Hey you guys-- sorry about this, but I reread muy original version of chapter 2 and decided that it didn't really fit with Chapter 1, in terms of tone, style, theme, etc. So, I rewrote it-- drastically-- and here's the new version of Chapter 2-- hope it's all right!
They use the rings seven times—(Ron four, Hermione three) before Harry catches on. Before he does, though, Hermione discovers that if she concentrates, she can control how close she pops up next to Harry when she turns the ring right twice; the outer limit seems to be about 10 feet away, though. They don't use it very often, only during the periodic raids that they sometimes go on with the Aurors. Hermione knows that Moody, now the de facto head of the Order of the Phoenix, wants to forbid Harry from coming, and Hermione can certainly sympathize with his reasoning, but the ghost of Sirius Black still haunts them all. What might happen to Harry if he goes on the raids can't compare to what would certainly happen if they tried to lock Harry up at 12 Grimmauld Place, and so every once in a while the three of them accompany with Aurors, go on raids that never turn up anything, get into hot short dogfights at certain hotly contested sites, generally do whatever it takes so Harry doesn't go crazy.
Five out of the seven times they use their rings, Ron and Hermione takes spells that were meant for Harry. Of course spells travel faster than they can react and turn their rings, but most Death Eaters have the bad habit of taking a deep breath and bellowing their spells, which gives Ron and Hermione enough time, usually, to use the rings to get to Harry. They don't use the rings on more than a quarter of the missions they go on; Harry can usually take care of himself.
After the fights, when they've come back to 12 Grimmauld Place, Ron and Hermione heal the wounds they've taken for Harry locked up in the bathroom, eyes squinting in the dim light. Hermione doesn't know what Harry thinks they're doing in there, and frankly, as she checks the stitches on the gash on Ron's back from their most recent fight (the Provakto curse is particularly nasty in that most healing spells won't work on it), she doesn't much care.
But when she's done cleaning and re-bandaging the wound, she sits back on the toilet lid and watches as Ron puts his shirt back on.
"You don't—you don't think Harry's going to run off and do anything crazy, do you?" Hermione asks nervously. She knows that he couldn't without them knowing, her sense of him and his whereabouts thrumming like something living deep in her gut; but she's worried about this for so long that she can't quite let it go, and sometimes she looks up to see a glint in Harry's eye that, quite frankly, scares her to death.
"He couldn't," Ron's voice is momentarily muffled, as the shirt goes over his head. "He belongs to us now, magically speaking." Hermione bites her tongue, reminds herself to hold on to her temper.
"But we belong to him too, you know." She says. It's the only justification she can come up with for what they've done. Even saving Harry's life seven times can't erase the memory of the succubus invading, examining her mind; can't stop her from having nightmares about the other rings the Blacks used the spell the create, and how those rings were used.
"Of course we do," Ron says shortly. "Never needed magic to know that." He unlocks the door and walks out of the bathroom.
It's on the 26th time that they go out with the Aurors that Harry first notices. Hermione is concentrating on fighting off an especially vicious werewolf—a man, but still— when she hears the words "Avada Kedavra!" shouted behind her. Her heart jumps her throat and she only spares a moment to kick the werewolf in the balls before whirling around, her heart in her throat.
They're both down, Ron's body crushing Harry's to the ground. The back of Ron's robes are singed through, and Hermione thinks abstractly, Ron's going to be arsed about that (even his best robes are still a little threadbare), it must've been where the curse went through, but at that moment Hermione would burn a thousand robes just to thank fate for damaging only Ron's clothes.
Harry rolls Ron off him with surprising force, and when Hermione sees his face she can tell that he's confused, and that the confusion is slowly turning anger, then the beginnings of fury.
At the moment, though, there's no time for it, no time at all. One narrow escape means nothing if the next attack kills you, so the three of them concentrate on staying alive through the rest of the fight; Hermione doesn't stray further than two feet away from Harry during the rest of the time they're there, and neither does Ron.
When they apparate back to 12 Grimmauld Place, though, Harry shoves Ron up against wall the instant the door closes.
