Disclaimer: Characters from Harry Potter, Temeraire and Doctor Who are, of course, not mine and I make no profit from playing with them.
A/N: It's been ages, I know... I know! But to make up for it, the chapter is nice and long :) The epilogue should be up in the next few days, too.
Nine Months
It is Ron who at last meets the creatures responsible for all the disappearances and if he wasn't busy running with all his strength, he'd curse heartily.
Why, oh, why does it have to be spiders?
Not even decent, normal spiders (insomuch as those horrid things can be decent): no, these are huge, blue monsters with long hairs sticking to their bodies, an unholy number of malevolent, glittering eyes and far too many legs flexing and extending in a revolting manner as they run along the accursed invisible webs.
The way they move is utterly amazing.
If Ron didn't know there are silky threads all over, that they must be using, if he wasn't tripping and getting tangled in the invisible things himself, he could almost believe the spiders are flying, gliding through the air in an incredibly graceful dance of smooth movements, letting them cover a lot of ground too fast for his comfort.
It's beautiful. As beautiful as they are ugly.
He is stricken by the incongruous though that, as hideous as regular Acromantulas are, this blue version is even worse.
And of course they're hunting him.
How did he get here, anyway?
Oh, right.
It was his own idea. Damn it all...
It all goes back to the morning before, around noon of what had then turned into an incredibly long day: Harry had been ensconced in the crook of Fortuna's leg, studying Hermione's maps with keen focus.
The wizard captain hasn't left Fortuna's side since the scare they had a few days ago, when his magic surged to heal her from the onsetting of the Plague. He's left it to Ron and Hermione to complete the survey of the zones where the odd light-shows have been spotted, like they've been doing during his and Fortuna's punishment period.
Unfortunately, their examinations hadn't been yielding results until yesterday: they'd only managed to confirm that the places are, indeed, linked with the disappearances – the invisible webs that polluted the areas prove as much.
Those weird threads are really starting to irritate Hermione, who finds them fascinating – they're incredibly strong yet impalpable, resistant to sharp shear or tensile stresses but utterly yielding to gradual deformation; she hasn't yet managed to make them visible (not without resorting to spraying them with something, like talc or very fine water mist, which for some reason she hasn't worked out, utterly ruins them). She keeps muttering about it, much to Ron's amusement, with that adorable frown of concentration she gets when she's researching something difficult, that he totally finds sexy.
Harry hadn't been discouraged by their reports and had simply started going over their notes with a fine-toothed comb, while Fortuna looked over his shoulder.
"It's useless, there's no rhyme or reason to it all," had been saying Ron, feeling discouraged.
"Not true," Harry had retorted suddenly. "There. Look."
With a few careful strokes of his quill, he'd highlighted what, in their anxiousness to investigate each single site thoroughly, they'd missed: the progression of 'light-shows' wasn't entirely random, but could be rather easily grouped into two series of aligned points – two ideal straight lines at an angle with each other, with the points scattered on them at narrowing intervals.
When considered in time as well as space, the pattern had become even more clear: taking as reference the most recent happening, the earliest instance was also the farthest towards the south-west and the second was the farthest to the north-east; then came another one to the south-west, slightly closer than the first one, and then a fourth, again to the north-east, slightly closer as well... and so on, alternating, at shortening intervals, until a sort of ideal line could connect them all. The latest one, which was more or less in the middle, had not been followed by any repeat: as if whatever what causing it had stopped.
The other line ran more east to west, at an angle to the first one, and wasn't so complete yet, but it did have a series of aligned points grouped off to one side and an equal number on the other, and the times confirmed they had appeared at alternating intervals, growing closer to an ideal middle point with each apparition.
"It's a pendulum!" had exclaimed Hermione, after observing it all for a good long deal. "And it's slowing down."
She'd taken the quill from Harry and started mimicking a pendulum over the map, letting the ink trail from one point to the next, then back to the third and so on.
An oscillating trajectory of narrowing segments had appeared under their eyes, confirming her guess.
She'd quickly moved to do the same with the other line, the incomplete one, and Harry had grinned, figuring out what she was trying to do: "We can predict where the next one will be!"
"And when, more or less," had nodded Hermione with a smile: "the time intervals seem to be almost halved with each oscillation. There should be another light-show five miles north of Cainneach's hollow... let's see... an hour before dawn, tomorrow."
"Brilliant." Ron had been sold at once. "Let's go there and investigate."
"Oh, but we can't!" had piped up Fortuna unexpectedly, in her profound brass voice, that ever since her brush with the Plague has deepened and now sounds as if a bronze bell is tolling sonorously.
"Why not?" had asked Harry, baffled. "It's not so far that we can't make it before dark. If you prefer to wait until tomorrow, I suppose we can, but it would be best to..."
"Nobody's supposed to be there," had told them Fortuna primly. "The older dragons say so. Salvius especially! Cainneach's hollow is wrong."
"It's wrong to go there? Why – some sort of religious reason?" had wondered Ron sarcastically, because he is still somewhat smarting over the ridiculous importance that religion has in this society.
