I really am not a fan of the whole WeasleyBashing! thing people have for Ron, so I hope you all enjoy this chapter.
In addition, I did change/condense some of JK's original work, so some of the memories are not directly word-for-word: hope you don't mind.
Cheers!
OoOoO Chapter19 - Toast to the Ones Here Today (Part 2) OoOoO
Several more mist-filled scenes passed amongst the Order Members, but Harry couldn't concentrate on any one of them. His mind was still filled with the shame and hurt he had elicited from both of the Remus's he knew.
The one from his world who had been terrified of having a baby with lycanthropy, who Harry had called a terrible coward for his fear, who was the only uncle he had ever really felt he'd loved, and who had then ultimately loved and then lost his only child.
And the werewolf here, who must have had the exact same thoughts, but never had the chance to meet the perfect outcome from all his worries. The Remus here who had never met little Teddy with all of the best parts between the couple, and who had brought them so much joy.
Harry hadn't meant for that specific memory to come out, he never wanted to hurt anyone like that, but now that it had come out, he wondered at the couple's reactions. Tonks disgust and anger. Remus and his shame and regret. The venom between them that Harry knew he had no right to judge, but honestly, they both had also looked envious. Of the memory that showed little Teddy growing and being in their lives. The want in their gazes.
It left him with a very dangerous thought in his head, something that he couldn't shake away, no matter how incredibly insensitive or idiotic it might be: because… well was possible. That dangerous flame of thought.
Unconsciously, Harry's eyes traveled to James and Lily at his side. Sirius and his wife, and Remus beside them too. The people he had grown to know here and -
Harry was snatched back into the moment when blue mist settled into a new scene around him, and his eyes narrowed at the aftertaste of rage that accompanied it. He definitely knew this memory.
"Is this… the Ministry?" James questioned, looking around the dark room.
Mrs. Cattermole stumbled to the single seat in the middle of the floor beneath the raised platform. The moment she had sat down, chains clinked out of the arms of the chair and bound her there.
"What is this?"
"Who's that?" Fred and George said one after the other.
"You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?" asked Umbridge.
Harry grimaced at the high, girly voice and the disgustingly pink-dressed woman sitting upon a dais across from the watching Order. Ron's hand tightened into a fist beside him. "I hate her."
"Get in line," Bill answered without a look over.
gave a single, shaky nod.
"Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance Department?"
Mrs. Cattermole burst into tears. "I don't know where he is, he was supposed to meet me here!"
"Is this-?" Lily started with a disgusted twist of her lips.
Umbridge ignored her. "Mother to Maisie, Ellie, and Alfred Cattermole?" Mrs. Cattermole sobbed harder than ever.
"They're frightened, they think that I might not come home –"
"Spare us," spat Yaxley. "The brats of Mudbloods do not stir our sympathies."
"Oh Merlin," Marlene whispered. "This is a Muggleborn trial."
"I don't want to watch this," someone from the Order said, sounding as if they were going to throw up.
Harry's eyebrows came together atop his head. "Don't you have these here?"
"Not really," Sirius answered, eyes flickering over the chained woman with deeply lowered eyebrows. "If a muggleborn is caught these days- it's death. Worse if it's a woman of course because she still has a good womb and all, but it's not publicized anymore. There's no need."
Harry swallowed back bile at what that must have meant.
"That's fucking sick," Ron glowered.
"You're not wrong," Sirius muttered back.
Mrs. Cattermole's sobs masked Harry's footsteps as he made his way carefully toward the steps that led up to the raised platform. Slowly and very carefully he edged his way along the platform behind Umbridge, Yaxley, and Hermione, taking a seat behind the latter.
"That's Hermione," Harry explained to the Order, pointing to the women beside Umbridge. "I'm somewhere under the invisibility cloak around here. Hermione, Ron, and I polyjuiced into some Ministry officials to take back the Horcrux on Umbridge's neck."
"Salazar's necklace," an Order Member acknowledged.
"We've already got that one destroyed, haven't we?" Fred asked, shivering slightly under the presence of the memory dementors in the hall.
"In the Chamber of Secrets," Arthur Weasley nodded to his son.
"And the Diary, at Malfoy Manor," someone else that Harry didn't recognize added with a distinctly American accent.
