Harry had a detention with Snape that evening that he'd neglected to discuss with Ron or Neville, who arrived for their usual pre-week prep session to find that Harry was up to his elbows in the entrails of some poor creature. Neville's features twisted sympathetically but he went straight to his essay work as usual, while Ron suited up to help with prep, feeling queerly cheated. This was supposed to be his off-hours, when he didn't have to pretend at being Ronald Weasley, aged fourteen. Ron wasn't sure what Neville thought of that, but he hadn't breathed a word to anyone, and Professor Snape continued to treat Ron as though he were some kind of mildly interesting puzzle he tended to pick up in the evenings when he was bored.

"Mister Weasley," Snape called, the moment Ron slipped through the door.

Ron approached the professor's desk, glowering. "I didn't know he'd be here," he said, allowing a bit of the petulance he felt to come through. Letting himself be fourteen could sometimes feel pretty good, too...

Snape eyed him, then Harry – still stubbornly glaring at the entrails – and back to Ron again. "I didn't imagine this split of yours would be permanent," he admitted, "much less after you'd saved the ungrateful brat's life."

It hadn't occurred to Ron to want or even expect thanks, really. Everyone was reeling at the time. But it was true that Harry hadn't so much as mentioned it, since. He sighed, scrubbing both hands through his hair. "Me, neither, I guess," he said.

"But you'll keep looking after him anyway," Severus observed. It wasn't a question, though he paused as though he expected Ron to add something. "As will I," he finished briskly, when nothing else was forthcoming. "Here, first-year essays."

Ron peered over to the lab area, where Harry was mutilating the Potions ingredients. "Sure you don't want to switch us?" he said lightly. "Those'll be unusable."

"Oh? Those aren't a Potions ingredient," Snape said mildly.

"It's just something disgusting to keep Potter occupied," Ron realized.

"Don't – " Severus said sharply, then took a breath. "Do not call him that," he said more quietly. "Do not saw at the ties of your childhood with so cavalier a hand," he said, yet quieter. "You will lose him."

"And what do you care if I do?"

"I care because, Mister Weasley, if Potter grows out of his trust of you, he will no longer keep you at his side, and you will no longer be capable of protecting him."

Ron remembered, throat going dry, how his fight with Harry had kept him in the Great Hall; how, if he'd been even a fraction more stubborn, he would have missed deflecting the Sectumsempra that nearly took Hermione's life. "Yeah," he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Ta, Severus." He realized his mistake immediately. "I mean!" he said, staring up at Snape in horror. "Professor Snape," he said, feeling his face burn crimson. "Can we please forget I said that?"

"Yes," Severus said. "So long as you do not repeat the error. Though it's a first," he muttered, stacking the first-year essays with a distracted hand. "Here you are, Mister Weasley," he said. "Address this legion of assaults on the English language and morass of misunderstandings regarding the nature of magic in general and Potions in particular."

"Yessir," Ron said, and stole one of Severus's quills off of his desk, along with a bottle of heartsblood ink. He escaped to one of the laboratory tables to score the essays with a feeling of reprieve.

Though the cursing and splashes of entrails never did quite fade out of Ron's awareness, the essays eventually garnered the majority of his attention. "Listen to this one, it's a doosey.

It is clear through a study of Potions Mastery that the foundation of Hogwarts is built upon women."

Snape snorted aloud.

"What do they mean, it's built on women?" Neville sputtered, clearly picturing legions of witches physically supporting the foundations of Hogwarts. "Ohhh," he said, before Snape or Ron could reply. "How d'you fix it?"

Ron said, "It's clear through the study of Potions that much of the..."

"Zeitgeist," said Snape.

"No one knows what that means besides you," Ron muttered.

Snape was clearly sifting through his lexicon. Ron figured that could take awhile.

"Maybe foundation is okay?" Neville said, then muttered, "foundational knowledge? Surely there's one word for that."

Snape moved around the desk to stand over Ron's shoulder. "It's clear through the study of Potions that many of the fundamental tenets of the discipline were pioneered by women," he said.

"First of all, tenets? And second of all, you can't pioneer a tenet," Ron groused. After staring at the weirdly-phrased text for a moment, he said, "Women have made many important contributions to the study of Potions at Hogwarts."

Neville let his head fall forward in dejection. "You always know how to say it so clean," Neville moaned into the slate surface.

"I wouldn't put my head on that," Ron muttered.

Neville pushed himself upright with a grimace. "I think I've revised this one until my eyes are bleeding anyway, Professor," he said. "Are you ready for it?"

