All The Places You've Been

29th March 2005 (Ron is 29, Hermione is 25)

HERMIONE: I heard a groan from outside the front door and drew my wand before answering.

"Help me!"

I fell to my knees and grabbed Ron's hand gently. He looked dreadful. He was bleeding heavily from the head and one of his arms appeared to be broken, his skin was covered with scratches and fresh bruises and he looked older than my Ron.

"Where are you coming from?" I asked him before I set about trying to heal his head wound.

"September 21st 2009," he wheezed.

That sounded bad, like one or two of his ribs were broken and restricting his normal breathing.

"Then I don't know where I was," he wheezed again.

"Don't try to speak Ron, I think you might have internal injuries," I said as I abandoned the attempt to heal his head and focused on his chest instead.

"In the air Hermione. Has it happened to me before?"

I frowned at this meaningless couple of sentences.

"What?"

"When is this?" he winced as he tried to take in his surroundings a little better.

"March the twenty-ninth 2005 now stop fidgeting around Ron, I mean it."

He didn't seem to be taking any notice of me. He gripped my arm just above the elbow tightly and looked into my eyes.

"It'll happen more than once Hermione, it'll be bad, and you've got to prepare yourself to be able to fix me up. Ben can't always get to me in time."

"Shut up Ron I'm working!" I snapped, I didn't like to hear him talking this way.

"How old am I now? Twenty-four? It'll happen soon Hermione and I won't be awake to tell you. I fall out of the sky a lot..." he shuddered with pain and I tried to ignore him and continue with the healing spells but I couldn't tell him to stop talking, I wanted to know what to prepare for, "...because I've flown a lot. This..." his face contorted with pain, "...this time I landed on the Quiddich pitch at Hogwarts again, next time..." the pain was coming and going in spasms now, "...the next time for you and the...the first time for me, I'll be really high up. I think it was from flying the car to school that day. It'll be worse and you've got to..."

I tried to get him to stop, he was hurting so badly, but he kept on pushing himself to finish what he needed to say.

"...you've got to..."

"Ron I get it ok, I'll get some more training in first aid but you've got to lie still for me right now please," I begged him and hoped that I'd at least made his chest more comfortable as I returned my focus to his still heavily bleeding head.

He tightened his grip on my arm, his arms were even more powerful then they were now, and he stared right into me with ferocious intensity.

"Fred and George," he struggled to say, "get them to learn C.P.R. I drown soon."

My eyes bulged in my head as Ron's eyes began to glaze over and he got that dizziness that always indicated he was about to disappear again.

"Hogwarts Lake...second task...time travel to the bottom and drown...Hagrid pulls me to the surface and I travel back to the twins flat before he can get me to Pomfrey...I can't see you Hermione!" he said in a panic.

"I'm here Ron, I'm right here, it's all going to be alright you know that don't already otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell me all this now."

His eyes almost fixed on me as he whispered.

"Anywhere I've ever been Hermione, I can go back there at any time in my life..." he began to disappear, my hands visible through his torso where I had been supporting him, and all I heard was his last few words hissed to me with devastating resignation," ...it's going to kill me."

And then he was gone.

19th May 1999 and 9th October 1980 (Ron is 19)

"Ron your brother is here to see you."

I looked up from my desk to see Lavender peering around my office door with her efficient professional look on her face, she was obviously worried that my brothers hated her almost as much as Ginny did, and I slid the field report I had been going over underneath a personnel file and a chart about pay scales. I wondered which one of them it was.

"You're going to have to narrow that down for me."

"It's Percy."

I stared at her as if she'd got confused and put the wrong name to the wrong face.

"Are you sure?"

Percy stepped through the door and stood behind Lavender, causing her to jump with fright.

"Hello Ronald."

I looked back at Lavender who was glaring at Percy for just barging in before she had cleared it with me and gave her a nod.

"Thanks Lavender."

As she left with an annoyed huff Percy strode across the room and took a seat across from me at my desk.

"Take a seat Perce," I said, amazed at his boldness, I didn't remember a time in the last few years when he had abandoned his manners.

"Ronald I don't have time to waste with niceties," he said in an impatient tone.

"When do you ever?" I snorted, he was still being such an arse to mum that it was all I could do not to kick him in the shin under my desk.

