Chapter Nineteen - If You Can Keep Your Head While All Around Are Losing Theirs And Blaming It On You...

Everybody had been caught-up on each other's news from the night before. Ron had gone predictably quiet during all the talk of the inferi and Hermione had taken his hand as Harry told him and the twins how she had buried it under the earth for them to make their escape. Neither of them could really bear to go into too many details about the amount of physical pain they had both gone through in those woods but the three red heads hadn't been fooled by their glossing-over of the facts of their escape.

Harry had figured that, seeing as Ron was already a little uncomfortable they may as well get the rest of the explanation over with and asked Fred and George exactly what Ron had been up to the night before.

George had been sitting up with him on Ron-watch when he had woken and seemed to be in some kind of panic. At first George had thought Ron had just woken from one of his buried alive nightmares and rushed over to comfort him but Ron had thrown himself out of bed and ran for the door while his brother was totally unprepared to stop him. He had hurried toward the stairs, causing George to yell the house down for assistance, and Fred appeared just in time to tackle Ron before he crashed down the first flight in his trance-like sprint. Ron's strength was more than both twins could manage as the tried to stop him crawling down the stairs and kicking them off as he reached the ground floor. His parents had risen and followed the struggling brothers down the stairs and Mr Wealsey had tried to put Ron into a full body bind but he had thrown himself into the kitchen and hidden behind the door.

Harry had been very confused by this, how did Ron know a spell was being aimed at him? Hermione had voiced that question but nobody could come up with any theories before Ron lost his patience and insisted they tell him what had happened next.

When Fred and George had followed him into the kitchen they saw him at the open back door, held back inside the house by the barrier Hermione had put around the house while she was away with Harry. They had been relieved, Ron couldn't go anywhere and hurt himself again, but soon Ron began to try and smash his way out of the house. He was frantic and furniture was flying against the walls. Ron didn't have his wand and he seemed to be throwing spells at the barrier over and over again but to no effect. Ron had been doing wandless magic and partially destroying the Weasley home while he was at it.

Harry watched as Ron and Hermione exchanged worried looks before turning their attention back to Fred.

"So why did you have to stupefy me?" Ron had asked.

Fred had looked at his mother before turning back to Ron and shaking his head.

"You just got out-of-hand that's all."

That explanation wasn't nearly good enough for Ron and Harry didn't think that more lying to Ron for his own good was actually doing him any good these days.

"And what exactly is out-of-hand Fred?" Hermione snapped, getting to her feet and putting her hands on her hips, a ferocious look in her eye.

George decided to be the brave one and told them that Ron had suddenly started trying to magically and physically remove the hoop from his arm and ended up on the verge of cutting his arm off to sever the connection. Hermione's face went white as a sheet and Harry felt himself swaying on the spot. Fred had stunned Ron to stop him chopping his own arm off.

After a painfully long silence Ron finally spoke.

"Well at least I don't wear that hoop on my wand arm, it would've been a right pain to have to learn to do everything again left-handed."

George had smiled at this little comment. Mr and Mrs Weasley had rolled their eyes and relaxed to a certain degree and Harry turned to Hermione to see that she was still looking tense. She didn't say anything, however, she seemed to understand that Ron needed to be blasé about all the bad things that were happening to him in order to keep his sanity. It seemed to be his psychological defence mechanism and Harry decided to play along with it. Ron had, after all, had yet another consecutive night of channelling the dead.

Mr Weasley, Fred and George had all disapparated back to their jobs after lunch and Mrs Weasley was going about repairing her obliterated kitchen while Harry led Ron and Hermione up to his and Ron's bedroom to discuss the figurine that had caused the three of them so much trouble.

"So I got struck down with a message while I was awake and you two had to fight of a whole magical forest and for what?" Ron frowned as he examined the figure in his hand, "It isn't even a horcrux."

"It's help," Harry thought aloud to himself, "it's something to help us find horcruxes."

"How does it help though?" Hermione took the figurine from Ron and tapped it a few times with her wand, nothing happened, "It doesn't have any magical properties other than us using it as a portkey this morning."

Harry sighed.

"Maybe it's a message, who is St Nectan anyway?"

Ron ran his fingers tiredly through his hair and suddenly looked wearier than Harry had ever seen him before.

"The patron stain of nectarines?" he sighed lazily.

Hermione had noticed this sudden exhaustion hit Ron too and stared at him with concern.

"Ron why don't you go back to sleep? All that wandless magic last night must have taken a lot out of you. I'll put the hoop on just to be sure you don't go anywhere."

Ron shook his head in an effort to wake himself up and grinned at her.

"No, it's alright, I'm fine. So St Nectan then, that sounds like research is called for," he nudged Hermione, "that sounds like your sort of thing."

Hermione forced a smile onto her face and nodded.

"Yes well I'm sure you two wouldn't mind helping me out would you?"

Harry and Ron exchanged a look of resignation and agreed to hit the books with her.

