Bringing Ron Back

BRINGING RON BACK

"Mr Potter?"

The nurse's voice cut through his head like a knife and he wanted to run away from her, from everything she was telling him, but he couldn't leave his best friend.

"I'm sorry, Mr Potter, I'd like to say we did everything we could, but the truth is there wasn't much to do once -"

Harry didn't need to hear. "Can I see him?" he cut across her, his voice breaking.

"Of course. Come this way."

She led him through pristine, plastic corridors and Harry wondered how Ron had ended up here, of all places: a muggle hospital.

"I don't understand why he's here," he said aloud. The nurse gave him a pitying look. She was young, and blonde, and fairly attractive - but Harry was here for Ron, he remembered.

"Mr Potter -"

"Harry, please. It's Harry."

"Alright. Harry - you must understand he was in a very serious state when he was brought in -"

"But who brought him here?"

"I don't know, I'm afraid. I could check, if you liked."

"No, it's...no." It didn't really matter anyway, Harry thought - the important thing was that he had finally found out where Ron was and that he was going to be able to see him very soon. He hadn't seen his best friend in days.

"In here, Mr Potter - Harry."

She led Harry into a softly lit room with one bed in it, in which Ron was currently lying. He didn't look too bad, Harry thought. There was a big red gash down one side of Ron's face but it looked to have healed pretty well already.

"When can I take him home?" Harry asked her.

The nurse simply looked at him, stunned. Finally she found words.

"You - Harry - didn't I - I thought I'd explained it to you."

Harry simply looked at her. He reached for Ron's hand, which was stiff and cold. He pressed it between both of his hands, trying to warm it up.

"You could put some heating on in this room for a start. He's freezing cold."

"Harry - Mr Potter - he's...dead."

"But he's my best friend," Harry said simply, and he could not keep the note of childishness out of his voice. "I want to take him home with me. He wouldn't want to be here."

"I'm sorry, Mr Potter. I can't let you do that. I can give you some time alone with him -"

"No, it's alright," Harry said. "I need a minute."

He left Ron's room; mentally telling Ron that he would be back once he'd sorted things out in his head. He walked away from the blonde nurse as quickly as he could and out into the maze of corridors of St Thomas's hospital. He found a seat by a window that looked out onto the Thames and sat down, staring at the water outside, thinking hard.

"He's...dead, Mr Potter - Harry - Mr Potter - he's...dead." The nurse's voice ran round and round his head and it was all he could think about for a long time before the connection made. Dead like Sirius.

But he wasn't dead like Sirius. Sirius had disappeared; he had vanished behind that bloody veil, leaving Harry without even a body to mourn. No. Ron wasn't dead like that. Ron was just dead, sleeping, in a softly lit room that was too cold, with a huge gash down the side of his face.

Now you'll have a scar for everyone to stare at all the time, he thought with a small chuckle. Except no-one would see it, if Ron had to stay here in this cold muggle hospital. Harry frowned at this thought, and got up to stand next to the window where he lay his head against the cool glass and stared down onto the pavement below. Couples were walking along the banks of the Thames in the fading summer sunlight.

What the hell am I going to do?

He couldn't leave Ron here, he knew that. He also knew that he should let somebody know what had happened to Ron; they were all looking for him since he had disappeared inexplicably some days before. His parents would be going frantic. And Hermione -

Harry thought of explaining things to her, and to Molly, and Fred and George, and poor Ginny, and he suddenly knew he couldn't do it. There had to be a way to get out of this. There had to. If he could just get Ron's body back, he knew there would be something he could do to bring him back to life. He was a bloody wizard, for goodness' sake - he knew there were spells for this sort of thing, potions - hadn't he seen Voldemort come back to life with his own eyes?

He had made up his mind - and it had taken him all afternoon, it seemed; when he snapped out of his deepest thoughts he saw that night had fallen, London had been replaced with little bright dots of light that settled against a dark blue sky.

"Ron," he muttered, and he turned and practically ran back to the little room where his best friend was lying.

Except Ron wasn't there. He had been replaced with an old man whose family stood round him. Harry stood in the doorway while they looked up at him, horrified expressions on their faces.

"I'm sorry," he said hastily, and slammed the door and ran before anyone could see him to tell him off.

Where the hell was Ron, then?

