Talking To Ron

"So he's sitting there in the cell just like I was and he's wishing he was dead..."

"Did you ever wish you were dead during your captivity?" Madam Boo asked him without any judgement or expectations of him.

Ron took a deep breath in and out as he thought.

"I wanted to swap a few times," he admitted with a shrug.

"Swap?"

Ron nodded.

"Y'know, like when they were crippling my arms and Danny got taken away. I wanted to take his place."

Madam Boo nodded.

"Jimmy as well," Ron said as he shifted in his seat. "He was the youngest, he was only se-sevent-t-teen."

"Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths for me, Ron," Boo instructed him.

Ron did what she asked and after a while he cracked his eyelid open to peek back at her. She was smiling at him, silently laughing because he was cheating, and he chortled and sat up in his chair.

"Sorry," he mumbled like a naughty schoolboy.

"No problem," Boo said as she poured a glass of water for herself before offering some to him. "Your stutter isn't as frequent as it used to be, is it?"

Ron held out his glass and watched her top it up.

"No, it still sneaks up on me and once I start it's like..." He took a sip of the water swallowed and continued. "It's like pins and needles. Y'know when your foot goes dead and you have to just bang it on the floor and wriggle your toes until you get the feeling back again?"

Boo nodded.

"It's like that. I have to keep banging away at it until I shake it off and I can't skip over it and keep talking. It freezes me up on the spot."

Boo set her glass on a folded napkin and Ron realised his glass was dripping all over the desk. He sat forward and lifted the glass, mopping up the ring of water with his sleeve apologetically. She smiled at him, lifted her glass to her lips again, and then set it down beside the napkin.

"What are you going to do now?" She smirked mischievously.

"What?" Ron frowned, corners of his mouth turning up.

"Well now, I'm making a mess, so are you going to do the same or keep holding onto your glass so it drips all over your lap?"

Ron narrowed his eyes and then lowered his glass down to set in on the rug at his feet.

Boo laughed.

"You have a defiant streak then?"

Ron shrugged.

"Sometimes."

"Do you tend to do the exact opposite of what your friends ask you to do?"

"No," Ron said sincerely.

"What about if your siblings told you to do something?"

Ron smirked.

"Well, I'd probably be a little difficult if they were bossing me around, yeah."

"And if your mother badgered you to do something for her?"

"I'd do everything I could to get out of it!" Ron grinned.

"You like to be challenged, to rebel?" Boo suggested.

Ron shrugged.

"You were asked to do something by that Death Eater and your instinct is to deny him what he wants, right?"

Ron drew in a sharp breath and sat back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest.

"I want to do what's right. I just don't know what that is as far as he's concerned."

"What if I told you killing him was right and set the papers down in front of you for you to sign? Would you just do it?"

"No."

"Do you think he deserves to die?" Boo asked, tilting her head to one side.

Ron shrugged.

"Do you think he should be punished?" she pressed.

"Yes!" Ron said emphatically.

Madam Boo hesitated for a moment before leaning over the desk, looking Ron in the eye.

"Did you finally come to see me in the hope that I would make this decision for you?"

Ron looked down at his hands in his lap and shook his head.

"What happened to make you come here, Ron?"

He swallowed and shifted in his seat. He licked his lips and cleared his throat before looking up again, eyes averted, and began to speak.

"I love my girlfriend."

Boo nodded.

"So you came because she asked you to?"

"No," Ron mumbled and squirmed again, "I love my girlfriend."

Boo stared at him for a moment before nodding.

"Have you been physically intimate with each other before?"

"Before V-Venlo, yeah, just once." He nodded.

"And since?"

Ron jumped up from the chair, knocked over the water at his feet and swore under his breath. He dropped to his knees and began to clean it up. He picked up the glass and set it on top of the desk and then siphoned the water out of the rug with his wand.

"I'm gonna go home now," Ron said distractedly. "I gotta g-g-go. I didn't tell anyone where I wa-w-"

"Go, Ron," Madam Boo said with an encouraging nod.

