Fic: A Slow-Motion Accident; RW/DM
Title: A Slow-Motion Accident
Author: Geoviki
Rating: R
Pairing: Ron/Draco
Author notes: Thanks to Parthenia14 for the beta (and I made her rush, too). Completed July 12, 2007, in the nick of time. Title from Frou Frou - Hear Me Out.
Word count: ~10,100
Summary: Ron would love it if his new companion, Draco Malfoy, would just bugger off and die. Although the last time he did, it ruined Ron's life.
~.~.~
So how do I do normal?
Hear Me Out - Frou Frou
Ron Weasley had wished Draco Malfoy dead so many times and in so many inventive ways that it was almost anticlimactic when it actually happened.
Surprisingly, his death wasn't especially evil, or impressive, or earth-shattering. Room-shattering; Ron would give him that. Actually, he'd probably describe Malfoy's messy end as dramatic - like Malfoy himself - and pointlessly stupid - ditto.
It had taken investigators no time at all to piece together the cause of Malfoy's dramatic and pointlessly stupid death. Apparently Malfoy's father, recently of Azakaban and even more recently of some unheated hermit's cave somewhere back of beyond, had concocted a grand plan in his unhinged mind to kill Harry and get back in You-Know-Who's good graces. Well, even Lord Thingie had managed to bugger that job for years (not that Ron wasn't grateful for that, of course), so Lucius Malfoy's chances of success were slim to none, even if he hadn't been a few twigs short of a Nimbus. Lucius's grand plan was to owl Draco a special parcel to deliver to Harry, a package which would explode upon opening, with a second owl sent to his son explaining the grand plan. Now, anyone thinking this through at all would know that it was pretty bloody vital that the owl with the explanation had better arrive before the owl with the parcel.
Lucius hadn't thought it through at all.
The second owl was a bit baffled as to how she was supposed to deliver her message to the pieces of Draco she'd found (and possibly sampled, but Ron, as much as he'd hated Malfoy, didn't want to dwell on that). The evidence in the letter she bore made it an open-and-shut case.
Malfoy by all rights shouldn't even have been at Hogwarts for his final year after the atrocious things he did sixth year. Ron never had worked out how he'd managed to end up back in school rather than in Azkaban with dear old dad. For some reason, though, Harry was all right with it, so Ron chalked it up to some secret he wasn't allowed to know. Because of Harry's stamp of approval, Ron forced his own hand back into his pocket and not around his wand any time Malfoy crossed his path.
The thing was, Ron was far more pissed off that he himself was stuck here while Harry and Hermione were off hunting Horcruxes. The summer had gone so well, he thought, with the three of them researching likely Horcruxes - well, so maybe Hermione and Harry were doing the lion's share of the research, but they'd insisted he was really doing a good job of giving moral support. Then his mum had put her foot down and practically frog-marched him to the Hogwart's Express come September, and all because of that one time when she'd caught him …well, it wasn't as bad as it looked, anyway, not that he had been able to talk his way out of it.
That night, after giving Hermione and Harry the news about Malfoy, Ron contemplated the rightness of the universe as he imagined his last four months of Hogwarts blissfully Malfoy-free.
He should have known better.
~.~.~
Being a prefect, Ron knew, had its responsibilities, which he took more seriously than anyone ever gave him credit for. With responsibilities also came privileges, which Ron accepted with humility, grace, and admittedly a certain amount of glee. One of his favorite perks was having his own room, something he'd never had a prayer of getting at the Burrow or in the Gryffindor dormitory. For the first time in his 17 years, he slept in a room by himself.
Which meant he shouldn't have woken up to the sound of someone screaming in his ear. Even worse, he shouldn't have woken up to the sound of Draco Malfoy screaming in his ear.
Granted, being jerked out of a sound sleep was enough to explain Ron's disorientation, but the screaming, and what he could piece together from the words, and the business of it being Malfoy and all weren't helping matters. But from what he could work out, Malfoy was seriously upset at being in Ron's room and was accusing him of bizarre plots to… well, Ron wasn't quite getting that part. He was still trying to come to grips with the eerie look of Ghost Malfoy.
"-how you even died, Weasel, not that it even matters to me, but I won't have you haunting me. McGonagall will have something to say about this when I tell her. She'll banish you, or exorcise you, or whatever thing she does to get rid of unwanted ghosts."
"What?" Inadequate, he knew, but it was a start.
Draco looked taken aback that Ron had interrupted his nice little rant, and he shimmered a bit and looked…more transparent.
"I won't let you haunt me, Weasel. I couldn't stand you alive, and it'd be even worse now that you're dead. So be a good little ghost and bugger off."
Ron blinked in confusion. "You've got things backwards as usual, Malfoy. You're the bloody ghost."
That shut Malfoy up, but not for long.
"-Fuck are you talking about? I'm looking at you right this minute, and I can see you're a ghost! Transparent? Check. Misty? Check. Ability to put my hand right through you?" At that, Malfoy stepped up to the bed and passed a hand through Ron's arm, leaving a painful trail of iciness in its wake. "Check."
"That's because you're…. Listen, Malfoy. You're the dead one here. Your father accidentally blew you up yesterday. Don't you remember?"
The look on Malfoy's translucent face told Ron the answer. He frantically wished that Hermione were here - she was much better at this metaphysical shite. "Your batty old dad was trying to kill Harry and buggered it up in spades. Poetic justice, that," he added and ignored Malfoy's blazing glare. If looks could kill…. "Doesn't ring a bell, then?"
"No."
"Yes. Look, do you remember yesterday at all? Doesn't matter. There's a memorial service for you today. If you don't believe me, you can see for yourself."
"See my body, you mean?" The sarcasm was sharp enough to cut steel.
"Um. Not exactly. There wasn't much left of you. Pieces, really."
"Nice try, Weaselby, but my body's right here, isn't it? In your room."
Ron pounced on that. "And how did you get here, then? Through my personal wards?"
Malfoy looked momentarily nonplused. "Shoddy job you made of it, that's all."
Ron had had enough of Malfoy's idiocy and launched himself out of bed. "It's no use wasting my breath even talking to you. You're as much of an imbecile as a ghost as you were alive. Look in the bloody mirror, then, if you don't believe me!"
He marched over to the mirror, almost reaching out to drag Malfoy along with him but thinking better of it at the last second. Malfoy, just as angry, followed.
"Well?" Ron demanded.
As much as he'd hated Malfoy, he couldn't help feeling a twinge of sympathy as the irritation on Malfoy's face was replaced by unadulterated shock.
"I…I…" Malfoy managed to squeak out.
"What?" Ron's curiosity won out. "What do you see?"
"Oh, God!" Malfoy replied, barely audible, but said no more. His face crumpled, and for a moment he looked as though he was going start blubbering. Ron wondered what it was he saw that made him so upset -Binns had lectured once about ghosts and mirrors, but Ron hadn't managed to stay awake for the details.
"Look, Malfoy, maybe you'd better go and talk to McGonagall about all this. I'm not the one who should be telling you."
There was a long silence, until finally Malfoy huffed out a nonexistent breath and said, "Yeah. All right." But he made no move to leave.
"Um, Malfoy?"
Malfoy shot him a look of cold annoyance. "Well, I obviously can't go anywhere until you untie the rope, can I?"
What the hell? "Rope."
"Yes, Weasley, the rope around my ankle that's tying me to yours. The rope. There." He was pointing down at nothing.
"Uh. There's no rope."
"Okay, let's not split hairs here. It's not exactly a rope, but close enough. So untie it and I'll be on my way."
"Malfoy, there's nothing there. Not a rope or a cord or a bloody chain. Nothing."
"Fine. You can't see it. Fine." The next thing he knew, Malfoy was pawing at Ron's leg, his ghostly hands passing right through it and leaving Ron's muscles cramping with the cold.
"Stop it, you tosser!" Ron shouted. "Keep your bloody hands to yourself!"
"Then you untie it!"
"I'm telling you there's nothing there, you pillock!"
Malfoy gave him a disgusted look, stomped off towards the door, and just as abruptly stopped. It did look as though he was struggling against something holding his leg, but Ron knew better than to trust him.
"I can't go any further." He got that odd look again, as if he were about to break down right there, and Ron didn't want to deal with that along with all the rest of whatever the hell this was.
"Look, I'll come with you, then," Ron told him. "McGonagall can sort this, right? I'm sure it's just temporary."
~.~.~
Ron's predictive abilities were clearly wonky.
McGonagall had got through the part where she explained to Malfoy - repeatedly and at length - that he was indeed dead and currently a ghost. Now they were at the part where she should have been casting the spell to get rid of Malfoy's invisible rope so that Ron could go back to his room and maybe catch a few more zzz's.
But McGonagall was doing nothing of the sort. Instead, she was shaking her head and looking sorrowful and saying something that sounded like sometimes this happens and reasons not understood and, even worse, permanent.
No matter how much Ron, and then Malfoy, argued the point with her, she didn't change her tune.
"What do you mean, Professor, until death? He's already dead!"
"She means until your death, Weasley. So why don't you just run along and top yourself like the toe rag you are, so I don't have to look at your ugly face any more."
"Yeah, bet you'd like that, you bloody prat! Seeing that you couldn't manage the job when you tried to kill me just last year."
"That might be a bad idea, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said, with what was obviously failing patience. "Besides being personally distasteful to Mr. Weasley, there's every possibility it might join you two together for eternity. So until we find a way to end this unusual connection between you, I suggest it's in your best interest to keep him alive."
Ron did his best to ignore the choking noises Malfoy was making. "But why is he tied to me, Professor? At least he says he is. Funny that no-one else seems to be able to see the rope he's running on about."
"Well, Mr. Weasley, you'll have to ask Mr. Malfoy that question. He seems to have chosen you for some reason."
"What?" Malfoy squawked. Ron thought he'd be probably bright red, too, if he could show any other color than ghostly grey. "I didn't choose him! There is no way I would have tied myself to this twat! I mean, really, I do have standards...."
"Nonetheless, I would suggest you two learn to get along. In the long run you may find it makes this much easier."
The morning dragged on. First their heads of house, then the other professors, and finally the entire Hogwarts student body joined in the nonstop fun of gawking at Ron, who had somehow grievously offended the universe and was now saddled with the ghost of Draco fucking Malfoy for the rest of his natural life. The longevity of which was looking less attractive by the minute.
It was odd to attend a funeral for someone standing not ten feet from him. Since there was no need for a coffin, there really wasn't much for the crowd to focus on, except, of course, Malfoy's very visible ghost. The git was acting like some kind of spectral maitre-d', nodding solemnly as his fellow Slytherins came over to tell him how sorry they were he'd died. Ron kept his back to Malfoy and tried to ignore the ceremony, while Seamus and Dean offered him what little support they could.
Ron discovered - by accident, of course - that Malfoy was indeed forced to stay within ten feet of him, when he'd finally heard enough sucking up for multiple lifetimes and paced off. Malfoy was yanked off his ghostly feet and dragged along behind him like an oversized balloon. A talking - no, whinging - balloon.
McGonagall, however, noticed the gleam of revenge in Ron's eye and sternly informed him that if Ron didn't want detention, he'd better make sure Mr. Malfoy could talk with his friends in peace. Ron's objections that he wasn't going to be able to talk with his own friends without Malfoy around were ignored, and he grudgingly backed down with only a few well-chosen obscenities under his breath.
~.~.~
The Slytherin problem, to Ron's surprise, solved itself in a few weeks.
Malfoy, while living, had clearly made friends through coercion and intimidation. Malfoy, ghost emeritus, found his ability to coerce and intimidate all too limited, especially with his odd connection - still invisible to everyone but Malfoy - to a Gryffindor.
Malfoy's dim-witted bodyguards were the first to abandon him, mainly because there was no longer a body to guard. A few of Malfoy's other friends hung on a bit longer, but eventually they got sick of his constant complaints and began to ignore him. Finally, Ron found himself waiting for the imperious daily order to visit the Slytherin table for lunch - an order that never came. Never again did he have to fume in silence while Malfoy hobnobbed with his old Slytherin cronies.
Malfoy was blessedly silent for days afterwards.
"I think he's depressed," Neville told Ron one afternoon. "Maybe he needs counseling. Do you suppose Professor Trelawney does that sort of thing?"
"I can hear you," Malfoy shot back, but they didn't bother answering.
