Chapter Ten - I'm Only Sleeping

Hermione had read the front page of the Daily Prophet three times before she felt confident enough to correct Ron.

"No, you're fine Ron, they don't know it's you."

"It wasn't him," George said with determination.

Hermione nodded in agreement.

"What I mean is that nobody saw you there to blame you. You won't get into any trouble over this."

"No trouble?" Ron rose to his feet; he had his second wind apparently and began to pace even more frantically than he had been before, "No trouble Hermione? I attacked aurors!"

"You didn't attack anybody, you controlled people."

Ron stopped in front of her with a look of disbelief etched on his features.

"Oh well that's fine, perfectly acceptable isn't it?"

"Calm down," Hermione said firmly as she held him in place by the shoulders, "nobody got hurt. Nothing belonging to anybody got stolen remember? You are not in any trouble because, along with everything else, you managed to perform a memory charm on everybody."

"Witnesses Hermione," Ron prodded at the paper with his finger, "did you not read the word witnesses...plural?"

"Witnesses who, along with everybody else, didn't see the wizard's face and weren't able to supply any kind of descriptive details to the investigators who arrived on the scene. You're in the clear Ron."

Ron looked as if he was about to burst into tears for a fraction of a second before his fearful frantic demeanour took him over again.

"All those people Hermione, I had one wand and I was asleep, and I performed an unforgivable curse and an unbreakable memory charm on all of them."

Harry suddenly came back to himself and drew himself up, setting his jaw with determination.

"So what?"

Ron looked at Harry as if he was clearly insane.

"So I need to be locked-up!" Ron said incredulously.

"You need to be shut-up," Harry said harshly, "you're talking bollocks."

"Hear, hear!" George said.

"Look at the state of me Harry," Ron said through gritted teeth as he held out his bruised arms for Harry to get a good look at, "and I was covered in blood when I first woke up, you're seriously telling me I'm not dangerous?"

"That's easily explained," Hermione chipped in, tugging at Ron's elbow, "Voldemort would've got word almost immediately that one of his...possessions had just been stolen from Gringotts and sent as many Death Eaters as he could summon to Diagon Alley to get it back. If you hurt anybody it was only somebody who was looking to hurt you."

"Oh so I'm fighting Death Eaters in my sleep too now? What the hell is going on?"

"What's going on is that Voldemort now knows what we're trying to do," Harry's voice silenced the room, "and unless you managed to perform that memory charm while fighting those Death Eaters Voldemort also knows that the wizard the Prophet has just declared to be as powerful him is you. This mission just got a whole lot harder."

The twins had been adamant that they stay with them for a few nights but Harry and Ron wouldn't hear of it. Then they had told Harry and Hermione that they should take Ron home to the Burrow.

"Mum's still got Dumbledore's wards up, he wouldn't be able to apparate out of the house, you could confine him to his room and keep an eye on him."

Harry had said no to this idea as well. Worrying Mrs Weasley wasn't something he wanted to do and something told him that Ron would take a return to the Burrow so soon after leaving to begin the mission to be a hint that he shouldn't be with them anymore. That wasn't the truth at all. Harry wanted Ron with him, more than ever now, to protect his best friend from whoever was guiding him for whatever reasons and from Voldemort if he had indeed discovered the identity of the Gringotts thief. He didn't care if the person Ron was talking to in his sleep was on his side or not, he didn't like the way they were going about showing Ron the horcruxes and retrieving them. Death Eaters had ambushed him in his sleep for crying out loud. He couldn't let Ron out of his sight again after that.

They were in a room above the Leaky Caldron, it was the only way to get the twins off their backs and Harry really meant it when he said they wouldn't be going back to the cave again, and had just eaten lunch in absolute silence. Hermione was finally getting some sleep on the large bed in the centre of the room. Ron was sitting at the window, examining his wand with wary fascination at what it had been able to do the previous night, and drinking strong coffee in an attempt to keep his own eyes open. Harry simply sat on a worn old armchair in the corner of the room, stuffing spewing out of every seam, and scanning the interior of the room for the sturdiest thing to bind Ron to when he eventually fell asleep that night.

There was the bedpost of Hermione's bed, but something about that made Harry feel uncomfortable so he had continued to look elsewhere, a pipe which ran along the length of the far side of the room and a very solid looking radiator against the wall. Harry liked that idea, at least Ron would be warm, and he had noticed that Ron was looking a little peaky after his nighttime activities in minimal clothing and with nothing on his feet.

The room was no better or worse than the usual standards he had come to expect from the Leaky Caldron over the years really. The yellow streaked ceiling sagged in the middle and the entire place shook every time somebody opened the magical wall into Diagon Alley. The lampshade that swung low from the middle of the droopy ceiling looked as if it had been rotting away for decades until all that held it together were the cobwebs that interlaced around the wire frame.

