002.

Life with the Weasley family was very different from how Ron remembered his young home life, his father would head out anytime someone floo messaged with a report on muggle artifacts, this in addition to the normal morning to afternoon work schedule at his desk in the ministry was keep Arthur quite busy, and Ron usually only see him at dinner times.

After one week of being home after graduation Bill had started his training with Gringotts, while they had no doubt of his ability as a curse breaker, he would after all be participating in the curse breaking team stationed in Egypt, and while he's there he would be representing not only himself but Gringotts as well, so obviously he had to go through all the procedural trainings to better suit their requirements. So during the week he was leaving home in the mornings and returning in the afternoon, so Ron didn't really get to see lots of him, but he observed why Bill was well liked and respected by his siblings. Aside from his educational success at Hogwarts and role as head boy of the school, he was also a great older brother, intimate enough that those under him were willing to confide in him, but he also has the authority of the older sibling to keep everyone under control in the rare occasion when the parents were out working or running errands.

The twins after returning from Hogwarts has managed to move their pranks up a notch. Before starting school their pranks were more fueled by their ability to perform accidental magic often used on the younger siblings in attempt to frighten them or a more direct physical approach like the once incident when they somehow snuck a garden gnome into Ginny's room at night and she woke up the entire house with her scream. But since coming back from school they had laid low for the first week, their mother even thought they were just studying in their room, until they pulled a prank on Percy involving homemade itchy potion sprayed over Percy's school book. Things eventually started to die down a bit when Molly stormed their room and confiscated all their potion ingredients, preventing them from further production. They also spent lots of time with Charlie flying on brooms hoping to join the Gryffindor quidditch team next year.

A few weeks into the summer Ron was now starting to get used to his new life. His family around him had barely seem to take notice in his changes, they do observe that he seem to be more quiet, and had managed to stay out of the way of the twin's pranks most notably he had started going around and asking his brothers for their old textbooks and seemed to spent an increased amount of time in his room atop the staircase. They just however assumed he was starting to become interested in magic, and were sort of trending in Percy's direction. With more than enough siblings to entertain themselves they mostly leave him be.

….I'm the dividing line.. And I'm back….

For Ron one of the very first thing he did once he had accepted this new life was to quickly assess himself with magic.

Ron was ten and all signs indicate that he was physically healthy, and had already awakened his magic, ie performed accidental magic. From memory it was during another case of the twins pranks, they were attempting to mess with Ron by keeping his toy just barely out of his reach and taunting him with it, Ron ended up shooting off the ground and snatching the toy out of his brother's hands, and proceed to bounce all over the room unable to control the force of his ascend. Ron did not however continue to explore his magic, after failing to control it he just kind of gave up on it.

Ron wasn't too worried about the time forfeited between now and the awakening, as he's not worried about his safety at the moment, in contrast to his last life when he was just a runaway child wizard. He would of course began harnessing his wizarding powers as soon as possible.

The very first thing Ron started with was the practice of Occlumency, protection of one's emotions and memories from trained legilimens, important as Ron would prefer to keep his secretes hidden. Ron had already been well versed in this craft in the previous life, and it's with ease he manages to establish occlumency shields in his mind.

The magical textbook was Ron's next step, back in his day before the existence of the printing press, only powerful families with magical heritage could have access to magical books, as a young and lone wizard the old Ron only owned a handful of books, some of them written by himself, plus he was interested to see how young wizards of this age was learning magic.

The first thing Ron noticed was how Hogwarts had expanded to include a multitude of subjects, as opposed to the five from when he was there, including core subjects elective subjects, and things such as OWLs to weed out students from more difficult subjects.

The first textbook Ron gave his attention to was of course A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, as he was eager to find out how the world has changed since his days. From what he could gathered in the brief historical descriptions, the relations between the wizarding community and muggles continued to get worst until eventually the newly formed ministry enacted the secrecy act, which soon become an international standard, the act allows the wizarding community to segregate themselves from the muggle worlds and gathering smaller wizarding families to form local communities for protection and support.

And once muggles experienced some sort of technology progression, and population increase, the once remote landscapes became dotted with dense muggle settlement, driving magical creatures to migrate to even less populated areas or in some cases become extinct. The spread of muggle territory to cover the majority of the nation forces the wizarding community to integrate with muggle society, with exception of magical estates that could afford permanent muggle repelling wards, thankfully advancements in memory erasing charms the new found enchantment to make muggles skip over certain buildings allowed the wizarding community to safely live in proximity to but not to the knowledge of the mass muggle community.

