Flesh Wounds

Ron released Jess and she fell to the ground sobbing. Percy was shaking like a leaf and George wasn't much better. Fred could've sworn he saw Ron's lips moving exactly in time to Jess speaking the words 'I'm coming for you' a moment ago. He reached out for his brother who was now staring straight ahead and seeming to glow slightly.

"Ron stop now eh? That's enough!" Fred said as his hand was just about to grab Ron's wrist.

"You can't fight them on your own Ron, not even with her!" Jess was sobbing while George looked from one to the other totally lost.

Percy seemed to have something to say himself but he didn't get the chance as Ron sent out a burst of bright yellow energy and disapparated on the spot.

"What the?" Fred said as he almost fell over backwards, "Has the non-magical border been taken down?"

"No," Percy said quietly as he stared at the spot his youngest brother had just been standing, "it just came up against something much stronger."

Before Fred could find out what exactly was going on three Death Eaters blundered through the trees and froze at the sight of the group before them. Percy and Fred raised their weapons while George hauled Jess to her feet and positioned himself in front of her while drawing his cleaver threateningly. The Death Eaters were armed too and ready to fight anyone in order to get across that border.

The gun clicked and the general stared at it without comprehension. Harry couldn't believe it in his current state of discomfort but he actually laughed.

"See one thing you really should have learned about guns before you decided to use one," Harry smirked, "is how to reload!"

The general growled and threw the empty gun towards Harry in frustration. It never hit its intended target however. There was a brilliant yellow flash and a crack that sounded an awful lot like apparition and then Ron was standing between them.

"How the hell did you do that?" Harry exclaimed before gasping as he saw that Ron's hand was raised in front of him and he was holding the gun in mid air between himself and the general.

"Ravenclaw can do anything she puts his mind to," the general said with a smile of awe at the amount of power he saw on display before his very eyes.

Harry swallowed and hoped that Ron wasn't lost to this possession indefinitely. He hoped that it wasn't going to destroy Ron's own mind. He hoped that Ron was still in there somewhere.

"Leave him alone now," Harry found himself calling out to the back of his friend's red head.

Ron seemed to be emanating a warm yellow glow, like the one left behind by the lightning bolt trail, and he raised his other hand towards the floating gun as well. Harry held his breath instinctively and the general smiled and took a step forward, seeming to think something good was about to happen.

"She is going to share her gift with me, with all of us," the general said in a state of near hypnosis.

Ron's lip curled into a very slight smile and he nodded. Harry wanted to scream at his friend to fight for control, to come back and force her out, but he was still paralysed at what he was seeing and by the sixth sense he was feeling inside that told him he needn't worry. Ron's arms were drawn apart and directed at every Death Eater who remained in the room and the gun exploded into jagged fragments, one for each of them, which plunged directly into the hearts of every dark wizard in the room.

They all dropped to the ground without even a yelp. They were dead immediately, even the general whose expression of awed joy had changed into one of comical surprise.

Ron turned around to face Harry and smiled at him, it wasn't Ron's smile but it was a smile all the same, and he waved his fingers at Harry's wrists. His bonds were dissolved and Harry tumbled to the ground where his arms and legs found new ways to hurt and his shoe seemed to be filling with fresh blood from the gunshot wound. Harry grimaced past all of this agony though and looked up at Ron who was taking in a deep breath and closing his eyes.

He seemed to be swallowing the residual power back inside of him before slumping to the ground himself and vomiting blood.

"Oh my God," Harry gasped as he dragged himself over to Ron's side and pulled his friend upright again.

Ron wiped his mouth and then his bloodied face, his nose had been bleeding too Harry could see now, and leaned with Harry against the wall behind the two of them.

"No more bleeding okay Ron?" Harry said fearfully.

Ron gave a very weak but very 'Ron-like' smile in return and signed his response. He pointed at himself and shook his head before pointing at Harry and shaking his head again.

"Deal," Harry nodded as he winced at the sharp pain in his shoulder where the bullet was still lodged deeply, "I won't if you don't."

Ron's eyes were falling closed and Harry's own eyelids felt heavier then he'd ever felt them in his life. Ron smiled again and pointed at himself, rubbed his hands together, pointed at his eye and then from his eye to Harry. Harry gave a halfhearted chuckle as his eyes finally lost the battle to stay open at the exact same moment Ron's did.

"It's good to see you too," he managed to mumble before they both slumped against each other.

