Three Weeks Ago

That morning, Ron had awoken as rested as one could possibly be after sleeping on a cold, stone floor amidst the groans and whimpers and manic whispering that took place nearly round the clock. There was no light coming through any of the huge windows in the Hall, and there hadn't been for almost a week now. The torches in the castle had been kept lit through a simple Lumos spell that Hagrid knew. However, no amount of effort had been able to light any of the hearths in the chilly dampness of the school. The students huddled together to keep warm, and a few courageous souls had made raids on the dormitories to gather blankets and extra clothing. The students were still terribly frightened of the uncertainties that lay outside of the Hall. The fact that several people had disappeared did little to ease their concerns.

Food was provided in rather limited amounts by Hagrid, who appeared at random intervals throughout the day clutching whatever he had been able to scavenge from the abandoned kitchens. The house elves had apparently hidden away most of the provisions, and each trip to the kitchens was like a highly-complicated treasure hunt. However, the students were fed and safe for now, if a little bit ripe.

Ron had been antsy during the last few days. He wanted to get out into the castle beyond the Great Hall and poke around, perhaps try to find a way out. Others had been unsuccessful, but they weren't Weasleys. His intuitive sense of self-preservation and a knack for deftly avoiding mortal peril were inherent in the Weasley blood. He thought fondly of Fred and George and their exploits at school. Lately, he missed them terribly and often mused that they would have found a way out of this mess by now. Fred and George were nothing if not resourceful.

Ron hadn't heard anything about his family since the attack; none of the students had heard anything about theirs either, though. No one had heard a single bit of news about anything from the outside world inside this bloody castle. The owls had all disappeared, the fireplaces had apparently been disconnected from the Floo network, and the Hogwarts anti-apparition wards still seemed to be firmly in place. They had been completely cut off.

This overwhelming sense of detachment had combined with a strange sensation claustrophobia over the last few days, which set Ron's heart and mind to constant, unceasing thoughts of escape. Hermione had done her best to sway him from this task, reminding him that people on the outside surely knew that they were in here, and that they were bound to free them much sooner than later. Ron thought that she was a sheep, just like the others, bleating to each other to stay put and wait. It disappointed him that her quite amazing intellect was sometimes stunted by her lack of common sense and intuition. And to think that he and Harry had finally been wearing off on her until now.

"Just think of your parents, and your brothers, for that matter!" she rationalized. "The entire Order must be working on a way to get us out right this minute, right as we speak!"

"And what if they're not, Hermione?" he asserted impatiently. It seemed like they had engaged in this very same conversation at least forty times since the siege. "What if they're all dead? Just like McGonagall? We haven't even seen Dumbledore himself since before the attack! What if he joined forces with You-Know-Who? What if everyone and everything we know is gone and we're stuck here forever?" At this point, Ron's voice took on a now familiar half-mad, high-pitched tenor while the tips of his ears began to glow a faint red as he worked himself into frenzy yet again.

Hermione always looked scandalized at the idea that Dumbledore could have turned traitor and Ron always had to admit that it did sound a little far- fetched, even for him. However, he could not put aside his leaden fears that the same painful fate that had taken his classmates and Professor McGonagall from them could have taken his own family as well.

All of them were on the battlefront; every single one of them was now deeply involved in the Order. Percy had come back to the Burrow one Sunday afternoon, eyes redder than his hair and his head bowed. He had not even uttered a breath before Mum and Dad had descended upon him in a flurry of hugs and excited whimpers and exclamations of love and joy. This display of unquestioning forgiveness seemed to have been the last crack before the dam burst in Percy's heart. From that point on, he was no longer the uppity, hopelessly humorless stick-in-the-mud Percy that they all knew. He became softened, somehow humbled. He was much quieter now when he spoke, but he laughed more and grumbled much less. He always had a faint smile playing at his lips when he watched his family bustling about the Burrow or at Grimmauld Place, as opposed to the sour expression with which he had noted their presence in the past. He had become a part of the family again, and none of them had ever been happier.

Even the fact that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had been growing in strength over the past year and a half had not seemed to slow anyone in the Order down. People were determined and purposeful, and people are usually happier when they have a sense of purpose, Ron reckoned. All of their work had seemingly been keeping the Dark Lord at bay through a combination of arduous recruiting throughout Europe, protracted laboring over the development of newer countercurses and protection spells, and the deftly cunning work of their few agents within the Death Eaters' ranks.

Ron didn't trust some of the agents any further than he could throw them, Severus Snape included, but they always seemed to provide highly accurate information and were considered invaluable. Ron often wondered just how much of the Order's highly accurate information these agents were providing the Dark Lord in turn. It seemed that his suspicions about Snape had been confirmed when the Potions master disappeared at the onset of the siege, and Ron spent many an hour silently berating his friends and family for ever trusting such an obviously duplicitous man.

Still, he thought, there was a time to lament their situation and there was a time to take action. As the Muggle bard had once exclaimed, the moment was swiftly approaching at which Ron was prepared to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. Luckily, it seemed that Harry had also begun to feel this way, as well.

Ron had taken some satisfaction of late in noticing that Harry seemed to have regained most of his sense of adventure in the past week despite the harsh and fearsome circumstances that currently surrounded them. In fact, Harry had at time appeared downright jolly, but Ron didn't like the malicious glint that had settled behind the bright green eyes during these periods of cheer. Being Ron, however, and a male to boot, he largely ignored these small moments and focused his thoughts and energies on finding a way out of the castle once and for all.