Ron wasn't even close to being the best writer in his own class, let alone thinking himself a writer of a comparable caliber. He couldn't weave through plots intricately and seamlessly to create a story worthy of an author like Seamus. Seamus who, when given a chance to present a talent by Flitwick to pass time in a free period left a bunch of teenagers excited to read a story.
He wasn't on par with Lavender who could create imageries and metaphors and blend them to form emotions that shined through the narrator to the reader. No, Ron wasn't as good as any of them. But when asked on what he loved doing the most in this world, without a doubt, the first thing he would say would be writing.
Before Hogwarts, Ron never was the type of kid to sit still and read a book and writing was something Ron viewed as even worse of a hobby than reading. His childhood was filled in a garden of memories, of running in the nearby field with his siblings, of playing quidditch on toy brooms with them and always lagging behind Bill and Charlie, curious about everything and especially Hogwarts. He always had questions for them, could go on for hours about anything.
In a lifetime of childhood, he remembered learning cooking with his sister, about muggles with his brother Percy. He was a child and he had a knack for living. Every day was a gift that life kept on giving.
He used to love the word magic, it meant something so special to him, a word he couldn't attribute any metaphor to show its wonder. Each trip to Diagon Alley for shopping left him in awe. Shops about Quidditch, wands, magical items bought a joy untold. He would beg his parents to stay just a few more minutes so he could explore more. The name of Knockturn Alley sparked mischief in him. He was a child and he just loved life in the purest form.
And as years passed by he watched his brothers slowly depart to Hogwarts, a school of magic. He went with them for their shopping, saw their happiness as they held their wands for the first time. The excitement building slowly as the days marched by and then watching them on the fateful day of their departure waving in a sea of students with Ron hanging onto his mother.
Their letters would be one of the only things he would enjoy reading back then. Sometimes he would end up reading more than ten times before the next one arrived, making their adventures his bedtime stories. He would hang on to their every single words in the weekly Floo Calls provided by the school, devouring them, imagining them and just wanting to be with them.
Ron counted down the years on his birthday till he could be with them and every single year he got closer made him slightly more excited till his tenth birthday, where he was practically buzzing with being this close to magic, friends and adventures.
And after what felt like years to him, the year was over and his brothers were back for vacations before they went to Hogwarts once again, but this time he would be going with them!
He felt bad for Ginny who once realized that she would be staying alone at home for a whole year started crying. He tried his best to spend time with her before going, promising letters solely for her at least once every week and Floo Calls longer than any other student.
And then his parents told him the day before going to shopping that he would be receiving Charlie's old wand. He remembered trying not to show his anguish to his parents, not wanting to make them feel even more worse than they already did but he also remembered the anger he felt at his parents, unabridged anger for not getting the chance to feel that happiness that each of his brother had held when they were eleven. He cried himself to sleep that night with silent but ugly tears.
The shopping left a bad taste in his mouth despite his parents trying to cheer him up. The wand shop taunting him at every turn, every chance he saw it. The second hand books he got always weighing on him. But he soldiered on and carried that weight, that heaviness with him because it was his burden to bear. He tried to feel hopeful for the future because he was going to Hogwarts. He always desired that, the one thing he wanted above all, right?
His brothers had told him about the excitement they felt the night before, making a list for all the things they planned but he just felt apprehension and nervousness. If there was any excitement, it was lost in the pool in his stomach filled with trepidation. The fateful day for him was trying not to panic as he said hi goodbyes to the family he would be leaving, his home.
His promises to Ginny now felt hollow when even he was unsure of what exactly was going to happen. It scared him, paralyzed him till he was just a mess of all the wrong emotions for what should be the start of his journey. And no one noticed it, his anxiousness, the shaking of his hands that he was just one moment away from breaking down in front of all his schoolmates and not caring one bit about it. Everywhere he looked he could see smiles and happiness and he just felt so alone in all the crowd.
The start of the train ride was torturous, every compartment he saw was filled with students to the brim, and there he felt so awkward when he thought of talking to two or three people already talking amongst each other. And finally he saw a compartment with what looked like to be just a single first year. He knocked and asked, "Can I sit here, all other compartments are empty." Then the boy inside the compartment smiled, and suddenly the world felt alright once again.
Harry was like the shade he had found after hours of blistering sun. He somehow felt a bit better with Harry, everything seemed a bit brighter, a bit livelier. And then he messed up a bit not realizing that Hermione was just behind him when he was venting to Harry which almost killed the three of them. But on the other hand, he had gained another friend so success right? Hermione was a bit weird for liking books too much in his opinion but he was beginning to feel like he could actually have fun here.
