Prologue: When the Tarnished Knight Met The Fairy Princess
Ron Weasley knew he wasn't anything special. His brothers were all special; Charlie worked with dragons, and Bill got to go work with goblins with heaps of gold, and Percy got all the good grades, and Fred and George…well, Fred and George got into heaps of trouble, but they made everybody laugh! Ginny was the only girl, so to Mum and Dad, she's special because of that!
But Ron…Ron wasn't special. He couldn't play pranks like the twins, or work with goblins, or dragons, or be a girl, even if his Mum would make him wear dresses before Ginny was born because she'd wanted a girl so badly. He couldn't fly on a broomstick without crashing into something and almost breaking his neck (curse Fred for telling him broomsticks flew by themselves and all the rider had to do was sit on the stupid thing), he couldn't come home after a month at the dragon reserves and tell scary stories about the great bloody beasts, he couldn't take pages and pages of notes without his hand cramping up and getting his nose splattered with ink so Mum would rub his nose with a handkerchief to try and get rid of it before it dried. So, what could Ron do?
He knew he was good at chess, being the only one in their family to beat their father in less than a dozen moves. Yet beyond that, there was nothing. Nothing to make his parents proud, nothing to get that look of pride and delight on his Mum's face that she wore whenever Percy brought home all O's, or when Ginny's first word had been "Mummy", or when Bill and Charlie had graduated, or when Bill got a job. Nothing to make his Dad ruffle his hair and say "My son can do that!" Nothing, nothing.
And yet he wanted it. He wanted it more than anything. More than for his Mum to remember that he didn't like corned beef in his sandwiches, or for his Dad to realize that he didn't think that the muggle fascination was stupid or crazy or silly like the grown-ups at work would say. More than riding a broomstick before he got too old, or getting rich when he grew up so his family wouldn't have to worry about money, even.
But perhaps... he didn't want it as much as he wanted a friend. Ron knew that Ottery St. Catchpole, although not the largest town, had enough children that almost every boy and girl, muggle or witch or wizard, had made at least one friend. Some even had more, having play dates and sleep overs at each other's houses and walking together to and from school and the grocer's and the candy shop down the road. Fred and George made friends easily, being friendly and outgoing and far too invasive of other peoples' personal space to not be noticed, and even if they played pranks, they still somehow made friends with their prank victim, even if said prank victim called them "a smelly pair of toads!" and threatened to tell their mother. Ginny met several girls a bit younger than her from the primary school downtown, and though they were muggles, that didn't prevent homemade Weasley chocolate-chip cookies and offers to come over and play under the apple trees in the backyard. Ginny even came home one day with her hair braided into little red pigtails by a school friend named Emily. Charlie made friends at work, friends who sometimes accompanied them home to the Burrow to tell tales of all the dragons that Charlie had gotten chased by, and Bill had brought home a girlfriend or two before, though they never seemed to meet his Mum's standards. As for Percy, he'd made a few acquaintances at a study group at school, and had once, on the threat of being hung by his ankles from the attic window by Fred and George, grudgingly admitted that he had "developed some feelings" for a girl named Penelope Clearwater. Ron had seen a photo of her in Percy's room once, hidden in his old striped pillow case with a hole in one side.
Ron wasn't so lucky. Sure, he had a few people who said "hello!" or "good morning!" as he passed them at primary school, and there were plenty of elderly muggle people who'd greet him and ruffle his hair and call him "a little scamp" when he went to the town park to play, and there were sometimes older muggle children who'd take pity on him and let him play tag or rugby or football with them, but that was it. He'd even tried to see if he could make friends with his brother's friends before, but they were all too old, or too big, too grownup to see anyone more than a little boy, their friend's "little brother", the kid lost in a sea of red-headed siblings. They didn't see Ron.
Ron didn't want to be just Ron. He wanted to be special. But the "special" spots were, it seemed, already taken up and crowded by all his siblings. How was he going to find a person who knew him as Ron, when there were already so many "special" Weasleys?
Even if it took him the rest of his life, Ron was going to find someone who saw him as him, not just another Weasley, another redhead, another little brother with freckles and dirt on his nose.
So, with this thought firmly in mind, he decided to go "friend-hunting". He wasn't sure when he'd be back, though hopefully it would before his Mum noticed.
Bill had once told him that the curse-breakers he would work with often had a rucksack of sorts to carry things they needed for a trip, like spare clothes, water canteens, antidotes for venom and poisons, and medicine for any allergies. When he came back from a curse-breaking trip in Albania several weeks later, Ron had been brought back a faded, beat up old rucksack (he'd apparently bought it in a Muggle town on the way to the curse-breaking site) stuffed with pockets, spare compartments, and little survival tools from both the muggle and the wizarding worlds: a small, folded blanket with a heating charm cast on it to keep the wearer toasty warm, a water canteen with replenishing and cooling charms to keep an endless supply of fresh water, a little Swiss army knife that one of Bill's teammates had modified to include cooking utensils and a "lumos" button, and a bizarre-looking compass engraved with a design on the lid of a map of an island with some sort of water fountain in the middle that a muggle trader had sold Bill for a few Knuts, as "the stupid bloody thing was broken and wouldn't ever point north properly!". The bag had even been outfitted with a locking charm to prevent the contents from falling out or being stolen.
Ron remembered vividly that Fred and George had looked on with envy as Bill presented him with the rucksack; the tools in that sack would have surely come in handy for pranking when their Dad would drag them on a "Muggle camping expedition!" (otherwise known as the times when their father would have them sleep outside under the stars and cook hotdogs on sticks, although Fred had once cursed the hotdogs to dance several times so that no one could catch them and eat them.). Their Mum had pitched a fit at Ron being given the sack, saying that Bill shouldn't be giving any of his brothers a knife to use. Dad had been ecstatic, asking eagerly if he could take the rucksack apart to see the Muggle craftsmanship of the stitching. Ginny, at first, had been interested in the rucksack and asked to see inside, but then had grown bored and wandered off to play with the toy bird Bill had brought for her, giggling as the enchanted toy flitted about.
Ron had merely been surprised that it had been him who'd gotten the rucksack. That didn't stop him, though, from going up to Bill and hugging him around the waist, burying his face into the bottom of his brother's ragged, sun-bleached blue shirt to hide the tears suddenly threatening to overwhelm his vision. This wasn't a present for the twins, or Percy, or Ginny, or Charlie, or his parents. It was a present just for him.
He'd carried the beaten up thing all day, until at bedtime, when he'd stashed it under his bed. It was shoved in carefully though, not like the old toys and faded quilts under there that wouldn't fit in the attic space. When everyone had gone to bed, he'd whispered to the Ghoul living in the attic, telling the old creature excitedly about his new possession. The Ghoul couldn't really say anything back, but Ron liked to think that he was happy for him all the same. The excitement wouldn't wear off for over a week; Ron walked in a slight daze, carrying the warm feeling around like a well-loved teddy.
It felt good to have things.
Be as it may, the moment that Ron decided to look for his new friend, he just knew that he needed to bring the rucksack along too. Slinging the old bag over his shoulder like he'd seen Charlie do to his jacket whenever he left for the dragon reserves, he headed down to the kitchen to grab a snack to take along. Those new apricot tarts his Mum made were wafting a rather enticing smell throughout the house. After all, it wouldn't do to be hungry on his quest, right?
As he walked out of the Burrow, a handkerchief full of tarts knotted up inside a pocket of the rucksack, Ron mentally congratulated himself on thinking of bringing along an extra tart. He hoped his new friend liked apricot.