Neville had long since figured out he ought to ask. If Snape were grading something, he could be very ill-tempered when roused before he was through, and the same went for when he was brewing. On the other hand, he was usually positively happy – for Snape – if he were interrupted in the midst of planning a lesson.

"In five minutes," Snape muttered, crossing something off of his own pile.

"Merlin, Ron," Neville said, leaning over Ron's grading. "It is important to remember that the foundations of Hogwarts do not rest literally on the bones of your foremothers? That's downright Snapeish."

Ron shook his head. "If I were being Snapeish, I'd make some comments maligning her ancestry, or her intellect, or her face."

"That's enough, children," Snape murmured, clearly lost in the last essay.

"Sure," Ron muttered, turning to the next. He of all people wasn't a child; but sometimes it could be fun to pretend.

Neville shrugged. "Spelling?"

"Sure," Ron said. "Or weren't you –?"

"Yeah, that's right," Neville said, standing. He moved back to the cabinet where he'd been organizing the cabinet of Venenifiometers.

"Mister Weasley, why don't you make some preliminary corrections on Mister Longbottom's essay whilst I finish this," Snape said distractedly.

Ron turned to Neville, who was head-and-shoulders into the cabinetry. "You don't mind?" he said.

"What?" Neville muttered, sticking his head out over the top of the cabinet door.

"I said, you don't mind if I have a look at your essay?"

"Oh! No, that'd be brilliant!" Neville gushed, and stuck his head back in.

Ron frowned at the work. Maybe it was that he'd gotten rather used to the sloppiness of the first-years, but... "Neville, actually this is quite good!"

"What?" Neville inquired. "Hang on."

"Look, I think you don't really understand this bit here..."

Neville looked up with wide eyes. "How did you know?"

Ron scratched his cheek against the feathered end of the quill as he thought. "It's just – it doesn't sound like you. So I guess that must mean you quoted a book or a paper or something. Not the textbook though, doesn't sound like the textbook, either. Maybe that medicinal plants book you have up in your room?"

"Blimey," said Neville. "You can tell all that?"

"I can tell you don't get it. Which part is confusing? I'm sure S-Snape can explain."

Severus, sitting there on the tip of his tongue, again.

"It's the bit about why we stir widdershins versus clockwise," Neville said gloomily. "I've never understood it."

"What potions do you stir only clockwise?"

"Er," said Neville. "Let me think."

Ron turned his attention back to Hortense Harrington, who seemed to believe that no sentence was complete without a semicolon or two. She was a Hermione sort and would soon learn better, but meanwhile it made reading her paragraph-long sentences torturous and tortuous.

Two words she had used in her essay, presumably to demonstrate that she knew the difference.

"Oh, er, I think I already see what..." Neville muttered. "Clockwise for things to come together; counter for them to come apart. Is it really that simple?"

"I'm still not much good at theory. Hands-on bloke, me."

"The ones where you do both... are like Polyjuice," Neville said slowly, "where you're pulling something apart to put it together again in a new way?"

"Ask Snape later on," said Ron, though he almost didn't want Neville to do so. Drawing any attention to Polyjuice Potion would...

...would...

Ron felt like kicking himself. He moved to Severus's desk and stood, practically vibrating in place when the older man held up a hand to ask for patience. After a moment, he lowered it, then raised his gaze to meet Ron's.

"What is it, Mister Weasley?"

"Just... I had a horrible thought," Ron said, shifting from foot to foot. "The ingredients we're low in... they're the ingredients to Polyjuice Potion," he said, lowering his voice when he felt Harry's attention perk up from the back of the room.

Snape's brows lifted. "Dare I ask how you know how to make Polyjuice Potion?"

"I made it in third-year," Ron said, perfectly truthfully.

"Of course you did. And so?"

"And so someone's making Polyjuice. And not the three of us," he added, meaning he, Hermione, and Harry.

Snape frowned.

The hip flask, Ron thought desperately. Think of the hip flask – he never goes without it – he's sipping from it all the time –

"Thank you, Mister Weasley."

Ron stared. "...that's all?"

"That's all," Severus said, waving him back to his chair.

Ron didn't budge. "You are going to –"

"Yes," Severus smoothly replied, arching a brow.

"But you're not going to let me –"

"No," Snape said.

Ron wasn't sure how to feel about this. "...but... you'll let me know how it –"

"Certainly," Severus agreed. "Now, let me grade in what passes for peace amidst the screaming agonies of the Oxford comma."

"You aren't playing a chess game with me, are you, sir?" Ron impulsively inquired.