"I just need to ask you something on behalf of the minister, I did ask father to approach you but he became quite offensive and threatening towards me so I decided to bypass him and bring you the offer myself."

So the minister was involved and dad wouldn't be a part of it. I knew this proposal was going to be something bad.

"What offer is this?" I said coolly.

"Well the minister seems to have received certain confidential information about a...well a medical condition of yours," Percy looked at me expectantly, maybe hoping I'd share this information with him too, I just froze and tried not to appear alarmed that somebody had just sold me out to the minister of magic, "I told the minister that as far as I knew your only condition was drunkenness."

What an arsehole.

"That's not me anymore Percy."

"Funny," he scoffed as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and seemed to be addressing a gathering of amused people who were all watching these proceedings rather than myself, "it was you last Sunday when you tried to beat down my door wearing nothing but a robe."

I folded my arms and sat back in my chair.

"Like I said, that's not me anymore."

"Well anyway, the minister wants to run some tests on you, something about finding a gene the unspeakables want to isolate and clone. It's a muggle thing that they want to adapt to the magical world. He said that due to you and your friends being responsible for the destruction of the ministry's entire collection of time-turners you owe us."

I almost grabbed him by the front of his robes and haled him across my desk to bellow into his arrogant face.

"I owe you? I owe the ministry? If the ministry hadn't been in bloody denial we'd never have had to go to the Department of Mysteries at all that night. Most of us nearly died, including your sister might I remind you, and I owe you?"

Percy pushed his chair back away from the desk and got to his feet.

"Well I warned the minister you would be like this."

"What," I said as I jumped to my own feet, "justifiably outraged? Yes!"

Percy was waking back to the door now and I was only too happy to shove the bastard out of it.

"I don't know how you managed to get such a responsible job within this department Ronald, I really don't, and somebody else has obviously found that very suspicious if they've gone straight to the minister with this...information about your medical condition."

Percy had opened the office door and was stepping through it as the thought that somebody was watching me within the ministry, somebody who wasn't supposed to be at the very least, began to cause me to panic internally.

"It really tears you up doesn't it Percy," I growled at him as I tried to get to the door to stop him closing it behind him, "the minister knows something about your own brother that you don't and neither of us will bloody well tell you what it is?"

Percy closed the door with a bang and I grabbed at the door handle but my hand went right through it. I couldn't see straight and I felt myself sinking to the floor as my head spun and I was swallowed up into a musty darkness.

No it wasn't just musty, it was downright rank, the air seemed stale and it was incredibly stuffy. I got to my feet and waved my arms in front of my face to try and clear the air just ahead of me. I felt several cobwebs breaking against my skin and yelped before stubbing my toe on something solid and hopping up and down on one leg before falling over something soft on the ground and hitting the gritty floor with a thud.

"Oh sodding marvellous!" I hissed as I massaged what felt like a broken toe and tried to acclimatise my eyes to the darkness.

There were thin shards of sunlight slicing through the dusty air and hitting the brown dusty floor in various places but nothing substantial enough for me to gage wherever it was in my life I had just reappeared.

I got up and felt around me, my fingers curled around some kind of light fabric, maybe a table cloth I thought, and I pulled it around me before extending my arm ahead of me to feel my way around this room or shed or whatever it was. I found what felt like a smooth stone wall and let my hand glide along the surface of it while I followed along and silently preyed for a doorway to appear sometime soon.

Nothing.

Why did a room that nobody can get into or out of even exist I ask myself? I couldn't just disapparate outside as I didn't know where I was and I didn't know when I was so I couldn't show up at the Burrow. Was I supposed to just wait it out until I went back to my office?

"Percy!" I suddenly snarled under my breath, "You git this is all your fault."

If he hadn't wound me up so much I would still be in my office right now sharing an uncomfortable conversation with Lavender. Well maybe this wasn't so bad after all.

I was starting to see things a little better now and thought I could see something glinting just beside one of the tiny pinpricks of sunlight. I fumbled my way over to it, stepping on something crunchy with my bare feet along the way and having to tell myself aloud that it was just crisps and not insects of any kind, before reaching the smooth round disc and discovering that it was an ornate mirror.

"Yes!" I said, not due to my vanity but because I could now throw some light on my situation.

