I was experimenting a little with this. The format, first person with no quotation marks, was inspired by a book I loved as a child, Our Only May Amelia. The style was always sort of endearing to me, and I thought it fit for Ron as a narrator. Though I probably got a bit too flowery for him towards the end.

Archery Competition: Bow

It's November or December or something and it's cold, fucking frigid. And it's not as if we're playing Quidditch out there either. We're sitting, waiting for something bad to happen and turning into ice.

We're invisible, I said to Harry when we packed for the first move. We've got every ward known to man on us. How are they going to find us, walk up and down every square inch of Britain with their wands out? Surely we can stay here more than a day or two.

Hermione overheard. How did they find us in the café, then? she said.

I dunno, Hermione.

Then we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again, haven't we?

She said it breezily, flourishing her wand all over the place to make a statement, and obviously, that was the end of the conversation.

Truth is we haven't got anything to do during the day but pack up and unpack.

Hi, Ron, says Harry, and I jump out of my skin. All you can see is the shiny bits of his glasses in the dark.

Fuck, I snap at him, fuck, why would you sneak up on me like that!?

He breathes out hard. I didn't sneak up on you, Ron, he says. If you can't hear someone coming out of the tent then maybe it's good I'm taking over watch.

Just his tone stirs up frustration in me, like mine must have in him, though I didn't mean it. All I'm good for is creating frustration, feeding it, spreading it like it's the damned flu.

He's swaddled in about every woolen thing we have between us three. He moves into the light of my wand and suddenly, acutely, I notice her hat on him: the blue and yellow stocking cap she was wearing when I went outside, that she said she got for skiing when I lamely asked about it just to talk to her.

I don't want to picture her but it just comes. I can see her in the dim tent wandlight holding him back before he goes, tenderly placing her hat on his head and tucking it over his ears. Probably wrapped the scarf around his mouth too. She worries about him like no one's ever worried about me

I'm going to bed, I say. I consider giving him my gloves as I go inside but don't do it out of spite.

Harry grunts a vague acknowledgment before I tack the tent flap behind me.

Hullo, I say weakly to Hermione, who's in her bunk reading Beedle the Bard. She's too busy checking her book against some other book and doesn't say anything but makes a little motion with her arm, almost a wave but more of a shrug.

I'm so tired that that just saps everything out of me, and I slowly pull my blankets over me, rolling up against the canvas wall. Harry stays up almost round the clock these days but I sleep long hours. Being awake and here and with him and with her exhausts me.

The metal was freezing against my neck when I put it on but it's warm as me now, like we're the same. I fall asleep wearing it and don't notice until the morning.

The conversations we have now don't ever end. It feels like we talk about the same things every day, picking at threads that weren't even wrong until they get all pulled out of shape and stick out every time you see yourself.

Are you reading that again? I ask Hermione. I spit it. Watching her stare at that book day in and day out frustrates me and everything in my mind is gone now but frustration.

Yes I am, Ron, she says, sounding like my mother.

What do you think, there's a code hidden in fucking Babbity Rabbity?

She purses her lips. That's not what I'm saying, she says. I just know it has to mean something. Dumbledore wouldn't have given it to me if it couldn't help us; it has to be something I could figure out…

Let it go, I tell her. That's stupid.

Well excuse me then! exclaims Hermione. We'll just go off your suggestions. Wander about the countryside hoping we find Helga Hufflepuff's cup lying in a ditch; that's how we ought to do it!

Least I'll admit I don't know anything, I say, wondering if I'd ever had sympathy for her, unable to remember. You can't handle not being better than the rest of us. Brightest witch of her age doesn't know what it's like to be useless.

It's almost a thrill, watching her face crush and uncrush as she tries not to let me in.

You've got the horcrux, she says forcefully. Harry gave it to you, didn't he?

My chest caves in around the locket, pulling it into me. What does it matter?

Give it to me, she says.

No, I say.

Come on, she says.

No, I say.

Ronald Weasley, says Hermione, I have had it up to here with you. She's starting to fizz with rage and somehow I'm glad to see it. I'm smiling.

Good, I reply. So stop talking to me, then.

She throws down Beedle on the chair, violent like I've never seen her with a book, and storms outside without a coat or gloves. Alone in the tent victory feels just as bad as losing.

Hermione says that the locket gets to us and changes us but she doesn't know what I am. All these years I've been waiting for them to figure it out, that I'm a monster who loathes them and loathes how much others love them and loathes how much I do. The fear is something primal like thirst or hunger. Whenever they're talking together it's about me even if it isn't, every time they laugh privately or scowl. Every day I'm scared of finally getting what I deserve.

But I can't give the horcrux to her because if she's right I don't want her to put it on. I don't want to know what dark thoughts she's too afraid to show me, because I think I know already.

The heaviness on my breastbone presses calmingly on my breaths and my heart.