The most notable shift to Ron was the way the society has changed overall, everyone muggles and wizards alike were now expected to live a safe life barring personal choices to put themselves at risk, as wars and battles are no longer common occurrence, whereas he once struggled to become a powerful wizard for the sake of surviving witch hunting raids, encounters with magical beasts, and the occasional duel with others over disputes, people nowadays are more worried about things such as career success, monetary gains, and luxury items. While individuals of strong and powerful magic still received respect from the magical communities, but other than those interested in the dueling circuits or becoming an auror for the ministry, the common folk are not that concerned with becoming a powerful mage.

The recent history basically revolves around pure-blood supremacy in reaction to increase ratio of muggleborns entering the magical community, and the two dark wizards leading the movement. Grindelwald the first of the two, dominated around the 1940's until he eventually lost in a duel with Albus Dumbledore, and disbanded his followers. The second much more recent one was Voldemort, or he who must not be named, who was in power until just nine years ago, and more importantly unlike Grindelwald he was based in England, the magical society at large is still experiencing impact left by him and his death eaters. His downfall was shrouded in mystery, as the facts only included him waking into a house alone on Halloween to essentially kill off a family of three, a young couple and their one year old son. Somehow he killed the adults but disappeared after that, leaving their son Harry Potter with a scar on the forehead. His parents had experienced Voldemort's terror and like the rest of the magical community still had no wish of speaking about him by name.

There were dark wizards a thousand years ago as well, but they mostly mass murdered muggles to collect their souls for rituals, or use their bodies for experiments, only wanting to attack other wizards in extreme conditions, as to avoid alienating themselves from the community, amidst the wizarding societies struggles against muggles, no one really paid much attention to dark wizards. Dark wizards really became "dark" after the passing of the secrecy act, as any of their actions against muggles were essentially putting the world wide wizarding society at risk of exposure.

While history interested Ron, as he had once imagined what the future would become and getting to find out about it himself was no doubt interesting. But his interest was mostly on the other subjects, he was proficient at potions and magical herbs as they were often involved in treating materials within rune crafting, and had confidence that those subjects would come naturally for him, his interest was mostly surrounding charms and transfiguration textbooks. This interest was not because of his lack of experience in the subject, but more how they were being taught. In the past these things came more naturally, and the knowledge behind the process was often hidden, individuals often have a completely different process when it came to the practical use of these magic.

Take transfiguration for example, if you could transfigure a stone into the shape of a dog, you did a transfiguration spell, but the dog has neither the ability to bark, to move nor the outside coat of a dog. Ron was not interested in the act of changing an object into an animal but he would like to know how the process was taught, and how wizards of today go about performing transfiguration.

With charms he was more interested in the concept of "standard" spells, and how the textbook aims to have every student capable of performing charms up to a certain consistent level at the least. In the past ability to perform charms was always a hit or miss type situation, as students are either talented at certain spells and capable of performing them way above the average skills of the classmates, or down right hopeless and could barely make anything happen, this despite receiving the same lecture and demonstration frustrated the mentors to no end. The new charms were taught with much more precision, down to things like tone of the enchanted words as you cast, to the finesse of wand movements, combined with mental will all interacting with the individual's magical powers. In the olden days you were just given the magical words of the spell, a short demonstration of the effects, and then set loose to practice them, no wonder the students showed inconsistence in their progression!

The rest of the introductory subjects held little interest for Ron as he didn't care much for star watching, defense against "dark" magic, and certainly don't think he needs a lecture on the theories behind magic, spells, and enchantments.

As the rest of summer went by Ron really feel himself embracing this new identity, he was beginning to behave more childish, and would occasionally find himself enjoying the time spent playing with his siblings in various games and activities, maybe it was the fact he's stuck in a boy's body, or the fact he's surrounded by a group of teens and children, no matter what it is he was no doubt happy about the situation. Heck! He even participated in George and Fred's pranks on several occasions. His process of self-teaching magic was going smoothly as well, making good process on reading the textbooks and performing practical parts of the lessons with ease even without a wand, by the time the twins went back to Hogwarts he would have at least read through most of the second year curriculum in time for them to take the textbooks with them back to school.

Soon the day came for the older boys to board the Hogwarts express, a magical train from London up to Scotland specially catering to Hogwarts students, Ron had decided to tag along as next year he would be boarding the train as well, not to mention this would be the last chance for him to leave the area immediately surrounding the Burrow, since he would be left home with Ginny and his mother for the rest of the school year.

