Interlude: Ron

He wasn't the best friend Harry Potter could have made. Ron could acknowledge that much. He was jealous and materialistic, quick to both anger and assumptions, and immature. He was a little bit lazy, and he only knew enough about pureblood customs to know he couldn't help Harry with them. When he'd realized how little Harry knew, he'd immediately dismissed the idea of asking Neville for help. If he'd done that, Harry might have realized how little Ron had to offer their friendship and ditched him.

Not that Harry would do that, but… He hadn't known that then, and even now, part of Ron was still afraid of the possibility.

All the same, best friend or not, Ron knew something was wrong the moment he saw Harry wake up at Grimmauld Place. He couldn't have articulated it well himself, much as he wasn't any good at explaining how he knew what moves to make in Wizard's Chess. He simply saw all the details together, and a conclusion formed. In this case, it was a combination of the way Harry held himself, the way he spoke, and the flow of conversations with him.

Harry was upset with them though, which made Ron frustrated with Harry. Because of that, he put the matter out of his mind. Whatever was wrong couldn't be anything too awful anyway, he told himself.

Harry only wanted to study now, and that made it easier for Ron to leave him alone. It was one thing to be friends with The-Boy-Who-Lived who was the youngest Seeker in a century and sucked at Wizard's Chess and was just as happy to jump headlong into situations as Ron. It was an entirely different thing to be friends with The-Boy-Who-Lived who only wanted to study and looked at everyone with cold, assessing eyes.

By the time they went back to Hogwarts, Ron was certain that Harry had become a different person, but he thought the end of the Tournament was the sort of thing that would completely change a person. That in mind, Ron ignored the feeling, instead striking out on his own to make new friends.

Even when he started attending Harry and Hermione's study club, and realized that Harry had all kinds of knowledge that Harry Potter just didn't have, Ron ignored it. He realized somewhere, deep inside, that there was no way Harry could have learned all this just over the summer. That something was terribly wrong with the boy he'd been friends with for four years now. But it wasn't causing any problems, whatever it was. In fact, this had so far been the most peaceful year at Hogwarts Ron had experienced. He liked being brave and going on adventures and saving the school, of course, but having something happen every year was too stressful. It was nice to be a normal student for once.

As Harry moved between classes, not actually ignoring Cho Chang (who Ron was dimly aware his friend had been interested in) so much as not even noticing her, Ron filed it away as yet another weird thing and went on with his life. Everything about Harry was adding up to something he didn't want to think about, because if he confronted that knowledge, the normalcy would end.

It was a little embarrassing, but the thing that finally broke through his willful ignorance was finding out Harry'd been sleeping with Ginny. The realization struck him when the boy before him said that he had been just sleeping with Ginny, looking more exasperated than embarrassed. For one thing, Harry Potter would have been absolutely mortified. But more importantly…

It wasn't something Ron necessarily wanted to know about his friend, but it was the sort of thing you ended up finding out when you shared a small space with a bunch of guys for most of the year. Especially when your friend wasn't nearly as discrete or good at silencing charms as he thought he was. So Ron knew full well that Harry was a normal bloke who thought about girls and sometimes wanked off when he thought his roommates were asleep and had wet dreams about just about every girl they knew.

Somehow, though, when this boy said he was just sleeping with Ginny, Ron could tell that he was saying it as someone who'd never even once considered the idea. And suddenly Ron knew. This wasn't Harry Potter.

The revelation was startling, but it had already been months, and this person hadn't done anything worrisome, and part of Ron still felt like he must be crazy to think his friend had been… what? Possessed? No, he definitely didn't have an evil face growing out of the back of his head. Imperiused? No, Harry could even shake off You-Know-Who's Imperius Curse. Converted? No, Harry would never join You-Know-Who, and anyway, that wouldn't have had this kind of effect, Ron didn't think.

Ron might have decided it was impossible and gone back to ignoring things if he hadn't thought, upon seeing this boy's notebooks, of Riddle's diary.

So Ron went to Fred and George and asked them to look at their copy of the Marauder's Map to see what name it said where Harry Potter should be.

