Beating The Clock
9th April 2007 and 8th September 2017 (Ron is 27 and 37, Hermione is 27 and 37)
RON: I had been enjoying this weekend with the ten years younger version of Hermione and myself. Junior Ron and myself had gone running every morning, averaging about 6 laps of the park before taking it in turns to take a cold shower and cook breakfast.
Hermione had quite enjoyed our ability to multi-task. For her she had her husband with her every minute of every day of the weekend while the Ron of 2007 could go into town and meet up with Harry and Neville for an afternoon watching Quiddich, as ever the Cannons lost but I didn't tell my younger self that would happen before he left the flat full of hope, and even managing to persuade Dean Thomas to meet up with them afterwards for a drink. That made me smile. Harry always had to be very careful when he got home never to mention to Ginny that he had taken me to a pub. I was fine with it, the family were fine with it and more importantly Hermione was fine with it, but Ginny had never really lost that over-protective streak when it came to me being in the vicinity of alcohol. It was of course one of the most popular causes of argument between her and Harry before their five year split, which was on the horizon for both of them.
I had spent the day with Hermione in Muggle London, we ate, she took me to the theatre after checking that there would be no flashing lights to send me on a further time jump and then we ate again in Diagon Alley before going home and falling asleep in front of the fireplace. WhenI woke up I was alone and covered with a blanket so I assumed my younger self had come home and taken his present-day wife to bed.
On Sunday, after our run, we went to the Burrow for lunch with the whole family. Fred and George pestered me for the results of the next world cup matches so they could rake in the galleons but Hermione was outraged at the idea of my condition being used for fraud and I left her giving the twins a good talking to while my younger self hid in the kitchen with Charlie and I took Cam off Bill and Fleur's hands to take him to the pond in the woods out back and teach him how to swim. He took inventory of all my scars, he's a morbid one is our Cam, and demanded to know all about how I got the ones he'd never seen before.
"So he beat you with a magical whip?" Cam gasped, slightly impressed.
"Well not a whip exactly," I shrugged as Cam examined the three long thin scars across my back, "it was more like a spell that caned me across the back and burned into my skin.
"Is that dark magic Uncle Ron?" he asked me as he splashed back around to float in front of me.
"Very," I nodded.
"So how do you defend against that then?" he frowned.
He always wanted to know about protection and healing rather than hexes. Most kids his age are all about what havoc they want to create when they get their first wand. Fleur and mum were always so proud of him when he expressed any interest in keeping people safe with spells rather than attacking them, even in a playful fashion like Fred and George used to as kids, and Bill had once confided in me that he thought it was because he grew up seeing the damage hexes and curses caused via all the hospital visits he had paid me over the years.
"Well protego would've done it but..."
"You didn't have your wand," Cam nodded sadly.
"Even if I had it's not much good to me when somebody sends a spell at my back. There's not a lot you can do about fighting a coward Cam, they're even worse than an out-and-out evil witch or wizard."
I found it funny how I always talked to Cam as if he was my peer rather than my little nephew. The Weasley family have never really been ones for baby talk but I still think I'm the only one who tells Cam how it is without any kind of sugar coating. He told me on his seventeenth birthday that I wasn't just his uncle but also one of his best friends and Godric help me I nearly cried. It was Cam who saved my life when I staggered out of the forbidden forest after being kicked half to death by Centaurs when I had travelled there. He uprooted some kind of herb from Hagrid's garden and made a magical compress with it to slow the internal bleeding until Hagrid could get me to Madame Pomfrey for treatment.
After Cam and me strolled back to the Burrow to say goodbye to the rest of the family I flooed back to the Hornet's Nest with my other self and Hermione. The other me had come over a little dizzy as he stepped out of the floo and managed to fight off a seizure before Hermione insisted he go and lie down for an hour just to be sure and I spent the time from sundown into early evening thrashing Hermione at chess before slumping in the armchair and feeling my eyelids closing.
"Hey get on the sofa and sleep properly, that looks so uncomfortable," she said after a few minutes of watching me fidget until my long legs hung over the arm and my body was curled up in the seat with my head resting on the arm rest.
"It's not, I'm comfortable," I mumbled, really I was too lazy to get up and change seats.
"Liar," she said with some amusement.
I must have dozed off as when I opened my eyes the room was dark, lit only by the crackling fire and I closed my eyes again and shifted my weight so I was turned away from the flames when I opened my eyes again. Flames were hit and miss with me, sometimes they'd send me into a seizure right away and other times they were of no bother at all. I saw Hermione sitting across from me with a sketchpad and a piece of charcoal between her thumb and forefinger.
"What are you doing?" I murmured sleepily.
