"You took your bloody time", Ron muttered as Harry approached him.

"Sorry, I was busy with homework."

Ron raised his eyebrows. "She's still at your house, torturing you with homework?"

They started walk away from the station and the crowd.

"No, she went home, going on some hike with her parents."

"That's a relief."

"What's up anyway? You seemed upset on the phone."

Ron took a deep breath, looking at him.

"It's dad", Ron had tears in his eyes. "You know I told you he got into St Mungo's at the start of summer?"

"Yeah, it was some rare disease, right?" Harry could see Ron just had lost something of great value by just looking at him. "It got worse?"

"Yeah, he…"

Ron bit his lip and brushed away tears with his jacket.

"He died in his sleep. Mom is absolutely miserable after we found out."

They stopped, a bit from the station.

"What?" Harry just stared at him, not wanting to believe what he'd just heard. "Why?"

"Can we talk more at your house?"

Harry and Ron returned just in time for the lunch aunt Petunia had prepared. Ron had only once met her once, and that was before Ron's family had picked up Harry just a couple of nights before going to the Quidditch World Cup.

"My, you kids grow fast. You are much taller than I remember", aunt Petunia said with a slight chuckle.

"Yeah, amazing isn't it", Ron gave Harry a slightly amused look.

After lunch Harry and Ron went into Harry's room. Ron began slowly to walk around the room, looking at the photos on the walls.

"It's sad really, my dad never gave me much of anything", he said with his back turned.

He sighed.

"He loved you. That's the main thing", said Harry.

Ron shook his head and turned around to face him. "Did he?"

He tossed Harry some sort of small, black device.

"This is all he gave me, during his dying breaths. Ginny didn't get anything, not the others either. I guess he thought I would be the only one to understand."

"What is it?" Harry asked while inspecting the object.

"See for yourself", Ron didn't just look completely broken, he looked betrayed. "Just hold it in your palm. It will… show a bunch of rapid images. I forgot what the Muggle word for it is. I still don't get why all this secrecy."

Ron sat down by the desk, almost with the expression of someone who just had been running an entire marathon.

Harry held the device flat in his hand. A hologram of a video expanded itself onto thin air and a voice began to speak.

In the hologram mr Weasley sitting by a desk, showed up. "Hi, Ron. If you have this message, I am most likely dead. I never intended for you to find out, not any of you. But I have no other choice."

Harry stared at the holographic screen with so many questions starting to circle in his head.

"I am not a good father. I never will be. I don't expect you to forgive me, I just want you to know the truth, Ron", said the holographic mr Weasley. "There is a rare disease in our blood-line. As my father and his father before me, my children are also affected. But with a bit of a loan from the Potter family I made a serum that can at least save my children, if not myself."

"They knew what he was doing?" Harry quickly glanced up at Ron who shrugged.

"The serum that I created, have to be injected at an early age for it to have any chance to work. I injected it into each one of you around the age of three to five, without Molly's or anyone else's knowledge. The lab's yours to keep, if you so would want it. The key is in the back of this device along with the address. I hope you will find peace knowing the truth about me."

And then the message ended. Harry was completely paralyzed.

Ron gave a small chuckle. "Crazy, right? All this time, I thought my dad loved researching about Muggles and their things. It was all just an act, Harry. Just lies, all of it. Maybe even his name was fake."

Harry tossed the device back to Ron.

"I don't know what to say", he tried to find anything reasonable so say, but it was impossible.

"Yeah", Ron took a deep breath and exhaled. "He used your parent's money, and never once did he tell us. He just kept smiling, pretending to be dumber than he really was. Hell, he could have been just as annoying as Hermione if he didn't pretend all the time."

"Uncle Sirius never mentioned anything like this."

"Maybe his brother didn't tell him, who knows? Maybe your dad was in on it too. Maybe it was bigger than we think it is. I really don't know what to believe anymore."

Harry slowly nodded.

"I'll… research about it. Aunt Petunia might know about it. Maybe Hermione knows something if you show her that device when we get on the train to Hogwarts."

Ron gave him a small smile. "Thanks, Harry."

"No problem."

Harry and Ron decided to shake off the depressing atmosphere by taking a walk around by the river.

"You never talk much about Hermione and you. Is she really that big of a pain?"

"Nah, she just think's I'm in another world most of the time."

Ron skipped a stone over the water-surface with a good throwing hand.

"Yeah, that's girls for you. Always want attention."

Harry crouched down as he watched the waves. "No, it's not that. It's more like she dislikes me being more of the heroic type more than just myself, you know? She thinks I have a personality disorder."

Ron gave out a short laugh.

"It's complicated", Harry shook his head. "But we love each other, where's the harm?"

"Is she any good?"

"What?" Harry frowned his eyebrows.

"Yeah, is she any good?"

Harry looked at him for a while, then he chuckled when he saw Ron's smirk.

"I am not telling you that much. But yeah, she will probably send me to St Mungo's soon if I'm lucky."

"I won't be surprise if she does."