The snore rattled the table and Harry and Hermione shared a quiet chuckle before looking back down at their respective books. Ron was face down, sound asleep, in his own book and had been that way for twenty minutes now. Hermione was turning the pages of her magical history of Britain with one hand while stroking the back of Ron's head with the other. It was like watching her ruffling Crookshanks' fur in the Griffindor common room late at night. Harry returned his gaze back to his own book and wondered if he should keep quiet or just ask the question that had been bugging him for several days now.

"Any luck yet?" he chose to ask instead.

Hermione sighed and twisted a lock of Ron's shaggy red hair around her forefinger as she answered.

"Well St Nectan is in here but there very little information about his life or who he was. He does seem to be a good person though. A quiet wizard who wanted to help the less fortunate and who met a bloody end. He doesn't sound like somebody Voldemort would want to associate with. He doesn't even seem to be that powerful according to this but, like I said, this doesn't say a lot."

Harry nodded and went back to the paragraph he had read five times already without taking in any of the information. He read it from beginning to end for the sixth time and still didn't feel as if he had taken in any of it's information and gave up, turning the page and glancing up at Hermione again. Without thinking he just blurted it out.

"So why are you two so coy? I mean everybody knows y'know?"

Hermione's head snapped up and she seemed to have been expecting him to ask this question but not at that exact moment.

"Well we're just being discreet that's all," she shrugged, "and Ron seems to think that saying it out loud will jinx it, jinx us, so we're just trying to be as low key as possible."

Harry frowned and looked at Ron's sleeping head, Hermione's fingers interwove with locks of red hair, and thought that discretion wasn't really a very Ron-like trait.

"But after the whole Lavender fiasco I wouldn't have thought he was, y'know, shy?"

She laughed and looked back at her book while responding.

"That's exactly why he's being so subtle, he's done the big snogging in front of everybody to show them this is who he's with, thing and look at how badly that turned out...for both of us."

Hermione looked a little sad for a second or two before she carried on and seemed to be just a light hearted as before.

"He just wants us to be exactly how we've always been, but slightly different, if that makes any sense." she shrugged and smiled again.

Harry thought he understood what she was trying to say.

"He doesn't want the three of us to change the way we're friends just because the two of you are a couple now?"

"Something like that, he worded it in this really overly-complicated way and I just went along with it."

Their eyes met and they laughed. Hermione's face dropped and she looked down at Ron's sleeping form once again sadly.

"There's something else too, after he found out about the oracle thing and the deterioration of his mental faculties, he told me he didn't want to make a big deal out of us being together so nobody would judge me too harshly when I had to move on after he..." she tailed off and her voice seemed to break into a sob.

Harry felt sick to his stomach.

"Once he goes insane you mean?"

Her eyes glistened and she nodded.

"We had a big argument after he said that."

Harry slammed his book closed, the vibrations on the table almost caused Ron to wake up, he made a murmuring sound and drifted off again.

"Well I hope you told him he was being a prat!" Harry snapped crossly.

She smiled and resumed stroking his hair again.

"As ever."

They turned their attention back to their books and Harry wondered what he and Hermione would do if the somnambulism didn't let up any time soon. What would they do without Ron? He tried to read the chapter on West Country saints but found it hard to concentrate on anything other than the thought of visiting Ron in St Mungo's. Sitting at his bedside while Neville sat across the ward with his parents every other weekend. Ron who could talk to him for hours and make him laugh until his eyes watered and who he could depend on to watch his back through thick and thing; Ron was going to be reduced to handing Hermione sweet wrappers in a deranged attempt to communicate through his insanity. That was the future Harry was fighting for. That was what Harry's quest to destroy Voldemort was in aid of. He decided to cherish these moments of Ron's lucidity while he still had them.

"Here!" Hermione pulled Harry out of his self-induced mope as she alerted him to a page in her book.

Her sudden outburst disturbed Ron's sleep and he started to breathe heavily. Hermione leaned forward and shushed into Ron's ear while brushing his hair away from his face with her fingers. She glanced at Harry, a look questioning whether or not they should wake him from his nightmare when he really did need the sleep, and he shrugged back at her. Before he could find out what Hermione planned to do Ron gasped, his eyes flew open and he batted Hermione's hand way.

"I can't breathe!"

Ron tried to calm himself down when he realised that he had been dreaming again and took several deep breaths before taking Hermione's hand back and squeezing it.

"Sorry about that, I didn't hit you did I?" he asked with breathless concern.

She smiled and squeezed his hand back.

"No you just made me jump a bit that's all. Are you ok?"

Ron smiled and his breathing slowly began to even out.

"Yeah fine, it's just the claustrophobia again, it's getting better though isn't it?" he smiled optimistically.

Harry and Hermione glanced at each other for a moment before lying to him with encouraging smiles.

"Yes, much better."

Ron tried to suppress a shudder as he pulled the book he had been sleeping on back towards him and tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes.

"So Hermione was just telling me that she found something weren't you Hermione?" Harry said, with a meaningful nod across the table to get her to start distracting Ron from his nightmare.

