Broken ties: Ronald M. Weasleys

Ronald M. Weasleys

The Prologue

  Falling and hitting the back of his head on a rock, he almost loses consciousness. But he pulls himself together — he can't... Just not now. And he turns over, crawls, crawls on one hand back — up — over the time-worn slabs, blindly groping in front of him along the steps, slippery with moisture and his own blood, until he gropes for the sword... The blade is slimy with blood, alive and dead, the hilt still retains the warmth of his palm...

  He has no hope of escape. Exhausted, almost blind, wounded... He won't run away.

  He knows that this is the end.

  Anyway, he took three of them. And he'll pick himself up. He rolls over onto his back, laying the sword flat across his throat. He puts his right hand on his chest, gathers the last of his strength, recalling the formula...

  Yes. That's it.

  "I won't give in to you, creatures..." He whispers, barely hearing himself, concentrating on the spell. "I won't give up. Not alive... not dead... Here's a message from me... A gift..."

  From the hand, the remnants of magic spread through the body like an icy wave. He had invented this spell himself, for himself and his comrades, just in such an extreme case. So that the body raised by someone else's will turned out to be a useless piece of meat, devoid of the usual malice for the undead. It would be better to extinguish self-preservation, but... he didn't have a chance to debug the spell...

  Because it needs to be applied to a person who is still alive. And it will take away... everything during his lifetime. Faith, will, feelings, desire to live. He already feels like his hatred of the magicians who are chasing him is being replaced by listless indifference; a little more, and everything he loved and believed in will lose its meaning. He has very little time left to complete the case...

  "I won't give up..."

  ... and with the last effort of his fading will, with difficulty turning the blade, he cuts his throat.

* * *

  "Ron! How are you? Wake up!"

  "Ron, we really didn't want to..."

  Children's voices. Well, like the children's apprentice boys, they've probably been studying for a couple of years already. There are still ringing voices, brittle, trembling. From crying? Has someone offended them? Or were they playing a prank on someone, so much so that they were scared themselves?

  And anyway, where do the children come from? They were definitely not in the community... Of course those bastards were recruiting kids. I'm not a kid, I wouldn't have lost my temper, but it would have been more difficult... It's hard for him to see children being bullied...

  "What did you do to him, well? What?!" a woman, her voice cracking with excitement. Probably the mother of Ron's boy. Or one of the pranksters.

  "Nothing..."

  "Don't lie to me!!!"

  "We're really okay, Mom! We made a firecracker..."

  "...They wanted to show him, but he got scared..."

  "...He ran, stumbled, and... lo and behold..." the boy barely restrains himself from crying.

  "Expecto Patronum!" the woman shouts, says something else, but he can't make it out... some kind of opacity, or it's from pain... She stops talking, and it gets a little easier.

  Something is gently touching his face. My head hurts, but not so much, and my thoughts are slowly clearing up. This is Ron, Ronald Bilius Weasley. The twins-his brothers, that's how-shot him with a homemade firecracker, and a huge furry spider flew out. Ron has been afraid of them since childhood... when the spider from the firecracker landed right on his face, he ran out of the brothers' room, not understanding the way, just trying to shake off this filth, stumbled on the stairs and ... fell. I hit the back of my head on a stone step... why a stone staircase, but a wooden one?.. Dad fixed it last week— the railing was completely loose...

  "Concussion," says the man directly above him. And how is he here? And when did you arrive? There is no reason to be hospitalized, Mrs. Weasley, but for the next five days your son needs complete rest and taking potions by the hour. I'll write out the prescriptions and explain everything to you...

  The darkness under his eyelids slowly dissipates, giving way to a reddish glow, and Ron decides to open his eyes a crack. There is a large yellow-green spot on the brown background. It hurts to look, and he closes his eyes again.

  "Sleep," the man says, and Ron falls asleep and doesn't feel anything anymore.

Part 1. Chowder with meat

  Ron can't sleep. He has a terrible headache, and the healer from Mungo told him not to strain himself at all and to lie down as much as possible. Somnium was no longer applied to him — healing potions have a hypnotic effect, it seems like it is impossible to cast spells and potions of similar action on each other. It's a pity. Ron is really sleepy, but for some reason he can't fall asleep, and this makes his head hurt even more... He honestly tries, lies with his eyes closed almost all the time, but nothing comes out — something deep inside is desperately resisting, not letting him fall asleep. It's an unpleasant feeling, as if a huge furry spider is sitting somewhere in my chest and moving, it's worth taking a nap for a while. Ron feels so bad, so painful, and so sorry for himself — just lie there in a dark room with a spider in his chest, not going for a walk, not playing chess, not even looking through Quidditch through the Ages! Nothing is allowed! that he was whimpering softly, buried in the pillow.

  And the healer who came to visit the patient finds him in tears and with a swollen clogged nose. Ron is very ashamed that an adult magician, an outsider, saw him like this, but he can't help himself.

  "What is it, Ron? Is it that bad?" mom strokes his head. Her voice is very soft, as if Ron is not ten years old, but five or even less, and the healer sees it all. It only makes it worse.

  "My head hurts a lot," Ron sniffs, "and... I can't sleep."

  "It's very strange," the healer comments. "Are the potions not helping you?"

  "Not particularly. They make you want to sleep, but you can't... My head only hurts more."

  "After taking potions?" he's very puzzled, looking around. "Hm... does your head hurt more when you lie with your eyes open or closed?"

  "Ron thinks for a moment."

  "Probably when they're open. I open my eyes when I need to drink potions, and... and not only that," he gets embarrassed.

  "Was there any nausea or vomiting? Dizziness?"

  "D... don't think so..."

  "Show me exactly where it hurts."

