Chapter Thirty Five - Play Dead

Hermione had got to night school early to use their sparse library. Not for the books, however, but to gain access to the Internet. She had to find out if anything had happened to Ron.

Beachy Head. That was where he was when he had called. The nearest town was Eastbourne and she thought that there must be a few local news websites for the area that she could look through to find out if anybody had died recently. Maybe she would find something at the department of Births Deaths and Marriages she thought as she tapped away on the keyboard. She didn't have a last name for him, she hoped he had meant it when he told her that Ron was his real name, and found herself accessing is list of names that she found alarmingly long.

What date had she last spoken to him? She had to remember and then look through every death from that date until now. God this was morbid. She was frantically searching for a name on a list that she really didn't want to find there. Would it be a good sign if she didn't find any Rons had died recently? What would she do if several Rons had died? Why was she so shaken up by a stupid dream for heaven's sake?

She searched the list for the first week she hadn't heard anything from him, nothing; then the second week; again nothing. She searched every single death up until the previous night and still no Rons. Well there was one actually but he was in his seventies so she was pretty confident that it wasn't her Ron.

Her Ron?

That was right. He was her responsibility and she would track him down if it killed her. She had tried to push the thought of him aside but that had only worked for so long. Mistakes can be corrected couldn't they? How far away was Eastbourne from Leamington Spa anyway?

She left the morbid web pages and went to the British Rail journey planner site. There she found out that she could get a train into Paddington and then get the tube to Victoria station where she could get a direct train to Eastbourne. She thought for a moment. If she was going to have to get off the train in London anyway she might as well go and visit her parents for the day before setting out on the second half of her journey. That would be nice. She missed them both and she was still quite curious about this person her father had mentioned on the telephone that she just had to meet.

She looked up the ticket prices and made a note on the back page of her Latin workbook before gathering her things and setting off to class.

She would have to work out a time in between classes and her shifts at the Samaritans that she would be able to go on her ill-advised little journey. She'd need to call her father and arrange for him to pick her up from Paddington station too. She knew that this wasn't professional behaviour but she also felt a thrill at the idea of having change of routine at last. She passed a couple of older students who were discussing their plans for the half term break and realised that she had a week before her own class broke up for a week on Friday. That would be perfect. She could go to her parents' house for Saturday and Sunday and then leave for the coast on Monday morning to go and search for Ron's hospital.

"It's not a hospital, it's a clinic."

She remembered what Ron had said to her that time. Right, she needed to find a clinic in the Eastbourne area for head trauma or psychological evaluation, some kind of treatment facility for Ron's problems. That shouldn't be too hard should it? So by Monday afternoon she would be meeting Ron face to face and she would be able to apologise for her mistake personally and maybe get to know the voice she had missed so much; the voice that had managed to penetrate her subconscious as well as her conscious thoughts. She would meet Ron. Her Ron.

It was Monday evening now. By this time next week she would known what had happened to him. She would have found him and everything would be better for both of them. He wasn't dead. That was just a silly dream about graffiti on walls.

As she pushed the door to her Latin class open and stepped inside she felt an unfamiliar buzz of excitement inside. She had something to look forward to. It was a good feeling.

ooo

Ginny watched Harry. He didn't know she was watching him or that she had been watching him for over an hour now, and he carried on with his strange behaviour completely oblivious to her scrutiny.

He was up to something. She already knew that. In fact she had already worked out most of what was going on in her ex-boyfriend's head recently, that was one of the bonuses of knowing him better than he knew himself, she could tell when a plan was brewing.

He had found a portkey and was trying to re create Hermione's cedo malori charm so that he could be taken to Ron, that's what she thought anyway, but this odd little scene with Hedwig on the green in Grimmauld Place was puzzling. Why on earth were the two of them concentrating so hard on an empty butterbeer bottle in a brown paper bag for Merlin's sake?

The routine seemed to be as follows; Harry would give the bag containing the empty bottle to Hedwig who would fly over the nearby park, turn and fly back and land at the feet of a Weasley, any Weasley it seemed, and pull at the bag with her beak until the bottle rolled out onto the ground in front of them. Then she would flutter up to their face and start acting in a very un-Hedwig like manner.

With Charlie she had beaten him around the sides of the face with her wings until he had grabbed her out of the air and examined her for some kind of injury. Being Charlie he seemed to have thought that any animal must be in some distress to be acting so out of character like that. He had been worried enough to try to take her into the house for closer examination before Harry had rushed over and claimed his owl back with some pathetically fake explanation for her little performance. The two of them had waited for him to go inside the house before Harry reached into his pocket to give Hedwig a treat for being roughed up by a concerned Charlie and then they began all over again.

Percy had his glasses plucked off of his face and dropped on top of the bottle but all that achieved was Percy stumbling around until he walked into a lamp post. Ginny had to laugh at that although Harry had seemed very annoyed that Percy hadn't done what was expected of him.

Her mother had come out of the house to help a dazed and confused Percy into the house while summoning the glasses to her with a quick summoning charm. This annoyed Harry further.

What on earth was he trying to get them to do?

