The Two Ronnies
17th November 1998 (Ron is 18 and 18, Hermione is 19)
RON: I stepped out of the fireplace and brushed the soot off my clothes before glancing around the flat to see if Hermione was home. She didn't appear to be.
I pulled off my jacket and threw it onto the sofa before walking into the bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror. I sighed my relief at seeing that there were no visible bruises on my face, I had been worried about how to explain that one away to Hermione, and pulled off my shirt to take a look at my back.
Oh bollocks!
I looked as if I have been whipped with an iron rod. Long thin bruises covered the whole of my back and one even seemed to disappear beneath the waistband of my trousers and continue on to my left buttock. That probably explained why it hurt so much when I sat down after I returned from the ambush at Droitwich Spa that afternoon.
I was struggling to angle my wand behind my back in an attempt to heal myself while turning my head uncomfortably to see what I was doing in the bathroom mirror when I hear sounds coming from the bedroom, familiar sounds, sounds that I didn't usually hear when I wasn't in the bedroom too.
"Oh Godric I love you," Hermione was panting.
I almost herniated a disc with the speed I turned back away from the mirror to stare in horror at the bathroom door. I gripped my wand tightly and held it ahead of me as I flung the bathroom door open and barged into our bedroom ready to take somebody's blood. That was when I saw what had happened and let out a groan of disgust.
"Ron!" Hermione yelped and threw off the other version of me she had just finished humping, "When did you get here? When are you coming from?"
I realised that she thought that I was the travelling version and glared at myself. The other me looked as if he was trying to appear guilty but wasn't able to pull it off due to the huge smile on his face.
"I'm coming from work Hermione," I said with a huff, "he's the one coming from somewhere else!"
Hermione drew a sharp intake of breath and turned on her shagging partner who shrugged and sat up in an annoyingly casual manner.
"Only a week, it's no big deal babe."
"A week ahead of me is a big deal," I yelled at him, "you're a week older than I am, you are not me."
He looked so smug. I wondered if I pulled that face often, I hoped not, and then wondered why more people didn't smack that look off my face when they saw it.
"Well let's see how you feel this time next week you horny sod," he chuckled.
Hermione was watching this exchange as if she was watching a tennis match, her head turning from one side of the bedroom to the other, with her jaw hanging open at the bizarre circumstances of her own life.
"I am not horny!" I protested.
"Well let's see how you feel after she sees the state of your back, a big fight escalates, and she withholds sex for a week," he said as he leaned back against the headboard and folded his arms with another self-satisfied grin.
Hermione turned on me with livid eyes.
"What's wrong with your back?"
I glared at my other self and hissed with seething rage at what a prick I could be.
"You bastard!"
He looked delighted as he chuckled, this moment was obviously a lot more fun from his side of things, and faded away before my furious gaze. All he left was an indentation in the pillow and a small pocket of air in the shape of his body beneath the sheets.
Hermione threw herself off of the bed and grabbed me, spinning me around and gasping with horror at the state of my back.
"Who did this?" she demanded as she spun me back around to face her.
"Nobody did it, I fell down some stairs that's all," I lied.
"Only on your back?" she scoffed.
"Well of course not, I was covered in them but..." I realised that telling her I had been more hurt than she first thought probably wasn't going to help me out but it was too late to turn back now, "...I could reach those ones to heal myself."
My voice had tailed off as I saw the fury building up in her face before she shoved me unceremoniously, face down, onto the bed and set about healing the bruises all over my back.
"And why couldn't Lavender have done this for you may I ask? Isn't that part of her job description, to heal you to the best of her abilities when you show up hurt? Why did she let you come home like this?"
I wondered if I could suffocate myself with of the fluffy pillows beside my head. I really didn't want to answer that question but I had made a point of being completely honest about everything that was going on with the Lavender situation ever since it first became a problem. She knew I wouldn't lie to her now and she knew she wasn't going to like it when I told her.
"Why didn't you let her heal you Ron?" Hermione said while roughly yanking down my trousers to heal the bruise on my buttock.
"I didn't want to encourage her ok?" I said with a wince, "I've kind of been...dealing with it myself rather than calling on her to do it this past couple of weeks."
Hermione grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me over onto my now healed back to vent her fury at me face to face.
"What?" she snapped, "That's it Ron you have to transfer her to another department she's letting her emotions get in the way of doing her job."
"Hermione I can't, you know what state she got herself in last time when I suggested it."
