Chapter Twenty Five - An Open Invitation

Ron was rubbing his head and sitting in a corner of the room in deep thought while his uncles pestered Dumbledore to think of something and Merope bemoaned her 'abomination' of a son to herself. It must have been five minuets now. Five minutes of Voldemort loose in his home with his family in his body and his...his...

Hermione I'm so sorry.

He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head, he had to think, he was the tactician after all. He looked back up at the three-way panic getting them nowhere just ahead of him and sighed.

"We can't just leave him with them for half an hour until his time's up," Ron found himself saying to himself aloud, the others turned and stared at him sadly, this only made him angrier, "we can't just wait until he's done so you can try to stop him from down here again."

Ron's voice had risen into a furious yell and his uncle Fabian had rushed to his side to try and comfort him but there was nothing he could do. What good was comfort when all there was waiting for him at home were dead bodies?

"What if you can't stop him tomorrow either eh? What about every other night for the rest of my bloody life, what about that? Am I supposed to just let him come out for thirty minutes a night until I drop dead? What if he used those half hours to make fucking horcruxes? What if I can't die? He'll be immortal and I'll..."

Ron didn't know what that would make him.

I'll be damned.

"Come on Ron, it won't come to that we can do something tonight, we will stop this once and for all tonight ok?" Fabian said with a forced smile that was convincing nobody.

"They're all dead," Ron said as he shook his head and drew his knees up under his chin, "he wouldn't wait around, they're all dead already."

"Then why aren't they here?" Gideon shouted over at him.

Ron looked up and stared at his fiery tempered uncle, he didn't have an answer to that.

"If they were all dead and they all know your secret and they all know you're trapped here with us don't you think they'd come looking for you to set you free?" Gideon said as he stomped over to him and pulled him up off the ground.

"Gids, the poor kid's in shock, take it easy will ya?" Fabian said.

"No, he's right," Ron nodded and Gideon released him and gave him an encouraging and solid pat on the arm, "they're fighting him. We've got to fight from down here too."

"That's a Prewitt!" Gideon said with jubilation.

"That's more than a Prewitt," Dumbledore said as he drifted across the room to the three of them, "that's Ronald."

Ron shifted uncomfortably and looked down to Merope who was looking at him from the floor.

"Sorry I swore at you, I do it to everybody," he shrugged.

The ghostly woman smiled and heaved herself up to her own feet.

"Now Ronald, you have always been the great tactical thinker I have ever witnessed of your age and over the course of this quest you have only improved," Dumbledore said while Ron's uncles beamed with pride, "I also saw you think on your feet and improvise both with and without my partnership and, more than anything else, I have marvelled as you solved problems that appeared to have no solution whatsoever. This is one of those problems Ronald and I don't think that you should allow yourself being temporarily non corporeal to limit your imagination."

Ron shrugged off the multiple compliments and began to pace up and down jabbering to himself, strangely enough he was left to do so by the others, it was as if they knew that he was simply processing information out loud for clarity. It was as if they really knew him.

"Non corporeal, on top of everything else I'm non corporeal, I hadn't even thought about that. Of all the things I've got going against me I can now count non corporeal as one of them. Don't have a body, don't have a wand, don't even have a corporeal existence..." Ron stopped in mid step, "...corporeal?"

He stood and tried to place why this seemed to stand out and yell at him to pay attention to it.

"Where did I keep hearing that?" he asked himself and tried to ignore the smile that was growing upon Dumbledore's face as he prodded the Prewitts and indicated Ron's thoughtful back tracking.

"He's about to do it," Dumbledore said, "watch this, it's marvellous to witness!"

What the hell is the old duffer on about now?

Dumbledore seemed to chuckle out of nowhere and Ron closed his eyes and tried to think of where he had heard corporeal out there in the real world that seemed to ring a bell in his head.

"Listen if you know the plan why don't you save us the time and just tell us, I'm sure Ron won't mind," Fabian said with impatience.

"I don't know the plan until Ronald knows the plan and he's just about to work it out," Dumbledore said while watching Ron with fascination.