/

The morning of the train ride was full of chaos, four of the boys were rushing to stuff the last of their stuff into their school trunks and drag them downstairs, as well as wolfing down the breakfast Molly had prepared, it had been decided that Bill would head out to his training program like usual while their father Author would accompany them to the train station, Ginny and Ron would also be tagging alone as their mother wanted to see the boys off but didn't want to leave the small children home by themselves.

As soon as everyone had finished eating, Mrs. Weasley casted a charm on the dishes to have them line themselves up next to the sink and wash themselves, and rushed the kids to get a move on and get ready to leave. Bill stepped out in to the yard and with a wave of one hand spun on the spot and apparated away to Diagon Alley. The brothers got up and started moving their school trunks into the Ford Anglia owned by the family, the car was clearly magical as it managed to fit in four large school trunks in the back of the car, as well as six children in the back row.

The car must have been engraved with magical runes and enchanted to expand while accommodating an increased amount of passengers, while also keeping up an illusion for people outside of the car to only see a reasonable amount of people within the car.

As Ron sit down between Ginny and Charlie in the car, he reached out with his magical sense to further inspect the vehicle.

Also enchanted to be able to become invisible and fly, not to mention whatever Arthur did to it in terms of rune inscribing plus the continuous injection of magical power by Arthur as he continue to "tweak" it over the years must have somehow accidently allowed the car to develop a magical awareness and some kind of intelligence, much like how the wizards of old tamed animal familiars with their magic given them magical abilities and increased intelligence.

Ron had of course no understanding of the combustion engine the car uses but Arthur had clearly been able to alter the car such that it now ran off of magical powers provided by the driver.

As the car rolled in to the city Ron was met with the spectacle of modern building that is the concrete forest, in his day the even the most densely populated areas were dotted with house made out of wood, straws, and even dirt, it was unbelievable how far the muggles have come since the tenth century.

Once they were getting out of the car, Molly looked down at her watch and declared that it was a quarter from 11, and they ought to hurry if they don't want to miss the train. So eight of them rush to load the luggage on to push carts and hurried towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten, and started pushing through the magically concealed entrance pair by pair.

Ron ran through the entrance hand in hand with the youngest Weasley, as they had barely made it in time to board the train the children were rushing their goodbyes, and boarding the bright red train with steam exiting the top of the first cart. Ron thought to himself, must be another unknown muggle device, he then joined in on the family goodbyes.

As Molly was busy giving the twins a short lecture on discipline for the coming school year, Charlie pulled Ron to the side.

"Ronnie, you will be alone with little Gin for the year, try and spend some more time with her will you? Gotta make sure she don't get too lonely, and it would do you some good to not be holed up with that ghoul above you all day."

Ron had no idea how to hang out with a sister, he didn't have any brothers in the past either, but he just hung out with his male siblings similar to how he would hang out with his other male friends, evidently Charlie had noticed that Ron wasn't spending a lot of time with Ginny and is trying to push him to spend more time with her.

"Yeah sure, I mean I don't really know how to hang out with her, but I'll do my best I guess."

"Just try and spend more time maybe visit the Lovegoods with her or playing some chess or cards with her, anything will do."

"Don't worry I'll try and keep her company."

Charlie flashed Ron a charismatic grin, and after kissing their mother on the cheek he boarded the train.

Ron felt his mother grabbing him and Ginny in each arm and holding them against her side, as the Hogwarts express sound the horns and started moving away. The brothers aboard the train waved their hands goodbye from their compartment, Molly was shaking a bit but held her two youngest a bit tighter against her body, oh how she would dread the days when even her too youngest leave the nest and she would be left by herself.

….

Their trip home was relatively silent, they could clearly feel the absence left by the older boys going off to sleep, the back row that magically stretched out to accommodate six siblings, were now spacious with plenty of room for the two of them even with no magic.

Ron, Ginny and Molly parted ways with Arthur as he dropped them off at in front of the Leaky Cauldron to floo home using the floo network, while he headed into the ministry to fill his timesheet.

The trio arrived in the living room fireplace, Molly immediately went off to the kitchen to do some cleaning apparently wanted to spend some time alone. Ginny headed off to her room on the first floor and shut her door. Ron stood there by the fireplace not quite sure what to do next.

I could just go upstairs and get started on reading the third year text books left behind, or try and perfect my avifors spell, or some other charms and transfigurations.

Or I could try and comfort Molly and Ginny a bit, like what Bill or Charlie would have done.

Ron sighed to himself, yes for the next eight hours or so or until Bill or his father returned from work he'd be the man of the house, and he would take it on himself to take care of his family.

