The Last Day
January 16th 2024 and September 14th 1999 (Ron is 43, Hermione is 44)
RON: I really miss running in the morning.
Ben has tried and tested other forms of physical exertion for me to do in my present state but none of them give me that same 'shut down and zone out' that running used to do. When I do travel I tend to keep away from anybody who knows me. I'd rather they not know that I have this waiting for me in the future. I definitely know I don't want myself to see this coming. The good thing is I know I succeed. When I woke up in St Mungo's and lifted the covers to see why I couldn't feel my feet and saw nothing there I was as surprised as anyone. I don't think Hermione was really prepared for the amount of screaming I then did. I was so sure that I was having a nightmare.
If it is a nightmare it's been going on for a very long time now.
My knees are killing me these days, it's all the crawling around on the floor, and the skin is tough like leather now. Fred and George weren't able to understand why I couldn't just have magical feet like Moody's leg or eye and Wormtail's silver arm. I got tired of trying to get them to understand in the end, so did Ben, it was Percy who eventually got them to let the matter drop. The simple fact is there is just no point to fake limbs, hands, feet or even a wig if I were to be rendered bald in the future as they would be lost the second I went travelling.
Sure a wig could be put back on, though I don't like to think of myself with a wig actually, it makes me cringe, and if I was sucked away from my magical eye I could always put it back in when I reappeared as long as I could find it again. If I had magical false feet I would travel and leave them behind. Magical extremities don't just float onto your skin either, it's a whole attachment procedure and I would have to go through it every time I travelled.
The twins seemed to think that a procedure like that once a week was worth it until Percy reminded them that since I was no longer able to run any more my seizures would increase in frequency and possibly return to the five a week I suffered in the height of my epilepsy back in the nineties. That's when they got it I think. I would be in St Mungo's for reattachment nearly every day for the rest of my life and it just wasn't worth it.
I can levitate and float myself about the flat but sometimes I just can't be bothered with all that as the second I want to use my wand for anything else I go crashing to the floor. Aimez likes me at ground level though; I'm the perfect height to play with her she says.
I don't see a lot of people from work, Davis and Cavendish come by a lot but they became more like friends then colleagues so I don't count them. I saw Nick Boyer in town a couple of times and he's just as mental as ever, laughs every time I mention cheese as well for some reason. Then there's the biggest surprise of all, Frankie. She's never away from the place! Who'd have thought she'd end up missing me? She even gets a kick out of Aimez now that she's a little older and less likely to 'expel fluids' at her. She took her retirement from the ministry the same week I had to be put out to pasture officially. She didn't want to get to know another cocky replacement she said. Hermione reckons that she just missed me. I don't know.
I shuffle off the bed and into a floating chair waiting to transport me to the lavatory for my daily and very demeaning 'assisted pee'. Throughout the rest of the day I can float myself on and off the loo easy enough but my bladder doesn't have the patience to wait for me to get there first thing in the morning so I have to swallow my pride and let the chair whisk me away as soon as I get out of bed. Hermione stirs and murmurs a good morning as I zoom out of the bedroom.
Godric who'd have thought life would end up like this?
I flush and wash my hands before banishing the damned chair back to the bedroom and cast a little hover charm beneath my knees and glide into the kitchen to make a cup of tea for myself and a coffee for Hermione.
"Daddy!" Aimez calls to me from the living room, she is the early bird in the family, "come watch Bagpuss with me!"
I roll my eyes, Hermione and her bloody nostalgia! She got something called a DVD player that can let Aimez watch all Hermione's favourite television programmes from when she was a little girl and this pink and white cat thing has fast become her favourite.
"Coming Aim, just sorting the tea," I call back to her.
"I made you chocolate porridge!" she calls back to me with pride.
My stomach screams and begins to plead with me not to do this to it again.
"Oh great," I say with thinly disguised enthusiasm, I hear Hermione laughing from the bedroom, "did you make enough for mummy as well?"
"Yep," Aimez replies and I chuckle at the look I imagine Hermione now has on her face.