"I don't care!" she bellowed down at me, rendering me mute with shock for a moment, "What if you come back seriously hurt one day Ron, hurt and naked, and she tries to take advantage of you?"
I couldn't believe that of her. Sure Lavender was getting a little more cuckoo every day now but she was just confused not immoral.
"She wouldn't," I said when I finally got my voice back, "I might have been wrong about that last time. You know me when I wake up I get all groggy and think all sorts of stupid stuff don't I?"
Hermione narrowed her eyes and walked away from me with a huff. I followed her into the living room where she was pacing up and down and attempting to suppress her clearly volatile emotions.
"She's even got you making excuses for her now, making you think it's your fault and that you're leading her on, that manipulative little bitch!"
"Hermione, c'mon..." I said as I tried to stop her pacing but she just shook me off and let out a growl of anger and frustration before folding her arms and staring out of the window, her back to me.
"You came back that morning unconscious, anything could've been wrong with you, you could have been dying for all she knew, and what did she do Ron? What was the first thing she did when she found you unconscious and naked on the floor of your office?"
I sighed; I really didn't want to get into this right now.
"I don't know I was unconscious."
Hermione spun around and practically screamed at me, her hair flying and her face flushed with rage.
"She kissed you!"
It might not have been the first thing that Lavender had done when she found me, I would never know, but it had been what I had seen and felt her doing when I woke up. She was bending over me and her lips were parted and her tongue was in my mouth. I had thrown her off of me as soon as I realised what was happening and started writing out the transfer papers before I was finished dressing but she broke down and begged me to let her stay. She said people would find out and it would ruin her ministry career. I swore that I wouldn't say a word about it to anybody but she just became a wreck and I couldn't do it. I thought I could help her, she wasn't well and I didn't want to be the one who pushed her over the edge, so I let her keep working for me.
She's been behaving herself pretty much since then but when I don't need to ask for her help I try not to. I thought it was best not to tempt fate.
Dean had come to the office a couple of days after that and told me that Lavender had shown up at his place looking for Parvati to console her about her 'awful situation at work' and he had been sent by his girlfriend to ask me to go easy on her. He thought I was over-working her. I was all ready to make my usual excuses when something just overtook me and I told him everything. He sat down afterwards and shook his head. Parvati had suspected that we were having an affair; she thought I was a total arsehole because of this apparently, but Dean believed me when I told him that Lavender was unstable. He said that he wouldn't tell Parvati if I didn't want him to but I thought that maybe her best friend might be able to help her so I asked him if he could have a word and get her to try and sort Lavender out for me.
I didn't want to have to put her out of a job or ruin her reputation.
"You're sacking her first thing in the morning Ron, no more second chances," Hermione said firmly.
"She doesn't know she's done anything wrong Hermione, I didn't tell her I was hurt, I didn't even tell her I'd been travelling."
"That doesn't matter I want her out of there," Hermione's body was rigid with tension.
"I can't sack somebody because I didn't give them the opportunity to do their job!" I struggled to explain.
She stared at me in a way I had never seen before and it made me feel very uneasy. I willed her to say something but when she finally did, in a low tone of repressed fury, I wished she hadn't.
"Well now we know why you had to travel back in time to get some don't we? I'm going to stay at my mother's for a while, don't owl me."
She barged into the bedroom and slammed the door. She was only in there for five minutes before coming out fully dressed and carrying an overnight bag. She walked out the door without even glancing at me and I stood in the middle of the living room and wondered why I had chosen the path or complete honesty with my girlfriend in the first place.
I flooed over to Harry and Ginny's where my sister was fanning through a stack of bridal magazines. She looked up at me and sighed lazily.
"Harry's away until Tuesday, I would've thought you knew that of all people."
I did know it. I pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her without a word. That was what made her look up with a frown of worry I think, I don't often do quiet with my sister.
"What's wrong, are you ok?" she tossed the magazine aside and took my hand while her eyes stared right into my mind in that eerily penetrating way they have when she's determined to wheedle out the truth.
I stared back at her and tried to bring myself to say it.
"I think..." this was too hard, I looked away before going on, "...I think Hermione's just left me."
24th December 1998 (Ron is 18 and 20, Hermione is 19)
HERMIONE: It is one of the oddest and yet most wonderful sights I have ever witnessed. Harry, Ginny and the twins are just plain amused by it, Charlie is fascinated by the whole thing and his father has to keep nudging him to get him to close his mouth where it keeps hanging open every few minutes, and Bill is rendered quite uncomfortable by the whole thing. I sit with Fleur and talk about the baby she and Bill announced was due over dinner but soon our attention is grabbed by the drama over at the chessboard. Ron had finally made his first move.
