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Most days, Ron loved being an Auror. It was a job of balances: cases and paperwork, action and boredom, stakeouts and chases. Good days counteracted the bad, and no matter how bad it got, he always felt he was making a difference in the world. Had anyone asked Ron Weasley if he loved being an Auror, he would have replied with a resolute "Yes!" But there was no real need to ask him, since his enjoyment was noticeable almost every day at the Ministry offices.
By age twenty-six, Ronald Weasley had worked in the Auror Department for eight years, having climbed up the ranks from Trainee to Senior Auror. For someone who had followed his best friend into a career field looking for glory and adventure, he had settled into a relaxed enjoyment by his sixth year as an Auror. He was no longer the bright-eyed young man with a grudge against the world, but he related to the child he'd been easily enough.
Ron flipped the lock on his door with an easy wave of his wand, and took out his pocket-sized PortaFloo (Our mini-fireplaces will connect you to the Floo network instantly! Only Floo calls can be made, not actual transportation. See our warranty information and safety precautions below) and called up Hermione. The time was around one-thirty, so she must have already returned from brunch with Percy's wife, Audrey.
"Well?" he asked with a grin when Hermione finally answered his call.
She huffed and he knew she was rolling her eyes. "Honestly, Ron. This bet of yours is sexist, idiotic and—"
"You were there when we made it. Come on, is she? I'll renew the housekeeping charms from now 'til forever if you tell me."
Given that renewing the housekeeping charms took up an hour every Sunday, Hermione quickly said, "Audrey isn't pregnant yet."
Ron cast a Muffling Charm around his chair so that he didn't distract Harry in his office next door and loudly pronounced, "We did it! Haha, Percy's the loser."
"How old are you again?" Hermione asked, but her voice was amused.
"Percy's the last one to have kids!"
The bet itself was over a decade old, made just before Harry and Ginny's wedding, when all of Arthur and Molly's children were under the same roof again for a few days. Bored of cleaning and wedding preparations, the boys (plus Ginny and a reluctant Hermione) had bet on which of them would have children last.
Charlie was, arguably, the first of them to have children, if one counted his dragonets. He surely acted like they were his own children. The rest of them were just waiting for the perfect someone or the perfect moment.
Now, over half a decade after they made the bet, Bill had two children (petit little blonde monsters, as Ron called them). Harry and Ginny had Teddy and James and a little bun in the oven that Ron was trying to convince him not to name after Snape. George had Fred. Fred was disqualified from the bet (even though his rather loud and overly opinionated portrait had lots of ideas for how he could still continue). Ron's Hermione was one month pregnant. And best of all, Percy's wife was not yet pregnant. Ron had even asked Hermione to check with her just in case they were hiding a pregnancy.
Percy was the official loser, and now owed one favor to each of his brothers. Ron had a ton of ideas for what his favor would be, starting with doing his housekeeping charms.
"Really, Ron?"
"I love you, Hermione, but we did it! Team Weasley-Granger got pregnant faster than him!"
Even from behind his Muffling Charm, he heard the Head Auror's assistant's whiny voice ("Isn't Weasley a bit overqualified for this?"), so he said his goodbyes to Hermione, disabled the charm, slid the PortaFloo into his pocket, and unlocked the door. He wasn't breaking any rules, per se, by making a personal call while working overtime, especially since it was his day off, but it was still frowned upon.
His assignment, which the Head Auror gave to him with cheerful grin (Ron bet the Head Auror didn't have a spouse he could and should be home with right now) and a written piece, made him frown. Nick was right for once: Ron was too overqualified for this assignment. The restriction that the Auror assigned could not have previously time-traveled limited a few of the rookies, but there were still several who could do it. Roberts didn't have to call a Senior Auror out of his home for this.
Which meant one thing: Politics. Bugger it all.
Ron slid the paper inside his robes and headed off to the Auror Department's Floo section. He made a brief stop, dropping in on a tired Harry, who told him with no exaggeration that criminals should have red bows to identify them.