"What—" Harry grabs Ron's right hand. "the fuck—" takes hold of the ring, shoves it up to Ron's face. "is this? Don't," he says, his voice deadly quiet. "tell me that it's a Weasley heirloom, Ron. Just don't."
For a moment, Ron's silent, touches a hand to his shoulder where Harry grabbed him; Hermione knows that he'll wake up with a bruise there tomorrow. Then it's Ron who grabs Harry, propels him into the drawing room and shuts the door.
Hermione sits in the study, tries to do some research despite the shouts that come from the study. She distinctly hears only one phrase, "—does it take to get away from you people?" Then she hears a bang, and realizes that it's the drawing room door being slammed. She sits still for a few moments, then gets up from her seat and looks out the window. Ron and Harry are rolling around in the back yard, trying their best to knock the other one out. Hermione watches a few moments, then goes back to her book.
When they come in, Harry looks a little sullen and Ron's looking forward stoically, but there's not a scratch on either of them. Even Harry's mood seems to have shifted now, and for the better. Hermione's glad to sense that he seems now to only be radiating a rather deep irritation, of the I-can't-believe-the-unbelievable-meddling-I-have-to-put-up-with variety, not the my-two-best-friends-in-the-whole-world-have-betrayed-me-and-I-must-rip-their-organs-out-and-set-myself-up-as-the-next-Dark-Lord-because-of-it kind.
Hermione's had nightmares about Harry figuring out how the rings work and taking that second route. Then again, at this point in the war there hasn't been much that she hasn't had nightmares about.
She examines both of them carefully, both of them studiously avoiding her eyes. Harry sits at the kitchen table, flicking through the latest newspaper, and Ron goes to pour himself a glass of water. Finally, Hermione shakes her head.
"You're going to have to cast better glamours than that, boys. Come on, take them off." They exchange grudging glances, but Ron's the first to take his off, then Harry. They both have fast-developing black eyes, and their clothes are ripped and a little bloodied. Hermione sits them both down and proceeds to heal them from the top down. When she's done she comes back to face them.
"You both feeling better?" They nod. "Good." She says, and socks them both in the stomach—hard—before turning around and walking away.
Later, when Ron and Hermione are alone in the study and Harry's upstairs, Hermione turns to Ron and asks, "How much did you tell him?"
"Enough." Ron says shortly, and Hermione knows that means she'll still have to watch her tongue around Harry.
"Did you tell him that we can use the rings to pull him around?" Ron nods.
"Reckon he's not very happy about it, though."
Not very happy is an understatement when Hermione does use it the first time. The raid goes awry within the first half hour, and even though Shacklebolt manages to investigate the house with Moody covering his back, he yells out that what they were looking for isn't there anyways. Moody orders a retreat, but at that point they're already hemmed in. Hermione stuns her opponent, and, concentrating, manages to apparate outside. Rumsford and Farleigh are already there, and catch her when she stumbles; apparating out of a warded house is possible, but draining. Hermione manages to stand, and turns her ring twice to the left. Harry nearly knocks her over, and then he nearly does it again on purpose when he realizes what she's done.
"Hermione, what did you just do?" His voice is deadly quiet.
"You heard Moody—we had to get out of there anyways, it wasn't worth staying," she argues back hotly. At that moment, Ron appears beside them, and Harry, still glaring at her, disapparates without another word.
Hermione and Harry have a flaming row once they get back to 12 Grimmauld Place, and Hermione knows it's not lost on Harry that Ron is standing right behind her shoulder, for which she is immensely grateful. She's never really thought that Ron would ever side with her against Harry, and she's never really thought that she'd ever get into such a row with Harry—she doesn't like to admit it, but usually when Harry's furious he can get her to back down—but Harry's safety is an issue where she and Ron absolutely will not budge.
Harry stares at both of them, breathing hard, furious and bewildered and also—also the slightest bit frightened. He spins around and goes into the study, slams the door behind him.
Hours later, at dinnertime, he emerges into the kitchen, and Hermione notices the newly-made and newly-healed scratches around his wrists, as if Harry tried to claw the wristbands off. She feels a little sick, but resolutely puts the plate of lamb chops on the table.
"Hungry? We've got a shepherd's pie coming out of the oven too, if you'd like that."
