Just Passing Through
March 28th 1999 Ron is 19, 23, 28, 37, 38, 39 and 41. Hermione is 19 and very confused!
HERMIONE: George had called me at work, he said that a Ron from 2009 had just appeared at their place and fallen down their stairs into the shop. That was new as far as his many sudden appearances went, he'd never appeared halfway up a flight of steps before, I hoped it wasn't a sign of things to come as he got older.
I stepped out of the fireplace to see the version of Ron who was married to me getting patched up by the twins and mumbling something with an amused look on his face.
"Are you alright?" I asked him as I rushed across the room to him and gave him a kiss before wondering if that was entirely appropriate seeing as he wasn't my current Ron.
"I'm fine don't worry," he said with a weary sigh and still looking slightly amused at something, "I just know what's coming that's all."
"Well of course you do you pilock," Fred said as he put his wand away and got back to his feet from healing Ron's broken arm on his knees, "you're from the future."
Ron scowled at his brother and flexed his newly healed arm.
"Shut up and let Lee in will you?" he grumbled.
The twins looked at each other and frowned.
"Lee as in Jordan?" they asked in unison.
Ron nodded and pulled a copy of 'Legal Loopholes For The Magical Grifter and How To Exploit Them' out from beneath a dusty pile of old adventure novels of George's beside him.
"But Lee's out of the country, he's not due back for seven weeks yet," Fred said as the door flew open and an out of breath Lee Jordan burst into the room and tripped over the loose carpet, falling into George's chest face first.
"Bloody hell!" George exclaimed while Fred stared back at Ron with his jaw hanging open.
Lee pulled himself back up to his feet and brushed himself down with an apologetic grin.
"Sorry about that but I'm kind of in a bit of trouble at the moment and was wondering if you still had that book about..." Ron thrusting the book he had dug out over his head and in front of Lee's face stopped Lee mid-speech. He blinked and took it, "Wow, thanks Ron."
Fred was completely speechless now and George wasn't far behind while Lee did a comical double take and stared down at Ron where he sat in the armchair and put his feet up on the twins' coffee table nonchalantly.
"Hold on, how did you get back here so fast?" the dread locked lifelong friend of the Weasley twins gasped, "I just saw you running starkers down the road not two minutes ago!"
"And so it begins," Ron said with an enigmatic sigh.
Before any of us could ask Ron what on earth was going on the fireplace erupted into green flames and a naked Ron fell out and crashed onto the floor on his knees heavily. The Ron in the armchair drew a sharp intake of breath between his teeth and looked away.
"I remember that, one of you lot might want to repair his kneecaps when you've got a minute."
I grabbed the new Ron and rolled him over to heal what appeared to be two shattered patella and George threw a coat over him to conceal his modesty while he shook off what had to have been a very painful injury indeed and looked around the flat before locking eyes with his twenty eight year old self.
"When is this?"
"This is the day Lee shows up to borrow a book from your brothers."
The new Ron stared up at the four of us as we all tried to understand what exactly was going on and he looked utterly fed up and dropped his head into his hand with a groan.
"Oh it's not that day is it?"
The Ron in the armchair shrugged and picked up a newspaper.
"The first of many for both of us I'm afraid."
The door behind Lee Jordan opened again and Harry walked in with a shivering Ron wrapped in a blanket and a smile on his face.
"Look who I found in..." he paused when he saw we already had more than our fair share of Ron's for one room already and this new, much older looking Ron looked from the one version of himself to the others and rolled his eyes.
"Oh no!" he sighed with a weary groan.
The Ron reading the paper in the armchair let out a highly amused laugh and the older of the three Ron's stomped over to him and kicked his feet away from the coffee table.
"Yeah you can laugh you git, you've only had to do it twice," he grumbled before sitting down on the sofa and resting his head back and closing his eyes.
"What's with all the Rons?" Harry asked me.
"I don't know," I said, wondering why I was the one expected to answer for this strange anomaly
I saw another Ron tapping Harry on the shoulder from the top of the stairs and clearing his throat. Harry almost jumped right out of his skin and into another life altogether.
"How many more?" Fred suddenly yelled as he found his voice along with his outrage at this Ron convention in his living room.
