Harry walked up and down, thinking: I need to look at myself in the mirror… I need to look at myself in the mirror…
And it appeared, a door in the solid stone. Harry pushed it open and stepped in, finding a mirror…
…and two armchairs…
and himself, seated in one of them.
Without conscious thought, his Defense reflexes kicked in and he had his wand out and trained on the impostor before the other had fully registered he was even there.
"Oh, NO!" Ron leapt up from the armchair, but it was too late: Harry had him at wandpoint, and the look in his eyes was flinty. "Harry, it's me! It's Ron!" he shouted before he got hexed, or worse.
"Stay where you are." Harry's eyes flickered, but his wand remained firm.
Ron could see Harry taking him in from head to toe, Harry in every detail, from the glasses to the lightning scar to the bleeding hand to the Muggle shoes Hermione called… flimsolls? Ron started to panic. He didn't know what kind of hexes Harry would throw at a potential Death Eater, and he certainly didn't mean to wait and find out. "Harry, I swear it's me, Ron! I can prove it to you! Ask me anything! Anything only I would know!"
He could see the mental gears turning, and when his friend finally spoke, Ron flinched at the coldness in Harry's gaze.
"What does your Mum give you every Christmas?"
"A Weasley jumper."
"What colour?"
"Maroon."
"What did who do when you were six that made your greatest fear worse?"
"FredandGeorge, turned, my teddy bear, into a spider," he choked out, disjointedly.
"What do the twins call you sometimes?"
Ron resented this, but answered, "Ronnikins."
"Not good enough." Harry's eyes turned colder, if that was possible.
"Ickle Ronnikins!" Ron burst out. "Harry, come on…"
"What else do they call you sometimes?"
"Little bro. Harry…"
The freezing eyes never wavered. For a moment, Ron understood why Harry was such a powerful wizard, or he would have done if he weren't in imminent danger of being hexed into oblivion. "What colour's your bedspread?"
"Orange."
"What's on the poster behind your bed?"
For a panicky moment Ron drew a blank. Then he visualized his room, but just as the poster of the Cannons' goalkeeper making a tricky save appeared in his mind's eye, he felt himself swimming, morphing back, and he closed his eyes because he felt sick and didn't know what to do. Then he opened his eyes, his own again, and looked, looked down from his own height now, into Harry's surprised, marginally more trusting face – only marginally, though, because the "how-do-I-know-you're-not-a-Death-Eater" look had been replaced by a "why-on-earth-are-you-Polyjuicing-into-me" look.
Completely baffled now, Harry lowered his wand. He stared at Ron, trying to work out why Ron would want to turn into him. What's going on? It was impossibly strange to see himself turning into Ron, and stranger still now to see Ron wearing his, Harry's, glasses. As though noticing his gaze, Ron sheepishly took them off with his bleeding hand…
Now why would Ron's hand be—Wait a minute.
And in a blinding flash of agonized betrayal, the explanation came crashing down on Harry in terrible detail: in an impossibly long instant, he understood with awful clarity precisely why 'Umbridge' had reassigned him to the toilets, the truth about the 'detentions with Snape', and why Ron's hand had bloody words carved into it. His mouth fell open as he stared at Ron, and from Ron's expression of wide-eyed horror, Ron knew he'd worked it out.
Their eyes locked in silence for long moments, and then Harry blurted in pain: "How could you—" Speechless, he tried again: "How could you—" but what words were there to describe the enormity of this detailed, systematic betrayal?
Hardly of his own volition, he whispered: "How could you?"
"Harry, I can explain this—"
"NO, YOU CAN'T!" Harry exploded. "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP HIDING THINGS FROM ME? I'M NOT A CHILD!"
