7"Hermione?" It's dark, muddled, different. All of his dreams revolve of around her, but always in memory. This time, for the first time since. . . that time, she does not appear to him. He craves for her torturous presence.
"Hermione?" Although it is dark, the air is not cold, he realizes. He feels no pain.
He find that he is thirsty. His throat has turned dry, and he can no longer repeat that name.
His hands flail in the dark, searching for something, anything, to give him a clue of what is going on. As he continues to move, the sound of rushing water reaches his ears, and a faint gloom lights a grassy path ahead. Rustling leaves indicate a slight breeze, and immediately he recognizes where he is.
In reality, this place is all but ashes. But this is not reality, this is his dream, wonderful and terrible and all coming from his own mental head.
Stumbling, he reaches the edge of the mirror-like Lake. Without hesitation, he plunges his hands and splashes the water over his face, cups some into his dehydrated mouth, and almost breathes its refreshingly familiar scent in.
Why does he see this place, of all places?
As if an answer to his unspoken query, the sound of laughter and voices reach his ears. What are they saying?
". . . about sixteen feet tall, enjoys ripping up twenty-foot pine trees, and knows me," she snorted, "as Hermy."
The air in his lungs vanished as the words sunk in. Wildly, Ron looked about for her, but saw nothing to indicate that it wasn't all just some memory that had decided to crop up in his head.
Intrigued and without any other options, he walks toward the magnificent stone castle ahead. The courtyard, though deserted, was littered with the usual amount of leaves, chairs, and even gobstones. It looked untouched from the way it had been. . . before. As he wanders to the doors, a faint wind swirls siad leaves into - a shape? Could it really-?
No, even if this is a dream, that's just not happening.
The large oak doors open with a creak. Again, he finds the main entrance empty of people, yet covered with old familiar things.
"How could you say something like that - I want Harry to win the tournament, Harry knows that, don't you, Harry?"
There it was again. Instantly, Ron burst through the Great Hall, half hoping, only find the House Tables stacked against the wall, a single circular one straight in the middle of the floor.
A sigh of frustration escaped him, and he ran as fast as possible up the stairs, to the top Tower. In no time at all, he was facing a blank frame stuck to a password-protected door.
"Hermione!" He shouted without thinking.
Oddly enough, the door swung open.
"You said to us once before, that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"
Yes, plenty of time. They'd had ages to back out of this mad deal that Fate had landed them. At the time, he had always foolishly believed that somehow, somehow, they would make it through.
They didn't. None of them. Except him.
And if there was any kind of god or living force powerful enough to have jurisdiction over life and death, he so uncharacteristically hoped that it would take mercy on him, for once, and end this eternal suffering and give him some sweet black oblivion.
Was it cowardly to think so?
Maybe once, maybe a while ago, maybe if she were here, it would seem like that.
But this wasn't then, wasn't with her, and right now, that was his only savior.
"Hermione!" Ron shouted without thinking.
His eyes jolted awake as he heard the crashing noise of an opening steel door.
"Crucio!" A spark of scarlet, and then-
-he didn't even scream at the pain now. Pain was his lot in life, a constant that had never, not once, changed.
Besides, this was like a paper cut compared to the pain inside.
Yet, he still squirmed uncomfortably. The burning sensation and heavy pressure on his every bone and muscle remained. His head still throbbed as much as ever, and his throat was still swelling with tears.
It wasn't because of this.
"Take him away," a cold voice sneered. Ron knew it well.
As the torture stopped temporarily, a set of arms dug under his own, and dragged him carelessly on the dirty, soiled stone floor.
Ron didn't care. There was no escape now, and there probably never would be. He'd lost faith in that sort of thing back when the only smells he could detect any longer were of death.
Death. It is what he hopes is finally approaching him. He will accept it like the second Peverell brother. For that boy had loved and lost too.
Death is filling his senses - he hears the strangled cries of others, smells the nauseating scent, sees the flashes of green and the daggers of silver.
He feels the strong pair of arms throw him roughly to the ground, and a small light illuminates his interrogators.
"Weaselby."
Good. It's him again.
"There's no Mudblood brain or Scarhead hero to save you now."
The next thing he knows is his fist making contact with something softer and smaller, and then getting covered in hot red liquid.
"You foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach!"
There's muttering, swearing, under that one's breath. "Damn you, Weasley! Your insubordination has gone on for long enough." Everything he says comes through a bit nasally now, and Ron almost smiles in satisfaction.
"Sectumsempra!"
Hot red liquid. Blood. It's gushing out of him, like never before. This has happened before, but rarely and briefly. For once, it's something that he's not used to at all, which is why he is moaning; moaning, even though it has become harder with the blood rising in his throat.
Somewhere, off in the distance, he hears a jeering laughter. He cannot see quite well, because he thinks that the lights have gone out, and he feels as if he's drowning.
At the moment, he's not aware of the reality of the situation. Regardless, he has got a bit of hunch that his wishes have finally come true.
He's right.
The pain, the laughter, and the dim light were ebbing away like smoothly running water - his consciousness was disappearing into some other reality.
"You said to us once before, that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"
The reality was that there had never been any chance of turning back. Once they had become, there had been an inseparable bond that couldn't be broken.
Not even by death.
Even though this wasn't a fairytale ending (because those were only in fiction, weren't they?), their love for each other, especially his love for her, was strong enough that it had surpassed death. It might not have withstood it, but it certainly still existed.
Of that Ron was now sure: his two best friends, though no longer with him in body, were with him elsewhere. Inside him, his memories, his heart, his very soul. Because the dead were only truly gone when no living being remained to care, to remember, to be loyal.
But Ron still cared; he still remembered.
Lying immobile and irresponsive on the dank and dirty floor in a pool of his own blood, he fell into a final sleep, where he dreamt of her once again and forevermore.
Ronald Weasley was loyal until the end.