Invisible Circus

It takes him 20 minutes to walk from his apartment house to the Rusty Snitch; it takes him another ten for him to actually work up the courage to walk through the front door.

He stands across the street from the pub, hidden in the shadows of the doorway alcove, dark and musty and filled with cobwebs and yes, spiders, but those aren’t what finally drive him from his spot. It’s the voice that he can hear coming from somewhere down the street, a girl hawking the Daily Prophet.

"…betrayal!" she calls. "Boy Who Lived shocked by Weasley’s deception! Read what the Ministry isn’t telling you, for only five knuts! Harry Potter’s secret anguish unfolded before you! The signs that Weasley’s friends chose to ignore! Read it all right here!"

When he peers out from his alcove, he can see a cluster of people around the street corner in the distance. They’re taking the girl at her word, apparently, because more than a few have walked by his doorway, his hiding spot, crooked noses already buried in the pages.

"Weasley, Weasley!" she calls again. "Read about Weasley the Betrayer, Weasley the Traitor!" And Ron can take it no more. He pulls the collar of his shabby transfigured robe up higher around his neck, as if it will help to obscure his freckles, his red hair, his face, which is plastered on the front page of every Prophet in the country. Above the fold, even, the spot normally reserved for Fudge and Harry.

Or Percy, Ron remembers suddenly. Percy’s picture made it above the fold twice. Once on the day of his arrest, then again on the day that he—

Ron steps out into the street, keeping his head low, and he hears his name once, twice, people who have recognized him, but he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t acknowledge them, hardly even breathes.

He lets the breath go when he puts his hand on the door handle of the Snitch. Cool metal that seems to mold to his hand as he touches it, then the door opens, and while he was able to hear voices while he was standing outside, the room he walks into is silent.

Eyes are on him, more than he can hope to count during his first survey of the room. Sweat prickles on the back of his neck and he wants to reach up and swipe it away, but that would mean admitting that he was uncomfortable.

It would mean acknowledging that he doesn’t belong there, when really, he does.

He has to.

The Snitch is not a large pub, but it is apparently well established. The sign above the bar reads: Serving Knockturn Alley since 1754 and the bar keep, a little old man with a gleam in his single eye that hints to his loyalties, well looks as if he could have been there for as long as the pub has.

There are rectangular tables off to the sides, interspersed with the circular tables that are also filling the floor. Ron has time to take all of this in, scowling to cover his discomfiture, before the first wizard stands up from his chair. Its flimsy wooden legs screech over the floor, renting the silence but raising the tension.

Now, in addition to the sheen of sweat, Ron can feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He drops one of his hands to the pocket where his wand is hidden. He’s hopelessly outnumbered, but at least he’ll go down fighting.

At least if he dies, he thinks, his name will be cleared, his family’s honor restored, and he’ll go down in the history books for not only being Harry Potter’s best friend, but the least successful spy that ever there was.

The other wizard doesn’t draw his wand, though. Instead, slowly, he brings his hands together, and it takes Ron a moment before he realizes that the man is clapping.

For him.

And not just one wizard, because the sound moves like the tide around the room, becoming honest to goodness—if rather weak—applause. Suddenly, it’s okay for Ron to blush, to swipe his hand across his neck, so he does. Now it looks as if he’s being humble, as if he’s feeling overwhelmed by the response, and he is. He really, really is.

By the time the first witch approaches him, Ron is breathing normally again and is almost smiling. He doesn’t want to be, because his life as he knows it is gone, but the people are clapping for him and something he did. They’re wanting to meet him, because of who he is, not who knows.

He should feel sick with this praise, he thinks as he starts shaking hands, but a small part of him admits that it feels good.

Soon, though—maybe too soon—the people stop coming up to introduce themselves, stop welcoming him into their fold, and the brief feeling of euphoria fades into non-existence, as if it was never there at all.

He’s left standing by the door alone, a traitor to everything he knows.

+

He is staring down at the chipped mug in his hand, a solemn frown on his face, when suddenly a copy of the Prophet comes sliding across the table towards him, only stopping as the soft corner is crumpled against his chest. His picture is looking up at him, waving cheekily, and the headline reads, simply, Betrayal!

When he looks up, he sees Malfoy standing on the other side of the small circular table and he should be smirking, Ron thinks. He should be smirking, because Malfoy always smirks and sneers and that’s the way life is. Malfoy’s not, though. His arms are crossed over his chest, his eyes are glittering like ice, and there is no amusement in his gaze.