He wiped his wet hands on his jeans and scurried for the door.

"Thanks."

"Are you coming back tomorrow?" she called after him.

He froze at the door and cringed slightly.

"Do I have to?"

"You don't have to do anything," Boo said calmly. "So shall I expect you again tomorrow, Ron?"

He turned the door handle and nodded.

"Yeah."

Ron sat opposite Lee and closed his eyes. Lee's hands were on his shoulders and Harry sat to one side reading the booklet from the speech therapist aloud.

"Okay, so now you need to hold his head gently, don't cover his ears, though."

Lee did as instructed and Ron sat perfectly still.

"Ron?" Harry asked, leaning forward to look at the peaceful face between Lee's hands.

"Go on," Ron said as he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs nervously before settling down again.

"Repeat after me, okay?" Harry said, waiting for Ron to nod before going on. "Okay, babble..."

"Babble."

"Babel."

"Babel."

"Babied."

"Babied."

Harry gave Lee a nod and the dreadlocked wizard began talking to Ron in an even tone.

"Tell me where my hands are, Ron?"

"On my head," Ron responded.

"Baboon." Harry said in the same way he'd spoken the other prompts.

"Baboon," Ron echoed.

Lee's hands slid down and held Ron very gently on either side of his neck.

"Where now?" he asked Ron as Harry prepared to throw another word at him.

"My throat," Ron said with a small crinkle in his forehead.

"Bacchanalian."

"Bacchanalian!" Ron blurted just as Lee's hands slid down his throat and pressed flat against his chest. "Chest!"

"Backbite," Harry said, picking up speed now, just as the booklet said he should.

"Backbi-bite," Ron said, flinching at his hesitation.

"It's okay," Lee whispered, hands sliding down to Ron's stomach. "Where am I now?"

"Backbone," Harry said quickly.

"Belly...Backbone!" Ron said in response to both of them.

Lee pushed his hands around Ron's waist and let them settle on the small of his back. Harry followed the instruction to do his best to confuse Ron's mind between words and sensations.

"Backside," Harry said, eyes wide as they stared at Lee who was still waiting for Ron to name the place his hands were resting.

"B-Ba-Back!" Ron said, one of his hands lifting away from his lap to wave before him as if batting away other thoughts. "Back."

"Backside, Ron," Harry repeated.

"Backside," Ron said with a deep nod of determination.

"Biceps," Harry said and nodded to Lee who then quickly grabbed Ron around the upper arms.

"Where am I now?" Lee demanded.

"Biceps, biceps!" Ron said hurriedly, his face was crinkled with concentration and his breathing was picking up speed.

Harry winced and read aloud the final word just as Lee removed his hands from Ron altogether.

"Bollocks," Harry said firmly.

Ron's eyes opened wide. He grabbed Lee by the wrists and shoved him backwards over the coffee table, shouting.

"No!"

Harry put the leaflet down and pulled Ron back onto the armchair again.

"Lee wasn't going to touch you that time…that was the last test," Harry explained.

Ron was panting and looking from one of them to the other.

"So w-what was the point of that?" he demanded.

"Forget the point, Ron," Harry smiled sympathetically. "You passed."

"Huh?" Ron frowned.

Lee grinned and sat beside him, throwing his arm around Ron's shoulders, giving him a bracing, blokey hug.

"You don't have to do speech therapy anymore, Ron," the dreadlocked wizard grinned. "Harry said the Healer told him that more than five stammers was a fail and you'd need to keep practicing. You only went a couple of times, mate."

"Exactly," Harry nodded happily. "You stormed it."

"But I still do it," Ron frowned. "I just did it then, when we finished."

"Well, I do it once in a while. Do you stumble over your words sometimes, Lee?" Harry smiled breezily to the other wizard.

"'Course, I do."

Ron didn't look as if he was buying this and Harry threw the leaflet down and gave him a friendly pat on the back.

"You knew this wasn't going to be cured, Ron. But it's better. You have control over it now, don't you?"

Ron shrugged.

