Title: Hearing Stone
Author: Dancing Invalids
Rating: PG
Summary: The fact that Harry is the hero was never questioned. But what if someone else had the chance? What if Harry had been stuck on the wrong side of the Chamber?
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The characters, places, and names involved belong to the lovely J.K. Rowling. The plot and interpretations of these characters are the author's. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made off of this.
Word Count: 1233
Author's Notes: This story was written almost a year ago today for a short story contest online. Imagining how things would be different in the earlier books -- a maniuplation of canon, if you will. It's one of the few stories I've ever dared to stray so far as to completely warp the book's intentions, but it's all hypothetical. All constructive criticism is welcome.

"Obliviate!"

The voice was strong, commanding. It should have worked. But, no, this wasn't an ordinary wand that Gilderoy Lockhart had grabbed a hold of, but he had instead been pushing his power through the bent and taped wand of one Ronald Weasley – and had failed terribly.

Rocks were coming down, the walls were crumbling and quaking with a skewed force, and dirt was rising at their feet, clouding all vision and leaving them all in a moment of dimmed silence padded by a loss as to what had happened. A spell turned back on its caster, smoothed inside out till it boggled not only the mind but the atmosphere it swept through. Neither Harry Potter nor Ron were truly "gone" as the walls came down and the ceiling of this centuries-old tunnel shook, but instead they were lost. If things were turning down so soon, how could they save Ginny?

Though, when the clouds blurring their sight disappeared – moving off to someplace they could hardly guess as anywhere but back to where they'd come – they were looking at one another through a pile of rocks, one with a blinking Professor trying desperately to guess his place and near the entrance to the ladies' room, and the other peering through that very same hole through the earth, wand-less and scared beyond his wits.

Ron shook his head side to side. Sure, this was Ginny. Sure, he could be brave. But Harry was the hero!

"Ron--"

"It… you were supposed to be here. Ginny--"

"Take the wand."

Ron's mouth was dry. He tried drinking air but found it only came in gulps and gasps that tugged his chest from the floor to the ceiling when he tried to steady his breath.

A wand was poking out from beneath the two rocks, tip facing toward his best mate – the hero who should be on his side.

But Ginny. They'd thought there was no hope – no way she'd come out alive. His sister. Gone forever. Just another pile of bones, littering this ground.

The thought of that horrible beast that he'd never really seen tearing her apart was what made him reach his hand out and pull the wand from Harry's hands before he could convince himself to find a way to do anything but that. But there was no way. Heavy rocks for his heavy heart; it was something he had to do.

"Ron--"

"I'll be back."

He hadn't said we.

It was the sound of sandpaper scraping across a rough surface it couldn't move. Ron's feet could hardly lift themselves to take another step; instead they shuffled as he walked down a winding tunnel, finding the terrain smoother as he went. Trailing one hand along the side, grainy wall turned to stone and stone to marble. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that it was white; that he would put purity in such a place, and even leave it shining after years of wear, kindled a rage inside so bright that sparks flew from the tip of the wand. He couldn't fail his sister.

There came a point where the marble started to curve down, and swerve until he found himself outside a set of grand doors, constructed in the same marble that he walked upon and that the place wore in an image of false hope – the false part coming from the two venomous snakes waiting outside, preying on the anguish that was tugging at his heart with their eyes that glinted in the darkness as he found he couldn't get in.

First he flung himself at the doors, only to feel his bones groan with the pressure, softening while his skin took to the wall in a way that would leave him bruised green and purple in only a few short minutes' time. He tried spells, running them through his head as fast as he could remember them, but each one bounced off the wall in a motion of sound reverberation – he had to dodge every last one. He recited incantations he hadn't even remembered learning or that he had thought he'd never get right, and though the magic told him he was finally right in something, the doors didn't want to listen. And there were the snakes, glinting, the heads tilting side to side, laughing in their lifeless way and smiling with their frozen eyes.

He tried flinging the wand straight at the door; he tried running into it from an angle; he tried knocking; he tried calling through the doors – he heard a strong voice, full of life, speaking on the other end --; he tried flinging his shoe at the top of the tallest column that stood on its sides; he strained and strained, trying to hang from the snakes and bring them down to crumbling marble, but let go when he got the oddest sensation that his hand had been pricked by something sharp; he kicked as hard as he could and as high as he could reach; he punched. And nothing worked.

Salt was on his lips now, sticking to his face and lining the contours – too many creases in his smooth skin than there ever should have been, but had he looked in the mirror he wouldn't have been surprised to find a streak of white dragging across his flaming hair. He had fallen to the floor and was left heaving and coughing; cursing and crying.

Ron could hear slight words of what were said behind those doors. Power. Life. Revenge. Foolish.

Dead.

He hadn't a clue what was to happen next, but he was well aware of what had happened and his body went rigid with the thought.

"Dumbledore!"

There was no answer.

"Harry?"

Only silence. A voice on the other end, whispering and cackling behind the marble walls. He shouldn't be able to hear that!

If they hadn't taken Dumbledore away, none of this would have happened! Dumbledore made things right; he always made things right. But Ginny was behind that wall, all the life leaked out of her and a beast slithering on the ground, venom and desire as it went on its raid, being only what it was and what it knew how to be. And Dumbledore wasn't here. The only man worth listening to and they'd taken him away.

"Faith… faith in what? A man they took away and a friend who can't save me. Faith in a brother who can't save his own sister!" Ron raised himself from the floor, his face contorted as he flew into the doors again. He rammed into them again; a few times more for good measure, indifferent to the bruises forming up his sides.

When he paused to catch his breath – paused for a moment just to wait until he could hold himself upright and fling himself again – he turned to meet the great doors opening toward him, stretching out to push him aside, filled with sounds of slithering across ground; robes billowing in a nonexistent wind; and wings fluttering through the air.

But before the song could sing in his ears, before the owner of the robes could breathe its arrogance of having killed something as pure as a young girl to Ron, he saw the glowing yellow eyes and ice ran up his body.

The end hadn't given him a choice but to fall.