How Deathly Hallows Should've Been
I am doing a nine-part rewriting of scenes in Deathly Hallows, altering them as slightly as I can to make the story Harry/Ron instead of Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione.
Title: How Deathly Hallows Should've Been - Part 1
Pairings: Harry/Ron, Ron/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is what Deathly Hallows would probably be like if J.K. Rowling was man enough to admit that Harry and Ron are in love. ;D
Disclaimer: This compilation of scenes mostly consists of text copied directly from the first Scholastic printing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I did not write said book, do not own the copyrights to Harry Potter and related characters, and did not have any part in the making of the Harry Potter books, movies, or any Harry Potter merchandise (licensed or otherwise). Please do not sue me.
Warnings: none
Notes: Considering the mega Harry/Ron slashiness undertones throughout all of DH, I thought it would be fun to edit parts here and there. I recommend reading Deathly Hallows like normal, but substituting these rewritten scenes for the canon versions. :D
Scene 1: Chapter 7 - page 113 American hardcover edition
“I’d do your fly by hand, though. We wouldn’t want anything damaged,” Ron advised Harry, sniggering when Harry immediately checked it. “Here’s your present. Unwrap it here, it’s not for my mother’s eyes.”
“A book?” said Harry as he took the rectangular parcel. “Bit of a departure from tradition, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t your average book,” said Ron. “It’s pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything you need to know about girls. If only I’d had this last year I’d have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I would’ve known how to get going with…Well, Fred and George gave me a copy, and I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.”
Harry forced a grin. “Thanks.”
He knew Ron meant well, but Ron knew that Harry preferred guys. Ron didn’t know Harry was gay (and Harry wasn’t planning to tell him within ten kilometers of Ginny), but Harry thought Ron would’ve have enough sense not to give him a whole book on getting girls.
"That’s not all,” Ron said, grinning. “Tap the word ‘witches’ with your wand.”
Harry did so and instantly the cover changed to Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Bewitch Wizards: Wizard’s Edition.
“See, it’s two books in one,” said Ron, “But you’ll probably want to keep it as the girls one when you’re not using it.”
Harry’s grin was real this time.
Scene 2: Chapter 7 - page 115 American hardcover edition
“Harry, will you come in here a moment?”
It was Ginny. Ron came to an abrupt halt, but Hermione took him by the elbow and tugged him on up the stairs. Feeling nervous and wishing he could go with Ron, Harry followed Ginny into her room.
He had never been inside it before. It was small, but bright. There was a large poster of the Wizarding band the Weird Sisters on one wall, and a picture of Gwenog Jones, Captain of the all-witch Quidditch team the Holyhead Harpies, on the other. A desk stood facing the open window, which looked out over the orchard where he and Ginny had once played two-a-side Quidditch with Ron and Hermione, and which now housed a large, pearly white marquee. The golden flag on top was level with Ginny’s window.
Ginny looked up into Harry’s face, took a deep breath and said, “Happy seventeenth.”
“Yeah…thanks.”
She was looking at him steadily; he, however, was determinedly looking away from her; he was already finding it hard to resist his old stand-by.
“Nice view,” he said feebly, pointing toward the window.
She ignored this. He could not blame this.
“I couldn’t think what to get you,” she said.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
She disregarded this too.
“I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”
He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up.
She took a step closer to him. Harry knew he should move back but his self-control was fading…
“So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.”
“I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.” Unless it was Ron.
“There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,” she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry, all self-discipline forgotten, was doing something he had never allowed himself to do before: he was kissing her back, pretending she was Ron. It was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; he was the only real thing in the world, Ron, the feel of him, one hand on the small of his back and one in his long, sweet-smelling hair -
Harry pulled back. This was wrong.
Ginny was breathing heavily, and she closed her eyes to kiss him again, but Harry stepped back.
She opened back her eyes, confused. She came closer and tried again.
The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart.
“Oh,” said Ron pointedly. “Sorry.”
