A Trio Sundered

A/N: Sorry. This chapter contains an awful lot of background politics. Thanks again to Phantom of Delight for Beta Reading.

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The previous week had, Ron admitted tiredly to himself, been something of a write-off. For weeks now he'd been peripherally aware that certain books were being disposed of, but hearing that it was limited to Dark Arts texts he hadn't been overly bothered. However, seeing that they were currently looking for books containing Death Magic, data on Horcruxes, and routes to the possession and/or the corruption of someone's soul, the fact that the information had long since been sent to the Fires was bloody annoying. He couldn't believe that they'd even burned the Ministry copies. Or, perhaps, especially the Ministry copies. Hermione had pitched a fit at the loss of centuries of accumulated knowledge although she'd eventually calmed down enough to admit that they were probably well shot of it. Maybe if they'd purged the Ministry years ago Voldemort would never have been able to make his Horcruxes in the first place.

Of their two searches, Ron's had fared rather better than Hermione's. Possession, unpleasant though it was, was rather difficult to eradicate and thus fact of life in the Wizarding world. Much the same could be said of mind control. As such, many books seemed to have remained in spite of the Fires. Unfortunately, most of those books only focused on identifying and halting the problems rather than giving even the barest of hints about how the curses were constructed. Hermione had been so frustrated at the lack of information that she'd actually tossed a book on household harms (Or was it 'charms'? Ron couldn't remember) across the room and onto their bed. Apparently not knowing how to cast the curses caused no end of trouble and Hermione wouldn't be able to reverse engineer the problem without getting lots of data first. Unfortunately, none of the cases that Ron had found in the texts sounded anything like their friends', so they were a long way from finding that data. Maybe they'd have to go to Azkaban and run tests on their corrupted friends.

Ron hadn't mentioned that to Hermione yet; he didn't want to upset her.

She was the smartest witch of their generation, however, so he thought that it was likely that she already knew what they were up against and would come up with some way to surmount their obstacles soon enough. He didn't want to mention the fact that he knew that she knew what their odds were though; he still didn't want to upset her.

That evening, however, they were going to put their books aside and take a break from the endless cycle of research that they'd been walking in. Ron forced himself to be adamantly optimistic as he thought about leaving the piles of books. It wasn't easy though. Not while he was a man under suspicion.

Kingsley Shacklebolt had come upon Hermione and him in the Library yesterday and, after a rather startled moment where he realised that he actually knew Ron's companion, had invited them to attend the next Order of the Phoenix meeting. Hermione's eyes had lit up like lamps at the prospect of seeing their old friends, and so Ron told himself to think about how nice it would be to sit and have tea together. Maybe someone there would even have access to some of the texts that the Aurors had gathered in their latest raids on the remnants of the Death Eater groups. If he knew anyone who could find light answers in Death Eaters' texts, it was his Hermione.

He let himself wonder what his mum would cook that night for the Order. Kingsley had said that they would have to celebrate Hermione's return.

Saying that had made it sound like she's been on sabbatical rather than comatose, but Ron didn't mind. He still couldn't quite bring himself to remember those days and then weeks of watching Hermione fade away and Harry sink deeper and deeper into darkness. It was probably better to think about her absence in lighter terms. After all, Hermione had survived untainted - surely that was even better than a holiday?

What Ron tried not to let himself think about - that evening, or ever - were the darker things. Over the last few months he'd discovered that they made him angry, feeding the fragment of Voldemort buried deep within his own soul. Imagining the corruption creeping into his heart and mind made him feel physically ill on some days and so he'd become accustomed to not looking too closely at upsetting things.

Besides, he needed to keep calm. He had Hermione back in his life now and he couldn't keep waking her at night with his blasted visions and nightmares.

But still, he hadn't realised before Kingsley's short visit that everyone else had so given up on Hermione that they hadn't even asked the healers to notify them if she awoke. He also tried not to wonder why, if it wasn't to see Hermione, an Auror had come to find him in the library. Nor did he reflect upon the fierce look in Kingsley's eyes until he spied Hermione sitting there. On top of that, he was busy not remembering that this was the first Order meeting he - along with a large chunk of the original Order who had been present at the Final Battle - had been allowed to attend since Harry... Well, since Harry.

Ron could almost feel his blood beginning to boil with the effort of not thinking as he stormed along the Ministry corridors towards the new headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Besides him, Hermione was struggling to keep up and he knew that he really ought to slow down for her; to calm down too; but he was damned if he knew how.

"I really need to get better at not thinking about things."

"Pardon, Ron?" Hermione gasped.