"Been working too hard, mate?" Ron asked, though the circles around Harry's sleepless eyes spoke for themselves. He left Harry's office and soon stepped out of the Floo network at the Hogsmeade Auror liaison office, from where he walked to Hogwarts.
The cool September air felt refreshing and helped him think. Hogwarts had called in the Aurors. Rare, but not unheard of. Hogwarts needed an Auror who hadn't time-traveled to retrieve an object. The Aurors sent Ron Weasley, who was overqualified. What else did he know? Harry was busy. Roberts hadn't looked stressed. Easy job. Headmistress McGonagall liked Ron well enough after trying to keep him, Harry, and Hermione in line for six years. But McGonagall probably had a good relationship with her other graduates, though not as good of one as she had with them. Why was Ron in particular sent? A family connection?
He was glad to walk inside Hogwarts with no problems, given the overpowered security charms that Hogwarts had taken on after the war, and traveled to the Headmistress' office without seeing any students in the hallways. The gargoyles guarding the Headmistress' office sprung out of his way before he was forced to guess passwords.
"Headmistress McGonagall," Ron said, stretching out his hand.
She took it. "Minerva, please, Mr. Weasley. I think you're quite old enough to call me by my first name," she said with a not-quite-smile and a wave to the seat in front of her desk. Behind Ron, Dumbledore's portrait gave an obviously faked cough, and Minerva offered a bowl of sweets to Ron with a certain look toward the portrait. "Would you like a lemon drop?"
"Thanks, I'll have one. And you might as well call me Ron."
They exchanged polite small talk for a while, until finally they reached the reason the Headmistress had called the Aurors in for.
"We've had a theft," Minerva began, sounding troubled. "The Department of Mysteries sent a prototype of their latest time-travel project to Filius, as he's a Charms Master and one of the charms on the device was causing the device to work improperly. It was stolen from his office last week. We believe it was the newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Aurelian Audeley, who stole it, as there were too many enchantments for a student to have gotten to it. Also, Filius had mentioned his project at the staff table a few times, in listening distance of Aurelian." She went on to describe how they hadn't thought it was really him, at first, because Audeley was sweet, good with kids, loved cats, etcetera, but they had gotten suspicious when he handed in his resignation so early.
Ron bit back the urge to say, "Last week? And you're only calling us in now?" Audeley could have been halfway across the globe by now, an imposter in his place.
Hogwarts had always dealt with its own problems, seeing itself separate from the bureaucratic British Ministry. Like with the problem of the Basilisk in the dungeons and the skeletons in its professor's closets, Hogwarts protected its secrets. With a Ministry-trained Auror's hindsight, Ron adamantly believed that Dumbledore should've gotten the Aurors involved in many of the school's problems. Though, back then, the Auror department had been too loyal to Fudge and filled with incompetents and corrupts.
"What is the device supposed to do, Minerva?" he asked instead, testing out the name. She had told him to call her Minerva a few times before, but Ron had always gotten away with not referring to her by anything. It had always felt too weird. The name felt awkward on his tongue, but he thought he might get used to it if given enough practice. "And what would it do if he were to activate it now?"
"It is supposed to take someone farther back in time than a Time-Turner, though the traveler is pulled back after an hour of being in the past. But with the defective charms, it may permanently send the traveler to the past or cause some sort of paradox."
"A longer Time-Turner? Do we really need them?" Ron asked, shaking his head. He understood the curiosity of going to the past, but what good was it to spend thousands of Galleons on the development of a device that was next to useless? The future was many times more important than the past. "I'll talk to him."
"Thank you, Ron."
Ron then went on to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, enjoying being in Hogwarts again. He hadn't been here since the spring of the Final Battle, when he had stayed behind to clean up. After that, he rarely thought of Hogwarts, since thinking of it made him remember all who had died there. But in bright sunlight and with a few more years behind him, Ron enjoyed the visit.
