What Life?
The silver haired minister greeted Percy with a warm hug before looking him in the eye and linking his hands and making a circular motion. Percy curled his index finger and hit it against his palm before giving a thumbs up.
The minister had obviously heard about the Weasley family troubles and Percy was moved that his boss had expressed a concern for their welfare but really didn't want to talk about it. It was enough that he now had to get security clearance with St Mungo's and make an appointment to see Ron in his new ward without the pain of talking about it with his employer. The wizard seemed to understand and gave Percy a firm pat on the back before handing him a folder full of paperwork and stepping back behind his desk.
Percy opened the folder and started work, anything to forget about the fact that there was a war over control of memories inside his brother that didn't even belong to him in the first place.
Hermione had been assigned to be the one to give Harry the final once over and discharge him. Her services on Ron's ward were no longer needed, as now the focus was on the brain trauma and the invading thoughts and knowledge that had to be purged and that was Neville's field. Harry and Ginny had been a great support to her since this whole mess had been blown wide open for all to see and they had been strong for her every time she cracked under the strain of her 'tough love' with Ron.
It had broken her heart when Healer Kalra advised her that maybe she shouldn't visit him for a few days but she understood where he was coming from. Ginny had taken her out for cheesecake and then taken her home to her parents house and left her sobbing into her mother's pristine silk blouse. Harry had been security cleared at his adamant insistence and booked daily appointments to visit Ron. This was something they'd both been through and something they had both suffered a hell of a lot for despite being neither of their fault.
There was something about Harry, and indeed Percy for some reason, that made Ron drop the attitude and talk openly. Ron was being highly resentful of his mother's fussing and over-protectiveness. He had had quite a nasty argument with her in which he pointed out that he didn't need wrapping in cotton wool when the healers were suffocating him with it already. She had run from the secure ward in tears when he had told her that all she could give him that he really wanted would be a cake with a file in it.
Fortunately for Ron his dad knew when to laugh at his temper rather then rile him up even more and he was able to go back more often in place of Mrs Weasley. She would still go but with one of Ron's brother's or Ginny and she'd let them talk while she just smiled at him and presented him with magazines and various home cooked treats to make his stay just the tiniest bit bearable.
In general Ron wasn't in much of a mood for talking to anybody, Harry and Percy permitting, and reverted back to smashing things to prove a point or simply to blow off steam. A Death Eater called Layton had already been apprehended attempting to gain access to the twentieth floor without clearance and the Aurors discovered, via a very dubious use of veritassyrum, that there were indeed plans afoot to capture Ron and forcibly extract the Ravenclaw knowledge from him.
Hermione signed Harry's discharge papers and smiled at his as she handed him his copy.
"There you are, you're free to go," she said as if she'd just told him Hedwig was dead.
"Well you could try to sound a little more happy about it Hermione," Harry snorted as he took the paper from his gloomy friend.
"Sorry," she smiled as she sat down on Harry's now vacant bed, "It's just that you can go back to the flat and do what you like when you like and he's just...up there on his own."
Harry sat beside her and put an arm around her comfortingly.
"Look Neville and Kalra are Ron's personal miracle workers aren't they?" Harry grinned and Hermione gave a watery chuckle and nodded, "And me and Percy are, believe it or not, working together to try and find a way to help too. Think of that eh? Percy's brains and my knack for getting out of sticky situations, that's solid gold right there!"
Hermione laughed properly at this and wiped her welling eyes before getting up from the bed.
"Well Healer Kalra told me that I could maybe go and see Ron on Sunday if I wanted to but I'd rather know that Ron wants to see me himself rather than impose myself upon him," Hermione began.
"Oh don't be stupid," Harry said crossly, "you're not imposing yourself on him."
"Listen to me Harry," she said firmly, "I want you to ask him if he minds me coming to see him on Sunday. I want him to be able to decide for himself okay? The poor guy needs some control over his own life back Harry, even if it's just the ability to say yes or no to this one little thing. Just ask him for me would you?"