"Correct," McGonagall answered. Her lips pursed. "And then Mr. Potter destroyed Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem hidden within Hogwarts grounds some days after the necklace. That leaves four Horcruxes unaccounted for. One Dumbledore had mentioned that might not even be physical."
James tensed beside Harry.
"The seventh Horcrux we've yet to discover," McGonagall turned her sharp eyes to Harry and Ron.
Harry met her stare with a solid one of his own. No one else except for James, most likely Lily, Sirius, Dumbledore, and Ron knew that Harry had died in his homeworld as part of Voldemort's Horcruxes. Harry still wasn't sure if he was 100% a Horcrux in this world or not, Hermione's research be damned. He didn't want to be one again and was not looking for any excuse to go on talking about it. He also had no idea how some of the Order members here would respond if they found out, what they might do.
Ron's hand tightened into a fist at his side. "You're poking through his memories aren't you?" he stated gruffly behind the fringe of his orange hair. "We'll get there when we get there. You all seem to forget that this happened only months ago to us. Some of this stuff Harry and I don't want to have to go back through." His face twisted into a savage grimace, filled with malice, sorrow, and hate, and some of the Order members turned their heads.
McGonagall dropped her eyes.
"Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took that wand?"
"T-took?" sobbed. "I didn't t-take it from anybody. I b-bought it when I was eleven years old. It – it – it – chose me." She cried harder than ever.
Umbridge laughed a soft girlish laugh.
Ron glowered at Harry's side. "She deserved worse than Azkaban," he snarled.
Harry agreed with him, he always would, but he knew it would do nothing for the both of them now. "She'll never get to hurt another person again," he reminded him.
"In that world maybe. Not here."
Harry paused. That was true. He had no idea where Umbridge was in this world. Although frankly, he didn't really care to know either, he could only imagine what she could do with a loose leash under Voldemort's regime. What she might have already done with the caste system set prettily available to her. Harry refused to shiver.
In the memory unfolding in front of them all, Umbridge was laughing with a clear sneer in her voice. "...The 'S' stands for Slewyns on the necklace here, a family heirloom. I am related to the Slewyns. Indeed there are few pure-blood families I am not related to."
"Bold of her to announce that in a Court of Ministry," someone muttered.
"It doesn't look like they'd likely check the legitimacy of her claim here," Gideon Prewett answered.
"It is newly established," Fabian agreed.
"A pity that the same can not be said for you," she continued and flicked through the other woman's questionnaire. "And look, 'Parents Profession': greengrocers. How repulsive."
Yaxley laughed jeeringly.
Harry watched as the face of the man he was pretending to be in the memory twisted in rage, and the air in the courtroom became even colder. Some Order members stepped back at the memory of polyjuiced Harry.
He raised his wand, not even troubling to keep it concealed beneath the Invisibility Cloak, and said, "Stupify!"
There was a flash of red light: Umbridge crumpled and her forehead hit the edge of the balustrade. Harry cast again and hit Yaxley before the wizard could retrieve his wand from his own robes, letting the man drop to the ground like a pile of stones.
"Harry!"
"Good shot!" Sirius cheered.
"Hermione, if you think I was going to sit here and let her pretend-"
"The woman!" George called, pointing to the memory and watching as a dementor swooped down to the shackled witch.
"Harry, Mrs. Cattermole!"
Harry whirled around as Mrs. Cattermole let out a terrible scream. A slimy, scabbed hand grasped her chin and forced her head back.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
The silver stag that exploded from Harry's wand seemed to fill even the memory with its warmth and protection. Harry himself felt his shoulders settle and his hatred lessen.
"It's always amazing," Sirius mused, looking at the stag with a small smile. "Looks just like Prongs."
Remus nodded at his side, the blue wavy reflections of light from the spell streaking across his face. "He'd never even seen it to begin with, makes you wonder about Family Magic, doesn't it?
"Nah, that's the undiagnosed Ravenclaw in you mate. That there is fate."
"Fate?" his wife smiled beside him with an amused lifted brow.
Harry caught James's quick glance over at him, and the smile that then echoed Sirius's words. Warmth was there, and pride too. Something peaceful and filling expanded in Harry like an inflating balloon. His cheeks felt hot. No one had to say it, but the Order was all probably thinking the same thing at this point: Like father, like son.