"No, there's something wrong there," had explained Fortuna patiently. "That's what they say."
She hadn't known more than that and the first order of business had thus become interrogating Salvius, the Longwing partnered with Captain Moreton, and whoever else had told Fortuna of this 'wrongness'.
Which... they really should have done sooner.
Even a day later, Ron is still kicking himself for not thinking of it. Of course the dragons know more about the situation than the humans. Of course.
"Dragons are widely considered sensitive to the supernatural," he'd explained to Harry and Hermione. "In all the stories, they know stuff like that a curse was cast or where the faeries will dance, before the night even falls! They're often the ones who warn the men away..."
Of course the dragons would know.
Why hadn't they asked sooner? They'd assumed that the general dismissiveness of the Aviation towards the disappearances meant nobody in the Corps could help them. Bit short-sighted, that. Just because the aviators care little for something, doesn't mean the dragons feel the same!
They'd found Salvius down at the lake, rather predictably.
The few dragons who are still healthy like to splash about from time to time, though Ron got the impression it is a novelty, from the reactions of the captains, and not long-established. Fortuna never much took to it, even if she likes being clean. She goes about it fastidiously, careful not to let more water than necessary touch her. Nothing like the Reapers and Coppers, who love frolicking in the water and often launch in impressive splashing battles.
Also predictably, all the dragons present had been quite eager to help them, Salvius more than anyone.
The few who aren't showing symptoms of the Plague yet are awfully bored by the confinement and any distraction is welcome.
Besides, Salvius is a vane, excitable and irascible creature, very different from his composed and unruffable Captain, and despite being old, almost never acting as sensible as his age and experience should lead him to do; he had preened under the attention he was bestowed and had relished the chance to shock them with his tale.
He'd started off informing them primly that of course he would not go there and neither should anyone else, because the humming air is a sign of bad things to come.
Harry had voiced their confusion: "Humming air?"
"It hums, so much that it makes your bones vibrate and your teeth hurt. It's quite unpleasant," Salvius had told them with a sniff, "I've felt like that before, and I didn't want to go back to the place, but Catherine insisted and so we did go, and there was something there." He'd puffed up with the importance of the information he was imparting. "Something that you can't see, but it touches your skin, and it's not water, or mud, but it feels a bit like both, only in threads."
"The webs," had whispered Hermione, eyes gleaming.
Silvana, the mild-mannered, musically inclined Yellow Reaper, who had also been to the place and had subsequently shown vehement reluctance to going there again, according to her captain, had insisted on interjecting: "It makes you feel all tingly and icky."
"And it's because the whole place was wrong beforehand," had added Salvius quickly, eager to regain centre stage. "But that's not the worst."
"No, that just feels funny," had agreed Silvana, making Salvius hiss at her: "I'm telling the story!"
She'd rolled her eyes, but subsided and he'd turned to them, pleased with himself, and chatted on about seeing a bunch of sheep floating in mid-air, bleating pitifully and kicking their legs uselessly a few feet above the ground.
"I thought about eating one or two, since they were just there, you know, but then a young shepherd arrived at a run and I thought better of it. Catherine always gets upset when I take sheep outside the feeding grounds: not at all like her father," he'd confided with dissatisfaction.
Then he'd moved out of the water and crouched low, preparing to share the most riveting part of his story: the young shepherd had tried futilely to free his sheep, only to get caught in whatever was holding them himself; then, as Salvius felt a little bad for him and wondered if he should help, a monster had appeared into the glade and made a beeline for the struggling young man.
"It was the hour of deepening twilight, so I couldn't see well, but there was a big shadow, bigger than a sheep, and it was flying, but not like a dragon, and it had no wings, only a lot of legs."
Salvius had been gleeful with the captive attention of his listeners.
"And then," he'd finished in an almost shout, "it ate him!"
His piercing, excited voice had sounded even louder in the sudden nervous silence that had followed it.
"It was so fast, I couldn't stop it; but I roared and it got scared and flew away," he'd concluded, sounding smug, in the vaguely horrified, enduring silence.
"Oh, come on!" had burst out a young cadet, loud but querulous. "Remember what the Captain said. It's all nonsense. You're not to spread tall tales just to scare people!"
Salvius had roared, displeased.
"Don't be like that!" all the cadets that had been washing Salvius before they'd arrived had complained, half nervous, half defiant, and a lot mulish.
"There's no point pretending it's not real, it happened, I saw it! What's the point in never talking about things?" had rebuked Salvius. "You saw the sheep clear as day, same as me, and so did Catherine! We all did!"
A babble of overlapping yells: "Shut it!" – "Don't, just don't!" – "He's right, we were there...!" – "It is so true. My brother says..." – "It's nonsense!"– "The Captain says..."
"What is all this?" had sounded Captain Moreton's voice over the confusion. "Settle down, all of you, and go about your business!"
Ron hadn't noticed her arriving but as everybody made room for her, he'd seen that she didn't look well – she was harried, worried and not at all inclined to indulge anyone.
