Chapter Text
Fred was dead. Fred was dead, and there were Death Eaters at the door, and Harry was missing. Ron felt his stomach turn as he looked at the lines of dead students and Order members. The sounds in the room came to him like he was underwater: screaming wails from those who had lost someone, from his own family. George, who hadn’t let go of Fred yet, shouting and moaning his agony to join the chorus of so many others doing the same, in denial that the other half of his soul was gone. Ron’s eyes flew to his watch.
Time was running out. They’d be coming any minute.
Ron’s feet started moving without his consent. He didn’t know where he was going, but suddenly he was running, leaving his family behind him without another glance, because he couldn’t stand to be there for one more second, couldn’t listen to the screaming anymore. He flew down the corridors, not sure where he was going, but letting himself run. People needed him, Harry needed him, Hermione shouldn’t have to face the battle without the both of them, his family needed him, he should go back to the Great Hall, but he kept running.
He ran, and ran, until he realized that he wasn’t running away from the hall anymore, in fact, he never had been running away from it, he was running toward something. Something was drawing him deeper into the castle than he had ever been before, into rooms he had never seen.
A chime rang throughout the castle. Time was up.
Ron kept running.
He ran through the sounds of the battle starting up again, their echoes reaching him even here, through halls he hadn’t been in for more than a year. He ran, and kept running, until he found it.
The Hogwarts Ward Room.
Only the Headmaster of Hogwarts should be able to locate the Ward Room, it was supposedly impossible for anyone else to find. Yet there he was, Ron Weasley, standing in a room that had been seen by less than a dozen people in the past century.
The sounds of the battle faded as he stepped across the threshold. While most of the castle was made of cobblestones, the Ward Room seemed to all be carved from the very bedrock of the land that Hogwarts stood on. The room was huge, with high ceilings, and stone archways making up the four entrances. Each archway was carved with lifelike statues on the pillars, all made up of the same piece of seamless stone that the rest of the room was.
The archway that Ron stepped through had a lion on one side, so realistic he kept his distance, and he recognized the imposing figure of Godric Griffindor himself on the other side, hands resting on the pommel of his sword.
The other doors were decorated with their respective founders and animals as well, and Ron couldn’t help but feel like all eight of them, founders and animals alike, were watching him as he stepped into the cathedral-like space.
In the center of the room was a huge stone circle made of intricate runes, which were lit up, and cast the only light in the room. In the center of the circle was a standing stone at least six meters tall and three wide, every centimeter filled with more of those intricate runes, though these ones were not alight, but rather seemed drained completely. The wards had failed early on in the battle: it was a miracle Hogwarts was still standing at all.
Ron took careful steps closer to the ward stone, stopping at the edge of the circle. He felt detached from his body, like he was a spirit floating within his body instead of a soul inhabiting it. He watched his feet step over the lit runes, and into the circle.
The ground started to shake. The whole room was shaking, the whole castle, maybe the whole world. Ron fell to his knees, unable to steady himself, still disoriented.
He looked up just in time to see the ward stone fall down on top of him. He accepted the darkness and his death as they came to him. He was grateful that he was done.
A few seconds later, and also six years earlier, Ron Weasley sat straight up in his violently orange bed in his horribly orange childhood bedroom, eleven years old again, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.