“Ron!” Hermione was just behind him, slightly out of breath. There was a strained silence, then Ginny said in a flat little voice,
“Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry.”
Ron’s ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry wanted to slam the door in their faces so he didn’t have to face Ron, but it felt as though a cold draft had entered the room when he broke off his kiss with Ginny, and he no longer wanted to be anywhere near her. All the reasons for ending his relationship with Ginny seemed to have slunk inside the room with Ron, and his happy forgetfulness was long gone.
He looked at Ginny, wanting to say something, though he hardly knew what, but she had turned her back on him. He thought that she might have succumbed, for once, to tears. He could not bring himself to comfort her, especially in front of Ron.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and followed the other two out of the bedroom.
Ron marched downstairs, through the still-crowded kitchen and into the yard, and Harry anxiously kept pace with him all the way, Hermione trotting along behind them looking scared.
Once he reached the seclusion of the freshly mown lawn, Ron rounded on Harry.
“You ditched her. What are you doing now, messing her around?”
“I’m not messing her around,” said Harry, as Hermione caught up with them.
“Ron - ”
But Ron held a hand up to silence her.
“She was really cut up when you ended it - ”
“So was I,” Harry countered, stretching the truth, “You know why I stopped it.”
“Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again -”
“She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, won’t happen, she’s not expecting us to - to end up married, or - ”
As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless stranger. In one spiraling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his and Ron’s…he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.
“If you keep groping her every chance you get - ”
“She approached me, and it won’t happen again,” said Harry harshly. The day was cloudless, but he felt as though the sun had gone in. “Okay?”
Ron looked half resentful, half sheepish; he rocked backward and forward on his feet for a moment, then said, “Right then, well, that’s…yeah.”
Scene 3: Chapter 15 - page 305 American hardcover edition
“Yeah, you’re right!” said Harry, and he felt even more cheered at the thought that Dumbledore had had some reservations, however faint, about Snape’s trustworthiness. “So, would he have hidden the sword well away from Hogsmeade, then? What d’you reckon, Ron? Ron?”
Harry looked around. For one bewildered moment he thought that Ron had left the tent, then realized that Ron was lying in the shadow of a lower bunk, looking stony.
“Oh, remembered me, have you?” he said.
“What?”
Ron snorted as he stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.
“You two carry on. Don’t let me spoil your fun.”
Perplexed, Harry looked to Hermione for help, but she shook her head, apparently as nonplussed as he was.
“What’s the problem?”
“Problem? There’s no problem,” said Ron, still refusing to look at Harry. “Not according to you, anyway.”
There were several plunks on the canvas over their heads. It had started to rain.
“Well, you’ve obviously got a problem,” said Harry. “Were you going to tell me?”
Ron swung his long legs off the bed and sat up. He looked mean, unlike himself.
“All right, I’ll tell you. Don’t expect me to skip up and down the tent because there’s some other damn thing we’ve got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don’t know.”
“I don’t know?” repeated Harry. “I don’t know?”
Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rain was falling harder and heavier; it pattered on the leaf-strewn bank all around them and into the river chattering through the dark. Dread doused Harry’s jubilation: Ron was saying exactly what he had suspected and feared him to be thinking.
“It’s not like I’m not having the time of my life here,” said Ron, “you know, with my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night and you two having all these cozy chats without me. I just hoped you know, after we’d been running round a few weeks, we’d have achieved something.”
“Ron,” said Hermione, but in such a quiet voice that Ron could pretend not to have heard it over the loud tattoo the rain was now beating on the tent.
“I thought you knew what you’d signed up for,” said Harry.
“Yeah, I thought I did too.”
“So what part of it isn’t living up to your expectations?” asked Harry. Anger at both Ron and himself was coming to his defense now. In his pains to make sure Ron didn’t suspect Harry’s feelings for him, it seemed Harry had been leaving him out. “Did you think we’d be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you’d back to Mummy by Christmas?”
“We thought you knew what you were doing!” shouted Ron, standing up, and his words pierced Harry like scalding knives. “We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!”
