Falling
1st April 2011 and 18th August 2014 (Ron is 31 and 34, Hermione is 34)
RON: I was in Hogsmede trying to track down the owner of the ring I had found at the scene of the murder. It had to belong to the mole. He wasn't just a mole now though was he? He may not have actually killed Parker but it was his leaked information that led his Auror squad right into the potential massacre.
I recognised it from somewhere but I just couldn't place it. It had to be from somewhere around the ministry. I'd seen it on somebody at work and now I couldn't pin the memory down enough to be able to delve into a pensive and find out who it was I saw wearing the thing.
Eldridge is furious to think that the ministry can't find out who this guy is. We've laid traps, fed miss-information to see if that gets leaked, it's as if he's right in the middle of the team trying to find him. That's what Parker always thought. Parker always suspected it was me and I always suspected it was him and now he's dead and everybody's wondering why somebody so damn good at his job and with this wonderful little knack of being able to see the future hasn't been able to identify the bastard in the past nine years.
I wonder how many people think it's me. I wonder if that's his plan. I'm kind of scared that it might be working.
"Ron, is tha you?" I hear a gruff voice and turn around with a smile.
"Alright Hagrid?"
The big friendly giant lifts me off the ground in one of his smothering hugs and I try not to inhale the revolting smell that is emanating from the fur waistcoat he's wearing. I wonder how long ago the creature it's made from actually died.
"What you doin' all the way up 'ere in Hogsmede?"
"Work," I said as we started to walk through the village together.
"Not travellin'? I was afraid you were on one of your Hogwarts visits again when I saw yeh," Hagrid's smile faded as he remembered something that troubled him greatly, "terrible that last time, terrible."
He shook his head and went quiet for a while and I thought back to the last time I'd been at Hogwarts. I'd played McGonagall at chess for three hours and gone down for breakfast in the great hall at the teachers table where Hagrid told me about a new variety of moth he wanted to breed that had a fifteen foot wingspan and venomous antennae. He had bemoaned the fact that they were dying before they grew over three and a half inches by flying into the flames of candles, something I had found quite amusing and Hagrid had very much not.
"Is this my last time we're talking about or yours Hagrid?"
Hagrid slapped me on the back, winding me and separating my shoulders ever so slightly, and shook his head.
"It's already happened so there's no changing it or tryin' teh warn yeh is there? Just you know that when you find yerself down there and there don't seem no hope help's on its way alrigh'?"
This was obviously one of those nasty episodes thatI hadn't had yet. Well Hagrid said he would be on his way soI knewI was going to be alright in the end. He was right, there was no point in worrying about it now.
"So business eh?" Hagrid said, perking himself up by force of will apparently, "Anythin' I can help with?"
"No I'm just trying to find out who made or sold this and who it was made for or sold it to," I took the ring out of my pocket and handed it to Hagrid.
He squinted at it for a very long time before handing it back with a distant look on his face.
"Tha looks right familiar tha does, I've seen tha somewhere before."
"You and me both," I said as I put the ring back into my pocket, "it's the where that's the problem."
A group of miniscule Hogwarts students passed the two of us and I stared at them incredulously before looking up at Hagrid who didn't even seem to register anything odd at all.
"Hagrid," I said, punching him in the arm to get his attention, "since when did the first years start getting Hogsmede privileges?"
"They don't," Hagrid frowned down at me.
"Well what d'you call that then?" I asked as I pointed to the group of titchy students.
"I call tha third years Ron, you've got to remember you were quite short once yourself," he chuckled down at me.
"I was not," I snorted.
"You still are teh me," Hagrid said before ruffling my hair as if I was a little kid.
"Hagrid," I said as I attempted to flatten my hair back down, "there are some giraffes that are quite small to you."
He chuckled at that and I tried to remember what we had been talking about.
"So you think it was bought here in Hogsmede then eh?"
The ring; that was it.
"Oh yeah, I traced it to the jewellers just a couple of doors down from the tea room, thought I'd see if they remembered who they sold it to or if they've got a record of it being made anywhere. I really need to find the bastard who owns this."
"Nasty piece of work is he?"
I nodded sadly.
"Somebody died because I haven't been able to find out who he is yet."
Hagrid put one of his huge hands on my shoulder and gave me a look of sympathy.
"Friend of yours was it?"