"I don’t believe a word of it, Weasley," Malfoy spits. Softly, so as not to draw attention to the two of them, and that’s un-Malfoy-like as well. Malfoy, as far as Ron knows, always wants to be the center of attention.

"Bugger off," Ron says. His voice is husky with an exhaustion that he knows more sleep won’t cure. Euphoria gone, he’s back to trying to play his part. "Bugger off and go bug somebody who actually cares what you think."

Ron didn’t see Malfoy come in, didn’t hear the door to the pub open to emit him and Goyle, who’s standing at Malfoy’s shoulder, looking more constipated than fierce. And even though Ron tries to look back down at his drink, to ignore Malfoy, the blond doesn’t leave. He walks around the table, around to where Ron is sitting, and sits himself right down on the bench next to him.

"Tell me why I should ‘bugger off,’" he hisses. "Of the two of us, I’m the one with the right to be here. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, Weasley, but let me tell you, I can smell one of your ‘good guy’ schemes a mile off and you, my traitorous friend, stink of it."

As he speaks, Malfoy wrinkles up his nose, as if to emphasize his point and Ron curls his lip, on the verge of baring his teeth. He can hit Malfoy now, he thinks. No one would think anything of it, because in the time that he’s been sitting in his corner, he’s seen two wizards draw their wands on each other twice, a third be punched in the nose by a barmaid, and a witch in the street get mowed down by a curse of indeterminate origin. The crowds outside parted to let her fall, but they closed in again before anyone helped her up. For all he knows, she’s still lying in the street.

The new Ron Weasley doesn’t care.

"It shouldn’t take you this long to think up your empathetic denial," Malfoy says.

"I’ve got nothing to deny," Ron says slowly. He’s practiced these words many times, so that they roll off of his tongue, but that doesn’t make them any easier to say. "My brother— He—he started making sense, before he—" A heartfelt pause, a swallow. "He started talking sense about where the Wizarding World is going, where we are right now. And then after— After, I got to thinking, and I didn’t want his sacrifice to be for nothing."

Malfoy doesn’t look convinced. There’s the sneer that Ron has been waiting for, the look that says he’s just on the verge of laughing at you, raucously, and pointing you out to all of his friends so that they can laugh, too.

He doesn’t, though, and Ron can’t help but wonder how many friends Malfoy actually has in this room.

"Just like that," the blond says, slapping his wand against the edge of the table. Sparks of gold shoot out of the tip, landing and smoldering for a moment on the polished wooden top, before winking out of existence. "Just like that, you changed your mind. Seven years of Potter’s and Granger’s influences washed clean from your impressionable little brain by a few words of heresy from dear brother Percy. My, my, Weasley, you’re even more gullible than I gave you credit for."

Ron looks down at the paper again. Harry’s picture is there, too. It’s a new one, from the week before, taken at a special celebrity Quidditch benefit match meant to raise money for children left parentless by the Second War.

Ron wasn’t there. He pleaded exhaustion, or paperwork that still needed to be completed. Something, he can’t remember what. Harry didn’t protest, though, and Hermione only frowned, looking resigned, as if she’d rather expected as much.

"Missing your pals?" Malfoy asks. "Bloody hell, Weasley. Go back, leave, the game is up, I’ve called your bluff, so just go back to your nice warm house, with your nice warm family, and leave the deception to those who actually know what we’re doing!"

That last part is hissed, almost frantically, and from the look on Draco’s face after he speaks the words, Ron can’t help but wonder if he said more than he wanted to. But then again, he probably said just as much as he wanted to and not a word more. Malfoys aren’t known for their verbal indiscretions. Other indiscretions, yes, of course, but verbal? No.

"I’m not bluffing," Ron says. The words sound lame in his own ears, but it shouldn’t matter. No matter how much Malfoy suspects, he won’t be able to find fault in Ron’s story, because for all intents and purposes—except for the motivation behind it—it’s all true.

Namely, he was leaking information, he was conducting secret meetings with Nott’s lackeys, and he did flee the Ministry, after the carefully planted trail of suspicion led directly to him. For all intents and purposes, he is a traitor and even Malfoy can’t find fault with that. He can only suspect.

Malfoy leans in close, so close that Ron can smell the sourness of alcohol on his breath, and jabs a finger into Ron’s chest, leaving it there as he speaks.

"I don’t trust you, Weasley. I’m never going to trust you and as long as we’re here, as long as the both of us are alive, I’m going to make it my duty to make sure that no one else—particularly the Management—trusts you either."

"Too late, Malfoy," Ron hisses. "The Management already does."

