A/n: Don't you just hate it when things don't work out the way you planned them? My massive apologies for the lateness of this chapter, but as usual I got overexcited and wrote way too much. As a result, the chapter I wanted to write now has to become two chapters. Hopefully there won't be too much complaining about that.

On with the story! On with the story!

The Tales of Weasley the Father
By dieselwriter

Chapter 21: The (First) Tale of Faith

"Ten minutes!"

A flurry of fluffy hair and red robes flew by him, retreating up the stairs.

"I'll be ready in five!"

Ron stuffed an arm into one sleeve of his own robes as he ran back to his bedroom to retrieve his dress shoes. He swore when he found only one black shoe inside his closet.

"Anyone know where—!"

The doorbell interrupted his shout and he cursed again under his breath while putting on the one shoe he did have in his possession.

"Door!" Hermione shouted unhelpfully from the top of the staircase.

"I've got it!" Ron bellowed back. "You see a missing shoe up—AH!"

"DAD!"

It took all of the dexterity Ron had acquired over years of Auror training to not fall flat on his face on the hardwood floor. The Gobstones he got tripped up over scattered every which way and Hugo crawled quickly across the floor to try to collect them.

"Hugo, what have I told you about playing in the—"

The doorbell chimed again, interrupting his diatribe.

"Why didn't you answer the door?" he asked Hugo, successfully adapting his frustration to a new topic.

Hugo stared up at him from the floor with wide, innocent eyes before knitting his eyebrows.

"You offered before I could."

Ron rolled his eyes, knowing full well it would have taken four rings of the doorbell before either of his children would volunteer to answer the door.

"Please move the game into the living room," Ron said as he made his way to the front door, treading carefully to avoid stepping on any stray Gobstones.

He finally made it to the door and opened it, revealing his neighbor and babysitter for the evening, Mrs. Puckle.

"Good evening, Mr. Weasley," her wrinkled face appraised him mildly as she stood on the front porch. He became self-conscious as she eyed his missing shoe critically, but her eyes crinkled warmly in understanding as she crossed the threshold into the house. "Almost ready, are we?"

"Getting there," Ron returned with a weak smile, buttoning his robes up as he led her down the hall. "Hugo's right in the living room, Mrs. Puckle, if you'd like to make yourself comfortable."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Weasley," she nodded before walking into the room to find Hugo.

"Rose!" Ron called up the stairs, knowing from the past few weeks' experience that his daughter was no doubt scheming something away in her bedroom. "Mrs. Puckle is here!"

Silence followed that remark, and Ron sighed before trudging up the stairs.

"Eight minutes, Hermione," he said as he passed his wife on the stairs, her fingers fumbling over the clasp of a bracelet decorating her wrist.

"I just need my wand and I'll be ready," she replied, succeeding in getting the jewelry secured around her wrist.

"Great, I'll bring Rosie down and then we'll head out," he sighed as he threw his hands up in the air in mock celebration, climbing up the rest of the stairs.

"Might need another shoe before leaving."

Ron wrinkled his nose as he glanced down at his shoeless foot, eyeing it with disdain, before glancing down at his wife from the top of the stairs with pleading blue eyes."Mind Accioing it for me?"

She sighed exasperatedly but nodded her head and grinned in amusement before turning to walk down the rest of the stairs. Ron straightened the cuff of the dress shirt he wore under his robes as he made his way down the hall to his daughter's room.

"Rose? C'mon, Mrs. Puckle is here and…" he said, ignoring both an introduction and an apology as he barged into the room, too much in a hurry to care too badly. He felt that attitude change abruptly, though, as the rest of his sentence died in his throat when he got a good glimpse at his daughter.

Rose sat in the middle of her bedroom floor, dozens of thick textbooks and highlighted parchment scattered about her, the carpet barely visible with the sheer volume of papers. The small cauldron Hermione had lost last week was sitting in front of her, filled with what looked to be water.

But his attention was focused mostly on the fact that every visible inch of skin on her body was bedecked in varying colors of paint.

Weasley anger was quite common to those in acquaintance with any member of the family. Symptoms included a reddening of cheeks, necks, or ears, a clenching or shaking of fists, and a loud and steady stream of curses.

Not even the offspring of a Weasley was allowed paternal censorship from a Weasley harangue, if such an occasion called for it.

"Bloody hell, Rose!" Ron shouted, his face hot as his fists clenched at the sight of his multicolored ten-year-old daughter. "What are you doing?!"