Ron couldn't get the bloody voice of Neville's girlfriend out of his head. It was her in the pub when they had been about to form the D.A. going on about Madame Bones telling her all about Harry's ability to conjure a corporeal patronus. He hated it when that happened. He would be desperately trying to think of a name or a place and would convince himself that it began with a 'B' when it was in fact an 'S' all along. His brain could be a difficult bugger when it wanted to be. He scowled at his inability to get past Susan Bones' voice saying, over and over again, 'a corporeal patronus?' and willed her to shut the hell up and let him think.

A corporeal patronus.

Ron's eyes suddenly went wide and he looked over at Merope.

A corporeal patronus.

He looked up at the shattered clear ceiling, back where he had fallen into the room, and then back at Merope again before looking at Dumbledore who was almost buzzing with excitement.

A corporeal patronus.

He had been told that he had sent a patronus out from this place when Dumbledore was using his body. He had sent Merope up to fight as a corporeal form.

As a corporeal patronus!

Ron looked back at Merope and opened his mouth to speak.

"There it is do you see?" Dumbledore said enthusiastically as he pointed Ron's expression out to his uncles who looked amazed.

"Merope," Ron began, "how did you get in here, how did...how are you...?" Ron tried to understand exactly where he was and why Voldemort's mother was with them at all.

"You invited her Ron," Fabian answered the question, "we needed to send her through you into the real world and she couldn't do it unless she knew your secret so Albus asked us to ask you to invite her in. To tell her your secret."

Ron looked from Merope, who was nodding to confirm this story, to Dumbledore and his uncles. Fabian was still waiting expectantly to answer Ron's next question but Gideon's face was dropping and he shook his head.

"No!" he said firmly.

"What?" Fabian asked, perplexed.

"Now Gideon, this is Ronald's choice and..." Dumbledore began but Gideon shook him off and materialised right in Ron's face.

"I'm telling you no!"

"You don't know what I'm thinking yet," Ron said.

"Yes I do," Gideon said, wagging a finger at Ron, "you and I are very similar and I know exactly what you're thinking and I'm forbidding it!"

"You're what?" both Ron and Fabian said at the same time.

"Gids," Fabian went on, "you are the most reckless person I've ever known in my life! What is this plan that is so extreme that even you won't have it?"

Ron looked at Dumbledore who was looking at him with a devastated kind of pride and nodded.

"We can send people up to fight him, to protect them all, send him back down here to us."

"Same way we sent Merope up y'mean?" Fabian asked, still not following the train of thought to the horrific conclusion Gideon had.

"Yeah," Ron nodded.

Fabian looked around the room at the anxious faces and still didn't get it.

"So what's the problem?"

Gideon turned on his twin and growled.

"People Fabian, people!"

Ron watched as his uncle Fabian suddenly registered what this plan really entailed. He turned to Ron with the same expression Gideon had been wearing just moments ago and shook his head in horror.

"No!"

"This isn't your choice," Ron said with determination.

"Yes it is," Gideon snapped as he turned back on his nephew, "we are your next of kin...in a dead, kinda reverse sense and that makes us your guardians and that means that we can forbid you and we do. We forbid you. You are forbidden!"

"I'm of age you can't stop me from doing anything," Ron said with a scowl, when the hell did his uncle Gideon start channelling Percy for Merlin's sake?

"There is no 'of age' down here there is me telling you no fucking way!"

Fabian took his brother roughly by the shoulders and made him look him in the eye.

"Gids, I am with you one hundred percent on the saying no but you've got to rein it in mate, this isn't the way to talk him out of it."

"There will be no talking me out of anything!" Ron shouted over the two of them, "In fact there will be no talking anymore. We have wasted too much time and I am not waiting for my mum and dad and everybody else I left behind in that house to come falling through this ceiling before we have enough people to attack."

Fabian looked over to Ron sadly and spoke with a broken voice.

"Ron do you know what this will mean for you when this is all over? Are you thinking about that because that can't be allowed to happen to you? I can't let you go through with this."

"We won't let you ruin the rest of your life Ron," Gideon said.

"What life?" Ron bellowed, "If we don't do this I'm Voldemort's bitch for all eternity! What life is that?"

Ron was shoving past the two of them to ask Dumbledore how to go about things when the twins re-materialised in front of him again, stopping him in his tracks.

"There's got to be another way Ron," Fabian pleaded with him, "you thought of this you can think of something else I know you can."

"What with all the time we have?" Ron said, pushing between them once again.