In fact, Ron was finding it astonishingly easy to ignore Malfoy most of the time. He practiced tuning him out on the Quidditch field, where Malfoy would float around the goal posts and interfere with Ron's attempts at playing keeper. Ron didn't want to let Malfoy know, but the harassment had given him something to overcome, or at least something to focus on when the game seemed dull, and he was becoming a better player for it.
Ron was surprised when Malfoy managed to restrain himself during the final match against Slytherin. Malfoy even muttered a soft, "Well done," when Ron made an especially tricky save, but they both quickly pretended he hadn't said anything of the sort.
Nor did they talk during detention after Ron punched Blaise Zabini's lights out the next week for making a snide comment about Weasley's pet ghost.
~.~.~
"What are you up to under there, Weasley?" Draco asked him early one morning, as Ron was taking full advantage of his single room and concealing counterpane.
It was useless to try to stop himself from blushing. "Fuck off, Malfoy," he muttered, feeling himself rapidly wilting.
"Can't. Looks like you're trying to, though. Are you wanking?"
"No." A beat. "Not any more, you stupid shit."
Malfoy laughed, a thin, melodic sound. "What's the matter, Weasley? Can't perform in front of an audience?"
"Shut up. Can't you just go back to sleep?"
Malfoy gave him a blank look. "I don't sleep. I don't think gho- I can." He rarely slipped up and called himself a ghost, Ron noticed, but he couldn't really blame the git. Early on, Malfoy had mentioned that it looked as if everyone else was a ghost, and he himself was real. It must be disorienting to try to remember it was the other way round.
"So what, you just watch me sleep all night?" He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.
"No. I- I just don't do anything when you're asleep, and then when you're awake, I am, too."
"I should sleep more often, then, if that's how to turn you off." He had a sudden thought. "So, can you even wank any more?"
Malfoy's smirk was pure evil. "Why, Weasel, fancy a go? Kinky."
"No, shut up. I- Just wondered, that's all."
Luckily, Malfoy accepted that. "I could, I suppose. I haven't felt the urge lately. Can't imagine why. Not that I haven't had other things on my mind, what with being killed by my father, chained up to an idiot, and tossed aside by my friends."
He didn't know what made him say it. "You could always find new friends."
Malfoy looked at him in shock. "What. You mean you? And Longbottom? Or maybe that Luna twit who hangs round asking me about creatures that don't even exist, the ones she's sure I can see now? Yeah, right, Weasley, that'd be spiffing."
Hurt, Ron challenged him. "Well, you could try, you know. I mean, if you took the time to know us, and stopped being such a prick."
"Right."
"Well, I'm just saying you could, that's all. It's your choice."
"And you and your friends would let go of everything from the past seven years, and we could all be best mates, is that what you see happening?"
Did he believe that? It didn't matter, it wasn't happening anyway. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying. What better time to try than after being killed? A new start, and all that."
"Oh, fuck off, Weasley."
"Well, I was trying to." He was surprised when Malfoy laughed, and even more surprised to find himself joining in.
~.~.~
Voldemort had politely waited until after the Leaving Ball before making his move, but he made up for it afterwards. Ron thought Malfoy would never shut up about how Ron had finally talked his mother into letting him join the Order only to find himself shunted off with a group of strangers, where he was clearly at the bottom of the chain of command.
"What's it matter to you, anyway, Malfoy? It's not like you're even eating our bad food or feeling the cold sleeping in these ditches."
"You're such a disappointment. Couldn't you have found a nice desk job sorting quills somewhere? What's the point of being Potter's best friend if you don't bother taking advantage of it?"
"Maybe some of us think it's wrong to use our friends like that."
Malfoy snorted his disgust. "It's not as if what you're doing is any help to anyone. Why aren't we with Potter? The same old crap, day after day, is boring me to death. Ha ha."
The thing of it was, Ron was every bit as bored and irritable at his lot in life as Malfoy was, and if it had been anybody else he'd have been agreeing wholeheartedly. But it was Malfoy, so he had to argue the point, and that pissed him off even more.
"Listen, just shut up about it, all right? It's hard enough flying around the countryside dodging Death Eaters without you running on all the time about how bored you are."
"But I am bored. Nothing ever happens in this stupid unit you're in, anyway."
"Look, I'll put myself in the line of fire next time; would that be exciting enough for you?"
Draco's eyes narrowed and he shimmered, something Ron noticed he always did when he was especially angry. "Don't you dare die, Weasley! I have no intention of being joined to you for eternity."
"Then instead of whinging about being bored, maybe you ought to be thinking about ways to keep me hale and hearty, hmm?"
Malfoy grunted, but Ron noticed that he was a lot quieter about their lot after that.
~.~.~
It had been a particularly bad day, and Ron, exhausted, had crept into a dense stand of brush for a quick rest. He'd somehow managed to tumble over an embankment earlier in a hasty escape - tipped off by Malfoy, surprisingly, that he was about to be blindsided. His leg bore an ugly cut, his second-best trousers were blood-stained and ruined, and his hands and arms were covered with raw scrapes that stung like hell. He'd just about nodded off at last, when Malfoy's panicky voice jerked him awake.
"We've got to get out of here."
"What? What's wrong? Is somebody-"
"No. No, no-one's coming, it's safe enough here. But we've got to-"
Ron rolled over, wincing from his injuries and feeling how his pain fired up his irritation, too. "Well, then, it can bloody well wait. I need a break, so-"
"No! We've got to go. We've got to go!"
Ron had never seen Malfoy so agitated, but he wasn't about to be pushed around. After all, Malfoy had it easy: he got to float along every day, never growing tired or hungry, never worrying about his family or his own skin. Ron deserved a break.
"In a minute," he muttered, and turned his back on Malfoy.
"No. Now."
Ron wasn't about to be browbeaten, especially by a ghost, especially by Malfoy's ghost, so he ignored him and let his eyes slide closed. The next thing he knew, a bitterly cold chill blanketed him, and he jerked awake, shocked and angry. Malfoy had dropped to the ground beside him and was rolling through him, even though the daft bugger knew how much Ron hated that cold contact.
"Stop it, you fucker," he shouted, but Malfoy did it again. And again. "Leave off! What's wrong with you?"
Malfoy stopped and looked at him with alarm. "I don't know. All I know is we have to go. Right now." Malfoy gave a huge shudder, then said the last thing Ron expected to hear from him: "Please."
Ron was pissed off, he was freezing from Malfoy's little tantrum, the cut on his leg was reminding him with every throb what a bad idea walking was, but Ron knew he would have to go with Malfoy. Still, he wasn't going to make it easy. He hefted himself unsteadily to his feet and limped behind an increasingly frantic Malfoy.
"Slow down, you sod! Some of us can't go through trees, you know."
"Shhh." Malfoy was pointing at something ahead that Ron couldn't see, but he immediately crouched down and tried not to make any noise when his leg - and arms and hands - objected.
And then he saw what Malfoy had been pointing at, and it left him colder than Malfoy's contact had.
Harry was there, standing with his back to Ron. And facing him, in full Death Eater regalia, red-eyed and sneering, was Voldemort.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Ron crept forward on his belly until he could get a better view and maybe overhear what they were saying.
"They're alone," Malfoy told him very quietly, and Ron wondered how he knew but didn't question it.
Contrary to everything in the Evil Overlord handbook, Voldemort was wasting precious time making some kind of dramatic, I-finally-have-you-where-I-want-you-and-you-will-not-escape speech. Ron had swung around enough to notice that Harry was wandless but glaring back at the Dark Lord with a defiance that Ron had to admire. If Ron's second-best trousers weren't already ruined, those crimson eyes staring at him like that would have done the trick.
He turned to look at Malfoy, who was staring at something in the grass a hand's reach away.
Harry's wand.
Carefully, Ron reached out and wrapped his fist around it. He exchanged a victorious look with Malfoy, who nodded at him and drifted like mist as far away from Ron as he was able - farther than usual by a good fifteen feet. Then everything exploded into action.
Malfoy shot up from the underbrush, suddenly looking far more solid and real than Ron remembered ever seeing him, and gave a loud shout: "For Slytherin!"
Caught by surprise, Voldemort jerked up his wand and took only a second to fire off an Avada Kedavra at Malfoy that passed right through him, while Ron sprang up, shouted to Harry, tossed him the wand, and dove back down for cover. Harry caught his wand, whirled on his heel, shot off his own killing curse, and in the time it took for Ron to process everything, Voldemort was dead at their feet.
~.~.~
Ron smoothed down the crisp black linen of his dress robes - well, technically his brother George's dress robes - and tugged uselessly at one slightly frayed and too-short sleeve. He ignored the echo of Hermione pointing out that if there was ever a time to spring for his own new robes, maybe the day that the Minister of Magic was going to be pinning an Order of Merlin on your lapel was it. He just didn't get tarted up all that often to justify the cost.
"That's going to wrinkle horribly, you realize," Malfoy said. "Linen always does."
"Doesn't matter," Ron snapped, grumpier now. "There'll be so many of us up there that my whole thing'll be over and done in seconds anyway."
"But your entire family will be there, and the photographers. And there you'll be, with robes so short you can practically see your knees. Honestly, Weasley."
"Big deal. And they're not that short. You're just jealous that you've only got that one outfit. All I can say is it's a bloody good thing you didn't open up that parcel from your father when you were still in your pyjamas."
"Oh, shut up." But the insult didn't have the heat it once did; for the past two months, ever since the day Harry killed Voldemort, they'd managed to settle into a begrudging truce of sorts. Although they still weren't friends or anything.
"You ready?" Ron took one final look in the mirror, which was looking back at him with a decidedly pained expression, and headed towards the Floo.
Malfoy had made some kind of stab at disguising the permanent scorch marks on his own robes by pinning sprigs of tiny ghostly flowers all over his chest. Ron had to admit it made him look kind of, well, nice. Poncy as hell, but nice. Although he'd look a hell of a lot nicer if he didn't always scrunch up his face like that.
"You aren't going to cry up there, are you, Weasley? Because if you're going to be a sniveling mess, I'm not going."
"Suit yourself," Ron shot back. "Just untie that rope you keep telling me about and be on your way."
"Bugger off. It's not like I haven't tried a few million times. Believe me, if I could rid myself of you, I'd be gone like a shot."
That was the weird thing. Everyone had agreed that Malfoy had saved the day with his odd insistence of chasing off into the forest and homing in on Harry. Even Professor McGonagall said that she thought that was why Malfoy had been forced to hang around as a ghost - burning off some bad karma, whatever that was. But instead of being freed from whatever strange magic brought him into Ron's life, Malfoy still insisted that the invisible rope kept him hanging round. Ron used to think he'd made the whole thing up, not that he could work out why he'd do something so boneheaded as that. But there was no reason for him to still be here.
At least the rope had got longer during the fight against old Voldie, which meant that Ron could finally take a piss - and do a few other things - with the loo door closed and Malfoy on the other side of it.
From his chair on the stage he could see his mum and dad squeezed right up front, and he fluttered his fingers at them. His mum beamed back at him, eyes already full of tears, even though the Minister was only as far as Dorothea Ballytrask. Being a Weasley meant that he was dead last in this group, and he settled in for a long wait, perking up when he heard Hermione's name and grinning at her while she marched up for her medal.
Malfoy hadn't bothered with a chair, instead drifting just behind the back row and looking a little fierce. Ron was a little surprised when the Minister skipped from Luna Lovegood to Marcus Quigley. Someone had probably warned the Minister about that invisible rope, so they'd probably be going up as a pair.
The minute his own name was announced, his heart started racing like a Cornish pixie's. It felt like a dream as he walked up to the front, blinking at the photographer's flashes and giving his sleeves a final yank. All too quickly the Minister had one hand pumping his own and the other on Ron's elbow, nudging him back to his seat.
"And in conclusion, let us give a final round of applause to these exemplary new members of the Order of Merlin-"
Ron had only taken a few steps towards his chair, but the words made him stop and turn back.
"Excuse me," he said, but it was lost in the cheers from the crowd. He made himself shout louder. "Excuse me. Minister? Wait, sir. There's been a mistake."
The Minister was shoving him away now, and he could feel his face flush with embarrassed heat. His mum was making shooing armwaves at him, and Charlie, standing beside her, had one hand over his face as if to hide any resemblance to the person currently making a fool of himself on stage.
