Chapter 2
Bill hauled me into the house, dropped me into a chair, and started a fire. I was shaking so hard I wondered if it was possible to shake to bits. Had it been so long since I’d seen colors? I squinted my eyes against the red and orange flames violently striking against each other, a burst of yellow sunflowers cut and arranged in a vase, and fluffy green pillows stacked against a peach-colored sofa. I looked away; Hermione had been the one to point out the difference between peach and orange to me. A family photo was framed atop the mantle “ the night of Harry’s birthday party. Every face seemed to scowl at me. With nowhere safe to look, I kept my eyes focused on my sopping feet.
Footsteps overhead told me that Fleur was now awake. Minutes later, Bill returned to the sitting room with a tray, steaming porridge, a mug of tea, and a woolly blanket tucked under one arm. He tossed the blanket to me, which I caught and stared at blankly. I desperately wanted to speak, but my throat refused to allow me to condemn myself. Bill placed the tray next to the flowers.
“I should let Mum know you’re here,” he began.
“NO!” It was like some force had ripped the word straight from the bottom of my toes, and I coughed away the searing pain.
“Ronnie,” said Bill quietly, “What’s happened to you? Why have you come here instead of going home? Are the others…”
That word, home, poked a hole in the dam, and salty water began to leak and stream, melting trails along my frozen skin. I shook my head “ a general “no” to all his questions.. He waited, his scars knitting together tighter and tighter, and handed me the full mug. As I took a swig, mindless of the white tendrils rising from the murky brown liquid, a fire scorched my mouth. I welcomed the fire and took another large gulp and another. When I finished, my mouth felt blistered and mutilated. Good.
“Fight,” I wheezed. “Harry and I had a fight, and I left and now…I tried to find them, Bill, but they’re gone! They’re gone!” The mug felt from my hands, still smarting from losing two fingernails, and I wept into them. Bill was silent.
Some length of time later, I found myself in a small bedroom with lots of frilly colorful decorations, a lacy quilt covering me. I couldn’t appreciate my surroundings at the time. Instead, I gazed around vacantly and then let my head fall back on the sweetly scented pillow. From the corner of my eye, which felt about as puffy as the pillow beneath me, I saw Bill sitting in a chair near another fireplace, watching me with his fingers steepled in front of him. I couldn’t read the expression, but I had several worthwhile guesses at what he was about to say.
“All right, Ron?” he asked. That was the last thing I’d expected to hear.
“Yeah…yeah, I’m…” I shrugged; he continued to glare “I’d finally figured out what was going through his mind. I waited for it.
We stared at each other for several minutes in complete silence, except for the crackling of the flames in the hearth.
“I can’t believe…you of all people, Ron. How could you ditch them when you know what’s at stake?”
I dropped my gaze. “I can’t explain it all to you, but I wasn’t myself at the time. I won’t make excuses. I know I’m the worst slug there is, and if you want me to go, then I will. I need to find them, anyway, just don’t know where to start…” Suddenly every part of my body felt so heavy: my eyelids, my arms, even my hair weighed several tons. Where could I start my search? Who was I kidding? They could be anywhere in the world, and with Hermione’s (the thought of her sent a stabbing pain through my chest) protections, it would be like trying to find a pair of baby fleas on Crookshanks.
Bill cleared his throat, but I didn’t look up. “You don’t have to leave; you’re still my baby brother. You don’t look up to traveling just yet at any rate. You’ll stay here and I won’t tell anyone. I won’t shame you more than you’re obviously doing to yourself.” He paused, and I glanced over to see that he’d cocked his head to the side. “Hermione must be heartbroken.”
“Doubt it,” I replied with a huff. “In a towering rage, more like. She’ll never forgive me.”
“Did this…fight have anything to do with her?” Bill asked. And that was the heart of it, wasn’t it?
“Not all of it, but a good bit, yeah. We’d been out there for weeks “ no food or money, freezing our arses off every night…. And then one night, I was watching her and Harry, and…. I dunno, I was already in a bad state, and next thing I knew, I was saying terrible things to Harry, and he told me to get out, so I left. Then I ran into this group of blokes…”
“Those would be Snatchers,” Bill said after I’d described what happened. “You’re lucky you got away. If they’d gotten you to the Ministry, you’d be in Azkaban right now. Or worse. At any rate, you don’t possibly think that she and Harry… I mean, what about Ginny?”
“I know, Bill. I know.”
The first few days with Bill and Fleur, I did next to nothing. I sat by the window in my little room, staring out at the waves crashing against the rocks. Without Hermione to guide me, I had no idea what to do next. Bill and Fleur left me to my thoughts and only came in to bring in meals, which was kind of them. Although they said nothing, they couldn’t hide the frowns or crinkled brows. And late at night I could hear their whispers.
Hiding from my family didn’t help me escape the hatred I tortured myself with every minute of every day. When I wasn’t worried for my friends’ safety, I wondered about their progress that was no doubt hindered without the extra hand, though I never kidded myself into thinking that I was ever much use, especially not after I’d gotten hurt. Perhaps they were better off without me slowing them down, and maybe they had even succeeded in finding another Horcrux. Or it was possible, not that I liked to think of it, that they had shut down just like I had, and had given up. And it would have been all my fault. The truth was I never knew quite what to think where they were concerned. Part of me had believed that Hermione cared for me and that we had a chance at a future together “ yes, I had definitely thought about the future we’d have if we managed to survive our quest. But then there were the days, even when I wasn’t wearing the locket, that I found myself doubting that she could ever love me; Harry was the smarter one, the braver one, the more attractive one. I was just dumb, awkward, grumpy, hotheaded, always-saying-the-wrong-thing Ron.
