FORTY-ONE: the Principle of the Thing
Ron Weasley did not understand Harry Potter.
Well, this was not news. He had been not-understanding Harry Potter off and on since the day he had met him back on the Hogwarts Express. At first he had understood him as a hero, and then as a boy. Now he was trying to understand him as a teenager and it was tougher than the other two put together.
For one thing, Harry was still arguing with Ron. He was also arguing with Hermione, but less so. Harry was angry, Hermione angry and guilty by turns.
It would have been a bit easier to deal with without Harry brooding and sneering about the Common Room, showing increased resemblance to Ron’s hated Potions Professor with every passing day; he also hid from Ron when he wasn’t looming. The same basic principle went for Hermione, who slumped from corner to corner with book after book, each one heavier and duller than the last.
What was most incredible was that they were arguing over Draco Malfoy, of all people. Although, as his father liked to say, it was really the principle of the thing. Ron had started not liking the idea of House Unity at all, but it had sort of grown on him over time, especially as he’d gotten to know Yolande Zabini and Draco Malfoy. His loyalty had shifted, so subtlely that even he had not noticed, from Gryffindor to a very select group of individuals, of varying age, background, and House.
Honestly. Why prate on about House Unity if you didn’t really mean it?
When Hermione took out Fleas on Fleas: the Microorganisms that live on Fungi, and All About Strangely-Shaped Rocks, Ron decided that something had to be done. He stood, brushed invisible lint off of the casual clothes he wore on weekends, and went to visit Draco Malfoy in the Hospital Wing.
Somewhat luckily for Ron, he was saved from awkwardness by the fact that Yolande was already in the room. At the noise he made entering, both she and Draco looked up in an abrupt, startlingly similar motion, white-blond hair flashing in the sunlight streaming in through the windows, grey eyes sparking.
“You two are related,” he said, then immediately felt stupid. It was like there was no barrier between his brain and his tongue, sometimes.
“Yes, Weasley,” Draco sniped. “All pureblooded families are. Although I shouldn’t expect you to know, given how you were raised.” This was delivered with all of the Slytherin’s old vitriol, complete with patented sneer.
“Well then,” Ron said. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.” He hadn’t heard that tone from Draco Malfoy in weeks, and was genuinely startled to hear it, but he wouldn’t say so. Although he expected it was obvious. Hermione was telling him he was an open book all the time.
Yolande stood. “Don’t be rude, Draco, or you’ll have no visitors at all,” she chided coolly. “We are rather closely related, Ronald,” she said with a small smile. “Draco and I are second cousins.”
Ron grinned at her, grateful for a way to ease into the conversation. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before. You two are the only ones in the whole school that have hair that color.”
Her smile widened. “Legend has it there is a Veela somewhere in the Black line,” she teased. “What do you think, Draco?”
Draco’s shoulders were hunched in an attitude of discomfort, his eyes flicking from Ron to Yolande. Ron noticed that he did that a lot, but kept the thought to himself. He’d learned a long time ago from his brothers’ taunts – especially the twins – that most people found it creepy, the details he cottoned on to. He reckoned that the Slytherin either didn’t have much social experience outside posturing and ordering people about, or had been finding himself in situations with increasingly unpredictable outcomes all term.
“I – I suppose it might account for some of our natural charm,” Draco allowed.
“Would you prefer it to be completely due to skill?” she teased gently. “I heard a whole contingent of third-year Slytherin and Hufflepuff girls swooning over you only this morning.”
“Slytherin and Hufflepuff?!” Draco exclaimed before Ron had a chance to.
“Professor Potter seems to be on a mission of peace,” Yolande commented dryly. “The younger years are particularly susceptible.”
“Speaking of Professor Potter,” Draco sneered, “why are you here, Weasley? As it’s obvious that the Wonder-Boy-Who-Lived can’t be bothered to meet me face-to-face... sending his bloody lackey...”
“I am NOT Harry Potter’s sodding lackey!” Ron exclaimed.
He froze. Damn, there went his mouth again, off and running without any consultation from his brain. Under incredulous, blank gazes on the part of the two Slytherins, he backpedaled for all he was worth.
“Look, Malfoy, you may have lackeys, but Harry has friends. And that’s what me and Hermione are. And we argue once in awhile. Which is what we’re doing now. But we’ll make it up. It’s just...” And he slumped down next to Yolande, feeling the power of anger dwindle into uncertainty.
“Then – then why are you here?” the boy finally managed.
Ron glared at him. “Look, Harry and I do function independently.” He wiggled his fingers under Draco’s nose. “Look! Didn’t even need to ask permission.”
Draco’s eyes uncrossed and lifted up to Ron’s, meeting him glare for glare. “I repeat. Why are you here?”
Yolande stood, smoothing her skirt. “So sorry, the testosterone’s positively choking me,” she murmured coolly. “Catch you later, Ron. I’ll visit again, Draco. ‘Night.” She moved to the door.