Harry let out a deep sigh and Ron took another sip of his coffee.

"Listen Ron," Harry began, shocked at the hoarseness of his own voice from lack of use, "if you want to get some sleep we can work something out."

Ron smiled across at him and shook his head before turning to look at Hermione as she slept soundly on the bed.

"Look," Ron twisted his body away from the window to face into the room as he spoke, "in my backpack there's..."

"I know, I saw them," Harry nodded, he had packed up Ron's things before they had apparated to Fred and George's place with them, "I thought Hermione made her feelings about that pretty clear."

Ron lowered his head and cast another sheepish glance her way.

"Yeah well that was then wasn't it?" he raised his eyes to stare into Harry's with determined ferocity, "Do it before she wakes up so she can't stop it."

Harry sat forward in his chair and clasped his hands together.

"Ron I don't know about this, she was cautious for a good reason you know?"

"The reason being that whichever one of you does it for me...if anything happened to you, I'd be stuck forever, but you know what Harry? If anything happened to either of you me being stuck would be the last of my worries."

Harry thought about this for a moment, his eyes drifting over to Ron's backpack where it rested on the floor, he did want to do this but he didn't want to be the one to do it for Ron. He knew it had to be Hermione or no one and that she wouldn't accept the idea no matter what either of them said.

"The thing is Ron," Harry began, "I really don't think it should be me."

Ron looked at him with disbelief.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm almost certainly going to get killed."

Ron shuddered.

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth Ron, I've told you the words of the prophecy haven't I? Neither can live while the other survives."

Ron swallowed.

"Well you're going to kill Vol...You'll kill him and then you'll be able to live won't you, there's no problem."

Harry couldn't help but smile at Ron's faith in his abilities.

"I intend to kill him Ron, I just can't be sure that he won't take me with him and if you're bound by my blood when that happens, when my blood stops flowing, you're bound for the rest of your life."

Ron blinked and fixed Harry's eyes in an unbreakable glare.

"Well you better not bloody 'bind' me anywhere during the battle eh?" he said firmly.

"I didn't mean that Ron, I was thinking of a night time attack, I could get caught up in defending myself and not have time to release you."

Ron stood up and crossed the room to crouch down at his Backpack and rummage around for the two silver coloured hoops that he had been hiding from Hermione since he took them from Borgin's secret room. Harry heard them clinking together as Ron withdrew them and held them out to him.

"It's the only way to stop me Harry," Ron looked up at Harry with pleading eyes and he found his hand reaching out to take the hoops from him, "please."

"Don't you dare!" Hermione's furious voice hissed from the bed, "Either of you."

Ron's head dropped and Harry jumped back from the hoops as if they were scalding hot as Hermione threw herself off the bed and stormed over to yank the offending items from Ron's open palm.

"I don't care what you did last night Ron, I don't care what you do tonight or the night after that, you are not restraining yourself with the bond of blood and that is final!" Ron was understandably cringing at her feet from his position crouched on the floor.

"It was just a maybe Hermione," Harry tried to help his friend out, "we were just talking about the idea of it. I wasn't going to do it."

Ron glared up at Harry, who tried to signal to him with his eyes that he was just trying to get them out of trouble and to keep his mouth shut.

"No you were going to suggest I do it, I heard you both Harry," Hermione yelled and stamped her foot like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.

Ron pulled himself back up to his feet and rounded on Hermione.

"I knew you'd never do it and I would never have asked you ok? Now give them here."

Ron held out his hand for her to give the hoops back but Hermione was gripping them so hard that her fingers were almost turning blue from the lack of blood reaching them. She seemed to swallow down a ball of rage and her eyes were burning fiercely as she stared at him.

"What was that supposed to mean?"

Ron lowered his voice but still spoke with strong resentment.

"I knew you'd say no. I didn't want to waste my time."

The two of them seethed at each other until Ron lowered his hand and turned away from Hermione.

"Keep 'em then," he growled under his breath.

Hermione seemed to loosen her grip on the rings now that she had won their little standoff and exhaled her built-up tension. She seemed to be trembling now as she watched Ron stomp back over to the window and sit on the sill with silent resentment.

"Harry's right Ron," she said, her voice sounding weak now, "if you're bound while the binder's blood stops flowing you're bound for life."

Ron met Hermione's eyes as he spoke with more seriousness than Harry had heard from him in a long time.

"If the binder's blood stopped flowing I wouldn't care about being bound for life."

Hermione raced across the room faster than Harry thought was possible and he felt sure she was about to fling her arms around him and burst into tears. He prepared himself to avert his eyes when he saw Hermione's right arm fly back and swing forward and heard the cold, hard slap as it landed on the good side of Ron's battered face.