"Dad, what are you doing in here?!" she all but shrieked, trying to hide the cauldron in vain.

It was hard to take her seriously, however, with her face light blue and her anger so pale in comparison to her father's.

"What is all this?" he demanded, snatching a paper from the floor. "Your mum and I need to leave and now we have to clean up after your…"

Ron's tirade ended in an instant as his eyes scanned over the paper full of intricate-looking runes in his fist.

"Rose…what is all this?" he repeated with quite a different intonation as he turned the paper around so Rose could see it.

"I'm just…it's just…it's a project I've been working on…."

Her voice was thick with emotion and her eyes were welling up with tears. Ron eyed everything around him again with a critical eye, but even without the haze of red anger he felt clueless as to what it was all about.

"You want to be a Healer someday?" he guessed, joining her on the floor and reaching for a particularly thick tome opened to a page on Healing salves.

"Not really, no," Rose muttered, wrapping her brightly colored arms around her equally vibrant legs.

"An artist, then?"

Rose's half-hearted glare told Ron he was getting nowhere rather quickly.

"Well that's good, then, because you missed a spot," he joked, pointing to a clean spot on her knee.

"That's the only spot I got right," she sighed, poking at the spot miserably. "The rest of this," she gesticulated at the other, more vivid parts of her body, "I messed up."

"But what are you trying to do?"

Her ears, which before had been neon yellow, turned an interesting orange shade as her eyes darted to the stolen cauldron sitting beside her.

"I just wanted to help you, Dad."

The tears that had threatened to show themselves did so, making the sky blue shade of her face look instead like the melancholy yet dangerous grey-blue before a storm.

"Help me with what?" Ron asked, curiosity getting the better of him as he stuck a finger into the clear contents of the cauldron.

The cold, jelly-like feel of the substance made him retract his hand abruptly, and he gasped in shock at the results.

"Y-you…Rose," he whispered breathlessly, unable to find any adequate words.

His finger came out a rosy peach colour, standing out in stark contrast to his other pale fingers. Her intention was obvious now: she had been trying to fix the skin pigmentation problem on his hands his run-in with Scabior had caused. While his difficulties with residual pain had all but faded, the scarred, pale hands the blast had caused were unable to be treated.

Or so he had thought.

"People always stare, Dad. I know you don't notice, but I do. Like there's something wrong with them. But there's not—" her voice cracked and she paused a moment before continuing. "Nothing's wrong with you. I wanted everyone to see that.

"But it doesn't work," she grumbled, shoving the cauldron away from her mournfully. "It's impossible to get the right shade. And a simple Scourgify makes the effect worthless. Not to mention the fact that measuring out powdered lacewings is so ridiculously fussy that even someone with a real Potions set couldn't figure it out."

She said this in the space of a few seconds, and was left huffing and puffing with exertion afterward. The obvious effort she poured into this project left Ron speechless; his vision roved over the makeshift Potions kit she had collected for herself: a cutting board and knife borrowed from the kitchen, mugs holding various (undoubtedly pilfered from her mother's stock) Potions ingredients, and her own Beater's bat as a temporary pestle for her lacewings.

"This colour's the closest I've gotten to your regular skin tone," she continued after catching her breath, the tears still leaking from her eyes as she pointed at the spot on her knee that to Ron looked unblemished. "But it's too orange; it'd make your hands look wonky."

It took him only a moment for that information to digest before he rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt and robes.

"Dad, what're you…DAD!"

Rose's eyes went wide and dry as Ron plunged both his hands into the cauldron, unheeding of her warning.

"No, Dad, stop!" she shouted, tugging uselessly at his arms. "What are you doing?!"

Even more tears than before coursed down her cheeks as Ron, rather matter-of-factly, pulled his hands back out of the gelatinous goop and rolled his sleeves back down. She continued to cry as he reached out to hug her.

"I'm messing—up—your dress robes," she choked out from beneath him, but he ignored her as he held her closer, rubbing her back consolingly. She continued despite his lack of response, "Why did y-you— do that?"

Fatherly instincts kicked into overdrive at the desperation in her voice; he placed his chin atop her fluffy head before answering.

"Rose, how long have you been working on this?"

"I don't know," she murmured, burrowing her face further into his chest, "a few months now. Since you got back from St. Mungo's maybe."

Months. Ron's heart felt fit to burst as he kissed the top of her head tenderly, her crazed curls tickling his long freckled nose.

"Your hands are messed up even more now. Why did you do that?"