Harry nodded and gave her a hug.
"Well there's one thing Ron and Ravenclaw have in common isn't there?" Percy said sombrely to Neville while he waited outside Ron's room for his visit.
"What's that then?" Neville said wearily, he had been on a twelve-hour shift and it wasn't even close to being over yet.
"They're both stuck in prisons not of their own making and through no fault of their own."
Neville nodded and rested his head against the wall behind him.
"You know what we need?" the young trainee healer said as he closed his eyes and wondered if he'd be able to open them again without coffee.
"What?" Percy said with a frown.
"I've no idea," said Neville with a sigh, "I was hoping you might know."
Percy chuckled and gave Neville a shove as he got up and began to stretch his legs by pacing slowly up and down outside Ron's ward. For several minutes they were both quiet. Neville must have dropped off to sleep because he suddenly felt as if he was falling and jerked awake in his chair.
"Sorry," he said, slightly flustered, "bad dream."
"It is isn't it?" Percy said as he stood before the closed doors, staring at them with a furrowed brow.
Neville got up from his seat and stood next to Percy.
"Hey are you alright?" he asked as he frowned with concern for the older boy.
"Not really no," Percy said quietly, "I'm about to go in there and try to remind my brother that all this crap he's having to put up with is worth it if it saves his life."
Neville nodded and stared at the closed door as well.
"The thing is Neville," Percy said as he turned to look at the young trainee healer, "he's not got much of a life stuck in there has he?"
Neville gave Percy a pat on the back.
"Don't talk like that Percy. It's only temporary you know that."
"Do I?" Percy snapped, "Does Ron? Does anybody? We're so keen to keep him protected that we've taken him out of his own life. He hasn't got any freedom, any control or say over what happens to him. He can't even throw a tantrum and check himself out Neville. He is literally a prisoner. It may be for his own protection but it's imprisonment all the same. It's not fair and it's not right and...forget it."
Percy slumped back into his seat and put his head in his hands. Neville sat beside him again.
"My gran once told me that living a dull long life is more tragic then living a lifetime in one day and one day only."
Percy lifted his head and blinked as he stared at Neville.
"What d'you think she meant by that?"
Neville looked away from Percy's eyes and focused upon his own hands as he spoke.
"Y'know a caterpillar is a hairy brown or green thing. It's dull and boring and name me one person who'd want to be able to transfigure into a caterpillar? There isn't one. And a caterpillar gets to be a caterpillar for ages. It hatches and grows and chomps through leaves and gets fat. Sometimes birds eat them, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they live their life to its full course and start to build their own little cocoon. They stay under the radar and nobody notices them to eat them or squish them and what do they get for it? They get to make their own coffin for themselves and sit in it waiting to be reborn."
Percy sat upright and turned in his seat a little to stare at Neville attentively.
"Then they change and grow and fight their way out of that coffin and a blaze of colour and they get to be beautiful and they get to fly and they get to be seen and admired and noticed for the very first time in their lives," Neville smiled sadly at Percy, finally meeting the older boy's eyes, "and it's only ever for one day Percy. They have the kind of life that most other creatures and even some people could only ever dream of and they have it for one day only."
"What are you saying Neville?" Percy said, sounding as if speech was as unfamiliar to him as it now was to Ron.
"I'm saying that we've built Ron the coffin that he'll die in," Neville said with such cynicism that Percy wanted to shake him and yell for the real Neville to come out, "We're just keeping him safe so nobody can squish him and he can just sit in his cocoon and wait until one of us decides that he can finally come out and have that one good day at long last."
Neville's head dropped again and his strong voice faltered and cracked before becoming nothing more than a mumble.
"Ron deserves more than just one good day. He's done his time and he's kept his head and now he just wants to be able to be whatever he wants to be and screw anybody who wants to stop him. He doesn't want to be in his cocoon anymore Percy. He's not scared of them. He's not scared."
