Killing you, killing me.

St. Mungo's held mixed emotions for Ron. Both of his children had been born here, Hugo very recently. Not to mention the hoards of nieces and nephews… On the other hand, this place held the uncomfortable memory of his father- his first brush with the idea of mortality. While you could argue the good memories far outweighed the bad, the bad memories were poisonous enough to infect his opinion of this place. It was not, by far, his favourite place in the world. At least Azkaban had a view of the sea…

It was rare for him to pass through the doors of St. Mungo's. Sometimes, though thankfully rarely, he'd find himself here for some auror-related injury. Other-times, he'd be here to visit some idiotic auror with a death wish (Harry). Still, despite his hatred of the place, he couldn't deny the beauty of it. Surprisingly for a place hidden inside an abandoned shopfront, it had an odd sense of beauty. A sense of importance. Its white stone floors glistened in the light of the crystal chandeliers that swung from above the waiting room. Several witches stood at the apparation point. Beside them, by the main door, stood several very clean fireplaces. Every now and again green light would spit a witch or wizard out onto the hard, cold floor. Everyone that arrived seemed to rush, there was Ron who seemed to meander. Everyone else rushed from place to place, as fast as they could. St. Mungo's was rarely quiet; this day proved no exception.

At the reception desk sat a stern-faced witch, whose face implied a no nonsense attitude. The waiting room was quiet despite the amount of people waiting in the green worn chairs dotted around the room. The witches and wizards that sat in them all nursed their own injuries with sullen acceptance. The witch surveyed the land as a lioness would her pride.

On her chest, pinned to her white apron, was an engraved badge.

Juliette Scholes

Medi-Witch

Ron put on his best charming smile as he reached her desk. She seemed thoroughly unimpressed, and her glare caused the corners of his mouth to slip before he tacked his smile more firmly on. "I'm here to see Gilly Anderson."

The witch pursed her lips, and slowly began to leaf down her roll of parchment. The silence stretched on, the only noise the rustle of her slowly unrolling parchment. Ron held in his groan, though his smile became fixed and painful. He fought the urge to tap his foot and instead simply focused on keeping a pleasant expression upon his weary face.

Eventually, after what seemed to Ron an age, she replied, "Third floor, room 2."

"Thank you!" Ron said brightly, noticing her eyes narrow at him. He turned to leave. Normally when a witch began to look at him like that, he knew to run. The look rarely ended well for him, between his mother, Hermione, Ginny and his own daughter- he was always best to run and work out what he'd done later. Her sudden voice stopped him before he'd the chance to complete his escape.

"Aren't you Ron Weasley?" She asked, leaning forward and gathering the attention of a fellow nearby with antlers for ears.

"Ummm…yes?" he replied. He self-consciously tucked his hands into the front of his robes and rocked from foot to foot.

"You saved that little boy last month, the one who touched that cursed chest?" She asked almost leaning over the desk now. Ron took half a step back, his ears burning.

"I didn't save him, you guys did that." He wasn't being bashful- he'd barely been able to keep the kid breathing. He'd been certain that he was too slow, too clumsy, yet the healers had pulled him back at the last moment.

"Oh no, I was there, I treated him when he came in… if it hadn't been for you…" she trailed off and Ron took this as an opportunity to scuttle out backwards, almost tripping over a woman who'd transfigured her foot into a table leg.

"Yeah, umm… thanks anyway!" he called, sighing in relief as the elevator doors slid shut around him. His ears were still red as he exited the lift on the third floor.

Room two was the first on his right, and the door opened into a somewhat gloomy ward lined with three beds on either side. Only two of the beds were occupied. The first bed contained a young woman who was bent over shaking uncontrollably in laughter. Tears streamed down her face as she shook in endless mirth. A healer was stroking her back, passing her a potion.

"Not much longer till this kicks in, Helena, then it will be time for a nice nap, I'd have thought."