Harry sits down, ignoring Ron who's sitting across the table from him.
"Sometimes," Harry mutters, "I just wish the two of you would disappear."
And four days later, Ron does.
The battle at Lodsmoor Plains is long, vicious, and costly. It's only after they've won and the Aurors are licking their collective wounds that they first realize that Ron's nowhere to be found.
Harry, as predicted, goes mad. He starts yelling at the Aurors, telling them to search every square inch of ground, and nobody, not even Moody, dares to do otherwise. All of them scour the fields until their eyes swim, and finally Hermione sits down and wraps herself in her cloak, draws her knees up and rests her forehead against them, thinking about the promise she and Ron made to each other the day they started following Harry around, thinking whether she can possibly keep it.
"In the case of capture, we, Ronald Bilius Weasley and Hermione Jane Granger, will not go back for each other," Ron says, reading the parchment they've written the promise on.
"Unless said rescue is incidental and in no way hinders the accomplishment of the chief objectives of defeating Voldemort or protecting Harry Potter." Hermione recites.
"Otherwise, no rescue attempt shall be made until the defeat of Voldemort has been achieved." Ron says.
"By the virtue of the magic that runs through our blood," they both say, Ron first nicking himself with a knife so a few droplets of blood pool onto the desk, then Hermione. "we do so swear." Hermione dips the nib of a quill into their mixed blood, and signs the paper, then Ron. The words shimmer for a moment, seem to lift of the page; then after flaring a blinding white for an instant, settle back down.
It is starting to rain, now, on Lodsmoor Plains. Hermione concentrates on breathing in, and thinks about the chains that they will wrap themselves in in the name of victory.
Finally, after dusk has started to fall and the temperature begins to drop below freezing, Moody finally convinces Harry to go home. Harry stares at him, wordless, then disapparates without a sound. Hermione gets up, stretches stiff muscles, and prepares to follow after him, but Moody stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Weasley got hit with an Abducto spell, it's meant for kidnapping people," he tells her. "Pushed Potter out of the way, although Potter was too busy trying not to get sliced up by one of those vampires to notice." He hesitates momentarily. "Weasley could be anywhere by now, but I thought it would be better to let Potter have his way, for a little while." Hermione nods, thinks about the madness glinting in Harry's eyes.
Moody hesitates even further before he ventures, "Have you thought about what you're going to do about Pott—"
"There's a letter," Hermione says sharply, and pulls away before she disapparates back to 12 Grimmauld Place.
As a matter of fact, there are two letters, both of them rolled neatly inside a copy of the Blood Promise Hermione and Ron signed all those weeks ago. The Blood Promise has two lines scrawled above the actual text of the promise— Harry, it's got to be done and Hermione—don't you dare go back on your word.
Harry reads the text of the Blood Promise, then snatches up the letter addressed to him. He reads the first few lines, then storms out of the bedroom towards the study. Hermione's guessing that Ron's referenced Bynding Magicks and Enchantements in his letter.
She sits down on the bed—Ron's—unrolls her letter, and starts to read.
Well, Hermione, I suppose it really has come down to this. In any case, you know what needs to be done, better than I ever did—maybe you'll get it done faster, now that I'm not there to bungle up your work and all that. And—and—all I want to say is, take care of Harry, and yourself, as well as you can, as long as you can.
Yours,
Ron
There's a little space, and then, scrawled untidily at the bottom, as if his hand was shaking so hard that he couldn't write straight.
That's a lie; there is so much more I wish I could say to you.
Hermione stares at the words until they seem to burn into her eyes, but then a small sound comes from the doorway. She looks up to see Harry standing there, and it seems as if the grief in his eyes will swallow him whole.
She moves over on the bed, pats the spot next to her. He comes over and sits down. The two of them sit there, not moving, not quite touching, for a very, very long time.
Thank you guys for your reviews-- I really appreciate each and every one of them. lee-- there's more coming, but you'll have to wait a little while longer! Inara, thanks for the compliments, and I will try to update asap! Loki, thank you so much for my first review, and I will try to keep up the good work :)) Pants of Happiness, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of this story!
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