Chapter Text
Kingsley Shacklebolt steps aside to reveal Pansy fucking Parkinson.
“Absolutely not!” Fred slams his hand down onto the table.
Ron is thankful someone else said it first. His leg aches too much for him to cause a scene and he presses his fingers deep into the still-healing muscle. Just the sight of her makes the pain worse.
Hestia scrapes her chair backward as she stands up. “This isn’t—this isn’t a bloody home for waywards, Kings.”
The Order members present titter around the table. They’re holed up somewhere in Edgware, behind a magically sealed door in the basement of some rail station. The ground shakes whenever a train passes aboveground and Ron’s grit teeth chatter. He sees Hermione in the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t dare turn to face her.
She’s sitting next to Malfoy, whose anemic, ferret fingers drum Ron’s death march into Hermione’s knee. The sight is revolting and even after three years of the two of them openly dating, he can barely stomach it.
The rest of the Order seems to have welcomed Malfoy with open arms at the behest of Hermione, but Ron still had his doubts.
Ron only trusted Malfoy as far as he could throw him.
This metric was useful because Ron could, in fact, throw Malfoy a good few feet and those feet of trust were solely underlined by his unfortunate and unrequited love of Hermione and the deep admiration he held for her.
“May I say—” Kingsley starts again, cutting through Ron’s reverie.
“She tried to get Harry killed!” Padma interrupts Kingsley.
Pansy doesn’t react at all. Her face is stone, save for the flicker, the tiny twitch in her eyebrow at Padma’s words. She stands next to Kingsley, arms crossed over her chest, in pair of muggle jeans and a black, short sleeved t-shirt. Ron fixates on her fingertips—they’re the only parts of her that move. She digs them into her upper arm, sharp emerald nails pressed into pale skin.
She’s nervous.
No one comes to her defence. Not even the snakes amongst their ranks. Only Malfoy turns his head to face Pansy, his ever-present sneer softening at the corners, but even his mouth stays closed.
Kingsley sighs. “People chang—”
“We need to find the last two horcruxes, we don’t have the time to grant clemency to every child that walks through these doors,” Andromeda says, once again cutting Kingsley off.
Dean snorts in the corner.
Hermione starts and Ron fights the urge to look at her dumb face. “Kingsley, please understand. She’s given us every reason to never trust her.”
“Miss Granger, you of all people should know that allegiances can change in unexpected ways,” Kingsley says, peering pointedly over the rims of his glasses.
Hermione falls back in her seat. Ron doesn’t see Malfoy’s hand reach for hers and he doesn’t taste bile because he doesn’t look at Hermione.
The room shuts up for exactly one moment and Kingsley seizes the silence.
“Miss Parkinson brought us the locket. Harry is verifying its authenticity now.”
It’s a declaration that immediately stuns the room. Ginny’s mouth snaps open three centimetres and it’s the same face that George makes, along with Bill and Charlie and Fred and also Percy. Ron suspects that he, too, is a Weasley mirror.
Hermione breaks the silence first. “The locket? It’s meant to be in Bulgaria! Viktor is retrieving it n—”
“Your dolt of an ex-boyfriend couldn’t find the locket if it was shaped like a clit and it lived in your knickers, Granger,” Pansy drums her fingers against her arm.
Hermione’s face blooms red and Malfoy unsuccessfully fights a bark of laughter. Ron bites down on his lip so hard he thinks he tastes blood.
It was funny.
“I stole the locket from Dolohov in Poland. It never made it to Bulgaria,” Pansy continues. “Dolohov was executed last week and I faked my death yesterday. To the Dark Lord, the locket is simply missing.”
It’s an impressive story, Ron thinks. To steal something from one of Voldemort’s most trusted generals and walk away unscathed. She has balls.
“So we—have the locket?” Hestia’s voice barely hides the hope.
“Have you not been listening?” Pansy scowls.
The door slides open before anyone else can say more. Harry walks in with Remus, his expression sombre. Ron reaches for his wand and his adrenaline spikes.
