Written for Empress! Thank for being such a great team mate, and sorry this is so late!
His family was crazy.
And no, he wasn't being an angsty teenager, or over exaggerating. He had endured his mother turning a pumpkin into a carriage, his sister plonking down on a couch and not waking up until a fairy came around to say that she may have possibly made a mistake, and a toad just up and turning into a prince and then getting huffy upon discovering it was Charlie who kissed him.
(They still weren't allowed to talk about that last one.)
Seriously. The stuff he put up with was just ridiculous.
In fact, it would be safe to blame the whole predicament he had gotten stuck into on them.
But, he's getting ahead of himself.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
His name is Ronald Bilius Weasley. Fortunately, his family, although rather touched in the head, wasn't amongst those who liked to participate in the kingdom's tradition of piling names onto each other. It was in this way he hadn't ended up being Ronald Bilius Patrick Reginald Arthur Regan Thomas Weasley. It would make signing papers rather difficult, he thought.
And he had been all fine and dandy and happy, until his family had decided he needed a quest and adventure. Naturally, Ron had completely disagreed with this. But regardless, he had still ended up in the middle of nowhere with no supplies and no map.
He was completely and irrevocably screwed.
-X-
Ron sighed, irritably brushing aside another low hanging branch. There were tons of them in the area he had stumbled into last night, and he couldn't see more than a foot in front of him. He was water deprived, sleep deprived, food deprived, and every other sort of deprived, and that was putting him in an extremely bad mood. At this point, he doesn't even care what came across the path – it was going down.
As if fate was mocking him, he did trip across something only moments after the thought. It was, in fact, a human body asleep on the damp forest floor.
Ron stared. The figure stirred slightly at the motion, but didn't wake. Sunlight shone on the body, illuminating the face and bringing out a pale blush that seemed ever present.
Well, he thought glumly, there goes my plan of violence. He couldn't very well return home with the dismembered body of their prince after all. Especially if he had been the one to do it.
Biting his lip anxiously, Ron debated whether or not to leave him there. He knew the prince had gone off on his own quest, but that was a half a year ago. What were the chances of finding him here?
-X-
"I'm lost," he admitted sheepishly. "I forgot to bring a compass."
Ron shifted uncomfortably in the presence of royalty.
"That's er— too bad," he mumbled. "I'm lost too."
The prince, Harry was his name, brightened as an idea occurred to him. "Why don't we stick together? I'm sure we'll survive better by going together."
Ron simply shrugged his agreement.
-X-
Honestly, by the time the two of them stumbled across the huge ass tower in the middle of the clearing, they were too tired and not curious enough to explore it. Not to mention the fact that it was night time. They set up camp, and promptly fell asleep.
It was around midnight when Ron awoke with his hair on fire.
Naturally, he screamed and frantically put it out. This woke up Harry, who realized his hair was also on fire.
The cause of their nightly terror was a dragon swooping overhead.
A dragon.
Ron gaped at it, shock numbing his limbs. He watched at it dove for him, and the last thing he saw before passing out was a silhouette against the tower.
-X-
The second time awoke that night, it was to a soft, pillow and book filled bedroom.
Oh, he thought dreamily, I must have died.
That thought was promptly chased away with a girl in slacks wielding a baseball bat in his direction. Right behind her, tossed carelessly on a cushion, was Harry with a rather large lump on his head. Wide-eyed, he slowly raised his hands as a sign of submission.
She swung it, pointing it accusingly at him.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here? Did my parents send you to save me again?"
Ron stared at her, flabbergasted. "What?" he managed, before she narrowed her eyes at him.
"We're just travellers that got lost, I swear!"
She examined him closely, then gave a haughty sniff, turning away from him.
"Fine," she said. "Get out of here. I don't want to see either of you again. You can take Crookshanks back to where you were."
-X-
"Don't ask," he advised Harry when they're both relatively safe. "Let's just pretend it was all just a bad dream."
Harry gave him a confused look, but it's overshadowed by his relief at being back at the castle.
-X-
The next day, he wandered back into the forest, attempting to find the huge ass tower with a pillow and book filled room again.
(It only took three months and a day.)
"What are you doing here?" she snaped after he's almost assaulted by her dragon again. They're walking up the stairs to her bedroom, which was a much nicer way to enter than by dragon.
Ron shrugged, brushing off some leaves and twigs in his hair.
"Thought you might like some company."