"Please, sir." The Minister stopped trying to crowd him off stage, but he didn't let go of Ron's arm. "It's Draco Malfoy. You forgot to give Malfoy his medal."
The Minister's assistant fumbled through a scroll, mouthing names as his finger traced the page. "No Malfoy listed here, sir," he told them.
"Of course not," the Minister said between gritted teeth. "There's no mistake."
Ron struggled for control. He glanced at Hermione for support, and relaxed a bit when he saw that her mouth was a thin, disapproving line directed at the Minister. "But- Look. You gave me one, and he did more to save Harry than I did. I mean, I did throw Harry his wand and all, but Malfoy was the one who made sure we were there in the first place. Malfoy found the wand in the grass and distracted Voldemort so that Harry could get a shot at him. Voldemort would have killed Malfoy with that Avada Kedavra, except, well, he was already dead."
The Minister's face changed from irritated to oily and placating, but the grip on Ron's arm got a lot more painful.
"Listen to me, Mr. Weasley. The Wizengamot itself chose to give these honors to those who were deemed worthy of them. Are you saying that the son of a Death Eater, of Voldemort's right-hand man-"
"Look, Draco isn't his father-"
"-that the Malfoys should be honored by the very Ministry they tried to destroy?"
The weight of hundreds of eyes pressing down on him and the flutter of photographers going mad a few feet away were making him a little crazy. He didn't dare look at his family - they must be so let down at the fuss he was making.
Then his eye caught the object of all the fuss. Malfoy was staring straight at him, not moving, and even though Ron felt sick at the thought, he knew what he had to do next.
"Yeah," he said. "That is what I'm saying. If what I did was worth an Order of Merlin, then what he did was, too. We were a team out there. Don't you see?"
If the Minister gripped any harder, Ron would be needing Skele-grow. "I'm afraid you are the one who doesn't see, Mr. Weasley, even though it's all too clear to me and to our audience. Now please sit down."
Ron finally wrenched his arm from that pincer grip, all his embarrassment turned to pure anger. "All right. Just one thing, though." He was fumbling at his lapel now, feeling the pin drive awkwardly into his thumb and relishing the adrenalin rush from the pain, but shit. Shit. This was not meant to be happening, he wasn't supposed to be causing a huge scene like this, but he saw only one way out.
"All I want to say is that if Malfoy doesn't deserve this, then maybe I don't either. Here." The stupid bastard was gaping at him now and making no move to take the medal that Ron was shoving at him, so Ron grabbed his wrist and dropped it in his hand, giving him a rough squeeze in payment for his now-aching elbow. He turned and walked off the stage, head held high while the rest of him shook with rage, desperately hoping he wouldn't trip and fall flat on his face and ruin his dramatic - and very Malfoy-worthy - exit.
~.~.~
He and Malfoy never said a word to each other about that day, thank God. They weren't girls, which was what they'd be if either one of them made a big fuss over it. Anyway, his family made a big enough fuss for both of them. And they weren't as disappointed as he thought they'd be. In fact, they were actually pleased.
George gave him grief, though, for getting blood all over his dress robes from where he stuck himself with the pin. So when Ron was asked a few months later to be best man for Hermione's wedding, he finally broke down and bought himself his own robes.
"Didn't I say you should have cosied up to Potter a lot more during the war?" Malfoy grumbled. "Then your own brother wouldn't have been able to steal your girlfriend away from you."
"That's not what happened, you tosser. It's just that people usually don't end up marrying their childhood sweethearts."
"What are you talking about? My parents did. So did yours! And Potter's, and Longbottom's, and-
"Yeah, all right, well then maybe it's just me. But look, Hermione and Charlie are just better suited than she and I were."
"Why would you say that?"
But Ron would never dream of telling him - there'd be no end to Malfoy's mockery after that.
His dress robes got a lot of use during the next year, called into service for round after round of weddings. For weeks afterward, Malfoy would goad him about his abysmal lack of dates, and Ron would laugh it off. Even though Ron was always careful not to be caught ogling the wrong person, he worried that one of these days Malfoy would cotton on to the real reason he was still so appallingly single. Anyway, he was busy enough with his job, inventing tricks for the twins' joke shop. The job was fun and just dangerous enough to keep him on his toes. So he didn't need a hectic social life for excitement, he kept telling Malfoy, but he didn't pretend to believe his own advice.
But until McGonagall finally came up with a way to get rid of Malfoy's rope, Ron was going to have to lead a very monkish life.
~.~.~
Looking back, Ron could identify each irritation, small or large, that had conspired to make everything unravel so spectacularly that bleak October day.
First, he'd been having a running argument with his alarm clock all week, which had retaliated against him for a bit of manhandling the morning before that, okay, might have been a tad forceful, but that didn't mean the daft thing had to let him oversleep nearly an hour.
"Why didn't you wake me up?" he growled at Malfoy, which had set him off too.
"I told you, I can only wake up after you do. Don't blame me because you can't get along with your own bloody clock."
Because Ron's flat wasn't hooked up to the Floo yet, he'd had to use the public one a couple of streets away. Rain was coming down in stair rods, so he'd cast an Impervius - or tried to, anyway. Maybe he mumbled the 'Im', because his clothes immediately soaked up every last drop of rain within half a mile. By the time he made it to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, it felt like he'd brought half the Thames in with him.
And that twat Malfoy wouldn't stop laughing about it for half an hour, either.
Then Neville accidentally stood him up for lunch, and by the time Ron finally worked that out, it was too late to grab anything outside the shop. So he settled for a half of a cold fish sandwich left in the shop's manky refrigerator, which ticked Fred off, since that was meant to be his lunch. Then of course George had to get in on it too and whinge about Ron nicking his lunch the week before. So by the time Ron got home, his mood was dark and his thoughts blacker. And none of it had been his fault.
The firewhisky, though. That was probably his fault.
"Are you just going to drink dinner tonight?" Malfoy snarked at him, but Ron just slouched deeper into his favorite chair.
"What do you care? Not like you have to worry about cooking. Or work. Or lunch. Or rain. Or waking up."
"I don't. I was just going to mention you're spilling that stuff all down your shirt front. But I suppose you'll just tell me I don't have to worry about laundry, either."
"No. Even if you have been wearing the same clothes for the past two years." That never failed to set Malfoy off, the ponce. Right then, Ron needed to make Malfoy as miserable as he himself was, and sartorial insults seemed as good a way as any.
But Malfoy didn't rise to the bait. Instead, he drifted towards the sofa where he hovered just above its floral-print arm and fixed Ron with an unsettling stare.
"What?" Ron snapped.
"I've never seen you get pissed all on your own. I'm just settling in for the show."
"What are you, twelve?"
"Seventeen. As you are quite aware."
Seventeen. The age Draco was killed. Ron hated to be reminded that the stupid git would never age another day, but Ron would. He'd get rounder and slower and greyer. Older. And unless Professor McGonagall came up with a way to unhook them - and lately she wasn't even bothering to answer his weekly pleading owls - Malfoy would always be a permanent and unwelcome reminder of his lost youth. And wasn't that just so cheerful to contemplate right now on top of everything else. He took another large swallow of firewhisky and enjoyed the burn all the way down.
"I hope you've checked your supply of hangover potion," Malfoy said. "You'll need it at the rate you're going."
"Shut up, you gobshite," he answered with unexpected force. He found himself on his feet, so he just kept moving. Grabbing his coat from the back of the chair where he'd tossed it - still damp - he flung it over his shoulders and announced, "I'm going out."
Which would have been far more effective an exit line if he'd been able to disappear without Malfoy tagging along behind him.
"Where are we going?"
"I told you. Out."
"Out. Fine. Well, I hope I'm dressed for the occasion."
Which was sort of funny, really, but Ron wasn't going to let him know that. He was too busy trying to work out where he was headed besides out. He'd look stupid if he backpedaled now; he had to make it look like a canny plan of some sort. Besides, why shouldn't he go out when he had a strop on? It was what guys did; it was normal. Ron very much wanted to be normal for just one night.
Except usually the person they were in a strop over had the good sense to stay behind.
He found himself pacing through the dark, wet streets ignoring both Malfoy's half-hearted questions and the growing awareness of where he was headed. And once he'd worked that out, he knew that normal wasn't - and hadn't ever been - what he was truly looking for tonight. Luckily, he'd had too much to drink to listen to that inner voice warning him that maybe this was one more idiotic decision in a day chock full of them.
The inner voice became Malfoy's.
"Oh my god, Weasley! Well, I can't say I'm overly surprised, looking back on all those disasters you called dates."
"Shut up."
"You've made your point. You could have just told me you were a poof, though. You didn't need to prove it by bringing me out to a gay bar."
Ron whirled on him. "What part of shut up don't you get? In the first place, I didn't bring you - you just dragged yourself along. And anyway, you're always griping that I have no social life. So here I am, and now you're complaining about that. Make up your mind!"
He didn't bother to wait for Malfoy's answer. He needed another drink, fast.
"Firewhisky," he said to the bartender. Best not to switch drinks in the middle of a binge. Seamus had taught him that, even though at the time his advice had come about twelve hours too late.
"How did you even know about this place?" Malfoy was saying. "You've been planning this!"
"And what if I was? Look, Malfoy, unlike some people, I'm not getting any younger. Maybe I'd like to spend an evening chatting up someone other than you, have you ever thought of that?"
"And what am I supposed to do while you make calf eyes at this someone, care to enlighten me?"
And that was the crux of the problem. Ron tried a more conciliatory pitch. "I was thinking you could maybe … if you sat at another table, with your back to me… Listen, if any ghosts happen to wander in, then you'd be all set, right?"
Malfoy only gave him that dead stare he was so good at. "Right."
"C'mon, please. It's just tonight. If you do this, I'll take you to the Billiwigs concert next week-" even though they're the worst band in the history of music, he added silently, "-like you've been angling for."
"I wasn't angling…" Malfoy protested, but to Ron's joy he was moving to the table a good ten feet from where Ron had set down his drink. "Is this far enough?"
"Yeah, fine." Coming here was starting to look like a excellent idea after all. But then Malfoy started in on the conversation again, and his voice was never quiet under the best of circumstances.
"Does Potter know you like boys? I bet not. I can imagine that Granger worked it out herself, now that I think about it. No wonder she married your brother-at least she had a chance at a normal married life with him. Now I know why Longbottom came over so odd that time - he was obviously trying to get into your trousers-"
"Neville's with Katie Bell, you stupid sod. A girl, last time I checked."
"That was afterwards. You probably broke his heart. Broke his gay, too! What a-"
"Malfoy! It doesn't do me a bit of good if you sit way over there and talk my ear off across the room, you know."
"Oh." Malfoy didn't apologize, but he did shut up, which was all Ron could really expect. Just in time, too, because the door opened and a crowd of men swarmed in and soon commandeered every empty seat in the place.
"Mind if I sit here?" a boisterous voice asked him. The voice belonged to a fairly fit man, too, although Ron didn't want to analyze exactly how much of that high opinion was whiskey-driven.
"Sure. There seems to be quite a lot of you. What's the occasion?" Ron said.
"Well, Nigel-he's the one with the goat horns there at the bar-and Geoffrey-that blond with the orange and purple robes-yeah, they're tying the knot, more or less. And we're the mates to make sure they go through with it, after all the high drama they've dragged us all through to get here. Not that I'd tell tales out of school." He thrust his hand at Ron and gave him an enthusiastic shake. "Name's Peter. Peter Stonecastle. You look familiar somehow. You're not a Weasley, are you?"
Ron was too used to that line to let it bother him. "Yeah. I'm Ron."
"I went to Hogwarts with your brother Percy. Odd sort of chap. Oh, sorry."
"No, that's all right. I happen to think so too."
"Clearly you're not the female Weasley. So are you the cursebreaker Weasley or the dragonboy Weasley or one of the twin Weasleys?"
"No, I'm the…." He stopped himself before he said anything he'd regret. "None of the above."
"Wait… aren't you the Weasley who stabbed the Minister of Magic with a pin at that Order of Merlin ceremony after the war?"
"I didn't stab him with a pin! I stabbed myself with a pin." Which, now that it was out of his mouth, wasn't exactly the suave comeback Ron had been aiming for. "Accidentally, I mean."
"Right, right." Peter's brow was knitted in concentration. "Wasn't there something about a ghost that hung round you all the time? Yeah. I remember now. You're the haunted Weasley!"