"I'm scared," Percy whispered, "I don't want him to die."
"Neither does he," Neville said before sitting up and looking at Percy with glistening eyes, "but he doesn't want to stop living either."
"Mr Weasley, you can go in and see your brother now," the medi witch smiled as she unlocked the door to Ron's ward and the security Aurors scanned him with their wands.
Percy looked over his shoulder at Neville and they both saw it in each other's eyes. This had to stop.
Jess tapped her cane along the corridor until she found the bathroom and turned the handle.
She stepped inside and locked the door behind her before sliding down it and bursting into tears. Her whole body was shaking after the vision she had just had and she didn't want to talk about it with anybody. She didn't want to talk to Stour or the temporary therapist or any of the other patients. All she could think about was what the sapper had told her.
He could kill Ron without even knowing he was doing it. He could kill him in his sleep.
But Ron was the only person she wanted to talk to right now. It wasn't just because of the horrific visions of him in trouble that she wanted to speak to him, it was the fact that he knew exactly how she felt and what she had been through. He had been hurt by magic and he had lost something precious. He also had something that the dark wizards wanted so badly that they were prepared to kill for it. He understood her and listened to her and he made her feel as if she wasn't so alone in her dark little world.
Despite being no use to each other when they were lost in the woods she had felt safe just knowing he was there. She had also felt sickened to know that her being there was making him so ill. Maybe it was her need for Ron's companionship that was draining him just as much as the sapper's uncontrollable power.
She sniffed and wiped her scarred eyes. The words she had heard in her vision were still ringing in her ears. The small crowd of dark robed figures chaining two struggling people to a wall before dragging Ron into the room and throwing him to the ground before them. Ron could barely stand and she could hear herself crying out his name in real life as well as in the vision. He was practically dead and they were going to finish him off it seemed.
Then she heard the words, muttered words as if they were being whispered into her ear from over her shoulder, she could even smell the putrid breath of the Death Eater as he spoke them in a coarse whisper.
"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil...until now!"
Ron's heart wasn't in this game but Harry made him play anyway.
"Your move Weasley," he said after directing his rook to throw himself into the breech bravely.
Ron scanned the board and looked up at Harry.
"You want to make a prediction?" Harry grinned.
Ron sat back in his chair and pointed at his head putting his wrists together and jerking them downwards. Then he gestured around him at the ward before rubbing the top of his fist with his palm and crossing his arms over each other. He moved his hand away from himself, pointing his index and forefingers on both hands downwards.
Harry felt sick.
"Melodrama doesn't suit you Ron, now make your damn move!" he snapped at his best friend.
Ron's eyes returned to the boards and Harry tried not to dwell on the fact that Ron had just told him his prediction, not for the game but for his own future. Ron thought he was going to be stuck in hiding until he died; be it from his brain trauma or at the hands of the Death Eaters; and Harry wasn't willing to contemplate that.
Ron blew out a careless exhalation and tapped one of his pawns on the head. The tiny figure turned and looked at Ron who banged two of his fists together and held up four fingers lazily. The pawn nodded and marched boldly to square G Four. Ron put his elbow on the table, rested his chin in his palm and stifled a yawn before looking across the board to Harry and raising his eyebrows to let him know it was his turn.
Harry didn't recognise this person as his best friend. This wasn't the lively volatile person he had grown up with. This wasn't the never say die attitude that had got Harry through the hard times. This wasn't the fearless bold person who had taken it as read that he would be at Harry's side at the very end when he faced Voldemort. More than anything else this guy who claimed to be his best friend Ron Weasley was not the same man who had stormed out of Harry's hospital room vowing never to come back again unless he pulled himself together.
Ron had bounced back from so much and now he'd lost his bounce completely.