"No actually, we didn't really like each other. Well it wasn't that we didn't like each other, he saved my life once, we just didn't trust each other and now it turns out that the person I suspected him of being is the very same person who got him killed."
"Tha's not your fault then is it? You were both being vigilant like you're supposed teh when tryin' teh hunt a bad 'un. You get 'im Ron, I'm sure of it."
I smiled up at Hagrid and wondered how he would deal with it if this whole rap got pinned on me.
Pop! Whoosh! Bang! Bang! Bang!
We both jumped and spun around to see what the commotion behind us was all about, I had my wand drawn before I really even thought about it, and we both relaxed when we saw that it was just the third years letting of some of Fred and George's wet start fireworks.
Hagrid began to say something about the twins and their legendary display for the benefit of Umbridge but I wasn't taking in any of what he was saying. The rapid flashes had sent my head into a spin and I couldn't focus on anything around me anymore. I was falling to the ground but as my clothes fell away from me and the ground came up to meet me I just kept on going through it.
I was falling and falling and falling until...
THUNK!
HERMIONE: When I got the call Ron wasn't with me. He had gone travelling just before we went to bed and he still hadn't come back yet. I thought it must have been him.
"Mrs Weasley?" Healer Wanless greeted me with an anxious smile.
He was a very young healer when we first started going to him at the start of Ron's problems, although Ron already knew him, having been treated by him when Healer Wanless was in his forties and Ron was still a teenager, and he still looked quite youthful now. He had very fair skin that contrasted strikingly with his short dark brown hair. He had his own brand of winning smile and there has been more than one occasion when I had run into St Mungo's emergency treatment room to be faced with both his and Ron's 'what are you so worried about?' grins. I don't know where we would have been without him.
"How is he Ben, what happened to him?"
"Well it looks as if he fell out of the sky again," Ron's personal healer said with a grimace.
I put my hand to my face and hoped it wasn't going to look as bad as the image I just had flash into my mind.
"Do you know how high up he was when it happened?"
"Well fortunately not high enough to do any irreparable damage," the healer said as he put an arm around me and guided me to Ron's room, "We're still getting really lucky with these falls Mrs Weasley. We both know how high he went riding that thestral and if he reappears in that space at any time then there will be nothing anybody will be able to do."
It was the thing we all dreaded most of all. Ron's ability to show up anywhere he had ever been in his lifetime meant that he was now paying an awful price for loving to fly so much. He had broken so many bones when he just fell out of the sky before the three gold hoops on the Hogwarts quiddich pitch that his whole family began to make internal lists of all the different places Ron has flown over the years and came to the conclusion that he could drop out of the sky almost anywhere. Fred and George had been quite sickened when they thought about how high up they had flown that car in the second year.
"Where's our boy though?" Healer Wanless asked as he realised I was alone.
"He went travelling earlier tonight," I was about to confirm that this meant the Ron we were about to see wasn't the present day Ron when it occurred to me that it couldn't have been. Ron vanished in our bedroom doorway so that would be where he reappeared as well, "I'm going to have to send him an owl to let him know where I am, I forgot to leave a note."
"I'll get it done for you when I show you in. Don't worry yourself about it."
As he pushed open the door to Ron's treatment room I saw three medi witches fussing around him and healing various head wounds. I squinted through their bodies as they rushed back and forth and tried to make out what sort of age he was. Healer Wanless must've read my mind and he leaned over to whisper into my ear.
I'd say he's not far off the present Mrs Weasley, maybe a year or two younger, I can tell by what scars he does and doesn't have."
I drew in a deep breath and nodded, that was they way I usually judged what sort of time Ron was travelling from, I wondered what scars of his were from this very accident as I crossed the room to step between the medi witches and take his hand in mine.
"You are the wife?" one of the women said with a smile and I nodded while another pushed a chair behind my legs, knocking me into the sitting position at Ron's bedside.
"Well healer Wanless has done a marvellous job on all the internal injuries, we fixed his broken pelvis, almost shattered I'm afraid but it's good as new now. It's my specialty I'm proud to say so it should be stronger than ever."
I smiled up at her.
"Thank you very much."
The medi witch moved aside to continue working on what appeared to be a broken foot while a second medi witch tapped Ron's head with her wand and a soft pink glow shimmered around his head before seeping in and disappearing completely.