Aimez's idea of chocolate porridge is to take a handful of oats and sprinkle them onto some cold water before stirring in a spoonful of coco powder. She seems to enjoy it and insists that I have some as well 'because daddy likes chocolate'. I will get her to come around to the idea that daddy can enjoy chocolate in frog form just as much as porridge form, just not for a little while yet.
The tea and coffee are made and I wriggle off the levitation charm and set the mugs down onto it, shoving them off ahead of me as I crawl along behind them. Hermione joins us in the living room and picks up her coffee before curling up on the sofa behind me, she busies her fingers in my hair while Aimez sits on my lap and recites the episode she is watching word-for-word while I drink my tea.
I could feel sorry for myself really but you've got to admit that for all the nasty things that could have happened to me over the years I've got quite a lovely life. I've got Hermione when I almost lost her. I've got Aimez when we had to go through all that hell and lose all those other babies in order for her to exist. I fell out of the sky, well I still do that now, and got dumped in Hogwarts lake, that too, and stuck in the ice and snow, okay I'll stop listing things I still have to do because now I'm getting depressed.
What I mean to say is things could have been much worse. I am looking on the bright side. Hell I'm nearly forty-four for crying out loud, neither Ben nor myself thought I'd live this long. I look around the flat for some wood to touch so I don't jinx myself with that thought but I don't see any.
"Daddy, you like your porridge?" Aimez grins up at me.
"Mmmmm," I nod while Hermione pulls at my hair and I try not to laugh.
"What about you mummy?"
"Delicious as ever angel."
Aimez seems pleased enough with that and watches the rest of her programme.
I blink and set my mug down on the floor so I don't drop it. It's the damn TV, it sets me off every time, and I forgot to focus my eyes somewhere else while it was on. Hermione seems able to tell a seizure is coming at the same moment I do nowadays and I sense her leaning forward to look at my face.
"Sweetheart can't you shake it?" she says softly while she strokes my fringe away from my closed eyes.
I make a murmuring sound and shake my head, I really don't want to throw up Aimez's porridge, it would hurt her feelings and she blamed herself for sending me away last time it happened.
"Aimez get off of daddy's lap for a second would you?" Hermione is saying now and I feel my daughter's weight lifting from my legs.
"Daddy can I come this time?" I hear her saying while her fingers curl around my own.
I try to smile for her but the head rush is hitting me hard and I try to keep the room from spinning. Aimez has a weird control over her seizures, she can sometimes tag along with me voluntarily and she doesn't seem to be affected by flashing lights the same way I am, Ben thinks it might be because she is the seventh child of a seventh child, it makes no sense to me so I don't try to understand it.
"I can look after you," she whimpers and I hear Hermione trying to explain that daddy will be fine on his own for this trip.
I'm about to fall onto my side with the dizziness and the room is sucked away from me and I lay on my stomach behind a sofa in a very familiar flat. It's a flat I have visited every year since the summer of 1999. It's a flat I somehow know I'll never have to visit again after today.
"Ron?" I hear her sniff.
"Yeah Lavender, it's me."
I heave myself up into a sitting position and find that Lavender is curled up on the sofa with a tear streaked face and a steaming glass of potion in her hands. She sees me looking at it with a tired frown and downs it in one defiantly.
"It's a nerve tonic don't worry," she said with a hint of bitterness in her tone.
"Okay good," I nodded while reaching up to pull a fabric of some kind down from the back of the sofa to cover myself up.
"Aren't you going to throw all your clothes on and leave me like you usually do then?" she said as she wiped her bloodshot eyes.
"Not this time no," I heaved a weary sigh and tried to shift my weight back out from behind the sofa a little to talk comfortably with her.
Lavender freezes at this and stares at me. I see her hands shaking and her face is pale.
"Have you finally come for me?" she says in a barely audible whisper of hope.
"Lavender don't do this again, we've talked about this too many times now haven't we?"
I see the tears welling up in her eyes once again and begin dragging my body along the carpet to get into some kind of position where I am able to try and comfort her. She jumps to her feet and storms out into the kitchen before I'm even clear of the sofa and I give in and just call after her.
