Chapter 21: The Potion

AN: I'm so sorry I know I promised this chapter to be finished a lot sooner but my computer crashed and I had to write a big part all over again.

But it's finally here and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Ron stood in his dorm pacing, thinking about how he could get all the ingredients he needed for the Cruciatus Potion. All the ingredients were at Hogwarts, but most of them were in the back store of the potion classroom where Snape probably was right now or in his office.

"Fuck!" He suddenly shouted as he hit his foot on Harry's trunk at the end of his bed. The lock went up and some of Harry's stuff flew on the floor. "Fuck." Ron said again and started to pick up Harry's things and put them back into his trunk. Last, he saw the invisibility cloak and held it up in front of him. 'It could work, and it's not like Harry will miss it for the next hour or so.' Ron contemplated. So Ron put it over him, having to hunch down a bit since he was too tall and of course didn't want his feet to be seen. 'Maybe I should take the Marauders Map to just in case.' He thought to himself. He walked over to Harry's nightstand and opened the drawer to retrieve the map before he headed down with it and the list of the ingredients in his hand.

He walked as quiet as he could (though it was easier said as done with his big feet) and made sure no one was looking when he opened the portrait hole. He heard the Fat Lady ask who was there but he ignored her and just kept walking. He looked at the map and tried to avoid as many people as possible and went down empty corridors or took shortcuts behind some tapestries. It took almost 20 minutes to go down to the dungeon where the classroom was located; he peered on the map and saw that it was empty and figured Snape was in his office a bit deeper in the dungeon, which Ron hoped he'd remain until he was long gone.

Ron opened the cloak to reach out a hand and tried to open the door though he was pretty sure that it was locked. He was right and a simple Alohomora didn't work at all and determined that there was only one other spell he knew could work.

"Absobfirmo!" It didn't work and he didn't know any other spell. He guessed he had to figure out how he could steal them in class when both the classroom and the back store were opened. But he could get one ingredient tonight and that was the basilisk venom. And there was only one place he could get it, the Chamber of Secrets. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to prepare himself to go down that creepy place once more before he put the cloak on again and headed up to the second floor girls' bathroom.

"Who's there?" A girl's gel voice shouted when he stepped in and Moaning Myrtle came floating up from her toilet. "I know you're there even if you're invisible so just reveal yourself." Ron took off the invisibility cloak and said,

"Relax Myrtle…it's just me."

"Oh, hello Ronald. What do you want? Are you here to harass me like you did when you were here and brewed that potion?" She asked bitterly and flew down to him.

"No I'm not and I did no such thing." He said. "I just need to get down to the chamber and then I'll be leaving."

"Oh how nice, the last I saw of any of you was Harry in the prefect bathroom two years ago when he tried to figure out that egg in the tub. Then I'm alone for so long and... AHHHH!" He saw her flying with a speed that he had never seen before back into her toilet. Ron just stared after her. 'Wait did she just say that she had visited Harry in the tub?' He just had to ask him about that later but right now he had to focus on his mission.

He walked over to the sink that he, Harry, and Lockhart had stood in front of when they were on their way to save Ginny from Tom Riddle in their second year. Suddenly, he saw the snake on the crane and remembered how to get in to it, speaking Parseltongue. 'Oh fuck.' He thought to himself. 'Ok how did Harry sound when he opened the chamber?' He closed his eyes and tried to remember the hissing noise Harry made to open it in their second year. 'All I can do is try.' He took a step back and started hissing at the sink and watched as nothing happened. He tried again, trying to reformulate the noise though he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

After the tenth time he was getting a little frustrated; after a half an hour he was pacing back and forth in front of the sink. When a whole hour had passed, he was sitting down with his head in his hands ready to give up. What the hell was he going to do? The only person he knew who spoke Parseltongue was Harry and he couldn't ask him to come and open it without him asking questions and risk giving something away to You-Know-Who.

