The Phoenix Syndrome
a/n – Welcome back. The good news – Harry Potter and everything recognizable from the Potterverse is the property of JK Rowling and her various and sundry corporate minions. Corporate partners. Whomever. The bad news – There's a rumor going around that there's an rogue epilogue out there looking for a story to latch onto.
As a couple of people mentioned in their reviews that Harry hasn't had a chance for a heart to heart with Ron ...
Chapter Ten – The First Rule of Spite Club Is …
1630 - 3 September, 2019 – Interview Room Seven, Caer Sidi – Off the coast of Wales (somewhat)
The lighting was bright and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The light coloured walls didn't actually glow, but if you looked at them long enough something caused the eye to look away unless you were very focused.
Sitting slouched down in one of the chairs at the table; Ron Weasley was staring at a nonexistent stain on the tabletop in front of him when a noise startled him out of his reverie. Looking up, he watched Harry Potter enter through a door that appeared in the seamless wall on the other side of that table. Looking down and seeing that the legs of the chair across from him seemed to sprout from the floor as had the ones for the chair he was sitting in, he shook his head as the chair came loose from the floor as Harry's hand touched it and pulled it back, turning it around so he was straddling the chair across from him.
"Never quite got around to asking how they did that," Ron began in a disinterested voice. Leaning back, he looked up to find Harry Potter, his onetime best mate and partner staring him intently.
"Always enjoyed the look on the faces of the skells we collared when they tried to bust out of one of these chairs and it doesn't fall away from them."
"You need to talk to her," Harry began without preamble. Seeing the disbelieving look in Ron's eyes, Harry sighed. "It won't make a tinker's damn bit of difference with the charges, either you knew what Pansy was doing or you didn't so neither of us can change what you knew. But the rest of it …"
"The rest of it?"
Staring in disbelief at Harry, Ron's fist clenched involuntarily as he slammed them against the tabletop. "You've been sleeping with her since the beginning and you have the nerve to come in here and lecture me about 'the rest of it'?"
"Ron, we never …"
Standing up awkwardly, hemmed in by the chair which didn't move back from the table, Ron glared at Harry with his hands at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching as his face began to get red. Not noticing as the wards in the room began to glow in response to his anger and his temper overriding his knowledge of the protections built into these rooms, Ron moved his feet to allow him to stand a bit straighter before he snarled at Harry..
"It was a lie from the very start, the two of you played the entire family for some sick muggle game you two cooked up," Ron began, his face color rising up the spectrum. "Gin told me how you …"
"Just like she told you how Hermione 'snogged' Krum," Harry replied calmly, trying not to react to the shocked look on Ron's face. "You ended up examining Lavender's tonsils for a couple of months because of that and almost died before you came to your senses. Why on earth would you believe her …"
"Because it's always been you," Ron shot back. "You were always the one Hermione loved, right from the beginning. From the night you two left me behind to go rescue Sirius …"
"Left you behind?" Staring at Ron in total amazement, Harry ran his hand through his hair, trying to remain calm.
"You were unconscious with a bloody broken leg in the Hospital Wing," Harry began calmly. "How the bloody Hell were we supposed to drag you all over the outer ward of the castle and then ride four on Buckbeak to rescue Sirius?"
"You always have an excuse for the two of you sneaking off," Ron snarled. "Ginny told me about the time you missed your anniversary because you were with my wife."
"Ron, that was the night of the hostage standoff at the Mayan Embassy back in '07. You were there along with every auror we could scrape up and six hit wizards. Hermione kept that Yucatan separatist group talking for seven hours debating obscure points of Mayan prophecy and theology with them while we infiltrated the enclave through the sewers. I ended up saving your arse from that thirty foot crocodile familiar they had guarding the basement once we broke in."
"You're not going to use me as an excuse to explain cheating on my sister with my wife," Ron shot back. "Ginny would never blame you if we were actually at work on your anniversary."
Biting back the response that was on the tip of his tongue, Harry sat back and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. Trying desperately to block out that little voice in the back of his head, which really sounded too much like Hermione's for his day to day peace of mind, that was snarking "told you so" at him, Harry decided to take another tack with Ron.
"Ron, we've known each other almost thirty years, so I'm going to cut to the chase here." Seeing the puzzled look on his face, and feeling a deep pang of sympathy for what Hermione must have suffered through, Harry resisted the urge to grimace.
"I'm just going to get to the heart of the matter. Apparently, you've been cheating on your wife since very early on for reasons known only to you." Seeing that he was about to launch into another round of accusations and justifications, Harry held up his hand.
"Regardless of what you think your reasons are, or what justified you acting this way, the truth is that neither Hermione or myself have ever acted in violation of the intent or letter of our vows to either you or your sister," Harry continued while the Hermione voice in his head snickered at "acted". Seeing that the tips of Ron's ears were turning a deeper shade of red, Harry decided to get to the point before he had a stroke.
"Arthur, acting in his role as Head of the Family for the Weasley family, questioned your mother with a scribe from the Wizengamot present and uncovered quite a number of … irregularities regarding the events of the fall after the Final Battle."
"You mean after you two came back from running off to Australia," Ron spat angrily. "Fred wasn't cold in his grave before the two of you ran off together."
"You were invited to come with us to retrieve her parents," Harry replied wearily, trying not to think about how many times this had come up over the years. "She needed help and support finding her parents. After everything she'd given up for me over the years, there never was any question about going with her."
"They were just muggles; she should have stayed at the Burrow instead of using them as an excuse to run off with you when the family needed her. We could have gone and found them in a couple of years, after things had settled down." Huffing in anger, Ron dropped noisily back into the chair on the other side of the table.
