Summer 1992

Ronald Weasley

The castle was always quiet in the mornings before everyone woke, a steady rhythm of wind and nearly silent echoing halls. It was a settled quiet, the kind that was entirely unlike the oppressive silence that hung over Ron as he crept carefully through the corridor. The air of the castle had thickened, grown stagnant, and pressed in on his lungs like heavy weights. Smoke curled under the cracks of doors in slow lazy tendrils, the acrid smell mixing with something harsher— black powder.

The walls had large cracks that travelled from floor to ceiling and sometimes cut across horizontally, or spread out like spider webs from gashes and indentations. There was a brittleness about them that Ron had never seen before, the surfaces darkened with soot or something else of a dark powdery nature. He reached out hesitantly, his heart feeling far calmer than his mind. He touched the tip of his finger to the cool service of the stone walls.

All at once, stone dissolved to dust folding in on itself like the ancientness of the school had finally crept up on it. The spot where Ron had touched became the centre of a large collapse, the entire wall unravelling in a slow, dreadfully delicate cascade. He should have flinched, he should have backed away or braced for the ceiling to tumble on top of him. Instead, Ron watched, his eyes mesmerized by the slight beauty in the way things fell. On the other side of the wall where there ought to have been another corridor there was instead a vast hollow space. A room so massive it swallowed the light at the other side, seemingly stretching endlessly into a vast great darkness. A darkness that seemed to resemble the sea, a darkness that Ron felt he could drown in.

Ron stepped through where the wall had once been, his breath shallow, but his heart still beating as calmly as it ever had.

Something soft sounded in the darkness, barely a whisper carried through the air. It was distant, a faint shuffle of something moving against the floor. It was enough to make the hairs on his arms stand on edge, but still, his heart beat steadily. Ron took one step forward and then another.

All at once torches flared to life along the walls of the vast room, their flames bursting into a bright burn without so much as a crackle of sound. The light chased away and consumed the darkness like a hungry animal, replacing the sea of black with a cavernous stone room. In the middle, a few dozen metres from Ron, a figure stood with their back towards him; a girl.

Ron's breath hitched, he was almost sure she hadn't been there a minute ago. He would have seen her form through the darkness. She was shorter than he was, long red hair cascading down her back in soft waves, the strands of which almost seemed to float on the small tendrils of smoke that had made their way into the room. She stood impossibly still, her posture rigid and her hands tight at her sides.

Something twisted wickedly in Ron's stomach. "...Ginny?"

His question was met with only a deep guttural hiss that reverberated off the stone walls like the toll of a bell. The torches flickered violently casting jagged shadows that seemed to run alive across the floor. Then, from nothing, the air twisted and warped into a massive and coiled shape.

A monstrous, impossible thing, appeared from seemingly nowhere. A large snake glistened under the torchlight, its scales so green and dark that it was almost the colour of a tinted ink. Its body seemed to stretch endlessly in loops and coils. Two sharp massive fangs hung like pointed tree branches from an enormous head where the beast's eyes glinted like molten gold.

It moved faster than it should have for its size. Ron took a step backwards but by the time his foot landed, it was already too late. The snake lurched forward and struck, but it hadn't been aiming for him.

Ron watched in horror, frozen in place, as the snake's massive fangs sank deep into the girl's chest. For a brief, shattering second, she didn't react. The world seemed to blink and then resume. Blood poured from her chest, too much of it. It poured in thick rivulets, soaking the already darkened stone and spraying as her body jerked and convulsed against the creature's grasp.

Ron woke with a violent gasp of air, his body jerking upright as if he had been ripped out of the freezing depths of the ocean. His lungs burned in his chest, and he struggled to pull enough air in to satisfy their desire.

Sweat clung to his skin which was cold and clammy, and he shivered uncontrollably. He sucked in a deep, ragged breath, then …

- SS -

The fire in the hearth crackled softly. It sent waves of warmth across the room, which was smaller than usual. Ron sat slouched on one of the sofas, his hands still trembling and his entire body shivering despite the heat that licked at his skin.

His mind was muddled, caught between what was real about his nightmare and what was just stress that had been pooling inside of him for the better part of the year. His vision lingered, and so did the smell of black powder; it was as if the substance was stuck to his lip. He couldn't stop his eyes from seeing the blood of the girl… of Ginny, as the snake tore her to pieces. It was burned into his mind almost as vividly as Voldemort's eyes or Charlie's death.

It hadn't taken him long after he had woken up to find Daphne. He hadn't even needed to say much, she had looked at him and understood immediately that something else had happened. His skin was pale, paler than it should have been. Even his arms seemed to be as white as marble. Whatever sharpness Daphne usually held had faded and was replaced with a heavy blanket of concern. She sat in the chair across from him, legs crossed, her eyes watching him carefully as he shivered.