“Ron!” said Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain thundering on the tent roof, but again, he ignored her.
“Well, sorry to let you down,” said Harry, his voice quite calm even though he felt hollow, inadequate. “I’ve been straight with you from the start, I told everything Dumbledore told me. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve found one Horcrux - ”
“Yeah, and we’re about as near getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of them - nowhere effing near, in other words!”
“Take off the locket, Ron,” Hermione said, her voice unusually high. “Please take it off. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you hadn’t been wearing it all day.”
“Yeah, he would,” said Harry, who did not want excuses made for Ron’s opinion. “D’you think I haven’t noticed the two of you whispering behind my back? D’you think I didn’t guess you were thinking this stuff?”
“Harry, we weren’t - ”
“Don’t lie!” Ron hurled at her. “You said it too, you said you were disappointed, you said you’d thought he had a bit more to go on than - ”
“I didn’t say it like that - Harry, I didn’t!” she cried.
The rain was pounding the tent, tears were pouring down Hermione’s face, and the excitement of a few minutes before had vanished as if it had never been, as short-lived firework that had flared and died, leaving everything dark, wet, and cold. The sword of Gryffindor was hidden they knew not where, and they were three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead.
“So why are you still here?” Harry asked Ron bitterly.
“Search me,” said Ron.
“Go home then,” said Harry.
“Yeah, maybe I will!” shouted Ron, and he took several steps toward Harry, who did not back away. “Didn’t you hear what they said about my sister? But you don’t give a rat’s fart, do you, it’s only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I’ve-Faced-Worse Potter doesn’t care what happens to her in here - well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff - ”
“I was only saying - she was with the others, they were with Hagrid - ”
“Yeah, I get it, you don’t care! And what about the rest of my family, ‘the Weasleys don’t need another kid injured,’ did you hear that?”
“Yeah, I - ”
“Not bothered what it meant, though?”
“Ron!” said Hermione, forcing her way between them. “I don’t think it means anything new has happened, anything we don’t know about; think, Ron, Bill’s already scarred, plenty of people must have seen that George has lost an ear by now, and you’re supposed to be on your deathbed with spattergroit, I’m sure that’s all he meant - ”
“Oh, you’re sure, are you? Right then, well, I won’t bother myself about them. It’s all right for you two, isn’t it, with your parents safely out of the way - ”
“My parents are dead!” Harry bellowed.
“And mine could be going the same way!” yelled Ron.
“Then GO!” roared Harry. “Go back to them, pretend you’ve got over your spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up and Fleur’ll probably kiss - ”
Ron made a sudden movement: Harry reacted instinctively, but before either wand was clear of its owner’s pocket, Hermione had raised her own.
“Protego!” she cried, and an invisible shield expanded between her and Harry on the one side and Ron on the other; all of them were forced backward a few steps by the strength of the spell, and Harry and Ron glared from either side of the transparent barrier as though they were seeing each other clearly for the first time. Harry felt a corrosive hatred toward Ron: Something had broken between them.
“Leave the Horcrux,” Harry said.
Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket into a nearby chair. He turned to Hermione.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you staying, or what?”
“I…” She looked anguished. “Yes - yes, I’m staying. Ron, we said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help - ”
“Hermione keeps her word,” interjected Harry.
“I get it. He chooses you. You choose him.”
“Ron, no - please - come back, come back!”
She was impeded by her own Shield Charm; by the time she had removed it he had already stormed into the night. Harry stood quite still and silent, listening to her sobbing and calling Ron’s name amongst the trees.
After a few minutes she returned, her sopping hair plastered to her face.
“He’s g-g-gone! Disapparated!”
She threw herself into a chair, curled up, and started to cry.
Harry felt dazed. He stopped, picked up the Horcrux, and placed it around his own neck. He dragged blankets off Ron’s bunk and threw them over Hermione. Then he climbed onto his own bed and stared up at the dark canvas roof, listening to the pounding of the rain.