Percy was on the Death Eater's back and tightening his strangle hold around the man's neck. The dark wizard ran backwards into a nearby tree and began to beat Percy against it repeatedly in an attempt to knock him off. Thought the body slams were painful Percy wasn't going to let go of the man for anything in the world.

Fred was knocking the legs out from under the two attacking Death Eaters with his cricket bat and they both hit the ground hard. Fred whacked one of the men between the legs with the end of his bat before turning on the other as he struggled to get up again and pinned him down by holding the bat, cornered side down, against his throat and pressed down with his full weight.

George was still doing everything he could to protect Jess and the Death Eater he was facing took full advantage of that fact. It was one thing to watch your own back but to watch the back of another who was unarmed and blind was completely impossible. George had managed to knock the Death Eater down and kick him in the stomach to wind him long enough to get Jess out of harm's way properly. He made her push up on his hands with her foot and grab hold of the thick tree branch above her head.

"Pull yourself up Jess, quick!" he yelled to her.

"Pull myself up to where?" Jess squealed down to him as she dangled from the tree.

"Pull yourself up and sit on the tree branch," George shouted back up at her.

Jess seemed to look right at him as her eyes widened and her head faced downwards toward George's own and her expression conveyed exactly what she thought of George at that moment. He was an idiot.

"Do I look like a gymnast to you?" she declared as her legs swung around and George had to duck to avoid being kicked in the side of the face.

This distraction was too much though and the Death Eater behind George had got his second wind and also George's cleaver. Just as George was going to try and give Jess another upward shove so she could attempt to get some leverage and pull her body up over the branch he felt the blade slicing across the skin of his back. He yelled out in pain and fell to the ground just as a second strike was being aimed down at him and this time the Death Eater intended it to cut a lot deeper.

Percy saw George hadn't noticed that Death Eater coming at him from behind and lost his patience with the dark wizard he was fighting. He released the man from the strangle hold; spun him around and head butted him. Percy immediately regretted it as his glasses shattered into his own face but the Death Eater was on the ground and completely unconscious. Percy jumped over Fred and the Death Eater he was in to process of turning an alarming shade of blue and kicked the other one in the face, breaking his front teeth and his nose at the same time and heard George yelling as the blade slashed across his back.

Percy stood before his injured brother as he hit the ground and raised his hands to stop the second blow of the cleaver as it came down. He had blood in his eyes by now but he wouldn't have been able to see without his glasses anyway so he just gritted his teeth and tried to keep the big dark blur of a man he was fighting as still as possible. The more he moved the more trouble Percy would be in.

"How many Weasleys can die in one day?" the Death Eater snarled, "One's at the mercy of the general as we speak, one's ripped open on the floor and now the three of us are going to finish you and your scrappy brother!"

Percy kneed the Death Eater in the testicles. The dark wizard dropped the blade and Percy kicked him in the head before the bloodied Death Eater with the missing teeth tackled him and slammed him down onto the ground. He set about pummelling his fists into Percy's stomach and Fred was thrown from the Death Eater he was fighting as he became distracted by the plight of his brothers. The Death Eater pulled a knuckle-duster from his pocket and slid it over his fingers while smiling as best a man with no front teeth actually can.

"Taste some steel office boy," he said as he drew back his fist.

George grabbed his cleaver up from the floor and stabbed it into the man's side. The Death Eater staggered backwards and the knuckle-duster slid off his loose fingers and bounced once on the forest floor before his hands clutched at his bleeding side and he turned tail and ran.

"You'll be dead before you reach the border you bastard!" George roared as he heaved himself over to Percy and wiped the blood from his eyes, "Shit Perce, you're not blind as well are you?"

Percy laughed and coughed at the same time, his stomach still tender from the severe beating it had taken, and he took George's hand and pulled himself up with a wince.

"Nothing that a new pair of specs won't fix."

Fred was still wrestling with the Death Eater a little way away and the one Percy had originally been fighting was coming round. Fred kicked the Death Eater he had towering over him in the chest and he staggered backwards and fell into his comrade just as he got to his feet. Fred ran to see if his brothers were alright, still brandishing his blood drenched cricket bat, and tripped over the unconscious Death Eater sprawled on the floor between them. He hit the ground heavily and practically lay across Percy and George's laps. The Death Eater he had been fighting and his new ally in the attack against Fred ran at the battered group as they slumped in a tangled mess of limbs and blood at the base of the tree.