Ron slipped past them towards the sorry-state for a man in the end bed. Anderson was also hunched over, but not with laughter. His were shakes of a different kind.

The healer, whose blonde hair was tied neatly into a low bun, bustled over. "How we doing, Gilly?" She asked, ignoring Ron.

Gilly didn't reply, but the witch didn't seem to care, running her wand over him and frowning before making a note on the parchment and finally turning towards Ron.

"Visiting hours are 5pm till 8."

Ron held up his badge for her to see. "Ron Weasley," he introduced, "I'm investigating the new drug craze, and Gilly here is my only witness."

The healer crossed her arms, frowning disapprovingly. "He's in no fit state to answer questions without incriminating himself. I will have to ask for you to come back tomorrow when he will, hopefully, be in a better frame of mind."

"Healer…"

"Jenkins." she said tartily, not letting up her protective stance.

"Healer Jenkins, Gilly here isn't in any trouble, I think he's going through enough as it is. However, Gilly is the only one who knows who is distributing a drug that, in the last two weeks, has killed seven people, that we know of- one only fifteen years old. I have no doubt that more will die from this drug, and the only person who can help me is that lump lying on the bed. I know he's sick; so are many more that won't be lucky enough to wind up on your floor, Healer Jenkins."

The healer's face didn't soften, but her arms did relax slightly. "You can have half an hour, Auror Weasley, any longer and I will be forced to make a complaint."

"Thank you." With a severe glare, the woman disappeared back out into the ward. Ron watched her retreat before taking the one chair beside the poor fellow's bed. He couldn't help but idly wonder how many (if any) others had sat by poor Gilly as he went through his withdrawal.

"Gilly, it's Auror Weasley, Ron- um," Ron broke off as the man was yet to raise his head. "I would say it's nice to see you doing better, but I have to say you look but a fraction better than when you swan dived in my interview room."

Ron scratched the back of his head, wincing as he felt the thinness George had been teasing him about for months. Perhaps Jenkins was right, Gilly certainly didn't seem up for any type of conversation- especially not one as important as this.

"Am I going to jail?" Gilly croaked, his head still hanging between his trembling legs.

"No, Gilly," Ron said softly, leaning forward in his chair in the hope that Gilly would pick his head up. He didn't, but fat tears landed on the bed sheet. Ron put a hand on his back. He waited.

"What do you want from me?" Gilly eventually asked, he looked up his bloodshot eyes meeting Ron's.

"I wanted to see how you were doing."

Gilly snorted, "No, that's not why you're here." He shuddered as he spoke, trembling and sweating without seemingly noticing.

"Perhaps not," Ron agreed, "you are the first person, that we know of, that has survived this drug after overdosing."

"So I'm an experiment?" He snarled, "go away."

"I will leave you in peace soon, but I need to know where the drug is coming from."

Gilly shook harder, his head rocking from side to side in panic. "I- I can't."

"We can protect you, if you need it. Get you into a good program- we can help you."

"You're lying- no one wants to help me."

"I do, Gilly," Ron pressed firmly. "You've got your whole life ahead of you- we can get you clean, we can help you."

"I'm not stupid," Gilly said with as much strength as he could muster.

"You are if you let anyone else die, Gilly." Ron said, leaning forward and eyeing him with a look of complete seriousness. "If you don't tell us, and someone else dies…" Ron trailed off. He waited, the seconds ticking over uncomfortably as he forced himself to neither speak nor look away.

"I don't know much," he eventually mumbled, his face crumpling into dispair.

"Tell me what you do know," Ron soothed.

Ron burst back into the office, barely pausing in his steps as he blundered through the maze of overflowing desks and legs. He had one target in mind.

"Yo, Weasley!" someone yelled. He ignored them completely, focusing on his goal: the glass door opposite where a bedraggled man sat surrounded by mountains of paperwork. A quill twirled in his hands as he frowned at the parchment before him.

Ron threw the door open with a crash as loud as a canon. Harry jumped, sending his papers flying like carosoles through the air.

