Ron Weasley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alwaysreturns) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riddlelog2017-09-05 01:56 pm
alwaysreturns) wrote in riddlelog2017-09-05 01:56 pm
But I went down to the demonstration
The Closet (you can't always get what you want)
[Making the decision to absolutely not register wasn't a hard one to make. After all, it can't be much worse from the way he's been living, can it? He's spent a few weeks on his own since leaving Harry and Hermione - since trying to get back to them, he corrects himself - and they definitely weren't good weeks or weeks he really wants to repeat, but the important point is that he survived them. So. He can survive in 1980 where things are worse and better at the same time, can't he?
Probably. Yes. Merlin.
In any case, Ron survived by bumming his late nights and early mornings in seedy pubs, where he quickly learned they asked fewer questions than the more upright establishments. The muggle ones were safer, but the first time he tried to order had gone miserably ("do you have Capuchins?") and so Ron tried to lean on the wizarding establishments that were less likely to rat him out.
He's really not sure how that brings him to this part of London, but here he is late at night, worried about being caught with the curfew, and unwilling to lean on Bill for a place to sleep. The Closet (the Closet, he wonders, really?) looks as seedy as it gets, and Ron tugs his stolen muggle baseball cap lower over his face as he steps inside. At least, he reckons, he doesn't have to worry about people recognizing his face much in this year.
On the other hand, he's not too keen on how many names and faces he's recognizing on people in power.
A quick look around tells him this was probably the most massive bloody mistake he's ever made in his life to date; there are a lot more people inside than he thought there would be. Ron slides into a booth that's in as dimly lit a corner as he can find, trying to look as unobtrusive as he can and running through the names of purebloods he went to school with who aren't part of the Sacred twenty-bloody-eight.]
Lurking Outside the Ministry (but if you try sometimes)
[Ron knows at least a few of the muggle entrances to the Ministry, and he spends the better part of his day staking them out. It twists his stomach up, and he tells himself it's just because he got splinched after their last escapade inside, but really it's because he's doing this alone and he wishes to Merlin he wasn't.
He knows he could ask Bill, maybe even find Dean to watch his back a bit, but it's not the same. Besides, right now he just feels like he'd be a danger to them. What if they've decided to register? Ron wonders if this is what Harry felt like, the night he arrived at the Burrow. Wanting to leave to protect everyone else.
It's probably hypocritical to stick to his own, but he's been weeks on his own, after all. Silly to change that now, isn't it?
Yes. Very silly.
So it's a stake out. A very long, boring stakeout of at least three different entrances. He tries to make note of faces, match them to names that fit older versions. He doesn't like what he sees much at all, and he likes his prospects of getting into the Ministry and down to the Department of Mysteries even less. If Harry isn't born yet and Riddle is Minister, is there even a prophecy? Bill brought it up, and Ron hasn't been able to let it go.
He also hasn't been able to let go of the fact that his best mate might not ever exist in this world, and that teases all kinds of things that he is just not equipped to think about. Better to be doing something, definitely.
Even if what he's doing is technically doing nothing. Shouldn't he have donuts for something like this?
Ah, there goes his stomach. Where can he get donuts?]
Closed to Hermione (you get what you need)
[Being stuck out of time, in the wrong past, is exhausting. Ron doesn't understand how this administration came to be, doesn't understand how this curfew could have gone on for a decade without something like the Order popping up to fight it. Or if it does exist, it's hiding itself bloody well, and maybe that's just as bad. People are disappearing, and if his conversation with Harry's mum (that is a whole different issue that he is doing very, very badly with) is anything to go by, no one even expects Riddle or his lackeys.
It's enough to make a bloke wonder if hes' gone loopy. Or at least go loopy enough to start putting graffiti on walls. 'Death Eaters Among Us,' maybe, or 'Don't Trust the Ministry.'
He's never wanted to graffiti something so bad in his life.
Maybe it's the frustration that makes him find the deluminator in his pocket. He clicks and unclicks it, treating it like a ye olde fidget spinner that's only moderately more annoying what with its light theft. He doesn't even think about it as he leans against a building in Diagon Alley, staring at the building that ought to be Fred and George's joke shop. He could really use a laugh right about now.
Ron.
He stares blankly for a moment, wondering if he imagined it. Is he just imagining things now? But no - no. That was Hermione's voice, calling him. Calling him. Maybe he is going loopy, because he's suddenly so certain. It couldn't have been more than a whisper, but it was her.
