’s forte; he couldn’t stop his face from going pale or his ears from growing red when he pictured Hermione’s bright-eyed laugh as she threw the necklace to the ground.
“G’ morning, Mrs. Weasley!” Ron flinched out of his reverie as Hermione entered the kitchen. Her chocolate eyes flashed dangerously as they met Ron’s blue ones. “…Morning, Ron.” He couldn’t help but realize that Hermione didn’t specify exactly what sort of morning she wished him.
Mrs. Weasley was busy scrambling around in the cupboards, looking for more pepper. Ron had noticed a while before that she looked a bit green in the face, but shrugged it off as a side effect of all the pickles she’d been eating. “Hullo, dear. Help yourself to a muffin”yes, you can have one too, Ron. One!”I think it’ll be a while before I start breakfast.”
Hermione cocked a brow. “Is everything alright?” She reached for a muffin and took a seat at the table, almost immediately moving to the opposite side as Ron sat in the chair next to hers.
“Yes, yes. Of course, everything’s fine. I’m just feeling a bit under the weather, that’s all…” Mrs. Weasley and Hermione exchanged a volley of looks and facial expressions. Curiously bewildered and somewhat amused by their antics, two words came to Ron’s mind that seemed to explain everything; girl problems. “I assure you, dear, everything’s fine… Don’t you worry your little head. And you, boy, haven’t you ever heard of a comb?”
Ron grunted as his mother floated over, patting down his unruly hair in a distracted sort of fashion. Watching his mother scurry out of the kitchen, still muttering about combs and messy hair, he stuffed the rest of his muffin into his mouth. Running his fingers through his hair self-consciously, successfully depositing crumbs about his scalp, Ron plucked another muffin from the platter with his other hand. When he was sure his mum was out of earshot, Ron finished his second pastry in one large bite, swallowed hard, and leaned in towards Hermione. “Erm…Hermione?” The bushy haired girl seemed very interested in a catsup stain on the battered wooden table. “Hermione!” he half hissed, half whined.
“What?”
“Can I have a word with you?”
“Fine.”
“L-later?”
“Why?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“After breakfast…in the garden, maybe?”
“You really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“Please, Hermione?”
“No.
Ron furrowed his brow and cocked his head to one side. “‘No?’”
“Yes. No.” Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, staring out the window.
“Wait”what?”
She stood, straightening her robes in an awkward manner, as if she had finally made up her mind about something, but was as of yet still unsure about her resolve. “I’ve got to go.”
“Where?” He cowered under Hermione’s fiery glare, shrinking back into his chair. The necklace pressed coolly against his chest, chain mail against Hermione’s sword-like tongue.
“Where is none of your business, Ronald. I’m going out, and that’s the end of it. It’s not a crime to nip into Diagon Alley once in a while, is it? Believe it or not, Ron, I have better things to do than sit around here pretending not to be furious with you; more friends than just you or Harry.” She trudged over to the fireplace, taking a fistful of Floo powder into the hearth with her. Glaring at Ron, she hissed, “ I won’t be long, anyway, so why would you care?” before disappearing in a puff of green flame.
“Because I think…I think I love you…” Ron mumbled under his breath, staring at the empty fireplace. Hearing himself say the words made his hands sweat, despite how terribly cold he
felt.
“Ron, mate. You know we’re just friends, right?”
“And brothers, to boot. That’s just plain unhealthy, if you ask me.”
“Definitely a bit disturbing.” Fred and George flopped down on either side of him, grinning broadly as their little brother turned a deep red that would rival the Gryffindor coat-of-arms.
“Gerroff…” Ron growled darkly.
Fred clapped his hands once in delight as he raised his voice ever so slightly. “Oh, Hermione, won’t you please stay? I’ve been meaning to declare my undying love for you since first year--”
“”And it wasn’t until now that you have plucked up the courage to say it to an empty fireplace?” George giggled shrilly in what he thought was a bubbly fashion. “Oh, Ron, you’re so sweet!” Together, the twins made loud smooching noise mere inches from Ron’s face.