"Salvius is telling everybody about that time he went off by himself, while the ground crew was busy fixing those torn straps and you had us set up camp to practice our aim," had explained the eldest ensign to his captain. At Harry's raised eyebrows, he'd added in a mutter: "He does that – going off, I mean. He never goes far, but he doesn't like staying still if he doesn't have to, and Moreton just lets him. It's not like there's anything wrong."
Captain Moreton for her part had rolled her eyes and patted her dragon's flank fondly: "You and your absurd tales. I shouldn't let you wander off, if you'll only think up such nonsense when you do!"
Offended, Salvius had moved away from her hand: "Why do you always do that!? You see something strange and you prefer to pretend nothing's happened – that's stupid, that is! You father wouldn't-"
"My father is dead," had snapped back Moreton and everybody had moved a little away, averting their eyes, to give them some illusion of privacy, should they feel like having a row right then.
The cadets and ensigns had continued to babble and quarrel among themselves and Fortuna had eagerly pushed herself into the conversation. "Why aren't you supposed to talk about it? It's right interesting, it is."
Her tail had been twitching in a way that made Ron think of a cat; Harry had spared a fond look for her.
"What do you think that monster was? Do you think it could really fly? How could it fly without wings?" Fortuna had kept asking intently.
"There was no monster," had rebuked her Captain Moreton, half-glaring over her shoulder at her mulish dragon. Sternly, she'd sent all the aviators off to this or that task.
One of the kids had taken the time to mutter to Fortuna: "It's ghouls, me mum says!" His red hair and murky green eyes had reminded Ron of one of the women in the village, but he couldn't remember her name, or the child's. "That's why they go for men flesh first, and sheep only if they can't find better."
"There's no such thing as ghouls," had said Captain Moreton tiredly. "Now, go!"
"Yes, there are!" had retorted her dragon loudly, turning away from her in a show of offended dignity.
"Salvius, please. It's a bunch of ridiculous superstitions."
"You were there! You saw the bones! He was eaten!"
She'd gritted her teeth: "We're all tired, seeing things..."
Salvius had reared and roared, furious.
Silvana, bless her gentle soul, had put an end to the tension by chirping that Cadwaladr had seen something like that too. Moreton had rolled her eyes and muttered about silly dragons and sillier stories, but Salvius had been sufficiently pleased.
Ron, Harry and Hermione had retreated and promptly gone to ask Cadwaladr about it all, in the sheltered spot he'd found for himself in the quarantined areas.
The massive white form had been slumped, but aside from lethargy, he hadn't seemed in too bad a shape. The Plague isn't hitting the older dragons as harshly as the younger ones.
He'd been more sensible and grounded than Salvius, too: "Hmm," he'd murmured. "I've seen it, yes. Felt the humming all over my scales. Those places feel wrong because you can tell there's something there, but you can't find it: it's not just invisible, you cannot hear it or touch it or smell it. It's disconcerting. I don't like it, I don't like it at all."
He'd sighed ponderously, shifting in an effort to find a more comfortable position. "As for the monsters... I've seen two shadows preying on trapped sheep, yes." His long claws had scraped the ground over and over, restlessly. "My eyesight isn't what it once was, but the way they moved reminded me of the sea dragons I saw in my youth, when I travelled to India. Was that with your father, Derec? No, no. I remember now, it was with my Jones. My first captain."
He'd hummed reminiscently, closing his eyes with a tired sigh. "Yes, yes, they moved smoothly like that. Fluid. Beautiful to watch. These here weren't dragons, though. Not even sea dragons. Too small... but I couldn't see very well."
Captain Jones, laconic as usual, had simply stroked his dragon's muzzle gently and added, briefly: "My eyes are nowhere as good as Cadwaladr's, but something did eat those sheep, and it wasn't anything I recognized."
He'd said nothing more, merely giving them desolate looks when they'd thanked him.
"Well, I think we have enough to go on. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get into position," had declared Harry blithely, only to stop short and go blank-faced as he'd almost run into Captain Howard.
"Going somewhere, Potter?" he'd sneered with menacing contempt. "I didn't think anyone was allowed time off. Running away, like the coward you are?"
"Merely trying to solve a mystery and protect the civilians," had replied the wizard with forced courtesy. He may dislike Howard, but a captain in the quarantined areas could mean only one thing and it earned the jerk Harry's pity and respect at once. "How's Mirificus?" he'd asked as kindly as he could.
Howard had taken it badly, interpreting it as a taunt instead of the genuine concern it was. He'd paled with rage and started spitting insults and threatening all sort of consequences if they dared to go near his dragon.
Unwilling to make things worse, Harry had stammered some platitudes and backed away. Hermione had been indignant, but Ron had simply grabbed his best friend's shoulder with sympathy.
He knows Harry finds it difficult to face the other aviators, especially those whose dragons are already suffering. They're all beyond grateful that Fortuna is immune, and no-one as much as Harry, but it is hard for him to meet his fellow captains and see the desperation in their eyes.
"It feels like anything I say is like gloating about our blessed state," he'd murmured yesterday, miserably. "I wish there was anything I could do for them."
But his magic isn't omnipotent and the miracle that preserved Fortuna was a one-time deal.