When he pulls the deluminator out, turns away from the main road and clicks it, a little ball of light comes out. The few lights on around him stay lit, but that ball just hovers in front of him, and somehow he's not afraid at all when it floats toward him, through him, right into his heart. He touches his chest, and he just knows.
She's here. And the deluminator will take him to her. Ron closes his eyes and disapparates.]
The Dog House; Closed to Harry, James, Sirius (We decided that we would have a soda)
[After leaving Lily with the address to James Potter and Sirius Black's house - and don't worry, the fact that he will eventually have to think about leaving Harry's mum's shop to go to his dad's and godfather's home is going to lay him up - Ron wastes no time. Last he saw Harry, they fought. Last he saw him, Ron told him so many terrible things, and he hates the bloody locket for making him say it, but he mostly hates himself, for the way a piece of You-Know-who brought that out of him.
He feels shitty, and the only thing to do about it is fix things in the most awkward, teenage boy way. So, par for the course.
When he reaches the address Lily wrote down for him, he stares at the door, looks between it and the paper in his hand. All right, Ronald. Apologizing isn't so hard, is it? (Yes it is. It is so hard.)
Well, if he keeps steeling himself, there was no point in practically breaking Lily's door down, was there? So. He shoves the paper in his pocket and knocks, and somehow resists the urge to knock again after three seconds, and again three seconds after that.]
[Making the decision to absolutely not register wasn't a hard one to make. After all, it can't be much worse from the way he's been living, can it? He's spent a few weeks on his own since leaving Harry and Hermione - since trying to get back to them, he corrects himself - and they definitely weren't good weeks or weeks he really wants to repeat, but the important point is that he survived them. So. He can survive in 1980 where things are worse and better at the same time, can't he?
Probably. Yes. Merlin.
In any case, Ron survived by bumming his late nights and early mornings in seedy pubs, where he quickly learned they asked fewer questions than the more upright establishments. The muggle ones were safer, but the first time he tried to order had gone miserably ("do you have Capuchins?") and so Ron tried to lean on the wizarding establishments that were less likely to rat him out.
He's really not sure how that brings him to this part of London, but here he is late at night, worried about being caught with the curfew, and unwilling to lean on Bill for a place to sleep. The Closet (the Closet, he wonders, really?) looks as seedy as it gets, and Ron tugs his stolen muggle baseball cap lower over his face as he steps inside. At least, he reckons, he doesn't have to worry about people recognizing his face much in this year.
On the other hand, he's not too keen on how many names and faces he's recognizing on people in power.
A quick look around tells him this was probably the most massive bloody mistake he's ever made in his life to date; there are a lot more people inside than he thought there would be. Ron slides into a booth that's in as dimly lit a corner as he can find, trying to look as unobtrusive as he can and running through the names of purebloods he went to school with who aren't part of the Sacred twenty-bloody-eight.]
Lurking Outside the Ministry (but if you try sometimes)
[Ron knows at least a few of the muggle entrances to the Ministry, and he spends the better part of his day staking them out. It twists his stomach up, and he tells himself it's just because he got splinched after their last escapade inside, but really it's because he's doing this alone and he wishes to Merlin he wasn't.
He knows he could ask Bill, maybe even find Dean to watch his back a bit, but it's not the same. Besides, right now he just feels like he'd be a danger to them. What if they've decided to register? Ron wonders if this is what Harry felt like, the night he arrived at the Burrow. Wanting to leave to protect everyone else.
It's probably hypocritical to stick to his own, but he's been weeks on his own, after all. Silly to change that now, isn't it?
Yes. Very silly.
So it's a stake out. A very long, boring stakeout of at least three different entrances. He tries to make note of faces, match them to names that fit older versions. He doesn't like what he sees much at all, and he likes his prospects of getting into the Ministry and down to the Department of Mysteries even less. If Harry isn't born yet and Riddle is Minister, is there even a prophecy? Bill brought it up, and Ron hasn't been able to let it go.
He also hasn't been able to let go of the fact that his best mate might not ever exist in this world, and that teases all kinds of things that he is just not equipped to think about. Better to be doing something, definitely.
Even if what he's doing is technically doing nothing. Shouldn't he have donuts for something like this?
Ah, there goes his stomach. Where can he get donuts?]