Though, it was interesting that Flitwick had received something from the Department of Mysteries. Usually, they kept to themselves, but the Aurors had a five to two odds bet that Flitwick was an Unspeakable on his weekends. Unspeakables were notoriously close-mouthed about who they worked with, and what they worked on, and kept no written records of their employees. Even codenames were changed twice a month. It was very possible Flitwick was one, though Hermione always called him a conspiracy theorist when he mentioned it.
He waited outside the DADA room for the session to finish and the class to leave. There was no point to ruining a possibly innocent man's reputation by storming into the room, wand out and yelling he was under arrest.
Audeley had a reputation for being a skilled dueler. Ron must have been sent because of that. He was the only Senior Auror available today (the rest were in some backwater country dealing with a new dark wizard cult, or were Harry, who was overworked enough on his current case), and the rookies were too green to take on someone like Audeley. Audeley was also loosely related to the Minister, so it had to be someone who could arrest him quietly.
He ignored the students' curious stares as they exited the classroom, and waved to the few first years he recognized as his friends' children before stepping into the room.
The man Ron presumed was Audeley sat at the far end of the room, behind a large wooden desk on a podium raised about twenty centimeters from the floor. A large window rested behind the desk, but it likely wouldn't open unless spelled to break. Ron cast a charm to enforce it just in case Audeley tried to make a run for it. He kept his wand at his side in case he needed it. When he was about a meter from the desk, Ron cleared his throat to alert the professor.
Audeley glanced up from his papers, and quickly stood up to shake Ron's hand, the pretentious beret he wore almost falling off his head. "Hello, what can I do for you?"
"My name is Auror Weasley, and my department has reason to believe that you—"
Before Ron could finish, Audeley raised his wand at Ron and a streak of purple flames shot at him. He dodged behind a row of desks. Dolohov's Curse, he recognized. Audeley wasn't starting out small. Ron shot a Confundus Charm at him while strengthening the automatic Shielding Charm on his robes. It wouldn't stop an Unforgivable Curse, but Audeley didn't seem like the type to use them so soon in battle, not when they would summon every other teacher in the castle to the room.
He jumped up and towards his opponent, yelling out, "Expeliarmus!" before Audeley finished another incantation. Ron's voiced spell reacting more powerfully than a silent one, working before Audeley finished another spell. Audeley's wand flew to Ron's side of the room, a few feet away from where he stood.
His wand pointed on Audeley, Ron said, "Hands up, and don't you dare move. Where's Flitwick's Time-Turner?"
Audeley dropped his eyes toward his right pocket, and Ron told him to take it out, still moving closer with his wand pointed at Audeley's head. He stopped with his wand a few centimeters from Audeley's nose while Audeley was in the process of taking out the box.
"Now!" Audeley suddenly yelled, and Ron felt sharp teeth dig into his left calf. He kicked the animal away, but that moment of distraction was all Audeley needed to make a grab for Ron's wand. He failed, but they both flew down to the floor, Audeley on top of Ron. Ron overturned them to the left, away from the desk and off of the incline, and the added drop caused Audeley to lose his breath. Ron thought he heard something crack, but he couldn't be sure.
Ron finally pinned Audeley with his wand under his throat. He jabbed at Audeley's side, feeling for the box, but didn't find it. "Right. As I was saying, I'm looking for the box. Don't bother trying to deny you have it, since trying to fight me makes it pretty obvious you're guilty. Where is it?"
Audeley gulped audibly, breathing in a mouthful of air to calm himself. He looked about to deny it all, but Audeley looked too similar to Draco Malfoy for Ron to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"I'll tell you everything just don't—Expelliarmus!"
"Fuck," Ron cursed as the spell pushed him backward into a bookshelf, a few books and nicknacks falling down. No one told him Audeley could do wandless magic, let alone something as complex as a strong wandless Disarming Charm. But Audeley wasn't fit, nor a sports player, and his reflexes were too slow to catch Ron's wand, which fell at his feet. Ron was about to grab it back, but Audeley picked it up first, and pointed it at the beret he'd grabbed from his head.