The sound seemed to echo forever. The resulting silence that followed this seemed to hurt Harry's ears. Ron was looking at Hermione with a blank expression that would have reminded him of his sleepwalking face if his eyes hadn't been so obviously focused on Hermione's own. Hermione's hands were covering the lower half of her face in shock at what she had just done and the agonising silence dragged on for a painfully long time.

In a movement that would ordinary have been silent, but in these heightened circumstances seemed to be deafening, Ron sprang up to his feet and grabbed Hermioine in a full body hug while whispering into her hair with a broken voice.

"I'm sorry."

Hermione began to blurt out sentence after sentence so fast that Harry didn't even think she was following what she was saying.

"We'll find another way I promise you. There's got to be a way to keep you safe, to keep you with me, and I can't let you do something this drastic so soon. There has to be something else we just haven't thought of. I can't let you do it, I won't, it's far too risky. We can chain you up physically and magically tonight and I'll stay up with you all night long and you won't go anywhere. I won't let you go tonight. I won't let you go, not ever, ok? You're not a bad person. You're not a dangerous person. The thing that comes to you at night isn't dangerous either. They didn't hurt anybody last night. They didn't make you hurt anybody. It's going to be ok Ron, I promise you, I swear."

"Say that again, I didn't quite catch it," Ron muttered.

Harry laughed, so did Ron and Hermione, before making his excuses and going for a walk.

He needed to go into the muggle world and pick up some handcuffs.

Ron tugged against the handcuffs as Harry finished fixing the one that wasn't around Ron's wrist to the radiator.

"These'll be off in a second you do know that right?"

Harry shrugged.

"Well we'll take your wand from you, that'll make it a little harder for you won't it?"

Hermione had a book open on her lap and had been casting charms on Ron, on the handcuffs, on the door and window and pretty much anything she could fins a charm for.

"You shouldn't be able to get out of them and my magical re enforcements on them Ron and even if you do the room should hold you."

Ron glanced up at her.

"And if it doesn't?"

Hermione's resolve only wavered for a millisecond, although Harry was sure that Ron had seen it as well as he had, and she stood up straight and closed the book calmly.

"Harry or myself would have woken up long before that becomes an issue, if either of us sleep tonight at all, and if you apparate anywhere we'll be taken with you."

Harry nudged Ron and grinned.

"Don't worry mate, we'll be on you like glue tonight."

Ron rolled his eyes and smiled as Hermione took a step back and regarded the sight of their best friend sitting on the floor, one arm chained to a radiator, on top of his sleeping bag and began to frown.

"Well you're obviously not going to doze off in that uncomfortable position are you?" she said, before raising her wand and twirling it in front of her, "Let me know when you're ready and I'll..."

"Cheers Hermione," Ron nodded as he turned onto his side to continue chatting with Harry.

Harry gestured to the radiator with a nod of the head.

"Why does this room even have one of those when there's a fireplace right here?" he asked.

Ron shrugged.

"Hot water's got to come from somewhere hasn't it? Besides, these fireplaces are really for flooing rather than heat, the chimney's haven't been cleaned in an age."

Hermione settled down on the end of her bed with another book and Harry and Ron played wizard chess and talked into the night until Harry caught Hermione watching Ron yawning for the third time in as many minutes over the top of her book and let out a sigh.

"Well mate I don't know about you but I'm knackered."

"Oh very subtle," Ron snorted, "couldn't you have just said, you're boring me now, knock him out Hermione?"

Harry couldn't help but laugh at the wicked grin that lit up Ron's face as he spoke.

"I didn't want to hurt your feelings," he shrugged.

Hermione put her book aside and sank down to the floor with her wand in her hand.

"You have been looking sleepy these last few minutes Ron," she smiled as she held up her wand to his face, "I think it's time for you to get some rest don't you?"

Ron nodded and settled down into the most comfortable position he could manage.

"Are you ready?" Hermione asked him, he nodded, "Obdormio!"

Ron's eyes closed and his body slumped. Hermione pushed his fringe away from his face and tried to move him into a position that looked more natural. Ron's handcuffed hand hung limp and Harry wished that they had been able to find a spell that would be strong enough to hold him without having to resort to this.

"And now we wait," she said as she sat back and stared at Ron's still form.

Harry leaned against the foot of the bed beside her.

"What if it doesn't happen again tonight?" he asked.

"It will."

Harry wasn't really sleeping, he was just resting his eyes for a minute or two, and the second he heard the clank of Ron's cuffs against the radiator his eyes were wide open and he was alert and prepared for action. Hermione had been vigilant all night, her afternoon nap having giving her the extra stamina she needed for this all-nighter and she gripped Harry's shoulder to reassure him that he hadn't missed anything.