She smiled at me and threw the charcoal down onto the coffee table; her thumb and the side of her finger were black.
"I was sketching you sound asleep in that awkward position but you've moved now."
I gave her a lazy smile and tried to get comfortable in my new position, it wasn't really happening for me.
"Ah the Crookshanks picture," I chuckled as I forced myself to sit up, "You have it above your writing desk at home."
She frowned at me and laughed.
"I don't think you've woken up properly. I said I was sketching you not Crookshanks."
I sat forward and pointed at the ugly great moggy where he was curled up in front of the fire.
"No look at the picture and now look at Crookshanks," I said as I leaned forward to watch her comparing the two several times before gasping and laughing loudly.
"I never even noticed that before. Godric Ron how long have we been married and I never even realised that you sleep in exactly the same position as my cat!"
I rubbed my tired eyes and sat back in the armchair.
"Well I've always said he's copying me rather than the other way round. I have to stick my legs out at unseemly angles, they're too bloody long for dignity and elegance, I dunno what Crookshanks' excuse is."
Hermione put the sketch down on the coffee table and drew her legs up beneath her where she was snuggled on the sofa and smiled down at her overstuffed cushion of a cat.
"Well maybe he can't fit his legs underneath him comfortably either. He's getting quite fat now."
"Now?" I shorted, "He was never that lithe to begin with babe."
Hermione laughed and threw a cushion at me. I was still pretty sleepy and didn't bother trying to catch it. I let it bounce off my head and drop to the floor. My eyes fell on the sketch that I had grown so familiar with over the last ten years and felt weird to have just inadvertently struck the infamous pose for it without realising. Hermione saw me staring at it and leaned back over to look at it herself.
"I think I've got your likeness down quite well," she said proudly.
I yawned and nodded.
"Yeah, you're a brilliant artist babe, I've seen this brilliant sundial you make in the future that's all about karma and stuff. That fish symbol that I always mispronounce, y'know?"
"Yin and yang," Hermione informed me before picking up the sketch and looking strangely proud of herself, "I become a bit of an artist do I?"
"Uh-huh," I nod as my sleepy eyes begin to fall closed and I struggle to find that ever elusive comfortable position again, "You're really good too. This sundial has the yin and yang symbol on it and it's beautiful."
"I've always liked that symbol actually," Hermione sighed thoughtfully, "It kind of helps me to make sense of everything we had to go through when we were kids, everything Harry had to go through, one half is very dark but it has to be there to complete the circle. It has to be there to make it whole you know what I mean Ron?"
My eyes were closed but I was still listening to her and nodded.
"If there was never any darkness all we'd have left would be a lonely fish and what the hell kind of symbol is that for life eh?"
I heard her laughing at me and opened my eyes a crack.
"Oh Ron you're so deep!" she rolled her eyes and I chuckled.
She reached out for the charcoal and lifted the sketch onto her lap. I frowned and sat up a little on seeing her put the charcoal to the blank corner of the sketch.
"Hermione what are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm writing the date for posterity."
"For who?" I said before leaning forward and putting my hand on her wrist just as she was going to start writing, "Don't, you don't write anything on it Hermione. You leave it just as it is."
She looked at me and blinked.
"What do you mean I don't write anything on it? I am doing now."
"I know but in the future I have the picture memorised and there isn't a date written on it. You leave it just the way it is now, no signature, no date, no nothing."
Hermione stared at me for an uncomfortably long time before looking back down and writing the date with a determined look on her face.
"What are you doing?" I said as I sat right forward now and my sleepy haze left me completely, "I told you that's not supposed to be there in the future."
"Exactly Ron," Hermione said defiantly as she put the charcoal and the sketch back down onto the table and fixed my eyes with a hard look, "and I'm sick of this whole predestined crap you keep giving me."
"Language!" I said half joking and half worried about Hermione's eternal need to challenge the future in order to break the time loop, "Y'know babe this is bordering on arrogance on your part. You can't just mess around with my future y'know?"
She laughed and shook her head.
"Oh really Ron it's just a date on a drawing that nobody but us ever sees. What harm can this little change do the timelines?"
I couldn't explain myself but I really didn't like this idea. I found that my hands were searching for something to do with themselves and my right leg was bouncing up and down anxiously.
"It's...Nothing's little when it comes to this time stuff Hermione. Look I really don't like it can you erase it or something? It's not supposed to be there."
Hermione's amusement left her face and she moved closer to my to try and alleviate my worries while remaining determined that she was right to challenge time in this way.
"Ron you know my thoughts on this don't you? I can't recreate Dumbledore's spell, exactly what he did and how he did it died with him, but I really think that we can stop the jumps by sticking something in the spokes to stop that wheel turning and keep you where you're supposed to be."