"Wait please," Gideon begged as he passed by, "I can't let you do this to yourself. You think you had it hard with just Dumbledore making you crazy night after night but just imagine if it never stops. Imagine all the different voices fighting for you attention Ron and it won't just be one half hour visit a night. They'll take it in turns, they get half and hour each Ron, they'll kill you."

Ron spun around and tried not to lose his nerve as he laid it out for them plain and simple.

"I'm already dead, don't you see that guys? Voldemort knows about me, he's inside my body now; he can get inside my head whenever he wants to. I'm already dead."

Fabian stared at him with a look that seemed to be a silent scream while Gideon scrunched up his face with rage and threw a wave of power at one of the crumbling transparent walls of the room, causing it to shatter and the pieces to fly off and break through several other fragile layers of this crystal world Ron was stranded in. Ron turned away from them and looked to Dumbledore.

"Well?" he asked the old man.

Dumbledore's devastated smile remained as he pulled Ron into him and embraced him, sending a fizzing sensation all the way through his non existent body, and whispered to him.

"I have no words Ronald, none do you justice, I am in awe."

Ron and Dumbledore broke apart and both sighed deeply before Ron built himself up for the task at hand.

"Right how to we get the people?"

Merope took one of Ron's hands and held it tightly with both of her own.

"You tell me who you want to come and help you fight, people you trust not to abuse the knowledge afterwards if you can, and grant me permission to invite them back here."

Ron heard one of his uncles smashing something else as he nodded to Merope to let her know that he understood.

"Ok them I want Harry's mum and dad definitely, Lily and James Potter, Sirius Black, Madame Bones...she's dead and dad always said she was a great witch, um..." Ron looked up at Dumbledore for help.

"My good friend Nicholas would be only too pleased to help Ronald, his dear wife too no doubt."

"Nicholas Flammel...and wife, um...grandma and granddad Weasley, granddad and nana Prewitt, may as well see them again," Ron shrugged and he could have sworn he heard his uncle Fabian laugh somewhere behind him, "what about the other members of the order the first time round?"

Dumbledore nodded and held out his own hand to Ron.

"We'll let Merope be on her way with her little list and I can talk you through them and you can grant me permission to gather them for you."

Ron nodded and looked back at Merope.

"I grant you permission to bring them all back here to me."

Merope's hands glowed and she disappeared into nothing. Ron took Dumbledore's hand and looked him in the eye.

"Marlene McKinnon and the McKinnon family, Benjy Fenwick, seeing as Amelia is coming we may as well invite her brother Edgar and the rest of the family too, Caradoc Dearborn, Dorcas Meadows and the Abbots too I think. That will be enough to be going along with now Ronald."

Ron felt a little dizzy at the thought of all of these people vying for access to his head every night but he tried not to dwell on that and looked down at Dumbledore's hand and said the words.

"I grant my permission for you to invite all those people back here to me."

As their hands glowed with the yellow light Dumbledore shook Ron's hand firmly and gave him a reassuring smile before vanishing.

Ron turned around to face his uncles. Gideon was still seething and struggling not to break anything else but Fabian was watching Ron with a strange expression of calm on his face. He sighed and shrugged as he made his way across the room to Ron and took his hand.

"I've got loads for you, are you ready?"

Ron nodded and smiled a silent thank you to him while Gideon lost his composure at seeing his own brother give in and go along with this insane plan and shattered a third of the ceiling and part of the roof above that too.

"Here goes, George, Florence, David, Gordon and Doris Canham, James, Geoffrey, Stewart, and Stanley Rhodes, Lynne Broadly, Tracey Knight, Stephanie Jones, Marie Martin..."

"All your fucking ex girlfriends?" Gideon exclaimed in outrage.

"Shut up Gids, they could hex the shit out of you at school," Ron laughed a little at this, "and they all want revenge on Voldemort too, now where was I? Right, Les, Edna and Andrew McPherson, Gareth Vanner, Bobby Hughes, Glyn Skinner and Robin Webb."

"I grant you permission to bring them all here," Ron said as the hands glowed and his uncle disappeared.

He looked over at his remaining uncle who pointed a finger at Ron and looked utterly furious with him.

"I'm not doing it, I'm not having any part of this, and I won't do this to you."

Ron shrugged.