Ron's face fell. "Actually, I was hoping you'd say the handsome Weasley or the clever Weasley or-" he said, but Peter was too busy remembering the rest of it. Unfortunately.
"Let me think-it was the ghost of one of those bigwig Death Eaters-Malfoy, wasn't it? Shite, that must have been horrible, yeah? So you finally got rid of the dead wanker?"
"Er. Not exactly," Ron muttered.
"Boo!" Malfoy said brightly, right in Peter's left ear. Peter let out a girlish shriek and jumped three feet into the air. "Speak of the devil, and he will … appear. Or so they tell me."
Peter was out of his chair by then and looked as though he'd like to be out of the room entirely if the crowd would let him bolt.
"What are you two playing at?" he said, pressing away from Malfoy as far as he could. "Look, I'm not into threesomes… And necrophilia's really not my thing…"
"What?" Ron's voice nearly matched Peter's earlier shriek. "I wasn't- We don't- It's not what you think-"
But Peter had seen an opening in the crowd and was gone.
In sheer frustration, Ron turned on Malfoy. "You utter dickhead! What did you go and do that for! We were just getting to know each other and-"
"I didn't want to see you waste your time, Weasley. Trust me, he definitely wasn't your type."
"How would you know?" Ron didn't even know his type himself; there was no way Malfoy could have worked it out.
"Don't you remember him from school, you git? He was such a boring, conceited, whiny idiot-"
"Takes one to know one, then."
Malfoy gave a haughty sniff. "Well, I'm so sorry for trying to do you a favor. It won't happen again. Go on, sit back down. I'll just wander back to my corner and play the red-headed stepchild. No pun intended."
"Don't bother. It's not as though you haven't drawn the attention of every single bloke here with your little performance."
It was true. Crowded as it was, there was now an empty no-man's-land around the two of them, and nearly every eye was glancing or openly gaping in their direction.
"Well, what's their problem? They all look as if they've seen a ghost," Malfoy drawled loudly. Eyes shifted nervously away, but not for long.
"Just shut up, Malfoy. Could you do that? For once in your life-"
"Ha ha. I'm just saying, Weasley, that you can do better than Peter fucking Stonecastle, that's all. Wait, where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
"Again?"
"Funny enough, I'm not exactly in the mood to stick around. And you can just bloody well forget about the Billiwigs, too, you crupfuck." He was just drunk enough not to care that he was rudely shoving his way through the crowd. Cries of alarm trailed behind him from the blokes who weren't quick enough to get out of Malfoy's way as he shoved his way through, too. Although in his case, it was far more literal.
~.~.~
If Ron closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could almost pretend the last two hours had never happened. He'd been sitting right here on his sofa drinking firewhisky the whole evening. He'd never gone out to that bar, he never was accused of sick perversions by an old school chum of Percy's, and he positively had not come out to Malfoy.
Who was being oddly silent about the whole thing, come to think of it. Maybe he was working on his own bout of pretending.
He opened one eye and found Malfoy staring at him again.
"Are you going to ignore me for the rest of your miserable and woefully single life, Weasley? Look, I said I was sorry."
"No, you never did. You just sent that bloke running for the door and then made up some shite about how he wasn't my type."
"Well, it's true. I've been hanging around you long enough, don't you think I've got some clue about who you'd like?"
Ron fingered his empty glass, contemplated another refill, then thought better of it. He was already going to be paying the price tomorrow, and for what? Another night at home with only Malfoy for company. "Yeah, well maybe I wasn't looking for a life partner. At this point I'd settle for anyone less boring than my own right hand. But thanks to you it looks like I have a hot date tonight with my left hand instead."
"God, Weasley, do you have to be so descriptive? Look, I'm sorry."
Ron grunted noncommittally. The problem was, before their disastrous trip to the bar, he'd been drunk and frustrated. Now he was drunk, frustrated, and horny as hell. Unfortunately, he muttered that last part out loud.
Malfoy was eyeing him thoughtfully. "So let me get this straight. All you're really looking for is something less boring?"
"It's a start-"
"Then maybe there's something I can do for you after all."
The way he said that made Ron nervous, so he hauled himself up on both elbows to see what Malfoy had in mind. And then his jaw dropped open in complete shock.
Malfoy was slowly undressing. By the time Ron managed to clear some of the fog out of his brain, Malfoy had already shed his robes and was slowly working loose his tie.
"Are you daft? What are you- We can't-"
"Keep your hair on. I know as well as you what we can and can't do. But I can do this much, and you can sit back and enjoy it. Or not."
"But-"
"Remember when you asked me if I could wank? You're about to learn the answer."
Not only was Malfoy undressing, he was making rather a show of it. Ron kept telling himself he'd have to be made of ice not to respond to something like this (as Malfoy's shirt was teased open to expose his lightly muscled chest), and that there was nothing more to it than a natural reaction to naked skin and the promise of more (as shoes and socks joined the discarded shirt, and Malfoy's slender ankles and long, suckable toes were freed), and that anyone in his position would get hard just watching, too-anyone gay, that is (as Malfoy's trousers slipped leisurely down those long, long legs and his pants ever-so-slowly followed)-and that even if it was Malfoy, and a ghostly Malfoy at that, he was still awfully fit.
And then Malfoy turned around to face him and he was entirely naked. Ron sobered up in a hurry.
"Guh…" was all he managed to get out.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Malfoy replied lightly. He was touching himself now, languid, sensuous strokes all over his skin, and Ron watched in shock and growing desire. Even though Ron knew it was stupid and impossible and wrongwrongwrong, he had never wanted anyone so much right then as he did Malfoy. Which meant that either his world was about to explode or his cock was, and it was a bizarre race to discover which would happen first.
"Are you going to make me do this all by myself?" Malfoy asked, with just a touch of his usual irritation.
"You- I-"
"Yes, Weasley, you and I. You've got that much worked out. Now unzip yourself. Go ahead, I know you want to."
Ron, always the dutiful youngest son, did as he was told.
"Now take your cock out, just like that, yeah …."
He didn't know which was more arousing: listening to Malfoy's increasingly breathy voice telling him what dirty, exciting thing to do next or watching Malfoy's hand sliding over his hard dick.
"C'mon, Weasley, yeah, just like that...spread your legs, that's it…"
Malfoy moved closer - not that Ron minded, since it seemed like he'd left his inhibitions somewhere back in the bar. If he squinted he could imagine he was watching one of those Muggle pornos Seamus owned, although he was sure Seamus always watched the girls and not the blokes the way he did. But this was far better; it was happening right here in front of him, and from what he was hearing, Malfoy was somehow getting off on watching Ron, too. That thought, more than anything, finally triggered his orgasm, and he came hard and hot all over his hand, his stomach, and Malfoy.
When Malfoy soon did the same, Ron was surprised to learn that ghostly come was not bone-jarringly frigid but only pleasantly cool.
~.~.~
Ron tried going out to bars a few more times after that before abandoning the whole idea as unworkable. The blokes he met there were either repulsed by Malfoy or else, worse, they weren't, and they let Ron know it in the most disgusting terms. As some kind of weird apology, Malfoy would repeat his exhibitionistic display later at home, so that those nights weren't a complete waste. Ron eventually decided to skip the disagreeable bar scene altogether and get right to their voyeuristic wanking.
All in all, between working at the joke shop in the daytime and getting his rocks off with Malfoy at night, it wasn't such a bad life. He never told Malfoy he'd stopped owling Professor McGonagall. Not like he could have any real secrets from the git, living in each other's pockets the way they did. It was just one more thing they didn't talk about because, after all, they were still guys, no matter what they got up to with each other in secret.
~.~.~
"Weasley. Weasley!! "
Malfoy sounded panicky, and Ron slowly opened his eyes.
His workshop was a total disaster. Clouds of ash and acrid smoke were still billowing around the corners of the room, and broken glass and shards of wood and pewter lay inches from his nose. The smoke was making it hard to see clearly, though, and Ron blinked a few times. It didn't seem to help; everything still looked blurred and fuzzy.
"Weasley!"
"Yeah, all right, give me a sec. I just got the wind knocked out of me, that's all. What happened?"
"I'm guessing that last counter-clockwise stir should have been clockwise," Malfoy said. He wasn't gloating over being right about it, though, which was odd.
Ron cautiously sat up. The devastation of his workshop hadn't done much damage to him - he felt pretty good, considering. No blood, no broken bones. Hell, he didn't even see any scratches anywhere.
"Looks like I got lucky this time," he said. "But Fred and George aren't going to be happy about this mess. Bloody hell, it looks like every bottle in the room got shattered. And that new order of runespoor eggs is ruined, shit shit shit! Reckon I'll have to blame it on you."
He glanced at Malfoy to see how he'd take that, but he didn't expect the full-blown look of horror on his face.
"I was joking, Malfoy, get a grip." Then he looked at him more closely and nearly screamed.
Malfoy was no longer a ghost. He was solid, corporeal, breathing-gasping, actually- and very much alive.
"Wow! Wait'll I tell everyone I brought you back from the dead, Malfoy! I've got to say, that's one amazing spell!"
"No. You didn't," Malfoy answered slowly, and something in his tone made Ron very uneasy. "And it wasn't. Look."
That's when Ron saw the body amid the wreckage. His body.
"Oh, fuck. You're not alive, I'm-" He couldn't say it.
"Yeah. Looks that way."
The door burst open and the twins spilled in, coughing on the smoke and tossing aside the debris. It was the oddest experience of Ron's life-death-to watch them tearfully discover his body and bear it away. The whole time Ron fruitlessly tried to catch their attention, but nothing he did made them aware that he was still here.
"I don't get it," he told Malfoy after the door had closed behind them. "They didn't even see me, or you either. Everyone could see you before. What's going on?"
"I don't know, Weasley. It's not like I'm exactly savvy on how this whole ghost thing works. Mostly, I fake it. Now you know."
Everything was so unexpected and strange that Ron needed a few minutes to take stock of what was going through his head. Being dead wasn't anything like he expected. He wasn't sad at losing his body, and not even the thought of how torn up his family would be bothered him much. They'd get over it, he knew. So that part was all right. Malfoy's own description of being a ghost turned out to be right on the Sickle - he felt like he was still alive but that he was in a strange and ghostly world. But that twinge in his ankle from where he injured it in the war was gone, and he felt somehow lighter and warmer.
And strangely, Malfoy was still here. Solid, too, or near enough. As Malfoy watched, Ron tentatively reached out and touched his arm, and for the first time his hand didn't pass right through him. He felt skin, warm and soft, and muscle and the hard outline of bone. Soon, just touching wasn't enough and became something else.
"That feels nice," Malfoy said, and yeah, it did. It definitely did.
Ron couldn't help it. He had to do the one thing they hadn't ever been able to do before, the one thing that as guys they didn't talk about at all. He leaned forward to kiss Malfoy, but Malfoy was already there first.
The prat was good at it, too, much better than Lavender or Hermione, but Ron was notnotnot going to ask where he'd learned his technique. He was still trying to work out why it felt so bloody good when they were both dead, even as his hands were unfastening Malfoy's robes and dipping into his trousers.
"Weasley, this is hardly the place," Malfoy mouthed into Ron's neck.
"Mmm. Where to, then?"
When Malfoy didn't answer, Ron pulled away to look at him. "What's wrong?"
"The rope," Malfoy said quietly. "It's gone."
Even though Ron knew he no longer had a real heart, it still felt like it sank at Malfoy's words.
"Oh." He wanted to say more, but didn't know where to start. Still, the look on Malfoy's face wasn't the relief that Ron expected to see.
"I suppose that means you and I are free to go our separate ways," Malfoy said, and if Ron knew more about these things, he'd say that Malfoy looked unhappy. Not that they were ever going to talk about it-they weren't girls after all-but that didn't mean that Ron was going to stand by and do nothing.
"There's just one big problem, Malfoy," he said. "Because now I have a rope attaching me to you. See?" He and Malfoy stared down at the empty space between them, silent, then Malfoy grinned.
"Figures," he said. "Just when I was well shot of you, too. Believe me, Weasley, payback's going to be a bitch. I think you owe me and it starts now."
"Wanker," Ron said.
"Oh, no. Not any more," Malfoy shot back, right before he melted through the workshop door.