At least they'd had a solid lead on their mystery to cling to, at long last: something concrete they could do.
Their hurdles had been far from over, however.
Captain Moreton had been reluctant to even listen to them and a sanctioned trip that night hadn't seemed in the cards.
Worse still, Captain Howard, always ready to give Harry a hard time, had come out of the quarantine – still pale with fury – for no other goal than to twist their desire to investigate the Wastes into a coward's attempt at avoiding deployment.
It's true that they're short on dragons on the Channel and Fortuna would be of great use there; it's also true, however, that Celeritas himself is delaying her relocation until Priscus, the very young Longwing partnered with Captain Winyard, can join her there, "since old Excidium is holding up well as flag-dragon of the Channel Division," as he'd explained.
Besides, Harry's resigned himself to their imminent posting, more or less. Howard's insinuations are nothing more than a tiresome bother.
Captain Moreton had let the accusations drop eventually, but they'd wasted a lot of valuable time in that pointless squabbling.
Furthermore, Moreton had showed no patience for their entreaties. She'd never supported their inquiries either, but enabling an investigation that would take a dragon away from the relative security of the Covert? Not likely.
Her Salvius is still well, thank Heaven, but too many others are coughing their lungs out; even with her companion being among the lucky ones, the Plague is taking a toll on her. She struggles with being in charge under such adverse circumstances. She's grown harder, stricter, uncaring.
It is not the time, in her lofty opinion, to waste efforts on civilians who aren't as valuable as dragons or even aviators and ought to be able to look after themselves besides.
This attitude, Ron knows, is precisely why strife has been brewing between the Covert and the village, that was never there before.
Common citizens think – not unreasonably – that the aviators should protect them, that the dragons might be able to face whatever is killing off their sheep, if no longer their people.
Aviators are too preoccupied with their sick dragons to care about mere cattle. Perhaps if the dragons were still well they might be concerned about the diminished food reserves, but as most dragons are eating less and less, even that isn't enough to gain the Corps' attention. The general consensus is that no-one can be spared to help out with what is deemed a civilian problem – even if it is a reluctant agreement on the part of those who have relatives in the village. "Being in the service requires sacrifice," they say, and with that, they ignore that they could help. An attitude made more ridiculous by the fact that the illness leaves them with a lot of time on their hands.
Harry, who's been arguing the most that they should protect the common people (the three wizards have long been casting repelling wards as a matter of course, against every dark creature they can think of, on the odd chance that it might be effective against whatever is out there) and whose current low standing among aviators has resulted in dismissive rejections of his ideas more often than not, had been visibly fuming in Moreton's office.
Too few share his view of duty and honour and he finds their indifference ten times more disgraceful than being reluctant to throw his dragon into a damn war. He hadn't been shy in making this opinion known, either.
Astonishingly, they'd found a staunch supporter in Silvana's companion, Captain Lennox – quite the surprise since he's one of the most vocal denigrators of Hermione's educational efforts and has made no mystery of his low opinion of the trio.
In this instance, however, their interests run together. Not only is he a native of the local village, with family still there; he's also a generous and determined soul, who truly believes in their duty to protect England.
"Not just ourselves – all of England. Down to the last child," he'd stated grimly, making the senior captain flush in shame.
Moreton and Lennox had ended up in a shouting match.
"Our duty is to fight! If Napoleon were to invade...!"
"Well, what's the point of defending a land if the people are already gone!"
"It's our dragons who're almost gone! Or perhaps you haven't noticed the Plague that's ravaging our ranks!"
"You are a disgrace to the bars on your shoulder!"
They'd all tried to make Moreton see reason – Lennox had cited duty, honour, compassion; Harry had ranted about twirling their thumbs when they could be helping; Ron had pointed out that it is affecting people close to home, so to speak, both in the village and in the Covert; Hermione had sensibly remarked that there is unease and unrest everywhere, that a lot of people are frightened, "and that's never a good thing, is it?"
She'd acknowledged that they were right, but stubbornly claimed that her task was to protect the dragons under her command. Not exposing them to possibly-real monsters (not that she believed the tales) was the most sensible option.
"Besides, it's too far. It's an eight hours hike to get there on foot and there's no hope of using carriages or the like. And the dragons won't go there," she'd objected briskly.
"They're just big cowards, is what they are," had grumbled Lennox disparagingly.
"No they aren't!" had shot back Hermione, glaring. "They're unnerved by something there and you would do well to heed them, because they're smarter than you by far!"
The portly man had gaped at her, outraged: "Smart! They aren't smart. They're just intelligent enough to talk, that's all. Just because you went and built up some fancy delusions for the rich to waste their money on doesn't mean..."
"My School is much more than that!"
"Sorry to interrupt," had interjected Ron in a tone that said he wasn't sorry at all, "but this is getting us nowhere. We all agree to scout out the place, right?"
"No, we don't. I do not think we should waste time and valuable people on this..." had started Moreton mulishly.
And Harry had finally snapped – "As if anybody's doing anything useful!" he'd yelled. "People are too frightened and worried and frantic to give much thought to training or anything else! And have you thought this through?"