Comments are more than welcome! :D
Part 2 is here
Title: How Deathly Hallows Should've Been - Part 1
Pairings: Harry/Ron, Ron/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Summary: This is what Deathly Hallows would probably be like if J.K. Rowling was man enough to admit that Harry and Ron are in love. ;D
Disclaimer: This compilation of scenes mostly consists of text copied directly from the first Scholastic printing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I did not write said book, do not own the copyrights to Harry Potter and related characters, and did not have any part in the making of the Harry Potter books, movies, or any Harry Potter merchandise (licensed or otherwise). Please do not sue me.
Warnings: none
Notes: Considering the mega Harry/Ron slashiness undertones throughout all of DH, I thought it would be fun to edit parts here and there. I recommend reading Deathly Hallows like normal, but substituting these rewritten scenes for the canon versions. :D
Scene 1: Chapter 7 - page 113 American hardcover edition
“I’d do your fly by hand, though. We wouldn’t want anything damaged,” Ron advised Harry, sniggering when Harry immediately checked it. “Here’s your present. Unwrap it here, it’s not for my mother’s eyes.”
“A book?” said Harry as he took the rectangular parcel. “Bit of a departure from tradition, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t your average book,” said Ron. “It’s pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything you need to know about girls. If only I’d had this last year I’d have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I would’ve known how to get going with…Well, Fred and George gave me a copy, and I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.”
Harry forced a grin. “Thanks.”
He knew Ron meant well, but Ron knew that Harry preferred guys. Ron didn’t know Harry was gay (and Harry wasn’t planning to tell him within ten kilometers of Ginny), but Harry thought Ron would’ve have enough sense not to give him a whole book on getting girls.
"That’s not all,” Ron said, grinning. “Tap the word ‘witches’ with your wand.”
Harry did so and instantly the cover changed to Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Bewitch Wizards: Wizard’s Edition.
“See, it’s two books in one,” said Ron, “But you’ll probably want to keep it as the girls one when you’re not using it.”
Harry’s grin was real this time.
Scene 2: Chapter 7 - page 115 American hardcover edition
“Harry, will you come in here a moment?”
It was Ginny. Ron came to an abrupt halt, but Hermione took him by the elbow and tugged him on up the stairs. Feeling nervous and wishing he could go with Ron, Harry followed Ginny into her room.
He had never been inside it before. It was small, but bright. There was a large poster of the Wizarding band the Weird Sisters on one wall, and a picture of Gwenog Jones, Captain of the all-witch Quidditch team the Holyhead Harpies, on the other. A desk stood facing the open window, which looked out over the orchard where he and Ginny had once played two-a-side Quidditch with Ron and Hermione, and which now housed a large, pearly white marquee. The golden flag on top was level with Ginny’s window.
Ginny looked up into Harry’s face, took a deep breath and said, “Happy seventeenth.”
“Yeah…thanks.”
She was looking at him steadily; he, however, was determinedly looking away from her; he was already finding it hard to resist his old stand-by.
“Nice view,” he said feebly, pointing toward the window.
She ignored this. He could not blame this.
“I couldn’t think what to get you,” she said.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
She disregarded this too.
“I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”
He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up.
She took a step closer to him. Harry knew he should move back but his self-control was fading…
“So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.”
“I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.” Unless it was Ron.
“There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,” she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry, all self-discipline forgotten, was doing something he had never allowed himself to do before: he was kissing her back, pretending she was Ron. It was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; he was the only real thing in the world, Ron, the feel of him, one hand on the small of his back and one in his long, sweet-smelling hair -
Harry pulled back. This was wrong.
Ginny was breathing heavily, and she closed her eyes to kiss him again, but Harry stepped back.
She opened back her eyes, confused. She came closer and tried again.
The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart.
“Oh,” said Ron pointedly. “Sorry.”
“Ron!” Hermione was just behind him, slightly out of breath. There was a strained silence, then Ginny said in a flat little voice,
“Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry.”