For sanity's sake, Ron determined that his rope would have to be longer than Malfoy's had been, so he gave him an imaginary forty feet before giving chase.
the end
Author: Geoviki
Rating: R
Pairing: Ron/Draco
Author notes: Thanks to Parthenia14 for the beta (and I made her rush, too). Completed July 12, 2007, in the nick of time. Title from Frou Frou - Hear Me Out.
Word count: ~10,100
Summary: Ron would love it if his new companion, Draco Malfoy, would just bugger off and die. Although the last time he did, it ruined Ron's life.
~.~.~
So how do I do normal?
Hear Me Out - Frou Frou
Ron Weasley had wished Draco Malfoy dead so many times and in so many inventive ways that it was almost anticlimactic when it actually happened.
Surprisingly, his death wasn't especially evil, or impressive, or earth-shattering. Room-shattering; Ron would give him that. Actually, he'd probably describe Malfoy's messy end as dramatic - like Malfoy himself - and pointlessly stupid - ditto.
It had taken investigators no time at all to piece together the cause of Malfoy's dramatic and pointlessly stupid death. Apparently Malfoy's father, recently of Azakaban and even more recently of some unheated hermit's cave somewhere back of beyond, had concocted a grand plan in his unhinged mind to kill Harry and get back in You-Know-Who's good graces. Well, even Lord Thingie had managed to bugger that job for years (not that Ron wasn't grateful for that, of course), so Lucius Malfoy's chances of success were slim to none, even if he hadn't been a few twigs short of a Nimbus. Lucius's grand plan was to owl Draco a special parcel to deliver to Harry, a package which would explode upon opening, with a second owl sent to his son explaining the grand plan. Now, anyone thinking this through at all would know that it was pretty bloody vital that the owl with the explanation had better arrive before the owl with the parcel.
Lucius hadn't thought it through at all.
The second owl was a bit baffled as to how she was supposed to deliver her message to the pieces of Draco she'd found (and possibly sampled, but Ron, as much as he'd hated Malfoy, didn't want to dwell on that). The evidence in the letter she bore made it an open-and-shut case.
Malfoy by all rights shouldn't even have been at Hogwarts for his final year after the atrocious things he did sixth year. Ron never had worked out how he'd managed to end up back in school rather than in Azkaban with dear old dad. For some reason, though, Harry was all right with it, so Ron chalked it up to some secret he wasn't allowed to know. Because of Harry's stamp of approval, Ron forced his own hand back into his pocket and not around his wand any time Malfoy crossed his path.
The thing was, Ron was far more pissed off that he himself was stuck here while Harry and Hermione were off hunting Horcruxes. The summer had gone so well, he thought, with the three of them researching likely Horcruxes - well, so maybe Hermione and Harry were doing the lion's share of the research, but they'd insisted he was really doing a good job of giving moral support. Then his mum had put her foot down and practically frog-marched him to the Hogwart's Express come September, and all because of that one time when she'd caught him …well, it wasn't as bad as it looked, anyway, not that he had been able to talk his way out of it.
That night, after giving Hermione and Harry the news about Malfoy, Ron contemplated the rightness of the universe as he imagined his last four months of Hogwarts blissfully Malfoy-free.
He should have known better.
~.~.~
Being a prefect, Ron knew, had its responsibilities, which he took more seriously than anyone ever gave him credit for. With responsibilities also came privileges, which Ron accepted with humility, grace, and admittedly a certain amount of glee. One of his favorite perks was having his own room, something he'd never had a prayer of getting at the Burrow or in the Gryffindor dormitory. For the first time in his 17 years, he slept in a room by himself.
Which meant he shouldn't have woken up to the sound of someone screaming in his ear. Even worse, he shouldn't have woken up to the sound of Draco Malfoy screaming in his ear.
Granted, being jerked out of a sound sleep was enough to explain Ron's disorientation, but the screaming, and what he could piece together from the words, and the business of it being Malfoy and all weren't helping matters. But from what he could work out, Malfoy was seriously upset at being in Ron's room and was accusing him of bizarre plots to… well, Ron wasn't quite getting that part. He was still trying to come to grips with the eerie look of Ghost Malfoy.
"-how you even died, Weasel, not that it even matters to me, but I won't have you haunting me. McGonagall will have something to say about this when I tell her. She'll banish you, or exorcise you, or whatever thing she does to get rid of unwanted ghosts."
"What?" Inadequate, he knew, but it was a start.
Draco looked taken aback that Ron had interrupted his nice little rant, and he shimmered a bit and looked…more transparent.
"I won't let you haunt me, Weasel. I couldn't stand you alive, and it'd be even worse now that you're dead. So be a good little ghost and bugger off."
Ron blinked in confusion. "You've got things backwards as usual, Malfoy. You're the bloody ghost."
That shut Malfoy up, but not for long.
"-Fuck are you talking about? I'm looking at you right this minute, and I can see you're a ghost! Transparent? Check. Misty? Check. Ability to put my hand right through you?" At that, Malfoy stepped up to the bed and passed a hand through Ron's arm, leaving a painful trail of iciness in its wake. "Check."
"That's because you're…. Listen, Malfoy. You're the dead one here. Your father accidentally blew you up yesterday. Don't you remember?"
The look on Malfoy's translucent face told Ron the answer. He frantically wished that Hermione were here - she was much better at this metaphysical shite. "Your batty old dad was trying to kill Harry and buggered it up in spades. Poetic justice, that," he added and ignored Malfoy's blazing glare. If looks could kill…. "Doesn't ring a bell, then?"
"No."
"Yes. Look, do you remember yesterday at all? Doesn't matter. There's a memorial service for you today. If you don't believe me, you can see for yourself."
"See my body, you mean?" The sarcasm was sharp enough to cut steel.
"Um. Not exactly. There wasn't much left of you. Pieces, really."
"Nice try, Weaselby, but my body's right here, isn't it? In your room."
Ron pounced on that. "And how did you get here, then? Through my personal wards?"
Malfoy looked momentarily nonplused. "Shoddy job you made of it, that's all."
Ron had had enough of Malfoy's idiocy and launched himself out of bed. "It's no use wasting my breath even talking to you. You're as much of an imbecile as a ghost as you were alive. Look in the bloody mirror, then, if you don't believe me!"
He marched over to the mirror, almost reaching out to drag Malfoy along with him but thinking better of it at the last second. Malfoy, just as angry, followed.
"Well?" Ron demanded.
As much as he'd hated Malfoy, he couldn't help feeling a twinge of sympathy as the irritation on Malfoy's face was replaced by unadulterated shock.
"I…I…" Malfoy managed to squeak out.
"What?" Ron's curiosity won out. "What do you see?"
"Oh, God!" Malfoy replied, barely audible, but said no more. His face crumpled, and for a moment he looked as though he was going start blubbering. Ron wondered what it was he saw that made him so upset -Binns had lectured once about ghosts and mirrors, but Ron hadn't managed to stay awake for the details.
"Look, Malfoy, maybe you'd better go and talk to McGonagall about all this. I'm not the one who should be telling you."
There was a long silence, until finally Malfoy huffed out a nonexistent breath and said, "Yeah. All right." But he made no move to leave.
"Um, Malfoy?"
Malfoy shot him a look of cold annoyance. "Well, I obviously can't go anywhere until you untie the rope, can I?"
What the hell? "Rope."
"Yes, Weasley, the rope around my ankle that's tying me to yours. The rope. There." He was pointing down at nothing.
"Uh. There's no rope."
"Okay, let's not split hairs here. It's not exactly a rope, but close enough. So untie it and I'll be on my way."
"Malfoy, there's nothing there. Not a rope or a cord or a bloody chain. Nothing."
"Fine. You can't see it. Fine." The next thing he knew, Malfoy was pawing at Ron's leg, his ghostly hands passing right through it and leaving Ron's muscles cramping with the cold.
"Stop it, you tosser!" Ron shouted. "Keep your bloody hands to yourself!"
"Then you untie it!"
"I'm telling you there's nothing there, you pillock!"
Malfoy gave him a disgusted look, stomped off towards the door, and just as abruptly stopped. It did look as though he was struggling against something holding his leg, but Ron knew better than to trust him.
"I can't go any further." He got that odd look again, as if he were about to break down right there, and Ron didn't want to deal with that along with all the rest of whatever the hell this was.
"Look, I'll come with you, then," Ron told him. "McGonagall can sort this, right? I'm sure it's just temporary."
~.~.~
Ron's predictive abilities were clearly wonky.
McGonagall had got through the part where she explained to Malfoy - repeatedly and at length - that he was indeed dead and currently a ghost. Now they were at the part where she should have been casting the spell to get rid of Malfoy's invisible rope so that Ron could go back to his room and maybe catch a few more zzz's.
But McGonagall was doing nothing of the sort. Instead, she was shaking her head and looking sorrowful and saying something that sounded like sometimes this happens and reasons not understood and, even worse, permanent.
No matter how much Ron, and then Malfoy, argued the point with her, she didn't change her tune.
"What do you mean, Professor, until death? He's already dead!"
"She means until your death, Weasley. So why don't you just run along and top yourself like the toe rag you are, so I don't have to look at your ugly face any more."
"Yeah, bet you'd like that, you bloody prat! Seeing that you couldn't manage the job when you tried to kill me just last year."
"That might be a bad idea, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said, with what was obviously failing patience. "Besides being personally distasteful to Mr. Weasley, there's every possibility it might join you two together for eternity. So until we find a way to end this unusual connection between you, I suggest it's in your best interest to keep him alive."
Ron did his best to ignore the choking noises Malfoy was making. "But why is he tied to me, Professor? At least he says he is. Funny that no-one else seems to be able to see the rope he's running on about."
"Well, Mr. Weasley, you'll have to ask Mr. Malfoy that question. He seems to have chosen you for some reason."
"What?" Malfoy squawked. Ron thought he'd be probably bright red, too, if he could show any other color than ghostly grey. "I didn't choose him! There is no way I would have tied myself to this twat! I mean, really, I do have standards...."
"Nonetheless, I would suggest you two learn to get along. In the long run you may find it makes this much easier."
The morning dragged on. First their heads of house, then the other professors, and finally the entire Hogwarts student body joined in the nonstop fun of gawking at Ron, who had somehow grievously offended the universe and was now saddled with the ghost of Draco fucking Malfoy for the rest of his natural life. The longevity of which was looking less attractive by the minute.
It was odd to attend a funeral for someone standing not ten feet from him. Since there was no need for a coffin, there really wasn't much for the crowd to focus on, except, of course, Malfoy's very visible ghost. The git was acting like some kind of spectral maitre-d', nodding solemnly as his fellow Slytherins came over to tell him how sorry they were he'd died. Ron kept his back to Malfoy and tried to ignore the ceremony, while Seamus and Dean offered him what little support they could.
Ron discovered - by accident, of course - that Malfoy was indeed forced to stay within ten feet of him, when he'd finally heard enough sucking up for multiple lifetimes and paced off. Malfoy was yanked off his ghostly feet and dragged along behind him like an oversized balloon. A talking - no, whinging - balloon.
McGonagall, however, noticed the gleam of revenge in Ron's eye and sternly informed him that if Ron didn't want detention, he'd better make sure Mr. Malfoy could talk with his friends in peace. Ron's objections that he wasn't going to be able to talk with his own friends without Malfoy around were ignored, and he grudgingly backed down with only a few well-chosen obscenities under his breath.
~.~.~
The Slytherin problem, to Ron's surprise, solved itself in a few weeks.
Malfoy, while living, had clearly made friends through coercion and intimidation. Malfoy, ghost emeritus, found his ability to coerce and intimidate all too limited, especially with his odd connection - still invisible to everyone but Malfoy - to a Gryffindor.
Malfoy's dim-witted bodyguards were the first to abandon him, mainly because there was no longer a body to guard. A few of Malfoy's other friends hung on a bit longer, but eventually they got sick of his constant complaints and began to ignore him. Finally, Ron found himself waiting for the imperious daily order to visit the Slytherin table for lunch - an order that never came. Never again did he have to fume in silence while Malfoy hobnobbed with his old Slytherin cronies.
Malfoy was blessedly silent for days afterwards.
"I think he's depressed," Neville told Ron one afternoon. "Maybe he needs counseling. Do you suppose Professor Trelawney does that sort of thing?"
"I can hear you," Malfoy shot back, but they didn't bother answering.
