Chapter Three - Spirited Away
He felt the sun on his face and the breeze in his hair, so soft and regular like fingers combing through his mass of red locks, and he snuggled into his soft pillow and gave a groan of contentment before turning over onto his side andnuzzling into something warm and sweet smelling. The smell was familiar and hesighed into the pleasant welcoming comfort. He felt something shake him gently before hearing a whisper close to his ear.
"Ron wake up, you hit your head and I can't let you sleep I'm sorry."
Ron lifted his head and his eyes squinted in the brilliant sunlight, he blinked several times before looking up to discover that he was laying in Hermione's lap, his face burrowed into her stomach and he came back into full consciousness with a jerk and scrambled away from her.
"Oh Merlin I'm sorry, I didn't...how did we? I wasn't...what was...? I'm really sorry Hermione I didn't, I don't...remember..."
He was trying to articulate himself a little better and understand what exactly was going on when a sharp pain sliced through the side of his head and he sucked air in through his teeth and winced, rubbing his sore head and feeling slightly sick. Hermione was crawling toward him on her hands and knees and he opened his mouth to start apologising to her again but she shushed him and reached out to him silently. He felt dizzy and he didn't think it was just because of his splitting headache. He looked at her as she began to run her fingers through his hair, feeling for bumps or bleeding he guessed, before holding his head in both hands and looking him in the eye.
"Um Hermione, what are you doing?" Ron asked, a tad self-conscious of the fact that Harry was right there watching them getting a little too intimate with each other.
She smiled at him and kept a firm hold on his head, forcing him to keep looking at her.
"I'm making sure it's you, it feels so strange to look into your eyes and not see you looking back at me."
"Sorry" Ron mumbled, not really following her but feeling sure he needed to apologise for something or other.
Hermione's hands fell away from his face but she didn't move back away from him. She was still smiling sadly at him and staring right into him in the most unnerving way. He glanced over and saw that Harry was trying to busy himself with a book, doing anything rather than look at his friends behaving...differently with each other.
"You scared me Ron, you're going to have to be more careful because I can't take the worry like I used to," she whispered so only he could hear.
"I'm sor..." he began before she shook her head to silence him.
"Don't Ron; just promise me that you're not keeping anything from me."
"What? Of course I'm not. Hermione what the hell's going on?"
She started saying something to him but he was distracted by a ringing in his ears and saw her stop mid-sentence and look at him with some alarm. He shook his head to try and clear it and heard the tail end of what she was saying.
"...your head? Let me take another look at it."
Ron pulled away from her when he recognised his surroundings and saw that Harry was watching them again.
"Wait a minute; we're at the Riddle house still right?"
Hermione nodded as Harry joined them.
"And it's still the same day?" Ron asked trying to place himself.
"Yes Ron, you fell through the floor of the attic and hit your head remember?" Hermione spoke to him as if he was simple.
"That's not the point," Ron huffed, he had hit his head not had a lobotomy, "you're talking to me as if I've just been on one of my walkabouts...I didn't did I?"
"'Fraid so mate," Harry said as he squatted down beside him and held out the book he had been looking at earlier, "you were walking and talking and doing graffiti all while being totally out cold."
Ron feared he was about to fall down before he remembered he was already sitting on the ground.
"I was doing what?"
Harry pointed to a page of the book which had scribbles all over it. Ron scrunched up his face as he tried to read it. It was the most bizarre scrawl he'd ever seen, it didn't seem to be written in any language he'd ever heard of, and he squinted at the page.
"It looks like a drunk wrote this"
"So you can't make it out either?" Harry sounded disappointed.
Ron did pick out one group of letters that seemed to form a recognisable word.
"Well that's clearly Borgin's," Ron said as he pointed out the only legible thing in front of him, "but as far as the rest of it goes..."