Slowly, the beret transformed more into a box-like shape with every Latin word Audeley murmured, the string of words going above Ron's head in meaning. All he knew was that he had to get that box before Audeley activated it and time-traveled away. He used Audeley's distraction to grab his hand, the one with Ron's wand, and point it upwards. He had his other hand on the box when it suddenly started to burn, a wave of fire spreading from his fingers, still curled around the box, up to his head. Audeley dropped it, but Ron couldn't when he tried—the pain kept his fingers from moving. He felt stuck and panicked.
As he lost consciousness in front of a screaming, angry DADA professor, Ron's last thought was that he should've chanced Audeley's reputation and stormed in when the children were in class.
His next thought, when he awoke with a groan, a sore shoulder, and a yet-to-fade heat in his body, was that Hermione was going to kill him for getting hurt on the job again. He felt grass and dirt under his body, and he wondered absently if Audeley pushed him out the window. But he wasn't in enough pain for that, even if he did feel pretty miserable.
He didn't have to open his eyes to imagine Hermione. She would be all, "Ronald Weasley, you are an idiot of unknown proportions. What were you thinking, wrestling for a dangerous device with a dangerous criminal? God help me, if you were—"
He loved her when she was angry. Beautiful, frizzy hair, hands akimbo, saying,
"—a drunkard because Mum says drunkards are bad and—"
Ron sat up suddenly, because he knew the general pitch of most of the people in his life, and that wasn't one of them. Nearby strangers had the bad habit of being accomplices to the crime in cases of kidnapping. But looking around, he realized he hadn't been kidnapped. He wasn't on Hogwarts grounds or near Hogsmeade, but he also didn't feel any anti-Apparition wards. Not that Ron felt steady enough to Apparate yet, but he was glad it was an option.
Had Audeley panicked and dragged him off somewhere? He was going to have a serious talk with Professor McGonagall about her staff choices for the DADA post. The curse on the title had faded when You-Know-Who died, but the professors who took the job were almost as bad as they'd been when Ron had been in school.
He was in a shaded, tree-filled area, though farther down the path in front of him he saw the outline of a large building and heard loud children's voices. It was a school, possibly one of the pre-Hogwarts schools that had appeared in the last decade following magical Britain's educational reforms. The size of it looked like Madam Mallory's School for Young Magicians, but the children's laughter made it impossible for the school to be right. Madam Mallowy was a harsh headmistress, and such loudness was expressly forbidden.
The young girl, whose voice had woken him out of his daydream (he should check for a concussion, actually), stood about a meter away. She was still talking a mile a minute.
"—but you could be a lost teacher like in the book I read a few weeks ago called—"
She sounded a bit like Hermione, Ron thought with an inward smile. The girl wore a yellow sundress and carried a book, and didn't look at all threatening, which was good because Ron couldn't find his wand. Eventually, she stopped talking and waited for him to say something.
Ron ran a hand over his face (he still had eyebrows, good) and gave the kid his friendliest smile. "Could you tell me where I am?"
The girl narrowed her eyes and clutched her book tighter, a child's defense mechanism. "Billingshurst Primary School. Are you lost?"
"Kind of. Where exactly is that?"
"Billingshurst."
"That's in England." It didn't come out much like a statement. He got to his feet, brushing spots of dirt off his robes as he got up.
"Yes." Now the girl looked more curious than nervous. "You're lost. You're not old enough to have memory problems yet."
Ron frowned. "That's a bit rude. How old are you, anyway?"
"I'm six years and eleven months old. It's the first day of school."
Too young to help him, Ron decided, and not a witch (or a Muggle-born, if she was one), so her parents couldn't help him, either.
"What are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be playing with the other kids?"
"Books are more interesting," she said.
