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Chapter 5 – Partial Truths

Ron avoided talking to Ginny about what had happened for over a week. At first it was dead easy; for several days Ron was too weak to do much more than sit on the living room couch and read or listen to Ginny go through her pre-Hogwarts lessons with Molly. He even dozed off several times a day for embarrassing (but healing) naps. Since Molly was always nearby – teaching, cooking, knitting, or the thousand other mysterious things mothers so – Ginny never had a chance to talk to him in private.

It was obviously quite frustrating for the young witch, and she was scowling at Ron so much that she was sent out to de-gnome the garden by herself to "get you out of that sulk", as her mother put it. This didn't help her mood at all and Ron was concerned that she might try and confront him in front of their parents if pushed too far.

Even so, he still couldn't talk to her privately when he was better because as soon as he was well enough to get off the couch Molly gave him a list of chores to fill his afternoons as punishment for nicking her wand and "pulling a ridiculous stunt with it, honestly!" He was given plenty of time to rest and no chore was too strenuous for him, but it still took him days to get through the whole list under her watchful eye. Weekday mornings were of course devoted to the pre-Hogwarts lessons on reading, writing, and arithmetic that he and Ginny did together, which Ron found quite boring but managed to get through without suspicion by being even lazier and sloppier about it than normal.

He probably would have been done with the chores sooner, but his mum unfortunately overheard him muttering to himself as he painted the shed that she should be glad Ron had acted up because the twins weren't around anymore and the punishment chores were piling up. This earned him several more items on the list for his cheek.

Finally, Ron finished his punishment and was allowed to do whatever he wanted in the afternoons again. That day Ginny announced at lunch that she wanted to play hide and seek with him in the orchard, and the look she gave him said quite clearly what would happen if he didn't go with her.

Ron gulped nervously and tried his best not to choke on the sandwich that had turned to ashes in his mouth. He had thought long and hard during his punishment period about what he could tell her (manual labor was good for freeing up your mind to mull over problems). He had decided on a plan, but wasn't sure if Ginny would buy it.

He was a terrible liar, and so had decided to tell Ginny the truth… mostly. If she pushed too hard Ron would have to tell her the whole truth anyway, and if he didn't phrase it right she would believe him even if he described every memory of the future that he had.

After they had finished lunch and cleaned their dishes, Ron and Ginny silently walked out of the Burrow together. When they were a good distance away Ginny turned to him with an expectant look. "Well?"

Ron shook his head and lead Ginny further into the orchard. After a few minutes of deliberation he sat down in the shade of a tree in the middle of the orchard in a spot that was too far from the Burrow or the property boundaries for them to be overheard, but where he could see the kitchen door clearly. He didn't want to risk anyone hearing what he was going to say. It was flimsy enough for a nine-year-old to hear, if a grown wizard heard him…

Well, he just couldn't risk being overheard. He had 'accidentally' locked Wormtail in a desk drawer that morning when grabbing parchment for lessons. It wasn't a tactic he could use often, but this particular conversation was too sensitive for Ron to take any chances with the traitorous rat.

Ginny watched Ron with frank curiosity, which was more to his liking than her anger even though it was probably more dangerous. "What is with you, Ron?" she asked, "Since when are you so paranoid?"

Ron took a deep breath. Time to toss the dice, he thought to himself. "It's hard to explain. And I think it would be really, really bad if anyone else found out."

Ginny rolled her eyes, and Ron decided she thought he was exaggerating. "Do your best then, and you'd better not lie to me." Ginny sat with her back to a tree and Ron followed suit, careful to keep the kitchen door in his line of sight.

Ron had a number of half-truths he could tell his sister, but how much of the truth she got would depend on her. "What did you see last week?"

The question surprised her; she had probably thought he would start stammering excuses right away. "We were running," Ginny began slowly, "and I looked back to see how close you were. Something flew into you, and you collapsed. I thought you were possessed by a ghost or something!" her eyes were a bit wild, as if the memory terrified her.

Well, that decided it. He couldn't risk her thinking he might be possessed. Ron pulled a small penknife out of his robes. "What do you know about blood oaths?" he asked his sister.

She blinked at the apparent non sequitor, "Er, I know the penalty for breaking it's really bad. It drains some of your magic if you break it, right?"

Ron nodded. "It's also the only binding oath I know that doesn't need a wand." Ginny nodded her understanding. "This is really serious Ginny, and I can't tell you everything." He drew the knife across his palm, just hard enough to make it bleed. "But I need you to believe me, and this is the only way."

It was time to toss the dice. Letting a few drops of blood drip on the ground, Ron said the ritual words softly. "I swear by blood and by magic that I will not knowingly lie to my sister until this conversation is over."

A soft light sprung up around them, reflecting in Ginny's wide eyes. "Ron!" she hissed, "This is so dangerous! Mum will kill you if she finds out!"

"I know." Ron said simply. He was walking a very fine line, and there was a good chance Ginny would ask a question he couldn't dodge, and everything would come out. But it was more important that she promise not to tell anyone what had happened.

Best to get it over with quickly. "I saw the future, or at least a possible future." He stated. It was the simple truth, he did see all of it.

Ginny gasped. "How? What happens?"

Ron ignored her first question. "You-Know-Who came back. He k-killed a lot of people."

"What about the Ministry? What about Harry Potter?"

This young, her crush on the Boy-Who-Lived was still going strong. Ron might have laughed at the hope in Ginny's voice if thoughts of Harry didn't take him to very dark memories. "He died." Ron whispered, "They all died. We came so close… But he won. And now I have to fix it." Ron's voice broke in the middle but he didn't notice, too caught up in his misery to care.

For long minutes neither of them spoke. Finally Ginny broke the silence. "Do… do you think you'll get more visions?"