He shrugged as he took the book from Harry and tried to make out anything else. Harry stood up and Hermione went with him, casting Ron a smile as they stood a little way away from him to talk behind his back no doubt. He didn't even bother getting angry with them about it and chose to try and make out the rest of what looked like the handwriting of a blind man riding a broom. Did he really write this? What on earth was he trying to tell them or himself for that matter?
Harry was suddenly standing before Ron with his arm extended and Ron wondered why their conversation had been so short. Ron took Harry's hand and hauled himself up while remaining focused on his erratic handwriting in Hermione's library book.
"This isn't even a whole sentence y'know?" he said to Harry as he pointed out the first part of the untidy scribble, "I don't use any capital letters until I get to Borgin's name at the end."
"No," Harry confirmed Ron's suspicion, "you started writing without any ink, this was all we got out of you before you flaked out again."
Ron sighed as he closed the book, Hermione was watching him as if she expected him to feint or something and he didn't like this new dynamic between the two of them, and she was being very argumentative with Harry recently too. Maybe it was the stress of the whole horcrux thing. Maybe he had been really awful while unconscious. He hoped not.
"Hey mate, sorry to rush you but do you feel up to apparating right now?" Harry said with a look of apology and urgency mingled together.
Ron wondered why his friend was so edgy.
"Yeah, I feel fine, why do we need to go immediately Harry? Is your scar hurting you or something?"
"No, I just, we need to...there's a good reason but I really don't feel comfortable hanging around here any more. I want to go. I want to go now."
Ron gave nod and bent over to pick up his backpack.
"No, I'll get that," Hermione fussed as she struggled to haul both Ron's and her own backpack over her shoulders.
This was getting ridiculous now, he wasn't an invalid, he just had a little bump on his head.
"I'm fine Hermione really, let me take..."
"No!" she snapped at him so harshly that he flinched and then she turned to Harry, "So back to the cave again? I'll meet you both there."
Then, without another word, she disapparated.
Ron looked at Harry, a dreadful thought striking him to his very core and churning his insides.
"You didn't wake me did you?"
Harry looked alarmed and seemed to want to put Ron's mind at ease immediately.
"No I swear we didn't, we promised you we wouldn't and we didn't" Harry held up his hand as he made his vow.
Ron nodded to the spot Hermione had just vacated.
"It's just she's acting a little..."
"Back at the cave mate, we'll talk there," Harry really was anxious to get out of there.
Ron couldn't really blame him, the Riddle house was eerie day or night, and they readied themselves for apparition. As Harry glanced across to Ron he couldn't help but smirk as he realised that all the tension between his best friend and his secret girlfriend was probably all over him.
"You had another row about waking me didn't you?"
Harry didn't have to do anything but grin to answer his question. And with that, they apparated back to the cave.
"Listen, there's one thing about all this that's really worrying me," Harry said to Ron as he prepared a chilli for the three of them back at the cave.
"Just one?" Ron snorted and ruffled his hair, drawing another look from Hermione, he couldn't touch his head at all without her watching him and looking all concerned, he tapped the cooking pot and stared at Harry in anticipation of his big revelation, "confundo!"
The pot began to stir itself and Hermione paused from transfiguring cutlery to listen in.
"Well the thing is, there's somebody or something in your head trying to get you to go somewhere...sound familiar?"
Ron had tried not to think about it and wished that Harry had kept that particular thought to himself.
"You're thinking about the Department of Mysteries disaster aren't you?" Hermione said grimly.
Harry nodded.
"Voldemort's already got to me in my sleep and, well, I can't stand to think that he's manipulating you when you're unconscious," he looked at Ron and seemed to be ashamed of himself, as if he had chosen to put his friends at risk.
Ron didn't want to talk about this, he didn't want to think about this, he couldn't even say you-know-who's bloody name and now Harry was suggesting that he was getting inside Ron's head. He wondered if he was going green, it felt like he was.
"What...makes you say that? I mean..."
"This isn't about you I swear Ron, it's just that you wrote the name Borgin while you were like that and we all know the kind of people he does business with don't we?"