"Go play with the other kids," he said in an effort to make her leave. He needed to search the area for signs of Audeley. "Make friends, stuff like that." What did little kids do, anyway, other than cry and whine for candy? "You can't read a book every hour of your life." Well, Hermione could, but she was a whole other story. Besides, she had Ron and Harry to pull her away from her texts when they felt she needed some air.
"Yes I can," she replied in the staunch voice only a misguided child could pull off.
Well, if she was going to go that route... "I bet you can't make friends."
"I can do that, too!"
"Prove it to me, then. Make a friend. I promise, you'll have fun," Ron cajoled.
Her lip wobbled that little bit, so Ron walked over to lead her back to the school. Noticing her name tag, he added, "So your name's... Hermione!"
Now that he looked closer, she did resemble the eleven-year-old Hermione who Ron barely remembered. Her hair was flatter, but that might have been because of her haircut, or some sort of straightening product. Her front teeth were a bit large, and seemed larger than ever because the rest of her was so small. She probably got teased for them, too.
Ron gulped, and felt something appear in his right robe pocket. He didn't have to check to know it was the box he'd worked so hard to get away from Audeley. Had he really time-traveled? Was he really seeing a younger Hermione Granger?
"Bloody hell," he muttered quietly so that the kid wouldn't hear.
Hermione nodded while Ron searched her face for signs that she was really his future wife. "Yep, that's my name. What's yours?"
He considered giving her a fake name, but "Ron" slipped out before he could stop himself. Cursing himself for possibly creating a paradox, he led her back to the school and watched her look back at him once, then walk over to another little girl sitting on a bench. Ron smiled. He was watching Hermione make her first friend, and it felt like the sweetest thing in the world.
He took the cube out of his robe pocket, studying the ridges and turning it over a few times. He didn't know how it worked, so he really hoped it would automatically take him back. There didn't seem to be any controls or buttons on the thing. Hopefully, it would know how to safely take him back to his own time, even though he was chuffed to see an adorable younger Hermione.
He blinked, and opened his eyes to a room filled with bookshelves after bookshelves of books, and a couch at the very end of the room, where the younger Hermione sat, reading.
Ron sat down beside her, wondering how much time had passed. "Hello, Hermione."
She looked up from her book and gasped, eyes wide and blinking. "It's you! You're the man from the woods! I told Rose you were real!"
"Rose?" he asked. Hermione had put it at the top of their girl baby names list, but Ron hadn't thought the name had significance. It was a nice name. Sweet, short.
"My friend. You said I should make friends, so I did, but when she looked at the woods, she didn't see you. I didn't see you, too. Where did you go?"
"Just...away." Lying to children was always hard, especially when they looked as small and gullible as the mini Hermione.
"You couldn't have gone far, since you're still wearing a dress." That must have made sense in the logic of children, Ron thought. "Or Roman clothing," Hermione continued excitedly. "We're doing Roman stuff at school. Rose and me are painting Rome, but she's a better artist."
"Yeah? What's she like?" he asked.
Apparently, Rosalyn Lewis was amazing. She could draw amazingly, eat biscuits quicker than anyone, and always wore pink. Ron felt odd, hearing everything she said about this girl. Hermione had never told him about her. Was she ashamed of having a Muggle friend? Ron would have loved to meet her, magical or not. Maybe she and Rose had just grown apart. But that name, at the very top of their list, made him wonder.
"Maybe I'll see her next time I see you," Ron said.
"Maybe." She paused for a bit, staring at him. "You look at me strangely."
"What?" Ron said loudly. "No! I'm just dropping by, it's nothing—"
"Shhh!" someone in the library called.
Ron quieted, but continued pleading that Hermione not think he was a pervert. Was she worried that he was some kind of child-snatcher? He hadn't mentally scarred his future wife, had he? If this was even real. McGonagall had said the device needed fixing. This could all be a product of a concussion, or something.