"I doubt it," Ron said, skirting close to the edge of the truth by not denying Ginny's assertion that he had a vision as opposed to, you know, living it. "I think it was some kind of one-time thing."

"Right then." Ginny whispered, almost to herself. She shook herself. "Right," she repeated briskly, "so what are we going to do to fix it?"

Ron quirked an eyebrow. "We?" He was thankful that Ginny seemed to believe him, and very lucky that she was too young to know any of the conventional wisdom about seers and visions.

"Like I'm going to let you run around doing Merlin-knows-what all by yourself." She sniffed at him.

Ron opened his mouth to object that it was much too dangerous for her to be involved, but Ginny cut him off. "And don't say I can't! I'm only a year younger than you are, and this is too important to just… pretend like it isn't happening!" She lifted her chin defiantly, and for an instant Ron saw the courageous young woman she would become.

Ron mentally shrugged. It was past time for him to stop thinking of Ginny as a tag-along, or a delicate sister he had to protect. She had proved too many times that she was perfectly capable. If Ginny was willing to believe and help him then he wasn't going to look a gift hippogriff in the mouth. "There isn't a lot we can do until we go to Hogwarts." He told his sister. "We can't do any serious magic without the Ministry knowing and that means we can't really practice magic at all."

Furrowing her brow, Ginny said. "Why can't the Ministry know about you vision? They could do so much more than we could to fix things."

Yet another precarious topic. Ron chose his words carefully. "Ginny, the Ministry is almost totally controlled by Death Eaters that lied to stay out of Azkaban. If they suspected that I knew about the future and was working against them; at best I would be locked up in the Department of Mysteries until they knew everything I know. At worst…" Ron couldn't say the worst: he would be executed for illegal time-travel, probably after Lucius Malfoy had sucked out all his memories for his own personal gain.

"There has to be something. An anonymous letter to somebody."

"To who? And using what owl? Errol's not exactly suited for secret letters." Ron knew he was being harsh, but in his opinion the sooner Ginny realized how cautious they had to be the better.

"Are you saying there is nothing we can do?" Ginny bit her lip.

"There is one thing." Everything he had told Ginny up to now had been general, but this would test Ginny's resolve. "Do you know what an animagus is?"

Ginny shook her head. "I think I remember the twins talking about it once, but they just said it would be too hard to do until they were out of Hogwarts."

"An animagus is a wizard that can transform into one animal, with or without a wand."

"Wow." Ginny said softly, her eyes bright with thought. "What does that have to do with… You-Know-Who?"

"Scabbers is an animagus, a Death Eater."

Ginny reacted with predictable revulsion. "WHAT?!" She shifted as if she wanted to leap to her feet.

"Shhh! Keep it down!" Ron glanced anxiously towards the Burrow, but there was no sign of their mum coming to see what the commotion was.

"Fine!" Ginny hissed, settling back. "But why haven't you turned him in already?"

"And how would I explain how I knew?" Ron asked, fighting to keep his voice level. "Excuse me Mr. Auror, but I think my rat is secretly an evil wizard, could you arrest him please?"

Ginny huffed in exasperation. "All right, what are you planning?"

"Well, we need to reveal him without looking like we're revealing him. And we need to reveal it to the public or the Ministry might just make him 'disappear' to hide their mist- embarrassment." Ron stumbled over the last word, not wanting to bring up Sirius Black just yet. If Ginny knew his ultimate plan was to free Harry Potter from his muggle relatives and get him into the wizarding world then she might forget all about caution.

If Ginny noticed his stutter she gave no sign. "So, what do we do?"

Ron held up his hand and pressed the now-scabbed cut on his palm. "The conversation is done, the oath is fulfilled." He intoned. The barely-noticeable glow around them faded and the cut on Ron's handed faded to a fine white scare.

Ron shrugged at Ginny's raised eyebrow. "I don't plan on lying to you, I just don't want to make a mistake and lose my magic."

The siblings sat under the tree for most of the afternoon plotting Wormtail's capture. By the time their mum called them in to wash up for dinner, Ron was quite pleased he had confessed to Ginny, even if she didn't know the whole truth yet. 'In the know' or not, Ginny had a devious mind when she really got thinking, and she had helped modify his plan that he was now almost sure that it would work.

But they still had to wait until Christmas.

As Ron got ready for bed, he realized that he felt better about telling Ginny for another reason – he wasn't alone on his quest now. Even if she didn't know everything, he could share information with Ginny, work with her to prevent You-Know-Who's victory. Ron may have been a Gryffindor, but he hadn't been looking forward to trying to work everything out on his own. It was a huge weight off his chest to share the burden, no matter the risk.

End Chapter 5

Notes: A quick response to Daiymo no Tashio's review (not to single you out but because it addresses some of my goals and inspirations for this fic) – I am a huge fan of Nightmare's of Futures Past, it's by far my favorite Harry Potter fanfiction. However, some of the elements of it are clichés of the time-travel story – overdone to the point of absurdity. I'd rather not write a cookie-cutter time-travel fic with a different face when there are already excellent examples out there. Plus my traveler simply isn't suited for some of those tropes – Ron doesn't have the galleons or the lack of supervision to go buy all the equipment he needs to hunt horcruxes or do underage magic, for instance. He's going to have to come up with something else entirely.

Regarding the nightmares specifically: as I alluded to in chapter 2 (planning a 3-year jump to the summer after 5th year), it had only been about a year from Harry's death to Ron's time travel. Also, what makes you think my Ron fought a war at all similar to S'Tarkan's Harry? Consider it part of the mystery of what happened after Voldemort & Harry's final duel. :)

As for the short chapters… if I try and make them longer they don't get written. It's short or nothing, I'm afraid.