Be Careful
42: What You Find Important
By Anne B. Walsh
Ron groaned. His head ached, his wrists were sore, and he was damp all over. He seemed to be sitting up, leaning against what felt like a tree.
Merlin, what'd I do? Was an arse to Harry and Hermione, right, I remember that bit. Walked out into the rain, got that. But what came after? Did I hit my head on a branch, or trip and fall on something? Have I been lying out here all night? I'd have thought one of them would come after me, but I suppose if I got them angry enough at me, they might've decided I wasn't worth it anymore…
"Wakey-wakey, Weasley," said a voice which was certainly neither Harry's nor Hermione's. "We haven't got all night here."
Ron's eyes shot open. Draco Malfoy, his features lit demonically from below by the wand in his hand, smirked at him. "So nice of you to come out and play."
"You—" Ron started to lunge forward, but the thick rope around his chest jerked him back. His wrists were sore, he now discovered, because they were tied together behind him. "How did you—"
"Ah-ah." Malfoy set down the wand he'd been holding, which Ron recognized with a further surge of fury as his own, and drew another from within his robes. "Trade secret, you know. Besides, I don't have to tell you anything. I'm not the one who mouthed off to his best friends and walked out on them in the middle of a war."
"You've got no friends," Ron growled, trying to use the familiarity of being angry with Malfoy to stave off the painful truth in the Slytherin's words.
Malfoy looked him up and down. "Neither have you," he said. "Not after what I assume you said in there. I couldn't hear it—Granger must have done your protective spells, they're quite good—but you've been getting closer and closer to snapping for days, and tonight you finally did. What triggered it off?"
"None of your damn business." The tightness in Ron's chest was not all due to his bonds. It was the Horcrux, the way it kept whispering to me, it made everything worse and I just couldn't take it anymore, and now I've ruined everything, if they get into a fight and they can't win because I wasn't there, or if Malfoy can backtrack somehow and find them again and catch them like he did me…
"They shouldn't’ve let you wear that thing," Malfoy murmured, as if to himself. "But you'd probably have shouted at them if they'd tried to take your turns for you, wouldn't you?"
"What?" Ron said, hoping he was doing a good enough impression of being dumbfounded. He didn't have to act much. He sounds like he's been watching us—like he knows everything already—but if he does, why take just me? Why not stick around and wait for Harry and Hermione to leave? A glance around had already told him they weren't in the same place where he'd left his friends behind, and he was starting to remember what had happened.
I'd just got round a big tree, I could hear Hermione behind me but I couldn't bear the thought of facing her after that, I was about to Disapparate, and then—
"Never mind," said Malfoy, breaking Ron's train of thought. "Hold still—not that you have much choice."
He sniggered at his own joke, then pointed his wand at Ron, who braced himself for an Unforgivable—
"Accio loose hair."
Ron felt a plucking at his robes, and a tri-colored cloud shot towards Malfoy, who nodded in satisfaction. "Excellent." He took a sheet of parchment from his pocket, unfolded it on his lap, and shook his wand briskly over it, dropping the hair onto it.
"What do you want that for?" Ron asked, peering suspiciously at the other boy. "Going to try and find the others?"
Malfoy looked up at him with his familiar Merlin-but-you're-stupid-Weasley look. "If I'd wanted the others, all I had to do was hang around there," he said. "Shoved you behind a tree and caught Granger while she was calling for you. Potter would have come out after her eventually, and then I'd have had you all. Since I didn't do that, perhaps you could conclude that I've got something else in mind. That is, if you had anything between your ears except solid bone."
The insults were oddly calming, putting this meeting back on a familiar footing. "At least I don't have to torture people whenever my Master tells me to," Ron shot back.
"No." Malfoy was sorting the hair out by color, black in one pile, red in another, brown and curly in a third. "You just torture your friends, or should I say your ex-friends, whenever things get too hard for you." He looked up, the wandlight making his eyes seem to glow. "It probably wouldn't have killed any of you to stop in somewhere, you know. Pick up a bit of news. Get your arm seen to. How does it feel, by the way?"
"What?"
"Your arm. The one you managed to splinch halfway off getting out of the Ministry—or was it Granger who did that to you? I was never very clear on that."
Ron rotated his left shoulder, discovering an unusual lack of pain there. "It's fine," he said awkwardly. "And I don't think we ever figured out who did it…" The disconnect between his conversational partner and the topic brought him up short. "Wait a second—how did you know about the Ministry?"
"I didn't, until just now." Malfoy grinned at him snidely. "I knew someone broke in, pretending to be Ministry workers, but the only thing that officially went missing was that creepy eye of Moody's." He shuddered briefly, but his grin was back the next second. "The reports said there were three of them, two men and a woman. And I always thought it was a little odd, you getting ill just in time for Potter and Granger to vanish off the face of the earth."