Harry swallowed and couldn't help the smile back, because he was, wasn't he? He was allowed to feel happy about… James's pride? Right? Harry looked away before he let himself answer that hidden thought and he made himself focus on the developing memory.
Polyjuiced Hermione and Harry were leading Muggleborns out of Atrium into freedom. There was chaos everywhere. Polyjuiced Ron showed up just as some were escaping, and the real Reg Cattermole appeared just to make everything more confusing. Mrs. Cattermole was hanging onto Ron's arm, eyes wild as they went back and forth between the two identical wizards.
"Reg, I don't understand-"
"Let go, I'm not your husband, you've got to go home!"
Yaxley appeared behind them, running at full speed, hatred clear across his face, wand extended.
"LET'S GO!" Harry yelled. He seized Hermione by the hand and Ron by the arm and turned on the spot.
Harry watched as they disappeared into blackness for a second, leaving the Ministry far behind, and appear on the steps of number twelve, Grimmauld Place for a split second. Then before the world could settle, Hermione screamed - gutwrenching and terrified - and a flash of purple light illumed the darkness. Ron flinched at Harry's side. The world twisted again.
"They followed you," Marlene concluded in the moment of blackness with blue mist swirling around them.
Harry nodded, then noticing that none could see him, replied, "Yes. Yaxley had grabbed onto Hermione as we disapparated and shook him off at the door in Grimmauld Place, giving him the secret of our location as Secret Keepers. We couldn't go back there after."
"Took to camping instead," Ron echoed as the memory swirled into something new.
"What, in the wilderness?" Lily frowned.
"The three of you, while hunting for Horcruxes with no supervision?" Marlene added.
Harry and Ron nodded.
Lily and Merlene traded appalled glances. "What the fucking hell was there Dumbledore thinking?"
"Sounded necessary love," James nudged his wife softly.
"They were seventeen James," Marlene argued.
Harry didn't feel the need to say anything as it might remind them that he was eighteen now, by all of two months, and he didn't think it'd help whatever case was unraveling. Merlin, it wasn't like he was a child. They'd all seen him do more dangerous stuff than living out of a tent before.
"But you escaped the Ministry," Sirius turned to look at Harry and Ron with amusement and surprise. "You broke in, got the Horcrux, and then escaped, getting Muggleborns out in the process." He huffed a laugh of short wonder. His eyebrow came up as he turned to Mad-Eye like he was saying, See? I told you. "Some of us couldn't have done that if we tried… and we have."
Mad-Eye's one good eye narrowed on Harry and Ron, but he didn't comment back.
The scene changed.
Harry, Hermione, and Ron appeared within the blue mist huddled in their tent flap opening, listening to a conversation right outside their canvas walls, completely unseen and unheard from the group in the forest beyond.
"Camping," Marlene stated dryly.
"Oh leave off love," Sirius said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, can we? They were old enough to survive if nothing else."
Marlene, Lily, and Mrs. Weasley did not look happy about it. In fact, most who were mothers or those that had children of their own did not look happy and frowned at their accommodations.
Harry and Ron Ron exchanged a look, then shrugged. They had no idea what they were on about. Witches.
"I had my small revenge before I left," Griphook said.
"A goblin?" An Order member asked. "Hiding- with wizards?"
Harry nodded and pointed to those he remembered and recognized of the group sitting outside. "It was all still new remember, Voldemort's new rule. That's Ted Tonks, he left to be on the run before the Muggleborn Registration Act, the man beside him is-"
"Dean Thomas," McGonagall recognized the young wizard with narrowed eyes and a tipped head.
"Yeah- his mums a muggle and he never knew his dad, so he went off before anyone could claim him muggleborn or not. That's Dirk, another muggleborn, and those two goblins are Griphook and Gornuk. We meet the one on the left little later too."
Ron grimaced.
"Didn't you hear about that, Ted?" asked Dirk. "About those kids who tried to steal Gryffindor's sword out of Snape's office at Hogwarts?"
James frowned. As did McGonagall, and even Dumbledore. "Why's Snape got the sword when it was willed to you?" James asked.
Ron shrugged in answer for Harry. "It's Hogwarts property, right? New Headmaster got it instead."
Sirius choked.
James's head snapped to Harry and Ron.
Several Order members' jaws dropped. "Snape? Severus Snape is the Headmaster of Hogwarts?" they questioned in various ways.