Breathing hard through his nose, still staring at the fireplace, Ron clenched his fists. “Stop it.”
“Oh, not very friendly, is he?” George said, taken aback.
“I said, shut up!”
“Actually, I believe you’re words were ‘stop it’…”
Fred elbowed his twin.“What d’ya expect? He’s just had his heart broken; I imagine the news that George and I just want to be friends was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it Ronnie?” He patted Ron on the back in a gesture of mock good will, his eyes growing round and wide as a soft, metallic jingling met his ears. “Oh, what have we here? Accio necklace…?”
George caught the silver trinket just as it slithered over the collar of Ron’s robes. Holding it up to the light, the Weasley twin grinned as Ron’s severely blushing features were reflected upon the pendant’s silver surface. “Wow…” he said almost breathlessly, staring at the engraved side. “A spoon, is it?”
Fred snatched the necklace from his twin. “Is this what you were doing last night after we left, then?” he asked, true astonishment in his voice. “You were really going to do the thing right, weren’t you?”
Blushing horrifically, Ron jumped from his seat with much more grace than he’d ever shown on the Quidditch field and plucked the necklace out of his brother’s fingers before either of them knew what had happened. “I know its rubbish, just--” George shook his head and opened his mouth to reply, but Ron cut across him, stamping his foot on the ground like a three year old throwing a tantrum. “Just shove off, will you?”
“What’s your bloody problem?” Fred asked as Ron threw himself back into his chair, crossing his arms on the table to cradle his chin.
“Hmm, I wonder. Could it have to do with you two beating the mickey out of him?” Ginny asked as she entered the kitchen, still in her nightgown. “Can’t you see he’s miserable?” Her eyes were soft as she looked at Ron, understanding and sympathy plastered on her face.
Fred and George looked to each other, and shook their heads. “No…! Really?” they said in unison, mocking their little sister.
Ron banged his fists on the table, knocking over a jar of strawberry jam. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” All eyes were on him as he glared at the twins.
“Better watch your temper, Ron, or you’ll be breathing fire right soon...” Ron continued to squint angrily at Fred and George, until at last the angry silence grew uncomfortable and the twins excused themselves from the kitchen.
“Huffy…!” Fred muttered as he crept towards the door.
George followed suit, his strides gawky and swift. “I…I think we’ll…just be in our room, then….”
“Yeah… Or-or maybe someplace you can’t find us…”
“I hear Peru’s quite nice this time of year…”
Ron felt Ginny’s hand on his arm and he glanced at her, feeling the heat radiating from his face rise up to sting his eyes. “What?”
“Sorry, but you should--”
“What? What should I do, Ginny?” he asked shortly, fury and embarrassment burning in his stomach like a dying star. “Honestly, I’m not in the mood.”
Mr. Weasley walked through the door that very moment, a stack of papers in his arms and a coffee cup floating before him. “Ah. Good, you’re up.” He offered no explanation as he sent Ginny out of the room, much to her objection. Ginny seemed desperate to tell Ron something, but as soon as she caught one of her father’s rare yet terrifying glares, the redheaded girl dashed from the kitchen without another word.
“What was that all about?” Ron asked, his eyes flicking to a point above his father’s shoulder; Ginny stood in the doorway, mouthing something he couldn’t comprehend.
“I don’t have a lot of time, as I should have been at the Ministry twenty minutes ago.” Arthur sighed, plucking the topmost paper from the pile and examining it for a moment; the photo was taken by a muggle camera, made obvious by the fact that it’s only inhabitant”a slouched man hidden almost entirely by his cloak except for two large, awkward feet”was not moving. “But, I think I really should tell you something before I leave…”
Ron nodded to his father, distracted by a scroll that was now hovering above the man’s nearly bald head. “Yeah…?” he asked as the parchment began to unroll itself.