"If that's some sort of tortured metaphor –"

Ron tsked. "No, an actual chess game. There's a set in the Gryffindor Common Room, and I was just wondering if my invisible opponent was you."

"Well. Perhaps it is merely Mister Potter in his infamous Cloak," Severus growled. "Yes, I do know about it. Mister Malfoy's descriptions of a head floating mid-air last year were... most illuminating."

Ron longed to ask Snape about when Malfoy would return, and whether the school were pressing charges, but the mention of Harry had reminded him all of a sudden that the boy in question was still in the Potions classroom, tucked in the back, and sorting entrails with a murderous look in his eye, so he found it best to let the conversation end there.

The rest of the evening was spent quietly, with Harry departing after an hour of labour and ten minutes of scrubbing in an attempt to dislodge the entrail smell from his hands.

"Did it have to be entrails?" Neville murmured, peering into the sorted bucket.

"Yes," said Snape.

"Why was he here, anyway?" Ron wondered aloud.

"Another student's punishment is not your concern." Snape straightened the stack of graded essays and lay them neatly on his desk.

"It was for duelling in the hallways," Ron said, "wasn't it? You know Malfoy was baiting him with those awful badges. You know that those two poke at each other until one of them –"

"And so I should not punish them, giving the impression thereby that such behaviour is acceptable? Because Potter was provoked?"

"No," Ron muttered, and finished grading his stack of essays. He really didn't have the first idea what he'd do if he were Malfoy's and Harry's professor.

Afterwards, Ron slipped out the door to be a glorified librarian for a few hours.

The Room was happy to see him these days, if a magical Ur-dimensional space could be said to be happy. When he entered, the torches flared a little brighter and the air seemed to clear. "Okay, where were we?" Ron said aloud, supremely safe in the knowledge that Skeeter was probably already trapped on Hermione's desk like some kind of exotic pet. "Ah, autobiographies. Accio biographies and autobiographies!" Ron encanted, casting Finite just before they reached him – and set to work.

When Ron stumbled in around midnight, he was surprised to see a lone figure standing by the fireplace, muttering something into the flames. It was long past curfew, and even further past Gryffindor's official 'lights out', which was eleven-thirty for upperclassmen.

Ron realized that it was Harry who was before the fire when the other boy stood and whirled.

"Who was that?" Ron wondered. "Who were you talking to?"

"None of your business!" Harry snapped. "Anyway, where have you been? Still hanging around Snape, like some great greasy git-worshipper?"

"Sorry," said Ron mildly, Snape's advice ringing in his ears. "I guess I'll just..." he added, gesturing toward the stair.

But Harry wasn't through. "Just thought you'd come nosing around, did you? Skulking around, like some ruddy Slytherin?"

Ron knew – Harry had told him – that he'd been initially Sorted to Slytherin. He'd told Ron only days before he died, actually. Harry accusing him of being a Slytherin and therefore corrupt was a bit rich. "Sorry, next time I'll leave you to give your latest interview in peace," he bit off, and Harry pinked.

"Er..." he said, and suddenly – Ron didn't know how – he just knew.

"You're the anonymous student who called Malfoy a nutter in Skeeter's article?"

"I figured he could use a dose of his own medicine!" Harry shot back. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

Ron scoffed. "You know that isn't true, or you wouldn't be shouting it, would you?"

"Why are you bothering to defend Malfoy, again? And why are you hanging around Snape?" Harry looked wild-eyed, ready to reach out with nails and teeth, wand be damned.

"What, instead of you?" Ron returned.

"I know, it wouldn't do for anyone to pay any attention to me," Harry snapped, "what with you being the hero in the papers." He scooped something off of the floor and threw it at Ron as hard as he could; it bounced off of Ron's forehead. "There you go!" Harry laughed bitterly. "Something for you to wear Tuesday! Now you'll have a scar like mine – that's just what you've always wanted isn't it?" he shouted.

Ron moved to Harry's side in three, great strides and caught at his arm. "No," he said.

Harry looked up at him through his glasses, wild-eyed. "What?"

"No, it's not what I've always wanted," Ron growled, "and no, you're not going to storm off after all that, after chucking something at me! It's time to talk this through."

"No," Harry said. "No, I – let go of me, Ron."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Ron, using his two stone advantage on Harry shamelessly. "Did I rob you of your dramatic exit?"

But then Harry ended the argument in a way always seemed to work on Ron.

His green eyes went suddenly wet, and he ducked his head swiftly as though Ron could possibly miss that he was tearful when they stood so close. "Let me go," he muttered, giving another halfhearted tug on his arm.

"Not a chance," Ron replied in a very different sort of voice.