And Harry, he never really needed me, did he? Always, when it came down to the final moment, he had managed to succeed on his own. Frankly, who did need me? Certainly not Mum and Dad “ they barely noticed me next to the rest of my brothers and Ginny. I was sure Bill and Fleur would have been much happier to have their privacy back. I came to the conclusion that I was a wart on the face of the earth and wished, after my third day of watching the sea pounding the cliffs, that I could feel the sea pounding against me, crushing me into nothingness.
The increasing lure of the ocean frightened me, and I eventually went down to dinner one night. Bill and Fleur looked up and smiled faintly, gesturing for me to take a seat. Fleur passed me a plate and came over to me and shocked me by kissing the top of my head. My eyes stung again, and I couldn’t breathe or look at either of them. I didn’t deserve all their kindness and understanding, but I was immensely grateful. I told myself that from then on, I would pull my own weight and stop being such a slug.
The following morning I went downstairs to find Bill in the sitting room tapping the top of a wireless with his wand.
“No work today, Bill?” I asked quietly.
He looked up and smirked. “It’s Saturday, you git. And by the way, you might want to keep your wand and things a bit closer. We’re fairly safe here, but you never can tell.” He pointed over toward the side table with the sunflowers, and there were my wand and Dumbledore’s Deluminator. I’d forgotten all about them.
I picked them up and then sat on the sofa next to where Bill was on the floor. “So what are you doing then?”
“You really have been out of it, haven’t you?” he said, not looking at me. “Our wonderful brothers, along with a few other Order members, have started a sort of underground radio program. They call it Potterwatch. It’s never on at the same times or days “ they’ve got to keep moving. But it’s the only way to really know what’s happening out there. That’s how we’ve kept as close a tab on you as we could.”
The wireless crackled and sputtered when suddenly a voice came out of it: Lee Jordan!
“Welcome back, everyone, to another edition of Potterwatch! I’m afraid we haven’t much time this evening, so we’ll jump right in. There have been many reported abductions of half-bloods and Muggleborns by the groups known as Snatchers. We must caution you all again: please be very careful of these barbarians. Some of them are just out for a reward, but others can be downright vicious. One such group is reportedly being led by none other than Fenrir Greyback, the infamous werewolf. In other news, the resistance movement at Hogwarts continues….”
We listened raptly to the remainder of the program. When it was done, I said, “Blimey, Bill, Fenrir Greyback? I had no idea. But wasn’t he working for Vol “”
“Don’t say it, Ron! Are you mad? The names been cursed! You’re just full of surprises these days! I would have expected you to know better.”
Taken aback by Bill’s forceful outburst, I couldn’t gather a response. He was right; I should have known better. I did know better! I didn’t know what had just come over me. Maybe all the time I’d spent with Harry and Hermione uttering that name had rubbed off on me for the worse.
“I’m sorry. You have no way of knowing, but Kingsley was almost captured by saying You-Know-Who’s name. They’ve jinxed it so that anyone who says it is immediately traceable.”
“You’re joking!” I cried. Of course, now it all made sense. “That’s how they found us the night of the wedding!” I told Bill about the two Death Eaters who had cornered us, and he nodded in understanding. And knowing this, I felt a hundred times worse. How long would it take for Harry or Hermione to utter the tabooed name without me there to remind then against it?
One evening, as I sat alone in the sitting room toying with the Deluminator, it suddenly grew warm in my hand. My heart leapt for an instant. It had never done this all the times I’d sat playing with it before. Had I done something to damage it, or did it mean something worse? Maybe I was just so desperate for guidance, I was imagining things. I decided that it was just the warmth from my hand, and put it away.
Another week passed. I spent the days listening for Potterwatch and helping Fleur with the decorations for Christmas. Despite keeping busy, I was still constantly disturbed about Harry and Hermione. I started to have nightmares. Often the dreams would involve Harry and Hermione in rather intimate situations, or sometimes they would be laughing about what a prat I had always been. Then the night before Christmas Eve, I had the worst one yet.
Harry and Hermione were in the tent having a grand old time. She was making red and green streamers from the tip of her wand, and they’d put up a giant Christmas tree in the center of the tent. They were singing carols and sipping eggnog from each other’s glasses, arms intertwined. Little yellow canaries twittered and flew around the top of the tree as if they were moving decorations. And then Harry grabbed her hand, helped her to her feet, and made a toast, “To Voldemort “ for bringing us together, for making a Horcrux that finally drove that git, Ron from our lives, and for…”
Then there was a loud thundering all around the tent. Hermione screamed. A dozen Death Eaters Apparated around them before Lord Voldemort finally sauntered in. He raised his wand, and two blasts of green light in rapid succession hit Hermione and then Harry…
I awoke, tangled in soaking wet sheets. I had instinctively grabbed my wand and the Deluminator from the bedside table, but there was no one near. The room was dark; moonlight was streaming across the calm waters outside. There was no sleeping after that, so I perched in my favorite spot by the window, clicking the Deluminator on and off, racking my brain yet again for some idea of how to find Harry and Hermione.
Weeks and Weeks by Ravensgryff
Chapter Notes: Thanks so much to Marauder by Midnight and Vindictus Viridian for beta reading!