One Eyed Alchemy Chapter 10.
The roar of thunder shook the heavens, as Ron jerked upright. His best mate gripping his shoulders and shaking him with a fervor. The voice coming from his friends mouth muddled and unclear to the Weasley's ears but imparting a sense of importance nonetheless."-ogs-de" the redhead barely made out as he was pulled along through misty yet familiar halls.
A set of large doors opened out into a misty field, a dark night illuminated only by an occasional flash as the sky shouted booming thunder, wetness staining the silver cloak that Harry threw at him. Ron's lips moved, to speak words unknown to himself as they went uphill toward the looming darkness.
His bare feet felt the wet grass give way for muddy roads as large square-shaped figures loomed around them in the white cloudy space. The sound of a length of steel striking the earth as a dog howled in the distance. The earth shook as the mud burst forth into life, And six glowing eyes looked at the pair running through the rain. Muddy words shouted at him as a silver object was thrust into his hands. Throwing him back into a puddle.
The jaws closed around Harry…. And Ron screamed.
The cold January air flowed over Harry's skin, and the diamond encrusted heaven stretched out above his head as he sat cross-legged on one of Hogwarts towers. The cooing of the messenger birds in the owlery, and the chirping crickets in the woods guiding his breaths as he calmly read through chapter seven of "The standard book of Spells". His wand tracing the patterns in the tome.
Putting the tome down in front of him, he repeated the spell on the book. And silently repeated the movements with his wand until after a handful of repeated motions the tome lifted itself off the ground. A swish of the wand cancelled the spell and the young king continued his movements once again. Feeling his magic as it swirled through the ether and bound the bindings to his whim. Closing his eyes to concentrate as he felt the book lift itself again. He cancelled the spell and started over once again. Until eventually it would lift on the first wave every time.
Putting his wand aside, and synchronising his breathing with the owls cooing in the distance he continued focussing on the energies within his chest, reaching out in utmost silence as he attempted to windlessly grip the book, and slowly attempted to release it from the worlds grip.
"AAAAAAARGHHHH!"
Only to be interrupted as a shout pierced the heavens, the cooing owls scattered through the skies and the king half-jumped up, only to trip on his still-folded legs. Colliding face-first with the rooftiles. Quickly turning into a hawk he flew down his bedroom window and landed on his friends bedside before returning to a human shape.
"Morning Ron, do you know-"Harry asked as he was interrupted by a set of arms squeezing him at his center. Causing him to startle as he looked at Ron's face for the first time noticing some slight bags beneath his eyes. "Ron, What's wrong mate?"
"Nothing, Just a bad dream…" a sleepy Ron responded. "it's nothing but a bad dream" already starting to put on his Hogwarts uniform to ready himself for the day.
"Ron… Tell me honestly, how long has this been going on?" He grasped his friend by the shoulders.
"About three weeks maybe, must've started 'round the holiday?" the redhead answered, as he pulled on his pants and picked his wand from the bedside desk. Only for Harry's hand to snatch his wrist half-way through
"Ron, I think-" Harry tried to speak, only to be interrupted when Neville's curtain moved from his bed. "We'll talk about this after class allright?"
"Fine by me." Harry released his partner's wrists, and proceeded to ready himself for breakfast.
Ron's potions class flew by surprisingly quickly that morning, interrupted only by a sneering Snape correcting Seamus on an a badly minced root and Draco's failed attempt to discard a filthy skin in Harry's cauldron. And the trio soon found themselves in the Hogwarts library together. Their table covered in a variety of tomes. Hermione was currently leafing her way through a heavy leatherbound issue of "Slumbering Sights; a treatise on the symbology of visions". While Ron sat there with a blank look on his face.
"You're a see-er Ron.", the words his friend had said echoed through his shocked mind as he wrote into the notebook his friend had supplied him with. Writing down the dreams he'd had over the weeks since his friend had given him his new wand, Or at least writing down the two dreams he could remember.
"I think the first dream might be the most important…" the bushy haired witch said, glancing up from the heavy book, "Last night's dream might just have been a nightmare, or a long-term prophecy. But the former has to be a real vision."
At this his emerald-eyed friend turned towards Hermione. A baffled expression on his face that quickly resolved itself. "Because of Fluffy on the third floor." His mate said as if that made any sense whatsoever.
"Yeah, Fluffy did scare my pants off." He admitted, one arm rubbing his neck in shame.
"No Ron, I mean how you had no way of KNOWING Fluffy was in the castle. Yeah your experience might cause nightmares but it wouldn't cause nightmares before you know about it. That's proof the first dream is a genuine vision." She said as she turned around another page,
Honestly, Ron was still a bit disbelieving about the whole "prophetic vision" idea, the notion that he of all people might be a see-er was honestly ridiculous. But Hermione had a valid point that he really hadn't kown about the dog beforehand, so for now he was willing to go along with it.
"Unfortunately, most of the things from your dream are weird, incredibly ominous but also quite non-specific." She went on, only to go silent for a bit. "Well… most of the dream, the ending seems very specific". There it was, the elephant in the room, the one thing Ron most wanted NOT to discuss.
"Are you sure you don't remember more names?" His mate said in a shockingly nonchalant voice.
"I mean there we're more, but I didn't recognise any." He attempted to shrug off. "just the three."
His mate went silent for a bit now, eyes flicking to the corner of the library where their roommate was readying his copy of "One thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi". "Do wizards have phonebooks?" his friend asked after a little while. "Maybe if we can get you a list of names, you'd recognise some. That way we might find a pattern in the names."
"What's a phonebook?"