In disgust, Malfoy pushes himself away from Ron, sliding across the slick varnish of the bench, and stands up. He stalks to the door, Goyle trailing behind him like a well-trained goon, and for the first time all day, Ron genuinely smiles.

It’s ironic, Ron thinks, that Malfoy, quite possibly the person who hates him the most in the world, is the only one—apparently—who isn’t fooled.

At least one person in the world still believes in him, he thinks.

Or maybe, it’s that Malfoy never has.

+

He’s no longer smiling when Nott finally deigns to come meet with him, face to face, sliding into the seat across the table and leaning forward in a rather conspiratorial manner. His bodyguards flank them, tall and dark and apish in build, and they glower at Ron for a full minute before turning their backs, providing a human wall between the two of them and the rest of the world.

Nott doesn’t speak at first, just stares, and as he does, Ron tries valiantly not to twitch in his seat, because he might have actually been lying just a bit when he told Malfoy that Management already trusted him.

Because they don’t.

Not at all.

At least, that’s the feeling that Ron is getting from Nott. The black eyes just don’t blink. They stare and stare and Ron can’t let himself look away; somehow he knows that this is one test he must pass.

Nott looks much as he did back at Hogwarts, but he’s even thinner, weedier now, Ron decides. The planes of his face are longer, darker, his cheeks and chin covered with a scruff of black hair, and although he looks a bit worn around the edges, he looks harder, too, sharper than Ron remembers. He looks like a weapon carved and poised, point already aimed at the heart of its target.

"You’ve cut and run," Nott says too many moments later, finally looking away. His fingers rub at the threadbare sleeve of his once-fine robe, an unconscious gesture, and Ron finally lets his fingers clench around his mug again, warm glass ungiving in his grip.

"Bloody bolted from the Ministry’s clutches," he continues. "I would say ‘Bravo,’ Weasley, but I don’t trust you. There’s only one of your lot that I trusted and he’s as good as dead."

"Is dead," Ron says, because Percy is dead to him, to his entire family.

"Is as good as," Nott corrects. He gestures off into space, presumably towards Azkaban, but it looks to be at the ceiling, or maybe the curiosity shop across the street. "He’s still alive, technically, a living martyr to our cause."

Ron wants to close his eyes, to draw in a deep breath, but he just nods his head once, a sharp jerk. "Our cause," he echoes.

Nott stares at him again, and for some reason—maybe because talk of Percy has re-steeled him—it’s easier to meet that gaze this time. Maybe it’s because this time, the other man’s stare is evaluating.

"I remember you from school. You and all of your little Gryffindor friends. You and Potter, Granger. And you know what I wonder, Weasley? I wonder why you’d turn away from them now, after the war is won. After your side has won."

Ron wishes that Harry and Hermione were sitting there with him, suddenly, so that they would be able to hear what he’s about to say and punish him properly. A fist to the mouth should do it, he thinks. Possibly a curse that would knock him out for a few days and give him the worst headache he’s ever had the pleasure of being personally acquainted with.

"They aren’t purebloods, are they," he says slowly. The Inspector told him that he sounds more believable when he speaks slowly. Earnestly. Also, he’s less likely to slip up, make mistakes from speaking in haste. "They didn’t grow up here, did they. They don’t understand what we’ll be giving up if we let the Muggles dictate our policy decisions."

He thinks he sounds awful and truthful, but still, still, Nott doesn’t look convinced. Ron leans forward, until only Nott and his goons can hear the words that pass through his lips.

"I’ve given up my life for this cause. I passed on what information I could to a cause I believed in, I got caught, and now I’m here. Have I played you false yet? Tell me, have I?"

At first, Nott doesn’t answer. He stands up, pushing his chair in, and then speaking loudly enough so that the wizards a few tables over can hear as well, he says, "The funny thing about traitors, Weasley, is how addicted they get to the deception. How it’s rarely a one way street." He rests his hands on the table again and lowers his voice. "Prove to me that I can trust you, Weasley. Prove it to me."

Then, he’s gone and Ron lets himself slouch down in his seat again. The Inspector told him that infiltration wasn’t easy and now, now, Ron believes him.

He tries to pretend that the wizards at the surrounding tables aren’t looking at him in distrustful manners rather than appreciative, as they had been before.

+

It will take a long time and a lot of hard work, this infiltration, the Inspector told him, but Ron—naively, he now knows—was holding out hope that things might go a bit more smoothly than that. Nott would welcome him with open arms, maybe, and he’d truly be that hero he was for a few minutes, when he first entered the Snitch.

