(A/N::Hi! This was written as part of the Reviews Lounge 'Rainbow' collabrative fic. We each took a character and wrote a piece about that particular character with the buzz word 'Rainbow'. The Reviews Lounge is a forum and community here on dedicated to spreading the 'review love' to all the under appreciated stories! Enjoy, and please review - they make any authors day!)
RKC x
Ron Weasley.
School: a place to learn a fraction of the skills needed for life outside the safety of education. This was a fact Ronald Weasley had known from the very beginning of his education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However knowing this did not effect the amount of effort he put into his school work, not when he was the best friend of Harry Potter and having an exciting adventure every other week, oblivious to the true danger that they were in.
Circling the room he now stood in, Ron marvelled at the sheer effort the people surrounding him were putting into the project. Not school work as such, something both much more important and less than simple school work. To some, it was simply a way to pass the O.W.L's. To others the importance of the movement that Hermione had aptly named the D.A., for Dumbledore's Army, gave the people involved something they hadn't been able to feel for nearly a year - hope. Personal hope. Umbridge, with her frilly pink cardigans and fluffy cats about the place promoted an air of false hope, which to Ron, reminded him strongly and strangely of rainbows.
The multicoloured semi-circle that appeared on a sunny, yet rainy day promoted false hope to people like Ron. At the end of a rainbow there's supposed to be pots of gold, glinting off the sunlight, welcoming. Enticing. Who ever invented that must have been a person with much faith. It was fools gold, gold that never existed.
Luna would probably come up with some sort of creature only she could see to explain the rainbow.
Have you ever tried to follow a rainbow?
Ron has. When he was just eight years old and he had not known school or the dangers of the world, and he had been wrapped up in the safe world his parents had created for him. His parents had laughed when he'd got up from the small picnic they were having, just Ron and Ginny as all his other brothers were off at Hogwarts. When it had come into sight, he had run towards the rainbow with it's fascinating and enticing colours, but he'd never caught up to it. It kept running away from him, further and further until little eight year old Ron could run no more. It was then he had realised that the magic of the rainbows were false, and he'd never tried to follow one again.
'What are you thinking, Ron?' Came Hermione's soft voice once he had completed a circuit of the room.
'About rainbows,' was the only answer she would ever receive. Hermione wouldn't understand, she herself was most like a rainbow, giving out the signs of false hope. She would be unattainable, why would she like him, an ordinary, average school kid, second to the famous Harry Potter?
There are many definitions of the term 'rainbow,' in a sense the DA itself was like one. It was a collaboration of the houses of Hogwarts, just like a rainbow was a collaboration of the various colours. Was this, then, an organisation giving out false hope to the members? Ron scanned the room again, seeing Luna produce a Patronus, and Neville stun Seamus. No, the DA was an organisation that was less like Ron's notion of a rainbow, and more like the fairy tale version, in which the people got the treasure at the end, in this case being able to do things they weren't able to before. There was no fools gold in the rainbow of Dumbledore's Army.
When Ron was ten, on a particularly showery day, Ginny had asked him why he didn't smile or look at rainbows anymore. Looking at her serious face, and the question in her eyes, Ron had no choice but to tell the truth.
'They lost their magic, Gin.' Ron had replied. Glancing out of the window into the fields beyond their house the sun started to come out from behind the clouds, looking back, he saw that she still wasn't satisfied, 'One day you'll see, rainbows are not something you can touch, to feel. You can't follow one to get the treasure at the end, because the treasure doesn't exist.'
It was a view that Ron had held for a long time afterwards. And he remembered the exact time that the feeling of the false rainbow stopped. It was in the very second that Ron had decided Dumbledore's Army was a rainbow, that the hope of three of the four school houses were assembled in a mixture of colours, intentions and that the treasure at the end was not the fairytale gold glinting in the sun, but the knowing that they were fighting not just for Dumbledore and against You - Know - Who, they were fighting for the colours that got forgotten. They were fighting, like a rainbow does, for a brighter future.
A year and a half after Ron's notion of the rainbow had changed saw the defeat of Voldemort. The day had rained and they were all tired. Harry faced the Dark Lord with Ron and Hermione at his side and the D.A. behind him, and a rainbow had shone brighter than ever in the sky. It was rejuvenating, energising and gave hope to the warriors of the Second War, and their treasure was found in the defeat of Voldemort at the foot of the shining rainbow.
(A/N:: Hope you enjoyed. Please review! To join the Reviews Lounge, there is a link on my profile page!
RKC x)