"Come on Lavender, we can't keep doing this forever y'know? I can't come and save you anymore, I'm not going to be able to so we need to talk about..." I froze and felt my breath leave me as Lavender walked back into the room with her wand drawn and her glistening eyes wide like a dear frozen in the headlights, "...no, you don't need that do you?"
She choked back a sob and laughed.
"What do I need Ron? Tell me please, what is it that I need?"
"Lavender look," I began, not knowing how to go about talking her out of doing what I know I won't be able to stop her from doing.
"I'm going mad Ron," she said as the tears finally flowed from her brimming eyes and she hugged her arms to herself, "I've hurt you in so many ways and I've hurt Seamus and Neville and I've lost Parvati as a friend. I'm just a basket case to everybody now."
"Don't do this to yourself," I reached up to try and slip the wand from her loose fingers but she paced away from me just as my fingertip brushed against the wood.
"I'm going to die lonely and unloved. I'll become one of those old spinster witches I used to laugh about," she was pacing frantically now, "I had such a bright future at the ministry and I've lost that now!"
"No Lavender you haven't, there's more to the ministry then just the Auror department isn't there, and you asked for the transfer. You wanted to make a change and move on with your life didn't you?"
"Did I?" Lavender suddenly turned on her heel and screamed down at me on her floor, "I didn't want to leave you Ron. I didn't want to let you go and look what I became because of that. Look at what I tried to do to you today."
I rubbed the side of my face and forced my eyes closed to try and keep up with the latest in a long line of senseless Lavender Brown rants.
"You should have woken me and talked to me about this," I said, "Why didn't you wake me before you left?"
Something came over her and she looked momentarily relieved before hugging her arms to herself again and her face crumpled into an emotional disintegration of despair.
"You still don't know," she said through her strained vocal chords, "you never found out what I tried to do...what I did."
I pulled myself along the floor a little more now, determined to get to the bottom of this whole Lavender Brown mess for both my own and Seamus' sake.
"What did you do Lavender?"
She turned away and looked out through her window. I watched her shoulders shaking as her head dropped.
"Whatever it was I forgive you okay?" I called up to her, "Don't tear yourself up like you did over the appendix thing. This is all in your head, this can't be as bad as you think it is."
"It is bad!" she screamed and paced away from the window and away from me again, "I'm a terrible person and he was right to get me away from you."
"What, who?" I frowned.
"He should have got me locked away for good. He should have punished me. I should be punished Ron."
I drew in a deep breath and gritted my teeth before dragging my body back in the other direction to get to her.
"Lavender you're not making any sense," I began to pant, deciding to roll over and crawl to her on my aching knees, "Calm down and stay still for a second so I can talk to you."
"What can you ever say Ron?" she spun around and yelled down at me, "Will you get up and look me in the eye when you're lying to me too? I want to see the hate in your eyes as you tell me it isn't my fault and that you really do care about me."
"I can't!" I lost my cool with her as my knees made a painful grinding sound.
"Because I'm just not worth the effort anymore am I Ron?" she said as she lifted her wand up to her temple.
"No Lavender don't!" I yelled as I rolled onto my back again to show her my legs, "I can't get up because of this alright? I can't physically get to you so please put the wand down and come down here to talk to me. Please Lav," I begged her.
Her wand remained at her head but it was shaking erratically now. She swallowed her tears and her bottom lip was quivering while her eyes grew even wider, despite the puffiness around them, and stared at the stumps at my ankles.
"So you're damaged too now huh?" she said with an odd distant sound in her voice.
"When wasn't I damaged?" I said with as much of a smile I could manage right then.
She lowered her wand and took a step toward me with a shudder.
"So after all those years of running away from me...now you can't."
I didn't like the sound of that and swallowed as I shifted my weight with my arms and prepared myself to have to fight of a love sick woman while dressed in some kind of shawl and without the luxury of feet.
"Now don't think like that Lavender, you're better than that I know you are," I said while struggling not to drag myself away from her and make her rejection complex even worse.