"I don't want talk about it," Harry said mutinously.

"But you do," said Ron. "Just look at you."

Harry snuck a glance up at Ron, then around the room, as though there were anybody listening in. "It's just," he said, voice wobbling. "It's just that it's dragons."

Ron nodded slowly, not able to manufacture surprise. "The First Task is dragons," he said. "Who was that in the fire? Was it Sirius?"

Harry nodded, a single, anxious bob of the head. "He said one, simple spell, he said it wasn't going to be complicated, but then I heard you coming, I told him to go, and he never got to say..."

Ron kept nodding, and he kept firm hold of Harry's arm.

"And you – you're supposed to be my best friend," Harry said suddenly, hiccoughing, "but you're not – you're not –"

"I am," Ron said, his voice crackling with intensity. "I was angry with you for putting your name in is all."

"But I didn't!" Harry burst forth passionately, torn between anguish and fury. "You don't know how awful it is – I wouldn't – I wouldn't ever..."

"I believe you, mate," Ron said. "But you were chuffed when your name was called. What was I supposed to think?"

Harry stared. His huge green eyes blinked a few times as though he were wondering if it was safe to agree. "That's not fair," he rallied. "Just because –"

"That's not fair isn't an answer," Ron pressed. "Didn't ask for my help, did you, or Hermione's? Because you thought you could keep being brave, all on your own," Ron said, and it came unfettered all of a sudden, his frustration and rage and desperate, anguished love. "It's you who're my friend, do you understand? Not the Boy Who Lived," he went on to Harry's increasingly gobsmacked features. "It drives me mad when you play the part to the crowd, and that makes you and everyone else say I'm jealous. But someone's trying to hurt you through the Tournament, and you know it, and being all Gryffindor-to-a-fault isn't going to help you, it's just going to make you a very heroic corpse –"

"Karkaroff," Harry said with a sharp nod, as though it was the first piece of what Ron was saying that he'd properly absorbed. "It's got to be; he was a Death Eater..."

"So was Snape," Ron growled. "Even if it turns out Karkaroff's a criminal, that doesn't mean he did this." Ron's gaze strayed to the chessboard in the corner. "You can't just think in straight lines when you're surrounded by enemies who like complications."

Harry nodded, accepting this bit of logic. "Why don't they ever just kill me?" he wondered. He didn't say it in a self-pitying way. "When – when a curse like Malfoy's is all it takes..."

"If you want to get caught," Ron agreed. And if your plan doesn't involve resurrecting your dead Dark Lord first, Ron thought with a grimace.

"I guess," Harry said, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses. "Let's not do this again anytime soon, yeah? Don't tell Hermione, but she's a rubbish best friend."

"Yeah," said Ron. "All right."

Harry looked around for a second time, and Ron began to realize with a pang that he was checking for witnesses again. He'd done it just before he'd begun to panic about the dragons. He moved awkwardly forward until Ron realized what it was that Harry was about.

Ron snaked his arms around Harry's waist, and Harry spent a second trying to decide where to put his hands, like he'd rarely been embraced before, which was probably true. Ron held Harry close with his considerably larger bulk and took an inadvisable breath in, and it swamped him all in a rush, who it was that he was holding.

"Ron... Ron, you're knocking the breath out of me, just a bit," Harry said, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Sorry," Ron said, withdrawing with a teary grin. "Reckon I must've missed you. A little."

Harry grinned in the firelight, before the smile fell off of his face. He groaned. "Dragons!"

"We'll sort it," Ron said. "We'll sort it, you'll see. For now you need to go get some rest. We'll start fresh tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah," Harry said, sounding a bit dazed. "Listen, Ron, you won't tell Hermione that we cried, will you? I don't want her to be all... smug about it."

"No, no," Ron assured him. "I'll only tell her that you did."

A/N: 'Luft' is German for 'air' but is a chess term that better translates to 'some breathing room'.

When the King is hemmed in by its own pieces, one of them can move in order to create a pocket in which the King has room to shift from spot to spot to avoid checkmate. Here Ron 'gives Harry an out' and some much-needed breathing room, so it seemed an especially appropriate chess term for this week's chapter.

And Ron's first real slip-up: calling Professor Snape 'Severus' of all things! The Potions classroom has become where he feels most relaxed, something he could not have anticipated at the start of the story. That - and the Room of Requirement - provide a little bit of breathing room for Ron, too.

"Don't saw at the ties of your childhood with so cavalier a hand..." Severus Snape wasn't thinking of anyone particular when he said that, nope, not at all...

Thanks for joining me and see you next time!