"You do!" Lee said, shoving him. "You used to stutter when you were perfectly calm and now you only stutter when you're really stressed out and even then you can put a lid on it. You've done brilliantly."

Ron pinked in the ears a little and smiled.

"I had my best brothers on the job, didn't I?"

"So do you remember your dreams, Ron?"

"The dreams or the nightmares?" Ron said, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes questioningly.

"The nightmares, what do you remember of them?"

Ron shrugged and shook his head with a deep, world-weary sigh.

"It's like a thick wet fog in front of one of those moving Muggle pictures. I see stuff that happened and it all blurs and smudges into other stuff from much later, then the fog shifts and I'm collapsing onto the bed at the safe house and thinking about going home the next day."

"So you still think about the attack on the safe house as well as the time in the cells?" Boo said, scratching the underside of her chin with her knuckles.

"Just before I wake up in the morning, mostly." Ron said thoughtfully. "Just as I get kicked in the head, I wake up."

"When you woke up from being kicked in the head, for real, I mean, what was the first thing you saw and heard?"

"Shouting and fighting. Everybody was scrapping and then we were lined up against the wall and taken one by one into the cells." Ron played with a broken quill on the desk as he spoke.

"Was it then you were singled out by the Puppet Master or later?" Boo asked, watching him carve a notch into the desk with the broken nib.

"Later," Ron said before scrunching up his face and looking to the ceiling. "Wait, no, he did start on me there. He was breathing right into my face and shoved me against the wall. Knocked me down, punched me in the back and then ordered me to get up again, otherwise he'd kill the people on either side of me."

"So, you were selected from the moment he saw you?"

Ron shrugged and sighed.

"Maybe."

"Do you think he was specifically looking for you at the safe house?"

"No," Ron said with certainty. "He was gloating over me at the safe house but I was just another body then. He left to round up more."

"So you did something after you woke up to make him notice you?" Boo pushed.

Ron closed his eyes and thought hard. Eventually, he shook his head.

"No, not any more than the others. Ernie wa..." Ron blanked for a moment before clearing his throat and continuing, "Ernie was fighting the whole time. During the ambush. When I woke up he was still fighting. They had to give him a real going over before they dumped him in his cell."

"So you think Ernie was the most noticeable?"

"Ernie, Krum--he was famous, wasn't he--Danny was playing his Auror card until they threatened to start killing the rest of us...um." Ron tried to un-cloud the memory. "I just can't order this stuff in my head any more. I'm sorry."

"You siphoned off the memories for the trial and then didn't put them back. Is that right?"

Ron nodded.

"Uh-huh."

"It hasn't taken the memory away?"

"No."

"Is the memory less painful?"

"No."

"Is it duller, fuzzier in your mind?"

"Kinda," Ron said with a single nod.

"I understand you are quite an impressive wizard, Ron," Madam Boo said, appearing to change tack.

"Uh...not really," Ron snorted.

"So you can't produce a corporeal Patronus then? I have the wrong information?"

"Well no, I can do that, but Harry taught me. He's the impressive one."

"A teacher is only as good as their student, Ron," Boo said with a satisfied smile. "Tell me though, have you tried to produce one since you were free?"

"No, I've had no need to."

"Would you try for me now?"

Ron look puzzled as he got to his feet and withdrew his wand. He concentrated for a moment before aiming his wand.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A small silvery dog burst forth from the jet of light sprouting out of his wand and bounded across the room. Ron whistled to it and it ran back to him, wagging its tail. Ron twirled his finger in tight circles and the dog spun around, chasing its tail until it faded into a cloud of silver light.

He turned to look back at Madam Boo.

"There ya go, was that what you wanted?" he asked hopefully.

She smiled broadly.

"I understand you have to harness a wonderful memory in order to produce something like that, Ron."

"Yeah, think happy thoughts and all that bollocks." He shrugged with a grin.

"Are your happy thoughts cloudy like the unhappy ones?"

He blinked and sat back down again.

"No."

"Maybe next time you find yourself in a foggy dream or nightmare you could cast a Patronus and...play fetch?"

They both laughed.