Closed to Hermione (you get what you need)
[Being stuck out of time, in the wrong past, is exhausting. Ron doesn't understand how this administration came to be, doesn't understand how this curfew could have gone on for a decade without something like the Order popping up to fight it. Or if it does exist, it's hiding itself bloody well, and maybe that's just as bad. People are disappearing, and if his conversation with Harry's mum (that is a whole different issue that he is doing very, very badly with) is anything to go by, no one even expects Riddle or his lackeys.
It's enough to make a bloke wonder if hes' gone loopy. Or at least go loopy enough to start putting graffiti on walls. 'Death Eaters Among Us,' maybe, or 'Don't Trust the Ministry.'
He's never wanted to graffiti something so bad in his life.
Maybe it's the frustration that makes him find the deluminator in his pocket. He clicks and unclicks it, treating it like a ye olde fidget spinner that's only moderately more annoying what with its light theft. He doesn't even think about it as he leans against a building in Diagon Alley, staring at the building that ought to be Fred and George's joke shop. He could really use a laugh right about now.
Ron.
He stares blankly for a moment, wondering if he imagined it. Is he just imagining things now? But no - no. That was Hermione's voice, calling him. Calling him. Maybe he is going loopy, because he's suddenly so certain. It couldn't have been more than a whisper, but it was her.
When he pulls the deluminator out, turns away from the main road and clicks it, a little ball of light comes out. The few lights on around him stay lit, but that ball just hovers in front of him, and somehow he's not afraid at all when it floats toward him, through him, right into his heart. He touches his chest, and he just knows.
She's here. And the deluminator will take him to her. Ron closes his eyes and disapparates.]
The Dog House; Closed to Harry, James, Sirius (We decided that we would have a soda)
[After leaving Lily with the address to James Potter and Sirius Black's house - and don't worry, the fact that he will eventually have to think about leaving Harry's mum's shop to go to his dad's and godfather's home is going to lay him up - Ron wastes no time. Last he saw Harry, they fought. Last he saw him, Ron told him so many terrible things, and he hates the bloody locket for making him say it, but he mostly hates himself, for the way a piece of You-Know-who brought that out of him.
He feels shitty, and the only thing to do about it is fix things in the most awkward, teenage boy way. So, par for the course.
When he reaches the address Lily wrote down for him, he stares at the door, looks between it and the paper in his hand. All right, Ronald. Apologizing isn't so hard, is it? (Yes it is. It is so hard.)
Well, if he keeps steeling himself, there was no point in practically breaking Lily's door down, was there? So. He shoves the paper in his pocket and knocks, and somehow resists the urge to knock again after three seconds, and again three seconds after that.]
the closet;
after all, it only makes the closet stand out more from the rest of the other wizarding pubs in london.
evan doesn't seem particularly fazed by the groups of people his pub has attracted over the course of the past couple of years. in fact, he may very well be the most relaxed and at home bartender in the face of such a shady crowd.
so, it should be somewhat flattering when ron catches his attention (probably due to that ridiculously obvious muggle hat on his head). talk about someone who's shite at being discreet. ]
You might want to take that off, mate.
no subject
Why?
[He reaches up, folding the brim a little and readjusting it on his head.]
Obliviated some stupid muggle for this. Good color, innit? [He has no fucking idea what color it is. Navy? Was it navy? Ah. Point is, channel Draco Malfoy. Ugh.]
no subject
Quick piece of advice, [ he makes a gesture at the pub. ] this establishment draws in a lot of... different kinds of people and not all of them are receptive to muggle artifacts. So, unless you want to get into a fight tonight — and, if that is the case, then have a right ol' time of it — you might want to take that off, mate. You stand out like a bloody peacock.
[ and it's exactly why you attracted malfoy's attention. he has a peacock fetish. ]
no subject
Ron reaches up to fiddle with the hat. Merlin he should have tried a charm on it, something, but he can't even think of the right spell, now. If only it was a Chudley Cannons cap.]
Why the friendly advice, then?
no subject
I like my patrons to be able to at least purchase a drink before they get sent to St. Mungo's. Now, are you going to keep fiddling with that bullseye on your head or are you going to make yourself stand out less?
[ take? off?? the??? bloody???? hat?????? ]
no subject
Pulling the hat off and tossing it onto the table, Ron arches his eyebrows at Evan.]
I'm not going to St. Mungo's for a bloody hat. Wait, your patrons? You own this place?