Hermione giggled. "It's not that. You know me, somehow. More than I know you, if that works. When we first met, you didn't mispronounce my name."
Ron didn't know what to say. "I could've—"
"You didn't comment on it, either. You said it easily, and you were surprised, but it wasn't about my odd name."
Ron couldn't decide what to say. Hermione was smart, even as a child. He felt even more amazed, that she'd chosen him over any other guy who could've been interested in her. Even better, they were going to have itty-bitty Hermiones when Hermione gave birth in a few months. He couldn't wait.
Then he felt a small tug, and vanished before he could say goodbye again to Hermione. He appeared in another wooded area, this time, but with the outline of a house nearby.
He didn't see Hermione, so he called her name, and grew worried when no one answered. Hermione was the common element in his travels—where was she now? Did something happen?
"Hermione?" he called again, and heard a noise from a nearby tree. He walked closer, quickening his pace when he realized it was crying that he heard.
Hermione looked about the same, so it couldn't have been long since he last saw her. Less than a year, probably, but she looked so miserable, curled up against a tree, sitting on a patch of grass, crying. Ron hated it when women cried. He didn't know what to do, but he crouched down next to her and stretched his hand toward her shoulder, stopping himself halfway. He didn't know if this Hermione would welcome his comfort, no matter how much he wanted to give it. "Hermione?" he asked. "Are you okay?"
She lifted her head, glaring at him with red-rimmed eyes. "I hate you! You're horrible and I hate you!"
"I'm sorry," Ron automatically said, then patted her shoulder anyway. It shouldn't hurt, knowing a child who barely knew him hated him, but it did. This was Hermione, no matter her age. "What happened?"
"Rose..." she whispered brokenly, crouching into a smaller ball. "Rose... why... I just hate you so much! You made me make friends! I'm never making a friend again! Rose... Rose died and you made me be friends with her!"
Ron wrapped his arms around the girl, and she cried into his shoulder, telling him Muggle words for sickness and cancer that didn't mean anything to him. He wasn't familiar with Muggle diseases, but he knew heartbreak well enough, so he whispered words of comfort until she stopped her hysterical crying. He told her of how she'll make friends one day, and they'll be the best friends she'll ever have, and they will stay with her forever and ever, and never just die on her.
He closed his eyes, thinking of his own Hermione. Did she know he was missing, yet?
When he stopped talking, which by that point had just been a murmured string of "It's okay, it's okay," he noticed she had fallen asleep. He carried her to the nearest house, the one he would visit years into the future when Hermione introduced him to her parents, and lifted her onto a hammock in clear view of the back windows. Her parents would find her soon, but he couldn't afford for them to see him.
Ron stepped back into the woods, took out the box, and whispered, "I want to go home," hoping it would understand. His vision began turning white, and he stared at the little Hermione until she disappeared, wishing his own younger self could care for her as much as he wanted to at the moment.
When he opened his eyes to white, again, he worried he'd gotten stuck somewhere in time, until he turned away from the blank St. Mungo's ceiling to an adult Hermione's sleeping form. Thank Merlin, he thought, and gently poked her awake.
"Ron?" she asked sleepily, then jumped up to wrap her arms around him. "Ron, you idiot! I'm so glad you're okay. You've been in a coma for four days."
Ron hugged her back, still thinking of the small girl he comforted just minutes ago. "Do you remember a man you knew when you were six?" he asked Hermione. "The one you met at school?"
Hermione's eyebrow furrowed. "What does that have to do with—" She stopped, as if remembering something. "His name was Ron. Was he really you?"
"Yeah. Do you remember..."
"Rose," Hermione finished with a sad smile. "My first friend. I was going to tell you, but it was so long ago. I barely remember her. Just the feeling of friendship, then loss. I didn't even remember you until just now."
"If we have a girl, I think Rose might be a good name," Ron said.
"Yes," Hermione agreed. "I think it would be. I'm glad you're back, Ron."