Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Collect Them All Challenge [Ron Weasley]
Not A Pawn
He was one of the fighters in the Final Battle. He had been one of the students that had been Hogwarts' last defense against You-Know-Who's forces.
He may not have been part of the front lines of the battle as some of his dorm mates and closer friends of Harry Potter had been. Perhaps he would have, had he befriended the bespectacled boy on the train in First Year. He had not though. It was possible that he would have become rather well-known had he done so but that would also have become rather dangerous, much like the many adventures Harry, Neville and Hermione had been through during their years at Hogwarts.
It was something like chess. The closer you got to the more powerful pieces, the more likely you were to get sacrificed in the long run should the player make a mistake and not wish to sacrifice that powerful piece. It would be similar to playing a pawn in a very large game of chess where you neither knew nor trusted the player. It was safer where he was. He was not even a pawn on the chessboard, he did not even register to whichever decision the player made next. The only thing for him to concentrate on was getting out alive, and relatively unscathed if such a thing were possible during a war.
His mother had not wanted him to be part of the war either. She had tried to force him to stay at home despite most of his year mates being allowed to fight but both he and Ginny had made a plan to get into Hogwarts in case their mother did not allow them to fight. He had not needed to use that plan but Ginny had been forced to. No one was counting who had been present or not, everyone had been too busy fighting and protecting everyone on their side to notice the two youngest Weasley children amongst their number. It was one of those inconsequential things that only got you in trouble at the very end when your mother was too relieved you were alive to properly scold you for the risk you had taken to be there.
The entire war itself had been a mess of blood, spells, bodies and plants that looked like the mandrakes they had been forced to learn about in Second Year when the basilisk had been attacking the muggleborns in the school. That basilisk attack itself had been so vague and dangerous to the entire school, to think that no one had realized that there had been a basilisk hiding underneath Hogwarts was quite frankly terrifying. That had been more than enough of an adventure for him, not to mention the relatively close encounters with the dragons in Fourth Year. Despite Charlie working with dragons, that had been much closer to a dragon than he had even truly wanted to be. He had no idea how Charlie was able to do it but neither did he want to find out. There was simply no need to do such dangerously foolish things unless you truly enjoyed it like in Charlie's case. One thousand galleons were definitely not worth the possible cost of your life or unfortunate body part.
He had been part of the war though, perhaps the most dangerous adventure of them all. There hadn't been a choice, really, he could not stand around and do nothing while everything he cared about had the potential to be destroyed. The year of Hogwarts where the Dark Side had ruled had been one of the worst years of school he had ever experienced. Nothing compared to the harshness of the Death Eaters and so called teachers that had been assigned to Hogwarts that handed out punishments like the Cruciatus Curse as if they were handing out sweets. That year had been nothing like Hogwarts was meant to be. The absolute hatred of muggles the Death Eaters had attempted to instill within them had been truly another caliber to the point where they almost preferred to be sent to Snape for punishment, an idea that had been entirely too shocking to the Gryffindors upon its realization.
Most of the Gryffindors had been forced into hiding that year. They had used the Room of Requirement. They had been Dumbledore's Army within those walls only a few years ago. Dumbledore's Army that was now within the Room of Requirement, hiding. They could have easily argued that hiding was much better than them uselessly wasting their lives and dying because safety was most important. That's what they had been within the Room of Requirement, safe from the outside and the Dark Lord's forces.
They had been recuperating, they were planning their next journey to the next meal. They had been forced to plan every single step they made, and have escape plans for every single place in case they were seen. That had certainly caused them to be able to control their more Gryffindor qualities, because the alternative was death, and everyone loved their life much more than their foolishness.
He had fought in the Final Battle and he had survived, something that despite his training left him somewhat surprised. While in the heat of the battle, he had never thought that he would ever see the end, but now that he had encountered it, he found himself rather pleased with the result.