"What are you talking about?" George asked innocently.

"We gave that old thing to Harry years ago, remember?" Fred added.

"He didn't lose it, did he?" they suddenly demanded together.

Ron knew his brothers better than that though. "You'd never give out an advantage like that unless you'd figured out how to make your own," he told them.

His brothers looked at each other, sharing a silent conversation the way they always seemed able to do. Finally, they pulled out a significantly smaller map. "Only partially," George said with some chagrin. "We couldn't figure out how to get the map to automatically chart out the castle's current configuration, so ours only shows the castle within a certain distance from the map." At Ron's request, they brought the map to the Common Room amid grumbles and sighs. Then they looked at the map, checking where Harry Potter should have been. Ron's blood turned to ice. It said Tom Riddle.

He had to explain who that was to the twins, whose first instinct was so Gryffindorish even Ron thought it was stupid. They wanted to go up to him and attack him, interrogate him, then force him to give back Harry. Ron managed, barely, to talk them down from that by pointing out that Riddle was, for whatever reason, not doing anything blatantly evil yet, so they should wait and gather information, then give that information to Dumbledore. "You sound like Hermione," Fred grumbled, the comparison distinctly uncomplimentary. George agreed with Ron though, and that meant Fred agreed.

Somehow though, Tom Riddle really wasn't acting like they'd have expected You-Know-Who to act. Ron started to feel like something was wrong with their theory. For one thing, Hermione knew Harry just about as well as Ron, and she'd only gotten closer to him over the past few months. She had to know already, but she seemed fine with it. That alone told them that they were missing something.

Also, even though he was absolutely terrifying in a duel (and didn't that suddenly make so much more sense), he wasn't cruel. Or at least, not as cruel as You-Know-Who should be. From the way their parents talked, You-Know-Who would have been furious at the twins for attacking him, but he seemed more amused than anything. Yes, he always attacked them twice as hard after, but he also gave them more advice than anyone else. George in particular was certain that Riddle was actually pleased with their continued attacks.

Fred was the one who realized that Harry Potter might be inside a dementor now. That had made both Ron and George sick, but it made sense. It even fit with Hermione working with him, because Hermione would do anything for Harry. If Riddle asked Hermione to take the Dark Mark in return for Harry's life, Ron didn't doubt that she'd do it in a heartbeat, because so would he. Ron might not have been the best friend for Harry Potter, but Harry Potter was the best friend for Ron. So they decided that, if it turned out that Riddle had a way of getting Harry back, they'd work with him.

Then their father died.

Ron spent the rest of the day and the following night in the same room as the twins and Ginny, the four of them bunched together miserably. Ginny was still crying in her sleep, and the twins were curled up against each other in a way he hadn't seen them do since they were very young. For his part, Ron stared out the window and at the night sky with red-rimmed eyes and thought.

Suddenly Harry's - or Riddle's, he supposed - insistence that they needed to be working harder made so much sense. Ron had known that the Order might do dangerous things, and he'd known that being an adult didn't make someone immune to that danger, but he also hadn't known. He'd expected that everything would be alright, because the adults would make things alright. If his parents couldn't, then Dumbledore would. The only reason he'd been able to go on those adventures with Harry each year was that deep down, he'd believed that someone would come save them if they ever really needed saving.

Now though, he knew.

With that knowledge came the realization that Hermione might already have known this. Maybe she wasn't just reluctantly working with Riddle to save Harry. If Riddle was planning to fight You-Know-Who, then Hermione could be working with him because who better to fight You-Know-Who than another version of You-Know-Who?

The moment that thought went through his mind, Ron realized how dumb the moniker You-Know-Who really was. Voldemort it would be then, he thought with a shudder. Riddle and Voldemort.

So Ron made up his mind that night. Next time he saw Riddle, he'd tell him what he knew and his decision and ask if it was really possible to save Harry. Harry was almost a member of their family, and Ron couldn't bear to lose anyone else. If Riddle could bring Harry back, Ron would do whatever he could to help. Even if he couldn't though, so long as Riddle meant to destroy Voldemort, Ron would still help however he could.