Ron never understood how it was that his brothers were so much better with swords than he was. Whenever they would go out in the fields and play with the wooden swords they kept laying around, they all seemed to be able to beat him without the slightest bit of effort on their part. No matter how much strength he put into his slashes or how many times he could make himself stand up again, they always seemed to be standing over him while he laid flat and gasping for breath.
Even Percy, who didn't come out with them often beat him with the same ease in which the others did. Something about the way Percy watched him always allowed him to find an opening in what Ron was trying to do.
Fred and George were always impossible, it seemed like they had eyes in the back of their heads and were completely unable to be tricked.
Bill was just too damn strong and too damn fast for Ron to have any chance at beating him.
At least Ron didn't have to worry about Ginny beating him, but if they ever let her join in on it their mother might have their heads.
And Charlie… well he couldn't win against someone who didn't live with them anymore, could he?
Anyways, staring up at the sky completely out of breath was not an unusual experience for Ron to have on any given day. So why was it that he was currently being overwhelmed by an intense wave of fear.
Ron pulled himself into a sitting position to try to get an understanding of where the feeling was coming from. His body was incredibly sore and he could feel that something was wrong with his left forearm from the unusually intense pain that was coming from it. He grit his teeth to try to look around despite the pain.
The clearing he and his brothers had been playing in looked like a storm had blown through it. Grass was upturned everywhere and large gouges had been made throughout the clearing. Some of the smaller trees that surrounded the area had been knocked down with large slashes through them.
Ron blinked confusedly at his surroundings, still not fully understanding what was happening. The devastation that had swept through the area seemed incomprehensible in comparison to the relatively normal stretch of forest he knew that he had been in only moments before. A sharp pain coming from his left shoulder knocked him back to reality.
With a hiss his hand shot to his shoulder to clasp onto the wound that was now leaking blood from it. A deep slash had appeared on his left shoulder and was causing Ron great distress, but he was distracted from that by a loud shrieking coming from his right.
A monster was standing over the body of what appeared to be Bill. The creature was stout and was wearing a cropped tunic made of hardened leather with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a long knife sheathed at its belt. Its skin was a ghastly shade of gray and brown that was evidently inhuman. It wore overly large iron boots that seemed several sizes too large for it. Its face was a gnarled amalgamation of an overly large nose, sharp teeth that could not be contained by its mouth, and eyes without lids that were bloodshot and almost appeared to droop out of their sockets. It carried a pikestaff that was longer than its own body that it was waving around in the air threateningly. The most notable thing about the monster, however, was the distinctive red hat that it wore which clued Ron into its identity.
A Red Cap.
Ron's blood ran cold at the sight of the monster. He had never actually seen any of the monsters that his mother had always told them stories about. To him they might as well have been made up stories with no bearing on reality. He had never seen anything that even remotely resembled this type of monster before in his life. Fred and George had often boasted about their supposed encounter with a grindylow down by the nearby pond, but Ron sincerely doubted that the pond was large enough to be attractive enough to such a monster. There were also the reported monsters of their neighbor, Luna, but her tales of monsters had always seemed even more ridiculous and unlikely to be real than the stories his mother had told him.
All of that was to say that Ron was in shock that a monster stood before him, and that he had absolutely no clue what it was that he was supposed to do. He knew that the stories his mother had told him about Red Caps had lessons about what to do if one were ever to encounter one, but being put face to face with one seemed to be making his memory very spotty.
What was a Red Cap this close to their home anyways? To Ron's recollection Red Caps made residence in abandoned castles that had been the sites of atrocities in the past, something about blessing the castle against bad luck, but Ron couldn't be certain. The closest castle was still miles away from the hamlet of Ottery St. Catchpole. Their hamlet couldn't even generously be called a village by most standards, they rarely ever even attracted wandering merchants to buy goods from. The lord of the region's castle was a long way away and to Ron's knowledge there hadn't been any conflict in the region since the war almost 15 years ago.
So, why was there a Red Cap here? Well, it wasn't like any of that really mattered in the face of the monster that was now running straight towards him. Running straight towards him?
Yes, it appeared that the monster was done grandstanding over the fallen body of Bill and now was charging straight at Ron. Panic flooded through him again and he quickly looked around to try to find a way to escape. He didn't find one but he did find his three other brothers with blood leaking from slash wounds much like his own, and being incapacitated on the ground much like Bill.
That momentary look around shrank the distance between him and the Red Cap to almost nothing and the only thing Ron could do to dodge the incoming horizontal slice of the Red Cap's pikestaff was to duck onto all fours.
Ron saw the pikestaff make a wide slash just inches above his hair, he almost thought he saw a few loose strands of his hair falling free from his head. Ron had a sinking feeling when he realized that he almost certainly would have been disembowled if he hadn't ducked right when he had.
Ron was so distracted by the slash that he didn't really comprehend that the Red Cap was right on top of him now and was completely able to retaliate again.
Ron was kicked hard in the ribs by the Red Caps iron boots and was lifted off of the ground by the force of it. He soared through the air for several feet until his back collided with a tree and he fell right on his left shoulder, where the slash wound had been earlier. Ron let out a very loud shriek of pain.
The Red Cap didn't seem to be waiting for Ron to recover from the pain, however as Ron could hear the heavy clanking sounds of the boots making rough contact with the ground quickly becoming louder. The Red Cap let out an otherworldly groan and Ron couldn't get himself to move out of the way of the coming pikestaff so instead closed his eyes in preparation for what would certainly be the end of his life.