Just as they were about to deliver their final blows to the three brothers, who were all raising their weapons in defence, something screeched and fell from the tree above them and crashed on top of bothDeath Eaters heavily.

"Ouch!" Jess groaned before feeling the two motionless bodies beneath her and panicking, "Oh no who did I land on? I'm so sorry, you just left me hanging from a tree, I couldn't hold on anymore!"

Fred laughed and reached out to pat Jess on the arm.

"It's okay Jess, we're all over here. You just squished the bad guys."

Jess looked pleasantly surprised at this before lifting her leg and dropping it to kick the figures beneath her.

"That's what you get for messing with me!"

Harry woke up surrounded by battered and bruised redheads. He blinked his eyes and Ginny handed him his glasses. He put them on and tried to sit up and what felt like a red-hot poker through his shoulder pressed him back down onto the bed.

"Whoa there Harry," Charlie said with a smile despite his split lip, "it's still healing. The extraction process causes a bit of bruising and then there are all the potions to prevent infection but you're going to be fine. There's not even a hole in you!"

"Or your foot neither," Fred said, his face dreadfully bruised and scratched.

"Well that's good," Harry smiled, "what happened to all of you?"

Harry was told of the rescue mission and the nasty scrap the twins and Percy had with the four Death Eaters fleeing from the general's hideout.

"So why aren't you getting your face healed then Fred?" Harry asked as he noticed Mrs Weasley fretting over her son's black eye.

"I'm going next, I told them to fix George and Percy up first," Fred nodded over his shoulder.

Harry forgot the advice not to try and sit up and moved to do so again. He yelped and Fred chuckled and pushed him back down again.

"What happened to them? Are they going to be alright? You said George's cut wasn't too deep and that Percy's eyes were going to be fine," Harry said as he tried to angle his head so he could look past Ginny and over to the other beds across the ward.

"They're going to be fine Harry, stop worrying about everybody else and lie still would you?" Ginny said impatiently, "Honestly it's as if you don't even care that you've been tortured!"

Mrs Weasley clamped her hand to her mouth and choked back a sob. Her husband put his arm around her and gave her a brief cuddle. Harry looked at all the faces staring down at him again and realised that Bill, Ron, Hermione and Neville were unaccounted for.

"Ron? He was with me; they didn't take him did they? It's him they want and they know it now. They thought it was me," Harry began talking and it just grew faster and faster until he was on the verge of hyperventilating, "I didn't tell them but he showed up there. He apparated there and that's not possible is it and he...he... they were all dead and he didn't have a wand and some of them suspected him anyway and there's three of them It's Ron, Jess and another person and...Where's Jess?"

"Harry calm down!" Fred demanded as he clamped his hand over Harry's mouth, "Listen to me okay?"

Harry nodded and Fred removed his hand from Harry's mouth. The family looked mortified, apparently they didn't know about Ron now being the original target, but Fred cleared his head enough to answer as many questions as he could address at that moment.

"Bill's just over there with Percy okay?"

"Alright Harry?" Bill's voice called out from somewhere.

"Ron's been moved to a secure ward to keep him from doing another runner on us again and when he's a little less...well internally bleeding I will personally kick his arse for being so stupid alright?"

"Internally bleeding?" Harry said, feeling all his own blood drain from his face completely.

Ginny squeezed his hand tightly and Mrs Weasley let out another strained sob.

"That's just what they're calling his nosebleed Harry," Fred smiled reassuringly.

"Oh yeah, and what are they calling him puking blood?" Harry demanded.

Fred's smile fell from his face in an instant.

"Oh you knew about that?"

"Knew about it? I saw it!" Harry yelled, causing Ginny to cringe and he, himself, to wince at the pain in his legs at his jerks of activity.

"Yeah well, it's to do with the stress of him channelling whatever it is he's channelling to let him disapparate in the middle of a non-magical area. The pressure just burst a few blood vessels in his nose and when you have a three or four hour long nosebleed you tend to get a bit of blood in your stomach Harry mate. Don't worry, it's just the nosebleed they're trying to get to stop."

"It's still going?" Harry exclaimed.

"On and off," Ginny shrugged.

"That's where Hermione and Neville are now, they're checking his head out and Hermione's giving him the verbal equivalent of a repeated punch to the face for being such an idiot," Charlie added with a grin.

"Jess has been checked out, given the all clear and she's on her way back to Cumbria now," Fred finished.