"He's only just sat up," she informed him as they watched Ron staring at the wall.

"For what?" he mumbled, blankly.

"Here we go," Harry gripped his wand and braced himself.

"Now?" Ron wearily.

"How do you think he's going to get out of this one?" Harry asked Hermione.

"Who's to say he will?" she said, not sounding as hopeful as Harry would have liked her to be.

"There's really no other way?" Ron asked the wall.

"This is different to the last time isn't it?" Hermione said as she studied Ron's features, "He doesn't seem quite so..."

"Upset?"

"Throwing your lap dog a bone huh?" Ron sounded like he was huffing.

Harry found himself laughing at this.

"He's giving them attitude!"

Hermione smiled a tired smile at this and shuffled a little closer to Ron, taking his hand in hers.

"I'm going to hold on to him just to be on the safe side ok?"

Harry nodded just as Ron spoke again.

"You know just how to play me don't you?"

Harry frowned as he heard Ron's tone.

"He's definitely not scared of this person Hermione, he's cautious though."

"I don't know, do you dare?" Ron said, his voice was sounding rougher than the usual whisper he spoke in when in this state.

"What's going on? It sounds as if he's challenging them," Hermione seemed to be more than a little concerned at this change in Ron's demeanour.

Ron let out a sigh before Harry could respond.

"Thank you."

Hermione's eyes tore away from Ron and stared at Harry, she had hope, and Harry smiled at her. It sounded to them as if Ron had won a little victory.

"You can't break the spells?" Ron was asking the wall as they both turned their attention back to their transfixed friend.

"We did it Harry!" Hermione tried to suppress her squeal of delight, "They can't move him."

"I have to go alone?" Ron said with great discomfort.

"Oh this doesn't sound good," Harry glanced at Hermione whose euphoria was rapidly diminishing as she tightened her grip on Ron's hand.

"When?" Ron asked with resignation.

Hermione pointed her wand at the handcuffs and cast another charm with determined ferocity.

"Obtineo! He's not going anywhere Harry, I promised him."

"What? What's the matter?" Harry blinked, as Ron seemed to be addressing the wall with concern.

Hermione looked almost annoyed.

"He's worried about them. Is this a different person do you think?"

"He's familiar with them just like he always has been but, you're right he's warmed to them for some reason, I think he trusts them." Harry didn't like that idea one bit.

"Why? What is it?" Ron demanded, "Where are you sending me?"

"Nowhere," Hermione huffed as she clasped his hand in both of hers now, "you're going nowhere."

"I don't get this, can they break our spells or not?" Harry said with agitation.

"Regulus?" Ron frowned.

Harry and Hermione stared at each other, their mouths hanging open.

"I know that name," Harry began, "I saw it on that tapestry at Grimmauld Place, that's the name of..."

"You're not going to make me kill anyone are you?" Ron suddenly interrupted Harry.

Harry lost his train of thought on hearing Ron ask this question, his voice now back to the uncertain whisper it had been on the previous nights.

"The draw with his wand inside, you locked it right?" Harry blurted to Hermione who nodded in shock.

"It's locked and magically sealed with three different..."

"You're going to kill me?" Ron asked the wall with a shudder.

"No!" Hermione yelped like a dog that had just had its tail stepped on.

Harry felt foolish doing so but he moved around to physically put himself between Ron and the wall he was conversing with.

"Harry this is in his head we can't shield him from anything," Hermione sobbed.

Harry was about to say something; he hadn't a clue what but that didn't matter, as he never had the chance. Ron's eyes closed and he slumped backwards into Hermione's arms. Harry fell to his knees and pressed his index and middle fingers firmly onto Ron's pulse point at his handcuffed wrist and held his breath. Hermione had lowered her head to his chest and was listening for a heartbeat, tears streaming down her face.

After three agonising seconds their eyes met.

"He's got a pulse," Harry said in a voice that didn't sound like his own.

Hermione nodded though kept her ear pressed firmly against his chest.

"I can hear his heart beating. He's breathing too," her ragged voice whimpered.

"He's only sleeping," Harry sighed and slumped against the wall with relief.

Hermione's red eyes looked up at him, she had her arms curled around Ron's body in a way that let him know she wasn't planning on letting him go any time soon and her head still rested upon his chest, and she spoke with utter devastation.

"Why doesn't that make me feel better?"

A/N Ok now I could have been mean and left that as a cliff hanger like I would've done in ESSM but I know how many of you I almost gave nervous breakdowns to during that fic so I've tried to be kind this time!

I must warn you though, this next plot development is going to be particularly nasty so brace yourselves...I won't be gentle with my favourite red head just because it's Christmas y'know?