“Now look what you’ve gone and done!” Draco snapped. “Robbed me of the only company I’ve had in–” His words cut off, his jaw dropped, and pink tinged his cheeks. He moaned and turned so that his face was buried in his pillow.
“Sorry,” Ron muttered awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.
Draco half-turned to face him, viewing him with one, gimlet eye. “You still haven’t said why you’re here.” He squirmed until he was half-supported by the bedframe. “Uhm. I mean, not that you have to go, or anything.”
Ron filed this away for further consideration, along with everything else. Draco could actually be sort-of charming, when he wanted to be. He had heard it was true, but he’d never had it directed at him before.
“I’m checking up on you,” Ron said, matter-of-factly. “You’ve been in here for two days. Bit much for a fall, especially one where you were caught before you hit the ground.”
Draco eyed him in surprise, then finally frowned. “Look, er, Weasley.” And then he stopped, glaring incomprehensibly at some middle distance between them.
“Yes?” Ron prompted.
It became more and more apparent that the blond boy was lost for words. “Look,” he repeated finally, “I don’t know what obligation you feel you have, but it certainly won’t be expunged through awkward chatter or anything so inane. Besides which, due to circumstances rather beyond my control, I shall be a very dangerous person to know in the near future...”
Ron’s eyes trailed to the other boy’s arm. “Well, first of all, if anything, you have an obligation to me.”
Draco started satisfyingly. “What?”
“You owe my little sister a Wizard’s Debt.” Ron’s smile twisted. “Sorry if it offends you to have a connection to such a lowly family,” he sneered. He could sneer when he wanted to, although his friends nearly never saw it.
Draco blinked. “Your sister? A Wizard’s Debt?”
“You mean no one’s told you?”
The blond shook his head slowly.
“You’ve been here all this time and no one told you what happened?!”
“Only that I fell.”
“You’re joking!” Ron swore loudly. “I’d want to know everything if it was me. Don’t you want to know?”
Draco trembled slightly with the force of wanting to know, but didn’t say anything. With surprise, Ron realized that he was not, however, going to ask.
Watching Draco Malfoy was a puzzle slowly coming undone in Ron’s mind, disconnected facts settling into a coherent whole. He told Draco the story without being asked, noting with some surprise that Draco felt no discomfort at the thought of being rescued by Harry, but seemed genuinely upset by the fact that Ginny had then arrived and saved them both.
“That’s why it hurts so much,” Draco said at the end, sitting up and rubbing at one of his shoulders insistently. “It must have jarred when Harry caught me.”
“Is that why you’re still here?”
Draco nodded. “Both shoulders and just under my knees. I must have been falling too fast,” he added absently. “Why hasn’t he come?”
Ron started slightly. “Er... because of me. I – uhm, I said something stupid.”
“What do you have to do with it?” the Slytherin demanded bluntly.
Ron tried to find some sort of way to be kind about it. “Harry’s Slytherin and you’re Slytherin, so I reckon you’ll understand,” he said slowly. “You know he saw the Mark–”
Draco’s hiss of intook breath did not surprise Ron, and he talked blithely over it.
“ – and of course that upset him, yeah? The way I figure it, he would’ve just gotten over it after awhile. He knows you, and he knows you, uhm, probably don’t really like having that on your arm.”
Ron likewise ignored the gobsmacked expression now adorning Draco’s features. It was good, sometimes, to have a reputation for being a bit unwitting.
“But then I sort of interrupted his moping and told him he was being stupid in a very, uhm, loud way, and now it’s made him stubborn,” Ron finished.
“Made him stubborn,” Draco echoed.
Ron nodded firmly. “Yeah.”
“Weasley,” the Slytherin said, leaning forward and narrowing his grey eyes until they seemed nearly black. “D’you see this?” He thrust his arm forward, undoing the bandage. “D’you see?”
Ron stared unwillingly at the Dark Mark, wincing when he saw how red the skin was. It looked – he didn’t know how to describe it other than ‘infectious’ – as though some poison had been inserted just under Draco’s skin. The area around the Mark was inflamed, pink, and looked like it would be hot to the touch.
It was one thing to be told that Draco Malfoy had the Dark Mark; it was another to see it branded into the skin of his forearm.
“Do you know what this means?” Draco continued, his voice rasping. “He marked me himself. Him. He stood there, a million times more powerful than I was and he took me. That’s why Harry hasn’t come to see me. He knows the truth – what I am now. And that’s His.”
Ron wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t know how to convey his mixture of sadness, pity, and exasperation. He never knew what to do with Harry when he got like this, either. So he sat, and waited.
Eventually, Draco deflated, staring at him oddly.
Ron quirked a smile at him. “You talk too much,” he said. “I know all that. “Except the bit where you’re his. You take up too much space to be anybody’s.”
Draco’s breathing hitched and his expression almost looked pained.