It was Sal who stared the hardest of the two of them, he flickered between being almost real and being slightly opaque. He stood with his arms crossed, his face lined with a deep heavy frown.

Ron swallowed, his throat felt dry.

"This is… concerning," Sal said finally. He had a tremor in his voice that Ron had never noticed before; uncertainty.

"Concerning?" Daphne said coldly. "I thought we had put this behind us."

Sal exhaled sharply and his frown deepened. "I was never certain the Philosopher's Stone would be the end of things," he admitted. "There are forces at play here that stretch beyond a single artifact, beyond a single battle."

Daphne shifted in her seat, "Then what is the end of things?" she asked.

Ron shivered. His fingers clenched against his own arms, his skin still clammy despite the fire's warmth. He didn't want to say it, but the words came anyway, quiet and hollow. "Charlie's death."

The air around Salazar seemed to crackle for a moment. "As long as Hogwarts stands," Sal said firmly, "your brother will not die and whatever this new vision is… it will not come to pass."

"Whatever it is?" Ron muttered. He felt like he might be sick. He should have known that things were only going to get worse. Voldemort was alive…

Daphne tilted her head slightly. "Are you sure… that it's an actual vision?" she asked quietly. "Not just a nightmare?"

The words struck something raw inside Ron, something jagged and raw. He hadn't realized was barely holding himself together. For a split second, he was back in the cavernous stone room, the torches flaring to life, the smell of black powder clinging thick to the air. Ginny's back was to him. The hiss came, deep and reverberating. Then the monstrous fangs, glinting like polished steel, sinking into her chest. The sickening, wet sound of flesh . So much blood—

His breath hitched. The fire flickered in front of him, but it might as well have been torches in the dark. His chest tightened as though an invisible hand had wrapped around his lungs, squeezing, pressing, suffocating. His hands curled into the fabric of his robes, his nails digging in so hard that pain barely registered over the crushing weight of—. Ron forced in a breath, but it wasn't enough. His vision blurred at the edges. The world tilted sideways. He wasn't here; he was there. His sister was dying in front of him.

Ron flinched, and his breath shuddered as he was yanked back into reality. Daphne stood in front of him, her arm outstretched and her hand resting on his shoulder lightly. The warmth of the fire washed over him and the distant hiss of the serpent faded into the crackling of a burning log.

"Ron," Daphne said softly. "Are you alright? I—I'm sorry for asking."

He stared at her for a moment, the ghost of his nightmare still clinging to the edges of his mind. Then, slowly, he exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair, his fingers knotting in the strands before he let them fall back to his lap.

"It's alright," he muttered. His voice felt rough, unsteady. "I just… I can't stop thinking about it. About what I saw."

She nodded and took a small step back from him.

"You need to focus on the present," Salazar reminded him. "Don't focus on things which are not guaranteed to happen. I know we have given you a terrible burden, Ronald, but for all our sakes you can not let it control you."

"Yeah…" he muttered. He wasn't sure how he was just supposed to cast his visions aside. They felt real, they were as real as anything else he had ever seen.

Salazar watched him for a moment longer, his expression unreadable. Then, with a slight tilt of his head, he spoke again. "You have yet to tell me how things went with the Philosopher's Stone."

Ron's mouth turned dry. "You were right, Voldemort was there. He was alive… but he wasn't really a wizard. He was something else. Like wisps of cold."

Sal's frown deepened, his form flickering faintly at the edges as if the very thought disturbed the magic that tethered him to this place. "As I expected. There are dark magics that can tether someone to this world, but it leaves the soul shattered and fragmented. It leaves a wizard as nothing but a portion of their former selves."

"You mean to say that… you-know-who is tethered to this world?" Daphne asked.

Sal nodded slowly. "It is a very large possibility given Ronald's experiences. As I said, I do not believe we have much to fear out of this Lord Voldemort. While he remains but a wraith, he is mostly a non-threat. I believe whatever approaches is independent of this former dark lord."

A frown crossed Daphne's lips. "He still has lots of support."

"Then perhaps it is his former followers that we must be cautious of. It would be easy for them to rally around him even if he is less than a man. Or better yet, for them, they could rally around a new figure if such a wizard or witch were to present themselves."

Ron shivered again. "There is going to be a war."

Daphne flinched.

"Possibly," Salazar said quietly. "But we do not know that for certain. We must continue to protect the school in any way that we can and hope that the threat we are facing will reveal itself in short order. Or, as I have said to you before Ronald, we can hope that this threat is many years away. So many years that I will have time to adequately train you."

I wasn't that old in my vision…

"I tried…" Ron's voice faded off and he cleared his throat. "I tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone instead of destroying it."

A small curious look spread across Salazar's face while Daphne's eyes widened.

"Are you serious?" She asked. "Merlin, I didn't think you were such an idiot."

Ron frowned. "Yeah, but we could have used it. Couldn't we?"

