Alright.

Hi Folks! This is my first HP fic, and it has been awhile since I've actually sat down and typed something up. And by a while I'm talking the last time I posted I was about to enter high school and now I'm a third year in college. (7 years?!)

Forewarning, I am not an English major. I am not a writer. I am a scientist under the guise of becoming a doctor. This is mostly written between chemistry classes and work when the desire to rip my own hair out from my complete dislike of anything on a molecular level drives me to seek outlets, ie fanfiction. Reading this stuff has been an amazing escape from reality since I was in grade school, and writing makes me feel productive so I thought I'd throw my hat in.

I write for me. I'm not trying to impress anyone with my skills (or lack thereof) but I would appreciate feed-back. I'm pre-med, I need constant validation so please let me know what you think.

Umm, what else?

This is an experimental fic for me, in term s of point of view. It starts out from Ron's but he is not the main character, nor will it stay in his POV.

Disclaimer: if I owed Harry Potter I would need to go to college, now would I? And I am a student, which means I don't even own a car, let alone Harry Potter & Co.

Now let's see what I've got, shall we?











HPHPHPHP

With all the strength in his legs Ron dove behind the crumbling section of brick and mortar that had previously been the northern wall of the Great Hall. He contorted his body sideways both to avoid the bright green curse and so that he could land in a roll, succeeding in both he came to a stop right next to his best friend of seven years.

Harry Potter had seen better days. Blood dripped steadily from the angry red scar above his right eye, leaving him partially blind in addition to the other cuts, burns and crushed bones that he suffered from. On his other side Hermione Granger appeared in a similar manner that Ron himself had, but lacking Ron's natural ability to fall correctly, was stopped only by tumbling into Harry, who muffled a curse. He made a move to grab his left shoulder, but stopped half-way. He paled, bit his bottom lip and slammed his head back against the wall.

"Harry-!" Her hands fluttered in a worried fashion, eyes flicking to Ron who kept his gaze on Harry.

"You alright, mate?"

With a groan Harry shrugged the cloak from his left shoulder, revealing a sight that made both of his friends sick. Where his arm should have met his torso there was nothing. The arm had been removed savagely and hotly based on the way the muscle and skin were charred black, bones were shattered and hanging precariously from bits of tendon and cartilage.



Hermione forced herself to look at things logically, it was cold and impersonal but it seemed to be the only thing that kept her from running far and fast in the other direction. "It's not bleeding that badly, the spell must have been extremely hot in order to cauterize the wound as it happened, which is probably the only reason that you haven't bled to death yet."

Ron paled, but managed not to throw up again. All around them friends, allies and enemies were fighting. They were dying. Harry was dying. He had to turn his head as Hermione cast a mild pain numbing charm on Harry, then super-heated her wand to finish cauterizing the wound. He saw to the left of them Susan Bones and Neville Longbottom dueling a man in tell-tale dark robes, but he couldn't tell who was winning.

"Harry, mate, I don't know about you, but I think now would be the time to begin implementing Plan B," he turned back to them, forcibly ignoring the smell of burning flesh.

"Ron," his jaw clenched, and the words were forced out painfully, "Even if there was a 'Plan B' I think it's long past the time to implement it."

"So, we're stuffed is what you're saying."

"No." Ron caught Hermione's sharp look as Harry let his eyes go out off focus. "No, we may not have a Plan B, but we do have a Contingency Plan 4."

"NO!" Hermione shook her head violently, "There is no way you have the strength to attempt that!" Confusion blossomed in the redhead's chest. As far as he knew there was no other plan but the first, disastrous one. He watched silently as his two best mates spoke without words, and was pleasantly surprised by the sudden lack of jealousy.

"I know that Hermione," the black-haired wizard reached out with his right hand and grasped her wringing ones, stopping their motion, "Which is why you're going to take Ron and send him."

Hermione looked surprised at the suggestion, like the thought to use Ron for a back-up plan had never crossed her mind. Ron didn't blame her though; he was pretty surprised by the idea as well. The redhead found himself under the scrutiny of the other two, and none of them flinched as the wall behind them shuddered under spell-fire. Hermione looked calculating and Ron realized that even though she was looking at him she probably wasn't seeing him, as her mind was trying to figure out if it could work. Harry, however, was offering him a half-smirk that was beginning to become signature.

"You sure about this, Harry? Do you really think that whatever the plan is, that it's going to work?"

Both green and blue eyes flicked to the spot on Harry's torso where his left arm should have been attached. "I don't think we have much of a choice, Ron. We screwed up somewhere and this may be the only way to fix it. The only was to make things the way they are supposed to be."