In fact, Ron was finding it astonishingly easy to ignore Malfoy most of the time. He practiced tuning him out on the Quidditch field, where Malfoy would float around the goal posts and interfere with Ron's attempts at playing keeper. Ron didn't want to let Malfoy know, but the harassment had given him something to overcome, or at least something to focus on when the game seemed dull, and he was becoming a better player for it.
Ron was surprised when Malfoy managed to restrain himself during the final match against Slytherin. Malfoy even muttered a soft, "Well done," when Ron made an especially tricky save, but they both quickly pretended he hadn't said anything of the sort.
Nor did they talk during detention after Ron punched Blaise Zabini's lights out the next week for making a snide comment about Weasley's pet ghost.
~.~.~
"What are you up to under there, Weasley?" Draco asked him early one morning, as Ron was taking full advantage of his single room and concealing counterpane.
It was useless to try to stop himself from blushing. "Fuck off, Malfoy," he muttered, feeling himself rapidly wilting.
"Can't. Looks like you're trying to, though. Are you wanking?"
"No." A beat. "Not any more, you stupid shit."
Malfoy laughed, a thin, melodic sound. "What's the matter, Weasley? Can't perform in front of an audience?"
"Shut up. Can't you just go back to sleep?"
Malfoy gave him a blank look. "I don't sleep. I don't think gho- I can." He rarely slipped up and called himself a ghost, Ron noticed, but he couldn't really blame the git. Early on, Malfoy had mentioned that it looked as if everyone else was a ghost, and he himself was real. It must be disorienting to try to remember it was the other way round.
"So what, you just watch me sleep all night?" He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that.
"No. I- I just don't do anything when you're asleep, and then when you're awake, I am, too."
"I should sleep more often, then, if that's how to turn you off." He had a sudden thought. "So, can you even wank any more?"
Malfoy's smirk was pure evil. "Why, Weasel, fancy a go? Kinky."
"No, shut up. I- Just wondered, that's all."
Luckily, Malfoy accepted that. "I could, I suppose. I haven't felt the urge lately. Can't imagine why. Not that I haven't had other things on my mind, what with being killed by my father, chained up to an idiot, and tossed aside by my friends."
He didn't know what made him say it. "You could always find new friends."
Malfoy looked at him in shock. "What. You mean you? And Longbottom? Or maybe that Luna twit who hangs round asking me about creatures that don't even exist, the ones she's sure I can see now? Yeah, right, Weasley, that'd be spiffing."
Hurt, Ron challenged him. "Well, you could try, you know. I mean, if you took the time to know us, and stopped being such a prick."
"Right."
"Well, I'm just saying you could, that's all. It's your choice."
"And you and your friends would let go of everything from the past seven years, and we could all be best mates, is that what you see happening?"
Did he believe that? It didn't matter, it wasn't happening anyway. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying. What better time to try than after being killed? A new start, and all that."
"Oh, fuck off, Weasley."
"Well, I was trying to." He was surprised when Malfoy laughed, and even more surprised to find himself joining in.
~.~.~
Voldemort had politely waited until after the Leaving Ball before making his move, but he made up for it afterwards. Ron thought Malfoy would never shut up about how Ron had finally talked his mother into letting him join the Order only to find himself shunted off with a group of strangers, where he was clearly at the bottom of the chain of command.
"What's it matter to you, anyway, Malfoy? It's not like you're even eating our bad food or feeling the cold sleeping in these ditches."
"You're such a disappointment. Couldn't you have found a nice desk job sorting quills somewhere? What's the point of being Potter's best friend if you don't bother taking advantage of it?"
"Maybe some of us think it's wrong to use our friends like that."
Malfoy snorted his disgust. "It's not as if what you're doing is any help to anyone. Why aren't we with Potter? The same old crap, day after day, is boring me to death. Ha ha."
The thing of it was, Ron was every bit as bored and irritable at his lot in life as Malfoy was, and if it had been anybody else he'd have been agreeing wholeheartedly. But it was Malfoy, so he had to argue the point, and that pissed him off even more.
"Listen, just shut up about it, all right? It's hard enough flying around the countryside dodging Death Eaters without you running on all the time about how bored you are."
"But I am bored. Nothing ever happens in this stupid unit you're in, anyway."
"Look, I'll put myself in the line of fire next time; would that be exciting enough for you?"
Draco's eyes narrowed and he shimmered, something Ron noticed he always did when he was especially angry. "Don't you dare die, Weasley! I have no intention of being joined to you for eternity."
"Then instead of whinging about being bored, maybe you ought to be thinking about ways to keep me hale and hearty, hmm?"
Malfoy grunted, but Ron noticed that he was a lot quieter about their lot after that.
~.~.~
It had been a particularly bad day, and Ron, exhausted, had crept into a dense stand of brush for a quick rest. He'd somehow managed to tumble over an embankment earlier in a hasty escape - tipped off by Malfoy, surprisingly, that he was about to be blindsided. His leg bore an ugly cut, his second-best trousers were blood-stained and ruined, and his hands and arms were covered with raw scrapes that stung like hell. He'd just about nodded off at last, when Malfoy's panicky voice jerked him awake.
"We've got to get out of here."
"What? What's wrong? Is somebody-"
"No. No, no-one's coming, it's safe enough here. But we've got to-"
Ron rolled over, wincing from his injuries and feeling how his pain fired up his irritation, too. "Well, then, it can bloody well wait. I need a break, so-"
"No! We've got to go. We've got to go!"
Ron had never seen Malfoy so agitated, but he wasn't about to be pushed around. After all, Malfoy had it easy: he got to float along every day, never growing tired or hungry, never worrying about his family or his own skin. Ron deserved a break.
"In a minute," he muttered, and turned his back on Malfoy.
"No. Now."
Ron wasn't about to be browbeaten, especially by a ghost, especially by Malfoy's ghost, so he ignored him and let his eyes slide closed. The next thing he knew, a bitterly cold chill blanketed him, and he jerked awake, shocked and angry. Malfoy had dropped to the ground beside him and was rolling through him, even though the daft bugger knew how much Ron hated that cold contact.
"Stop it, you fucker," he shouted, but Malfoy did it again. And again. "Leave off! What's wrong with you?"
Malfoy stopped and looked at him with alarm. "I don't know. All I know is we have to go. Right now." Malfoy gave a huge shudder, then said the last thing Ron expected to hear from him: "Please."
Ron was pissed off, he was freezing from Malfoy's little tantrum, the cut on his leg was reminding him with every throb what a bad idea walking was, but Ron knew he would have to go with Malfoy. Still, he wasn't going to make it easy. He hefted himself unsteadily to his feet and limped behind an increasingly frantic Malfoy.
"Slow down, you sod! Some of us can't go through trees, you know."
"Shhh." Malfoy was pointing at something ahead that Ron couldn't see, but he immediately crouched down and tried not to make any noise when his leg - and arms and hands - objected.
And then he saw what Malfoy had been pointing at, and it left him colder than Malfoy's contact had.
Harry was there, standing with his back to Ron. And facing him, in full Death Eater regalia, red-eyed and sneering, was Voldemort.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Ron crept forward on his belly until he could get a better view and maybe overhear what they were saying.
"They're alone," Malfoy told him very quietly, and Ron wondered how he knew but didn't question it.
Contrary to everything in the Evil Overlord handbook, Voldemort was wasting precious time making some kind of dramatic, I-finally-have-you-where-I-want-you-and-you-will-not-escape speech. Ron had swung around enough to notice that Harry was wandless but glaring back at the Dark Lord with a defiance that Ron had to admire. If Ron's second-best trousers weren't already ruined, those crimson eyes staring at him like that would have done the trick.
He turned to look at Malfoy, who was staring at something in the grass a hand's reach away.
Harry's wand.
Carefully, Ron reached out and wrapped his fist around it. He exchanged a victorious look with Malfoy, who nodded at him and drifted like mist as far away from Ron as he was able - farther than usual by a good fifteen feet. Then everything exploded into action.
Malfoy shot up from the underbrush, suddenly looking far more solid and real than Ron remembered ever seeing him, and gave a loud shout: "For Slytherin!"
Caught by surprise, Voldemort jerked up his wand and took only a second to fire off an Avada Kedavra at Malfoy that passed right through him, while Ron sprang up, shouted to Harry, tossed him the wand, and dove back down for cover. Harry caught his wand, whirled on his heel, shot off his own killing curse, and in the time it took for Ron to process everything, Voldemort was dead at their feet.
~.~.~
Ron smoothed down the crisp black linen of his dress robes - well, technically his brother George's dress robes - and tugged uselessly at one slightly frayed and too-short sleeve. He ignored the echo of Hermione pointing out that if there was ever a time to spring for his own new robes, maybe the day that the Minister of Magic was going to be pinning an Order of Merlin on your lapel was it. He just didn't get tarted up all that often to justify the cost.
"That's going to wrinkle horribly, you realize," Malfoy said. "Linen always does."
"Doesn't matter," Ron snapped, grumpier now. "There'll be so many of us up there that my whole thing'll be over and done in seconds anyway."
"But your entire family will be there, and the photographers. And there you'll be, with robes so short you can practically see your knees. Honestly, Weasley."
"Big deal. And they're not that short. You're just jealous that you've only got that one outfit. All I can say is it's a bloody good thing you didn't open up that parcel from your father when you were still in your pyjamas."
"Oh, shut up." But the insult didn't have the heat it once did; for the past two months, ever since the day Harry killed Voldemort, they'd managed to settle into a begrudging truce of sorts. Although they still weren't friends or anything.
"You ready?" Ron took one final look in the mirror, which was looking back at him with a decidedly pained expression, and headed towards the Floo.
Malfoy had made some kind of stab at disguising the permanent scorch marks on his own robes by pinning sprigs of tiny ghostly flowers all over his chest. Ron had to admit it made him look kind of, well, nice. Poncy as hell, but nice. Although he'd look a hell of a lot nicer if he didn't always scrunch up his face like that.
"You aren't going to cry up there, are you, Weasley? Because if you're going to be a sniveling mess, I'm not going."
"Suit yourself," Ron shot back. "Just untie that rope you keep telling me about and be on your way."
"Bugger off. It's not like I haven't tried a few million times. Believe me, if I could rid myself of you, I'd be gone like a shot."
That was the weird thing. Everyone had agreed that Malfoy had saved the day with his odd insistence of chasing off into the forest and homing in on Harry. Even Professor McGonagall said that she thought that was why Malfoy had been forced to hang around as a ghost - burning off some bad karma, whatever that was. But instead of being freed from whatever strange magic brought him into Ron's life, Malfoy still insisted that the invisible rope kept him hanging round. Ron used to think he'd made the whole thing up, not that he could work out why he'd do something so boneheaded as that. But there was no reason for him to still be here.
At least the rope had got longer during the fight against old Voldie, which meant that Ron could finally take a piss - and do a few other things - with the loo door closed and Malfoy on the other side of it.
From his chair on the stage he could see his mum and dad squeezed right up front, and he fluttered his fingers at them. His mum beamed back at him, eyes already full of tears, even though the Minister was only as far as Dorothea Ballytrask. Being a Weasley meant that he was dead last in this group, and he settled in for a long wait, perking up when he heard Hermione's name and grinning at her while she marched up for her medal.
Malfoy hadn't bothered with a chair, instead drifting just behind the back row and looking a little fierce. Ron was a little surprised when the Minister skipped from Luna Lovegood to Marcus Quigley. Someone had probably warned the Minister about that invisible rope, so they'd probably be going up as a pair.
The minute his own name was announced, his heart started racing like a Cornish pixie's. It felt like a dream as he walked up to the front, blinking at the photographer's flashes and giving his sleeves a final yank. All too quickly the Minister had one hand pumping his own and the other on Ron's elbow, nudging him back to his seat.
"And in conclusion, let us give a final round of applause to these exemplary new members of the Order of Merlin-"
Ron had only taken a few steps towards his chair, but the words made him stop and turn back.
"Excuse me," he said, but it was lost in the cheers from the crowd. He made himself shout louder. "Excuse me. Minister? Wait, sir. There's been a mistake."
The Minister was shoving him away now, and he could feel his face flush with embarrassed heat. His mum was making shooing armwaves at him, and Charlie, standing beside her, had one hand over his face as if to hide any resemblance to the person currently making a fool of himself on stage.
