Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I really wish I did, but nope. So I content myself with writing Fanfiction with my own little copy of him.
Author's Note: I do realize it's been a LONG LONG time since I last updated this story. Sorry! I was damn busy in college. Those of your who have been following international sports news, you might have heard that Singapore won the bid to host the world's first Youth Olympic Games. Yeah. I was involved in that.
Harry's eyes flew open with a start.
Where am I?
The surroundings had changed – from what, he didn't recall – .
He was lying on a hard bed in an enclosed room. Opposite from the bed was a door.
Harry sat up – and clutched his head, wincing as stabs of pain lanced through his skull.
As though on cue, the door swung open and a vaguely familiar, pudgy figure strode in.
"Ah, you're awake, Mr. Potter," it remarked acidly. "As you're certainly in no condition to travel alone, I took the – ah, liberty – of contacting a friend of yours."
A slight figure materialized at the pudgy figure's side. Harry blinked, and Hermione's familiar features slid into focus.
"Hermione," he muttered thickly, conscious of how hoarse he sounded.
She did not move to Harry's side immediately, exchanging low words with Dr. Roberts. Once he had departed, Hermione approached him, squeezing his hand gently.
"Are you alright, Harry? Dr. Roberts was saying that you were shouting…about Voldemort…and Ron…"
He looked into her eyes – and caught a glimpse of long-repressed pain within. Yet Harry could not be kind.
"I saw them. They kept coming for me. Ron…he said I killed him…"
Hermione buried her face in Harry's chest to stifle an involuntary sob and automatically, he wrapped his arms around her.
"It…wasn't your fault, Harry."
Eventually, Hermione composed herself sufficiently to force those words out. She pulled away from him abruptly, forcing Harry to meet her gaze. Fierce determination burned there, the same quality that had carried Hermione through the many trials the Trio had faced together.
"What you killed wasn't…him…"
Involuntarily, Harry's mind revisited the dark cave of his nightmares:
A dark cave. Ron, Harry and Hermione were walking, wands raised.
"Any sign of him, get out," hissed Harry sharply, his face set. "It's between him and me."
Ron wheeled about sharply, fixing him with a famous Weasley glare.
"You've got to be kidding me, mate. We're not about to turn and run like scared rabbits because of some stupid prophecy – "
"Ron – " began Hermione warningly.
But she never finished her sentence.
He never knew which one of them had did it. Someone's foot hit a rock, triggering the trap.
And let all hell break loose.
Dementors swarmed out of nowhere, filling the Trio with the familiar cold wave of despair. Caught of guard, it took a while for them to retaliate.
"Expecto patronum!"
Hermione's otter was the first to materialize, scattering the first few Dementors. Ron's Jack Russell terrier and Harry's stag were quick to join it, destroying a few as they passed, exploding in black wisps of smoke.
And then things went horribly wrong.
A Dementor at the back of the horde glided up to the three Patronuses – ignoring its fleeing comrades – and seized Ron's.
Before Harry, Ron and Hermione could react, it doffed its hood, revealing its horrible sucker and sucked the entire Patronus up.
Harry's stag rushed into action, catching the creature where its waist should have been and sending it flying into the cave wall. Merely rebounding from it, the Dementor swooped back into the fray and seized the Patronus by the horns.
A newly-conjured Patronus from Ron soared up and snapped at the Dementor's hood, forcing it to relinquish its hold. Hermione's otter seized the opportunity to claw at the sucker.
Suddenly, a fresh, overwhelming feeling of utter misery swept over the Trio.
The three Patronuses vanished, and the Dementor moved forward with lightning speed towards its chosen victim.
In that heartbeat, Ron acted purely out of instinct, the culmination of years of dogged loyalty.
He leapt in front of Harry, so the Dementor's scaly rotting arms embraced him instead.
"RON! NO!" shouted Harry and Hermione simultaneously.
He had no time to say anything, not even to scream, when the Dementor clamped its jaws over Ron's face.
Tears poured down Harry's face as he frantically tried to reconjure his Patronus.
Concentrate! He tried to think of happy thoughts but all he could see was Ron laughing, young Ron on his broomstick with the wind through his hair…
Hermione was screaming, firing useless curses which flew harmlessly through the Dementor while Ron struggled violently in its Kiss.
Abruptly, Ron's legs stopped kicking and the Dementor cast him aside, like a useless rag doll.
His eyes were wide open, staring vacantly into space. Drool trickled slowly from the corner of his mouth. Clearly, nobody was there anymore.
With a burst of emotion, a massive stag and otter, twice the size of any Patronus ever conjured and shining with the radiance of the Sun, exploded from the ends of Harry's and Hermione's wands and attacked the Dementor.
It imploded with a rush of inky black wisps, taking the two supercharged Patronuses with it.
Harry and Hermione fell to their knees beside Ron's sprawled figure, emotion heaving in their chests, too stunned to cry.
With a start, Harry jerked back into the present as he became aware of Hermione's sobs filling the enclosed room. A cold breeze on his face made him realize he'd been crying too.
Roughly wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt, Harry tenderly stroked Hermione's hair in a feeble attempt to calm them both.
Unwillingly, his mind flashed back to the sequence of fateful events:
Time had passed since the incident in the cave.
Ron was seated on the veranda of The Burrow, a blanket tucked around his legs. Silently, Harry and Hermione entered the house and Mrs. Weasley came forward to meet them.
"Is it over?" she asked in hushed tones.
Harry swallowed, then nodded. "He vanished into the ocean before my eyes. We never retrieved a body."
She clasped her hands over her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. "Thank Merlin – "
"How is he?" interjected Hermione gently, who had up till then been silent.
Mrs. Weasley suddenly burst into tears.
"I can't take it anymore," she sobbed, chest heaving with emotion. "That's not my son out there, in that chair…that's not my Ron…I can't bear to see those empty eyes…"
They took their turns in comforting her before stepping out onto the veranda.
Ron stared straight ahead, oblivious to their arrival.
"Hey, mate," said Harry softly. "It's over. He's gone for good."
No reply. No indication that he ever heard.
A tear slid slowly down Hermione's cheek. Bending forward, she squeezed one of the slack hands resting on his lap. "Don't worry, Ron. We'll take care of you."
A trickle of drool ran down his cheek and she mopped it with the towel that hung at the side of the chair, specifically for that purpose.
Harry swore, and stormed from them as more tears ran down Hermione's face. It wasn't easy at all for them to see him, once so full of life, in this condition: an empty husk. Mrs. Weasley was right. Ron was gone.
Later that evening, the entire Weasley family plus all of Ron's friends gathered in The Burrow to discuss something of grave importance: setting Ron free. Not everyone was for the idea.
"Are you telling me you're going to kill Ron?!" roared Dean Thomas, blue eyes widening with righteous fury.
"That – husk – out there isn't Ron anymore, Dean!" yelled Harry, banging his fist on the table. "Ron is long dead. We are setting his body free!"
With a final glare, Dean stormed out into the night, swearing never to speak with Harry nor Hermione again.
Eventually, everyone reached a consensus and took their turns going out and saying goodbye. Last of all were Harry and Hermione.
When they were done, Harry raised his wand slowly, tears streaming down and pointed it at Ron.
"Avada kedavra!"
The funeral service was modest, considering it was for one of the greatest heroes of the Light. That night, Harry's nightmares began.
Author's Note: That's it for this chapter. Inspired by a distant relative of mine who was terminally ill and whose immediate family opted for euthanasia.