"Fractured his skull dear," she said with a wink, "but no damage to his brain don't worry. We're going to have to deal with a very serious concussion as soon as we're done but I'm told you've plenty of experience in that area yourself?"
I nodded again, I had too much experience with almost every possible way my husband could get hurt, but thought that concussion wasn't the worst thing I might have had to deal with that night.
"Hey babe," Ron suddenly said from behind me, Healer Wanless running after him to hand him a pair of shoes to put on, he seemed breathless, "I just got back and saw Ben's owl crapping on the rug."
I reached out for him and took his hand, I now held my husbands left hand in the present and the past at the same time, he must've thrown on a pair of jogging bottoms and a long sleeved t-shirt before jumping into the fireplace barefoot.
"Concussion watch again tonight it seems," I smiled and Healer Wanless nodded before conjuring a chair for Ron beside me and two of the mediwitches followed him out while the last one finished working on his head.
"Well at least we know I'm alright, I never show up back home in any kind of mess from this do I? Ben said this one's from the past."
"He is," I said as I pulled back the covers to reveal a healing slash on his hip, "this is how you got this one look."
Ron lifted up his t-shirt and pulled down the waistband of his joggers to reveal a crescent shaped white scar in the same place.
"Huh," he said, "well that clears that one up."
I covered the sleeping Ron again and looked up as the medi witch caught my eye with a warm smile.
"I'm just going to wake him up to do the first test and then I can leave the two of you to keep it up every hour until morning can I?"
Ron and I nodded and watched as the medi witch flicked her wand into the unconscious Ron's face and said the revival spell.
"Ennervate!"
The spell hit him and his face contorted into a grimace before his eyes blinked open and stared up at the medi witch groggily.
"Do you know what your name is sir?" she smiled.
"Ron Weasley," he groaned, seeming to recognise the first of the concussion questionnaire as soon as he heard it and just wanting to get it over with and go to sleep.
"How old are you?"
"Thirty one," he mumbled as his eyes fell closed again.
"Do you know where you are?"
"Hospital."
"What's is your address?"
"Hornet's Nest," he said in barely a sigh, he was almost asleep again.
The medi witch stared at the two of us at his bedside with a confused look on her face.
"It's our floo address," I explained to her and she seemed happy enough with that.
"I need your eyes open Mr Weasley, you know that, look at me please," she said firmly.
He groaned and lifted his eyelids to focus back on the medi witch again.
"Do you know what day it is?"
The Ron beside me stifled a snort and I nudged him in the ribs to get him to behave.
"I'm fucked if I know!" the concussed Ron said with no more facial expression other than a pair of raised eyebrows at the pointlessness of that question.
"Ron language," I said, hating myself for sounding like his mother.
"Give the guy a break babe," my Ron said with a smile, "he's not with it."
"I don't mind Mrs Weasley, it must be very disorienting to wake up in a whole other time, the time is ten forty three now," she said as she looked at the clock on the wall, "could you do the honours at a quarter to midnight and then every hour afterwards for me?"
We both nodded and I looked down at the already sleeping Ron in the hospital bed.
My Ron put his arm around my shoulders and whispered into my hair.
"I can do this, you go home and get some sleep babe."
I curled my arms around him and rested my head on his chest.
"No I want to stay and keep you both company," I murmured into his t-shirt.
I felt him planting a kiss on the top of my head and we sat in silence like that for the next hour.
11:45PM
"Oi wake up, what's your name?"
"Same as yours," the injured Ron grumbled sleepily to his healthy counterpart who had just rudely awoken him, "can't you answer these questions and let me get some sleep?"
"Come on mate, you know that's not how it works. Name?"
"Ron Weasley," he said with a sigh as he closed his eyes.
"You've got to look at me for this or I'll make you do it all over again from the beginning," my Ron said, almost sounding like Madame Pomfrey when she was dealing with Ron being a difficult patient all those times at school.
I tried not to smile at this strict side of him.
"I hate you," the injured Ron mumbled to his other self who grinned wickedly back at him.
"Well I love you! Now tell me your age."
"Thirty one."
"Do you know where you are?"
"In hell," Ron said as he scrunched up his face and rubbed his head.
I looked up at my Ron with concern but he gave me a smile and shook his head to tell me not to worry.