He'd slammed his hands down on her desk and with cold fury had pointed out – dates and places on hand – that the disappearances and the Plague had started at the same time.
"What if they're connected? Huh?"
That had silenced Moreton. Frightened and endangered people would not move her, but when it came to stopping the dreadful illness, any avenues had seemed worthy of investigation: in the end, that had been the argument that had won the callous woman over.
They'd reluctantly been given the all clear for their 'mission', albeit as a strictly scouting expedition.
"Are they connected, do you think?" had asked Ron, worried, later. He doubted it, but... the timing was suspicious.
Harry had shrugged with some bitterness: "I don't believe that for a minute: it makes no sense; we know where the Plague came from – that Dakota they brought to Wales. I just knew she's desperate enough to go for it. Finally."
"In any case, we'd better hurry. The sooner we put a stop to this madness, the better," had concluded Lennox harshly.
The two dragons had made things difficult, too. Silvana had complained loudly at the idea of returning to one such place and had a bit of a row with her angry captain, who'd shouted at her, red in the face and panting with outrage, until she'd sulkily agreed to go, but only if he promised to take her to a concert soon. They'd heard Lennox curse his stubborn dragon, Laurence and Harcourt's bright ideas, Hermione's absurdities and the world at large for a good long while.
Fortuna had whined a bit – "I don't want to feel all weird and icky!" – but Harry had talked her into it quickly enough and they'd been off, just the three of them secured to her back, in the dead of night.
It had taken less than an hour, since with Lennox' blessing, they hadn't waited for the much slower Silvana: Harry and he had agreed that it would be best to split up and cover more sites rather than try and coordinate two dragons with wildly different flying and fighting styles.
Thus, even with all of the delays and pointless waits, they'd managed to catch the tail end of the 'light-show'.
It'd been spectacular.
With nitid brightness in the dark of night, a morning glory spillway made entirely of light had glowed like a hole in the fabric of the world; faintly luminescent threads lit with iridescent reflexes by its light had gleamed dully, marking the position of a spiderweb that had seemed anchored to the spillway and spreading out from it.
Fortuna had stopped her grumbling about flying in the dark in favour of gliding as silently as she could through the night, flying in slow circles to give them a chance to watch.
They'd spotted two indistinct shadows moving in and out of the light, impossible to see clearly from where they'd been, industriously busying themselves around it.
Fortuna had made one last lap around it, far above it in the moonless night, and then had flapped her wings vigorously, taking them away.
"I want to get a closer look at the webs, now that they're visible," had whispered Hermione with some excitement.
"We should be careful not to scare them away. We need reliable information, I don't want to find myself with nothing to show for tonight!" had warned Harry.
"Let's split up," had decided Ron, "we'll go at it from different angles. You and Fortuna should hang back, if Salvius scared them she might as well. Hermione and I will go, keep hidden and scout the place. If we're in trouble, you'll sweep in and rescue us."
"Sounds like a plan," Harry had agreed.
And that's how Ron finds himself here, in the humid light of dawn, tearing through the invisible webs that, against all logic, become stronger and harder the faster he goes through them, as if they were sentient and trying to actively stop him, while if he relax and moves slowly, they offer almost no resistance.
Except that's not an option because huge blue spiders are almost onto him.
They're close enough that he can hear their sounds, screeches and clacking and clicks, utterly alien but strangely harmonious: it almost sounds like a language, the way Aragog's children's clicking and hissing had. And isn't that bringing back nightmares. Urgh.
He trips and curses, getting up as quickly as he can, barely sparing a glance to his pursuers.
The way they move is incredible: it's like they're flying on invisible rails, which he knows are really their webs. It's smooth and elegant even with their revolting joints; they make it look weightless, like the best athletes can make their own flying look effortless, when Ron knows it's anything but.
They're gaining on him.
He curses again.
Where is a Flying Ford Anglia when he needs her...!
A sudden shadow and low thunder of wind from above him signals Fortuna's arrival: a bellowing voice – Harry's – shouts a very welcome, powerful: "Repello!"
Grasping the spell, Ron twists – getting tangled in the damn, hardening webs – and thrusts his wand forward, yelling in unison with his best friend another: "Repello!"
The two spiders are thrown back – and lo and behold, the webs are working against them now, hardening against their bodies whenever they hit the threads and actively resisting their twisting.
The blue spiders are trained, though, and quickly gain control of themselves, going back to the smooth, fluid movements that let them pass through the webs without impediment. Ron kind of wants to learn that trick.
Fortuna doesn't land, but dives low enough that he can jump to grab her leg, hoisting himself up and quickly securing his carabiner hooks to her harness. She moves away in a hurry.
"Those webs are a pain in the ass!" he gasps as Harry heaves him higher up by the arm.
"Well. At least we know for sure what we're up against, now," says the wizard captain with a grin that has no business being so wide.
Ron mock-glowers: "Did it have to be spiders, damn it?!"
They laugh together.
The first thing Harry insists on doing is informing the people of 'their' village, the one closest to the Covert, of what the threat is and talk about defences and counter-attacks. There's really no point in trying to do everything on their own, no matter what they're used to.
