AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is for the Season 7 Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round 2 and I am this year's SEEKER for Puddlemere United.
PROMPT: Write about a character(s) that seems conniving and manipulative but aren't bad people OR write about a character(s) that manipulate others for their own agendas, whether good or bad.
I wrote psychological manipulation in different ways and tried to play with the idea of my protagonists' knowledge about his friends. To get the end that he wanted, he set everything up. I hope I was able to convey that here.
Anyway, enjoy reading!
Beta: ginnys01 and JBrocks917
oxoxoxoxoxox
Permitte Divis Cetera
(Leave everything to the gods)
There were a lot of bad things that could be said about Ronald Weasley, but none of them were about his strategies.
He proved his skill at the age of eleven, when he won at a game of wizard's chess against McGonagall's enchanted chess set at the face of death.
He proved it again during summer before his second year, when he asked for a rope from the boot of their car so he could tie it around the bars of Harry's windows and let the car pull it off.
Third year to sixth year, he stopped, because Harry and Hermione believed in Dumbledore, and he believed in Harry and Hermione.
He remembered thinking foolishly, 'If anyone could get us out of this war alive, it's those two.'
No one could deny Harry's bravery and Hermione's scary pursuit of knowledge — together, those two could be invincible.
But they hadn't known it back then.
When Cedric Diggory had died, he had known immediately that the first piece had been set into motion — that the game had truly begun, but no one had noticed it yet or if they had, they hadn't made a move, so he stayed silent.
At the start of their fifth year, when he had found out about the Order of the Phoenix, he had, again, foolishly believed that the adults could handle it, that they actually knew what they were doing, so again, he kept mum.
But when he almost lost his mind at the Department of Mysteries and Hermione and their friends almost died — hell, where Sirius Black actually died — he knew that all bets were off. Right then, he could see the playing field better. How both sides were using his best friend to their advantages — everything for their own twisted version of, "The Greater Good".
When Dumbledore died at the end of their sixth year, and Harry told them that he needed to do something away from Hogwarts, that's when he started planting his own place in the chessboard.
No one would've seen it coming. Not even his friends — well, especially his friends who grew up as Muggles.
He was a wizard, he knew that from the moment he could walk and talk. And, as a child who grew up playing with a wizarding chess board, he knew how to play with pieces that have temperaments like humans.
Subtle suggestions equal underhanded manipulations.
The end would justify the means — that has always been part of the rule of war. He just wanted to lessen the casualties, and he, Harry and Hermione would always be a casualty of this war — more so his friends if he would really have to be technical about it.
He, as everyone reminded him, is a Weasley, but he also have the blood of the Prewetts running through his veins. And the Prewetts were more grey than white when it came to family magic. Not to mention, his grandfather, Ignatius Prewett, married a Black.
So, two weeks before his brother, Bill, was scheduled to be married, while poring over the Prewett's family grimoire in his room (he'd already learned everything that he could about the family magic of the Weasleys, being taught by his father himself from a young age), he finally found a solution that could potentially end the war and save a lot of lives. In fact, the plan came to him as soon as he read the words written on the book.
'Hermione and Harry already saved two lives before while doing it, why couldn't they save more?' he thought, as he started to prepare for his plan long before they'd left for the Horcrux hunt.
The magic, however, needed a blood sacrifice, and he, as a pureblood wizard, understood that more than his friends ever could. He knew how his friends would act — what they would think — but he'd played wizard's chess a lot, he knew what to tell his pieces to convince them to move.
If he could not check the King, then he'd have to settle for a stalemate.
That's when he started cultivating the thought to his friends.
It was in the small remarks.
"If only you were able to get to the cup a little bit earlier, Harry."
"Maybe we need more time to plan, Hermione."
"Maybe if we knew then what we knew now, maybe we could've ended this sooner."
"You think if the old Order of the Phoenix knew about the Horcruxes, they'd have planned their attacks better?"
"Your dad shouldn't have trusted Pettigrew, Harry."
"Imagine a world where kids didn't have to be casualties in a war."
He said all of those words off-handedly, like it was something that he spouted every day.
He prepared them.
Gave them ideas.
So when the time is right to strike, they both would choose what to do.
What he'd intended them to do.
And he succeeded, if he did say so himself. Most times, while on watch, he heard Harry mutter more than once about having "little time," and then there were days when he'd catch Hermione looking in through books about the consequences of time travel.
And if some of the books from the Prewett family library ended up in the collection of books that Hermione had in her purse, well, then he didn't need to tell her about the little side trip he did just before Bill's wedding while she was with his family and helping to prepare for the wedding.
He had bided his time well.
There were no coincidences from his actions in the war.
He did everything with careful thought, calibration, and deliberation — except for that one time when he left them during the hunt, just because he let the Horcrux get to his head. He regretted that — and it had set his plan back for a bit longer than it should.
He didn't even intend to let it go as far as the Battle of Hogwarts, but then eventually realized that it was a great push to them both — Harry and Hermione, equally.