In his hands, Harry holds a golden locket that looks exactly like the one they once lost in the Forest of Dean. He passes it to Pansy, arm fully outstretched as if the locket would attack him if he were to spend even another millisecond near it.
The room turns to stare at him. The future of what is an ever growing everything depends on the locket’s legitimacy and everyone is silent in a held breath.
“Good work, Parkinson,” he says.
Hermione stands up, her chair falling backwards with a clatter. “Harry! You can’t just hand it over to her! We need to—”
“I made a promise, ‘Mione.” Harry puts his arms up.
“What—”
“The locket is mine until I get what I want,” Pansy says. “Potter and Shacklebolt have agreed to my terms.”
Half the room sends glares to Harry that would have murdered him if looks could kill. He would have been in pieces on the concrete floor, butchered beyond recognition.
The other half of the room targets Kingsley.
“Her demands,” Kingsley starts, amplifying his voice to cut through the din of angry chatter, “are reasonable. She brought us a horcrux.”
He doesn’t stop, continuing on before someone—Hermione—could disagree.
“Miss Parkinson is not a threat at this time. In fact, she does not have a wand.”
Pansy’s expression darkens.
“She has asked to remain in possession of the locket until she has acquired a wand. She has also requested a stay from Azkaban, should we win this war.”
Wands were a luxury now. After Ollivander’s death, the stocks depleted quickly. The Death Eaters took control of Diagon Alley in weeks and now a new wand could only be a scavenged one. Even within their lines, people protected their wands fiercely. There were no replacements.
Ron tucks his own deeper into the holster.
Harry stands beside Kingsley now. He looks dishevelled and the rims of his glasses fade into his dark circles. And when he starts to speak, everyone looks at him with earned respect. “We will not be able to destroy the locket until we find the last horcrux. The rest of the Order will be engaging in ground combat and horcrux search missions, but someone will be assigned to protecting the locket. By proxy, they will also be monitoring Parkinson.”
Ron isn’t able to stifle his snort. The locket had been a nightmare for him in the past and having to deal with Pansy on top of that would be a living hell.
Harry shoots him a glare.
“Actually, Ron,” Harry says, just as Ron’s heart starts to sink, “we were hoping you’d take this.”
The room turns to look at him. Fred and George both share the same smirk, but near everyone else wears pitiful sympathy.
“Why me?!” He can’t hide his irritation. He doesn’t bother to try.
“You have experience with the locket—and at least Pansy is familiar with you.” Harry shrugs as if it’s a done deal. “You’ll be setting off tonight.”
“We’re dissolving this safe house tonight. If Miss Parkinson was able to find it, then it means our location has been compromised,” Kingsley slides in before Ron can interject again. “I’ll arrange the portkeys to our next location and have them delivered to you shortly. Dismissed.”
Hestia pats Ron on the shoulder on her way out. Padma offers a small smile and Parvati follows suit. His feet stay cemented until the room all but empties out, save for Kingsley, Pansy, and Harry.
“So—what, I’m her keeper now? I’ll just stay at the next house and watch her twiddle her thumbs and insult my hair?” He plants both hands onto the table in frustration.
“I’ll insult your clothes, too,” Pansy deadpans.
Harry grimaces. “Actually… you won’t be at the house. It’s—unsafe.”
“You’ll be travelling with the locket. A moving target is harder to pin down, should the Death Eaters realise who possesses it.” Kingsley, again, continues on because Kingsley has chosen today to ruin his life and why should Kingsley take anything he says into consideration anyway.
“I’m not—”
“We don’t have a choice, Ron. Everyone else is—well, look at it this way, you’ll be able to heal faster,” Harry says.
Ron flinches. He’d hurt his leg during the last encounter with the Death Eaters. His shield had faltered when Macnair tried to crucio Hermione and his left femur had taken the brunt of the wrong end of another dark curse. Padma had healed it as best she could, but the wound had yet to fully close. She’d estimated it would take another month or two before he regained full function of his muscles—but for now, he limps along.