"Something's trying to get you to lead Harry to Borgin and Burke's," Hermione said.
Oh great, they were ganging up on him...but for what purpose?
"Somebody's setting a trap and using you...as bait maybe or as some kind of Pied Piper" Hermione's voice was so meek and she didn't seem able to look Ron in the eye.
He didn't speak for what felt like forever until he decided to try and distract himself from this uncomfortable theory of theirs by turning his attention back to their dinner.
"Oryza!"
A huge mound of rice filled the plate and overflowed onto the floor.
"Shit," Ron grumbled, "I went a bit over the top there, sorry. Decretum!"
The rice thinned out to a more realistic amount and Ron forced himself to look at Harry as he felt his eyes burrowing into the top of his head.
"I trust you with my life mate," Harry smiled at him, "and I think somebody's trying to use that against me. Somebody's trying to use you against me and that was my biggest fear for both you and Hermione, I've made you targets."
No, Harry wanted to send him back home, he wanted to ditch him because of this sleepwalking thing starting up again. If Harry felt that way then fine but he wasn't going to let him use it against him in this way. Using You-Know-Who's past record for invading Harry's sleep to try and scare him off was out of order.
"Bullshit," Ron snapped, "this theory is bullshit!"
"Ron please" Hermione reached out for him but he jumped to his feet and began to pace up and down the darkening cave.
"Explain it happening to me when I was seven, explain that, Voldem...he didn't target me when I was seven Harry. I didn't even know you when I was seven."
Harry was speechless.
"I'm not being possessed; this isn't like that."
"You don't know what it's like yourself, you don't remember do you?" Hermione looked upset but determined to prove her point.
"If I was dangerous mum would've...well dad would've told me, something would have been done back then."
Harry jumped to his feet.
"I'm not saying you're dangerous Ron, nobody thinks that, you didn't think I was dangerous after I lead you all into Voldemort's trap and got Sirius killed did you?"
Oh not this again!
"Oh don't go down that road again Harry, I'll drown myself in this bleedin' chilli I swear."
There was a tense standoff for a moment before they both broke into small smiles and let the tension go.
"Do what you have to do to feel safe, whatever you've got planned to 'control' me I don't mind. I just don't think it's anything bad or evil, this has been going on since I was little, it's just...me. I'm just mental!" he shrugged.
Harry chuckled.
"You and me both!"
"Ronald you need to get to Borgin's"
Ron stared at Dumbledore as he stood before him large as life. He breathed a sigh of relief, it wasn't You-Know-Who, he wasn't being messed with by anyone bad. He also knew he couldn't be taken anywhere this time as Harry and Hermione had done a number of restraining charms on him.
"I can't move."
"Do you have a wand?"
"They didn't make that mistake twice."
Dumbledore waved a dismissive hand and shook his head.
"No matter, we can find a way to liberate you and get you over to the Borgin's."
"I don't want to go there."
"You need to."
Ron heaved a deep sigh and wished he could just sleep like normal people.
"Why?"
Dumbledore's image seemed to shimmer like mercury floating upon still water as he leaned in closer to Ron and smiled a thin but genuine smile.
"That is where Harry needs to go to begin his search. I need you to show him the way."
"He knows where it is, he's already been there."
Dumbledore seemed surprised that there was something about Harry he didn't already know and straightened up stiffly.
"Harry has been to the Borgin's ancestral home?"
"No, the shop."
Dumbledore sighed, Ron thought this was a strange thing for a dead person to do as they didn't need air or have lungs, and tried to explain the plan with a little more clarity.
"Ronald, you don't need to guide him to Borgin and Burke's he can find that in his sleep...if you pardon the pun, it is the Borgin residence where you will find your answers."
Ron was being sent into the house of a suspected Death Eater? He began to get suspicious and remembered how Harry had been so sure that he had seen Sirius in his sleep. You-Know-Who was powerful enough to do that, who was to say he wasn't powerful enough to appear in Ron's head as his trusted headmaster? Dumbledore wouldn't ask him to do this would he? Not the real one. Ron frowned; he didn't know for sure, he never really knew the headmaster as well as Harry did. How was he to know if he was acting out of character?