Ron walked into the kitchen to see Molly silent as she's putting away the dishes with her wand, not even listening to the wizarding radio like she usually does whenever she's doing chroes.

"Um …. Mum are you alright you seemed a bit down since the express station?"

Molly was surprised to hear Ron come in the kitchen and crudely attempt to comfort her, she had always thought of him as the runt of the family at least in terms of intellectual development, likely victim to the twin's pranks, and way too trusting for his own good especially when it comes to accepting things from George and Fred. So far she had seen very few occasions when Ron seem to be putting forth effort.

"Oh Ronnie!" She exclaimed, tucking away her wand in her apron and wrapped her arms around him in a firm embrace.

"I'm fine just a bit sad to see your brothers go, it kind of reminds me of how in two years even you and Ginny would be off to school leaving me alone in this house."

Ron could understand his mother's feelings, no doubt it had to be hard raising seven children and having to see them go off to boarding school for the majority of the year, combined with Bill's scheduled leave to go to Egypt, in less than ten years this women who had devoted all of her time to her family would have to live with all of her children leaving her nest.

He hugged her back, trying to put some emotion into it.

"Mum we'll be fine, you still got me and Ginge, not to mention they will be coming back for Christmas to see Bill off to Egypt!"

He pulled his face away from her, to briefly look her in the eye.

"And I'm sure even when we all move out, we'd make sure to visit as much as possible! There's like seven of us so you can expect to be kept busy!"

Then in attempt to cheer her up a bit, and to reveal some of his magical talent, he waved at the dishes with his hand and returned them to the cabinets. He was delighted to see her eyes widen a bit with surprise.

"Since when were you able to do that? Is this what you've been working on all summer?"

"Yea mum, I wanted to get a head start on magic, I want to be like Bill and Charlie, mature and respected and be able to look out for my brothers and sister, by the time I get to Hogwarts."

From this summer Ron had concluded that both Bill and Charlie were mature young men and could easily lead and take care of the younger siblings, while Percy no doubt tries the hardest to imitate them he seems to keep falling a bit short, as he could spend the time studying and matching their educational success, but in doing so he didn't have enough time or communication skills to have the same bonds with the younger siblings. The twins would no doubt stand up for their family, but for the most part struggle to keep themselves out of trouble. Ron had decided he wanted to be like the two oldest siblings, as well as try and play an active role in this family that he wanted but never had, until it fell into his laps.

"I also promised Charlie, I would try and spend more time with Ginny, but I don't really know what to do with Ginny, mum?"

"That's so sweet of you, oh she's a sweet heart, but she is a bit shy and not very confident about herself. You just gotta bring her out of her shell a bit, my baby girl has always felt a bit left out being the only girl you know."

Ron nodded and smiled as he watched his mother, clearly feeling much better now, let go of him and announced she will be getting an early start on her holiday knitting this year as she head for the living room.

Ron chuckled to himself and proceed to walk up the stairs stopping in front of Ginny's room.

…..

Oh Ron was feeling nervous right now, in his past experience he had played the role of respected rune master, mentor to students, trusted friend, even someone's love interest, but he has never had to play the role of an older brother.

He knocked on the door lightly, opening the door to see Ginny sulking on her bed curled up against the wall. Ron approached the bed and sat down on the edge.

"Ginge, you feeling alright?"

Ginny looked up from her arms, and turned to Ron.

"What are you doing here? I thought you'd be busy holed up in your room right now?"

"I came to cheer you up Ginny! I promised Charlie at the station that I would take good care of our baby sister, and I can't have you sulking by yourself in your room."

Ginny gave him a weak smile. "I'm fine now, I just needed a moment."

Ron reached over and pulled her by the shoulder into a hug, tugging his head over her right shoulder.

"Come on! We'll be spending the next year by ourselves, we got to be there for each other remember?"

"But last year we barely spent any time together, you never wanted to spent time with me and mum knitting and didn't want to visit Luna with me either!"

"Well that just say I was nine last year, and ten seemed to be a good year for me. I'll make sure to spend more time with you and mum and go along with you when you visit the Lovegoods, I'll also try and convince mom to let us out in the orchard as well, so we could play with those old brooms."

"That will be great Ron!" Ginny said, feeling a bit better now, clearly excited in the prospect of those suggestions.

"We can also try and invite Luna over some time, she'll be by herself as well!"

The two continued to discuss the possibilities until lunch time when Molly open the door to find them chatting about excitedly.

Ha! This was already going better than last year! She thought to herself.