'Come on Weasley…you can't give up now. Hermione needs her parents and the only way for her to get them back is if you get the stupid chamber opened.' He lifted his head up from his hands, got up from the floor, and took a deep breath and started to hiss once more.

"Ssssyyyaaahaasssa. Shaaayasss. Chassshasyes. AHHHHH!" He pounded his fists on the sink. He started to just shout out randomly. "HASSAYAAS!" He almost fell forward as the sink started to sink down into the floor.

'It worked, it had actually worked.' He thought to himself feeling shocked as he looked down the hole that led down to the chamber. 'Well here goes nothing.' He took a step forward and then was slipping down the slimy pipe just to land on his arse on the disgusting rat skeletons. He quickly passed the giant snake skin and made it to the wall of bricks and stones that had fallen down from the ceiling as the result of Lockhart's memory spell in their second year. The hole he had made for twelve year old Harry and eleven year old Ginny to climb through was too small for him now, but this time he had a wand that was complete and therefore could easily lift the stones away with Wingardium Leviosa.

After a couple of minutes walking in the slimy sewers, he came to the big round stone door with snakes on it that Harry had told them about. It didn't take him as many tries this time to speak Parseltongue, and when he got the word right again, a moving snake appeared unlocking the door by slinking around it. A click was heard as the snake disappeared again and a rumble echoed as the door opened to reveal the great chamber.

Ron stopped and almost dropped his jaw at the size of it. 'How the hell does this even fit under the castle?' He stepped down the ladder and walked on the platform between the giant stone snakes toward Salazar Slytherin's ugly face where the corpse of the basilisk laid-a very rotten basilisk corpse. The closer Ron approached, the stronger the odour of rotten flesh grew stronger and eventually he had to cover his nose with his cloak so he wouldn't gag as much. The basilisk had big flesh wounds, some even to the bones and Ron could see worms crawling inside them, eating it up from the inside.

When he got there, he quickly but carefully loosened the fangs (avoiding cutting himself) and then placed them in his pockets. He then stood up and ran all the way to the door before taking his cloak away and took several deep breaths to take in some clean air as he hadn't been able to breathe down inside the chamber. When he had calmed down, he climbed the ladder and took one last look around the chamber before climbing out of the door and back into the pipes. The door closed by itself as he started to run back toward the stones of the fallen ceiling past the skin of the basilisk and to the room where he had landed when he had jumped down the pipe in the girls' bathroom.

When he got there he looked up the pipe he had first come from. 'Oh bloody hell!' Last time they had Fawkes fly them up the pipe, now he had nothing. 'What the hell am I gonna do?' Then he could literary hear Hermione's voice in his head.

"Are you a wizard or what?"

He smiled to himself and took out his wand. "Accio Clean sweep!" He had to wait a couple of minutes but he soon heard the familiar sounds of a broom closing in. It came down the pipe and flew into his outstretched hand. After he mounted it, he made sure the fangs of the basilisk were secured in his pockets before he took off and up to the girl's bathroom once again.There was no sign of Myrtle this time and Ron could quickly cast the invisibility cloak over himself and his broomstick so as not be seen or bothered by Myrtle.

It was now dark outside and when Ron took a glance at his clock he noticed it was almost 11pm. He had to get the other ingredients and the only place he could do that was to break into Snape's private store in the back of the classroom. But he couldn't do it now as it was highly secured and Hermione was probably the only person to know the charm to unlock it besides Snape. No, he decided that he was going to do it tomorrow during the Potion lesson; he just needed a distraction and he knew just the thing.

He soon reached The Fat Lady's portrait and spoke the password without her seeing him but she just sighed and opened it up anyway muttering to herself. The common room was deadly quiet as everybody had gone to bed. Ron took off the cloak and started to head towards the stairs to his dorm when he heard small familiar snores coming from one of the tables in the far away corner. Hermione was sleeping on her arms that were resting over a couple of books on the table. He walked over to her and thought first of waking her but then decided not to as it would probably be very awkward to talk to her. Instead, he took a quilt that was lying over an armchair and wrapped it around her back. He stared at her beautiful face that looked just as tired as he felt.