He looks down at his leg and then back up at Harry. He knows Harry well enough to read the anxiety set between his brows and the desperation in his pursed lips.
He would do a lot for Harry Potter.
“I’m not wearing that fucking locket,” he says, falling back into his seat in resignation.
“Don’t worry, Weasel. I don’t trust you and your grubby hands.” Pansy snaps the locket back around her neck.
The safehouse in Edgware is erased that night.
*
It’s just camping, he tells himself. He struggles to lie to himself. He hated camping when he did it with Harry and Hermione and he’s bound to hate it now. In some respects, it feels like he’s been exiled, sent to live out the last of his days as a broken man. The albatross around his neck tightens with every glare Pansy sends his way.
She isn’t a conversationalist, Ron quickly realises. She helps him set up camp when they reach their destination, but she barely says a word to him. He levitates their tent–their new home–over to the edge of the clearing. The expanding charms don’t take long and the tent settles, anchoring itself into the ground.
“I’m not sleeping in there,” she says, peering her head inside.
Ron shoves past her and into the tent, chest knocking into her shoulder. “Sleep outside, then.”
“Some gentleman you are,” she bites back, rubbing her shoulder with those same blasted emerald nails.
He does not deign her with a response as she is an idiot without a wand who would come crawling into the tent as soon as the sun set. Instead, he concentrates on his wandwork. His heating charms were always a bit weak and Hermione isn’t here to correct his movements or his incantations.
“No wonder you’re a bloody virgin, Weasley!”
Her voice is the screechiest moving stairwell at Hogwarts. Her voice is Crookshanks puking into his shoes on Sunday morning. Her voice is emerald fucking nails on a slate chalkboard.
In any case, he isn’t a virgin. Not that she needed to know that. He didn’t need to defend his manhood because Lavender Brown licked him from taint to tip every night in the fall of sixth year before lowering herself onto his hardened cock. Because Parvati Patil wanted a turn two years later and fucked him in the barracks while everyone else slept. Because Gabrielle Delacour climbed into his lap on her 19th birthday and—
He isn’t a fucking virgin.
He grouses in silence and finishes warding the tent before stepping out and doing the same to their tiny glade. He doesn’t retreat immediately to the tent once he’s done, instead choosing to linger by the fire Pansy has started to build.
She’d already cleared a small area and circled it in flat stones. Her pile of kindling grew first, before she layered it in twigs, then sticks, before finally balancing two large logs against each other. It’s almost the exact technique Hermione had tried to teach him back when they’d been on the run at seventeen. In case of emergencies, she’d said.
If only she’d known.
When Pansy motions for him to light the base of the fire, he isn’t sure if he’s more surprised at the success or the fact that Pansy built it. It grows quickly and steadily and he warms his hands by the flames, then presses the warmth into his leg. She crosses her legs and sits on the ground.
It couldn’t hurt to join her, so he does.
Even without a wand, she keeps the fire going. He doesn’t know how long they sit there in silence, but it is long enough that the sun sets and the moon floats high into the night sky. He passes her a sandwich at some point and they share a meal without exchanging a word. She reads for a bit, but for her, unlike others in his life, it is a solo activity. She holds the book—How to Win Friends and Influence People—in one hand and does not gasp in shock or wheeze in laughter. He plays chess on the small handheld muggle device Harry had gifted him last year and loses only once in the sixteen games he plays.
He is shocked to find that it is a comfortable quiet. He did not know those existed anymore.
They shed their jackets when the fire grows thicker. Ron removes his sweater, too. A Molly Weasley Christmas Special, this one a maroon knit with dancing snitches as elbow pads. Pansy’s leather jacket is folded into a square next to her, and she stretches her arms above her head. The locket hangs low around her neck over a white shirt and in the crevice between her breasts.
The flames dance in the jewels, glinting every time she adds more wood to the pit.
“Stop staring at my tits,” she says, finally breaking their quiet.