Ron’s ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry wanted to slam the door in their faces so he didn’t have to face Ron, but it felt as though a cold draft had entered the room when he broke off his kiss with Ginny, and he no longer wanted to be anywhere near her. All the reasons for ending his relationship with Ginny seemed to have slunk inside the room with Ron, and his happy forgetfulness was long gone.
He looked at Ginny, wanting to say something, though he hardly knew what, but she had turned her back on him. He thought that she might have succumbed, for once, to tears. He could not bring himself to comfort her, especially in front of Ron.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and followed the other two out of the bedroom.
Ron marched downstairs, through the still-crowded kitchen and into the yard, and Harry anxiously kept pace with him all the way, Hermione trotting along behind them looking scared.
Once he reached the seclusion of the freshly mown lawn, Ron rounded on Harry.
“You ditched her. What are you doing now, messing her around?”
“I’m not messing her around,” said Harry, as Hermione caught up with them.
“Ron - ”
But Ron held a hand up to silence her.
“She was really cut up when you ended it - ”
“So was I,” Harry countered, stretching the truth, “You know why I stopped it.”
“Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again -”
“She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, won’t happen, she’s not expecting us to - to end up married, or - ”
As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless stranger. In one spiraling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his and Ron’s…he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.
“If you keep groping her every chance you get - ”
“She approached me, and it won’t happen again,” said Harry harshly. The day was cloudless, but he felt as though the sun had gone in. “Okay?”
Ron looked half resentful, half sheepish; he rocked backward and forward on his feet for a moment, then said, “Right then, well, that’s…yeah.”
Scene 3: Chapter 15 - page 305 American hardcover edition
“Yeah, you’re right!” said Harry, and he felt even more cheered at the thought that Dumbledore had had some reservations, however faint, about Snape’s trustworthiness. “So, would he have hidden the sword well away from Hogsmeade, then? What d’you reckon, Ron? Ron?”
Harry looked around. For one bewildered moment he thought that Ron had left the tent, then realized that Ron was lying in the shadow of a lower bunk, looking stony.
“Oh, remembered me, have you?” he said.
“What?”
Ron snorted as he stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.
“You two carry on. Don’t let me spoil your fun.”
Perplexed, Harry looked to Hermione for help, but she shook her head, apparently as nonplussed as he was.
“What’s the problem?”
“Problem? There’s no problem,” said Ron, still refusing to look at Harry. “Not according to you, anyway.”
There were several plunks on the canvas over their heads. It had started to rain.
“Well, you’ve obviously got a problem,” said Harry. “Were you going to tell me?”
Ron swung his long legs off the bed and sat up. He looked mean, unlike himself.
“All right, I’ll tell you. Don’t expect me to skip up and down the tent because there’s some other damn thing we’ve got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don’t know.”
“I don’t know?” repeated Harry. “I don’t know?”
Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rain was falling harder and heavier; it pattered on the leaf-strewn bank all around them and into the river chattering through the dark. Dread doused Harry’s jubilation: Ron was saying exactly what he had suspected and feared him to be thinking.
“It’s not like I’m not having the time of my life here,” said Ron, “you know, with my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night and you two having all these cozy chats without me. I just hoped you know, after we’d been running round a few weeks, we’d have achieved something.”
“Ron,” said Hermione, but in such a quiet voice that Ron could pretend not to have heard it over the loud tattoo the rain was now beating on the tent.
“I thought you knew what you’d signed up for,” said Harry.
“Yeah, I thought I did too.”
“So what part of it isn’t living up to your expectations?” asked Harry. Anger at both Ron and himself was coming to his defense now. In his pains to make sure Ron didn’t suspect Harry’s feelings for him, it seemed Harry had been leaving him out. “Did you think we’d be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you’d back to Mummy by Christmas?”
“We thought you knew what you were doing!” shouted Ron, standing up, and his words pierced Harry like scalding knives. “We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!”