I held the mirror in one of the thicker beams of light and angled the mirror to scan the walls of the place. I had been right, the walls were a kind of sadly coloured smooth stone and there were cobwebs draped everywhere like bunting at a party. I shuddered and tried not to think about how many spiders were in here with me. I angled the mirror about the middle of the room, wondering what it was I had broken my toe on earlier, and there sat a golden sarcophagus shrouded in a layer of dust and cobwebs but clearly recognisable to me as the brilliantly preserved mummified remains of the great wizarding pharaoh Zimba Redkez.

I almost laughed.

"I'm in a fucking pyramid! Oh Bill, what did you have to bring me here for all those years ago?"

Well it was all those years in the future really as the tomb had yet to be discovered. I sat down on an ostentatiously decorated throne and rubbed my head.

"Oh you are kidding me. Oh top of everything else I can now show up inside pyramids in Egypt can I?"

The throne suddenly passed through my body and I fell with a thud on my back in my office once again. I cursed and the door opened, slamming right into my side and causing me to yell out in pain.

"Oh sorry Ron, I thought I heard you come back," Lavender winced as she watched me rolling over and clutching my hip, "I didn't mean to hit you sorry."

I just shook my head and massaged what was going to be one hell of a nasty bruise.

"Clothes Lavender, please just get me my clothes."

She hopped over my body and to my desk where what I had been wearing when I had disappeared was now folded and stacked neatly. I got to my feet and pulled a cloak from the cloak stand to cover myself with while I hobbled across the office to take the bundle from her. Seeing my discomfort in walking she looked down and threw her hands up to her face, looking away with a squeal of disgust.

"Ron your toe!" she pointed shakily.

"What?" I said before looking down at my foot.

"It's pointing upwards!" she said, going very pale.

I made quite an unmanly sound as I held my injured toe out in front of me and hopped backwards on my good leg, almost as if I was trying to run away from my own foot, and struggled not to be sick. My big toe was bloody and at a forty-five degree angle to all the other ones. When I break a toe I really break a toe!

"What are you standing there for fix it, fix it, fix it!" I said still hopping up and down and trying not to look at it.

Lavender flapped her hands in front of her face and winced.

"But it's so disgusting!"

I was losing any composure I might have managed to hold on to up to that point.

"Well get Ben then!"

Lavender pulled out her wand and tried to calm herself down, not very successfully I might add, as she approached my extended foot.

"No I'll do it, I can do this, I'm doing it now."

"Just do it!" I said in a higher pitch than I would ever like a woman to hear me using.

Lavender swished and flicked her wand at my damaged toe.

"Corrigo sano!"

There was a flash and I felt my toe go numb and then hot before hearing a loud crack and looking down to see that it was straight again.

"Scourgify!" Lavender said as she cleaned the blood away to reveal a perfectly healed and healthy toe.

I put my foot down on the floor and wriggled all five toes on that foot before sighing and catching Lavender doing the exact same thing. We smiled at each other and then laughed.

"Sorry about that Lavender," I said as I pulled the cloak around myself a little more, "it just kind of...took me by surprise!"

"You and me both!" she said with a giggle, she still looked very pale, "I'm sorry I freaked out so badly it's just," she looked down at my healed toe, "I didn't think something like that was possible."

I grabbed my clothes from the floor, where Lavender had dropped them in shock, and she began to make her way back outside to give me some privacy.

"Believe me as far as I'm concerned anything's possible!" I said with a shake of the head.

She laughed and began to pull the door closed.

"So where were you this time?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I huffed with amusement.

"Well you were gone a whole day so I'll just send Hermione an owl, let her know you're back."

"Thanks," I said as she closed the door and I dropped the cloak away from me to begin to get dressed.

This was all Percy's fault.

A/N I just want to thank you all for sticking with me on this one. It's just as hard to write as it is for you to read but you know me and the challenges I set myself don't you? At least nobody can accuse me of just doing the same thing over and over again.

I just realised that this is my 10th fic and I've only been doing this since September last year. I do churn these things out at an alarming rate don't I?

So I hope that the confusion isn't too much for you and that as I solve some of the puzzles I've set up for Ron and Hermione you begin to understand this all a bit more.

Oh and some general responses to reviewers... No I am not taking any kind of medication. I can't tell you what the significance of Gorecki is until the very end I'm afraid. There IS an explanation for a certain little red head travelling to 1998 and another no-so-little red head travelling so far forward but you don't get it just yet!

Thanks and much gratitude to all who review as always.

Shari