Ron's stomach plummeted. They'll know Dad and Mum were covering for me as soon as they see me, they'll break the wards on the Burrow and grab them while they're sleeping—Ginny's at Hogwarts, Snape'll hand her over in a second—Fred and George will try to go after them and probably get caught themselves, Charlie and Bill will be next, Percy might even get his head out of his arse for this—I've killed them all, my whole family, just because I didn't know when to keep my mouth shut—
"Still, if the Ministry believes it, who am I to judge?" Malfoy's voice broke into Ron's panicked thoughts. The blond boy had pulled a flask of potion from his pocket, a potion with a familiar muddy appearance—and now he was picking a few hairs from the top of one of the piles and adding them to the potion, which was bubbling up and turning the appetizing color of hot chocolate—
"I'd much rather avoid any… unpleasantness at school," Malfoy went on, swirling the potion in its flask. "And if I know Longbottom and Luna—Lovegood, that is—"
"I know who she is," Ron said curtly, his mind still in turmoil. What is he doing with Polyjuice? Going to try to make me look like Harry and get more credit for bringing me in? It won't do him much good once the stuff wears off, or once You-Know-Who gets a proper look at me…
He quickly abandoned this line of thought, as it seemed likely to cause true screaming panic in very short order.
"I know you know who she is." Malfoy sniffed the potion and nodded, satisfied. "I was saying, they'd be unlikely to let me live past tomorrow if I got their dear little Weaslette sent off to Azkaban. And that's not even counting what Potter might do when he heard about it. Still, Potter's off hiding in the woods. Lovegood and Longbottom are at Hogwarts. And I have to be back there tonight." He glanced at his watch and shuddered. "I'm already probably in trouble for being out after curfew. Still, I'd say this will excuse me." Setting the potion down between them, he drew his wand again. "All right, Weasley, are you going to drink this willingly, or do we do it the hard way?"
Ron scowled. "I'm not about to drink anything you give me."
"Oh, good," Malfoy murmured, starting to smile. "I did hope you'd say that." He glanced upwards. "You saw it. He's making me."
His head came back down, and his wand swung into line with Ron's chest. "Imperio!"
In the last instant before the comforting pink haze filled his mind, Ron swore at himself for not expecting this sooner…
He blinked, and wondered vaguely why he'd thought there was trouble. Of course there was no trouble… Draco, his friend Draco, was just going to let him go, take these stupid itchy ropes off him, and then he'd drink that nice Polyjuice, just the way he was supposed to…
Would it really turn him into Harry? It didn't look like quite the right color for Harry… he remembered how Crabbe and Goyle had turned it horrid colors, but the Ministry workers they'd pretended to be had mostly been nice, though Runcorn, the bloke Harry'd impersonated, had been dark and threatening…
He swallowed the last cabbage-tasting lump and grimaced. The stuff was already taking hold, shrinking him rather as he'd shrunk to be Reg Cattermole, though there was definitely a set of sensations there hadn't been for that transformation… his chest itched rather, his robes felt a bit too small there, and a very important place seemed to have gone numb and cold…
"Damn," Draco said mildly, peering at Ron's front. "Forgot about that. Good thing I know what one looks like. Have a seat, Weasley, it's done. Lean forward so I can get your hands again."
Ron seated himself obediently, nearly tripping over his robes, which were several inches too long and alternately tight and baggy in the strangest places. As he leaned forward, something fell into his line of sight, startling him a bit. It was brown and bouncy and seemed to be attached to him, as it was moving from side to side when he shook his head, but he couldn't think what it might be…
Draco stepped away and lifted his wand.
Ron screamed.
Malfoy's sideways flick of a wand, conjuring something painfully tight around his chest, only stopped him for a second, as did the second flick, which restored the rope binding Ron to the tree behind him. The third created a gag in his mouth, effectively cutting off the scream, which paradoxically helped Ron regain a bit of equilibrium. There had been something horribly disconcerting about hearing himself shrieking in a voice he'd spent six years learning to tune out at need.
"Not too bad," Malfoy said, crossing his arms and regarding Ron. "Might have to shorten the robes up a bit, so you don't fall and break your neck, but we can always claim you ran out and had to borrow Potter's. As long as you haven't got a tag in the back, that is. Let me check." He stepped up and leaned Ron's head forward, brushing long brown hair out of the way. "Nope, no tag. I guess when you're a foot taller than anybody else around, you don't need one."
Ron made a comment regarding Malfoy's parentage, preferences, and eventual destination.
"I didn't quite catch that, Weasley," said Malfoy, his eyes glinting again. "If you think you can stop yourself from screaming, we might be able to try it over."
Ron repeated himself, adding a few comments on Malfoy's personal appearance and dietary habits.
"That sounds like agreement to me." Malfoy twitched his wand, vanishing the gag.
"You sadistic bastard!" Ron shouted, wincing as the words came out an octave and a half too high. "You turned me into Hermione!"
"Yes, I did." Malfoy frowned. "And she doesn't swear. I think we'll have to go with the gag after all, at least until I get you into the cellar." Another wave of his wand restored the cloth across Ron's mouth. "Sorry about that."
Sorry about that? You've kidnapped me, you're about to hand me over to You-Know-Who, you've Polyjuiced me into Hermione bloody Granger—and you're sorry about a flipping gag?
I think someone needs to sort out his priorities…