  That's difficult, because Ron feels like his whole head hurts. But he's honestly trying to focus and figure out where the pain is greater. It seems to be in the temples and the back of the head...

  The healer examines him with a diagnostic spell and turns to his mother. He says that the posters on the walls can be the cause of such severe pain: even in semi-darkness they are too bright and move. Mom immediately takes them all off with a wave of her wand and rolls them into neat scrolls. Ron doesn't know how it works, and he feels a little sorry for the posters — lying in a room with bare walls is quite depressing, but on the other hand, maybe then he can fall asleep. And then, when he gets better, Mom will hang them back up, so Ron doesn't mind, even if they don't ask him. He drinks the prescribed potions, says goodbye to the healer, and for a while his gaze wanders around his room, which is so strangely bare and empty — he is completely unaccustomed to wooden walls from which no one winks or waves at him. He starts to feel sleepy again, but for some reason the spider in his chest doesn't move, has he fallen asleep? That would be nice. Maybe he'll let Ron sleep then, too...

  And soon Ron actually falls asleep.

  Because of his incomprehensible insomnia, instead of five days, Ron is treated for a week.

  And apart from the fact that he can't get out of bed and his head hasn't completely gone away, he almost likes being sick. Mom comes in several times a day to check if he drinks potions; sometimes Percy looks in instead of her, which is also good — he's boring, of course, but if he's in the mood, you can chat with him. True, he talks mostly about school, and Ron doesn't have much to say in response, but it's not that important. Ron is not picky, and he is ready to listen for the hundredth time about Snape, whom he already dislikes in absentia. The main thing is that they tell him exactly.

  Another absolute plus of the disease is that you don't get twins. They even tried to apologize: they brought a chocolate frog and told us a little about what had happened.

  "You know, Ma was really scared. You broke your head in blood, crawled up..."

  "And he was groping along the stairs with his hands like that, as if he was looking for something. We also thought you were kidding..."

  "And then you fell over on your back and started mumbling something in Latin..."

  "...We didn't understand, but there was definitely something about death..."

  "..And only then did you switch off."

  In Latin? About death? Wow, he doesn't even remember. But he doesn't really remember how he fell or what happened next, and the twins will lie for a sweet soul. He doesn't even know Latin. Ron accepted the apology, but did not dare to eat the frog, in case there was something mixed in it that the person who ate it started scratching in Greek.

  But all good things come to an end, and the healer, recognizing his condition as satisfactory, gives the last recommendations: for the next three days, do not read, especially small letters, do not go near brooms if it gets bad — potions and bed rest for the day. As for reading and brooms, I didn't really want to... Otherwise, everything is fine. I'm already tired of lying down, especially since the weather is wonderful — at least walk all day. And Fred and George seem to have quieted down. Their humility won't last long, we need to seize the moment.

  Ron sits up in bed. He needed to get himself in order: lunch was coming soon, and he couldn't come to the table unwashed and in his pajamas. Surely Mom will persuade the healer to eat with them, because not a single guest has left the Weasleys hungry yet! And when visiting, you need to keep up appearances.

  He tilts his head back and runs his hands through his hair-straight, coarse, and very long-quickly, forcefully, smoothing and gathering them up. He holds his hair at the base with one hand...

  Ron blinks and shakes his head. What was that?! His mom's been cutting her hair very short for as long as he can remember, and his hair isn't like that at all. But now he actually tried to make a tail! Just like that, without combing. And that feeling of long strands under his hands was so real and so familiar...

  On the other hand, maybe this is normal for someone who has properly applied his head. If Ron crawled up the stairs immediately after the impact and pretended to be a fortune teller, an attempt to collect a non-existent mane in a ponytail can be considered a residual symptom of a concussion. He definitely likes this explanation, and he calms down. Moreover, before dinner, no residual symptoms bother him.

  For dinner tonight, chicken soup with cheese and onions, his favorite. When his mother puts a plate in front of him, Ron involuntarily lingers his gaze on her hand — clean, with short-cropped nails, slightly smelling of lavender soap. He looks at the plate where pieces of meat are floating in a thick broth... and suddenly she remembers.

  He's sitting in the hall of an abandoned castle or something... White stone walls and floor, high ceiling with fancy wrought iron lamp. Now, however, there are no candles burning in it, you can only distinguish its outlines if you look closely for a long time. There is a bonfire right on the floor, and people in black robes are sitting around, very close to each other, laying animal skins on a stone. One of the women, a very small woman with wrinkles around her eyes and the first streaks of gray in her dark hair, Marietta, her name is Marietta, is pouring out a thick meat stew. She has dirt under her nails, and her hands smell strongly of bile, intestinal juice, and onions. And the light eyes look kind of benevolent, but there's something about them... It's scary and disgusting, which scares little Ron to the point of trembling, but it's familiar to another adult and just doesn't let him relax. He's among the enemies. Marietta is the enemy. Nevertheless, he smiles at her gratefully, accepts the bowl from her hands and begins to eat, fishing out pieces of bittersweet meat and drinking hot fatty broth. By the way, his hands are no cleaner than Marietta's, and they smell... Oh, Merlin...

  Ron jumps up, claps his hand over his mouth, and knocks over a chair, rushes to the bathroom. He's shaking. He knows what was swimming in that broth. And the other one, who was sitting on a hide in an abandoned castle and eating, smiling at Marietta, knew it too. What did I know! He helped to cook... But he wasn't afraid, and he wasn't disgusted. He accepted it... as a matter of course, or what? No... Or is it? He... like this... He understood and accepted the need. The need to smile, thank, and eat without wincing, erasing any disgust that might have given him away. Ron is ten years old, and it's too difficult for him. And it's too scary.

Part 2. Couldn't be straighter