'Don't worry my love. Everything will be alright soon. That I can promise, please forgive me.' He bent down and kissed her on the forehead and she sighed and smiled in her sleep. He smiled back and turned around and walked up to his dorm. There he tiptoed over to Harry's bed and carefully put the cloak back into his trunk. Then he walked over to his own bed and opened his own trunk and roamed through it until he found what he was searching. 'This will be perfect for a distraction in class tomorrow.' He thought to himself as he put it in the school robes he was going to wear tomorrow. He then put the fangs in his trunk and locked it with spells and then made himself ready for bed, (something he hadn't done in a couple of days now), and opened up his curtains and lay down. Tonight he would get a couple of more hours of sleep than he had in the past week. And that was probably a good idea as the next couple of weeks he knew would be even worse.

He had had another dream about Tyra Powel that night from when she first had figured the potion and had exactly thought about how much of every ingredient was needed and how the potion it should be done.

The next morning he was sitting in the front row in the Potion classroom closest to the back room where Snape had his private ingredients where no one but him was allowed in (except when you had special permission from Snape). When he had started to walk towards his seat, he could almost hear Harry's jaw drop to the floor as he and Harry had never been that close to the teacher desk other than the middle row.

It was the middle of the class and Ron was stuffing ingredients in his cauldron from a potion he didn't even know the name; instead he was focusing on the thing he had in his pocket. It was a block of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, one of Fred and George's new store products. The product would explode and set the whole room in darkness and would give him exactly eight minutes to get to the back room, grab the ingredients, and get to his seat again without bumping into something or someone.

He was fingering the black clump in his pocket, looking around the room to see if anyone was paying him any attention. Everyone was busy with their potions and paying no mind to him at all and Snape was busy with Neville's sad excuse of a potion. Ron slyly took the clump of powder out of his pocket and rolled it down the aisle. Suddenly, a loud bang and several screams from the girls in the class were heard as the room got pitch black and no one could see anything. In all the noise no one noticed Ron who stood up and rushed in the direction of the back room.

It took about half a minute to find the handle but eventually he found it and stepped in just as Snape said, "Just stay in your seats and be quiet so I can think! Lumos" Ron understood that Snape must have taken out his wand to light it but nothing could shine through the dark fog. Ron closed the door so not too much powder would slip inside the back room too and turned his focus on finding all the ingredients. He looked up on the many shelves and then looked down at his watch and saw that there were seven minutes to go; he started to walk, reading all the etiquette on the jars as he squeezed himself through the shelves trying to find his necessary ingredients.

He found the Silverweed first and then the Valerian, Asphodel, Runespoore egg, Wormwood and Scarab beetle. Lastly, he found the Crocodile heart, Jobber knoll feather and the Knotgrass (which was in the back of the room as they were rare ingredients). He had taken his list out with all the ingredients he needed. He found them as they were sorted according to their usual potion value and the order he would put them. Silverweed was first and then continued onto The Blood of the Victim (which was the last one as it was the most valuable and rarest) as every man's blood was unique.

When Ron had stuffed his pockets with the ingredients he needed, he looked down at his watch again and saw that he had a little under two minutes to get out of there and back to his seat before the powder started to clear up and someone would notice him gone. He quickly made it back to the door and opened it; the problem was then that he didn't remember the way back to his seat. 'Oh shit!' He thought to himself as he closed the door behind him.

"I swear that when I find out whoever did this, they will never set their foot in Hogwarts again." He heard Snape say to his left a couple of meters in the back of the room. "Lumos, Lumos, Lumos!" He was clearly still trying to light his wand to see anything through all the darkness but Ron could only concentrate on finding his own seat again in time. He walked in the direction he thought it was but soon collided with Snape's desk which meant he was too far to the right. He chanced the direction to the left but soon hit the wall. After a while, he finally found his table but unfortunately most of the smoke had cleared away by then.

