My father will hear about this, I thought with a small grin. Rose’s mum said that was Dad’s catchphrase during their time at Hogwarts, and I knew why: Dad revered my grandfather. I hardly felt the same about ol’ Draco, in fact I never called him Dad but inside my own head. The degree of separation between us was never enough.
Sitting on the floor of a dark room, I listened to those thugs torture the only thing I’d ever loved. I knew I was only fourteen, and that love was fleeting at this age, but I loved Rose. She was small and fiery, her long hair a delicious brunette, her bright eyes stricken with happiness whenever my own gaze met them. She had Weasley freckles and Weasley mischief. She did not, however, have Weasley hatred for me and my family, and that was one of the most precious things about her. She was brave, braver than most girls I knew, and the last thing she would do to a person was loathe or despise them. She was hasty, eager to forgive, and be forgiven. When she was mildly upset, she was in great pain.
I knew her so well. We’d been close friends since our fathers forbade us from being anything at all on the platform our first year, and we were together since the beginning of third year. I knew her young cousin Lily, a redheaded first year with a decided agenda, had had a crush on me since then as well. We’d laugh about it each night in the Room of Requirement, our eyes tearing as we put couples together out of our acquaintances. I was a born people-pleaser; I’d laugh at myself later for the feminine act of matchmaking, but simply joining in the activity to make Rose smile was one of the greatest joys in the world.
Her mum liked me, I knew. She’d had the natural suspicion of my surname and family, but accepted me as a lingering part of her life. I loved her daughter - five years from then, I planned to marry her. But I couldn’t marry a corpse. I had to rescue Rose, and her mother, and seek retribution for her father’s pain and near loss of life. I couldn’t see more tears run down her face. i just couldn’t.
I listened to her screams, the low chuckles of her abusers. I heard the scuffling and I thought desperately of escaping my own confinement to go free her and escape with her in my arms. To carry her back to her home, where her parents would love her and her little brother would annoy her and I’d care for her until there were no sorrows left to plague her. She’d play Quidditch and she’d read Muggle fiction and she’d tell me off for my crass language.
I was a born Ravenclaw, though, thinking through a strategic rescue, but fearing injury or death. She was the brave one, and I was too weak to accomplish victory.
I turned my head after all these ponderings, to glance at her mum. Rose and Mrs. Weas- Hermione - were very alike. I saw the motherly love and fear in her eyes, no thought of self-preservation in her mind. Rose told me once that there was only one person in the world who her mum secretly disliked, and it was herself. Rose, through her tears at her father’s supposed death a few months before, said that Ron and Hermione Weasley were very much in love.
I imagined Rose’s dad in a hospital bed, feeling helpless to save his abducted wife, lover, and teenage sweetheart, much as I was helpless to save my young girlfriend. I saw pain in Hermione’s eyes at her helplessness when it came to saving her daughter, helping her husband, and protecting her son.
How could I be cowardly in the presence of such a family, of a family I had ambitions to join someday? I could never leave Rose unprotected, at least I had previously assumed I couldn’t.
I rose and went to Hermione. She pulled me into a motherly embrace, and my mind drifted to a forbidden place. The place I’d ignored for the past few weeks - the place where I thought of my mother. Astoria Malfoy. She despised my grandparents and loved my father, but only a little bit. Their marriage had been an elopement. She’d loved other men since then, and I sometimes entertained the idea that she still loved my father, even if he was a moody old git who’d peaked at fifteen and missed out on midlife crisis. She loved me, but we’d talked very little since I went off to Hogwarts. My most meaningful relationship was with my grandmother, who’d saved Rose’s uncle’s life. She was once a Death Eater, but now she was a bestselling author and kept my grandfather alive from his many health failures.
Hermione was watching the door. “I’m sorry for your mum, she must be worrying about you.” Was she a Legilimens? She was clever enough, I supposed.
“You could say that.”
She raised her eyebrows at this, but said nothing.
That was when the men burst in, a bloody figure hanging limply between them, her face wild with fear and agony, but mercifully alive. They tossed her onto the floor, and one of them pointed a wand at her, while the other stepped on her shoulder.
“Both of you. Stand,” Goyle demanded, not once taking his eyes of Rose.
Hermione was shaking with anger, but she stood. I followed suit, though slower, and more cautious.
My girlfriend lay shivering on the concrete, inches from death, beaten and bloody, her clothes ripped to shreds. “What have you DONE?” I screamed at my father’s childhood friend, wanting desperately to wring his neck and bring an axe through his gut.
“It’s all business,” he spat, pulling his own wand out and pointing it at me. “Now, I have specific orders from old Crabby to send you back to your cowardly, groveling, sniveling father, and let you live. I’d love to comply, but I’m a doer not a thinker. So I think I’ll send Mrs. Weasley instead, back to her husband so she can watch him die. Then you, Scorpius, can watch little Rosie go the same way as her father. Good plan? Everyone happy? All righty then, load up the carriages.”
Hermione gasped in indignation, and when they tried to escort us out, she made a hole in a thug’s smile. They tossed Rose’s limp form onto my weight, and I carefully supported her, glad to have her in my arms again but aching to relieve her of all the pain she was feeling. She was shaking terribly, and she didn’t recognize my face. She didn’t struggle, she simply whimpered for me not to hurt her.