"Well there'll be seven of us in all," the newest Ron explained, "including your one when he arrives, but I kind of need a little help right now. They beat the shit out of me when they finally caught me."
I shoved my way through the crowd of Lee, Fred, George, Harry and the Ron whose knees I had just repaired to get a better look at the new arrival. He didn't look injured at all.
"Who beat you and where, I can't see a mark on you?" I frowned as I reached up and touched his face tenderly.
The newest Ron reached out and pulled another, battered almost beyond recognition, Ron through the door.
"It's not this me it's that one."
While Harry and I supported the semiconscious Ron over to a chair his escort wandered over to the group sitting around the fireplace and perched himself on the arm rest of the sofa, nodding a greeting to the newspaper reading Ron as he did.
"This again eh?" he said, almost sounding bored.
The more cynical of the Ron's huffed wearily.
"I understand that this is a momentous event and everything but has anyone worked out why is was necessary for so many of us to have to be here for it?"
As I healed the beaten Ron's fat lip and Harry worked on his pummelled torso tenderly he looked over to the group with his two black eyes and managed to mumble.
"The gravity of the situation pulls us toward it."
Just as I was going to ask the bleeding Ron when he had started to become so profound he passed out and it was all I could do to hold him up while Harry, now accompanied by the more helpful of the Ron's, finished healing the rest of his injuries.
The Ron reading the newspaper held up his hand to get everybody's attention and said with a smile.
"I'm older than he is and I'm ok so don't worry about it babe," as soon as he finished speaking the grinning Ron pointed over his shoulder to the bathroom door.
We all turned to look at it and gasped as we heard the sound of a toilet flushing and another older Ron stepped out wearing Fred's bathrobe and smiling at me.
"I'm older than he is and I'm ok so don't worry about it babe," he shrugged.
"Ha!" the Ron with the newspaper said as he revelled in his predictive skills.
"Right," Fred bellowed at the top of his lungs with both his arms raised, "Shut up Rons!"
George seemed to be on board with this and began to shove all the different Rons into the one area.
"All of you just sit down and keep your traps shut."
Harry cleared his throat and nodded down to the unconscious Ron in my arms.
"Well he can stay there," George shrugged.
"Lucky bastard," one of the gathered Rons muttered, "doesn't have to sit through all this crap again."
"I said shut it!" Fred barked as he shook a warning finger and cast his furious glare around every pair of blue eyes that looked back at him, "Right now one of you please tell me what's going on here?"
All the Rons began to open their mouths to speak when an older Ron got to his feet and held his hands palms out to silence them all.
"I'm the oldest, I'm the one who has to do it, so I'll explain it to them alright?"
The other Rons nodded.
The oldest Ron cleared his throat and took a step forward, out of the group, and put his hand on Fred's shoulder.
"Something really complicated is about to happen but you have to remember that if he was in any real danger then none of us would have been able to be here in the first place ok?"
I didn't like the sound of this and tried to set the unconscious Ron down so I could get to my feet but he was too heavy and my legs had gone numb with pins and needles after supporting him for all this time.
"What do you mean by 'him' being in danger? Who is 'he'?" I said while Harry tensed up and curled his fingers around his wand, seen only by me out of the corner of my eye.
The oldest Ron was about to answer my question when something else did, the arrival of the present day Ron. I could hear him thundering up the stairs and yelling to the twins before he arrived into the room of chaos.
"Fred, George, you are not going to believe what I've..." Ron stepped into the living room and froze at the sight of me holding an unconscious version of him while Fred was face to face with another and four others just like him watched from the fireplace expectantly.
He just froze and stared at the scene with wide eyes and not a single sound escaping his lips. The oldest Ron walked away from Fred and over to the stunned Ron and looked him in the eye for a moment before slapping him hard around the face.
"Hey!" George protested with some confusion.
The present day Ron, my Ron, blinked and shook his head before looking around the room again and letting out a very short nervous laugh.
"Right I have to do something and you know why that is don't you?" the oldest Ron said forcefully.
The youngest Ron glanced over at Lee Jordan who was still clutching the book he had come for what felt like hours ago, though it was only minutes, and nodded.