"Fair enough."

Ron turned around and began to pace up and down as he waited for his 'guests' to arrive.

"It was my fault."

Ron looked up and saw Gideon running at one of the walls and kicking through it. As the smashing sound tinkled into silence again he turned round to face him again.

"It was my fault we left you out there to freeze that time."

Ron took a step towards him and opened his mouth to let him know that it was all water under the bridge but Gideon seemed desperate to get this out.

"I've always been too cocky y'see Ronnie? I've always felt invincible, even when they were killing us I was being cocky. Five of 'em it took and I was so smug about that. I'm pathetic."

"You sound just like me," Ron said sadly.

Gideon shook his head and smiled.

"You're not cocky, you're anything but."

"Not that I meant calling yourself pathetic, I do it all the time."

Gideon looked back at him in disbelief.

"Why?"

"I don't know, I think I'm crap at quiddich when I've won the quiddich cup twice, once without our first choice team playing and this..." Ron gestured upwards to indicate the hundreds of dead warriors he had just summoned into the place he had needed to keep a secret until his dying day, "...I can do something like that but if I see a single spider I shit myself!"

Gideon laughed at this and Ron joined him, their laughter faded very soon and Ron stared down at the floor of what looked like frosted glass but couldn't have been what with its spongy texture.

"She's still not here little man Prewitt."

Ron looked up at his uncle and blinked.

"If she loves you half as much as you obviously love her she would have smashed her way in here invitation or not to help you get back but she's not here is she?"

Ron shook his head and dared to hope.

"None of them are down here, they're all still alive Ron, and we'll figure something out to keep him out of your head. I'll find a way to keep 'em all out I swear alright? I'll never stop trying."

"Thanks uncle Gids."

There was a sudden whoosh as Merope and a crowd of people descended into the room, two people running at Ron with open arms and another two running at Gideon. It was his grandparents.

"Thanks for helping Grandma, Grandie, it means a lot."

As the tall man and the tiny thin woman with short red hair hugged him and told him they would do anything for any of their 'little ones', always funny when a four foot nine woman calls you little, Gideon dragged his own parents over to introduce them to Ron.

"This is our last oracle mum, dad, he's incredible. Molls has raised a good 'un here I'm telling ya."

"Hiya nana," Ron nodded nervously to his mother's mother, who cupped his face in her shimmering hand and smiled sadly.

"I never got to see you did I?"

Ron swallowed and shook his head.

"Now I know what I've been missing all this time."

Ron's granddad shook his hand and mentioned something about a resemblance to Bilius which caused Ron to yell out of nowhere.

"Bilius! I forgot uncle Bilius!"

Just as Dumbledore was reappearing with the deceased order members Gideon grabbed Ron's hand with his own and spoke bracingly.

"I'll get him, send me."

Ron smiled at his uncle and sent him on his way with permission to bring his batty old uncle Bilius to join in the fight too.

"Ron!"

An urgent voice called out to him and a face from his nightmare of this scenario came running at him and gave him a huge bear hug before staring right into him and speaking with a low firm growl.

"Look at you ya poor sod. When we're done up there I'll threaten an afterlife of pain and torment to anyone who messes with you in your sleep. I will seek them out and make 'em wish they'd decided to become a ghost in a haunted sewer, with nobody to talk to but the rats and the shits, I guarantee you that!"

Ron smiled and looked over at his grandparents nervously.

"Um grandma, nana, granddad and grandie...this is my friend Sirius Black."

The four foot nine spectre of Ron's grandma Weasley looked up at the giant hairy wild eyed man who had just accosted her grandson with a foul-mouthed torrent of threats to his fellow deceased visitors in Ron's afterlife and turned to her husband with a nod of approval.

"I like him!"

Ron chuckled until he was frozen at the sight of his best friend, only older and with different eyes, and a woman he recognised from a photograph he had seen of Harry's

"Hello Ron," Lily Potter smiled on seeing his shock at recognising them, "Sirius has told us all about you."

"Hi...Mrs Potter," he managed to say before Dumbledore leaned in front of him to catch his eye as he found himself staring at Harry's father now.

"Now Ronald what are you thinking?" Dumbledore asked him now that all the spirits were assembled and ready to go forth and face Voldemort at the Burrow.