"You think I'm better than rape do you?" she said with a cold laugh, "You don't know me at all Ron. You don't know what kind of abomination I have become. You should talk to Harry, he'll tell you just how much he thinks of me."
"Harry?" I was getting lost in Lavender logic; she had never been this random with her emotional outbursts before.
"Or your sister, she has a high opinion of me too doesn't she?" Lavender said as the pacing started again and heaved a sigh and propped myself up against one of the walls of the living room with resignation, "I'm the mad skank who'd let you die just so I could cop a feel!"
"None of my family talks about you like that Lavender," I snapped, "None of our friends either. We all worry about you and just want you back the way you were for crying out loud! There was a time you did nothing but giggle, where the hell did that time go?"
She spun around and pointed her wand at me.
"Well you are the expert on lost time Ron!" she screeched, "You tell me. Where did Lavender Brown go to because I've been looking for her and I can't find her anywhere."
I stared at the tip of Lavender's wand and tried to find something I could say that wouldn't tip her over the edge but my mind was completely blank.
"Well?" she demanded an answer and I could only shake my head.
"You know what I think Ron?" she said as she took another step towards me, her wand still pointing down at my chest, "I think that bright future you promised me was all a lie."
"Lavender don't..." I began as I tried to drag myself away but found myself backed into a corner.
"You told me that not a year goes by in either of our lives that we don't see each other and I think I've worked out why that is Ron."
"No," I shook my head and tried to think of anything I could do to stop her.
"It's because I die today and you come back every year to try and stop me until you die as well, isn't that it Ron? Isn't that the truth?"
"Lavender time's not entirely unchangeable, Hermione's got this idea about beating it and maybe this can be how we do. Maybe it's me and you Lavender, maybe we change time between us and have different lives but if you do this you'll just be following the plan and nothing can ever change."
"You know you can't change a thing about my life and when it ends, don't lie to me anymore Ron!" she wailed as her wand arm began to shake again.
"I-I changed things once," I stammered, pulling anything I could out of my brain now, "I knew Harry was going to kill somebody and I stopped it and he never did. I can change things Lavender. We can change things I swear."
"So that person never died?" she asked me and I knew that she already knew the answer and felt my shoulders slump just as she threw her head back with devastated laughter, "You change the silver dagger to a gold one but it makes no difference Ron, the final cut is always going to be the final cut isn't it?"
"Lavender, Seamus loves you so much that he ruins the rest of his life trying to get some justice for you. You are loved just the way you say you want to be loved and you won't ever get to see it if you do this."
"There is no 'if' Ron, there is only 'when' and we both know that the time is now. You've always known haven't you?" she sobbed as her wrist flicked and I flinched as the wand jerked away from my chest and pointed into Lavender's own face, "Today is the day and you can't do anything to stop me."
"Lavender please don't do this," I said as I saw her closing her eyes and sparks flying from her unsteady wand.
"It's been done already, you've lived a life without me and it's time for me to fulfil my part in that life by removing myself from it."
"No!" I yelled.
Her eyes opened and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Tell me how I do it Ron," she said with a tremor in her voice, "Do I take the killing curse in the face?" she lowered the wand to her chest, "To the heart maybe? That would be appropriate wouldn't it?"
I was shaking almost as much as she was now and I crawled forward and reached out my hand to try and grab the wand from her but she shoved me back with her foot and took a step back.
"Lavender don't do this."
"The heart it is," she mumbled as she looked me in the eye.
"NO!"
She closed her eyes and flicked the wand at her chest.
"Avada kedavra!"
I brilliant flash of green light slammed into Lavender's chest and she fell heavily to the floor while I gagged on a combination of a yell and the contents of my stomach forcing their way up and out of me. The green light faded from my view and so did the room which spun away from me while I vomited and forced my eyes closed until I was on my hands and knees on my own living room carpet retching violently and shaking as if I had just been plunged into ice cold water.
"Ron! Oh Godric, Aimez go to your room and play while I help daddy okay angel?" Hermione was saying while she rubbed her hand up and down my back and pulled something soft and warm around my shoulders.