“Ron!” said Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain thundering on the tent roof, but again, he ignored her.
“Well, sorry to let you down,” said Harry, his voice quite calm even though he felt hollow, inadequate. “I’ve been straight with you from the start, I told everything Dumbledore told me. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve found one Horcrux - ”
“Yeah, and we’re about as near getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of them - nowhere effing near, in other words!”
“Take off the locket, Ron,” Hermione said, her voice unusually high. “Please take it off. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you hadn’t been wearing it all day.”
“Yeah, he would,” said Harry, who did not want excuses made for Ron’s opinion. “D’you think I haven’t noticed the two of you whispering behind my back? D’you think I didn’t guess you were thinking this stuff?”
“Harry, we weren’t - ”
“Don’t lie!” Ron hurled at her. “You said it too, you said you were disappointed, you said you’d thought he had a bit more to go on than - ”
“I didn’t say it like that - Harry, I didn’t!” she cried.
The rain was pounding the tent, tears were pouring down Hermione’s face, and the excitement of a few minutes before had vanished as if it had never been, as short-lived firework that had flared and died, leaving everything dark, wet, and cold. The sword of Gryffindor was hidden they knew not where, and they were three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead.
“So why are you still here?” Harry asked Ron bitterly.
“Search me,” said Ron.
“Go home then,” said Harry.
“Yeah, maybe I will!” shouted Ron, and he took several steps toward Harry, who did not back away. “Didn’t you hear what they said about my sister? But you don’t give a rat’s fart, do you, it’s only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I’ve-Faced-Worse Potter doesn’t care what happens to her in here - well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff - ”
“I was only saying - she was with the others, they were with Hagrid - ”
“Yeah, I get it, you don’t care! And what about the rest of my family, ‘the Weasleys don’t need another kid injured,’ did you hear that?”
“Yeah, I - ”
“Not bothered what it meant, though?”
“Ron!” said Hermione, forcing her way between them. “I don’t think it means anything new has happened, anything we don’t know about; think, Ron, Bill’s already scarred, plenty of people must have seen that George has lost an ear by now, and you’re supposed to be on your deathbed with spattergroit, I’m sure that’s all he meant - ”
“Oh, you’re sure, are you? Right then, well, I won’t bother myself about them. It’s all right for you two, isn’t it, with your parents safely out of the way - ”
“My parents are dead!” Harry bellowed.
“And mine could be going the same way!” yelled Ron.
“Then GO!” roared Harry. “Go back to them, pretend you’ve got over your spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up and Fleur’ll probably kiss - ”
Ron made a sudden movement: Harry reacted instinctively, but before either wand was clear of its owner’s pocket, Hermione had raised her own.
“Protego!” she cried, and an invisible shield expanded between her and Harry on the one side and Ron on the other; all of them were forced backward a few steps by the strength of the spell, and Harry and Ron glared from either side of the transparent barrier as though they were seeing each other clearly for the first time. Harry felt a corrosive hatred toward Ron: Something had broken between them.
“Leave the Horcrux,” Harry said.
Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket into a nearby chair. He turned to Hermione.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you staying, or what?”
“I…” She looked anguished. “Yes - yes, I’m staying. Ron, we said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help - ”
“Hermione keeps her word,” interjected Harry.
“I get it. He chooses you. You choose him.”
“Ron, no - please - come back, come back!”
She was impeded by her own Shield Charm; by the time she had removed it he had already stormed into the night. Harry stood quite still and silent, listening to her sobbing and calling Ron’s name amongst the trees.
After a few minutes she returned, her sopping hair plastered to her face.
“He’s g-g-gone! Disapparated!”
She threw herself into a chair, curled up, and started to cry.
Harry felt dazed. He stopped, picked up the Horcrux, and placed it around his own neck. He dragged blankets off Ron’s bunk and threw them over Hermione. Then he climbed onto his own bed and stared up at the dark canvas roof, listening to the pounding of the rain.
Comments are more than welcome! :D
Part 2 is here