"Please, sir." The Minister stopped trying to crowd him off stage, but he didn't let go of Ron's arm. "It's Draco Malfoy. You forgot to give Malfoy his medal."
The Minister's assistant fumbled through a scroll, mouthing names as his finger traced the page. "No Malfoy listed here, sir," he told them.
"Of course not," the Minister said between gritted teeth. "There's no mistake."
Ron struggled for control. He glanced at Hermione for support, and relaxed a bit when he saw that her mouth was a thin, disapproving line directed at the Minister. "But- Look. You gave me one, and he did more to save Harry than I did. I mean, I did throw Harry his wand and all, but Malfoy was the one who made sure we were there in the first place. Malfoy found the wand in the grass and distracted Voldemort so that Harry could get a shot at him. Voldemort would have killed Malfoy with that Avada Kedavra, except, well, he was already dead."
The Minister's face changed from irritated to oily and placating, but the grip on Ron's arm got a lot more painful.
"Listen to me, Mr. Weasley. The Wizengamot itself chose to give these honors to those who were deemed worthy of them. Are you saying that the son of a Death Eater, of Voldemort's right-hand man-"
"Look, Draco isn't his father-"
"-that the Malfoys should be honored by the very Ministry they tried to destroy?"
The weight of hundreds of eyes pressing down on him and the flutter of photographers going mad a few feet away were making him a little crazy. He didn't dare look at his family - they must be so let down at the fuss he was making.
Then his eye caught the object of all the fuss. Malfoy was staring straight at him, not moving, and even though Ron felt sick at the thought, he knew what he had to do next.
"Yeah," he said. "That is what I'm saying. If what I did was worth an Order of Merlin, then what he did was, too. We were a team out there. Don't you see?"
If the Minister gripped any harder, Ron would be needing Skele-grow. "I'm afraid you are the one who doesn't see, Mr. Weasley, even though it's all too clear to me and to our audience. Now please sit down."
Ron finally wrenched his arm from that pincer grip, all his embarrassment turned to pure anger. "All right. Just one thing, though." He was fumbling at his lapel now, feeling the pin drive awkwardly into his thumb and relishing the adrenalin rush from the pain, but shit. Shit. This was not meant to be happening, he wasn't supposed to be causing a huge scene like this, but he saw only one way out.
"All I want to say is that if Malfoy doesn't deserve this, then maybe I don't either. Here." The stupid bastard was gaping at him now and making no move to take the medal that Ron was shoving at him, so Ron grabbed his wrist and dropped it in his hand, giving him a rough squeeze in payment for his now-aching elbow. He turned and walked off the stage, head held high while the rest of him shook with rage, desperately hoping he wouldn't trip and fall flat on his face and ruin his dramatic - and very Malfoy-worthy - exit.
~.~.~
He and Malfoy never said a word to each other about that day, thank God. They weren't girls, which was what they'd be if either one of them made a big fuss over it. Anyway, his family made a big enough fuss for both of them. And they weren't as disappointed as he thought they'd be. In fact, they were actually pleased.
George gave him grief, though, for getting blood all over his dress robes from where he stuck himself with the pin. So when Ron was asked a few months later to be best man for Hermione's wedding, he finally broke down and bought himself his own robes.
"Didn't I say you should have cosied up to Potter a lot more during the war?" Malfoy grumbled. "Then your own brother wouldn't have been able to steal your girlfriend away from you."
"That's not what happened, you tosser. It's just that people usually don't end up marrying their childhood sweethearts."
"What are you talking about? My parents did. So did yours! And Potter's, and Longbottom's, and-
"Yeah, all right, well then maybe it's just me. But look, Hermione and Charlie are just better suited than she and I were."
"Why would you say that?"
But Ron would never dream of telling him - there'd be no end to Malfoy's mockery after that.
His dress robes got a lot of use during the next year, called into service for round after round of weddings. For weeks afterward, Malfoy would goad him about his abysmal lack of dates, and Ron would laugh it off. Even though Ron was always careful not to be caught ogling the wrong person, he worried that one of these days Malfoy would cotton on to the real reason he was still so appallingly single. Anyway, he was busy enough with his job, inventing tricks for the twins' joke shop. The job was fun and just dangerous enough to keep him on his toes. So he didn't need a hectic social life for excitement, he kept telling Malfoy, but he didn't pretend to believe his own advice.
But until McGonagall finally came up with a way to get rid of Malfoy's rope, Ron was going to have to lead a very monkish life.
~.~.~
Looking back, Ron could identify each irritation, small or large, that had conspired to make everything unravel so spectacularly that bleak October day.
First, he'd been having a running argument with his alarm clock all week, which had retaliated against him for a bit of manhandling the morning before that, okay, might have been a tad forceful, but that didn't mean the daft thing had to let him oversleep nearly an hour.
"Why didn't you wake me up?" he growled at Malfoy, which had set him off too.
"I told you, I can only wake up after you do. Don't blame me because you can't get along with your own bloody clock."
Because Ron's flat wasn't hooked up to the Floo yet, he'd had to use the public one a couple of streets away. Rain was coming down in stair rods, so he'd cast an Impervius - or tried to, anyway. Maybe he mumbled the 'Im', because his clothes immediately soaked up every last drop of rain within half a mile. By the time he made it to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, it felt like he'd brought half the Thames in with him.
And that twat Malfoy wouldn't stop laughing about it for half an hour, either.
Then Neville accidentally stood him up for lunch, and by the time Ron finally worked that out, it was too late to grab anything outside the shop. So he settled for a half of a cold fish sandwich left in the shop's manky refrigerator, which ticked Fred off, since that was meant to be his lunch. Then of course George had to get in on it too and whinge about Ron nicking his lunch the week before. So by the time Ron got home, his mood was dark and his thoughts blacker. And none of it had been his fault.
The firewhisky, though. That was probably his fault.
"Are you just going to drink dinner tonight?" Malfoy snarked at him, but Ron just slouched deeper into his favorite chair.
"What do you care? Not like you have to worry about cooking. Or work. Or lunch. Or rain. Or waking up."
"I don't. I was just going to mention you're spilling that stuff all down your shirt front. But I suppose you'll just tell me I don't have to worry about laundry, either."
"No. Even if you have been wearing the same clothes for the past two years." That never failed to set Malfoy off, the ponce. Right then, Ron needed to make Malfoy as miserable as he himself was, and sartorial insults seemed as good a way as any.
But Malfoy didn't rise to the bait. Instead, he drifted towards the sofa where he hovered just above its floral-print arm and fixed Ron with an unsettling stare.
"What?" Ron snapped.
"I've never seen you get pissed all on your own. I'm just settling in for the show."
"What are you, twelve?"
"Seventeen. As you are quite aware."
Seventeen. The age Draco was killed. Ron hated to be reminded that the stupid git would never age another day, but Ron would. He'd get rounder and slower and greyer. Older. And unless Professor McGonagall came up with a way to unhook them - and lately she wasn't even bothering to answer his weekly pleading owls - Malfoy would always be a permanent and unwelcome reminder of his lost youth. And wasn't that just so cheerful to contemplate right now on top of everything else. He took another large swallow of firewhisky and enjoyed the burn all the way down.
"I hope you've checked your supply of hangover potion," Malfoy said. "You'll need it at the rate you're going."
"Shut up, you gobshite," he answered with unexpected force. He found himself on his feet, so he just kept moving. Grabbing his coat from the back of the chair where he'd tossed it - still damp - he flung it over his shoulders and announced, "I'm going out."
Which would have been far more effective an exit line if he'd been able to disappear without Malfoy tagging along behind him.
"Where are we going?"
"I told you. Out."
"Out. Fine. Well, I hope I'm dressed for the occasion."
Which was sort of funny, really, but Ron wasn't going to let him know that. He was too busy trying to work out where he was headed besides out. He'd look stupid if he backpedaled now; he had to make it look like a canny plan of some sort. Besides, why shouldn't he go out when he had a strop on? It was what guys did; it was normal. Ron very much wanted to be normal for just one night.
Except usually the person they were in a strop over had the good sense to stay behind.
He found himself pacing through the dark, wet streets ignoring both Malfoy's half-hearted questions and the growing awareness of where he was headed. And once he'd worked that out, he knew that normal wasn't - and hadn't ever been - what he was truly looking for tonight. Luckily, he'd had too much to drink to listen to that inner voice warning him that maybe this was one more idiotic decision in a day chock full of them.
The inner voice became Malfoy's.
"Oh my god, Weasley! Well, I can't say I'm overly surprised, looking back on all those disasters you called dates."
"Shut up."
"You've made your point. You could have just told me you were a poof, though. You didn't need to prove it by bringing me out to a gay bar."
Ron whirled on him. "What part of shut up don't you get? In the first place, I didn't bring you - you just dragged yourself along. And anyway, you're always griping that I have no social life. So here I am, and now you're complaining about that. Make up your mind!"
He didn't bother to wait for Malfoy's answer. He needed another drink, fast.
"Firewhisky," he said to the bartender. Best not to switch drinks in the middle of a binge. Seamus had taught him that, even though at the time his advice had come about twelve hours too late.
"How did you even know about this place?" Malfoy was saying. "You've been planning this!"
"And what if I was? Look, Malfoy, unlike some people, I'm not getting any younger. Maybe I'd like to spend an evening chatting up someone other than you, have you ever thought of that?"
"And what am I supposed to do while you make calf eyes at this someone, care to enlighten me?"
And that was the crux of the problem. Ron tried a more conciliatory pitch. "I was thinking you could maybe … if you sat at another table, with your back to me… Listen, if any ghosts happen to wander in, then you'd be all set, right?"
Malfoy only gave him that dead stare he was so good at. "Right."
"C'mon, please. It's just tonight. If you do this, I'll take you to the Billiwigs concert next week-" even though they're the worst band in the history of music, he added silently, "-like you've been angling for."
"I wasn't angling…" Malfoy protested, but to Ron's joy he was moving to the table a good ten feet from where Ron had set down his drink. "Is this far enough?"
"Yeah, fine." Coming here was starting to look like a excellent idea after all. But then Malfoy started in on the conversation again, and his voice was never quiet under the best of circumstances.
"Does Potter know you like boys? I bet not. I can imagine that Granger worked it out herself, now that I think about it. No wonder she married your brother-at least she had a chance at a normal married life with him. Now I know why Longbottom came over so odd that time - he was obviously trying to get into your trousers-"
"Neville's with Katie Bell, you stupid sod. A girl, last time I checked."
"That was afterwards. You probably broke his heart. Broke his gay, too! What a-"
"Malfoy! It doesn't do me a bit of good if you sit way over there and talk my ear off across the room, you know."
"Oh." Malfoy didn't apologize, but he did shut up, which was all Ron could really expect. Just in time, too, because the door opened and a crowd of men swarmed in and soon commandeered every empty seat in the place.
"Mind if I sit here?" a boisterous voice asked him. The voice belonged to a fairly fit man, too, although Ron didn't want to analyze exactly how much of that high opinion was whiskey-driven.
"Sure. There seems to be quite a lot of you. What's the occasion?" Ron said.
"Well, Nigel-he's the one with the goat horns there at the bar-and Geoffrey-that blond with the orange and purple robes-yeah, they're tying the knot, more or less. And we're the mates to make sure they go through with it, after all the high drama they've dragged us all through to get here. Not that I'd tell tales out of school." He thrust his hand at Ron and gave him an enthusiastic shake. "Name's Peter. Peter Stonecastle. You look familiar somehow. You're not a Weasley, are you?"
Ron was too used to that line to let it bother him. "Yeah. I'm Ron."
"I went to Hogwarts with your brother Percy. Odd sort of chap. Oh, sorry."
"No, that's all right. I happen to think so too."
"Clearly you're not the female Weasley. So are you the cursebreaker Weasley or the dragonboy Weasley or one of the twin Weasleys?"
"No, I'm the…." He stopped himself before he said anything he'd regret. "None of the above."
"Wait… aren't you the Weasley who stabbed the Minister of Magic with a pin at that Order of Merlin ceremony after the war?"
"I didn't stab him with a pin! I stabbed myself with a pin." Which, now that it was out of his mouth, wasn't exactly the suave comeback Ron had been aiming for. "Accidentally, I mean."
"Right, right." Peter's brow was knitted in concentration. "Wasn't there something about a ghost that hung round you all the time? Yeah. I remember now. You're the haunted Weasley!"