“It’s about…what you heard the other day,” his father pressed on. “We’ve just gotten word that some of our….sources…may not have been reliable…”
“Mmhm…” Ron squinted at his sister, confused, as she mouthed the words ‘feed it’. Feed it? he mouthed back, taking advantage of the few seconds it took Mr. Weasley to fumble with a fold in his robes.
Suddenly Ginny mimed reading a book, and comprehension dawned on Ron’s face. His eyes flicked to the open scroll above his father’s head.
Mr. Weasley took the look of revelation in quite a different manner. “You do remember then. Good. Although, it would have been best if you’d forgotten, but alls well that ends well, right…?”
“Oh, yeah. Erm, what about it…?” Ron mumbled in reply, not really knowing whether he was chatting with his father about plugs or the ghoul in the attic; he was concentrating on catching Ginny’s eye and shaking his head a fraction from side to side, hoping she’d get the message, ‘I can’t read it…’.
Ginny rolled her eyes in frustration, and called back the scroll. Ron watched her fiddling with the parchment, only half listening to his father.
“Mundungus was, well, in a right state when he made his last report to the Order, and--”
The parchment was hovering above his father’s head again, this time a sentence near the bottom was enlarged to twice the size of the rest of what appeared to be a letter.
“”we couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. I’m not even sure he knew what he was saying, as tipsy as he was--”
Blinking, Ron leaned forward in his chair to read the highlighted sentence;
“”So, naturally--” Ron wished his father would shut up so he could think; the letter triggered something in the back of his mind”it wasn’t just the chunky handwriting, either.
Love always,
Viktor Krum
He felt his stomach go cold. Love Always?
“”the Durmstrang situation was all a…” Mr. Weasley paused, puzzled by the look on his son’s face. “Ron?”
…the Durmstrang situation… Those words echoed around his mind, bouncing off the walls of his skull until Ron’s head became numb; for a moment, the words ‘Love Always’ were driven from his thoughts. “The….Durmstrang…” He sat pin straight, rigid in his chair as he stared with wide eyes at the battered wooden floor. “Krum…”
Mr. Weasley furrowed his brow. “Sorry…?”
“Krum…his arm… Durmstrang…” Ron smacked his palm against his forehead”how could he have let this happen? How could he have forgotten? “He’s a Death Eater…!”
Ginny stumbled forward, perplexed. “Death Eaters? At Durmstrang?”
Arthur whipped around in his chair. “Ginny!”
“Dad?”
“RON!”
Bloody Hell! How could I have forgotten? I am an idiot! Ron could hardly hear his father and Ginny, barely noticed the questions they were shooting at him like bullets.
I’ve been so busy”stuck with my head in those useless clouds”that now… ‘I will be in the Leaky Cauldron until noon tomorrow, if you wish to speak with me then.’ Now Hermione’s off…off to Diagon Alley with a Death Eater... Alone! He jumped from the chair, knocking the floating coffee cup into Mr. Weasley’s lap in his haste to get to the fireplace.
What sort of surprise did Krum have in mind? An ambush? Perhaps he’d hold Hermione hostage and refuse to let her go until she revealed the Order’s Headquarters--or maybe Krum had something worse up his sleeve, something that Ron didn’t feel quite comfortable thinking about at the moment…
Visions of his dream flooded his mind’s eye, and for a moment, as he took a pinch of Floo powder, all Ron saw was Hermione and her terrified, betrayed expression she had donned just before Krum killed her. This time, Ron thought as he stepped into the fireplace,I’ll be able to stop him.
Mr. Weasley scrambled from his chair, ignoring the burning coffee on his pants, and tried to snatch at Ron’s robes, confused and frightened by his son’s reaction. But it was too late, and his youngest son disappeared in a flash of green flame. The father of seven looked to Ginny for an answer, but found her almost as frantic.