Harry slammed his palm down on the table and the chess pieces scattered screaming in terror. Ron jumped and sat back in his chair in shock. He blinked and waited for Harry to explain his little outburst.
"Pull yourself together Ron!" Harry found himself yelling, "I've seen you surrounded by giant spiders, I've seen you facing a Death Eater ambush, I've seen you slowly dying from ingesting a lethal dose of poison, I've seen you shrug off never being able to speak again as if speech never really mattered to you in the first place and I've seen you wake up from an irreversible magical coma and fucking smile! Who the hell are you because you definitely ain't my best mate?"
Ron glared at Harry and slammed his open palm onto closed fist and then pointed at him.
"Fuck you too!" Harry yelled as he jumped to his feet and toppled the table over.
Ron got to his feet and took a step towards Harry, his ears glowing bright red, he shook his head as he slammed his fists into his chest then grazed his fist down the side of his upper arm and made a gripping motion away from himself before gesturing at his own arms.
"So whose fault is it then Ron?" Harry said as he too stepped up to the nose-to-nose confrontation, "It's not your fault they can't take the scars away. It's not the healers' fault they can't take your scars away. It's not your family's fault they can't take your scars away so who is it you're so mad at Ron? Who?"
Ron turned away and kicked his chair across the ward before marching away and over to one of the barred windows.
"Are you blaming Hermione?" Harry yelled after him, Ron turned around and stared at Harry as if he was insane, "Neville?" Ron folded his arms and looked at Harry warningly, knowing exactly was coming next, "Me?"
Ron looked as if he wanted to smash something more then he'd ever wanted to smash something in his entire life and grabbed handfuls of his own hair in his fists and gave a silent growl.
"This sucks for you Ron and we all know it. You don't have to remind us every single minute of every single day y'know?"
Ron looked half amused and half murderous as his eyes widened and he threw his arms up with exasperation before managing to sign with sarcasm, something that greatly impressed Harry considering the circumstances. He rubbed his knuckles against his chest while rolling his eyes, putting his hand to his armpit with an overly dramatic pained grimace and then pointing at his eye and hitting himself on the chest. Then he made a sniffing sound and pretended to wipe his eyes.
"Yeah," Harry nodded defiantly, "You know what Ron it does stink to come and see you like this and you do owe us all an apology but that's not the point."
Ron huffed and gave a shrug while throwing an annoyed smile at Harry.
"The point is we can all go home and leave you here. You have to live with yourself Ron and let me tell you you're impossible to live with when you're like this. You need to shake this off for your own bloody sanity Ron."
Ron made a 'pfft' sound with his lips at Harry's use of the word sanity in reference to his incarceration. Harry stood his ground and folded his arms. Ron stared at him for a moment before making an annoyed gesture at the closed door and then doing the grip and pull away sign again and then performing a dropping motion and then moving his hands outwards while splaying his fingers as if demonstrating a small explosion. Harry's anger left him just a little and he swallowed. His eyebrows that had been wrinkled with fury evened out into a sad frown and he relaxed his fighting posture.
"They took away everything you could break?" Harry said blankly.
Ron nodded and slumped down to the floor beneath the window, averting his eyes from Harry and looking at his feet.
"You just want to smash something?" Harry almost laughed as he approached Ron with caution.
Ron nodded again and snorted before smiling a little himself. He tapped his thumb to the side of his head before knocking his knuckles against his skull and stroking his chin with his finger and rubbing his hands together.
"If it makes you feel better then it's not stupid Ron, not at all, you're not shallow for needing an outlet for your frustration." Harry said sadly, "Bloody hell mate you can't scream so we can at least let you smash things up eh?"
Ron made a pinching motion away from his throat and rolled his eyes with a huff, the sign for 'I wish'.
"You don't have to," Harry said with determination before walking out of the secure ward and slamming the door behind him.
It was Neville Longbottom's day off and he was spending it with his nose in a healing textbook set upon Percy Weasley's desk at the ministry while the young translator spent his lunch hour taking notes about brain trauma, possession and thought burns. This was not a fun way to spend an afternoon.