"Do you want to go back to the beginning again, I'll do it, you know how petty I can be?"
"I'm in St Mungo's," Ron growled.
"Address?"
"Hornet's Nest."
"And the ridiculous question is...?"
The injured Ron broke into the slightest of smiles at that and muttered his answer.
"April Fool's Day."
My Ron's eyes widened on hearing this.
"It's never April the first for you!" he looked at me and suddenly added up the date and his other self's age in his head before turning back to his dozing self in the bed, "Wait a minute, were you just with Hagrid?"
The sleepy Ron gave a murmur and my Ron looked at me with a shake of the head.
"So this is where I went."
"So you don't remember any of this?" I asked him and he shook his head.
"I remember falling down talking to Hagrid and then I'm being carried up to the hospital wing at Hogwarts by the big guy bawling his eyes out!"
I put my hand to his amused face and pulled him back into me to continue our silent snuggle until the next hour came along.
12:45AM
"Ron, Ron wake up," I said with a slight shake of his shoulder, "I'd really prefer you woke up for me naturally rather than me using the spell Ron."
I looked over my shoulder at my own Ron slumped in his seat with his head lolling and snoring away before turning back and pinching the fleshy part of Ron's earlobe very hard. He made a squealing sound at the back of his throat and scowled up at me.
"I hate it when you do that," he said, his voice sounding quite rough as he spoke.
"What's your name Ron?"
He looked at me and laughed before wincing and clutching his head.
"Well we'll skip that one now I've told you the answer," I said, slightly embarrassed, "How old are you?"
"Thirty one as ever."
"Where are you?"
"Mungo's"
"Where's your flat?"
"North London, Mornington Crescent."
I felt quite proud of myself for varying the question so he had to give a different answer and decided to have another crack at it.
"What day is our wedding anniversary?"
He was just dropping off when he opened one of his eyes and looked right at me and smiled.
"You know I can never remember that."
I was raising my hand to slap him but he was still quite fragile so I turned to his sleeping counterpart and hit him on the arm instead.
"What the hell?" he said as he woke up and stared at me with sleepy eyes, "Is something wrong, d'you need Ben?" he said as he got to his feet.
I pulled him back down into his chair and laughed at his confusion before turning back to see the other Ron had dropped off again with a tiny smile twisting the corners of his mouth.
1:45AM
"Oi mush, up!" Ron said wearily as he shook himself roughly.
The sleeping Ron opened his eyes and heaved a frustrated sigh.
"Ron Weasley, thirty one, in hospital, Camden Town, don't know, sod off!"
His eyes closed and he was sleeping almost instantly. My Ron turned to look back at me with an impressed expression on his face.
"Succinct and to the point, I like it!"
He sat back down beside me and I nestled into him, feeling like a nap myself, and I felt him stroking my hair gently.
"I never asked you where you'd been while you were gone," I sighed as my eyes fell closed.
"Just home, the Burrow."
There was something about his minimal use of words that made me think there was more to his trip than just a dinner with his family or a chat with his mother.
"And?" I probed as I looked up at him and saw that he was looking out of the moonlit window thoughtfully.
He turned back to me and smiled before lowering his head and kissing me on the lips.
"Not now eh?"
I let it go...for the time being.
2:45AM
I was alone, Ron had gone down to the cafeteria to get us something to eat and drink, and I leaned over the injured Ron's bed to wake him when his eyes opened and he was looking right at me. I leaned in and kissed him softly, pausing to push back his hair and check that his head wound was still healing nicely, and Ron whispered up at me.
"Name?"
I smiled down at him and kissed his lips again.
"Hermione Weasley."
"Age?"
"Thirty four."
"Where are you now?"
I leaned in even closer and practically answered the question into his mouth.
"Right where I want to be."
He kissed me back and smiled as I moved away again.
"What day is it today?"
"It is the early hours of the nineteenth of August two thousand and four."
He raised his eyebrows.
"It's mum's birthday."
With that his eyes closed again and I returned to my seat just in time to see Ron walking back in with two cups of tea and four packets of crisps between his teeth.
"Healthy Ron, very healthy," I said as I took my cup from him and he opened his mouth to drop the bags into my lap.
"What? It was all they had at this time of night that wasn't stale."
He sat down beside me and opened one of the packets, beginning to munch while I sipped my tea and looked at his other self sleeping peacefully.