"I dunno, Rosie," he said, returning to rest his chin on the top of her head. "Because I had faith in the work you did."

"But I messed up," she replied mournfully.

"You didn't," Ron disagreed, "you did more than anything my Healers could. You did more for me than anyone else would have."

"That's not…that isn't…." his daughter sounded startled yet faraway, lost in a thought and unsure of how to respond to such praise.

Ron too was recalling a thought his words had caused and took his time responding to her lack of response.

"It's just like that one time… you know about Harry's godfather—Sirius Black?"

Rosie, emerging from her deliberation abruptly, nodded swiftly.

"Well, the second time I met him, your Uncle Harry and mum did something for me that made me sure we would be lifelong friends."

The Grim had been properly named.

As the beast's jaws locked onto Ron's outstretched arm, throwing him down to the ground and dragging him away, Ron's dazed brain couldn't think of a grimmer situation.

Some distant corner of his mind couldn't help but appreciate an odd coincidence as the Grim pulled him further away from his friends. His Uncle Bilius had died right after viewing the harbinger of death, and now it seemed Ron was going to be literally dragged into hell by it right after his middle namesake.

A logical voice echoed in his head, sounding a bit like a mixture of Hermione and McGonagall, lectured him that this humongous black dog couldn't be the Grim. Being a spectral creature, this monster shouldn't be visible to Harry or Hermione, let alone be able to draw the blood currently dripping from his hand.

It wasn't an omen of death…it was death itself.

The Grim Reaper.

Hermione's shriek alerted his fuzzy mind again of his surroundings. The Grim—no, not the Grim…the Reaper—was yanking on his mangled arm, pulling him into what looked to be the trunk of the Whomping Willow.

For a moment Ron was incredibly happy to see the tree; there was a very real possibility it could help fight off the furry black menace attempting to abduct him. But no—the only time a person happily (if not accidentally) ran into striking distance of the lethally vicious tree and it instead decided to strike his mates, who were in a far less ideal spot to cause it harm, standing just out of reach of the menacingly swinging branches.

"Ron!" he heard Harry shout, but a branch swung at him as he tried to follow.

A hopeless panicky feeling settled in the pit of Ron's stomach. He glanced over at Hermione, who was staring at him with bright eyes. Her despaired expression mirrored his own.

"No!" Ron grunted through his clenched teeth as he swung his available limbs out wildly, imitating the tree fending off his friends.

The dog didn't seem phased at all. It had found a passage between the roots of the massive tree and seemed determined to reach it. Ron fought even more furiously, but any attempt at hitting the dog proved futile—his legs couldn't connect at all and it didn't even so much as yelp when he punched it.

His still-flailing leg connected with a root, and he desperately wrapped his foot around it in an attempt to stay in one place visible to Harry and Hermione. At first this improvised plan seemed to work a bit better than his original plan of trying to stop the dog; it yanked him once but Ron remained in his spot, resilient.

It was as the dog yanked a second time, much harder, and as Ron held onto the root tighter that he knew something didn't feel right. The root remained intact but Ron's foot started slipping, twisting unnaturally against the wood. But the only way to keep Harry and Hermione in sight was to hold on—

CRACK!

His mind blanked, completely numb. He was only vaguely aware of the final vicious tug that resulted in his foot's coming free of its own accord, of the fact that the dog was now dragging him down its desired earthen path.

He waited for the pain, waited to see how serious it was. It was just the root breaking, right? That crack…it couldn't've been his leg….

Experimentally, Ron tried moving his numb foot.

Ah, he thought, reluctant tears springing to his eyes, there's the pain.

It had been his leg after all.

He should have been worrying about retrieving his wand, about attempting to save himself, about where he was, about what was going to happen to him now, about Reapers and family and friends and life…his life…it should have been flashing before his eyes on this road to hell.

But the pain was all consuming.

The jarring, bumpy, rocky path made sure he never fully crossed that line into blissful unconsciousness, but he felt completely paralyzed, unable to move so much as a finger to help himself. His vision was hazy, clouded, and he was certain that any speech attempt would be slurred. His brain was foggy and any perception of time vanished; it felt as if all parts of himself had turned to lead except his broken leg, which screamed every protest and profanity in existence as it was jostled and dragged uselessly behind him….Much like how the troll back in first year schlepped his club around, looking for unsuspecting Gryffindors in the girls' loo….