To their surprise, the news is welcomed with a wave of relief. Malicious faes and cursed spirits, preternatural entities and the Devil's own pets, they're scared of; concrete critters are nothing they can't cope with – even weird, dangerous, previously unheard of beasties. So long as they're not supernatural, they can fight back.
Hermione's map is quickly appropriated – for once, she's blessed instead of criticized – and the hope they'd given up regains strength as they discuss how to recover the lands they'd abandoned in their fear. They cheer Harry and Ron as heroes and break out the best whiskey to toast their health.
Hermione, for her part, all but disappears: she's harvested herself a good few samples of the mysterious webs and is studying them or experimenting or something. Ron doesn't bother trying to understand: she'll explain when she's ready.
Harry throws himself into helping the villagers plan how to protect the women and children and it raises him in their estimation even more; they are all singing his praises and looking at him for direction.
Ron, quite naturally, is right by his side and takes over all the organizing of hunting parties and gathering of volunteers and coming up with attack plans and so on. He also tag-teams with Harry to secretly cast a few more wards around the village, just in case the blue acromantulas might be as intelligent and inclined to retaliation as the common ones.
Even as busy as he is, Ron finds himself reflecting on his best friend's familiar attitude and his own response to it.
Back when they were younger, Ron had always either been swept up in Harry's powerful leadership, or else resented it and fought it; he remembers though, the day when he finally realized his own attitude had changed for good – that day at Shell Cottage towards the end of the war, when in the tense quiet of Bill's cottage, he'd understood, and accepted.
He remembers being almost frightened by how much of Voldemort and even Dumbledore Harry seemed to understand, by how sure his friend was of himself, of what he was doing; feeling bewildered but very impressed as he followed him, sharing astonished looks with Hermione as he spoke to that Goblin, hoping he would explain in the end, watching the terrified wandmaker turn pale in front of Harry's implacability and not blaming him one bit, but also trusting that Harry had things well in hand and strangely enough, trusting that he would call upon Ron himself, when he needed it, for just the right contribution – just like he'd ended up doing, with him, with McGonagall, with Neville...
He's never told his best friend just why, in Ron's eyes, he makes such an excellent leader in times of crisis, and likely never will; but here's yet another example of it. In the middle of an antsy, determined village, filled with people who so far have wavered in their opinion of the green-eyed captain, teetering towards contempt, Harry is calmly and surely steering everybody into doing exactly what he wants.
It's kind of inspiring. And a little bit amusing.
Ron's often been called an excellent strategist.
He's not.
People tend assume that his great skill at chess and similar games should translate in equally great skill in real life – and in a way, it is true. But chess is a confined system, with clear boundaries, only that many pieces, that many moves, a finite chessboard... and most importantly, a distinctly defined goal.
Real life, well.
Ron often finds himself floundering, frustrated, unable to see much of a pattern in the chaotic homogeneity of the world: because real life has no boundaries, no set of pieces, no goal – except what you set for yourself.
No, he's no strategist.
If anything, he's a tactician. His domain is the planning and execution of tactics, and there, he shines.
It is Harry, however, who sets him his goals.
He does it so naturally, so easily, Ron thinks he doesn't even know it. Harry can always see the big picture – realize when it's the smallest things that truly matter and when it's time to go for the biggest prize; when the most obvious way is not the one they should pursue and when it's right to walk the path everybody's pointing to.
The other side of the coin is that once Harry figures out what the right thing to do is, the green-eyed wizard tends to flounder – turning to Ron and Hermione, almost chagrined that deciding what should happen isn't enough to make it happen. The end game is always in sight for Harry, but he doesn't often see every step of the way.
That's Ron's job.
It's like a perfectly woven spell, the way it all works; the way it has always worked.
Harry would say something – something outrageous, like "I'm going after Voldemort," or "I need to break into a Gringotts vault," – and Ron's mind would suddenly see; the world crystallizing in recognizable shapes, that suddenly move in more predictable ways – he would see, clear as he sees the moves he needs to win a game of chess, all the steps he needs to do to achieve those goals, like setting a Devil's Snare on fire or mimicking parseltongue to get at Basilisk venom...
Ron can always see the best way to a victory.
But only if Harry sets up the game for him.
What a team they make.
Bill once told him that leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right. He's not necessarily a leader. Harry is. But managing his best friend is up to him. They'd have probably avoided some of their more hare-brained adventures as kids if he'd figured this out sooner.
But even if it's taken him years to understand, here they are now: Harry sets the direction, and Ron follows without question, but pointing out all the in-between steps that Harry tends to forget or haphazardly leave to luck.
And as always, it works.
They've just managed to get the villagers to agree on a plan of attack – after quite the series of heated debates, sometimes slipping into spirited rehashing of long-standing grievances – when Lennox returns with the triumphant news that the horrid spiders are monstrous, yes, but perfectly mortal: Silvana has slain one easily. They burn the carcass in the village square with loud, exultant jeers, sharing even more whiskey in celebration.