"Weasley! Didn't I tell you to stay in your seat?" Snape roared at him as he noticed Ron standing up in front of his table.

"Sorry Professor, I stood up before you said that and couldn't find my way back." Ron said as he sat back down in front of his failed potion. Snape just shook his head at him and walked up to his desk and then turned back to the class.

"I will find out what it was and who did it and that person will wish he or she had never done it as they will scrub every cauldron in this school when they get caught! Now class dismissed as we will not get to finish this potion today and have to do it all over in the next lesson. And as a punishment for all of you, you will bring me a two foot parchment about where you find all the ingredients to the potion and how you pluck them. Away with you." Everyone started to gather up their things and started to line up to pour out their unfinished potions. When Ron was done, he took his bag and met up with Harry outside the classroom.

"Wow! Who do you think did it?" Harry asked Ron when he got out and started walking up the stairs up from the dungeons.

"Dunno…maybe Seamus? It seems like a thing he could do right?"

"Nah it wasn't me." Seamus said as he and Dean caught up with them. "But I liked to shake hands with the one who did it."

"What if it was a Slytherin? Would you still want to shake hands with him then?" Ron asked him.

"Ok, no…I wouldn't want that. But why would a Slytherin do it?" He asked in his thick Irish accent. Ron just shrugged and then when he turned from Seamus he found Hermione watching him with both a suspicious and worried twinkle in her tired and sad eyes. Ron held her gaze for a while asking her silently what was wrong but she just turned away and started past them. Did she know what he had done? Did she know that he had stolen ingredients and that it was he who had set off the Darkeness Powder? So what? She had absolutely no proof and wouldn't tell on him if she did, right? Merlin how he missed her; he was sick of her absence from his life and wanted his old Hermione back and knew there was only one way to do that: To prove to her that even if his promises went wrong, he would do everything in his power to make things right again.

It was one o'clock in the morning and Ron was under the invisibility cloak once again carrying his cauldron, which was stuffed with all the ingredients, in his hands. He was walking down corridors of the seventh floor, looking for the wall where The Room of Requirement was hiding. He had taken the Marauders Map with him too so he would see if Filch, Mrs Norris or a teacher was roaming around to catch students out of bed. He knew that Snape was on this floor but was down far on the other end of it.

When he was finally in front of the wall, he paced back and forth as usual and thought 'I need a room to make a potion.' The room was filled with what Ron thought would be every potion book in the world and could only think of how long it would take for Hermione to read every one of them, thinking probably no more than two months. They were stuffed on shelves against the wall but Ron didn't focus on them for very long as he already knew what he needed to know about his potion. Rather, he focused on a giant fire with a gantry over it to hang a cauldron. There were several cauldrons that were better than his stapled on top of each other so he decided to go with one of those instead.

He took off the invisibility cloak and put his cauldron with the ingredients down beside the fire, then took one of the other ones and filled it with water by using Augamenti to hang over the fire. He then started to prepare and chop the Silverweed while the water started to boil. After about 20 minutes, the weed was nice and evenly chopped so Ron put them in the cauldron and watched the water turn slightly darker. He then took the Valerian and did the same. This was the only thing he could do today as the Valerian needed three days to boil before it gave any affect to the potion. Even though he couldn't do anything else, he sat there to make sure the fire didn't go out or that nothing went wrong with the potion. He was feeling exhausted and would slumber from time to time but kept his eyes open for most of the time to see that the potion was doing alright.

When the morning came, Ron woke up with his head on one of the shelves with the potions books. His neck cricked when he moved his head and every bone in his body felt sore as he rose to his feet. He checked his watch and noticed that he was very late for class so he checked the potion one last time before he took off to Herbology.