….

Ron and Ginny was really getting close over the months, he hung out with Ginny during the day and would spend an hour or two studying magic before going to bed, he had manage to obtain their mother's approval for him and Ginny to fly around in the orchard with the family's dusty old brooms, as she had decided he was "responsible" enough. This pleased Ginny immensely quickly began to abandon knitting all together and dragging him out to the orchard any chance she's got. They also talked a lot more, Ron more often than not played the part of a listener, allowing Ginny to talk about whatever she wanted. Her concerns about spending the next year by herself, or not being able to make friends at Hogwarts once she gets there, or even her secrete crush on the legendary boy who lived. Aside from the last one Ron manage to convince her that everything will be fine promising to write to her every week when he would be at school next year, also promising that he would do a bit of scouting for her, and if she was struggling to make friends he would no doubt introduce her to some of her friends.

They also manage to visit Luna once or twice a week, in the beginning at least, but since Luna's dad, Xenophillius Lovegood who worked from home, wasn't nearly the cook Mrs. Weasley was, they started inviting Luna over more and more.

Luna was a mystery to Ron, no doubt she was smart, nice, and friendly, but she would continuously talk about magical creatures that only she would seem to be able to perceive, but overall Ron thought she was nice, not to mention she and Ginny were the only two young girls from wizarding families in this village, so she was the only one available for Ginny to hang out with next year once Ron too, leaves for Hogwarts.

The Christmas holidays came and gone, the school children all arrived home to spend the holidays. The family enjoyed Christmas, then send Bill off at the ministry as he went through the international floo network to Egypt. Charlie skillfully dropped the bomb that he has been accepted to study dragons at Romania, where there is a large dragon conservation area, right before leaving, giving his mother no time to nag him about it.

Immediately after the brothers went back to Hogwarts, Ron decides to begin a personal project. He wanted to prepare for Hogwarts by creating some gear for himself, he was after all a master rune crafter, and he would prefer to leave the boundaries of home somewhat protected. Ron began shifting his schedule a bit, without cutting time with spent with his family he dug up the best set from the collection of Bill's old robes, and will be enchanting the robes for himself.

The process of enchanting the robes was quite tedious, the robe aside from being old and used was made from basic fabric and by itself has no magical properties. Ron had no intentions of casting powerful enchants on the robe as it's material simply would not be able to withstand it for long duration of time, but something still had to be done to make it a bit magically pliable as a base material.

The first step was a ritual he haven't done for a long time, it was the most basic way to add low amounts of magical potential to otherwise non-magical objects. It involved the moon, the ritual consist of creating a magical ward with an object placed atop it, and the ward would absorb essence from the moon light and release it slowly into the object, making it just slightly magical, an incredibly useful technique for beginner rune crafting or if your straight broke and can't afford better materials.

The second step was the engraving of magical runes, ideally in this fabric like material it would be best to actually sew the runes on to the fabric, but that would require magical threads, instead Ron simply plan on mixing some of his own blood, just a tiny amount, with ink and scribe the magical runes on the robes.

Actual engraving of runes is of course not as easy as just writing the runes correctly, the key is being able to insert the scribe's magical aura evenly within the magical material making up the runes, to have your final product not only function, but function consistently with little variance.

It took three months of hanging the robe up against Ron's window for the ritual to reach Ron's desired effect. The rune inscribing was of course the easiest part for Ron, having lots of experience and talent in said area, but it still took almost three months for the runes to work according to Ron's plans. The robe was to be self-cleansing, offering a weak magical shield against spells and upon interacting with a potentially dangerous or powerful spell would immediately teleport Ron randomly a hundred meters away, and produce a thick layer of dark smoke on the original spot allowing Ron to escape. All achieved with runes that Ron assumed died with his old self as he was the discoverer of them. He hadn't even had a chance to share his findings before the incident that send him here, and since Ron couldn't find any mentions of them in Bill's collection of rune books, he assume no one aside from him has mastered them.

Before Ron knew it the school year was coming to an end, and his brothers would be heading home for the summer soon, also by the end of the summer he would be on his way to Hogwarts, something he's been looking forward to since the summer before.

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A/N

1. Bit off with the timing of the chapter coming to a close, next chapter will likely span from when Ron receives his letter to him meeting Harry on the Hogwarts express.

2. Thinking about setting 5k to be chapter length some will be longer and some will be shorter but will be aiming for 5k.

3. As usual excuse poor English skills, and all rights belong to original author of the book series.

Edits. Also went through adjust Ron's age to 10.