They’d taken her away, even though I still held her securely in my arms. I tried not to weep, for her sake, but many small tears escaped their ducts and ran down my face.
She was the only thing I’d ever really loved, and by loving her, I’d destroyed myself.
****
GINNY’s POV
****
Lily was unresponsive to every treatment the Healers wheeled into her ward. She was peaceful, though, for once, and I took comfort in pulling the hairs of her face and caressing her forehead, holding her hand and talking to her sleeping form. She hadn’t been so tenderly quiet since she was five.
Harry was in and out, loyalties split between his daughter and my brother. To me, there was pain in separation from my dying older brother, but I couldn’t leave Lily’s side, for fear of her waking up alone and in a nightmare. Ron was chipper and bright, hiding his morose, selfless fear for Hermione.
Each night, we went back to the Burrow, so James and Albus and Mum and Hugo and Dad and Harry and I could all hold each other and breathe slowly. By early morning, we were back at St. Mungo’s, back and forth between Ron and Dominique and Lily.
I didn’t try to imagine how this plot would end, how my world would change, who I’d lose and who I’d keep, who I’d weep with at the end and who I’d weep with. But I kept a brave face on for my friend and sister-in-law, for my daughter and nieces, for my brother and for my family who was simply sad and withdrawn. The world was changing - it had been since the day Ron died. Where would I end up?
****
RON’s POV
****
I awoke to Ginny and Hugo that morning, and Ginny told me gently that nothing had changed, not with my nieces, or my wife and daughter, or even my daughter’s boyfriend. I held Ginny’s hand as she told me my digestive system was failing now, and they were pumping nutrients straight into my bloodstream. I cursed Goyle and I cursed Crabbe and I cursed myself for not being a better Auror. For not being a better father. A better husband. Lover.
Around noon, Mum came by to pat my cheek and kiss my forehead, like I was a child whose teddy bear was suddenly a spider or who’d broken a bone. When she left she took my young son with her, his parting words to me being “Dad, you’re a hero, and heroes never die.” I held him close and tousled his hair before watching him leave in my Mum’s embrace.
Ginny left me for Lily soon after that, her fear for her daughter too great to leave the girl alone for an entire day. The Healers asked me if I wanted anything - I asked them to bring a book.
I spent the day reading Hogwarts, A History and crying over Hermione’s notes in the margins. They’d given me her copy. How it had gotten to them, I had no idea. By dinnertime, I was feeling worse, a fire burning in my torso, behind my navel. Damn magic. Damn curses. Damn Goyle.
The lights went off earlier than usual, but I couldn’t sleep, and for the first time in a week I refused the sleeping spells. The Healers shook their heads at my case.
The noises started around midnight, echoing down the halls. Sobbing, harsh tones, whispered comfort. I sat up right as my door swung open, and Goyle walked in, hand at Hermione’s neck, Hermione’s face dirty and bruised, Hermione’s eyes searching desperately for mine.
“You have five minutes for a reunion before that curse of mine reaches his lungs and we discover how long he can hold his breath,” Goyle chuckled, and coldness spread over my body. Shock, too, as I felt my wife’s hand on mine. The door slammed behind him.
“Ronald, if you die on me I will flay you alive,” she spat into my ear, clambering onto the bed and holding my neck so my face was inches from hers. She curled into my side and wept into my shoulder. “Ron, they brought me here so I could see you die, and then they’ll come and kill me and Ginny and Harry, and Rose will die and they’ll find Hugo, and I can’t let any of that happen but I’m helpless.”
“I love you,” I told her softly, feeling the fire fade in my torso, feeling it start to migrate.
“Ron, no,” she hissed, sitting up. She looked haggard and bruised but beautiful, and I struggled to obey.
“Ron, no, what?” I asked her, whispering to conserve the breath I had left.
“Don’t give up on me and Rose and Hugo, please, Ron. Don’t leave us in a world where there’s only pain,” she whispered back, putting her arm around my neck and kissing my lips.
“I could never do that to you,” I answered. “Find a cure, braniac. Find a cure for this curse, and Goyle will never touch you again, I swear it.”
She nodded and sat up, wiping her tears. “You have five minutes to live, maybe more. How long can you hold you breath?”
“As long as I need to,” I coughed, reaching feebly for my wand. She smiled and kissed my cheek, then raced out of the room.
I lay back and felt the fire move through my torso slowly, the burning destruction, the elusive blackness that had stemmed from a weapon like the one I held in my hand. A wand.
It was just like before. When I was near death, my thoughts got deep. What an odd form of deliriousness.
My Brave Face by grangergirl35
Chapter Notes: We are nearing the end, my friends!! Please review!! I always respond to reviews, and stalk profiles of reviewers, and read stories that reviewers have and review on those. So it's a win-win, capeesh?
Chapter Endnotes: Remember what I said before that chapter? Win win!!! So please review!! In your reviews, tell me what you think is gonna happen so I can laugh at your far-fetched theories :D Until next chapter!!
Reminder: I just started sophomore year of high school, so updates may not be as frequent. Love you all!!