This whole routine of the Room of Requirement and potions continued each day. Every free time (such as breaks, lunch, dinner, evenings and nights), he would spend in the Room of Requirement with the potion, adding each and every ingredient at the precise time so that everything went right as some of the ingredients were similar to the Valerian that required days to set in the potion.

The days turned to weeks and soon it was the beginning of December. Ron had never felt more tired or hungry in his life. The only food he ate was when he stopped by the kitchen in the morning to get a sandwich from Dobby; the only sleep he got was from when he fell asleep in class or when he was doing his homework in the Room of Requirement as he kept one eye on the potion. But he had to forget his fatigue and focus on the potion which he was working on currently. Four days ago he had added the Jobberknoll feather and was just about to get some poison out of the Basilisk fang he was holding. Exactly three drops and then the potion would stand for two weeks before he added the Knotgrass and then it would be done and would hopefully mean that maybe Hermione would have her parents back.

When he was done and had watched the potion turn to the right colour, he decided that he couldn't do any more (as staring at the cauldron was getting tedious), so he rounded up his things and took off to get some much needed sleep in his bed. He didn't get very far though as Ginny caught up with him and dragged him into an empty classroom.

"You know you could just have asked me nicely to come with you." He said as she closed the door.

"Stop it Ron, stop whatever you are doing to yourself. You are worrying everybody- me, Harry and especially Hermione." Ron looked at her teary eyes. Ginny never got teary eyes if there wasn't something really bad that had happened or was happening. "She looks just as tired as you do and has lost weight too. She thinks you blame yourself for what happened to her parents and that you are doing this to yourself and that it is all her fault for yelling at you. Is that true Ron? Is that why you stopped taking care of yourself?" Ron just stared at her. He couldn't believe what Ginny was asking him. Did they really believe that he was starving himself due to self-pity?

"Of course not, Ginny. I'm doing this to make it all better. I'm doing this for Hermione so she will feel better and hopefully, if she still wants me, she'll take me back."

"What? Of course she wants you back, she doesn't say it out loud but haven't you noticed the looks she gives you? It would be odd if you haven't as everyone else has."

"Well, yes I have noticed but I wasn't sure if I just saw what I wanted to see. But if she regrets her words and wants me back, why hasn't she said anything?" He asked her very concerned.

"Because she's afraid that you are so angry with her that you're gonna say no and dump her for good if she tries to apologize you darn buffoon!" She said and put her hands on her hips, imitating their mother.

"What that's just barmy, how could she even think that?"

"Because…you haven't even tried to make contact with her at all for the past month, Ron."

"Yes because I thought she still blamed me for not being good enough to cast a Fidelius Charm on her parent's safe house!"

"Well she doesn't blame you but you have to discuss it with her. All I want to know is that you're not starving yourself because of guilt?"

"No, I'm not starving myself at all; it's just that I'm very busy with something very important."

"Ok, but please start eating again Ron, I've never seen you this skinny and if it goes on I'm afraid I'll have to send after our dear mother to talk some sense into you." Ron shivered at the thought about what his mother would say if she heard about his current eating habits.

"Don't worry Gin I will, and I will soon be done with the thing I'm working on." He said and smiled his most calming smile. She didn't smile back but did something he hadn't expected and therefore almost lost his balance as she hugged him tightly.

"Good because I can't stand to see you like this much longer." And with that she let him go and walked out of the classroom leaving Ron rooted at his spot. Ginny's comment about Hermione still wanting him back, made him even more determined to bring her parents back to her and her to him; unfortunately, that would make the promise he had just made to Ginny very hard to keep. But at least this broken promise was for something good.

Two weeks later he stood behind the cauldron at 3am and dropped the Knotgrass in it. It was almost done and now the only thing he needed was the blood from Mr and Mrs Granger and then it would finally be finished. He could feel the adrenalin that he had running through his body for the last two weeks pump even harder through his blood as he thought to himself, 'I must get to St. Mungo's now!'

AN: Please tell me what you think!