For a few seconds at least, for the pikestaff never came to make contact with him. Ron opened his eyes to see that Bill was standing right above him, holding one of their two wooden swords and the head of the Red Cap's pikestaff buried into the ground a few inches above Ron's head. Bill must have come along and deflected the pikestaff mid swing, causing it to miss Ron's neck by a span of a few inches.
The sight of the pikestaff was enough to motivate Ron to scramble into a sitting position and back up frantically so that he was resting against the tree he had hit earlier, while trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder, ribs, and back. Bill was standing while holding the sword in his left hand, which was weird because Ron knew that he was right handed, but made more sense when Ron saw the mangled mess that his right hand had become.
Bill came out with a large swipe of the sword and hit the Red Cap in the hip and knocked it back a few feet, with the pikestaff now several feet away from it.
"Ron," came Bill's voice, thick with a cool decisiveness. "I want you to get up and run back to the house. Tell Mum and Dad that there's a monster and alert the village guard."
Ron was shocked by the suggestion. "I'm not going to just leave you here alone!"
"Ron," Bill said, harder than he had before. "I need you to go and warn Mum and Dad so they can get Ginny to safety."
Ron just blinked at the suggestion and stumbled to his feet with a guilty feeling in his stomach. Would he just leave Bill here to face the Red Cap alone? It only took a few moments to decide once he was on his feet, and he spun around on his feet and started to limp towards the Burrow.
Tears spilled from his eyes as he ran through his limps back to the Burrow. He wasn't being a coward here, he was going to alert his family. He would have stayed to fight the Red Cap if he didn't have others to protect back at home. What could they even expect him, the youngest brother to do against a monster?
It wasn't like anything was ever expected of him, he was the most useless of all of his siblings, the sixth son. The son that only existed because his Mother had wanted a daughter so bad. He had heard the story about her crying when they found out he was a boy from the twins one too many times to not slightly believe in its authenticity. He was the son that always messed up whatever it was that he was trying to do.
He was the son that always lost when they fought with wooden swords.
Bill let out a loud scream from behind him.
Ron came to a stop.
Ron turned around and started to run much faster than he had before. He didn't know what it was that he was doing. It was smarter to just go back and warn his parents. It might already be too late to save his brothers. Going back might just doom the rest of his family as well. But no matter how many excuses he made in his head, his legs wouldn't stop running towards the clearing.
And he was getting faster as he ran. The pain was disappearing from his shoulder and he started being able to breathe much easier than he had been before, the pain almost completely disappearing from his back.
He was sprinting now, about to burst his way into the clearing when he jumped over a fallen tree.
Except when he jumped, he jumped much higher than he thought that he was going to. He must have jumped 10 feet into the air, as he could see the clearing much below him and could make out everything inside of it. Fred, George, and Percy were still unconscious across the field. The Red Cap was now walking away from Bill, who was staring wide eyed up at Ron. The Red Cap was holding the long knife Ron had seen it bearing earlier, and was on its way to pick up the pikestaff that was still buried into the ground.
Ron was coming down right on top of the Red Cap however. Ron landed on both of his feet with a loud thud which seemed to ripple out into the earth around him. The ground rippled up and down around him like a stone had been dropped into a puddle. Ron's eyes felt like they were burning with an otherworldly determination as he stood in between the Red Cap and its pikestaff.
The Red Cap seemed momentarily taken aback by his appearance, but soon recovered an let out another shriek in response to his appearance. Ron screamed right back at the monster and it actually seemed to be staggered by it for a moment.
Ron paid that no mind and ran straight at the monster with a kick from his left leg.
A wave of green fire appeared out of nowhere around his leg and shot straight out towards the Red Cap. The flame made contact with the monster and caused it to roll around on the ground in agony.
Ron was so shocked by the flames that all he could do was watch as the Red Cap rolled around and screeched. He was so shocked, in fact that he just watched as the monster recovered and made a desperate lunge at him with the knife. Ron moved his arms up to guard himself, but yet again no attack landed on him.
Ron looked to see that large vines had sprouted out of the ground and had grasped a hold of each of the Red Cap's limbs. All Ron could do was stare in shock and dropped his arms. In response to that, the vine grabbing hold of the monsters left arm suddenly constricted and tore the arms straight off of its body.
The monster screamed and lunged at Ron again with its knife and Ron tripped over himself and a pillar of stone sprouted out of the ground to deflect the knife away from him.
The monster lunged again but to Ron, it seemed like it had suddenly gone in slow motion. Ron looked around quickly at the clearing and realized that it was like his perception of reality had suddenly gone much faster than what it had been before. He stared at the Red Cap that was lunging straight for him and all of a sudden no longer felt any form of fear from it.
He just knew what he had to do in order to beat it.
Ron raised his right arm and snapped his fingers.
An explosion rang out through the clearing, the force of which knocked Ron back a few feet. Ron rolled over himself but quickly pulled himself up to his feet in order to prepare himself for the next attack of the Red Cap. But there was no need to do so.
The Red Cap lay down on the ground in front of him. There was a large chunk of flesh missing from where its neck met its right shoulder and the flesh that surrounded it was now a charred black color.
Ron had defeated the Red Cap.
Somehow.
Ron barely processed what was going on when he looked down at his hands in shock. They were glowing a bright crimson.
A group of people suddenly burst into the clearing and stared in shock at him and at the corpse of the Red Cap. They all stared in shock at the scene of carnage around them.
A long moment passed between them before one of them worked up the courage to exclaim. "H-he's one of the Chosen!"
All Ron could think about before he passed out was how screwed his life now was.
A/N: New story that I wanted to make. I want to try making an update schedule so I'm going to try to make this a weekly thing. So maybe expect an update every Saturday? I don't know I might give up after this chapter.