Get to Hermione. Get to Hermione. Find her, keep her safe.
Amid the bedlam around him, she was all Ron could think of. He avoided falling debris, dodged students as they ran past him, and single-mindedly kept running toward Gryffindor Tower.
She'll be all right, he assured himself, fighting down the panic. The tower hasn't been hit yet.
There was a loud BOOM! from outside the castle walls, but Ron barely registered the sound. All he could think of was finding Hermione and getting her out of here somehow, before Voldemort's Death Eaters got inside.
That's who it had to be, of course. Voldemort himself had been defeated that very day by Harry Potter, the boy who lived…again. What was left of his dark army must be very confident of their success, or else very desperate to try such a thing right now, when such a devastating blow had been struck to their forces.
This was madness. Ron couldn't believe they were attacking the school. What did they think they would accomplish, here? He could understand them targeting Headmaster Dumbledore – as the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, he was their greatest foe – but it seemed most unwise to try to get at him by hammering their way into the most carefully protected structure in the hemisphere. Hogwarts was guarded by the most powerful charms that the most powerful wizard in the world could conjure. The castle itself was an ancient, sprawling, impenetrable fortress.
I hope, Ron thought. I hope it's impenetrable. Because if they get in here…
It would be a slaughter, he knew. When he, Harry, Hermione and the others had gone up against a pack of Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic in their fifth year, they'd barely escaped with their lives. And they'd been years older then, than half the complement of the school, now. There was no way the younger students would be able to defend themselves.
Ron skidded to a halt, falling backward just as part of the ceiling gave way and crashed down before him in a flaming pile of rocks. Not even waiting until the last brick had settled, he jumped up and ran around the debris, never wavering in his destination.
What he was really afraid of wasn't mass slaughter of the children, however. He didn't think that was the intention of the Death Eaters outside. They would have absolutely nothing to gain from it. Some of the students attending this school were offspring of the Death Eaters, for crying out loud! An image of Draco Malfoy's father intruded into Ron's thoughts, and he angrily shoved it away. He knew all too well who Lucius Malfoy would target. His disdain for Muggles and Muggle-borns had never been a secret, and Ron knew who the first person he went after would be, if he managed to gain entry to the school.
And that was why Ron was running. It was why he raced to get to Hermione as quickly as he could. Because Lucius Malfoy would kill her, if he got the chance. And Ron would kill to stop him.