"I shouldn't be talking to you."
Dumbledore's smile grew from the slight wisp across his face to a broad curve upwards that made his eyes twinkle in that mischievously familiar way.
"Why is that Ronald, because I'm dead? Do you no longer need my help now that I have passed on?"
"I need you to leave me alone," Ron tried to appear immoveable but still respectful, just in case this really was Dumbledore, as he explained what was going on in the real world, "You're making them scared of me."
This seemed to sadden Dumbledore, but his determination remained as strong as ever.
"I need you to show Harry the way and you won't remember it when you wake up so it has to be like this Ronald. It has to be done now."
Ron began to panic at this, he didn't want to be taken into a dark wizard's home in any state but especially not partially blind and totally unconscious, there had to be another way.
"I'll write for you again, I'll write..."
"They can't read it Ron. It has to be this way."
He shook his head and struggled to keep himself together. The last time he let himself be taken he almost died. He couldn't trust this...whatever Dumbledore was supposed to be, and didn't want to lead Harry and Hermione into a trap. He was going nowhere. This wasn't Dumbledore, Dumbledore was dead.
"I do not want to cause Harry any more worry than I already am by using you this way but it has to be done."
Dumbledore crouched at Ron's side and tried to rest his ghostly palm onto his shoulder. It was strange, he wasn't there at all, like the Hogwarts ghosts, but he could touch him. It was only a feather light touch but it was there. It made a chill run right through him.
"You will wake in the Borgin home and come to your senses before apparating back to the cave. You will tell them where you found yourself and you will be able to take them back there because you would have been there. You can apparate the two of them back to the room you found yourself in and they will understand."
"It's a trap" Ron's exhaled as he tried to shake of the nightmare.
That was all this was, a really realistic nightmare.
"You have to trust me Ronald. Did your uncles lead you into harm when they used you as their oracle?" Dumbledore persevered.
Uncles, what was he talking about, the only uncles Ron had were all dead. He gasped, dead people...he was being haunted by dead people, he began to panic and found himself breathing as heavily as if he had just been at quiddich training for an hour.
"Well I heard about the incident that winter but I know Fabian and Gideon well and I know that was just poor timing on their part. They are sorrier for that then you can ever know, not to mention terrified of the day they must face your mother again!" Dumbledore chuckled.
Jokes? He's trying to make jokes? I'm possessed and he's making jokes!
"Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!" Ron tried to shake himself awake, to shout or punch himself into consciousness, anything to escape this.
Ron felt pressure upon his shoulder and it wasn't coming from Dumbledore's hand, he was being shaken roughly, he could see nothing but darkness and the silvery glow of Dumbledore before him.
"Harry is watching you right now Ron, he is going to wake you and you know what will happen if he does that Ronald. I will be there."
"No!" Ron shouted, afraid of what he might be releasing upon his friends if it really wasn't Dumbledore, "Harry don't wake me."
"If I believed it would make your life easier I would come forward in a second but right now I fear it would simply put you on the fast-track to St Mungo's and a bed beside poor Mr Lockheart."
That was it, he was beaten, Ron gave up. Either he allowed himself to be plunged into the depths of dark territory all by himself or he would release Merlin-knows what upon his best friends in the middle of the night. He slumped and heaved a trembling sigh of resignation.
"I'll do whatever you want just don't come out," he sounded so empty that it took even him by surprise.
Dumbledore smiled, he appeared to be relieved that Ron had finally come round; Ron hoped that it wasn't a smile of triumph.
"Well we must postpone for a while until Harry goes back to sleep. I'll leave you be in the meantime. You will see Ronald, that I am helping the three of you. You will understand...even if you do not remember you do."
Ron had been woken again, not long before daybreak, by Dumbledore. He didn't even put up a fight; he just allowed the spectre to free him from his body bind and got to his feet.