"But there's too many ifs in that theory Hermione," I said uncomfortably as I couldn't stop glancing back at that date that wasn't on the sketch back in 2017 and feeling as if we were messing with something we had no business to mess with, "What if I stop and can't move at all? What if I get stuck here or there indefinitely? What if I can't ever go back at all? What if the future I go back to isn't the one I left behind. I really don't like this..."
Hermione dropped to her knees right in front of me and took my face in her hands. I needed her to understand that I wasn't following some self imposed set of time travel rules, this was a gut instinct and I couldn't let her risk the whole future just to prove me wrong again."
"...Please change it back Hermione, something's not right about this. I can't explain it but I just know you shouldn't be messing around with time like this."
"Shhh Ron, calm down alright," she said before kissing me on the lips to keep me from gibbering, "I won't do anything you don't want me to do and I will never ever risk you or your future, our future Ron, on some stubborn whim of mine."
I exhaled my relief and smiled at her, the smile didn't seem to reach my worried eyes though and she seemed to notice this and kiss me again before going on.
"I don't want to challenge time for the sake of my own curiosity or some arrogant intellectual experiment or other. I want to show you that you don't have to worry about a cure or the stupid inevitability of never reaching your forty forth birthday. I want to prove to you that your future, my future and his future," she pointed to the bedroom where my other self slept, "is not all planned out and the three of us have no say in it at all."
"But Hermione..." she put her finger to my lips to silence me.
"I need to show you that we can make a little bit of a difference Ron. I'm not trying to save any lives or change the course of history that hasn't even been made yet, all I want to do is show you that I can wear blue instead of green one day and it won't change the world as we know it. You can spill your tea one morning and still have the exact same future as you would have if you had never spilled your tea at all. I can write the date on this drawing and you will go home and see my little message from ten years ago and feel as if you have some small control over your own destiny. That's all I want Ron. I want for you to have control of your life back."
I lowered my head. I still felt uneasy about this. She was a hell of a lot cleverer than me that was for sure and I trusted her one hundred percent. My gut instinct was just as wrong as it was right so why was I paying it so much heed right now? I didn't know.
"This is giving me a headache Hermione," I said with another one of my strained worried smiles, "I mean what if I do go back and see that the date was there all along. That will mean that this conversation never happened and that would mean we never did challenge time at all and where the hell does that leave me? What if the version of me who lives with a dated drawing for the next ten years and travels back here never to have this argument with you doesn't end up being this me you're talking to now? Where do I go if I'm not in the right past or the right future? Do you understand what I'm trying to say because my brain's just run off without me and I can't follow it anymore!" I huffed as I dropped my head in my hands.
Hermione put her arms around me and hugged me, making me lift my head to look her in the eye with a weary sigh.
"You're over-thinking things just like you always do Ron."
I blinked at this statement.
"Since when have I ever been accused of over-thinking anything? I'm always being told off for being thoughtless and impulsive!"
She laughed at me and kissed me on the cheek.
"It's your chess genius side of the brain that forced you to think every possible scenario way ahead of time."
I smiled a real smile now and she took my hands in hers on seeing the anxiety dropping away and my shoulders loosening up a little bit.
"Just because you can see what would happen if your opponent made their first move on the left side of the board doesn't mean that that is their game plan. They might move on the right. You, Ronald Weasley will still win the game because...well it's you, but you can't say for sure what move your opponent will make to get to the same end result."
"But it's the differing moves along the way that worry me Hermione I..." she put her finger to my lips again and shushed me.
"I'm asking you to trust me Ron. I am asking you to trust me to write the date on this drawing and not have time collapse all around us. Please let me prove this to you Ron. I wouldn't risk even the slightest thing if I thought there was a chance I could be wrong."
I swallowed and looked back down at the drawing and nodded. She smiled and kissed me again before hugging me and giving me countless reassurances that everything was going to be fine and not to worry. I got up to make us both a cup of tea and not long afterwards my younger self came out of the bedroom stretching out his rested limbs.
"Feeling better?" Hermione asked him as she curled her arms around him and rested her head upon his chest.
"Yeah, sorry about that it's just hit me and wouldn't let up," he said with a smile.
I was about to welcome my other self back when the two of them blurred and the room darkened.
"Ron?" I heard Hermione saying just as my head spun and I realised that I was going back.
As the room and my borrowed clothing drifted away from me I felt the fear hit just as the nausea did and as I reappeared on top of my bed my body arched and I leaned over the side to throw up with anxiety almost as much as travel sickness.