It’s not to be, he knows that now, as he sits at his little round table, staring down to the bottom of his chipped mug, the dregs of his ale warm and still. There’s a difference between discussing theory and probability in a cluttered, musty office with the Inspector and actually living the reality.

Basically, he doesn’t know what to do.

If he stays where he’s sitting, he risks the opinion in the room turning against him—as it will, he’s suddenly sure, given the whispers that are slowly traveling around the room, like ripples in a tide pool, moving ever outwards.

If he leaves, stands up from this miserable little table and pushes his way through the gathering crowd to the door of the pub, he risks people believing it an admission of guilt, an acknowledgment that Nott was speaking the truth. His assignment will be over before it ever truly begins.

If it isn’t already over, that is.

"Damned if I do, damned if I don’t," he mutters into his glass, lips barely moving, and softly enough so that he’s sure no one else can hear him. So that it looks like he’s just another drunkard, muttering nonsense to his only friend in the room.

"Aye," the wizard at the table to Ron’s right says. It’s no one that he recognizes, just a man that looks to be on the wrong side of middle-aged, rough around the edges, with deep lines in the thick skin of his face. He holds his mug up in Ron’s direction—acknowledgement? An informal toast?—and Ron sees that his fingers are callused, the skin cracked, with nails that are potions grimy and chipped.

The wizard can’t have heard him, he can’t have, Ron knows, not even with one of Fred and George’s enhanced eavesdropping devices, because Ron’s lips barely moved. He really only heard the words in his head. It never hurts to be cautious, though. That’s one thing Ron didn’t need the Inspector to tell him.

"Aye?" Ron asks hesitantly.

The wizard nods sagely. His round eyes twinkle rather like Dumbledore’s used to, just before he said something completely barmy, a non-sequitor that made sense only in his own mind.

"Aye," he says. "The Snitch always fills up ‘round this time o’ the night, it does. It’s more crowded than usual, mind you, but you’d be the reason for that. You and Mr. Nott and his speeching."

Ron nods warily; he doesn’t know what to say. The man seems friendly enough, but the people here, he doesn’t trust them. Just like they, apparently, don’t trust him.

The wizard ducks his head to the right, then the left, looking over his shoulder at the rest of the people in the room. Instinctively—or maybe it’s paranoia setting in—Ron does the same. He looks back at the wizard in time to see him scooting across the bench, until he’s close enough for Ron to smell the alcohol on his breath, his clothes.

Maybe he’s not loony, Ron thinks. Maybe he’s just overly intoxicated, like Ron wishes he was. He doesn’t sound drunk when he speaks next, though. He doesn’t say things that Ron would blame on drink.

"He needs you, Mr. Nott does," the wizard whispers, his voice sounding as if it was being strained through gravel. "He’s ‘fraid of you, Mr. Weasley. You’re the biggest thing that’s happened to The Cause since your brother, well."

He jerks his head towards the wall, knowing that Ron will know what he means, then leans in closer still, letting his fingers come to rest on the top of Ron’s table. They start tapping a rhythm, thick and uneven. Ron looks down, feeling his own fingers twitch in his lap.

The wizard continues: "He’s worried, Mr. Nott is, that people will start looking to you in this fight, rather than him. Just like they looked to your brother."

And Ron, suddenly, wants to breathe a deep sigh of relief, because there, there is the glimmer of hope that he’s been looking for since he started this god-forsaken assignment. All is not lost already, he thinks. There are people, he thinks, that want to believe in him, no matter what Nott says.

Nott, he suddenly realizes, is not the only one who matters.

"I’m not looking to lead anything," Ron says. He lifts his mug to his lips, tries to take a sip before he realizes that it’s as good as empty, then sets it back down again, lining the bottom up with the ring on the table. "I only want to do what I can, to do what I believe is right."

He has his goals, after all. The ones that he carefully worked out with the Inspector over the months leading up to his escape. They don’t involve leading anything. They just involve him being on the inside, in a position to do some good at the end, because with the direction that Nott seems to be leading The Cause, an end must eventually come. It has to.

"But he don’t know that yet, does he?" the wizard asks. "He only knows what he’d do if he was in your position, Mr. Weasley. That’s all he knows. You were of more use to him on the inside, you were." His eyes twinkle again. "But some of the rest of us, we’re glad you’re here."

Ron nods again, this time venturing an almost genuine smile. "Aye," he says. "Well—"

The wizard’s attention is no longer on him, though. It’s at the front of the room, where there is a loud clamor of voices, the sounds of chairs and tables being moved, and then there is Nott, standing on a bench, head, shoulders, and waist above the crowd.