Harry lay back in his bed and closed his eyes. So everybody was as okay as it was possible for them to be. He opened his eyes again to see Fred being pulled away by a medi witch and George reappearing in his place while trying to ignore his mother's pleas to rest his poor back.

"It's healed woman, what's to rest?" he huffed before grinning down at Harry, "Glad you're alright there Harry, we were worried for a while."

"Well I don't like to live an incident free life for very long do I?" Harry smiled.

George leaned in and lowered his voice as if ashamed of what he was about to say being overheard by the family.

"So Percy turns out to be...a good bloke after all," he paused to share a look of disbelief with Harry, who simply chuckled, "I never knew he could fight like that Harry. He actually nutted one of them!"

Ginny snorted and whispered to Harry.

"Hence his current concussion!"

The doors to the ward swung open and a healer bounded in, clearing all Weasleys as he approached Harry's bed.

"Ah Mr Potter, I heard you were awake, let's get the last of those aches healed shall we?" she smiled as she withdrew her wand and flicked them at the curtains which slid closed all around the bed.

Harry sat back and let the healer do their magic. His mind was on things other then the mild discomfort of his injuries though. All he could think about were those Death Eaters who had escaped. They were out there somewhere and they knew that Ron had what they wanted. Ron was their target and he was still nowhere near cured.

More than anything else he thought about Ron's immediate future as a prisoner of his own secure ward. He was an indefinite inhabitant of St Mungo's and so far there didn't seem to be any way out for him. The very life he and Hermione had saved Harry from was now the only way Ron had of keeping his own.

The checks were over, Harry's aches were soothed and the healer threw back the curtains and left the ward. Percy stepped in through the parting in the curtains and adjusted his new glasses on the end of his nose.

"Harry," he nodded.

"Percy," Harry nodded in a similar fashion, "I hear you've mastered the Glasgow kiss?"

Percy rolled his eyes.

"I'm not proud of it."

"Well you should be," Harry said sincerely, "You saved the twins lives. That's going to make it really hard for them to hate you now y'know?"

Percy gave the slightest of smiles at this before shrugging.

"Well you'd know about making yourself impossible to hate wouldn't you Harry?" Percy looked down at his feet before continuing, "I know that you took all that for Ron. You knew it was him they wanted and you were going to let them torture you, maybe to death, and you would never have given him up to them. You wouldn't have even tried to call on him for help."

Percy looked up and met Harry's eyes, Harry looked away almost immediately.

"I can't ever take that scar away for him Percy. I can't ever give him his voice back. I can't ever give him his laugh back but I'll be damned if I ever let anybody do anything to hurt him the way I hurt him."

Percy leaned over and forced Harry to look him in the eye.

"You've never hurt Ron since the day you met him Harry. We both just seem to go about protecting people we love the wrong way."

Hermione was trying to be as professional as possible. It was hard though. It was difficult to see Ron like this and it was even worse to see him look at her in that way he had been as if she had betrayed him or something. She marked off the dosage of the potion she had just given him to clot the burst blood vessels inside Ron's nose and replaced the chart in its holder.

"I'm going to go downstairs now to check on Harry okay?" she called out to him.

Ron didn't even shrug. This was worse then the silent treatment, as funny as it sounds Ron could actually still deliver the silent treatment these days, and she knew she couldn't leave it like this with him. Hermione walked over to the window where Ron was leaning against the wall and tapping at the metal bars that blocked it with his finger idly.

"Look Ron I know this seems like more of a punishment then something we have to do to protect you but..." Hermione couldn't stand it anymore and grabbed Ron's chin to force him to face her, "Look at me!"

Ron huffed and folded his arms before turning away from the window and away from Hermione.

"I know what it must look like okay? The bars, the guards on the door, and the consent forms for any visitors but it's got to be done Ron. You know this isn't about locking you away from people."

Ron turned and scowled at Hermione before gesturing to the bars again and stomping away.

"Ron please just..." she began but stopped as Ron spun around and glared at her.

Ron prodded himself in the chest and seemed to be counting layers stacked one on top of the other with his hand before splaying both hands twice. He was pointing out that he was on the twentieth floor. He shrugged while twirling his index fingers upwards on either side of his head and gesturing at the windows again before making a diving gesture.

"Of course we don't think you're going to jump!" Hermione said with anger, "I know you think the bars are pointless this high up but some Death Eater with a broom could just..."