“I live in the same room as Harry Potter,” Ron went on. “Drama washes on over me. Besides, you aren’t any Death Eater.”
The Slytherin made the strange mistake of glancing down at his own arm, as if to verify the presence of the Dark Mark. Ron couldn’t help but grin.
Draco’s gaze slid, then, to stare at the thin wool blanket covering his bed, shoulders slumped, eyes unseeing.
“Malfoy?” Ron chanced.
The blond jerked slightly in recognition of his name. “Sorry,” he muttered, scrubbing at his eyes.
Ron tactfully looked out the window until the Slytherin spoke again.
“Why should he come? Why should anyone?” Draco bit off. “With this on my arm I’m worthless to anyone sane.” He glared at Ron. “Why are you here again?”
Ron decided to be straightforward. “I’m sorry you got the Mark. It was probably really tough, and it can’t be easy to have it there now, like a little voice telling everyone you’re untrustworthy. I’m sorry about your Dad. I’m sorry you fell off your broom. I’m sorry your House is full of berks. And I’m sorry that Harry’s not here instead of me.”
“So you’re here because you’re sorry for me.”
“Got it in one,” Ron grinned.
“So long as we’re clear,” Draco snorted.
“Harry told me that you play chess,” Ron said. “Fancy a game?”
Draco blinked at him. “Er...”
“Good,” Ron said. He fumbled around in his pocket and withdrew his own chess set in miniature. “Engorgio,” he said, and they sprung back to their normal size.
“That’s the most beat-up chess set I’ve ever seen,” Draco said unthinkingly.
“Shut up Malfoy! I’m trying to be nice, here.”
Draco pinked, looking strangely humble. “You should know,” he said stumblingly, “that sometimes my mouth and my brain are on the same floo. I don’t mean anything by it. Most of the time.”
Ron shook this off. “Yeah, I know that. White or black?”
“White,” Draco said. “Are you very good?”
“Incredibly,” Ron replied. “You?”
“I’m getting better, I think.”
After that, there was only the hollow sound of wood on wood.
Ron went back every evening after that, and while it was partially because he felt bad for Malfoy, it was also because he’d found the only student at Hogwarts still willing to play him. Draco was sneaky, moving the pieces while Ron wasn’t looking, and distracting the redhead with elaborate stories that often ended with the characters in tight spots.
While the Slytherin was good company sometimes, of a sort, Ron realized that his initial assessment of the blond was right: Draco didn’t have much social experience where he didn’t order people around, and the result was a boy who said what he thought without first considering the consequences. There was at least one flash of temper on both sides every time Ron visited. He couldn’t help it, the same way Draco couldn’t help saying something stupid once in awhile.
By the third day, Ron figured that Harry ought to have cooled down. After all, the Slytherin-cum-Gryffindor was wearing his Unsorted House badge these days, along with Hermione (and Ron, really, though he’d gotten his from Yolande). He and Harry and Hermione were just beginning to be civil to one another again, when he said, “I really think you ought to apologize.”
“All right, Ron, I’m sorry for calling you simple,” Harry said.
Harry had a way of being obtuse on purpose that drove both Ron and Hermione absolutely batty.
“I mean to Draco.”
“For taking the Dark Mark? For being a prat?” Harry wanted to know.
He was still doing that clueless thing. Maybe it wasn’t an act. “I’ve been by to see him–”
Hermione jerked in her chair, upsetting her ink bottle. “You what?! Ronald Weasley!”
“–and he’s actually quite upset you haven’t been by,” Ron continued placidly. “He didn’t want the Mark; you know he didn’t.”
Harry’s green eyes flashed, always a sign he was about to be almost painfully grim. “You haven’t heard him say what I’ve heard him say, Ron. Or seen him do what I’ve seen him do.”
Ron straightened, giving Harry a glare of his own. “I’ve heard him laugh with you,” he said simply. “Tell you he trusts you. That’s enough.”
Harry and Hermione were both staring at him now, so he left the Common Room and went to loiter around the Hospital Wing.
Draco could still laugh, luckily, although afterwards he always looked startled, even mutinous, as though he hadn’t meant to and he certainly hadn’t meant to in front of Ron. Ron didn’t mind; he actually thought it was sort of funny the way Draco attempted to suppress every little thing about himself, from his hair to his allegiances to his wicked sense of humor. It was incredible how he’d never really noticed that before, but then, he hadn’t really been looking. Draco made such a production of himself that it required a certain degree of sheer stubbornness to peer past the shiny, well-cultivated surface. Luckily, Ron had that in spades.
At the start of the week, Ron showed Draco loyalty because no one else would, because of duty, or pity, or ‘the principle of the thing’. But now – now it was because of Draco, who was sarcastic and bitter, clever and narrow-minded, petulant and hilarious, guarded and rubbed raw. Ron knew Draco; and soon that was reason enough to come, and to keep coming.
He only wished Harry would see it the same way.
The End.