"Was," Harry couldn't help but mutter back, cringing at their tones. A brave man in his world, he still thought. A wizard who had risked everything for the love of a woman who had never loved him back except as a friend. Who had dedicated his life to correcting his wrongs. Harry didn't care if this world's Snape was a madman or cruel, his Snape had been terrible sure, but he'd also saved Harry's life more than most as well.
"'Was'" Sirius parroted and then huffed a sigh. "Well, that's good at least. Bastard doesn't live past his master."
Harry swallowed his words. He focused back on the memory that had been playing out around them.
"Well whatever they thought they were going to do with it, Snape decided the sword wasn't safe where it was," said Dirk. "Couple of days later, once he'd got the say-so from you-know-who, he sent it down to London to be kept in Gringotts instead."
The Goblins started to laugh again.
"I'm still not seeing the joke," said Ted.
"It's a fake," rasped Griphook.
"The sword of Gryffindor!"
There was a moment of silence from both sides of the memory for a moment. "It's a what?" Fred then exclaimed a second later.
"Snape put a fake sword into Gringotts?" George asked right after. "Why? He must've known, right? He-"
The Order exploded into mutters and titters about what must be and how the sword of Gryffindor in their world was already found and imbued with basilisk venom. Further mutters came about of where exactly the location of the other Horcruxes were. How strange Harry's world was.
The memory continued on, and Harry gave it only a passing glance. He wanted to hurry this all up.
Ron suddenly went pale at Harry's side.
Harry turned to his friend and frowned. His freckles stood out starkly against his suddenly sickly face. "Ron?" he asked, the memory still playing out as Hermione and Harry questioned the portrait of Phineas Nigellus from Hermione's bag. "What is it?"
"This is the day I leave you," Ron answered breathlessly, eyes flickering about the memory as if it would come out and bite him. "The Horcrux- food- Ginny at Hogwarts with Snape, and I just- this is when I leave you both." Shame filled his voice and darkened his eyes.
Harry's breathing became shallow. A lightheaded feeling passed over him, and when he turned back to the memory, he realized Ron was right. This was the day when it all happened.
And dammit all to hell, the Order would be watching it all, again.
"I-" Harry started, and looked around. "I don't know how to switch it or move it on," he said hurriedly.
Ron flinched as his own cold voice from Harry's memory rang out.
"Oh, remembered me, have you?"
Harry stilled. He remembered feeling elated not a moment before this conversation because they'd thought that they finally had a leg up on Voldemort. He remembered the irritation at Ron not contributing, snapping and blaming Harry- Horcrux swinging from his chest as he pointed fingers, and Harry's unbelievable rage when he told him to leave. He swallowed. He remembered it all like a bandaid ripped off somewhere soft. This had happened probably only a year ago now, and the pain was still fresh.
"Harry, I-" Ron said as the words got angrier in the background. "I'm so sorry mate." He shook his head, downcast and shamefaced, fists tightened into balls at his sides. "I-I've no excuse. I was a terrible friend. When you needed me and I-" He swallowed. "I'm so sorry."
"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for?"
"Yeah, I thought I did too."
The Order was unmoving around them, watching in deathly silence.
Harry shook his head, stepping closer, and whispered back to Ron. "This wasn't entirely you're fault, and you know that." The Horcrux had been messing with everyone's minds. For weeks.
"-Did you think you'd be back to Mummy by Christmas?"
And Harry hadn't been unaffected as well.
"We thought you knew what you were doing!" shouted Ron, standing up.
His words pierced Harry like knives, and it was his turn to flinch this time. Ron turned his head to Harry with pained eyes. "I didn't mean it. None of it."
Harry nodded back, but he couldn't take his eyes away from the both of them squaring off in the tent. Hermione looked close to tears between them.
"Take off the locket Ron," she said. "Please take it off, you wouldn't be talking like this if you hadn't been wearing it all day."
"Emotional manipulation by dark magic is hard to combat even in the best, sanitized, circumstances," Bill said quietly, but his voice rolled over everyone. "Under the amount of stress here, I'm surprised you all lasted even three days with it on and about."
Bill's words should have made Harry feel better, it was a solid argument against everything going on, but it didn't. In the back of Harry's mind, he couldn't help but hear another voice inside say, Sure, but this wasn't the first time he decided to leave, was it?