Ron's stricken expression almost made him relent – almost, but not quite. "Harry, you'd never have let me…"
"YOU'RE RIGHT, I WOULDN'T!" Harry screamed. "BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? THAT DOESN'T GIVE YOU AN EXCUSE TO GO BEHIND MY BACK! FIRST 'DUMBLEDORE MADE YOU SWEAR', AND NOW THIS! I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF!" He paused, breathing hard. "I can't believe this! Hermione put you up to this, didn't she?"
Ron looked stung. "She didn't 'put me up' to anything, mate."
"Oh, so it was your brilliant idea, all by yourself? I don't believe it. She helped you with the Polyjuice, you're not good enough at Potions to have done it all by yourself," he said coldly. He knew he was being savage, but was past caring.
"W-well, yeah, she did – but," Ron added loyally, "it was my idea, and—"
Harry took a deep breath. "So you were in it together." When he thought of the organized nature of their betrayal – not only keeping things from him and making up excuses, but contriving a detailed fabrication and duping him into believing it – he felt sick. "There never were any detentions with Snape, were there?" he asked quietly.
"N—no, Harry, I'm sorry—" Ron gulped as Harry shook his head in disbelief—"but we just couldn't – I couldn't stand it any more – Harry, you've got to und—"
"What have I got to understand?" Harry snapped. "That you're together in the know, and leaving me out AGAIN? Only this is worse – it's not just that you didn't bother to tell me, now you're planning things behind my back, making up things that aren't true and tricking me into believing them like some kind of idiot! Happy now that you and Hermione have made a fool of me?" he stormed savagely.
"Harry," Ron advanced towards him, palms up in a placating gesture. A trickle of blood wended its way slowly down his right palm, between his second and third fingers. He came closer. "Look, mate, we—"
The 'we' – not including him – made Harry see red. "Shut up!" He raised his hands to Ron's chest and pushed him away, hard.
Ron lurched backwards, but then took another step towards him. The look in his eyes made Harry even angrier. Ron took another step forward; they were almost touching. "Harry, please – we just didn't want you to go to any more of those awful det-"
"GET OFF!" Ron's tall form looming so close to him filled Harry with disgust, and this time he shoved Ron away so fiercely that he tripped and fell backwards onto his bum. Harry's glasses fell off and he fumbled for them on the floor, not that he could see all that well; anger was filling his vision with a red haze. "STOP DOING THINGS FOR MY OWN GOOD! JUST STOP IT! I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF BEING KEPT IN THE DARK! I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF BEING LIED TO!" He was gasping for breath now. "How do you expect me to trust anything you say after this?" He looked down at the blurred figure of Ron, lounging on his side on the flagstone, with utter contempt. "I've HAD it with the two of you. Just stay away from me. I'll handle things myself from now on."
Finally finding his glasses, he pulled them on and stormed out of the Room of Requirement, seething anger successfully covering up the aching void in his heart.
Ron stayed curled up on his side, breathing hard against the pain. He'd reached behind him to break his fall; when his injured hand had hit the flagstones, he'd felt the jolt of screaming agony up his entire arm. He curled up protectively around it, gripping his wrist with his left hand, Harry's words floating over his head through the pain. The fall seemed to have jolted the cuts; his whole arm throbbed, blood was welling up again, and he didn't care. He heard a keening sound, and was surprised to find it was coming from him.
Pull yourself together, Weasley, he thought bracingly. You knew this might happen, well, now it's happened, that's all. He'll come round. But he wasn't sure he believed it, and the keening sound started up again. There was a coldness around his right ear now, and it took him a moment to realize that it was the chill of his tears, rolling sideways down his cheeks and soaking into his hair.
Pull yourself together, man! he chided himself furiously. Hermione'll be coming in soon, you want her to see you looking like this?
Ron took a shuddering breath, then another, trying for calm and collected. Squeezing his eyes shut, he slowly used his good hand to pull himself upright, dragging himself into the chair by main force of will. He plunged his hand blindly into the bowl. He felt the worst of the pulsing-hot pain recede, but there was no potion that could push away the heavy, sinking feeling in his heart.