First year…he and Harry had hardly given a thought before going in to save Hermione. His only wish was that this time around, when he was playing the mate in distress, Harry and Hermione would think of other options before sticking their wands up the Grim's nostrils.

No…that was wrong…he didn't want Harry and Hermione thinking of any option at all. He wanted them as far away from the Reaper as possible.

A turn in the tunnel made him roll onto his broken leg, and the pain he didn't think could get any worse proved him wrong. Agony swept through him, his breathing becoming nothing but harsh gasps, and the fingers of his free hand scrabbled to help out the shattered leg trapped under his weight.

The path evened out as they entered a room Ron wasn't able to pay attention to; he was solely concentrated on fixing his current problem. With the help of the smooth, flat floor he was finally able to successfully pull his leg out.

With the pain lessened considerably, he was able to discern the dusty room they had entered that looked as if it would collapse on them at any moment. The only positive side effect of that agonizing experience was that it had sobered him up immensely. As the giant dog pulled him from the crumbling room (Ron internally sighed in relief) and into the hallway, he inched his fingers towards his cloak surreptitiously, where he knew his wand to be. Now that his mind was cleared it didn't seem such a daunting task to try and free himself; the biggest problem was trying to do so without the Reaper noticing.

At least, it hadn't been a daunting task. That was before he eyed the obstacle the Reaper had planned to surmount next.

"No, no, no, no…c'mon, there's no way…" he moaned, paling even more as he eyed the dilapidated staircase they were rapidly approaching. His leg throbbed at just the thought of trying to climb them. The rickety railing didn't look like it could support a pixie, let alone him and his broken leg.

Of course, he was making the assumption that he would be the one to climb the stairs. The Reaper didn't seem too keen to release Ron as it reached the bottom of the staircase.

When the dog ascended the first step, Ron knew he had to make his move now. It was obvious they were close to reaching whatever destination the Reaper was planning to kill him; there was still this last chance to try an escape.

It was difficult, trying to reach for his wand without drawing the dog's attention. It never occurred to him to not be secretive about this plan; if the monstrous dog caught wind of any change in its prey, Ron didn't doubt it would kill him immediately on the unstable staircase—assuming it didn't collapse underfoot and kill them first.

Choking down a scream of pain as he was forced on the staircase by the beast, his fingertips reached down into the pocket of his robes where he knew his wand to be. It was awkward; every step they ascended sent a jolt of shocking, mind-numbing pain from his leg, and it didn't help that the wand was in his right pocket when he was reaching for it with his left hand—hard to be inconspicuous about getting it when reaching across his body for it.

Slow but steady, he told himself, unable to help a low groan as again his broken leg took on another stair. Just focus on the wand…

He felt panicky, even as his fingers grazed the tip of his wand, when they reached the top of the staircase.

This was it.

He pulled it out of his pocket; his heart beat faster, his breathing was shallow and shaky, and sweat rolled down the back of his neck in nervous anticipation.

He was so focused on the wand, but he should have been paying attention to the Reaper.

The disgusting, hot doggy breath he caught whiff of every so often from his right vanished, and so did the pain from his right arm. As he whipped his wand around, ready for a fight even with his back on the floor, he found that there was nothing to fight; the Reaper had vanished.

"What—"

The next thing he felt was blinding, white-hot pain, so inexplicably unbearable that his wand clattered to the ground and he screamed, scratched, clawed, pushed, kicked with his good leg—did every instinctual thing in his power to get whatever had thrown itself on his broken leg off immediately.

"Well that was close, wasn't it?"

The humid, repugnant breath was back at his ear, smelling just as foul as the dog's breath even though it clearly belonged to a human.

"You almost got me there, for a moment."

Or at least he had thought it was human. The voice was low and scratchy; sounding more like what a monster's voice should have sounded like rather than a man. You-Know-Who should have had a voice like this. The short chortle he gave afterward had a harsh edge to it that made it seem as though he were bitter about Ron's escape attempt rather than amused.

The lead weight on his leg finally moved, and Ron felt lightheadedly thankful for the shortest of moments, as long as it took for him to be fearfully cautious of the person who must have saved him from the Reaper.

Ron glanced up, squinting through the dim light and echoing pain of his leg to search for him, his rescuer.

Bile rose up in his throat.

He had been wrong before. The dog hadn't been the Grim Reaper. This corpse, with his long, greasy hair, barred yellow teeth, shiny, scheming eyes, and waxy skin stretched taut against his skull-like face….

This was the Reaper. He was staring at death.