"Harry - Mr Potter - he's...dead"

"Oh crap," Harry said aloud. He was going to have to find the morgue.

x

Harry had no idea where the morgue was, but on instinct he made his way to the gloomiest part of any building - the basement. He took a lift to the lowest levels and prowled around until he found a large stainless steel door saying Staff Only. There was a small office to one side of it where a man sat, immersed in his newspaper.

Harry sat back on his haunches, back to the wall, and plotted his next move very carefully. There was a man outside the morgue, but was there anybody inside? Surely not, at this hour - it was almost midnight. As soon as he had thought that, however, there was a clatter from down the corridor and Harry leapt behind a stack of chairs.

"Bugger," he whispered as the man from the office looked up from his newspaper and rose to greet the porter who emerged, pushing a trolley bed.

"Evening Ted. See the footie last night?"

Ted made a face.

"Fuck off Nige," he said.

The man called Nigel chuckled and loudly sung the score at Ted - "3:1, 3:1, 3:1, 3:1"- whilst Ted, still swearing under his breath at the other man, pushed the trolley near to Harry's stack of chairs, pulled a lever down to open the heavy stainless steel door of the morgue, and disappeared inside, now pulling the trolley behind him. Harry's stomach leapt.

Two men, one lever, and I'm in.

He took his wand from the back pocket of his jeans, pointed it at a utility cupboard at the end of the corridor, and muttered "Reducto".

The effect was extremely satisfying. The door shattered into a thousand splinters of wood, and mops, brooms, buckets of water and cleaning fluid jumped and spilled all over the floor.

Ted came running out of the morgue, the door slamming tight shut behind him.

"What the fuck was that, Nige?"

Nigel had sprung up from his seat and was staring at the shattered door.

"I've no idea," he said, dazedly.

"SHIT! There's chemicals all over the floor! Well help me, then, Nigel, for fuck's sake!"

Harry waited until Nigel and Ted were fully immersed in clearing up the mess he'd made before walking casually to the stainless steel door. He pulled the lever; the door swung open and he stepped into the cool morgue.

It was then that he realised he had a problem. He had never been inside a morgue before; he had simply visualised Ron lying somewhere on a trolley in the middle of the room. However, the only trolley was the one Ted had just brought in. Harry realised with a sickening lurch in his stomach that he was going to have to look for Ron in the fridges that bordered the room. There were so many of them...and it was surely midnight by now...

Great, I'm in a morgue, at midnight, on my own.

Then he remembered that not only was Ron in a morgue too, but he was actually locked in a fridge in a morgue, which had to be worse.

"I'm gonna make you pay for this one, Ron," he breathed, and then proceeded to open the fridge doors.

Luckily, he found Ron in the seventh fridge he tried. The tag tied to his big toe merely said "Ron ?" - and Harry realised in amusement that he hadn't told anyone Ron's surname. He wheeled Ron out and saw a huge gash down the centre of Ron's chest, to match the one on the side of his face. He set his jaw.

"Sorry about the wait, mate," Harry said. "It's all right, though, you weren't in there that long, were you? I'm getting you out now. We'll be alright, don't you worry."

He stole the sheet from the corpse on the trolley in the centre of the room and laid it over Ron. Ron let out a gasp of air that made Harry jump.

"Yes, I know it's been on a dead guy but you're hardly in a position to be choosy," he said shakily.

He closed the fridge door and wheeled Ron round to face the door.

"I really am sorry, mate. I know you would have wanted your Mum there with you. They're all out looking for you, you know. They're worried sick. I would have told them, but I didn't - didn't know how to. It doesn't matter now, anyway. I'm gonna get you out, and then I have a plan. A good plan. You'll be alright yet, you'll see."

Harry wheeled the trolley to the door, fighting the sudden urge to play the role of the porter and whistle. He opened the door and stepped out, stealing a look down the corridor to where the two men were still battling with the damage to the cupboard.

He walked purposely in the other direction, to where he knew was a service lift. He had almost made it, until -

"OI!"

Harry froze.

"Nigel, call security. YOU! YOU STAY THERE, AND DON'T MOVE!"

Harry didn't know whether to turn around or not. He eyed the service lift. It was two feet away from him. He covertly pointed his wand at the call button, and a jet of air flew out of it to hit the button. In three seconds, the lift had appeared and the door opened.

"OI!" Ted shouted again, and he started to run.

Harry was quicker, however. He ran with the trolley into the lift and magically closed the door. Frantically he hit the topmost button, and he felt the lift rise. Through the glass, he saw Ted red-faced and furious before he ran out of view.