"Are you seeing anything in all those note yet Percy?" Neville asked through a yawn.
"All I'm seeing is spots," Percy grumbled as he removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes.
"Me too," Neville groaned as he slammed the book closed and sat back in his chair, "and the only option I think we have left isn't an option at all."
"We have an option?" Percy said as he sat upright and pushed his glasses back on, "Since when did we have an option?"
Neville laughed and leaned forward over the desk with a shake of the head.
"It's just the only thing my sleep starved brain can think of and it's not going to happen. There's too many if's and it's not even ethical. Oh and we'd have to break the law too."
Percy blinked at Neville and nodded.
"I'm listening."
Neville stared at Percy in disbelief. Had he not said that breaking the law part out loud?
"He's my brother Neville," Percy said by way of clarification that he had understood everything the younger wizard had just said perfectly well.
Neville took a deep breath in before beginning.
"Well what we're dealing with is an old kind of magic that nobody can understand and no healers can treat."
Percy nodded.
"Ron was touched by something that put this foreign and very powerful old magic into his arms in the form of scars."
"Right," Percy nodded again.
"Scars that we can't take away."
"When do you get to the point and stop telling me things I already know?" Percy huffed impatiently.
"I'm explaining the exact circumstances we're dealing with here," Neville said as if demonstrating a spell to a first year in the D.A. when he ran it during his seventh year at Hogwarts, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every magic, old or new, has it's opposite too. Ron had magic poured into him by something so old modern healing can't remove it or the scars it caused so what is the opposite kind of magic to that Percy?"
Percy looked into space for a fraction of a second before his eyes widened and he looked back at Neville.
"A thing or a person that can drain magic out of Ron."
"Exactly!" Neville said with a look of reluctant victory on his face, "Some thing or some person capable of draining magic and that modern wizarding cannot do anything to prevent because the magic itself is so old and rare. If it was in a person there would be nothing a healer could do other than..."
"Isolate them in an entirely non-magical environment." Percy said as he tried to get his head around every possible implication that needed to be considered with regards to this impossible plan.
"It's been the only thing I can come up with but the risks are too high," Neville sighed.
"He knocked Ron out while he was asleep once didn't he?" Percy frowned.
"Yeah," Neville nodded with a wince, "and Ron fainted on the spot when all the guy did was point at him. This plan, well it's not a plan but let's talk as if it is, would require the sapper to actually touch Ron's scars."
"It could kill him like that," Percy said as he clicked his fingers.
"It might not," Neville added, still talking entirely in theory he told himself.
"Ron's in a secure ward, the healers and the Aurors would never release him outside the hospital let alone allow him to go back to the clinic," Percy said thoughtfully.
"That's the illegal part isn't it? We'd have to break him out and sneak him all the way to Cumbria where we'd then have to break into the clinic because the nurse there knows he's forbidden to come back on medical grounds."
Percy began tapping the nib of his quill against the top of his desk absentmindedly as he pondered aloud just as Neville was doing.
"Persuade the sapper to drain only the foreign magic from Ron and stop before he gets hurt."
"And then face everybody and tell them that we risked Ron's life on a theory that may or may not have even worked," Neville sighed.
"And lose our jobs."
"And possibly go to Azkaban," Neville was shaking a little now.
"Or we could just keep at this," Percy looked back down at the book and the notes.
"Hoping the whole time that the Death Eaters don't get to Ron before we can find another way to heal him," Neville said, entirely unconvinced.
There was a moment of silence between the two of them.
"I'll do it," Percy said suddenly, his voice sounding raw and tremulous but determined at the same time.
"No Percy, I'm the one with healer training, it should be me, I'll do it."
"You'll never get to be a healer if you do it," Percy said firmly, "They'll throw you off the programme. You can't ruin your life and everything you've worked for Neville I won't allow it."