"I've been preparing for this time, Harry, please," he told his best friend when the ceasefire was declared by Voldemort.
They were counting their dead and Harry was lashing out on the hallway with him and Hermione as they saw who fell from their side.
Remus and Tonks, the last marauder, and his brave Auror of a wife.
Fred, his brother.
Lavender Brown, his ex-girlfriend and Hermione's dorm mate before they left.
Seamus Finnegan, his and Harry's dorm mate and friend.
Colin Creevey.
Augusta Longbottom.
The professor for Ancient Runes — Hermione was most distraught when she saw her body.
And many more.
So many more.
He took a deep breath and listened to the gasp that Hermione let out from beside him, and waited until he heard the shuffling of Harry's clothes and the stopping of his friend's rampage.
He waited until someone spoke up.
"What do you mean, Ron?" he heard Hermione ask him tiredly.
"What do you mean you've been waiting for this time?" he heard her ask again. This time, he took another sharp intake of breath before letting it go slowly as he turned to look at the eyes of his best friends.
Harry James Potter and Hermione Jean Granger.
Too many were lost because of this war.
Because Harry was the Chosen One.
Because Hermione had sullied blood.
None of them deserved this, and yet…
He took another breath, and slowly let it out before he took out the chess piece he'd been carrying since the beginning of this hunt.
"A chess piece?"
"A black knight?"
He heard his friends ask their questions simultaneously, and if he wasn't feeling the dull ache of muscle pain, he'd have laughed from the looks that the two gave him.
"Yes," he answered. "Remember first year?"
"What about first year?" Harry asked, giving him one of his patented eye-looks.
Ron was used to it.
"We're losing, Harry," he started. "Just like in first year when we stumbled on that wizarding chessboard. We've already lost a lot of valuable pieces in this chess game, Harry," he insisted, this time standing up as he tried to make them see this from his point of view.
"Is that a portkey, Ronald?" he heard Hermione ask, and he turned towards her and smiled as he answered, "Got it in one, love."
But then Harry blew up again.
"So that's it? You want us to run away and what? Play the field? What are we supposed to do with that, Ron? Why do you have a portkey? What are we going to do?" his friend fired off. Ron sunk back in the broken windowsill while twirling the little chess piece, and waited for a while before answering.
"We know everything we need to know now, Harry," he started. "But what we don't have is time to act."
He stood up again and held the chess piece out towards his best friend while staring at Hermione and saying, "You know what this is, 'Mione." He winced as he saw her starting to tear up. "You know you have to," he insisted. "He'd die alone." He gave her a look of pleading and some sort of understanding and apology.
He saw her nod her head slowly and give him a look of pride before saying, "It's a time key, Harry."
"A what?" his friend asked.
"Take it, we need to go," Hermione said again, before turning towards Ron and asking, "How long?"
"In a few hours or so," Ron answered, already anticipating this question from his best friend, who gave him another nod and then jumped on him to give him one of her hugs. She cried as she said, "Thank you, Ronald," over and over until she pried herself off of him slowly, took the chess piece for herself, and placed it on Harry's hands.
"Wait — Hermione!" Harry objected, but then Ron also heard Hermione cut him off immediately as she glared at him a bit and said, "You wanted to save everyone, Harry! Weren't you just ranting about it less than an hour ago? Wasn't this the worst case scenario we talked about while we were on the hunt? That we'd find a way to travel back in time and finish this before it even begun?"
"But —" Harry started again, and this time, it was he who stopped Harry.
"This would take you back in 1979, mate — at the height of the First War." And then Ron added, "Join the Order, explain the Horcruxes, and finish this before anyone unnecessarily dies." Ron looked at him and said, "Before little Harry James Potter grows up without his parents, little Hermione Granger gets petrified again by a basilisk on her second year, and little Ronald Weasley won't be able to meet the uncles he'd heard so much about."
"Save us all." He murmured those final words, but in the silence of the hallway, he knew Harry and Hermione heard him, especially when he was engulfed in a three-way hug with his friends.
"What about you, mate? What would happen to you?" Harry asked after a brief pause.
"Nothing," he answered truthfully, not bothering to lie now that it had come to this.
"This world will turn into nothing as soon as you two go back in time," he began. "I, need to stay here to be the anchor of that time portkey you have," he finished, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
"Ron," he heard Harry call him, making him lose composure and turned his back from his friends.
"You two are my best friends, alright?" he said slowly — he knew that Harry needed more of a push and they didn't have enough time. He steeled himself and said, "It's what we always do, right? Save the world?" And then in a smaller voice, "You have to do it without me," just like he said all those years ago in the dungeon to get to the Philosopher's Stone.
"I'll be the Knight," he deliberately said, knowing that after hearing those words, Harry and Hermione would definitely throw themselves into the world to get the life they all needed — the life that they are all so willing to die for.
He heard a distinctive pop from behind him right after saying those words, and then there was nothing.