"The Aurors want to arrest him but it's a trumped-up charge and if I let him walk so he can find his loop hole and get himself out of it I'm going to go to Azkaban for corruption," Ron said as if he was reading it off of a card rather than speaking fluidly.
The older Ron smiled and nodded while Fred and George turned and glared at Lee Jordan.
"This whole mess is your fault?" Fred exclaimed, aghast.
Lee seemed defensive and shook his head.
"I didn't multiply him!" he said as he gestured to all the various Rons.
"Shit Harry's here," my Ron suddenly said while he visibly deflated at the sight of his best friend in the middle of this mess.
"Exactly," the oldest Ron said with a grimace, "we've got you and a member of the Auror team in here with him. It's going to have to be something bloody spectacular to keep you both out of trouble when it comes toLee getting away."
My Ron swallowed and looked over his elder's shoulder to meet Harry's eyes for a moment.
"When they ask you what happened tell them it was six Death Eaters who'd taken pollyjuice to look like me ok?"
Harry nodded, although he didn't seem to know what was about to happen.
"Expelliarmus!" my Ron said with a quick flick of his wand and Harry's wand left his tight grip and flew through the air to be caught by the cocky version of Ron who had been reading the newspaper.
"Stupefy!" he yelled as he hit Harry with the stunning spell and Fred and George yelled out in shock before I looked at my Ron in horror.
Our eyes met and he tried to give me a smile of reassurance before looking back at himself and closing his eyes.
"Make it look good."
The older Ron looked as if he was going to be sick as he raised his wand to Ron's chest.
"I've been through this six times already and it never looks good, Crucio!"
I heard myself screaming at the same moment Ron began to, I watched him dropping the floor and curling up into a ball as the curse hit him, and the twins and Lee were all raising their wands to try to intervene before the younger Ron who still brandished Harry's wand, without any of his previous amusement regarding the situation, threw the immobulus spell at them. I was still weighted down beneath the unconscious Ron and tears were streaming down my face as I watched the oldest Ron lift the curse, drop the wand and crumple to the floor leaving nothing but Fred's bathrobe behind.
The other wand-wielding Ron lifted the immobulus spell on the twins and Lee and heaved a great sigh of relief that it was all over.
"Get out of here and save your arse Lee, and you two," he said to the terrified looking twins who were on their knees at my Ron's side trying to rouse him, "remember the story, six Death Eaters on pollyjuice."
Harry's wand fell through his vanishing fingers and hit the ground just before the pile of clothing the Ron had been wearing did. A weary version of Ron, older too, looked over to me and smiled sadly.
"He'll be fine, it's harder on the one who has to do it to himself," he looked away from my burning eyes, "it's my turn next time."
With that he dissolved out of his blanket followed quickly by two others and now all that was left of the visiting Rons was the unconscious one draped over my lap. He opened his eyes and tried to whisper something to me but I couldn't make it out and leaned forward to put my ear to his lips.
"Tell him the mole is..." I felt his weight leaving my lap at the same time as his voice had been sucked away from reaching my ear.
I tried to go to Ron but my heavy legs wouldn't let me stand so I dropped down and crawled over to him, the tears streaming down my cheeks.
"Well he didn't take that for nothing you daft sod," Fred snarled up at a shocked Lee Jordan, "GO!"
Lee ran out of the flat and down the stairs like a man possessed and Harry groaned from somewhere behind me. George scrambled over to him to make sure he was alright. Fred looked me in the eyes, seeming to be a little shaky himself, and tried to keep himself calm.
"The theory that Ron's office job is just a cover story isn't really a theory anymore is it?" he asked me.
I shook my head and realised exactly why Ron's employers had been so enthusiastic about employing a time epileptic. Even though I knew that Ron would survive to become that older version of himself who had to put his nineteen-year-old body through such torture it was still cold comfort. I would still worry about what he had to go through to become the kind of Ron who could perform that curse in the first place.
"I'll go and floo his healer," I mumbled while ministry police and several Aurors bounded up the stairs to respond to reports of screams at Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes.
I don't think I am going to be able to take this.
A/N I didn't think I was confusing you all enough so I wrote you THIS chapter! I hope I didn't give any of you a headache.
You gotta love a room full of Rons!