"Ron!" I heard Hermione saying from the bedroom door, she sounded so happy she was on the verge of tears, "Just let it out Ron don't worry about the mess. Oh I'm so glad you're back at last. I'm so...I missed you so much sweetheart don't ever stay away that long again, it's too hard."
She started crying and I wiped my mouth and grabbed her to give her the hug I knew she was going to need.
"Did you get the letters babe?" I asked her as she ran her hands over my back, feeling every little raised scar as if reading my life story in Braille.
"Yes. Thank you so much for that, and the flowers and everything but it wasn't the same as having you here Ron. That was too long, I actually hurt inside can you believe that?"
"I can believe that," I sighed as I felt the guilt of having left my wife all alone for three months at her end.
"I don't want to let go of you," she said with a watery laugh, "I can't let you go. I hope you don't need to pee anytime soon."
I laughed out loud at this and I felt her body shaking as she joined me. I had made it back it seemed, without time having stranded me or the present having changed into something I couldn't recognise anymore. We stayed on that bed for a very long time.
After much kissing and catching up on three months worth of love-making we slept until morning when, at the unimaginable hour of five AM, my stomach roared at me to get out of bed and feed it. I had a piece of toast before running three laps of the park and jumping into the shower. By the time I came out Hermione was brewing the tea and handing me a pint glass of water while I waited.
"I'm going to do a nice unhealthy British fried breakfast in celebration of your first day back, think you can stomach it?" she smiled, knowing that I could stomach almost anything.
"Oh I think I could force myself to have a fired egg or two," I nodded, "some rashers of bacon maybe, sausages, fried bread," she was laughing at me now, "chopped tomatoes and beans...possibly some soldiers to dip in my egg."
"Is that all?" she said with a wicked grin on her face.
"I dunno," I said as I opened the kitchen cupboard, "have we got any brown sauce?"
She shoved me out of the kitchen before turning her attention back to the stove and I bumped into the writing desk and suddenly remembered the drawing she had done of me ten years ago and sat down at the desk. I scanned through the papers and rolls of parchment but couldn't find it anywhere. I frowned. It was usually propped up at the back so she could see it when she was sitting here writing. I moved some books aside to see if it had slipped behind them but it hadn't.
"It didn't cease to bloody exist did it?" I muttered.
"What's that sweetheart?" Hermione called back to me from the kitchen.
"I'm just looking for that picture you drew, the Crookshanks charcoal of me sleeping remember?" I said as I shuffled through more papers in search of the missing portrait.
Hermione walked back into the living room with a frown etched upon her face before bending over and looking in exactly the same places I had just looked.
"Huh, it's always leaning against the back here,I wonder where it went," she pulled the desk forward a little and her eyebrows lifted, "Ah there it is, it fell down the back with some old Christmas cards. Accio!"
The fallen papers and cards zoomed into her waiting hand and she passed the sketch to me. I took it and my eyes darted straight to the bottom corner where I had watched Hermione writing the date only the night before and saw nothing.
"Where's the date?" I frowned.
"The what?" Hermione said as she fanned through the papers and tossed them into the waste paper basket.
"The date, I saw you write a date on this after you drew it, we had quite a discussion afterwards remember?"
Hermione blinked and suddenly smiled sheepishly.
"Oh right, that."
"Yes," I said with annoyance, "that!"
"Well I was all confident while I was explaining it to you but when you left I got thinking about it and got a little scared. You seemed so sure that I shouldn't and everything you said about not having a future to come back to or you maybe getting lost in time and never coming back to me at all."
I nodded for her to go on, she sat on my lap and stroked my hair.
"Well it was all very well for me to be so sure of myself and send you ten years into the future but the first time my Ron went travelling after that I had this awful feeling that, I don't know...I wondered what if another version of myself tried something similar and you could never come home to me"
She hugged me tightly and I smiled at her, realising that she seemed to have seen my point not long after I had left her that night.
"So I ran to the desk and erased the stupid date so the drawing was just the way you said it should be. You came back about thirty seconds after and, whileI still think that the stupid date and nothing to do with anything, I never tried to challenge time like that again."
I kissed her and sighed with relief that her theory still hadn't been tested.
"I still think we should think about challenging these stupid parameters though Ron," she said as she rose from my lap and took a step toward the kitchen to finish breakfast, "but only when we're both confident that it's safe okay?"
I smiled and nodded. I didn't think there was a way to beat a future I had already seen but now was not the time to get into that argument again.
"Hermione?" I called after her, she leaned back from the stove to meet my eyes, "I'm sorry I had to leave you alone for so long."
She smiled and looked back at the eggs in the frying pan.
"It's like you said all those years ago Ron, you never ever leave me do you?"