"So how are things going with you then, runt?" Charlie said as he ruffled his little brother's hair and wandered over to the larder to grab a Butterbeer. "Want one?"

"Fine and no thanks. I'm not allowed," Ron said with a carefree shrug of the shoulders.

Charlie closed the door to the larder and removed the cap from his bottle.

"What d'ya mean you're not allowed?"

"I'm not allowed alcohol for a month. Apparently, I have a very low tolerance for Sloe-V and it's gonna take twenty-eight days to get it out of my system."

Charlie's face broke into a wide grin.

"Are you telling me you're going to be drunk for the next twenty-eight days?"

Ron gave a tut and rolled his eyes.

"No! It just means if I have any alcohol, it'll react to my blood and make me go all loopy like I'm hammered. The Sloe-V thins the blood or something...also if I cut myself you have to take me to hospital. Now I think of it, I probably should have mentioned that bit first."

Charlie gaped at his little brother.

"Oh d'ya think so?" he said before leaning over and clouting Ron around the back of the head. "In future all circumstances that end with the words 'you have to take me to hospital' are to be told to me straight away."

Ron chuckled and looked back down at some papers he had spread out in front of him. He chewed on his bottom lips thoughtfully and then reached for a quill.

"Whatcha doin'?" Charlie said, leaning over and trying to read the papers upside-down.

"Propositioning the new Head of International Operations," Ron mumbled as he scribbled something down on the paper nearest to him and ticked several 'ticky boxes'.

"Does Hermione know?" Charlie snorted.

Ron lifted his eyes but didn't raise his head to give his brother a withering look and then he signed and dated the bottom of the paper and set it to one side for the ink to dry.

"Speech therapy's over and I'm enrolling in advanced Dutch at the linguistics academy. By the time the International Ops bloke gets back to me, I'll be fluent and can apply for an interpreter job with the Ministry."

Charlie furrowed his brow and considered Ron carefully for a moment.

"You still want to get into that, do you?"

Ron looked up, met Charlie's eyes for a moment, and nodded. Charlie necked half his bottle of Butterbeer in one and set it down again with a burp. Ron sniggered and signed and dated a second page before shuffling the papers together and pushing them to one side.

"It's good to see you like this, runt," Charlie said as he propped his head up with one hand, elbow on the table.

"It's nice to be looked at as if I'm normal," Ron said frankly.

"You're not normal," Charlie grinned. "You're exceptional!"

"You're delusional," Ron chuckled, "like that Skeeter woman who thought Harry and Hermione were a perfect couple!"

Charlie threw back his head and laughed before swigging back some more Butterbeer and summoning another from the cupboard with his wand. Ron arched an eyebrow at him and eyed the bottles before him.

"Oh, only house-elves get drunk on Butterbeer, it's weak as hell," Charlie scoffed. He flicked his wand at his cloak which hung on a hook by the front door and a slab of Honeydukes' chocolate flew towards him. "Here ya go, I picked you up your drug of choice."

"Ta!" Ron said as he tore open the paper and broke off a chunk.

Charlie watched him and shook his head in amazement.

"Wha?" Ron asked thickly.

"Just you, that's all. You'll never stop being like this, will you?"

Ron wrinkled his eyebrows together and scrunched up his nose.

"I mean you'll never forget what it felt like to be a kid. You'll always have that child-like enthusiasm in you."

Ron sat back and spoke through a mouth full of melting chocolate.

"Why is it I feel like I'm being insulted?"

"You're not!" Charlie cackled. "It's a compliment I assure you. After everything you went through in your childhood, you still managed to stay a child and I'm really glad. I'm glad you didn't go all bitter and tired and...Percy on us."

Ron swallowed his mouthful and licked his fingers.

"Percy's alright," Ron said reasonably. "I feel sorry for the bloke. He gets judged in comparison to us and told there's something wrong with him because he's different. What makes us so great that he should change?"

"He was a very old five-year-old though Ron--he was born an old codger!"