“Dad!” she shouted, tugging him to his feet. “We have to go with him--”
Arthur frowned, his forehead wrinkling. “Where? Where the bloody hell is he off to in such a state? And what’s gotten you so riled up?”
The redheaded girl shook her head wildly. “It’s Hermione. She’s gone off to the Leaky Cauldron--”
“Yes, I know, she said she might--”
“With VIKTOR KRUM!” Ginny finished. When her father didn’t quite react the way she had wished, Ginny elaborated. “The Quidditch player? From Durmstrang, dad! The one who played dirty at the Tri-Wizard Tournament!”
“That matter’s already been taken care of, Ginerva.” Her father’s tone was stern, suggesting that that was to be the end of the conversation.
“Ron thinks he’s a Death Eater!”
Mr. Weasley’s forehead wrinkled as his eyebrows climbed up his receding hairline. “W-what? That’s ridiculous… Why would he think that?”
Ginny rolled her eyes; she was beginning to get a bit frustrated. “Weren’t you just saying to Ron that--”
“I was about to tell him that it was all a mi”Oh. Oh my…” He stopped mid-sentence, his face falling as he began to piece things together. He remembered Molly telling him about this; as per usual, she seemed a bit keener on the up-take than he, and had become concerned the day Ron left for Hogsmeade, itching his arm with a passion. Arthur had been quite tired that night, when his wife shared with him her son’s peculiar behavior and wondered whether it may have anything to do with what the boy had over heard; lazily, he assured her that she was overreacting, that Fred and George had probably switched out his soap or something…
At that moment, Mrs. Weasley screeched from upstairs, an ear shattering howl that caused Ginny to flinch horribly, her frustration momentarily forgotten. “Oh dear…” Arthur muttered, suddenly going very pale as his wife’s shrieks pierced his thoughts.
“ARTHUR!”
“Mum?” Ginny called, horror painted onto her freckled face.
Mr. Weasley summoned his wife’s coat from the mudroom. “Dear, oh dear”oh dearindeed. Ginny put on your shoes”no, no time to get dressed. Find Fred and George, and tell them to meet us in the kitchen in two minutes.”
“Already here, dad,” George exclaimed, skidding into the kitchen as he tugged on his cloak.
Fred held the door open with his foot, cringing at another shout. “We’d know that screech anywhere.”
“Thanks for the head’s up, by the way. It’s just wonderful to know that there are no surprises in this house-- ”
“Don’t you be talking to me about surprises!” the man shouted in aggravation. Mr.Weasley shook his head, his face scrunched in a look halfway between worry and impatience. “No time to spat. Fred, would you--”
“One step ahead of you!” he replied, scribbling something on a bit of parchment. Fred passed it to his twin, who tapped it with his wand and threw the note into the fireplace along with a pinch of Floo powder. It disappeared in an instant. Moments later Fred had scrawled another, slightly longer message onto a Zonko’s receipt from his robe’s pocket and chucked it into the fireplace. It too disappeared in a rush of emerald flames, their howls punctured by the sound of Mr. Weasley pounding up the stairs.
“Who were those to?” Ginny asked, watching her father scurry up the stairs.
“The first one was to Mungo’s,” George explained. “The second, to the Ministry.”
“And this one…” Fred mumbled as he crumpled a third bit of parchment into an awkward wad and tossed it into the roaring green flames. “Is to a friend of ours down in Hogsmeade. Obviously we can’t go fetch Ron ourselves, so…”
“But how do you know where to look for him”how do you know Ron needs looking for, anyway?” The look on Ginny’s face revealed that the girl was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.
“We found the Extendable Ears last night…” Fred said in way of explanation.
“Ah…” Ginny heard her mum and dad thundering down the staircase. “What the bloody hell is going on?” She looked from Fred to George, and back. Suddenly, Ginny gave a little wide-eyed gasp, bringing a hand to her mouth. “No…!”
The brothers grinned, nodding in harmony. Their tones were mischievous, yet somehow tense; excited, but horribly nervous. “Yes.”