Ron felt his resolve steeling as Hermione started to nod, "This could work," she was frowning, biting at her bottom lip, "It'll be a bit trickier because Ron's not as prepared as you are, but he doesn't need much instruction." She nodded once more, more for herself than either one of her boys, "Alright I'll make sure the way is clear, Ron, you help Harry-"

"No." Harry shook his head, "Me coming with you will only slow you down and you'd have to waste time and power protecting me."



"But Harry-!"

"No, 'Mione."

She looked at Ron distraughtly, "Ron, talk some sense into him!"

But Ron wasn't looking at her; his entire conscience was focused on Harry. Neither blinked, neither breathed. Finally Ron rolled his jaw and gave his best friend a short nod, which Harry returned with that near-famous half smirk. "It's a Queen's Sacrifice, Hermione. With Harry causing a distraction, we'll be able to get away and do what needs to be done, with minimal risk."

She was glaring at him, incensed by his betrayal and opened her mouth to show her displeasure. Ron, perhaps for the first time in his short life, didn't take the bait and ignored her, "I won't let you down, mate." He reached out and placed his hand on Harry's right shoulder.

The green-eyed wizard grinned, "I never thought you would, Ron. It's not for nothing."

Ron matched his grin with his lips, but neither smiled with their eyes, "It's never for nothing."

Harry was going to die. They had all thought about it, hell, they'd even made plans around it once, but they'd never thought they'd see the moment before the moment it happened. Ron didn't know if he'd be as calm as Harry was when his moment came, but he knew that the man he held in higher regard than anyone else on the planet wouldn't go into it any other way.

Between them Hermione shuddered, and drew her hand to her face to hide the tears that fell. Ron realized starkly that in the seven years that the three had known each other, Hermione was the only one who had never left Harry. They had had their fights and split paths several times in the past, but the bushy-haired witch had also been on Harry's side in mind, spirit and focus. She was always unceasingly working towards ensuring Harry would live past all of the stupid things he got himself into.

Now she was sending him to his death.

"Hey, look at me," Harry gently pulled her hands from her face and nudged her chin with his fingers, encouraging her to look him in the eye, "this isn't the end." He smiled crookedly, "I'll see you on the other side of this rabbit hole."

Through her tears, she offered him a similar half-smile, "Would you tell me, please," she quoted, "which way I ought to go from here."

He touched her cheek, trying to stop the flow of tears, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

She reached up and grasped his hand between her own, "Oh, I don't much care where."

Harry winced at the trail of his blood that he left along her cheekbone, "Then it doesn't matter much which way you go."

"… So long as I get somewhere."

"Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough."



She reached to him, cupping her hands around his cheeks and touched her forehead against his, "You promise me that you'll be on the other side."

"You won't even have to look for me. I'll be right beside you."

"Swear it."

"I swear."

They stared at each other for a few more moments as Ron kneeled to the side, slightly awed by the love between the two. He knew beyond a doubt that the bond was more familial than romantic and was suddenly and immensely glad that these two had one another in this world where they were otherwise alone, one orphaned by death and the other by separation.

Behind him Ron heard a high-pitched scream and he shuddered as his mind told him how much it sounded like Hannah Abbot.

With that, Hermione realized that they didn't have much time. Quickly she rolled back onto the balls of her feet, kissed Harry on the forehead (directly on the still bleeding lightning-shaped scar) and helped him stand in a somewhat hunched manner so that he was still crouched behind the half-demolished wall.

Ron stood beside them. He clapped Harry on his good shoulder as the dark-haired wizard did the same to him and Hermione hugged them both around their middles. The Golden Trio.

Harry stepped back first. He picked up his fallen wand and with tears in his eyes said, "On my signal, get the hell out of here. The Anti-Apparation wards are down. Get to the Chamber and fix this."

He sighed, steeled himself, "I love you guys," and with a loud crack! was gone.

The sounds of explosions, screams and the wet thud of bludgeoning cruses seemed to get louder and louder. Harry's arrival was nearly drowned out and his attacks were almost as quite. Hermione folded herself into Ron and he wrapped his arms around her tightly. On the other side of the wall and loud explosion seemed to rock Hogwarts to her very foundation. A slow, short lull in the noise followed.

And then…

"Boy."

"Hello, Tom."

"You have to know that you cannot beat me, and yet here you stand, prepared to do battle."

"Sometimes it's not about winning, Tom. Sometimes it's just about the willingness to fight."

"Then let us fight."

"Let's."

Ron held Hermione tighter to himself, and the noise of his Side-Along Apparation was drowned out by the blast of the two enemies' attacks hitting each other.



They appeared in Salazar's Chamber of Secrets, safely hidden by the rotting coils of the Basilisk. Ron released his friend, "Tell me what I need to do."

"Harry and I came up with a couple of different plans in case something went awry. Contingency Plan 4 is pretty much the Ultimate Do-Over; it was the last course of action if everything went wrong."