"And what about you?" Neville exclaimed, "the ministry is everything you've always wanted and you're finally working in a satisfying and useful area, helping a good man and a great minister. You can't throw away your future Percy. I could at least start over, I've only been out of school for a year, a clean slate shouldn't be that hard for me but you're different."
"He's my brother Neville, damn my future, I'm doing this for him."
"Yeah well he's my friend and you were right when you said healing was my life, it is, and what kind of healer would I be if I let a patient like Ron suffer in that bloody ward any longer than necessary when there was a way to cure him?"
Percy looked Neville in the eye and rose from behind his desk.
"I can just about rationalise risking Ron's life and ruining my own but I can't justify wrecking yours as well."
"You don't have to justify it Percy, it's my life," Neville said firmly as he too stood up and stared at Percy across the desk.
Percy's resolve seemed to shatter momentarily and he couldn't meet Neville's eyes.
"I only just got my family back, if this doesn't work..." Percy's voice broke.
"Don't think like that, it'll work," Neville said with determination.
"It could end up killing him."
"It could end up saving him," Neville said without hesitation.
"What if the sapper makes him worse? What if this plan ruins his life?"
Neville only had one thing to say to that.
"What life? If we do nothing what life does he have?"
Percy extended his hand across the desk and Neville shook it. They were both trembling.
"Tomorrow morning, early, I'm working on Ron's ward," Neville said clinically.
"I've got a 7AM visit booked before work, I wasn't going to use it, Ron's not normally up at that time."
"He will be, I'll explain it to him."
"D'you think he'll be up for it?"
Neville finally smiled.
"I think he'll be doing somersaults!"
The door opened and Harry levitated a huge sack into Ron's ward and dumped it on the floor with a grin. Ron had been sitting on the bed listening to music. He pulled the headphones off and gave Harry a quizzical smile. He twirled his index fingers skyward at either side of his head before pointing at the sack.
"This is a fantastic new game I've invented for people like you who have a fetish for destruction."
Ron sniggered and hopped off the bed as Harry rummaged inside the sack. He pulled out six empty butterbeer bottles and handed them to Ron.
"I want you to arrange them in the shape of a triangle at the far end of the ward for me okay?" Harry smiled.
Ron took the armful of bottles and smiled back with curiosity before carrying them to the very end of the long empty ward and arranging the bottles as he had been instructed. Harry reached inside the sack and pulled out the first of what were two-dozen ripe watermelons and began to toss it from hand to hand while Ron jogged back to his side and pointed at the melon with a shrug.
"We will be enjoying a match of melon bowling," Harry grinned, "and we will be keeping score so no eating your balls before you've tossed them."
Ron almost collapsed with laughter at this and clung to Harry's arm to support him as he recovered. Harry had never felt more proud of himself then he did at that moment.
The next hours was spent hurling every single melon Harry had managed to find down the ward and into the butterbeer bottles, shattering as many as the bowler could, before the melon exploded against the wall behind them. The next bowler would repair the bottles before taking their turn.
Soon they were trying all sorts of different techniques. Ron started it off by throwing one of the melons over arm like a shot putter, just missing the ceiling fan, and landing in the centre of the butterbeer bottles, smashing every one of them. Then the challenge was on. Harry seemed to want to better that effort by hitting the ceiling fan so it would slice the melon into six individual pieces that would each hit their respective bottle and break it into smithereens. Ron claimed this was impossible and then the game was forgotten and the new melon in a ceiling fan wager took over.
Harry didn't think he'd laughed like he had that afternoon in a long time, if he ever had at all, and when the mediwitch came in to tell him his visiting time was up she almost exploded with fury at the sight of her ward. Harry left Ron being ordered into the shower while she set about cleaning the fruit cocktail of a mess that was St Mungo's most secure ward.
Maybe things were going to be better for everyone now. Ron was himself again.