Ron and Charlie laughed. Charlie drained his first bottle and Ron broke off another piece of chocolate and popped it into his mouth. They sat in comfortable silence for some time before Charlie scraped his chair along the floor and moved around the table so he could confide in Ron discreetly.

"Hey, runt," he began with a nudge to Ron's elbow, "I'm going to be starting work in Estonia next week and I wanted to talk to you before I left."

Ron nudged him back.

"I'm gonna be okay. I know you miss work, and you've spent way too much time at home for you. I bet you're craving living rough and eating raw meat and pounding on your bare chest at dawn while Valkyries with ginormous chests ride dragons around your head."

Charlie spat his mouthful of Butterbeer all over the table.

"That's how you picture me at work?"

"I didn't have to picture it. Fred drew a really graphic cartoon for me once!" Ron said brightly.

Charlie wiped his mouth and rolled his eyes.

"I worry about him sometimes."

"Ah, that's your first mistake," Ron said with a sigh. "You should worry about Fred at all times."

Charlie chortled and, gradually, his smile faded, staring down at the table top once again.

"Fred lost it at the Embassy, didn't he?" Ron asked.

Charlie swallowed and lifted his head again.

"He gave one of those sods a damn good beating, if that's what you're talking about, yeah."

"Ginny said he scared her."

"Not me," Charlie said adamantly. "I wanted to do it too. He'd seen what they were doing to you and he needed to make them pay."

Ron summoned a jug of elderflower and poured himself a glass. He took a sip and then fixed Charlie's gaze with his expressive blue eyes.

"He didn't kill him though, did he?"

"No, he didn't."

Ron blinked, chewed on his bottom lip, and then drew a line in the condensation down the side of his glass with his little finger.

"Did you keep hitting him after he died, Charlie?"

Charlie knew they both needed to have this conversation before he left but now that the time had come, he wanted to run away.

"I did, yeah."

"They don't bleed the same once their dead, do they?" Ron said in a detached way. "I knew when that Death Eater I fought in the woods was gone because the blood stopped gushing."

Charlie nodded.

"I just wanted to obliterate him from existence. I wanted to erase his smug face," Charlie said before glugging on his Butterbeer. "The things he was saying about you...what he said he'd done...he said...said you'd..." Charlie drank deeply from the bottle again.

"Tell me, Charlie," Ron said, shuffling forward on his chair. "I need to have him dead in my head, too. Please tell me."

"He said you liked it and you were begging him for it," Charlie said, sounding disgusted. "He said you offered yourself to him and you'd kissed him and...he just twisted what really went on in there to make me think he'd broken you and that he'd raped you."

"Sounds like him." Ron nodded.

"He was mocking me as I killed him. He was smiling at me long after I'd knocked his teeth out. I couldn't stop pounding his face in," Charlie said, both hands gripping the bottle tightly. "He touched you and he was laughing about it so I just hit him and hit him and hit him..."

"Mine died with a fight," Ron said as he stared over his brother's shoulder into the middle distance. "I had to stop him killing me and then I had to stop him alerting the others. They were all lo-looking for me."

Ron swallowed and bowed his head and hummed a musical scale, high note to low, and then lifted his head and carried on.

"Then I knew they'd want a body and I needed a disguise, so I had to disfigure him. I mutilated his face with a rock and changed his hair colour and swapped clothes. I killed him, I mutilated his corpse, and then I undressed him."

"You escaped. You fought for your freedom and you survived," Charlie said fiercely.

"Did it make it better for you? After you killed him, was it like...justice?" Ron asked.

"It was like putting down a rabid dragon before it tore apart the local village," Charlie said with a sad sigh. "It was a necessity, not a triumph."

Ron nodded.

"But I really relished that bastard's death."

"He caused a lot of pain, Charlie," Ron said, reaching over and squeezing his forearm.

"So did that scum in Azkaban, Ron," Charlie said firmly. "Don't let him get into your head. He let you go because it didn't interfere with him running out on his brotherhood. If you'd have been standing in his way...he'd have ended you without a second thought."

"Yeah," Ron said heavily, "I know he would've."