"Crap," Harry said. "Crap, crap, crap, crap - you're really gonna pay for this, Ron. Why did you have to get yourself dead in the first place, eh? Why couldn't you just stay alive like the rest of us? It's not that hard. People try to kill me all the time, and I manage it." He was babbling as the lift rose higher, not knowing what to do next.

Finally the lift stopped, and Harry stepped out into an empty corridor. He sighed, and looked back at Ron.

"Right, I've no idea how else we can do this. We've got to get to the roof, I reckon, but there's only stairs leading up there. So...you're gonna have to get off your backside, I'm afraid mate."

He took the sheet and wrapped it round Ron's middle, like a towel.

"You don't look half bad in a skirt. Mobilicorpus," he said, pointing his wand at Ron, and Ron's body rose from the trolley and floated in front of Harry. Satisfied, Harry hurried towards the stairs, dragging Ron's body behind him with his wand.

When he got out onto the roof he set Ron down and did the only thing he could think of.

"Accio Firebolt," he yelled into the night. He pulled Ron over to prop him up next to a metal vent, and sat next to him, hoping the spell would work. He looked at his friend, whose head had dropped down onto his shoulder.

"Look at the state of you." He sniffed, willing the tears not to come. "You'll be alright yet, mate. You'll be alright. You can have a fly on my Firebolt in a minute, that's gotta be good, hasn't it? I'm sorry I didn't nick any clothes for you, you're bound to freeze even more than you have already."

Ron slipped down slightly, and his head banged Harry's shoulder. Harry moved him into a more comfortable position, sniffed once more and stared out into the night.

"I wish you'd wake up, mate," he whispered. "I wish they hadn't put you in that damned fridge. I wish whoever did whatever to you had just left you alone. I'm sorry they came after you, it should have been me. We didn't know where you'd gone. We decided one of Volde - sorry, one of You Know Who's lot must have nicked you. We came out of the Three Broomsticks, Hermione and me, and it was only until we'd got up the road that we realised you'd gone," he admitted sheepishly. "I'm sorry. But it was kind of your fault, making us drink that Firewhisky stuff in the first place. You wanted us to get rat-arsed, you know you did. Your mum was furious. That broomstick's taking its time," he finished.

At that moment, the door to the roof banged open and the two men from the morgue burst out, accompanied by four burly security guards dressed in black. All six of them stood rooted to the spot at the sight of the young man before them with the half-dressed corpse leaning on his shoulder.

"Son," said one of the security guards, and Harry jumped to his feet, pulling Ron up with him.

"Son, are you alright?"

Harry backed away slowly towards the edge of the roof, dragging Ron.

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE, YOU FREAK!" shouted Ted, and the security guard who had spoken shot him a dark look.

"Son - take it easy there, just stay where you are, we're not here to hurt you. What are you doing up here?"

Harry hesitated before he answered.

"I'm not your son."

"No, that's true," the guard admitted. "What's your name?"

"Harry. Just Harry."

"Ok, Harry. Now listen, we need to get you down from here. It's not safe up here, you know? We need you to come with us, in the warm."

They were speaking to him as though they expected him to jump off the roof at any moment, Harry thought. And where the hell was his Firebolt?

"I can't go with you," Harry answered.

"Why's that then, s- Harry?"

Harry shifted his weight from foot to foot, hugging Ron's body to him.

"He's my friend!"

"I know."

"But he's my best friend, and he doesn't want to be here any more."

"Harry, I'm sorry, but I don't think your friend wants anything apart from somewhere peaceful to lie. You can understand that, can't you?"

"No," Harry said. "He wants to go home. He doesn't belong here."

The security guard made to answer Harry, but Harry had slowly made his way to the edge of the roof, and looked behind him.

"And I don't want to be here any more, either. Thank you for your help."

He stepped off the edge of the roof and the six men ran towards him, but before they could reach it Harry had already landed on his Firebolt with Ron sprawled awkwardly across him, and sped off into the night. By the time the men got to the edge they looked down at nothing but an empty pavement hundreds of feet below.

Harry laughed as he pulled Ron up into a more comfortable position.

"We did it, mate! Did you see me? Pretty smooth, don't you reckon? Ha!"

He flew higher and faster over the London lights and soon they were out into the Essex countryside.

"It'll be all right now mate," he said into Ron's hair. "Don't you worry. Don't you worry."