Next up were the twins. Fred had yelped with the shock of Hedwig landing on his head and digging her claws into his scalp while George simply doubled up with laughter as the owl tried in vain to retain her balance on her thrashing perch and empty the bottle out of her bag. The bag tore and the bottle fell out and knocked the owl off of Fred's head, causing considerably more amusement to George in the process, while Harry dropped his head into his hands and looked thoroughly disappointed though slightly amused himself now.

Their mother had bounded out of the house and started to bemoan the behaviour of Harry's normally dignified owl while examining Fred's bloodied scalp.

"She's off her bloody rocker!" Fred had exclaimed when his mother had asked what he thought was troubling the owl enough to begin attacking the family in such a way.

"Language Fred!" she said as she shoved him toward the house, "Get inside and let me clean that up."

She had turned around to try and capture Hedwig but the snowy owl had taken off with the bottle in her claws and flown back to Harry's point of observation behind a hedge on the far side of the green.

"What are you up to Potter?" Ginny muttered as she watched Him reaching into his back pocket and withdrawing a plastic bag and placing the bottle inside before sending Hedwig out after a brief set of instructions and causing havoc all over again.

The targets seemed to have changed from just the Weasley family members now. Hedwig had next emptied the bottle from the bag at the feet of a milkman before pecking him in the ankle until he aimed a kick at her and she flew away looking quite offended.

Then a small child was presented with the bottle at her feet but all she had eyes for was the beautiful white birdie and Hedwig had to abort that attempt.

Finally Lupin came walking along the road with Mad Eye Moody and a silver haired Tonks and Hedwig simply dive bombed the three of them, hitting Lupin on the side of the head with the bottle, still inside the bag, before it fell to the pavement and smashed.

"Wasn't that Potter's owl?" Moody asked, his magical eye swivelling around every inch of the sky while the real one focused upon Lupin's bewildered face.

"I believe it was." he replied as he rubbed the side of his head.

Tonks was shocked,

"Did Hedwig just bottle you in the face Remus?"

"I believe she did." Lupin said as he stared at her, still somewhat shocked at the airborne attack.

"I didn't think owls went through phases of teenage hooliganism," she said as she struggled not to chuckle.

"Oh go ahead Nymphadora, laugh at my persecution by the animal kingdom, I don't mind." he smiled back at her.

"You are the animal kingdom that's why." she said as she pulled his hand away to examine the side of his face, "There's not even a mark yer big baby!"

"Come on," Moody grunted, "our awareness of our surroundings are becoming lax. Even I didn't see that owl coming. We shouldn't let our guard down just because we live in a better world now. There's still plenty to threaten us."

"Like big white owls drunk on butterbeer?" Tonks asked with a great deal of sarcasm.

"Get inside while I patrol the area." Moody ordered.

Tonks was about to say something else before Lupin grabbed her arm and pulled her inside the house, leaving Moody to set off around the green.

Ginny glanced over to Harry's hiding place and realised that he and Hedwig had gone. They couldn't continue their practice now that they had attacked tow aurors so it looked as it they had thrown in the towel for the day. Ginny still didn't quite understand what the point of all this bottle in a bag and assaulting passers by routine was in aid of but she was going to watch Harry very closely from now on.

Not that she didn't watch him already of course.

ooo

Billposters will be prosecuted

Hermione read the official looking sign that had been plastered onto a wall that was papered with all sorts of flyers for underground clubs and local bands tour dates. Her eyes glanced down at the spray painted graffiti that somebody had scrawled beneath this sign.

Bill Posters is innocent!

She found herself laughing out loud at this. What a simpleton she must look, she thought without really caring all that much, standing alone at a bus stop and howling with laughter at a wall.

"Oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed as a thought occurred to her.

This was just like her dream, only with something funny written on the wall rather than something horrid, maybe this was what her dream was about. Maybe it was a premonition dream that didn't really mean anything at all. She felt a little disappointed with her own subconscious. Other people had premonition dreams about major catastrophes and she gets a premonition dream about localised vandalism. She rolled her eyes and shook her head at this realisation.

How typical of her life so far eh?

Then she felt a little ripped-off. She had just made some very wild and spontaneous plans to go off in search of Ron based on that dream and now she finds out that the dream was utterly meaningless? Well what did that mean for the plans she had just made? The plans she was so excited about?

She set her jaw with determination and told herself that it made no difference at all, she was still going through with her ill-conceived idea and that was that.

She stared at the graffiti before her and remembered the blood red words she had read on the walls in her dream.

Obiit

Her eyebrows shot up so high that they almost disappeared into her hair.

"Maybe somebody called Bill Posters died!" she said with wonder at another possible interpretation of her bizarre dream.

"Excuse me?" a middle aged woman asked as she leaned around the corner of the bus shelter to see who Hermione had been talking to.

"Oh sorry," Hermione stammered, "I was just thinking aloud. Sorry."

Oh great, she thought, laughing at walls and now talking to walls...no wonder she didn't have any friends!

ooo

A/N Unfortunately the Bill Posters gag isn't mine but I do love it so much credit goes to whoever it was who wrote that particular piece of genius wordplay in London. I bow before a greater talent than my own!