"So I figure out it was Sirius Black that had dragged me into the Whomping Willow, and you'll never believe what happened next, Rose. This is the best part…Rose?"

He looked down to find his daughter fast asleep in his arms. He smiled wryly; it only made sense, after all of the planning and deciphering and researching and…and potioneering, that she would be completely exhausted.

With the idea in mind that he had told probably the worst and most disturbing bedtime story in history, and with the invitation to tonight's Auror Appreciation Gala swimming to the forefront of his mind, he lifted the sleeping Rosie and tucked her into bed. Her little blue face peaked out from underneath the quilt her grandmother had knitted her for her tenth birthday, and he bent over, placing another gentle kiss on her forehead.

When he made his appearance in the living room, already ten minutes past the time they were supposed to appear at the Gala, he fully expected a thorough berating from his wife. He was therefore surprised to find Hermione, dressed magnificently in rich scarlet dress robes, smiling at him.

"What?" Ron asked anxiously, afraid he was being lured into a false sense of security.

"Nothing," she answered, but it was clear from her excited smile that she definitely had something to say.

"Found your shoe!" Hugo piped up from the corner of the room, where he and Mrs. Puckle were in the midst of a heated chess match. He bent over to retrieve his previously missing dress shoe and held it in the air victoriously.

"Brilliant," Ron smiled, walking over to fetch his shoe. "Where'd you find it?"

"Hallway, but Mum's the one who found it. Are your hands orange?"

"The better to support the Cannons with," he said distractedly, taking the shoe from his son and placing it back on the floor to stuff his foot in.

"So are we going to—wha…?"

He had taken a step and frowned when something inside his shoe burst under his socked foot.

"Urgh!" he exclaimed, pulling off his shoe to see what had caused the incident. His nose wrinkled at the putrid smell.

"Eww, Dad, your feet stink!"

"My feet don't stink," Ron upturned the shoe and two Gobstones fell to the ground. He glared up at Hugo, whose eyes went wide. "Your Gobstones do, though."

"So that's where they went to!" his son's grin was wide as he momentarily abandoned the chessboard to pick up the fallen Gobstones. "I'd been wondering where they'd gotten off to!"

"Glad I could be of service," Ron mumbled, pulling off his stained sock and walking over to his wife, who was still sitting on the couch and watching him with a broad grin. "Well? What is it?"

"Something came while you were talking to Rosie."

She was practically jumping up and down in the air in anticipation, and Ron raised an eyebrow over at Hugo and Mrs. Puckle to see if they could decipher this mystery. Hugo shrugged in response and Mrs. Puckle swiped one of Hugo's rooks off the board when his eyes were concentrated elsewhere. Ron couldn't help but laugh.

"Well what is it?"

"Guess!"

If she were wearing a Hogwarts uniform and waving her hand in the air Ron would have mistaken her for her 12-year-old self, anxiously wanting to be called on for an answer. Before Ron could even hazard a guess she burst.

"It came!"

"What came?"

"This!"

She thrust a small, black, leather-bound, ancient-looking book under his nose, and, after glancing up into her eyes to assert himself that this wasn't a joke, he took it and read the cover aloud.

"Nature of the Charm?"

"Here, let me," she took the book back immediately, clearly annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm.

She riffled through the pages at lightning-fast speed and shoved it back under his nose as soon as she found what she was looking for.

"Servus manus?"

"The Servant's Hand Charm."

Hermione's beam was turning slightly manic, the way it usually did after unveiling the answer to a highly advanced problem. But Ron finally felt like he was catching on as he viewed the illustration on the following page: a silvery hand.

"Scabior's hand…you found it?"

"It took me almost six months, but I finally got my—er…"

"Hands on it," Ron finished, rolling his eyes at the bad pun. He held up the tiny book that would soon answer all of his problems. "I can't believe we finally have it."

"Hey!" Hugo burst suddenly from the corner of the room. "Didn't I have another rook before?"

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," Mrs. Puckle said with the straightest of faces.

A/n: Okay, I apologize here and now. I swear on all that is Ron that the next chapter will talk EMPHATICALLY about Scabior's hand. Until then I look forward to any and all speculation. ;)

Thanks as always to my wonderful, fantastic, bloody brilliant reviewers! I hope you are all having a marvelous summer!

Expect the next update…soon. And expect the rest of the flashback, and more info on the hand, and a Harry and Ginny cameo, and (with any luck) a new fic before the sixth movie comes out.

~dieselwriter