"It's that time again," Ron said, his mouthful of crisps, as he looked to the clock on the wall.
"No it's not, I've already done it."
We sat and ate our fatty late night snack and spent the rest of the next hour just staring at each other and twisting our fingers in the other's hair absent-mindedly.
3:45AM
"Name your mother calls you when you've upset her?" my Ron was barking down at himself, who jumped at the sudden raised voice.
"Ronald Bilius Weasley!" he said in shock.
My Ron chuckled at this and his other self relaxed back down onto the bed to go over the rest of the questions while casting annoyed glances at his inquisitor.
"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"
"Eighteen," he said sheepishly.
"Where in the flat have you done it with my wife?"
I laughed out loud at this and the other Ron was really struggling not to give in and smile at this new line of questioning.
"Where haven't I done it with your wife?"
Both Ron's sniggered at this and I punched the healthy one in the arm again.
"Where did Doctor Foster fall in a puddle?"
"Somewhere in Gloucester."
This one totally passed me by but Ron seemed to be satisfied with the answer so I didn't say anything about it.
"March the first 2024?"
The two Ron's looked at each other and the younger one swallowed.
"You're the oldest, you know better than me, have you seen it yet?"
My Ron shook his head.
He never stopped trying to find that forty four year old version of himself. Time was passing and still nobody had seen him.
"Go to sleep," my Ron nodded before excusing himself and going for a walk.
4:45AM
I sat up to wake the visiting Ron when I noticed that my Ron had tears in his eyes and was trying to keep his head turned away from me so I couldn't see it.
"Ron what's the matter?" I said as I pulled at his arm to make him turn around.
He sniffed and wiped his face before answering me in a very muggy sounding voice.
"It's nothing just ignore me alright?"
I got up from my chair and moved around to his other side, crouching down to make him look at me. It was always unsettling to see Ron cry. It wasn't that he didn't do it but he hated to in front of anybody, not even me, and his eyes shone in the light of the moon.
"I will not ignore you. Tell me please, what's upsetting you? Is it what you were asking yourself about earlier?"
He wiped his face again and shook his head.
"Well what is it Ron, you're scaring me."
He sat back and patted himself on the lap, indicating that he wanted me to sit there, and as I settled myself upon him he encircled my body with his arms and wept on my shoulder for almost an entire minute.
"It's ok babe I'm here, don't get yourself into a state now come on. What's happened, is it your trip tonight?"
He nodded and squeezed me harder.
"I knew there was something you weren't telling me," I said as I rubbed my hand up and down his back and felt him take several shuddering breaths in an attempt to shake off his little emotional overload, "what happened back at the Burrow Ron? Please tell me."
He held me close and began to tell me everything. He was struggling to pull himself together as he spoke about it and my own eyes were watering when I thought about what he had just had to do and that he had come straight here and repressed it for the sake of me and his other self.
"The whole family was there and they were all so old, really old Hermione, and they were looking at me like...they were really shocked to see me. Ginny grabbed me and dragged me up the stairs to mum and dad's room and shoved me inside and...and..."
Ron had showed up at his house just in time to hold his mother's hand as she died.
"She was really old so it's not that bad y'know?" he whimpered into my hair, "She obviously had a good long life and she wasn't in any pain at all but..." I felt his shoulders shaking and I held him to me as if a strong wind was threatening to rip him from my arms forever, "I didn't want to see that Hermione, not now, not yet, not ever."
We had been holding each other for almost five minutes before I looked over to the bed and saw that the visiting Ron had gone back where he had come from. A frantically worried Hagrid was cradling him and a desperately sad wife who knew there was nothing to say or do to take this pain away was comforting my Ron.
I sniffed.
"What's your name?" I asked as the tears pushed their way out of my eyes.
"Ronnie," he said as his shoulders began to shake once again and I felt the fabric of my shirt dampening where his face was hidden.
"How old are you?" I choked.
"It doesn't matter, I'm always the baby boy."
I tried to keep myself together.
"Where are you?"
His voice seemed to break as he strained to give me my answer.
"I'm lost."
"Where do you live?"
"Home."
"What day is it?"
He was shaking all over now and I began to sob into his hair while he broke down, still hiding his face in the side of my neck.
"What day is it Ronnie?"
"It's her birthday."