The next order of business is figuring out where the next holes will open and sorting out who will go where. They only have two and a half days, if Hermione's calculations are exact (which they are, of course).
Lennox proudly gathers a good-sized group of aviators too, to join the hunters. He's quite certain that it's their duty and won't be dissuaded; many are convinced by his spirited appeals, even those who wouldn't listen to Harry.
The commoners welcome the help with slight resentment but enough good grace overall. The two leading captains – Harry and Lennox – become the face of the Aviation with the people, mending the fences that Moreton's indifference had destroyed, with nothing more than a show of sincere concern and a willingness to help.
To her credit, she does not pettily oppose them. She does not admit she was wrong, mind, but she has the decency to keep quiet and let them have carte blanche on the whole situation. Her silence is taken as tacit approval and even more aviators get off their bums to help, at long last.
When Hermione re-emerges and triumphantly announces that she has a way to make the invisible webs visible, Fortuna's crew is elected on the spot to escort her to each existent and expected light-hole before the various hunter groups reach them, in order to make the webs visible and give them an advantage – and they set off before Ron can voice his misgivings about having people around when she uses magic.
As it turns out, however, Hermione has gone all muggle on this one ("It would be ten times easier with magic, of course, but I thought it might become difficult to explain..." she comments off-handedly) so there is nothing to be worried about.
She bosses the lookouts ("Assistants!") around, mutters about thermoacoustic engines and non-newtonian fluids and other weird things Ron doesn't bother to understand, fusses and tinkers with a glass tube and a candle and brass faucets, until a soft wail starts from the contraption she's put together and finally, finally, an intricate web of delicate, barely-visible threads, vibrating madly, emerges from thin air, like sea foam when it's lit up by the rays of dawn and draws the crests of previously unseeable waves.
There are many gasps of awed wonder. The rainbow reflexes that make the complex threads gleam are as beautiful as crystal beads and the strange material the web is made of pulses and tenses and almost seems to breathe. Harry's crew is left speechless. Little Donnel's eyes are so wide they dwarf his face; Barton is openly gaping, the riflemen are cursing up a storm.
A screech from somewhere to their right heralds the charge of an unwelcome sentinel and the awestruck mutters switch to screams and loud swearwords.
A volley of bullets nails the blue Acromantula, making it jerk with a terrible screech and tangling it in its own web; it remains dangling from the slowly deforming threads, ugly and exotic. Nobody pays any mind to Fortuna's complaints: "I wanted to do that! That's not fair, Silvana got to kill one, why can't I? Harry!"
Instead, they cautiously get closer, intrigued against their best judgement (though Barton makes it a point to sternly herd the children back).
Wedge, moronic bully that he is, starts poking the hairy body with unpleasant snickers and nastily taunts the men who're more sensibly keeping their distance, ignoring Harry's weary order to stay back.
"What are those things?" breathes one of the midwingmen, sounding positively horrified. Ron feels for him, really.
Hermione answers clearly with a teacher-y tone Ron recognizes as her 'I'm having trouble coping with the squeakiness of this but I won't admit it so I'm hiding in trivia' mood. She used to resort to it a lot in Potions. And in Care of Magical Creatures. Occasionally in Herbology, too.
"They're arthropods, by your classification system," she says loftily and Ron just bites his lip to avoid laughing at her.
"Not mine," mutters Harry, unashamedly amused, drawing an exasperated glare from Hermione but managing to get a smattering of laughter from his crew, which was probably his goal.
"Let's call them blue spiders and leave it at that, yeah?" says Berriman with fake joviality.
"Big blue spiders," corrects Ron, not about to let anyone forget that point.
Suddenly, Wedge pokes the exposed stomach too harshly and the creature snaps into motion, brutally attacking – because apparently it's not quite as dead as they'd thought.
Yells and shouts are torn from everybody's throats – the loudest cry coming from the unlucky lieutenant, and unfortunately, also the shortest. The paired claws at the tip of its upper legs are buried in the incautious Wedge's stomach before they can truly react.
The knee-jerk reaction is to jump back, get away, run; Fortuna is the only one who darts forward, ignoring the way her bulk has to fight against hardening filaments of web and heedless of the fleeing men she knocks aside.
The creature is throwing itself into abortive attacks, but thankfully, they're now all out of range; the vicious, jerky movements are trapping it more securely in the tangled threads, impeding its movement, but Ron gets the impression it doesn't care about getting free. Perhaps it's too far gone.
The horrified riflemen have hurriedly reloaded and are finally ready to shoot again – late enough, unacceptably late for soldiers, in truth, though the man responsible for their training has paid the steepest price for his laziness – but they don't dare risk shooting Fortuna; the dragon has things under control, in any case: she claws at the struggling Acromantula and nails it to the ground, holding it down until it stops jerking and lies still, then holding it down some more, just to be on the safe side.
It's a shock. Ron gulps and tries to control his breathing, watching the others move slowly – their slight uncertainty before retrieving Wedge's body, the hesitant blinking, as if they can't quite believe what just happened, the frightened voices of the cadets pretending to be brave.
Thankfully, Harry manages to keep his crew from freaking out.