Salazar nodded. "Yes, I imagine a great deal of good could have come from such an object. The elixir of life would have undoubtedly improved your stamina in a duel, not to mention the wealth that could be generated from the transmission of metal into gold. That was not a bad idea at all, Ronald."

"Only," Daphne added. "He said he tried to steal it. Meaning he failed."

Ron nodded slowly. "Yeah, Dumbledore somehow knew I was lying. He asked me to give it to him and then he destroyed it. Guess he can just tell when I'm not telling the truth… which doesn't sit well."

"Merlin," Daphne said breathlessly. "Do you know how much trouble you could have got in? You could have been expelled. And I swear to god, Weasley, if you had been expelled I would have punched you. If anything happens to Astoria, I'm going to punch you."

"This headmaster is curious," Sal interrupted. "Why harbour the stone in the school if he would allow its destruction? It seems he had some other purpose for keeping it here rather than just safekeeping."

"He should be fired," Daphne said, tilting her head upwards. "He's almost killed a student twice."

Ron couldn't help but agree to an extent. Despite never having a truly bad interaction with Dumbledore he couldn't help but feel that the headmaster bore responsibility for everything that had happened. It was the same thoughts he had that morning about Dumbledore judging him for trying to steal the stone."Beware the greater good,"he repeated in his head again. Who was Dumbledore to issue such warnings when the headmaster seemed to not give a damn about a troll almost killing a student?

"He's Merlin, come again," Ron said. The words were more bitter than he had expected.

Daphne nodded in his direction. "Exactly what I mean, he probably thinks he is more important than he is."

Ron wasn't so sure. He knew that Dumbledore had bested Grindelwald, and he had been a dark wizard almost or just as powerful as Voldemort. After all, Grindelwald had almost taken control of most of Europe. Despite Ron's reservations about Dumbledore, he couldn't help but believe that he was as important as he believed… if not more. He had seen as much when Dumbledore had written to his parents on his behalf. He was certainly the only wizard who could influence Ron's mother. It didn't mean that he was doing things the right way, that he wasn't putting others in danger, but it did mean that he was probably as important as he felt.

"There is something else…" Ron said slowly. "Something that Quirrell said to me before he attacked Harry."

"Something of great importance?" Salazar asked.

Ron nodded. "He thought that I attacked Sally Smith, bloody mental. He didn't even seem to doubt it."

Daphne nodded and frowned deeply. "I did find something about it Ron, and it's not good."

"That is strange, and what did Sally Smith have to say?" Sal asked.

"She couldn't remember who attacked her, only that she knew it was an older student."

"I heard more than one voice," Ron recalled.

Daphne nodded. "Yes, so something is going on here. If Quirrell thought that you were the one who attacked her, then obviously he wasn't working with whoever did this. Maybe that's the threat to the school?" She looked up to Salazar who nodded slightly. "She also told me something peculiar, she had scars on the tips of her fingers, like they drained the blood through her hands."

"Ah," Salazar mused.

Both sets of eyes looked at him.

"There is a ritual," he explained, "often used in blood magic, or it was at least during my time. Of course, only by those who had no regard for the lives of muggles. Which, of course, was almost all of those who dipped their hands into the rivers of such magic. It used gemstones, red agate to be exact, as a means of storing blood for more complex rituals in the future. It drains the blood through the tips of the fingers, the subject grasps the stone in their hands."

"Blood magic, shite…" Ron mumbled. He could only begin to imagine what kinds of terrible things were going to unfold.

"As terrible as it sounds, this is not the end of the world. In fact, we now have many clues to investigate and clues more often than not lead to answers. To begin with, if the girl was found in the corridor then the ritual must have been performed nearby. She was also left alive, which tells us that these ritualists were not interested in murdering anyone or leaving any lasting damage."

"There are abandoned classrooms nearby…" Daphne said slowly. "Nobody usually goes in there… unless they're hiding something."

"I would recommend you investigate those rooms, look for anything that may have been left behind," Salazar suggested. "If they are storing blood, this also gives us equal opportunity to find the stones which they are using. These ritualists will be in possession of these accursed agates and can be identified as our targets. Finally, the fact they are saving blood lets us know that they are planning a larger, more powerful ritual. There are many, yes, but only a few that could be performed inside of Hogwarts. The charms and enchantments of the castle would block anything that is too terrible, when we built this place we ensured that it would be hard for terrible magic to breach the castle walls."

"What if they aren't going to use the blood at Hogwarts?" Ron asked tentatively.

A thin smile appeared on Salazar's lips. "Then, my boy, we have nothing to worry about. It is not our job to eradicate these ritualists, just as it was not your job to eradicate this dark lord of yours. We must only ensure that the castle remains standing."

Ron took a deep breath, he couldn't imagine how hard of a job that was going to turn out to be.