"Let the speeching begin," the wizard says, softly, already scooting away again. "You’ll be the topic, of course. He don’t have to trust you to use you."

Ron’s breath catches in his throat as he sits back on his bench, then he turns his attention to the front of the room, too.

"Today," Nott says loudly, more loudly than Ron has ever heard him speak before. "Today is a glorious day in the life of our Cause. Today we gain a strong ally, an ally that is known the world ‘round."

His eyes, large and black and dancing with reflected firelight, like two furnaces that have grown too hot, look to Ron. The rest of the room looks to Ron, too, and he doesn’t know what to do, whether he should crouch down in his seat, or raise his empty mug in salute. He stares right back at Nott, not trying to challenge even though—if the wizard next to him is right—it will probably be construed that way anyway.

"Today," Nott continues, "a genuine War Hero joins our ranks, giving up the life that he has always known for the good of our humble objectives."

There is noise then, whispers and shouts, clapping and the scraping of chair legs over the uneven floor as some patrons turn to look at him, others to Nott. Then everyone is looking at Nott, even Ron, as the man at the front of the room claps his hands twice, sharply, a call for attention.

"We have other new faces in our crowd today. New faces are joining ours every single day and that, my friends, my companions in this fight, makes my heart glad. I am proud, proud to be in the company of such forward thinkers, the future leaders of this world."

It should have sounded silly, Ron thinks, a Slytherin talking about his heart being made glad, but it doesn’t. There’s a warm tone to Nott’s voice, a curl and a dip which catch Ron in their embrace, almost making him believe, too.

If he didn’t know better, he thinks, he would believe.

"I am proud," Nott says, his voice rising to a shout, "to be a member of a group of people who would not turn their backs on me just because I might see the world in a different way. Just because I have the courage to stand up for what I think is right."

A wizard off to the side of the room, a little man with bushy eyebrows shadowed under a crumpled top hat, lets out a whoop. Others follow until Nott has to gesture them quiet again. As he does so, Ron watches him step fully up onto the tabletop, his feet landing in the spaces between plates of bread and mugs of frothy ale. He starts pacing back and forth, back and forth, keeping the attention of the room focused on him.

"You all know about Ron Weasley," Nott says. "You all know what you’ve read about him in the papers today, or what your friend’s neighbor’s sister’s husband’s cousin had to say about him. Today, he’s been the talk of the Wizarding World. Today, some call him a traitor, but not me. Not me."

He takes a deep breath and holds out a hand to his—his bodyguard? Ron thinks it is, although it’s a different man than the one he brought to Ron’s table, and a mug is placed in his grip. He takes a long pull of it, then licks the froth from his lips.

This is not the Nott that Ron remembers from his school days. This Nott is a leader, knows how to work the crowd and rile them up, and Ron is no longer wondering how he came to be the head of this movement, him and Percy. His blood is almost pounding with the energy that Nott is calling forth and he’s just there to absorb, to betray.

"Let me tell you what I know about Ron Weasley," Nott says more softly, calming the energy in the room. Not diffusing it, because Ron can still feel it thrumming in his veins, but containing it, making it manageable.

"A year ago, he approached me, offering us help, offering us information, whatever was in his power to give. I had my doubts as to the motives behind his offer, but after careful consideration, and in memory of my dear friend, his brother Percy, I accepted. Ron Weasley, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we’re here today. The information that he has provided us has proved to be most valuable, letting us make inroads where it might not have been suspected inroads could be made."

He takes another swig of his ale, violently almost, Ron thinks, and the amber liquid drips down his hand, landing on the table beneath his feet.

"Today, my brothers and sisters, with him standing visibly beside us, we are stronger than we have ever been before. We are a cohesive group, all of us equal in this fight that we have embarked on, and we are strong. From today on out, the Ministry must look at us and realize that we are a force to be reckoned with! People—our friends and neighbors and relatives—will look to us and see possibilities that they did not see before! The world, my friends, will fall at our feet. "

He smiles, an almost friendly, almost encouraging sort of curving of lips, and then he raises his mug in the air, toasting the world.

"Today, we have taken a large step forward. To Ron Weasley," he calls.

There’s a shout around the room, loud and long and riotous. Ron blushes.

"To The Cause," Nott finishes, this time adding his own shouts to those echoing around the room.

Ron lifts his own glass in the air, wishing it was full, and says, "To The Cause," before pretending to drink.