"Hermione, just tell me what to do."

"Ron, give me a break here, this could change everything and I don't even know if it's going to work. I mean it's supposed to work, we did all the research and in theory it works, but no one can ever say for sure."

Ron swallowed hard, "Why not?"

"Because it can change everything. Ron, I'm sending you back in time and whatever you do while you're there has the potential to change anything and everything that comes after." She looked at him, judging how he felt about that. After a few seconds, he nodded. "Good, you can't be wishy-washy about this, you need to be confident. There is a spell that I'm going to perform and a potion that I have here," she pulled a small, unbreakable phial from her pocket and handed it to him. "You drink this and I perform the spell, while I'm chanting you need to think of the exact moment in time you want to go back to."

"When do you want me to go back to?"

"Harry and I agreed to last year, before he and Dumbledore left to retrieve the fake locket. I'm not sure how much time you have, but you need to find them, tell them the locket they are about to get is a fake, that Dung has the real one and that Malfoy is going to let Death Eaters into the school that night. When you go back your mind now will fuse with your body then and you some indiscernible amount of time, until your body then will kick your mind now out and force back to your body now, in what ever reality comes from your actions."

"Right, easy as cake."

"Pie," she corrected automatically.

"What?"

"Easy as pie, the saying is 'easy as pie'."

He gave her a confused look, "I thought it was 'piece of pie'."

"No, that's 'piece of cake'."

He rolled his eyes at her and groaned exasperatedly, "Muggles."

Faintly bemused she smiled weakly at him, "Sometimes I wonder what happened to those pure little innocent kids that got on the train seven years ago, and then you open your mouth and butcher simple sayings like that and I wonder if we've even changed at all."

He grinned, not at all upset by the jab, proof enough of growth, "You're still a bushy-haired know-it-all."

"And you're still a big-eared little boy with the mentality of a five-years-old and the emotional range of a teaspoon."



"You grew up to be one of the bravest people I've ever met and a more loyal friend than I could have ever deserved."

"And you're more cunning than you let on, and smarter than I'd care to admit."

"And to think, that scrawny kid in the broken glasses and clothes big enough to live in would be-"

"The greatest wizard of all of us."

He touched her on the shoulder, "He's going to be okay, I'll fix this."

"I know, Ron, I trust you. Are you ready?" He nodded and she motioned for him to drink the prepared potion. As she began chanting Ron couldn't help but think about that day on the train when he met the two people who have the greatest impact on his life.

All around the two of them the walls of the Chamber began to shake and immense cracks formed in the mortar, but for the most part this went unnoticed. Ron grabbed at his chest as he felt a pain not unlike a stab wound with a spear. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out and then with the whisper of sand sliding against itself he was gone.

HPHPHPHPHP

When Ron blinked back into consciousness he realized he was in the middle of a sentence. Across from him a scrawny little boy with big green eyes hidden behind broken glasses blinked back. The red-head slammed his palm against his own forehead and shouted, "Bloody Hell!" To him it sounded like a high-pitched squeak and he clamped his hands to his mouth in surprise. If the little boy staring strangely at him wasn't enough proof the rest of it lay in his own hands. They were small, pale and heavily freckled, only slightly blistered from degnoming the garden and little games of pick-up quiddith with his brothers and sister. In short, they were the hands of a small eleven-year old fledgling wizard, not the scarred ones of a seventeen year old warrior.

He swore again, not even bothering to be surprised at his own stupidity. He had fucked up. Royally.

He had promised! Dammit!

Reminding himself of his promise also poised him to remember Hermione's warning that everything he did here has the possibility to change things in the future, a future that he has to return to. Across from him Harry Potter sat and looked more than a bit frightened by the sudden mood swing of his new-found companion. It took Ron a moment to reconcile this small, scared boy with the force he would become, if Ron didn't screw it up.

"Look, Harry, I'm sorry about that, but I – uh, that is to say, um," he thought fast. The Harry to come is very skeptical about just about anything, but this one here, this one hasn't been battered around by enemies posed as friends and teachers, yet. He is still mind wide open about magic, and even though his up-bringing has him feeling like all of this may be too good to be true, he'll listen and take things in that not even his aware of. "Harry, I'm going to tell you a secret, and I need you to keep it to yourself for a little while and when the time is right, and you'll know when it is, I need you to remember this. In our sixth year Dumbledore, he's our headmaster, he's going 

to go looking for something, -Horcruxes, Harry!-, only it's not going to be where he thinks it is! It's back at the house! Better yet, at the house there is this locket, see, and it's got this S on it-!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The future, Harry!"

"You know the future?" his skepticism was almost palpable, and Ron felt the fraying edges of panic. "What are you? Some kind of Seer?"