"You don't seem surprised to see me Ronald," Dumbledore frowned with interest, "am I to believe that if I visit you during the same period of sleep you retain the ability to remember?"
Ron shrugged, he didn't feel much like being an experiment or a novelty for the afterlife, and Dumbledore rested his palm on Ron's shoulder. He shivered and the pair of them apparated out of the cave.
He couldn't see anything, his vision and the darkness of the room rendering him completely blind, and Dumbledore put his finger to his lips to tell Ron to keep quiet. They listened to see if they had disturbed anybody in the house, there was nothing to indicate they had, and Dumbledore relaxed and gave another one of those affectionate but sad smiles in Ron's direction.
"Well here we are Ronald; it is as simple as that, I will leave you to sleep now. Why don't you get yourself comfortable, I would hate to leave you and just let you fall down, I think your poor skull has been through enough without battering it on the floor here as well?"
Ron swallowed and stared at the wizard for a few seconds before getting down onto the floor without a sound. He hadn't been ambushed, maybe this was really Dumbledore, and the ghostly figure gave him a nod before fading away. The blackness swallowed Ron up and he was once again asleep.
Godric his pillow was hard, and rough, was he sleeping on a cement block?
Ron's eyes opened and he sat up just enough to try and pound his pillow into some kind of shape when he realised that he was staring down at a Persian carpet; a very bald looking Persian carpet. Why was there a Persian carpet in the cave he wondered?
A wave of nausea hit him and he leapt to his feet, fumbling for his wand before remembering it had been taken away from him before he went to bed, and desperately trying to work out how he had come to be here. Where were Hermione and Harry? Were they still at the cave, why wasn't he at the cave, had he been sleepwalking despite all their charms?
He frowned as he looked around the mahogany panelled room, it was a little bit like Snape's dungeon but with Slughorn's taste in luxury items and there was something of the fake Mad eye Moody's room about it too. Something didn't feel right. He really thought he should get out of there right away but his curiosity got the better of him and he crept over to an elegant but well worn desk pilled high with all sorts of papers. He picked up one of them from the top pile. It was a letter from the ministry of magic demanding access for their aurors within seven days; forceful entry was being threatened if the occupant didn't comply.
The occupant, Ron turned the letter over and read the address.
"Bloody hell!"
He threw the letter back down and nervously scanned every wall around him, feeling as if he was being watched or as if a trap was about to be sprung, he tensed to defend himself but there was no attack. He was readied for an ambush that never came. He still felt uneasy and refused to relax, however, and pressed his ear against the solid wooden door beside the desk. There didn't seem to be anybody moving around out there. He tried the door handle, it was locked.
"Crap!" he grumbled before shaking slightly as the awful realisation hit him.
He couldn't have got into this room through the door. There was only two other ways he could have done it and there was no fireplace in there so that just left apparition. His knees gave way and he collapsed into the three legged chair in front of the desk, making a little gagging sound as he did, this couldn't be. This wasn't right. This was terrifying.
He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes for a few minutes, taking deep breaths to try and calm himself down, before opening them and scanning over all the different kinds of paperwork that looked as if it didn't make any kind of sense at all. Only at first though. There didn't appear to be any kind of filling system but all these letters and invoices were bundled and stacked in a very specific way. Ron had an eye for organised chaos as he used that very same filing system in his room at home.
"Ronald Weasley will you tidy up this mess, it's no wonder you lose things when you just throw them into the corners like this!" his mother had once ranted when she came barging in during his preparations for another year at Hogwarts.
What she hadn't noticed was that he didn't ever lose papers or important letters. He lost pet rats and chocolate frogs or the odd shoe here and there. If she had asked him for his Hogwarts letter he would know where it was without even having to rummage. He could find his transfiguration homework from the second year if he really needed to. He had a whole stack of Quiddich match programmes stacked alphabetically and chronologically under his bed, they looked like they'd just been pilled on top of each other higgledy piggledy but if anybody actually took the time to go through them you could follow four years of the Chudley Cannons progress (or lack of) in the league without missing a single match.