"Oh yes!" she suddenly sprung into action and read aloud from her book while Ron and Harry listened with interest, "St Nectan was originally from Wales, which probably explains why we found his icon in a Welsh forest, and moved down to the west of England where he became one of the most celebrated saints in the region."

"Yeah but celebrated for what? I can't find that the guy actually did anything," Harry grumbled as he closed his book with annoyance.

"Well he did settle at a valley in Hartland point and created a never ending spring there. Creating eternal fresh water is something of an achievement don't you think?"

"Creating eternal butterbeer would be a better one," Ron snorted.

Harry sniggered and Hermione rolled her eyes and carried on.

"He tended to the needs of the poor, mostly muggles but he did a lot of good in the wizarding community too. He sounds like a quiet peaceful man who kept himself to himself despite having an awesome amount of power. He wielded it but it didn't seem to have any negative affect on him."

"So what are you saying?" Harry frowned.

"I'm just telling you what's written down here," she huffed, although Harry felt sure she was getting excited about something and trying to keep a lid on it, "so it goes on to say that he had two cows stolen from him and he was beheaded while in the process of retrieving them."

"They chopped his head off because he wanted his cows back?" Ron said with incredulity.

"Hold on," Harry tried not to laugh along with Ron, "if he was so powerful how on earth did they manage to chop his head off in the first place?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"He's a magical martyr Harry, he did it for a greater good."

Ron cursed under his breath and looked annoyed.

"Oh not the greater bloody good again, I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime."

Hermione smiled at him sadly and pushed her book in front of him.

"But it says here that legend has it Nectan picked up his severed head and returned home to his chapel."

Ron blinked at her and looked to Harry before trying to understand what Hermione was finding so informative about this.

"So he's the patron saint of headless people is he? Nick will be pleased."

Harry chuckled before shrugging at Hermione to let her know that this had passed him by as well.

"Oh you two can be so literal. Of course he didn't pick up his head and go home, that's not possible, it's a metaphor isn't it?"

Ron looked at her as if she was accusing him of being an idiot.

"Is it?"

Harry noticed that she was smiling even more now, despite being slightly frustrated by their refusal to understand, and felt a little tingle of hope inside him. Something good was about to happen he could feel it.

"Let her finish," he said before nodding to Hermione who tried to contain her own optimism.

"He didn't lose his head, even when they chopped it off, that's the metaphor. A powerful wizard who didn't lose his head Ron."

She threw Ron a meaning full look and he shrugged.

"Think about it," she huffed as she took Ron's hand in both of hers and looked him in the eyes, "he was really powerful but there are no stories about his power, no demonstrations or legends about his deeds during his life. Why did he become a saint if there was nothing more to him than his creation of a spring and the fact that someone stole his cows?"

Ron turned to Harry with exasperation.

"Am I really that slow or are you not following this either?"

Harry shushed him and leaned across the table, eager for Hermione to continue.

"He was very powerful but for some reason his power had to be kept a secret, sound familiar Ron?"

Ron's eyes were wide.

"He was an oracle?"

"Makes sense doesn't it?" Harry nodded, "So what are you thinking Hermione?"

Hermione took a deep breath in and readied herself to say something that might provoke a negative reaction.

"I think that Ron's night time companion is on his side just as much as yours Harry."

Ron snorted and Harry almost jumped out of his chair with his eagerness to refute this crazy theory.

"How can you say that after what they did to him Hermione, you said yourself that they were just using him and didn't care if he got hurt along the way as long as he got the job done."

Ron looked at Hermione in shock.

"You said that?"

"Listen," Hermione raised her hands to silence them both, "This wasn't a horcrux, this wasn't even a clue to the whereabouts of a horcrux, this was a six inch high icon of an oracle...who kept...his head."

She said the last sentence with such emphasis on every word that there was no way she could be misunderstood.

"An oracle who didn't lose his mind?" Harry said, unable to allow himself to hope that there was a way to save Ron after all.

Hermione nodded victoriously. Ron swallowed and looked at the figurine.

"So what you're saying is..." he began.

"What I'm saying Ron is that the message, the viator spell, that wasn't for Harry at all. It was for you."

"They're trying to help you, they know that they're d...damaging you and they're trying to keep you sane," Harry could barely get the words out.

This person, who he had hated so much, really was on their side. They didn't want to hurt Ron, they weren't being careless with him, and they were trying to show them a way to help him hold himself together during the consecutive episodes.

"So how does knowing that this guy didn't go mad help me?" Ron said, the apprehension in his voice clear to the both of them.

Hermione cupped Ron's face in her hands and beamed.

"That's what we're going to find out."

A/N Now I hope you guys appreciate the fact that I do my research! St Nectan and all the facts of the story are real (for those of you who believe that sort of thing) I just adapted it to the wizarding world and my own story. He really was beheaded for trying to get his cows back the poor guy! Oh and the calico man from Llangynidr is a real Welsh ghost story too.

I hope you like that I can be nice to Ron as well as mean...I do try to give the guy a break from time to time!