Ron blinked, "That's not really important. What is important is that Malfoy is a no-good Death Eater and –"

"Don't you know that it's rude to speak slander of people, especially when they aren't around to defend themselves, Weasel?"

And that was when Ron Weasley lost it. The pitch was high, much higher that he knew it would be, but the sneer in the voice would never change. In Ron's mind Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. He let other psychopathic Death Eaters into Hogwarts. His actions led to the deaths of Dumbledore, Fred, Percy, Harry and so many others. He deserved to die, but Ron knew his body now did not have the magic to do much in the way of pain and the wand he held now was old and held together by spell-o-tape.

So he did something that he'd wanted to do since Hermione had done it to the blonde in their third year. He reeled his fist back and punched Draco Malfoy as hard as he could in the nose.

Beneath his knuckles he felt cartilage break and blood begin to pour freely. Draco's eyes rolled back as he collapsed on the ground, behind him Miniatures Crabbe and Goyle blinked stupidly at him. Ron felt a sharp pain in his chest, not unlike a spear wound, and he felt the righteous anger subside he felt something like panic and resignation settle in his chest. He wasn't sure what he had done to the future, but it couldn't be any worse than the one has had come from.

As the walls of his compartment on the Hogwarts Express began to shake and crack Ron took to ignoring the shouts coming from the hall as people came out to see what the ruckus was. The redhead sighed and prepared himself to be forced back into the future he had created; he did not look back at Harry and thus missed the look of gravest distaste upon the smaller boy's face.

Ron Weasley had just proved himself as a bully and Harry Potter did not like bullies.

HPHPHPHPHP

The next time Ron blinked back into his own body, he really was coming back from unconsciousness. He blinked as two or three blurry shapes hovered above him, talking quietly. Blue skies framed them, and Ron pressed his eyes closed tightly to stop the sun from cracking open his brain. He could hear a collective murmuring like a large mass of people was carrying on hundreds of conversations on the other side of a wall. But there were no screams, no curses and the air smelled of recently stopped rain not blood and death.



"Come on there, Weasley, up and at 'em, I know you didn't hit the ground that hard." The voice sounded familiar but was muffled behind the buzzing in his ears.

An exasperated groan sounded from the left of him, "Good job, Potter, you broke my brother."

Potter? Harry? Ron moaned. That sounded a lot like Ginny. But different, lighter.

"Did not, Nix. He's the one that decided the best way to avoid my bludger was to roll off his broom at 15 meters up. Hey, he's coming to!"

Ron blinked once more, eyes opening to find that his headache had not abated, but was now manageable. A red-haired blob hovered over his left, which he assumed to be Ginny, and on his right was a dark-haired blob that he took to be Harry, but who didn't sound like Harry. "Harry?"

The figure laughed, a light carefree laugh that Ron couldn't remember hearing from the guy before, "Sorry, Gin, but maybe I did break him." The figure on the left giggled and they both helped Ron sit up. He blinked rapidly, trying to get his vision to clear. "On first-name basis are we, Ronnie-Boy? Well alright, I can play that game too." He waved two figures in Ron's face. "How many do you see?"

Ron shook his head and regretted it immediately, but he could see. He was sitting on one end of the school's Quidditch pitch, his broom was some feet away behind his sister on his left. Ginny looked the same, but somehow, in some unnamable manner, different. She looked sleek and strong, and power swelled behind her eyes despite the smile on her face and her short size. She was dressed in her Gryffindor Quidditch robes, and looking down so was he. "What happened?"

"Took a dive off your broom to avoid the bludger I sent your way. Not a very smart move, but it seemed effective, I suppose, seeing as it wasn't what hit you. Now, come on, how many fingers, Weasley?"

Ron tried to focus on him. It was Harry alright, same face and eyes, but there was something so fundamentally wrong with him that Ron couldn't even figure it out right away. "Um, four?"

Harry laughed, "Close enough." He turned towards the middle of the pitch where Ron saw the rest other people in Gryffindor Quidditch robes and others in yellow and black. "He's alive," Harry yelled in a jovial manner, "but I think Madam Pomfrey might want to take a look, I think he has a concussion." He turned back to Ron. "Pity, Weasley, this was actually a fun game."

Ron felt something click. He was getting faint, panic surging deep in his chest. What the hell did I do? Why is he calling me Weasley and… "Harry?"

The boy in question looked bemused and somewhat pitying, "Yeah?"

"Why are you wearing Hufflepuff robes?"

And he surged forward, Ginny barely escaping her brother getting sick on her. She shared a wide-eyed look with Harry, who turned back to the pitch, "Madam, quickly!"

Ron passed out.



HPHPHPHPHP

Haha, well that was exciting. Right?

Let me know what you all think. Please?