Borgin's desk may have looked like a parchment dumping ground but Ron could see how the system worked straight away. He could see the stuff that wasn't any kind of secret and could pick out the piles that were decoys, there to make an intruder think they had found the hidden papers. Then he could spot the important papers, looking as neglected as a stack of old Prophets, and then the really vital stuff. Ron picked through that pile without disturbing the way they were stacked and saw just how dodgy a businessman Mr Borgin was. He suspected as much. His eyes fell upon a few familiar names and he scowled and grumbled under his breath before freezing as still as possible.
He thought he had just heard movement from upstairs somewhere. He bit his bottom lip and held his breath but there were no more sounds. Maybe he had imagined it.
He let the breath out and got up from the chair. He wanted out of here right away. He took one last look around the room before disapparating.
Crack!
"Ron?" it was Hermione's voice, she sounded worried.
Well of course she was worried, he'd gone in the middle of the nighthadn't he? He padded into the cave barefoot and very cold now that he was out in the open again. Harry was staring at him as if he'd just been given a reprieve from execution and Hermione was pure white. He knew what they were going to ask him so he decided to get in there first.
"How did that happen?"
As he spoke Hermione ran to him and forcibly hauled him over to the fire, rubbing his arms to warm him, before grabing Ron's jacket and flinging it around him.
"Harry," she snapped at their friend who seemed to be paralyzed with relief, "make him a hot drink or something will you?"
Harry nodded so hard that his glasses bounced up and down on the bridge of his nose. Ron almost laughed at this but then he caught sight of Hermione looking stern and very business like and realised she would probably kill him if he made light of the situation right now.
"Where did you wake up?" she said as she forced herself to smile despite how obviously she didn't feel like it at that moment, "Did you wander far?"
Ron glanced across to Harry who, unless Ron's eyes were deceiving him, was carrying a mug of boiling mud in his shaking hand. Hermione nudged him, impatient for an answer to her question. He knew he had to tell them of this new evolution to his sleepwalking but he dreaded their reactions.
"I didn't walk there. I hadn't thought about that...it was never an issue when I was seven."
He was so desperate to explain himself that he wasn't explaining anything at all.
"Calm down Ron, take a deep breath and start again. Where did you wake up?" Hermione sounded just like she did when he was getting angry at his inability to understand his potions homework.
He took a shaky breath in and let it out before swallowing and forcing himself to look her in the eye and spit it out.
"I woke up at Mr Borgin's house."
Hermione's face dropped. Harry dropped the mug of boiling mud and Ron found himself unable to look at either of them anymore.
"I can apparate in my sleep," he mumbled, though that was now probably quite apparent to them both considering what he had just told them, they were right all along about him being used by You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters and there was now nothing they could do to stop it.
Hermione grabbed him and hugged him tightly. He didn't care that Harry was watching, he curled his arms around her waist and clung on tight, and burrowed his face into the side of her neck.
"It's ok, it'll be ok, we'll figure something else out to keep you safe at night alright? It'll be fine," she seemed to be chanting a mantra, willing he words to come true rather than telling him she was certain that was how it was going to work out.
"Was anybody there?" Harry's voice sounded as if he had a mouth full of gravel it was so rough.
"They were all still in bed when I woke up, I couldn't make any sense of what was going on at first, I just started to look around. I found some papers on a desk and saw his name on them. There was dark magic stuff everywhere; I think I was in his secret den or something."
Ron gave an involuntary full body muscle spasm which caused Hermione to pull his jacket tighter around him, thinking it was a severe shiver. Ron's eyes met Harry's own and they both shared the same awful thought.
"I'm apparating into dark wizard's houses that I've never ever been before Harry. I think...what you said last night...I think you might be right."
Hermione made a whimpering sound and held him tighter and Harry looked utterly lost.
Why was this happening to him?