The Second Time

He hadn't consciously decided to walk there, but somehow he found himself outside the girls' bathroom on the second floor. He needed somewhere to process everything that had happened before he would return to the chaos that was the Burrow.

Moaning Myrtle looked suspicious as he walked into the bathroom and opened the Chamber. He didn't need a broom this time, his wand would be enough. It still wasn't a pleasant experience descending into the cavern beneath.

It never failed to scare him that the Chamber had been built for the sole purpose of killing children because of who there parents were, or weren't. That a thousand years on people were still fighting over the same meaningless argument divides the Wizarding World.

It hadn't changed since he had last been down here, though maybe there were a few more rodent skeletons that had appeared over the preceding year. The passageway was just as gloomy, illuminating the basilisk skin in all the wrong ways.

The basilisk was even more decomposed than last time, but the ink puddle remained. But nothing mattered. He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to be able to get it through his thick head that he had seen a man die. The Chamber seemed perfect for that.

Sirius was no angel, yet he stood up for what was right even with the pressure he was under from his family. He was the best of us, in that respect. Was this really the same man who had spent the past year hiding in the very house he grew up in?

And then he thought about Harry, who had through even more but was forced to keep living. Ron wasn't stupid. He knew that Harry was hurting deep inside from the double loss of his Godfather and the promise of the first real home that he would know.

He himself had never realised how hard it must have been for Harry to watch from the sidelines as he saw the Weasley family with the only thing he had ever wanted: love. Ron sunk to the floor as he thought about the pain that had almost come from that love.

"Back again, Ronald?"

There, walking regally towards him was the aged Headmaster with a sort of sad smile on his face. There was sympathy to his tone. But, as Ron thought, how could the great Albus Dumbledore know what it was like to almost lose someone you love?

Ron didn't even bother to look back. He continued to stare at the puddle of ink by his feet. "Again, sir?" He inquired tentatively, "I don't quite know what you mean?"

"Oh, I think you do. I don't need an invisibility cloak to remain undetected, Mr Weasley."

Ron whipped his head round in horror at that statement. A brief smile graced Dumbledore's face.

"You see, last year, not long after Harry returned from the maze, young Myrtle approached me in quite a state." He said softly, "She told of a red-headed boy coming into her bathroom and speaking in parseltongue, before descending into the Chamber. There are not many students who know the true horror of what occurred here." There was a short pause before Professor Dumbledore added knowingly, "I wondered how long it would be before you would come back."

He though for a second before he replied quietly, "He almost killed my sister, sir. He ordered the deaths of my uncles. He destroyed Harry's entire family."

Dumbledore swept gracefully to sit on the floor beside him. "But that's not what's troubling you." That was a statement, not a question.

"No sir," He admitted. Then his voice changed to a pleading, frightened tone, "I watched a man die, sir. I watched as my friends were tortured. Why am I not feeling anything?"

"It's not weak to admit when you are scared. I, myself, remember quaking in my boots before my first duel. Maybe you are trying to forget what you saw because it scares you?"

"There is going to be a war, isn't there sir."

"My dear Ronald, the war has already started. Believe me, Mr Black is not the first, nor will he be the last person to die fighting Voldemort."

"My family are marked, aren't they sir? We aren't all going to make it, are we?"

"I cannot say. But yes, Mr Weasley, your family has been marked since before I was around. Which, based on the students' betting pool, is 200 years last time I checked. I believe Messrs Fredrick and George Weasley placed that one." Ron smirked at that statement.

The odd pair sat in silence for a few minutes before Ron had the courage to open his mouth. "Sir?" A pause. "What really happened down here? What did it do to my little sister?"

"It possessed her. It took control of her body and used it for unspeakable acts. The only thing Miss Weasley can be grateful for is that her attacker did not have a permanent body or the mental and physical damage would have been much worse, I'm sure."

"She still has nightmares about it." He confessed. "Sometimes she will wake up in the middle of the night screaming, but she refuses to talk about it. Harry never got over it either. He'll start muttering 'Please don't be dead Ginny' in his sleep, and it hurts because I know how close I came to losing her."

Ron thought he saw pain flash across the Professor's eyes. "The pain will never go. Yes, it will decrease, but it will stay forever. It has changed you, not just your sister and Harry. I'm sure Miss Granger also bears lingering reminders of that year as well." Professor Dumbledore peered over his half moon glasses at Ron. "It saddens me to know that you and your friends have been through so much more than should be expected of a child, yet even more is still expected. What happened at the Ministry will not be the end of your trials, and I fear we still have a very long road to travel before it will all be over." Professor Dumbledore made to leave.

"Sir, can I ask one more thing?"

"Of course, dear boy."

Ron gestured towards the blood stain on the stone flooring. "Whose blood was that?"

Dumbledore's eyes filled with sorrow as they looked at the stain, then back to Ron's face. There was an awful look of regret in his eyes as he said, "That Ronald, I do not know." Then he swept from the Chamber with as much dignity as he had entered with.

Ron just sat there as he let tears slide down his cheeks.