"About bloody time!" Fred exclaimed while he, George and Harry broke into applause and Ginny whooped.
Ron shook his head and chuckled.
"Shut up!"
We all turned out attention to his opponent, the ultimate opponent for Ron and the very reason he had just spent twenty-four minutes deliberating his opening move. It was himself from two years in the future.
The twenty year old Ron sat back in his seat and scanned the board with his eyes, taking in every possible game plan he himself would have based upon that opening gambit before considering that his younger self would have a counter-attack planned for any move he could think of to make, and trying to find a tactic that he thought he wouldn't have taken into consideration two years earlier.
"This is bizarre," Charlie exhaled as he watched the two versions of his little brother trying to outwit each other.
"Don't distract him Charlie," Mr Weasley said with a smile, "you didn't interrupt the present Ron when he was concentrating did you?"
Charlie flinched and stared at his father before pointing at the visiting Ron.
"What he's the one from the future?"
Fred and George laughed and slapped their bewildered brother on the back as they sat on either side of him.
"Right, I'll only go over this one more time for you Charlie alright?" George said with a patronising smirk, "The one playing with the white pieces and wearing the threadbare sweatshirt is our Ron..."
Our Ron glared over at George, obviously not taking the comment about his wardrobe in the spirit it had been intended, before looking back at his other self and watching his eyes move around the board and trying to read his intentions.
"...and the one playing with the black pieces," Fred continued, " and wearing the Weasley jumper that mum knitted for Ron this year is the grown-up Ron."
Our Ron looked affronted at this and turned on his elder twin.
"Excuse me what do you mean by grown-up? I am an adult y'know?"
The other Ron chuckled at this and his younger self turned on him and folded his arms in a huff.
"And you can shut up as well ya git."
"Boys, language!" Mrs Weasley snapped as she walked into the living room carrying a tray full of mugs of steaming hot tea.
"Um boys?" the older Ron said with a raised eyebrow as he looked up at his mother, "I think you'll find that he's the one that swore, he's the boy."
Charlie shook his head in amazement again and Fleur and I chuckled at the flustered look on Mrs Weasley's face as she apologised to her innocent son while the twins nudged Harry and muttered.
"I think I like him better when he's twenty, do you think we could send our one back and keep the new and improved Ron instead?"
"I heard that!" Ron grunted and Bill got up and made an excuse to leave.
Fleur glanced at me and smiled before following him out and I noticed that our Ron was watching the two of them leaving with an uncomfortable look on his face. His older self nudged him under the table, only Harry and myself noticed this as we shared a look after it happened, and shook his head with a reassuring smile. Our Ron smiled back and nodded back down at the board. His opponent finally made his first move of the game and Ron stared at the layout of the board for three seconds before breaking into an irrepressible grin.
"Shit!" the older Ron hissed as he pounded his fist into his own leg on seeing that his whole game plan had just been read and deconstructed by his younger self.
Our Ron jumped to his feet and pointed down at his other self.
"He swore that time and his was worse than mine, get him mum!"
Ginny curled up into a ball on the floor as she fell off the sofa laughing and Harry couldn't look at Mrs Weasley, whose face seemed to be outraged that she just been instructed to set upon one of her children as if she was a rabid dog. Everybody was grinning at this insane event except for Charlie who was rubbing his head and looking more confused than ever.
"So can you read each other's minds?" he asked the two Ron's with a furrow in his brow that you could hold a pencil in.
The younger Ron sat back down and shared an amused glance with his other self before responding to his brother's question.
"We're the same person Charlie, we're not twins."
"I can't read his mind and we're twins," both Fred and George said before staring at each other in shock.
"No but," Charlie was getting into this now. He was treating his brother, or brothers as they were right now, as if he was new species he was studying in the wild and gathering information on for a wizarding journal, "what number am I thinking of right now?"
Both Rons snorted and shrugged before humouring him with an answer.
"Eighty two," they both said before doing a similar kind of double take that the twins had just done moments earlier, "Whoa!"
Harry turned to Charlie and excitedly asked him what number he had been thinking of.
"I wasn't thinking of a number, I just wanted to see what they said," he grinned with a shake of the head.
The older Ron snorted and urged his opponent to make his next move.