Despite the challenges he faced next which included getting bitten by a dragon, almost dying to a chess set and of course exams, Ron liked living at Hogwarts, it became a home away from home. He like the sense of adventure, actually doing something meaningful.
Then second year arrived and he saw that Ginny was starting to get nervous like him so he tried to cheer her up, telling her stories and reassuring her that she would like Hogwarts just as much if not more than her brothers which was the most he could do because apprehensions aren't removed by mere words or at least they didn't for Ron so he simply spent more time with her between his homework talking about quidditch with her to distract her.
Alongside balancing the two, he worried about Harry not replying to his and Hermione's letters and listening about the Dursleys during the year scared Ron of what had happened to Harry. So he struck a deal with Fred and George and went on the car to rescue him. And his concerns were right, he should have been worried about Harry because seeing bars on his windows horrified him. And then everything felt in order once again, he had even more adventures during his second year, he worried even more for Ginny. In the end Ginny turned out to be possessed by You-Know-Who which made him feel angry and helpless, he knew something was wrong with Ginny yet he didn't think twice about what exactly was wrong with her.
And then third year came and his life fell apart like a house of cards in a small breeze. It all started when Harry had trickled down his replies from his usual enthusiastic every day replies to once a week short notes telling pretty much nothing. Ron in his usual habit started worrying that something was wrong with Harry again. But this time he couldn't exactly go an rescue Harry due to a number of reasons, the major being he was actually replying back right now and whatever was happening wasn't probably foul play.
And he also didn't want to worry his mother after a year like that. She was constantly hovering over Ginny, asking her if she was alright and ripping into anyone who stepped any toe out of line especially when in the same room as Ginny. Even the twins were more somber this time hardly pranking and just trying to lighten up the mood. Ginny was especially a big part of this too, she had become closed off, hardly speaking or interacting with anyone. Her loud and distinctly high pitched laugh also no longer accompanied the twins jokes.
So like every year, his start was a bit wonky, he wasn't exactly miserable but he couldn't laugh in such an atmosphere too. Then all hell broke loose when the day Bill was supposed to arrive back from Egypt for a long vacation. He arrived late at night after his mum and dad made Ron and the twins sleep promising that Bill would be there to greet them as soon as they woke up.
Come morning, Ron found his house in a disarray with Bill and his parents in a hurry for something and from their looks Ron knew it was something to do with Harry. Asking, pleading, demanding did nothing to give anything about the situation away and Bill was especially short in his reply, ordering to not throw a tantrum when others are preoccupied. It hurt deeply, hearing his brother's first words to him after a long time to be nothing but a biting reply, because coming that from a calm person like Bill, he may as well have yelled them.
With that exchange, Ron was sent to his room with a plate of bacon and eggs in his hands to eat in their and then just staying out of the way of the living room. The rest of the day was spent with Ron holding in his anger at them, doing nothing except just being outraged at the situation, how could they keep him out of knowing what had happened to Harry, when he was his best friend. Looking back, he probably should have been more worried about why they were actually doing something unknown related to Harry but he supposed he was just terrible at managing emotions and giving excuses for his faults too apparently.
By the time evening rolled in, the anger had simmered and he had calmed enough that the thought of Harry being in danger had finally started to sink in. With his mother still staying mum about the situation, all he could do was walk aimlessly down the gardens he had loved since the childhood and distract himself.
It took another few hours before Bill would arrive with Harry and Hermione in tow, talking in whispers with dad and Ron would forever remember the elation and relied he felt at seeing both of them well, in one piece and together once again but he would also remember the irritation that had crept in when even Harry would hold his tongue on what happened.
His father would then go on to win a lottery the very next day, which in hindsight seems suspiciously off, and would announce that everyone including Harry and Hermione was going for vacations to Egypt. And to Ron's welcome surprise, he would also get a new wand. That alone erased any past irritation immediately because he would be getting his own wand finally. He would never get that awe of holding pure magic as the first experience of his own magic but maybe, just maybe, he could feel like he was someone finally.
As time moved on, Charlie too arrived for the trip, and he would actually properly talk with Ron, ask how he was doing instead of Bill, who seemed to be hanging an awfully lot with Harry these days when he was not out of the house, talking privately with mum and dad or hovering over Ginny.
His relationship with his two best friends however seemed to be going weirdly. It always seemed like the two of them were hiding some sort of secret amongst themselves, maybe about what happened that night if he were to bet on it. They would spend more time with Ginny this time around, which Ron reasoned, made sense after last year. and lastly, Harry would start being too chummy with his family, especially Bill. It was not that he hated his friends getting to know his family, it was the fact that everything seemed to happen so fast, and he just felt so excluded and alone with whatever was happening, somehow this time around everything seemed different and not for the better he was afraid. He was finally hearing Ginny's loud laugh that he wanted to hear once again so badly and it just seemed so odd this time around. It was this time around that Ron would start writing, cringy diaries, badly written fictions filled with grammatical errors.