"So why are you still here?" Harry asked, seething.
"Search me," said Ron.
"Go home then," said Harry.
"Yeah, maybe I will!" shouted Ron, taking several steps towards Harry, who did not back away.
Ron swallowed and looked at the floor with clenching teeth.
"Merlin," Lily shook her head.
The Weasley's on the other side of the memory kept looking up from it with wide eyes at Ron. Molly seemed to be on the fence about actually saying something or taking a step forwards to comfort him. Arthur's face changed from angry, to frustrated, to pained, and then back again all over. It made for a very uncomfortable air in the heat amongst the memory.
"It's all right for you two, isn't it, with your parents safely out of the way-"
"Oh, shit," Remus muttered.
"My parents are dead!" Harry bellowed.
"And mine could be going the same way!" yelled Ron.
"This is getting out of hand," James murmured as well.
"Then GO!" roared harry. "Go back to them and pretend you've got your spattergroit and Mummy'll be able to feed you up and -"
Ron made a move to his pocket, Harry reacted, but before either wand was clear of its owner's pocket, Hermione had raised her own and cried, "Protego!"
A shield blew the two men away from each other, seething in their own rage, and then the blue mist of the pensieve crawled in and swept them both away.
The scene changed, and with it, the dangerously charged air.
Harry let out a hard breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding in, and Ron's shoulders lowered beside him. He didn't look over to meet Harry's eyes.
"What... what happened?" Lily asked softly, Order members looked away from their little group as the mist swirled amongst them, but the Weasley's drew closer.
Ron swallowed, then looked up and met everyone with a hard face. "What you think," he confessed without a trace of emotion. "I left. Dissappareated away and didn't come back."
Harry's head snapped over to Ron's flat statement, and his eyebrows crumpled together. "That's not entirely true and you know it," he said back firmly. He didn't know why he'd said anything, the pain of the memory still hurt, but he wasn't about to let Ron become a rug for people to walk over after all that. He had come back in the end. He'd tried to, anyway, and he was the person protecting Harry's back when it all came down to the last battle.
He'd already forgiven Ron months ago. It all hurt, it might always sting, but that's what family did to one another, they forgave and moved on. He'd learned that much at least.
"He wanted to come back as soon as he left, but he got held up by Snatchers as soon as he landed, and didn't make it back in time when Hermione and I left again. He was wrong, I was wrong, and that's all there is to it," Harry ground out every word, face hardening as he looked over the people around him.
Harry could see Ron staring at him from the corner of his eye, but he didn't let himself look over. He matched his unrelenting gaze over everyone there, new feelings or not, so that they understood. Ron was his best mate, and everyone made mistakes. Sirius's face falling into the veil flashed in Harry's vision for a moment, and he tried not to grimace. At the very least, Ron's mistake hadn't outright killed anybody.
Sirius in this world suddenly broke into a smile. "You know Prongs, I can't manage to tell if he looks more like you when he does that, or Lily. All cold defense and stiff-necked will." he shook his head and huffed an easy laugh, throwing an arm over Marlene. "Could have come from your mum too. She had that way about her when she wanted."
Lily visibly struggled not to roll her eyes, and the tension in Harry's shoulders released. Ron exhaled a heavy breath. James laughed and Remus grinned from the corner of his mouth.
"What? It's true! Look at that mulish face-"
Jokes and short laughter bubbled from the surrounding adults, but Harry made to face Ron. Ron met his eyes, all sheepish gazes, and softening mouth, and Harry shrugged a deliberately easy shoulder, instant forgiveness between them. Ron smiled back, straightening, and made to stand closer at Harry's side.
The adults pretended to be wrapped up in their own poking insults at one another.
Harry let the sour feelings fall away. What had happened, happened. That would never change, just like the memories that were yet to come. What mattered was what they did moving forwards, and Harry would rather have no one else at his side when it all came crashing down again.
The blue mist swirled and settled. Shapes from the environment of the new memory came clearly into being, and as Harry's eyes roamed over the darkened room, a cold feeling suddenly snatched up all of his waiting breath.
He knew this place. Shivers traveled up his spine.
He knew exactly where they were now.
BUM BUM BUUUUUUMMMM
I do plan to move on past the memories here very shortly and jump right back into the thick of it. I'll see you all very soon :)
~Missmusicluver