Ron shook off his obvious stare at Harry's doppelganger, or maybe Harry was the doppelganger, and bit his lip. He hoped that Dumbledore knew of a way to do this.

"Well you were able to talk through me while my body was conscious weren't you?"

Dumbledore's eyes lit up and he nodded.

"The viator spell, of course!"

"Well if you can speak through me from all the way down here couldn't we send a bunch of patronus' out of me while he's using me?"

Dumbledore's eyes were darting rapidly from side to side as he thought over everything he knew. Ron glanced up at the faces of his deceased family, he really did look just like Bilius, the Potters and then to Sirius who stood at his side with a hand resting upon his shoulder and willed him to come up with something.

"Viator patronum," Dumbledore eventually said to himself quietly.

Ron looked to Sirius and then back at Dumbledore.

"What's that?"

"It's a way of forcing our spirits out of Voldemort when he tried to perform any kind of spell or release of energy of any kind. As soon as he does we will all come flowing out and set about forcing him back here where the rest of the spirits will be waiting."

"Waiting to do what exactly?" Gideon said.

"Waiting to bind him to this room. Because he knows of it we can't do anything to stop him coming back here as many times as he would like but we can make sure he can never leave it and roam free about the afterlife."

"Wait, that doesn't sound good," Ron's maternal grandmother frowned, "surely we want to keep him out not lock him in."

"We would not be locking him in with Ronald, we would be containing him while finding Ron another place to call afterlife, and Voldemort wouldn't be able to get to him again."

"You can do that?" Ron asked with his eyebrows raised.

"Yes I believe we can."

"You believe?" Fabian said, not liking the uncertain sound of that statement at all.

"We will, don't worry Ron," Sirius smiled confidently.

"Right so we send a team up to force him down here..." Ron tried to clarify the plan in his head.

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded, "and you will return to your body, hopefully awake and able to remember."

"Hopefully?" Gideon said, "This is sounding a little bit too vague for my liking Albus."

"Mine too," Fabian nodded.

"Boys, pay attention and don't interrupt," Ron's granddad Prewitt said, causing his sons to lower their heads and sulk.

"So I'll be put back, possibly with a memory?" Ron confirmed.

"Indeed," said Dumbledore, "while we down here set about binding Voldemort to this room, funnily enough it's very similar to the bond of blood Ronald, except with essence of one's soul rather than blood and I'll be only too happy to be the one whose soul we use if there are no other volunteers."

Everybody around the circle volunteered immediately and Ron smiled at them all gratefully before Sirius began to get impatient and clapped his hands together ready for action.

"Right so can we go and get the bastard now; he's been up there with my godson long enough."

"Patience Sirius please," Dumbledore said as he raised his hand before leaning forward and looking Ron in the eyes, "Now we will do our level best to get you another place to call an afterlife Ronald but I must ask you to please stay awake as long as you possibly can to buy us the time to do so."

Ron nodded and Dumbledore motioned to the others to head towards the hole in the roof that Gideon and his temper had caused earlier before turning around and gripping Ron firmly on the shoulder and whispering.

"I know you too well now don't I Ronald, I feel I must say, don't make yourself ill in an attempt to stay awake. Sleep when you are tired by all means but try not to get tired until at least an hour has passed, that is all I ask, I want no super-human marathon of consciousness do you understand me?"

Ron smiled and nodded, he had just been wondering if there was an opposite potion to the dreamless sleep draught that he could take for a week or so when Dumbledore had said that to him. It was as if the old man could read his mind or something.

"Don't worry Ron," said Sirius as he drifted upwards with the attacking party, "we'll stop this once and for all I give you my word."

Ron waved to him and the Potters as they drifted up with Gideon and Fabian, Dumbledore bringing up the rear and gathered all the rest of the spirits into a large circle and instructed them to join hands. When everybody complied Ron nodded and they all began to chant.

"Viator patronum, viator patronum, viator patronum, viator patronum..."

What looked like lightning struck the floating figures above and transported them into the living world and Ron stepped out of the circle, letting the space behind him close up so they were ready to begin the binding as soon as he was sucked back into his body. He looked at Merope and smiled at her before turning to wave at his grandparents and uncle Bilius. He waited.

He waited.

He waited.

A/N That chapter wasn't supposed to be funny, I just can't help myself can I?