"Have you listened to yourself?" Glaring at Ron, and resisting the urge to look over his shoulder, Harry's expression became very guarded. "If it had been your parents …"
"My parents didn't need to be protected; they are part of this world. Truth be told, we would have been better off if she had left them there. That way I wouldn't have had to listen to Helen's harping on me for the past twenty years."
Seeing that there was nothing left but to ask the one question he had come in here to ask, Harry placed his feet flat on the floor and casually slid back on the chair. Trying not to make a production out of it, but he was balancing himself in case it became necessary to move quickly.
The wards and restrictions on the room should keep Ron from launching an unexpected attack, but Harry was very aware of the fact that Ron had been an auror long enough, and had been in interview rooms more than enough times to know any number of tricks.
Seeing the gloating look in Ron's eyes, Harry nodded. "I have to ask. Why?"
Looking incredulous, Ron stared at Harry in disbelief. "You have the nerve to ask 'Why' after you've been cheating on my sister with my wife?"
Resisting the urge to explain, again, that nothing physical had ever occurred between Hermione and himself, Harry stared Ron straight in the eye, trying to find an answer there. Seeing that his former friend, the wizard he had considered the brother he had never had, was glaring at him, he hardened his features and, in a calm controlled voice, asked, "Why did you ask her to marry you?"
Seeing the shocked look on Ron's face, Harry added, "According to Pansy you were cheating on her almost from the beginning. So that brings us back to why?"
"Everyone could see that you wanted her, and she wanted you," Ron replied. "Mom's potions put things back the way they should be. Once I wasn't going back to school, I didn't need her. You wanted her instead of Ginny, and giving Gin the wizard she'd wanted for so long and keeping something that you wanted seemed a fair trade for having put up with her for seven years."
Having heard it spoken aloud, Harry knew that it was true. Marrying Hermione and keeping the two of them apart was Ron's last revenge, his last betrayal for the injustices that he saw were heaped on him and his sister over the years. The information they had gotten from Molly and Ginny had told the entire sorry tale, but Harry had needed to hear it from Ron before things began to spin totally out of control.
Standing abruptly, Harry tried not to smile as Ron flinched in reaction to the motion. Looking down at him, Harry wondered if anything had ever been anything genuine between the two of them. Twenty-eight years reduced down to petty jealousy and spite. Seeing that Ron was about to launch into another spiel, Harry waved his hand and wandlessly silenced him.
"Save it, it doesn't really matter," he began. Ignoring the murderous look on Ron's face, Harry looked over his shoulder once at the blank wall behind him before turning his attention back to the wizard seated in front of him.
"Tomorrow, we're going to Hogwarts to pull the children out of classes for the day and explain what's going on, before they hear about it or read about it in the papers," Harry began. Seeing Ron narrow his eyes, Harry shrugged.
"The Ministry has ten days from the day you were arrested to either make the arrests public or go into a closed session of the Wizengamot and seal the entire affair. I'm not certain Kingsley has made his final decision, yet. Carrenton, our old boss who came out of retirement to oversee this sorry mess, has recommended to the Minister that the entire matter be sealed and the four of you simply disappear."
The shocked look on Ron's face touched something in Harry and he removed the silencing charm from him.
"So that's the way it is, you're just going to vanish us."
"Hermione's worried about the children if we do that. I'm not certain which is better, a father who simply disappears into thin air or one that's convicted of being an accomplice to a spy for terrorists and then divorced because he's been shagging some trollop who was the spy, but those are the choices we have to work with."
"I notice you're not mentioning the potions in that heartwarming little synopsis," Ron shot back.
"That's our reserve," Harry replied. "You and your sister agree to nice quiet annulments, severing your parental rights until the children are of age and then they get to decide whether or not they want you in their lives, and the interview with your mother remains sealed. Either of you two cause a scene, or go back on this agreement anytime in the future, and the evidence of the potions is brought out, your mother goes to Azkaban for a minimum of fifty years, and you and your sister get charged with and convicted of multiple counts of potions-induced rape."
"She was my wife," Ron smugly shot back, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest.
"Care to up the ante?" Harry shot back with a sneer. "You're in the same boat as your mother and sister; you interfered with the free will of the holder of a hereditary seat in the Wizengamot. You're a pureblood wizard; you know the penalty for that as well as I do."
The fact that the only penalty for that offence was to squib the offender, hung in the air between them. "You're bluffing. Remember, this is Hermione Weasley we're talking about. She's so bloody proud of being a mu … muggleborn. Whether or not you squib the mother of your children has nothing to do with me."
"Actually, this is something that is my fault," Harry chuckled. "I didn't realize it at the time, but do you remember when I gave Hermione the title for Peregrine House?" Seeing the wary nod, Harry flashed Ron a grin that would have made him the spitting image of his late father, just as a particularly clever prank was revealed.
"Well, since Hermione was granted a seat in the Wizengamot with her award of the Order of Merlin, First Class, we decided to twit all of the pureblood bigots in the assembly just a bit, so I put forward a measure to entail Peregrine House to House Granger. With the stroke of a quill, and a vote in the Wizengamot on a quiet day in September when nothing much was going on and we barely had a quorum, the House of Granger became the Honorable House of Granger with the holding of Peregrine House and the twelve acres that surround it as her entailed holding in the name of the Crown and the Wizengamot."
Seeing the disbelieving look on Ron's face, Harry chuckled as the door opened for him. Looking over his shoulder, he fired his parting shot.
"Give us any trouble with this, and you'll have your wand snapped and your magic removed in front of the Wizengamot." Pausing for a second as Ron slumped forward, hitting his forehead on the table with an audible 'thunk', Harry snarked, "Cheer up, maybe your cousin the accountant needs an office boy."