Her voice is raspy after the hours of disuse. It tickles something inside Ron, but he isn’t sure if that tickle finds its way to his cock or his brain.
“I wasn’t staring—” he splutters.
“And why not?” she interrupts, “I’ve got great tits.”
Ron rolls his eyes. He shoves the chess device back into his pocket and stands up with his jacket in hand. “I’m going to bed.”
“Aw, are you into men?” She taunts at his turned back. “There’s no judgement here, you know. It’d make you more interesting!” Her voice grows in volume the further he gets.
He flips her off without turning around.
He’s pleasantly surprised to realise his warming charms had held and the interior of the tent is just cosy enough to sleep. Pansy has yet to walk inside, so he takes the moment alone to swap his trousers for a pair of plaid pyjamas and his shirt for a Chudley Cannons tank.
Everything smells of the fire, and it’s a comforting scent as he pulls his jumper back over his head. This tent is better than the one Hermione, Harry, and him had travelled with in the past. It’s slightly more modern on the inside, with a functional toilet and shower and these are simplicities for which Ron is grateful as he brushes his teeth and washes his face.
He retreats back into the bedroom, sitting down on his bottom-bunk bed. Last time, he’d slept above Harry, but he can’t climb the ladder now. His leg throbs and he tries to put it aside, but they’d done far too much more than he’d been used to recently all in one day. The pain potions in his rucksack were for emergencies and he fights the urge to sink them all into his mouth.
The pain is tolerable, he tells himself. A mantra that he repeats, over and over as he lets his head fall into his pillow and his eyes drift closed.
But the wind wakes him with a start in what feels only a few minutes later. A gust shakes the tent poles and even the bunk beds rattle. The top bunk is empty, weightless in the wind, vibrating as he sits up.
He punches his pillow in frustration. The clock reads well past 1AM and Pansy is still outside. He can see the flickers of the fire through the canvas tent; they cast her silhouette into fuzzy shadows across the floor. She is still upright, sitting in the same position he left her in and he curses himself with every step he takes.
He pulls the fabric door to the side and sticks his head out.
“Parkinson,” he calls.
She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t move at all.
“Parkinson!” He tries again, louder this time.
Her head cocks to the side, but she still doesn’t face him. He watches her from behind and sees her draw her hands up over her face before she turns.
“What.” Even in the darkness, he can still see her sneer.
“You should come inside,” he says. “You can have the top bunk.”
“I’m not sleeping in there, Weasel.” Her voice is softer than he’d expected.
“So you’d rather sleep outside?” He reaches for his shoes and shoves his feet inside, not bothering with the laces. He would drag her in here himself if he had to.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t fuss with a response. He stomps out of the tent, striding over to her sitting form and holds out a hand.
Pansy looks at it, traces her eyes over his palm before looking up at him. Her wisped eyelashes are matted together and her cheeks glisten in the orange glow.
Oh.
It’s an all too soft erosion, a version of Pansy Parkinson that he is not used to.
His hand closes into a loose fist and it drops to his side.
She swipes her hand across her face again, and Ron shifts his weight from foot to foot, contemplating his next move.
Despite his better judgement, he channels a kindness he didn’t know he still possessed and drops to kneel beside her, one hand pressed into his injured muscles.
“What—can I do?”
She turns to him and blinks.
This is all the response he gets, as she stands to her feet and stomps into their temporary home.
“I need a few minutes,” she calls over her shoulder, closing the door to the tent behind her.
He is still stunned in confusion when she finally lets him back inside.
She’s up in the top bunk by the time he’s reentered the room, turned to face the opposing canvas wall. Ron is simply grateful that he’s able to secure them both into an enclosed space. He doesn’t dwell on their interaction outside because it is far too baffling and he has no interest in decoding Pansy’s moods in the middle of the night.
He engages the last of the wards on his list now that they were both inside and slides back in under his navy covers.
“Goodnight, Parkinson,” he says.
“Shut up, Weasel,” she replies.