Harry shook his head and tossed a rock straight over the water.

"So… you've heard about this mental spider-guy? I hear about him on the news."

Harry looked up at Ron. "Spider-Man? Yeah, I have. What of him?"

"I don't know. He seems like Viktor Krum's type; risking his neck up in the air for fame, the girls are crazy about him… you know, all of that."

"Are you seriously comparing him to Viktor?"

"Yeah, kinda. And he's just as annoying I've heard, yapping about, never shuts his mouth. Hermione gotta love a guy like that, right?"

"Nah, she thinks he's more of a menace."

Ron laughed as he tossed yet another rock skipping across the water surface. "I can't really blame her."

Harry stood up and looked at Ron. "So what are you going to do about your dad's lab?"

Ron shrugged. "Check it out I guess. I really don't got any other choice other than selling it. I'm already rubbish at potions, I'd doubt I'll keep it."

Ron went home late in the evening where Harry took the opportunity to suit up, but he didn't return home until after midnight.

He took the door just to be safe, in case aunt Petunia was worried. He peeked into the kitchen, where there were no sight of his aunt.

After such a long night of crime fighting he was starving and tired, and he really didn't want to wake aunt Petunia up and cause a ruckus.

As quiet as possible he went over to the fridge and looked after something to eat.

"Where have you been?" the ceiling lamp lit up.

Harry quickly turned around and saw aunt Petunia standing in the doorway to her bedroom.

"Out with Ron", he said with a nervous chuckle, trying to be as convincing as possible.

Aunt Petunia looked at him with a piercing glare. "At this hour? What were you up to, Harry?"

"Nothing."

There was a moment of silence before any of them spoke.

"I'm grounding you for the rest of the week. I've got to sleep now, I have to go to work in the morning", she said before returning to her bedroom.

"What? You can't…", Harry sighed and cursed silently in his head.

He took a bit of food with him to his room and sat down before his computer in silence, thinking over what Ron had showed him today.

He'd thought of mr Weasley as a kind and loving family man with an odd fixation for devices and objects from the Muggle-world, but he had no idea how wrong he was all along.

In the morning Harry decided to confront aunt Petunia about the matter, and he hoped she had some idea what the connection between his father and mr Weasley was.

He just had to figure out the best way to say it.

"Is something the matter, Harry?" aunt Petunia asked during breakfast. "If you need something from the store, you have to get it yourself because I'm in a hurry. But you can't go anywhere else, got it?"

"No, no, it's not that", Harry shook his head.

He looked down at his bowl of cereal and up at her again.

Aunt Petunia looked at him with a frazzled look. "Then what is it? It's about Hermione, isn't it?"

"No. Aunt Petunia, you knew my parents better than me", he started and got a curious look from aunt Petunia. "Yesterday, Ron told me his father had passed away because of a genetic disease. And he told me his father worked together with my father. Is it true? Did uncle Sirius ever say anything about that?"

Aunt Petunia got quiet – really, really quiet.

"Ron just want to know the truth, nothing more. And I want to know as well if my father worked with mr Weasley", Harry added.

"Harry… sweetheart…", aunt Petunia patted his hand. "Everybody have their secrets, but there's nothing I can't tell you that you don't already know."

Harry could tell something was off with her response.

He pulled away his hand and frowned. "But mr Weasley lied to his entire family who he was. He wasted my father's money to keep himself alive."

"I got to go, Harry", aunt Petunia got up from the chair and rushed out to the door. "There's money on the counter for lunch and dinner, and don't forget you're still grounded."

Harry sighed and leaned back in the chair. He directed his gaze towards his room, and as soon as he heard the door lock he got up.

Not long after, he was outside swinging in his costume.

"Yeah, disease", he said to Hermione over phone. "And he lied about everything we thought about him. I still can't process it. He didn't seem like the mad scientist type."

"And you're saying your father worked with him?" Hermione asked.

"He gave him money, that's all I know. But why did my father help mr Weasley? Isn't it a weird coincidence?"

"Not really. They both were in the Order, I would suppose that's how they met."

"My aunt avoided everything I had to say. She definitely know something."

He softly landed on the side of a building.

"Well, we'll be back to Hogwarts in a couple of days anyway. I hope you and Ron have bought all your books ready?" said Hermione.

"Crap. No", Harry slapped his own forehead. "I've got to ask mrs Weasley about that."

"Oh, so you're going to the Burrow?"

"You're not?"

He leaned his head back towards the wall.

"No, sorry. I'm taking it easy after the hike."

"It's okay. I've got Ron to keep an eye on meanwhile."

She gave a small laugh. "Yeah. I hope he can find a way to forgive his father."

"Yeah, personally I would be pissed. But you never know. Maybe he accepts it and moves on."

AUTHORS NOTES

I know, I know. ASM2 was a horrible movie, but I really wanted to use the disease concept from that movie as a key point in the story. I thought it would be really interesting if I took this seemingly good and pure man, and revealing he'd just been playing everyone all along for years.