If you were to ask Ron Weasley what kind of person he was he would tell you that he was pretty average. Especially compared to his friends and family. He had five older brothers, all of whom were more notable than he was. Bill and Charlie both had wicked jobs; a curse breaker and dragon tamer respectively, why Ron considered these jobs "wicked" probably doesn't need to be explained. Percy had achieved ridiculously high grades throughout his Hogwarts years and was a shoe-in for a Ministry job when he graduated unless something went wrong, which it wouldn't as Percy was quite literally the perfect son. Ron's mother frequently reminded her younger children of this. Especially the next two brothers, Fred and George. Ron could hardly envy anything about Fred and George. They had poor grades, got in even more trouble with their teachers than Ron himself did, and generally caused mayhem everywhere they went. They did get plenty of attention however, making Ron look very normal by comparison. Ron's younger sibling, Ginny was notable for being the only girl in the family, and for being the seventh child of the family. The Weasleys weren't particularly superstitious about such things but many would claim that as a seventh child Ginny was guaranteed a magically auspicious destiny. Compared to his siblings Ron felt quite average.
Ron's opinion could hardly be considered accurate. Especially when you looked at his current situation, or honestly any of the major events at his school since he had started attending almost two full years earlier. He and his best friends, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, both had a tendency to attract trouble and find themselves right in the middle of whatever was happening at Hogwarts. Take right now for instance, Hermione had been petrified by a monster in the infamous Chamber of Secrets, Ron's little sister had been kidnapped into the chamber by the Heir of Slytherin. Harry and Ron had managed to deduce the location of the chamber with some help from a note left by Hermione before her petrification and, after grabbing their Defense professor to aid them, they entered the chamber by way of incredibly long and steep slide.
Upon entrance into the chamber they had been attacked by their professor. The man was as crooked as he was incompetent and would rather turn on students he had sworn to protect and teach than face the monster that had been terrorizing Hogwarts for the past year. Sadly, for him, the wand Gilderoy Lockhart had attempted to use had been Ron's wand, which was broken in half and incredibly difficult to cast spells with. Ron's success to cast anything correctly with this wand spoke to his control of his magic if nothing else. The broken wand had backfired and caused a rather massive explosion, leading to Ron's current predicament. He and Harry were separated and after a quick disagreement Harry had went ahead to save Ginny while Ron attempted to get through the barrier of rocks that had been created by the explosion.. Ron was using Lockhart's wand, a terrible match for him, to levitate boulders out of the way. The process was slow but Ron's determination to save his sister and help his friend pushed him through the work. In summary, to call Ron Weasley average would be a travesty and a horrible misunderstanding of reality, though perfectly understandable in an insecure boy of thirteen.
Ron could see the other side of the rockslide by now, there wasn't quite a way through, the rocks reached too far up for him to safely climb over to the other side and he was having to clear a wide path to prevent other rocks simply sliding down into the gaps he cleared. The process was made even slower by his horrible match with the wand he used, luckily, he was used to using poor wands. Before it broke his old wand had been a poor match for him. Ron knew the struggle of an incompatible wand better than most. He would've used his own wand, despite its faults but it had been lost in the rockslide, along with Lockhart himself. After what felt like an hour of the work but was in reality a mere half hour Ron had cleared a suitable path and ran through.
If Ron had to describe the chamber he now saw, he would say it was incredibly creepy. The magical lighting was dim, likely because of the age of the enchantment. This made it feel as if the walls themselves were glowing a dull green and caused the various sculptures of snakes along the walls to stand out in very menacing ways. On second thought, Salazar Slytherin might have planned the lightning to be this way from the start. As Ron walked down the path he began to hear action ahead, shouts in what was clearly distinguishable as parseltongue, the language of snakes. Ron didn't know what was being said but he did know that he didn't like the sound of it at all. Ron finally entered the final chamber to see Harry cradling his arm in obvious pain with Fawkes, Headmaster Dumbledore's pet phoenix, draped over him. Standing over Harry in triumph was a teenager holding a wand. With the whole distance of the chamber between them Ron could only faintly hear the words of the man.
"And so, Harry Potter, you fall at the hand of Lord Voldemort. As it should have been 11 years ago. You put up an impressive fight, to kill Slytherin's basilisk with a sword should've been impossible. Still, it matters not, I have awoken fully now. The Weasley girl is dead and the power I have taken from her sustains me in this body." The young Voldemort, as he christened himself clearly loved the sound of his own voice. His words caused Ron's heart to drop, he had arrived too late. Ginny was dead. An average boy would've started to cry or let out a shout of anger, normally Ron would've done this but some other part of him seemed to awaken in his anger and grief. It told him to be discreet and make his way in range to cast a spell unnoticed.
"Yes, Harry, I see that you understand. You have failed to save the girl. How does it feel to have failed?" The sadistic grin on Voldemort's face made Ron's simmering rage only grow but he did not lose control. Instead he grew only more determined to succeed in sneaking up on the man, a task that would've been impossible if Voldemort wasn't so distracted by his need to gloat.
"How have you not yet died from the basilisk venom…" All of a sudden Voldemort's grin disappeared as he looked in apparent disdain at the phoenix on Harry's shoulder, "Ah… I see, the birds tears counteracted the venom. I shall have to remedy that." With this Voldemort raised his wand and started to speak the Killing Curse. Ron jumped into action at this moment, his reflexes surprising even himself. He spoke a spell that he had only heard of and had never attempted to cast himself, "Reducto!" He slashed his wand diagonally upward and away from his off hand. Had Voldemort chosen a quicker spell to cast on Harry he would've succeeded in his task, However, wand magic was rather fickle and spells like Avada Kedavra which contained multiple words required multiple wand movements, and the most complex spells like the Killing Curse couldn't be cast silently to speed up the cast. Because of this Ron's slower draw was easily overcome by his quicker spell and the exploding curse smashed into Voldemort's head just before he could finish his own curse. The gore this caused was disgusting and if not for the raw adrenalin rushing through his veins Ron might have vomited at the sight of the body.
