(Untitled)

[loyalotter]

Who: loyalotter / sacrificemyself / cruxofapotter / nearlychosen / lunarwit / hisdarkmark
What: The DA House starts getting out of hand. Someone has to bring it together again!
When: At night for a start, probably backdated a little to closer to the middle of the hallucination craze?
Where: House 26
Summary: Hermione rounds everyone up to spend the next few days together on the floor of the living room
Rating: PG (

Comments

[sacrificemyself]

Like Harry, Ron would also consider a disheveled Hermione a welcome sight... except that the one he kept seeing over and over again wasn't quite disheveled. Well, she was, but 'a bloody, half-eaten wreck' would likely be a more appropriate term.

Ron, it would seem, had spiders on the brain. It could be the ridiculous costume he'd been forced into, or it could simply be his very natural and very strong arachnophobia acting up. Whatever it was, he was sitting on the floor in a corner of his room, looking up at a tiny cobweb on the opposite corner. But he didn't see it as tiny; rather he saw it as filling the expanse of the room, littered with spiders of various sizes, from the typical garden spider to Aragog-levels of hugeness. And right there, stuck on the web, was Hermione, screaming at him to use his wand, to cut her loose, to do something, but all Ron could see were the mostly-devoured remains of various other friends that he'd failed to save. He couldn't tell they were his friends, of course, since most of their flesh was gone, but of course it'd be them; who else would it be?

Cue the crying, the trembling, and the useless shaking of the head.

[loyalotter]

Considering she was still annoyed with Ron, Hermione fully expected to still be annoyed with Ron, but the moment she enters the room, something in her softens. Unfortunately, she can't quite sort out what's going on out there in his room with everything that she can see and hear following her.

Namely Bellatrix, Greyback, and her now zombie parents who were asking her why they died without even remembering their only daughter's existence.

"Ron!" she practically yelled at him as, once again, she entered without knocking. "Come on! We're going downstairs!"

[sacrificemyself]

Hermione's call was just another one of her pleas to do something in Ron's mind, and he shook his head, still immobilized by fear. He saw a sudden flash of light and jumped as a body fell in front of him, and he realized that it was George, his ear a bloody and half-eaten hole, and that was it, Ron was just going to squeeze his eyes shut and wait until he either woke up or got himself killed off, too.

[loyalotter]

Apparently Ron was having some of the worst of it. Hermione pushed into the room, determinedly ignoring whatever Ron was seeing along with the Greyback and Bellatrix that were tailing her and yelling threateningly at her. She strode pointedly forward to grab Ron's hand and tug him to get up.

"Come on! Up!" she called as she pulled. "It isn't real!"

[sacrificemyself]

Ron could feel a hand grabbing his, and he instinctively drew back sharply, hand going for his wand and blindly pointing it at what he thought to be an unseen assailant. When he opened his eyes, however, he was aghast to see who he'd been directing the wand at, and he dropped it to stare up at Hermione, not sure what to do.

"'Mione," he stammered, trying to choke back the tears. "I-... I didn't mean to-... I'm sorry, I thought-... the spiders, they-...."

[loyalotter]

Fortunately for him, Hermione wasn't going to take complete insult at being the target for whatever spell Ron wanted to aim at her. She gave another tug and then sighed, dropping to her knees to hug him tightly.

"It isn't real," she murmured into his ear. Their previous fight over Malfoy was old news now, officially not important anymore. "Come on. We have to get downstairs to make sure everyone's all right."

[sacrificemyself]

"B- but you-... they...." He didn't know how to explain it, how to tell her that she'd been trapped and about to be eaten and how everyone they knew and cared about had already suffered the same fate. It seemed so ridiculous, now that she was here, being a grounding force as she'd so often been over the years.

Sliding an arm around her in return, Ron quietly choked out, "Don't leave me like that again. Please." Clearly, when Ron Weasley was saying 'please,' he was more than a little disturbed.

[loyalotter]

Hermione understood far more than she was saying. She'd already watched her parents' ghosts flit around her, saw Greyback lunging for the people she cared about and turning them all before mauling them, even watched Bellatrix torture Dobby.

But she was trying not to let it all defeat her.

Tightening her hold on Ron, she tried not to let the tears in her eyes slide out, and, of course, failed. "I won't," she answered, knowing just how shaken he must have been. "But we really do have to go downstairs. Can you walk? I won't let go and I won't leave you."

She planned on at least holding his hand, if not wrapping her arm around his waist and holding him close.

[sacrificemyself]

Ron forced himself to open his eyes, and when he did, he once again saw the mauled, half-devoured form of Hermione clinging to his ceiling, and his hold on the real Hermione jerked instinctively. He made himself take a deep breath, take in her scent, and remember that she was right - she was always right - and that the girl in his arms was the real one. The other one was just... just an awful nightmare.

"Think so," he responded hoarsely, glancing down. "Just... just don't let me look up. Bad things are up there."

[loyalotter]

"All right." Hermione finally stood, slowly so as not to upset Ron and make him look up again. Wrapping an arm around his waist once he was up, too, she turned towards the door, letting him lean on her. Her cheeks are still wet if he happens to look at her face while they walk.

She passes Bellatrix and Greyback in the doorway, her parents in the hallway, jerking away from them and burying her head against Ron's shoulder as they walk by the images.

"We have to... to get downstairs." Just a little further.

[sacrificemyself]

Ron kept his gaze downcast as he rose to his feet and let Hermione lead him out. He could swear that he could hear the bristling motion of countless spider legs moving towards him, and feel the cobwebs brushing his face as he crossed the threshold between his room and the hallway, and judging by the way Hermione seemed to jerk, maybe she'd felt it, too. But Hermione said that it wasn't real, and despite everything else, he knew that he could always trust her when it really mattered, so he kept on moving.

"What's downstairs?" he managed to ask.

[loyalotter]

"A campsite," Hermione answered, keeping her concentration on the stairs beneath her feet and not on the cackling Bellatrix behind her. "And everyone else. Alive. We can't tell what's really going on if we're all separated. We need to stick together."

It was how they'd always weathered bad things and she didn't see how this was going to be any different.

[sacrificemyself]

Ron could only nod in response. It made sense, sure. More sense than a lot of the things he'd been seeing and hearing and feeling.

"'S a regular party, huh?"

[loyalotter]

"As much of a party as we ever get," Hermione muttered grumpily as they made their way down into the living room area.

[sacrificemyself]

"We could make do without the decorations, though," Ron said absently, shuddering as he valiantly ignored the spiderwebs that had begun crisscrossing the walls, following them as they moved towards the living room. "Starting to get a bit tacky."