"Come on, I wasn't here long enough to finish this game first time around so get a move on."
The younger Ron raised both his eyebrows and stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"So you don't complete the game eh? That means you forfeit and I win."
The older Ron sat back in his chair and folded his arms with a tut.
"Well I don't want to play now, the suspense is gone," the younger Ron said in all his arrogant glory.
"Well if you stop playing then you forfeit and I win," the older Ron said smugly.
"I'm getting a headache," Charlie said as he got up and walked out of the room and into the kitchen.
I decided to follow him and gave my Ron a wink as I passed him by, leaving the infinite forfeit rule of time travel chess under heated debate by both players and spectators alike. Charlie was head deep in the fridge looking for leftovers from dinner when I walked in and I saw Bill and Fleur coming back inside from what had obviously been a walk.
"Go back and sit down love," Bill was smiling before kissing her on the forehead, "I'll be back in a bit."
Fleur glided back through to the living room in that floaty way of hers and I smiled at Bill who was looking a little sheepish.
"Did he notice that I was a little weird?" Bill asked me.
"Who isn't?" Charlie answered as he backed out of the fridge with an arm full of different plates covered in tin foil and sitting down at the kitchen table with them.
Bill pulled up a chair and sat down at the table, I joined him and tried to reassure him that Ron was ok.
"He did but his other self let him know not to worry about it so you shouldn't either."
Bill ran his fingers through his long hair and looked down at the table.
"His other self...that's what's getting to me I think," he sighed, "I mean I've seen him older and younger all over the place but I've never seen him with himself, and they're so close in age too."
Charlie swallowed his mouthful of food, it was kind of like watching Ron eat actually, there didn't seem to be enough room inside his mouth for the amount of food he wanted to put in there in one go and tried to help his brother make some sense of it all.
"It's no different to seeing Fred and George talking to each other, that's what I keep telling myself."
"But it is different," Bill said as he turned to his brother, "Ron isn't a twin and besides, Fred and George aren't the same person, they have different personalities and temperaments don't they? Fred's quite aggressive and spiteful when the mood takes him and George is more of a peacemaker when he's not swept up in his own wicked streak. But this is different, they are the same person, they're both my baby brother but there at the same time."
"Not any more," Ron said as he leaned against the doorframe and smiled down at Bill, "he's just gone."
I smiled up at him.
"So present day Ron one after all then?"
He stood up straight and seemed to realise that I hadn't realised who I was talking to.
"No I'm still here, he's gone. Your Ron just left."
"Oh," I said before feeling suddenly concerned, he had vanished on Christmas Eve and I didn't know how long for, "will he be back soon?"
The older Ron shrugged and pulled up a chair.
"About an hour, I'll be gone by then myself, so if you could tell him that I said goodbye and that he forfeited the game so I win I'd be most grateful," he smiled.
I still felt a little uneasy and bit my bottom lip, he knew what I was thinking and leaned forward.
"I only go to my office in the middle of the night for about five minutes, he'll be fine when he gets back I promise."
I relaxed on hearing that and watched as Ron nudged Bill in the arm and beamed at him.
"What?" Bill asked uneasily.
"I know what sex your baby is, I know what sex your baby is..." he began to say in a singsong voice.
Bill broke into laughter and pulled his brother into a headlock.
"Shut up squirt, I want it to be a surprise!"
"Oh it will be," Ron said as he got Bill to release him by tickling him, Bill is the most girlish giggler I have ever heard in my life and all of his younger siblings exploited his sensitivity to tickling in order to get out of any situation with him, "seven heads it's got, each one uglier than the last!"
"Right that's it," Bill declared as Charlie almost choked on his cold-cuts with laughter as Ron sprang up out of his seat and ran for the back yard, with Bill in hot pursuit, "I know a certain spot behind your knees that sends you into hysterics and makes you sound as if your voice never broke!"
Ginny and Harry appeared at the kitchen door to see what all the commotion was about while Bill tackled Ron just a few feet away from the broom shed.
"What in Merlin's name is going on?" Ginny said, doing quite an unnerving impersonation of her mother.
"Bill and Ron are trying to see which one of us has the most feminine laugh while under tickle torture," Charlie grinned.
"Well that's easy, it's Percy!" Fred shrugged.
Ginny grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him out of the back door.
"Come on, you've got to see this."
I stayed in the kitchen, waiting for my Ron to reappear, and filed away that useful little titbit for future reference.
Ticklish behind the knees eh?