Ron's face fell. "Actually, I was hoping you'd say the handsome Weasley or the clever Weasley or-" he said, but Peter was too busy remembering the rest of it. Unfortunately.
"Let me think-it was the ghost of one of those bigwig Death Eaters-Malfoy, wasn't it? Shite, that must have been horrible, yeah? So you finally got rid of the dead wanker?"
"Er. Not exactly," Ron muttered.
"Boo!" Malfoy said brightly, right in Peter's left ear. Peter let out a girlish shriek and jumped three feet into the air. "Speak of the devil, and he will … appear. Or so they tell me."
Peter was out of his chair by then and looked as though he'd like to be out of the room entirely if the crowd would let him bolt.
"What are you two playing at?" he said, pressing away from Malfoy as far as he could. "Look, I'm not into threesomes… And necrophilia's really not my thing…"
"What?" Ron's voice nearly matched Peter's earlier shriek. "I wasn't- We don't- It's not what you think-"
But Peter had seen an opening in the crowd and was gone.
In sheer frustration, Ron turned on Malfoy. "You utter dickhead! What did you go and do that for! We were just getting to know each other and-"
"I didn't want to see you waste your time, Weasley. Trust me, he definitely wasn't your type."
"How would you know?" Ron didn't even know his type himself; there was no way Malfoy could have worked it out.
"Don't you remember him from school, you git? He was such a boring, conceited, whiny idiot-"
"Takes one to know one, then."
Malfoy gave a haughty sniff. "Well, I'm so sorry for trying to do you a favor. It won't happen again. Go on, sit back down. I'll just wander back to my corner and play the red-headed stepchild. No pun intended."
"Don't bother. It's not as though you haven't drawn the attention of every single bloke here with your little performance."
It was true. Crowded as it was, there was now an empty no-man's-land around the two of them, and nearly every eye was glancing or openly gaping in their direction.
"Well, what's their problem? They all look as if they've seen a ghost," Malfoy drawled loudly. Eyes shifted nervously away, but not for long.
"Just shut up, Malfoy. Could you do that? For once in your life-"
"Ha ha. I'm just saying, Weasley, that you can do better than Peter fucking Stonecastle, that's all. Wait, where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
"Again?"
"Funny enough, I'm not exactly in the mood to stick around. And you can just bloody well forget about the Billiwigs, too, you crupfuck." He was just drunk enough not to care that he was rudely shoving his way through the crowd. Cries of alarm trailed behind him from the blokes who weren't quick enough to get out of Malfoy's way as he shoved his way through, too. Although in his case, it was far more literal.
~.~.~
If Ron closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could almost pretend the last two hours had never happened. He'd been sitting right here on his sofa drinking firewhisky the whole evening. He'd never gone out to that bar, he never was accused of sick perversions by an old school chum of Percy's, and he positively had not come out to Malfoy.
Who was being oddly silent about the whole thing, come to think of it. Maybe he was working on his own bout of pretending.
He opened one eye and found Malfoy staring at him again.
"Are you going to ignore me for the rest of your miserable and woefully single life, Weasley? Look, I said I was sorry."
"No, you never did. You just sent that bloke running for the door and then made up some shite about how he wasn't my type."
"Well, it's true. I've been hanging around you long enough, don't you think I've got some clue about who you'd like?"
Ron fingered his empty glass, contemplated another refill, then thought better of it. He was already going to be paying the price tomorrow, and for what? Another night at home with only Malfoy for company. "Yeah, well maybe I wasn't looking for a life partner. At this point I'd settle for anyone less boring than my own right hand. But thanks to you it looks like I have a hot date tonight with my left hand instead."
"God, Weasley, do you have to be so descriptive? Look, I'm sorry."
Ron grunted noncommittally. The problem was, before their disastrous trip to the bar, he'd been drunk and frustrated. Now he was drunk, frustrated, and horny as hell. Unfortunately, he muttered that last part out loud.
Malfoy was eyeing him thoughtfully. "So let me get this straight. All you're really looking for is something less boring?"
"It's a start-"
"Then maybe there's something I can do for you after all."
The way he said that made Ron nervous, so he hauled himself up on both elbows to see what Malfoy had in mind. And then his jaw dropped open in complete shock.
Malfoy was slowly undressing. By the time Ron managed to clear some of the fog out of his brain, Malfoy had already shed his robes and was slowly working loose his tie.
"Are you daft? What are you- We can't-"
"Keep your hair on. I know as well as you what we can and can't do. But I can do this much, and you can sit back and enjoy it. Or not."
"But-"
"Remember when you asked me if I could wank? You're about to learn the answer."
Not only was Malfoy undressing, he was making rather a show of it. Ron kept telling himself he'd have to be made of ice not to respond to something like this (as Malfoy's shirt was teased open to expose his lightly muscled chest), and that there was nothing more to it than a natural reaction to naked skin and the promise of more (as shoes and socks joined the discarded shirt, and Malfoy's slender ankles and long, suckable toes were freed), and that anyone in his position would get hard just watching, too-anyone gay, that is (as Malfoy's trousers slipped leisurely down those long, long legs and his pants ever-so-slowly followed)-and that even if it was Malfoy, and a ghostly Malfoy at that, he was still awfully fit.
And then Malfoy turned around to face him and he was entirely naked. Ron sobered up in a hurry.
"Guh…" was all he managed to get out.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Malfoy replied lightly. He was touching himself now, languid, sensuous strokes all over his skin, and Ron watched in shock and growing desire. Even though Ron knew it was stupid and impossible and wrongwrongwrong, he had never wanted anyone so much right then as he did Malfoy. Which meant that either his world was about to explode or his cock was, and it was a bizarre race to discover which would happen first.
"Are you going to make me do this all by myself?" Malfoy asked, with just a touch of his usual irritation.
"You- I-"
"Yes, Weasley, you and I. You've got that much worked out. Now unzip yourself. Go ahead, I know you want to."
Ron, always the dutiful youngest son, did as he was told.
"Now take your cock out, just like that, yeah …."
He didn't know which was more arousing: listening to Malfoy's increasingly breathy voice telling him what dirty, exciting thing to do next or watching Malfoy's hand sliding over his hard dick.
"C'mon, Weasley, yeah, just like that...spread your legs, that's it…"
Malfoy moved closer - not that Ron minded, since it seemed like he'd left his inhibitions somewhere back in the bar. If he squinted he could imagine he was watching one of those Muggle pornos Seamus owned, although he was sure Seamus always watched the girls and not the blokes the way he did. But this was far better; it was happening right here in front of him, and from what he was hearing, Malfoy was somehow getting off on watching Ron, too. That thought, more than anything, finally triggered his orgasm, and he came hard and hot all over his hand, his stomach, and Malfoy.
When Malfoy soon did the same, Ron was surprised to learn that ghostly come was not bone-jarringly frigid but only pleasantly cool.
~.~.~
Ron tried going out to bars a few more times after that before abandoning the whole idea as unworkable. The blokes he met there were either repulsed by Malfoy or else, worse, they weren't, and they let Ron know it in the most disgusting terms. As some kind of weird apology, Malfoy would repeat his exhibitionistic display later at home, so that those nights weren't a complete waste. Ron eventually decided to skip the disagreeable bar scene altogether and get right to their voyeuristic wanking.
All in all, between working at the joke shop in the daytime and getting his rocks off with Malfoy at night, it wasn't such a bad life. He never told Malfoy he'd stopped owling Professor McGonagall. Not like he could have any real secrets from the git, living in each other's pockets the way they did. It was just one more thing they didn't talk about because, after all, they were still guys, no matter what they got up to with each other in secret.
~.~.~
"Weasley. Weasley!! "
Malfoy sounded panicky, and Ron slowly opened his eyes.
His workshop was a total disaster. Clouds of ash and acrid smoke were still billowing around the corners of the room, and broken glass and shards of wood and pewter lay inches from his nose. The smoke was making it hard to see clearly, though, and Ron blinked a few times. It didn't seem to help; everything still looked blurred and fuzzy.
"Weasley!"
"Yeah, all right, give me a sec. I just got the wind knocked out of me, that's all. What happened?"
"I'm guessing that last counter-clockwise stir should have been clockwise," Malfoy said. He wasn't gloating over being right about it, though, which was odd.
Ron cautiously sat up. The devastation of his workshop hadn't done much damage to him - he felt pretty good, considering. No blood, no broken bones. Hell, he didn't even see any scratches anywhere.
"Looks like I got lucky this time," he said. "But Fred and George aren't going to be happy about this mess. Bloody hell, it looks like every bottle in the room got shattered. And that new order of runespoor eggs is ruined, shit shit shit! Reckon I'll have to blame it on you."
He glanced at Malfoy to see how he'd take that, but he didn't expect the full-blown look of horror on his face.
"I was joking, Malfoy, get a grip." Then he looked at him more closely and nearly screamed.
Malfoy was no longer a ghost. He was solid, corporeal, breathing-gasping, actually- and very much alive.
"Wow! Wait'll I tell everyone I brought you back from the dead, Malfoy! I've got to say, that's one amazing spell!"
"No. You didn't," Malfoy answered slowly, and something in his tone made Ron very uneasy. "And it wasn't. Look."
That's when Ron saw the body amid the wreckage. His body.
"Oh, fuck. You're not alive, I'm-" He couldn't say it.
"Yeah. Looks that way."
The door burst open and the twins spilled in, coughing on the smoke and tossing aside the debris. It was the oddest experience of Ron's life-death-to watch them tearfully discover his body and bear it away. The whole time Ron fruitlessly tried to catch their attention, but nothing he did made them aware that he was still here.
"I don't get it," he told Malfoy after the door had closed behind them. "They didn't even see me, or you either. Everyone could see you before. What's going on?"
"I don't know, Weasley. It's not like I'm exactly savvy on how this whole ghost thing works. Mostly, I fake it. Now you know."
Everything was so unexpected and strange that Ron needed a few minutes to take stock of what was going through his head. Being dead wasn't anything like he expected. He wasn't sad at losing his body, and not even the thought of how torn up his family would be bothered him much. They'd get over it, he knew. So that part was all right. Malfoy's own description of being a ghost turned out to be right on the Sickle - he felt like he was still alive but that he was in a strange and ghostly world. But that twinge in his ankle from where he injured it in the war was gone, and he felt somehow lighter and warmer.
And strangely, Malfoy was still here. Solid, too, or near enough. As Malfoy watched, Ron tentatively reached out and touched his arm, and for the first time his hand didn't pass right through him. He felt skin, warm and soft, and muscle and the hard outline of bone. Soon, just touching wasn't enough and became something else.
"That feels nice," Malfoy said, and yeah, it did. It definitely did.
Ron couldn't help it. He had to do the one thing they hadn't ever been able to do before, the one thing that as guys they didn't talk about at all. He leaned forward to kiss Malfoy, but Malfoy was already there first.
The prat was good at it, too, much better than Lavender or Hermione, but Ron was notnotnot going to ask where he'd learned his technique. He was still trying to work out why it felt so bloody good when they were both dead, even as his hands were unfastening Malfoy's robes and dipping into his trousers.
"Weasley, this is hardly the place," Malfoy mouthed into Ron's neck.
"Mmm. Where to, then?"
When Malfoy didn't answer, Ron pulled away to look at him. "What's wrong?"
"The rope," Malfoy said quietly. "It's gone."
Even though Ron knew he no longer had a real heart, it still felt like it sank at Malfoy's words.
"Oh." He wanted to say more, but didn't know where to start. Still, the look on Malfoy's face wasn't the relief that Ron expected to see.
"I suppose that means you and I are free to go our separate ways," Malfoy said, and if Ron knew more about these things, he'd say that Malfoy looked unhappy. Not that they were ever going to talk about it-they weren't girls after all-but that didn't mean that Ron was going to stand by and do nothing.
"There's just one big problem, Malfoy," he said. "Because now I have a rope attaching me to you. See?" He and Malfoy stared down at the empty space between them, silent, then Malfoy grinned.
"Figures," he said. "Just when I was well shot of you, too. Believe me, Weasley, payback's going to be a bitch. I think you owe me and it starts now."
"Wanker," Ron said.
"Oh, no. Not any more," Malfoy shot back, right before he melted through the workshop door.
For sanity's sake, Ron determined that his rope would have to be longer than Malfoy's had been, so he gave him an imaginary forty feet before giving chase.
the end