Harry did vomit, but in his defense part of Voldemort's brain had landed on his shirt. "Couldn't you have cast a less messy spell?" Harry asked with a grin as he realized that he had somehow managed to survive against all odds, admittedly not an abnormal occurrence for him.
"No thank you? I just saved you from a teenaged Voldemort and all I get is a complaint?" Ron didn't share Harry's amusement, but he was at least relieved that his friend was alive. All of his relief drained away as he remembered the fourth person in the room however. "Ginny!" Ron ran over to the body, Harry stood up to follow him but fell to the ground grasping his forehead.
"Ron. The diary." Harry's voice was filled with pain, but Ron was entirely distracted by trying to find some sign that Ginny had survived. He checked her breathing and found that she wasn't breathing.
"Harry, she's not breathing." Ron's voice filled with panic.
"Ron. You need to destroy the diary." Harry attempted to communicate the urgency of the situation, for the diary had housed the piece of Voldemort that had taken Ginny's life force for himself.
"Harry, she's not breathing." The grief that hadn't come out earlier was now pouring out of Ron. Tears started to pour out of his eyes as he held the body of his sister close, hoping that she might wake back up. She didn't. While Ron mourned, oblivious to what happened around him, Harry tried to crawl towards the diary, only to find that as he drew closer the pain only grew and he found himself paralyzed by pain, exhaustion and maybe a bit of the diary's magic itself.
Suddenly, Ginny's eyes flickered open. "Ginny, you're back!" Ron exclaimed, only to find himself forcefully shoved away from his sister by a magical shockwave that sent him sprawling back a few feet. Ginny stood up and Ron noticed a distinct problem, Ginny's eyes were brown, not red. "You're not Ginny." Ron screamed, near hysterics now. While Ron gazed horrified at the body that had once belonged to his sister Harry found that the pain had gone away and leaped for the diary, grabbing it and looking around for something he could use to destroy it. His eyes locked on the body of the basilisk, it's fangs still dripping poison.
"No you don't, Potter." The voice was Ginny's, but it wasn't. Ginny's voice had never sounded so confident, or so malevolent. Voldemort's hate spilled out through Ginny's mouth and the combination only further fed Ron's emotion. "Petrificus Totalus."
"Expelliarmus." This time Ron's faster spell did not beat Voldemort, and Harry found himself paralyzed upon the wet floor again. Had Voldemort been in his own body he would've also easily countered Ron's spell before it could reach him. In Ginny's body and with Ginny's wand, an incredibly poor match for him, he only managed to turn towards Ron as the spell caught him full in the stomach. Ron's emotion powered the spell to tear Ginny's wand and have it fall to the ground from Voldemort's grasp and knock him back a step. It would've done more but Ron's own wand was a poor match and the spell was not quite at its normal power.
When Voldemort lost control of Ginny's wand the body bind on Harry dropped and he immediately ran towards the basilisk. Voldemort sent another magical shockwave out to trip him and Harry fell hard, the diary leaving his grasp and sliding along the slick floor several feet to the side. The effort of this second shockwave clearly caused Voldemort to falter as he fell to one knee. He recovered easily enough, grabbing Ginny's wand and summoning the diary to him after shielding against Ron's body bind spell.
"You boys both fought bravely but you've lost. Any last words before I kill you both and find a way to restore myself to my own body and magic?" The words looked wrong coming out of Ginny's mouth and the expression of madness and triumph that gleamed in Ginny's eyes almost caused Ron to scream again. Harry on the other hand saw his own wand a mere foot away from him, clearly having rolled to this spot when Ron felled Voldemort's body. Harry grabbed it and cast a disarming spell of his own at Voldemort, Voldemort shielded it. Fortunately, Voldemort ran into the same problem he had earlier as Ron's "Expelliarmus" collided with his head. Harry, remembering what had happened last time, quickly shot off a knockback jinx and sent Voldemort sprawling back several feet. The wand was sent flying towards Harry and the diary was sent straight into the air. Harry then ran to reach the wand first.
Ron just stood and watched, the adrenalin that had coursed through him hardly a few minutes earlier completely forgotten as he fought against the body of his little sister. Harry shouted "Ron, the diary you need to stab it with a basilisk fang." To say that Ron sprung into action upon hearing Harry's words would be a very generous depiction of his response. He looked down at the diary and bent to grab it, only to have the body of his sister slam into him and knock him off balance. Voldemort wrestled with Ron for control of Lockhart's wand as Harry ran for the diary, his own ability to use a spell forgotten. Harry grabbed the diary and moved for the basilisk. Triumphantly slamming it down upon a basilisk fang as Voldemort screamed, "NO!"
With the diary destroyed Voldemort no longer had a base of power from which to possess Ginny. Ginny's body fell, lifeless, over Ron. The whole episode over, Ron crawled out from under his sister and held her body in his lap. The tears returning as the truth of her death was confirmed.
A/N: Gameplan; this is part one of a two-part prologue. I decided to separate them because despite the closeness in the timeline (part two will cover the aftermath). The tone of the second part will be incredibly different and I felt that they would be better separate. Expect this to be among the shorter chapters I write here. This just felt like the best place to cap it off.
I hope to post the second part of the prologue tomorrow. Third year will only be a few chapters long before the real story kicks off in year four. Leave a review to tell me how horrible I am for killing off Ginny or how interesting and unique you find the idea of Ginny dying in the chamber (I don't think it is actually either of those things?)!