"It's like a public registry, with peoples names addresses and contact information" Hermione summarised. Annoyed at Ron's ignorance of all things muggle.
"You mean like the Floo Registry? There's probably a copy around here." He said, gesturing towards the library's many book-filled shelves. "would honestly surprise me if it wasn't."
"All right then, You continue trying to remember any details. Hermione continues her reading. And I'll try to find a copy." Harry said in a tone that brooked no room for argument, as he stood up and disappeared between the shelves.
In Harry's opinion, there were far too many books in this library, while intellectually he understood that there was only a single librarian. And that organising their shelves might be less important for more experienced wizards who could just summon the book they wanted on a whim. The lack of organisation in these shelves was starting to feel like a personal offense to him. A casual glance at the shelves told him that most of the books were put in seemingly at random with little to no care for any organisational structure he could recognise, books on merfolk were shelved right next to books on goblin history, which itself would be next to a book on constellations (the latter of which he'd added to his own ever-growing pile). And he had honestly this whole deal was becoming quite exhausting.
Luckily for him, he distantly heard the lock on Madam Pince's personal office turn, signalling the end to her breaktime. Deciding to put his pride in the matter aside, Harry turned around to ask her help.
Only for the pile of books in his hands to end up scattered all over the floor as he collided with the oversized form of Hagrid. Bending down to pick up his books, and stammering out a half-hearted apology for his clumsiness Harry's eyes fell upon an interesting title. "Dragon Species of Great Brittain." That book clearly hadn't come from his own pile. A further look at the various books strewn about revealed a variety of other books on related topics.
"Mister Hagrid? When you're done with these books, could you lend them to me?"
"Interested in dragons are yeh? Ah what am I sayin' course yeh are. Magnificent beasties aren't they" the man said dreamily, his overly large hands slamming into Harry's back, almost making him drop his books a second time. The giant looked over personal stack for a second, before picking out the slimmest book. "I reckon' that I'll finish this one here in a day or two, if yeh want yeh could prob'ly pick it up t'night?"
Politely accepting Hagrids invitation, Harry flagged down the librarian and returned to his friends table books in hand.
"No Ronald, put that down, the Tuatha should be first"
"Hey guys, I found the registry" Harry handed the book over, "Well in all honesty, Madam Pince found it for me, but what matters it we found it. What are you arguing about?"
"Currently? Trying to find a correct order in which to research Ron's visions." His bushy-haired companion answered.
"I still don't get why we need an "order" at all, can't we just start?"
"Because Ron..." Hermione said in a tone of voice that made clear her exasperation. "There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of gods out there. And there's no way we're going to find them ALL if we just pick up books at random. We need a system to ensure we don't waste time with the same god twice."
"Then let's just do it alphabetically right?" Ron shrugged, to Hermione's growing anger. Seeing that this situation was about to explode, and not wanting to anger Madam Pince, Harry decided to come to Hermione's help.
"That wouldn't work Ron, not unless we first had a full list of every god who'd ever lived. And even then it would be a major waste of time."
"See Harry gets it," Hermione approved. "If the god was just completely random, then order wouldn't matter. But this heretic god wants whatever it is in the 3rd floor corridor. Which gives us a lead."
"But we don't even know if my dream involves a god at all, and what lead?"
"Knowledge Ron. Whomever it is, they know about whatever is up there, they're invested in it. Which means it's more likely to be a local god. Hence starting with the Tuathe de Danann and other Celtic myths." Hermione nodded in affirmation, before taking over reaching for a large piece of Parchment and inking her quill.
"So we start with the major gods… and first write down each and every name we come across like so," Hermione wrote "Danu" at the top of the list as an example, followed soon by "Lugh, Dagda, Fall" and "Nuada". "Then we study their individual legends, writing down all names we come across as well."
Hermione grabbed yet another piece of parchment this time, and on it created a series of rows with the aforementioned names, and columns with such lables as "Hound", "Lyre/Music" and "Locust". "Then we write their names in the first column here and mark each field that is represented in their legend."
"And in doing so we'll develop a list of the most likely contenders for your vision." Harry finished. "That's a good plan Hermione."
"But that'll take ages, What if by that time..."Ron drawled off for a bit. Before continuing" And we still need to keep up with regular studies, this could take years!" Ron almost yelled, earning a stern shushing from Madam Pince.
Smaragdine eyes pierced Ron's; "Well, we best started then right?"
This chapter took a little while, because to write Ron's Prophetic dream sequence, I really needed to make certain I had the subject of the prophecy lined out already. Which meant making sure I knew exactly what I wanted to do there. Be aware that the dream sequence isn't going to be relevant for this year yet. It's a long-term prophecy that will become increasingly clear as Ron grows into his own oracular powers. So it's largely unimportant right now, besides for alerting Harry that Ron has oracular power, meaning they can actually start to plan around it now.
I deliberately attempted to harken back to Hagrid's famous "You're a wizard Harry" line in Ron's revelation. To hopefully establish how world-breaking it is from the characters perspective. To Harry that line was a beacon of hope in the darkness, the answer to his every prayer. And to Ron this revelation is much the same, it's just a slightly different prayer. (Harry wanted to be accepted, Ron wanting to be special. I hope it worked as intended but I suspect it might come across as more derivative?
Once again, my personal nemesis Hagrid returns. And its still hard as hell to write him because of the heavy accent and having to balance accent-representation with legibility. Really hope no ones offended by my attempts at the accent.
Currently proto-scrypting a RWBY crossover, got a Poll up to help figure out who should accompany Jaune. (No guarantees that nr.1 becomes it. Or that it ends up influencing it in the long run.)