Ron interrupted with the slamming of his hands together, causing a loud clapping sound, and then interlocking his fingers, pointing at his thumb, curling his index finger into his palm, making a 'D' shape with thumb, forefinger and opposite index finger and finally linking his little fingers together.

"Yes there are wards, you're right, they'd just bounce right off them if they tried it but I'm not willing to take any chances with you okay? I won't, Neville won't and Healer Kalra definitely won't so stop bloody moaning about being stuck here and let us find a way to get that woman out of you! We've got to find a way to get those thoughts out of you or risk losing you to whatever dark wizard wants to exploit Ravenclaw's mind."

Ron seethed and turned away from Hermione again. He marched over to the opposite window, barred just like the others were, and kicked a metal potion tray across the floor with a loud clatter as he went. Hermione took a deep breath and let it out before gathering up her things and walking quietly to the door.

She had been beside herself when Ron and Harry were carried out of the non-magical border unconscious and covered in blood. Percy had told her everything he and Harry had pieced together and then every last detail about Ron's behaviour in the woods just before he disappeared and she head feared the worst. This was ten times more stress then the incident that had put him in a coma for three weeks and things could have turned out much worse for him. She had worked furiously on him all the way to St Mungo's and then with Healer Kalra after that.

Ron's nosebleeds were triggered by stress but the profuseness of the bleeding, the fact that the blood wouldn't clot while he was under this mind control, worried everybody. This was internal bleeding that could also be affecting the brain. Ron didn't need any more pressure on his brain than he was already under right now but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get him to understand.

He hadn't just been running to Cumbria to help Jess, he had been running away from these very circumstances. He knew as soon as nurse Stour showed up to report Jess missing and inform the staff of St Mungo's that she'd be heading right to them to see Ron that they'd lock him away for his own protection. He'd only just won his own little bit of independence back and now he'd lost it and ended up in a worse state then before.

She remembered how Ron had saved Harry from his own downward spiral of self-pity with his 'tough love' and knew that this time she had to be the bad guy. She would do it and she wouldn't give in until Ron was safe enough and well enough to leave. That didn't mean doing it to him didn't break her heart.

As she opened the door and gave a strained smile to the two Auror guards stationed outside the secure ward something shattered against the doorframe beside her. She flinched and turned in shock to see Ron, his ears burning red and almost shaking with rage, as he seemed to snatch something away from his face and toss it over his shoulder before shaking his head and putting his hands together like saloon doors in a western and then miming the turning of a key.

'Don't forget to lock the door'

Hermione repaired the ceramic mug that Ron had thrown at the doorframe, just inches from her head, and set it upon a nearby shelf.

"Don't worry, I won't."

Jess was sitting in the day room, supposedly alone, when the sound of a chair scraping beside her made her jump.

"Who's that?" she said as she held out her hand and felt the space to her left.

"Me," a gruff low voice said, as if they were talking to her against their better judgement.

"Me who?" Jess said with annoyance.

"Never mind," the low voice growled, "I just wanted to tell you to stop chasing that bloke. You're not saving anyone. You're not warning anybody. You're causing it all."

The chair scraped again and Jess grabbed the man's arm and yanked him back towards her.

"It's you isn't it? You're the magic sapper guy."

"So what if I am?"

"So you never liked him. You kept telling people he shouldn't be here and that he should go away. Stay the hell away from you isn't that what you said to Stour that time he collapsed here?"

"It's a magic free environment and he isn't magic free!" the voice snarled, not as low this time and the arm was yanked away from Jess' grip, "I nearly killed the poor guy once already and I was fucking well asleep! I don't want him back here again."

Jess sat in shock before feeling hot breath on her earlobe and shuddering.

"You call him back here again and I can't be held responsible for what my powers do to him understand?" he whispered into her ear.

Jess nodded and she felt her eyes burning with tears. The breath was gone and all she could hear over her own rapid heartbeat were the sapper's departing footsteps. She made a silent promise to herself right then. She'd never tell anybody about her visions of Ron when she had them from now on. She'd never try to contact him again. She'd keep herself invisible and keep him from feeling obliged to come back and see her. Her visions had done nothing for him other than ruin his life and it was time she left him alone now.

"Jess," nurse Stour's voice sounded from the doorway to the day room, "are you alright? You look as if you've been crying."

Jess wiped her face with her hand and shook her head.

"I'm fine nurse Stour," she smiled, "just a little hay fever that's all."