It was the day before the trip where things would reach their first peak, when he overheard Ginny and Harry talking in Ron's room which he was sharing with Harry for the time being, and he would just stop and listen, in his defense Harry had rarely slept here in the weeks he had stayed and Ginny too almost never came to his room so he was shocked to find his room locked, and Harry would mention about the incident and in that moment Ron knew that he would overhear this conversation till the end. Harry would go on to tell about Marge and her cutting words, the lack of food given to him, the bars, him running away and calling Hermione eventually, Bill arriving.
And as Ron was listening, the door would suddenly open on him and Harry was there, his eyes flashing with anger, his words teeming with bite as he asked Ron why was he overhearing the conversation. Maybe Ron shouldn't have taken Harry on his words when he was emotional but he was already too full of regrets to care.
The words that Harry spoke next will remain burnt in his mind calling out Ron for being too nosy to let things rest, for being lazy and unobservant when things that actually mattered and that was why Harry would never trust him with his shoe, and well, Ron was never the one to back down from something, so he would attack back, much much harsher than he intended and maybe this was the moment when the friendship broke beyond repair already before what would happen next and Ron would always regret the harshness of his words but he would never regret not backing down.
The words he spoke were cruel, crueler than Ron thought he could ever be, somewhere along the line mentioning Harry's dead parents and the Dursleys' too. And suddenly he was knocked back with the force of magic and before he recovered, Harry was out of the room and Ginny would shout at him in her slightly shriller voice she used when she was angry, calling him an idiot, pushing him before running after Harry.
He was stunned at everything that had happened, his mind barely keeping up with all of this and before he could collect himself he heard Ginny telling mum about what had happened. In the hours proceeding this, he saw every single person's disappointment in him for his actions, even his own father's who hadn't even scolded him for destroying his Ford Angela.
Ron was given the punishment of doing the shopping on his own and that he was not allowed to go on the trip to Egypt and he would stay with the Lovegood's in the meanwhile.
Seeing everyone just not care to ask for his side, or even remotely consider that they would be going on a trip for a whole two weeks without him was surreal. The single fact that his friends were close enough with his family that they could go on with his family and without him being with them hit him deeply. This was one of the first times this would wound him. He would be reminded of this again when he would feel the magic running through him as he held his wand for the first time. At the end, the elation felt hollow, just a couple of sparks dying out quickly.
And again when he saw their picture in the daily prophet, smiling without a care, Bill's arms on Harry's shoulders, a perfect family.
Writing at this point was the thing that kept him sane, he would pour out emotion after emotion so he could finally rest from feeling this awful feeling that his clothes were always to stuffy on him, his stomach was in constant upheaval and his mind a mess.
After they arrived, he would try and mend hi friendship with Harry but it was for naught because he had started to hang out with new people, everyone from different houses, backgrounds. It was difficult to stand out as an ordinary Ron who on top of it, Harry already resented.
It all came to an end with another prophet post when Harry would be announced as Bill's apprentice, which you have to make public within a month of completion of paperwork and every single family member and even Harry's distant friends knew.
Contrary to how he expected he would react, Ron never looked for a final confrontation and accepted his isolation from everyone with dignity. His family would maintain short five minute chats with him once every week and that was his only interaction with someone throughout the week.
It was then he realized that Hogwarts was never a second home for him, it was his friends. A house could never generate memories of its own, it was the people that you lived in with created them. In a swoop, Ron lost his home and his second home. A wanderer in a sea full of faces he recognized broke him down slowly and steadily. Writing was what kept him alive during these times, every time he felt an impulse to do something he knew he shouldn't he just wrote and wrote without a care for how good he had written.
He never wanted to be the best writer, he just wanted these memories gone from him, every tainted memory he held, of a sister that once adored him looking at him in disdain. Of brothers that loved the mischief but never crossed a line now turned to cruel pranksters. Of brothers that once kept in contact now never looking in his direction, of parents and hugs that were now reduced to distant and polite floo calls. Maybe it was the consequence that he had to bear for every mistake he committed, but he couldn't help but ache for forgiveness, long for a time of memories of adventures and friends, siblings and a family.
If he wasn't allowed to create new ones' then he would just be satisfied by reliving just the small amount of memories he had gathered. It was just thirteen years and it was a lifetime of memories for him and at the end, he would have to live his life in just those memories, and end his life by those memories.