"But I want to help daddy to feel better," I heard my little girl protesting sadly.
"Aimez I mean it, go!"
"I do it when you're not here," I felt the floor vibrate with Aimez's petulant stomp of the foot and spat the last of the bile from my lips before choking on my emotions and losing the will not to cry in front of my baby girl.
"You know daddy doesn't like you to see him like this now do as you're told please," Hermione had worded this statement to leave no room for further argument as far as she was concerned and I heard Aimez's bedroom door slam.
Once I knew she was out of sight I put my hands to my face and let it all out. Hermione was shushing me and stroking my hair as my whole body shook with the sobs of despair and relief. Despair that I hadn't been able to do anything for Lavender in her final moments and relief that I would never have to go back there again. It was all over at long last and my visits to the summer of 1999 had made absolutely no difference at all.
"Ron come on sweetheart, it's going to be alright, you're home again now," Hermione was saying in a soothing tone.
I reached out for her and held her to me while I just kept on crying and soon felt her rocking me from side to side while planting kisses onto the top of my head.
"Please tell me what's upsetting you Ron," she whispered into my hair, "I hate seeing you like this. Please let me know what I can do to help."
I shook my head and held her even tighter. There was nothing anybody could do. There hadn't even been anything I could do to stop it. Lavender had died and Seamus had snapped and we would spend the next twenty years of our lives trying to kill each other. For all my experience in time travel I was still no good to her. I had still driven her to die just the same way I had done when I was nineteen years old.
"Ron please tell me what happened to you. Where did you go?"
"L-Lavender's...Lavender's dead." I managed to say before shuddering and crumpling into another coughing fit of emotion.
"Yes?" Hermione was saying with unease, "for a long time now."
"No," I gasped as I finally pulled my face out from it's hiding place in Hermione's stomach to look up at her through my hazy waterlogged vision, "just now, right in front of me."
Hermione suddenly understood and pulled me into her where we stayed, rocking from side to side in silence for another five minutes, until Aimez's door creaked open and her little voice called out.
"Please let me look after daddy with you mummy, I don't like hearing him crying."
I heard Hermione's voice cracking at the back of her throat as she tried to give the motherly response but she couldn't manage to get the words out. I reached my arm out behind me and heard Aimez running to me. My fingers curled around her tiny arm and pulled her into a three-way hug with us. I felt Aimez's arm curling around my back and her little head lying on my shoulder. Hermione moved her own arm up so she could stroke Aimez's hair while the three of us held each other for a little longer without words.
Not until Aimez mumbled into my skin.
"I'll always look after you daddy, don't be sad."
I felt my eyes burn while Hermione sniffed and held us both a little tighter to her.
"It's okay Aim, I'll be fine, I just need a cuddle that's all," I said with a strained voice, "Daddy just had to say goodbye to a very old friend who was very very sick."
I felt Hermione's shoulders shaking.
"Are they all better now?" Aimez asked me with her sweet little innocent voice.
"Yeah," I nodded, "all the pain's gone away."
A/N Deisel writer, You are right Ron did travel twice in the last chapter. It wasn't a mistake, he can do it but it's rare. I've very casually mentioned it in an earlier chapter, I think it's All The Places I've Been, when Ron warns Hermione that she has to get better at emergency healing and to tell the twins to learn CPR. He tells her that he didn't know where he was and then he came to her. He leaves her at the end of his little warning to go back when he belongs.
There's nothing to say he can't have a seizure while in the time line of another seizure but I didn't want to over complicate things for you all by going into that. Also It's partly the time gravity thing as well. He learns why he let Parker get hurt and is traumatised by the realisation that Parker had just been murdered at the stroke of midnight while stressed about having been stabbed in the gut and this pulled him back to that very night when the mistrust with Parker all began.
I bet when you read this chapter's title and saw how old Ron was you thought I was about to kill him didn't you? You know something bad is going to happen when I write a character being happy with their lot in life and then saying 'touch wood' !
This should be finished before the weekend. Not long now...