"Ron!" Harry said, dropping to scoop up the papers. Ron stood, chest heaving and body trembling.

"I know where they are making the drugs."

Harry's head snapped up, still crouched on the floor like a rabbit in the headlights. "That's great, Ron- give me a couple of days and we can put together a raid; we can scope the place out." Harry stood gingerly, he'd twisted his knee at the weekend playing quidditch with Teddy and Dominique, Ron knew. Although, Harry's knee had been messed up when he'd shattered it on one of the last cases they'd worked together. No matter how good the Skele-Grow had been, it had never been the same.

"No," Ron said vehemently, jabbing his wand onto the desk as if to prove his point. "We go tonight."

Harry frowned, taking in Ron's frantic, heaving chest and the way his eyes seemed almost too bright for his face. It came as some surprise to Harry that Ron wasn't the usual put-together auror that he usually was. Every auror has a case that ends up taking over your life; that infects your every thought, moment, action until it is finally solved. For Harry, that case had happened to him just over a year ago, The McNeil Boy, a case that he still deemed so important, so affecting, that even now it could ruin his entire day if he allowed it. Ron, however, while the dutiful and caring auror, had always had a way of distancing himself from his cases. An ability that Harry envied with every fibre of his being. But then again, he'd known that this case had been affecting his friend. He'd seen the agony in his face as they'd discovered body after body... After every lead turning cold before they'd even had a chance to investigate.

"Ron, we can't go now," Harry said firmly. Ron shook with something, and the tip of his wand pressed into the dark mahogany wood.

"If we don't, they'll move the operations. We go now!" Ron was flushed. His ears burning.

"But protocol-"

"Damn the paperwork, damn it all!" Ron finally lost the last thread of his unravelling temper. The wood sizzled and popped, turning black beneath the wand. Harry forced himself not to flinch at the ferocity of his anger. "How many more bodies do you want us to trip over, how many families do you want to send weeping?" Ron fumed, his ears and face a crimson Harry had never seen. "People are dying, Harry. I've talked to their families, I've seen their bodies. If we don't- if we fail to-" Ron sagged, weighed down by a weight he couldn't shake. "You remember Ritchie Coote?"

Harry wracked his mind for the name, a tingling feeling running down his spine as he wondered why on earth he would be asking this. The answer came to him suddenly, "he was chaser for Gryffindor. The year I was captain."

"No, beater. Never quite as good as Fred and George but a beater nonetheless," Ron corrected his eyes blazing as fiercely as the hearth in Griffindor tower on a freezing night. "He's dead."

Harry, who had known where this dangerous conversation was heading, simply winced. Seeing this, Ron's fury grew, spiralling out of him uncontrolled.

"He's dead Harry! Had his whole life ahead of him, now…"

"We will get them, Ron, but with planning and time."

Ron shook violently, the bags under his eyes standing out starkly against his pale face. "Harry, I know where they are; I know where they will be. We can't let anyone else lose a son, a daughter- we can't."

"Ron-"

"It's killing me."

Silence descended upon the room. Harry looked into his friends eyes and the sorrow, the pain, the horror- well, he decided it was killing him too.

"I still want to do this right- wait," Harry said, firmly holding up his hand. "But we will go tonight."

Ron's eyes closed. He seemed to sag- the weight of the last few weeks momentarily lifting as finally they had a lead, a chance. The plan had been set; the choice made. They would move on the house tonight and one way or another this whole dreadful mess would be over. Finally, they would have their guys in custody and the vulnerable would be safe and the dead avenged. Finally, Ron would be able to relax into dreamless sleep. He would be able to hold his children, laugh with his friends without this dreadful case hanging over him, shadowing his every move. He'd longed for so long for this case to be over and now they had the opportunity to strike as the wand was hot.

A/N I can only apologise for the wait. I hope you enjoyed, please review. I am moving this towards the main part of the story now. It will get a lot more whumpy. Hopefully, the next chapter will be on soon.