Brisk and barky, he takes charge and sorts people out, setting them to different tasks – create a perimeter, check for other sentinels, recover Wedge's body, arrange for its transportation – concrete tasks, practical and controllable, things to do that do not require too much thinking, that do not let them feel helpless.
Beneath the façade of control, Ron can see Harry berating himself – they should have been more cautious, checked things more carefully, they should have remained aloft – they should have, should have, should have...
It's not his fault, of course; but Ron knows he won't let anyone else bear the burden. His dark looks reflect his guilt and promise a world of pain to his enemies.
In the back of his mind, Ron starts plotting methods to get everybody out of the way, because he has a feeling that magic will be used after all.
The second dragon assigned to this site arrives, carrying his crew and a bunch of villagers and as soon as they realize what happened, rage and panic raise in the air; and it could turn into a disaster – either a terrified flight or a furious witch-hunt (well, spider-hunt), it could go both ways, really – but Ron knows what needs to happen to keep things under control and Harry has always been charismatic and very good at generally being inspiring; between the two of them, order is maintained, the overexcited are calmed, the reluctant convinced, the lazy pushed.
It helps that they're all soldiers, even the youngest raised to cope with sudden deaths in combat. This isn't too different. Truthfully, they're far less shell-shocked than they probably should be.
Messengers are dispatched, too, to warn and inform and explain as quickly as possible. These people really need to come up with better ways to communicate – faster, more reliable – but that's a thought for another time.
Sooner than Ron thought doable, they've entrusted their fallen crewmate and the youngest of Fortuna's crew to the other captain and they're off to the next site. Hermione's weird candle-and-tube-thingy is working and they're going to replicate the effect wherever it's needed.
Their destination is an older site and far from being as bright and grand as the one they've just left, the morning glory spillway is pallid and waning; still there, however, holding up the web that Hermione coaxes into view and surrounded by a strange sort of glass construction, which Hermione makes noises about examining.
They stay alert for any spiders, but nothing stirs around them. Even so, the nervousness increases palpably as they move closer to the fading spillway of light, the crew unnerved by the looks of it and even more by the strange pulling sensation it emits. Ron recognizes it as the first stage of a portkey, when you get hooked right before the trip. It doesn't seem to be taking them anywhere, though. In fact, it's quite easy to resist.
Hermione pulls the two wizards discreetly by the side, face grim but eyes bright: she's come up with the best spells to deal with this. Except that with all the muggles around, they can't use magic.
Harry's expression is still dark. "It's worth exposing us to avoid more deaths," he murmurs steely.
Ron winces. Is Harry serious? He can't be. To Ron's mind, that's really not an option – at all; he knows his best friend's stubbornness, however: it's up to him to offer an alternative.
"What if we put them out first?" he tries desperately. "There aren't that many of them. We can manage to stun them before anyone notices. That way we're free to use magic without risks!"
He's aware he sounds a little bit desperate, his idea has a lot of holes and it's probably not going to work as he hopes and he's kind of trying to sell it by mimicking the way George tries to convince people to test-try his products, but he has to convince them because, well – magic in front of muggles? No, just no.
Thankfully, Harry seems to consider his suggestion seriously and Hermione is biting her lower lip in thought but voices no misgivings. She almost looks relieved, really, and that slows down Ron's anxiety. He's well aware that sometimes his best friends see the world differently from him, but it looks like this time they won't clash. Thank Merlin.
"Stunning is too risky," says Hermione after a while. "Do you know the incantation for the Bewitched Sleep?"
At their predictably blank looks, she huffs and slips her wand out, glowering: "Shield me from view," she orders and starts weaving the charm.
One by one, riflemen and aviators yawn and topple over gracefully, falling asleep under the fluid direction of the young witch's wand, some flopping to the ground, some dangling from the webs, only two putting up a token resistance, their eyes clouding with confusion even as they droop, before giving up and snoring away.
Harry frantically shushes Fortuna who is loudly cheering, as usual excited at seeing magic, and Hermione smoothly concludes the lengthy incantation, twirling her wand around in a finishing move and smiling in satisfaction: "That'll hold them for about two hours," she declares.
"If we hurry, we could manage other sites too," thinks Ron aloud.
"Let's not waste time, then!" exclaims Harry and starts casting Locator Spells around.
They find three of the blue spiders hiding on the opposite end of the clearing; they are obviously frightened of Fortuna, but the moment they realize they're caught, they charge with deadly speed.
The three magicians step forth together, Ron and Hermione flanking Harry as usual, wands drawn and ready. It's such a familiar stance, Ron feels himself relaxing even as adrenalin rushes through him.
"Sericoligo!" they chant in unison.
Zig-zagging purple spells shoot out like bullets and grip the silk strands, racing up and down, animating them with the will of their casters: in moments, the blue monsters are trussed up in swathes of their own silk, bound and subdued. Quick as lightning, Hermione transfigures the silk into steel, ensuring they can't break free.
"Now what?" she asks somewhat nervously.
Harry doesn't even hesitate: "Now we kill them," he says grimly.
And they do just that.