Forcing himself to stop, Ron waited for Hermione to catch her breath. She managed to flash him a brief smile and Ron tried not to squirm guiltily. He really shouldn't be making her run about like that.

Hermione took his hand. "Are you alright?"

He nodded.

"Are you thinking about Harry?"

Another nod. Damn it, when would he be able to stop thinking about him?

Hermione squeezed his hand reassuringly. "It'll be alright, Ron. We'll get him back." He tried to take comfort from her words and persuade the tightness in his throat to take a hike.

"Did the Order move into the Ministry after Harry went a bit... mad?" she asked, after they started walking again.

Ron shrugged and tried to pretend that he'd not come so close to crying thirty seconds ago. "The answer's a bit of yes and a bit of no," he said, voice tight. "The Order officially disbanded after the Second War ended because we didn't have any purpose. I mean, what's anyone sensibly going to do with a bunch of warriors and spies after all's said and done? Pardon?"

He thought he'd just heard Hermione mutter something that sounded suspiciously like 'well, that is the question', but she shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"Anyway, we broke up. It's only been since things have started to go back downhill again that they got restarted again. Harry still seemed to be okay at that point. Maybe a little..." Ron paused, looking for the right word; how did he describe eyes darkly circled that seemed to bleed with everyone else's pain? "He seemed a little bit down. Basically sane, though. Still, I guess they decided that it felt like an imposition to move back into Grimmauld Place after so long, especially as Harry was actually living there and-"

"You all left him there? In that house? Alone?" Hermione was gasping at him in dismay.

"He said it was only until he got Godric's Hollow rebuilt," Ron snapped, defensively. "Besides, he wasn't alone. I was there."

Fat lot of good I did, though, Ron thought. Hermione's hand tightened around his own understandingly and he just knew that she'd heard his unspoken words. He didn't know why it made him feel better that she could, but then, he rarely did understand how Hermione did what she did to his life and that was just fine by him.

"What with one thing and another, Tonks managed to help the Order get these rooms. They're really near to the Auror Department, aren't they? I think that the Minister did it on purpose. He only gave them to us so that he could keep an eye on us."

Hermione's lip twitched. "How terribly generous of him."

Late afternoon sunlight appeared to be slanting in through the high windows of the corridor. It bathed her hair in gold and scarlet, a veritable phoenix-feather halo about her face. Ron wondered if he'd ever live it down if he admitted, even to himself, that it felt like she was raising him up, out of the ashes that he'd been living in, and up to the light where he wanted to belong.

"Hermione, everyone's acting like the Minister is. They're scared." Ron tried to remind her. He didn't want to steal the smile from her lips and drag her into the shadows of uncertainty with him, but he needed to know that she understood how much things had changed since she'd been asleep. He needed to know that she would recognise what they were up against in their quest to cure Voldemort's contamination and how difficult it would be to get the help that they needed, so that she could deal with it. Deal with everything: the soul contamination, the rumours, the mistrust. He needed to be saved by her.

"It's just like everything's gotten out of control around here. First it was Malfoy. He took the Fringe. Then the Dark Right appeared. The next thing you know Harry's disappeared, along with people we know. People that were in the DA with us. And that's pretty damn unnerving when you consider how vital we were in the last war."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully, then asked, "Who are the Dark Right?"

"Oh, I forgot. You must have already been in the, er, that is to say, you-"

"The coma."

"Yes." When would that become easier to say, let along think about? And when would he stop being such a babbling idiot? At least he wasn't still serenading her.

Hermione was watching him with an amused look about her face when he finally realised that he'd been standing there staring into space. "Er." Where was he? "Oh. You were in a coma. And then, then it became relevant."

"Okay..."

Ron flushed. He thought it might help slightly if Hermione moved out of that particular beam of light and went and stood somewhere more... down to earth. Maybe then he'd stop making a fool out of himself. He strove to act more professionally. "You know that the Order used members of the DA for ages. And then, when Malfoy decided to come and support our cause and brought all of his cronies over with him, no one wanted to be associated with them? And we used to call them the Fringe, just so that everyone would know that they weren't actually with us?" Looking back it seemed like a rather childish and pointless task. Everyone knew who supported what.

"Actually," Hermione interjected delicately, "I seem to recall you referring to them as 'those bloody gits'. Didn't you ever make that stick?"

Ron smiled wryly. "I'm afraid not. It was a bit too much of a mouthful.

"So anyway. The war ended. You may have noticed that." He chanced a cheeky grin at his lover. "After the end there was just us. That is, the Order, the Ministry, and so on. And by that point, we were all more or less in agreement. I remember just how unbending and fucking annoying the Ministry was at the start of the war. All their stupid edicts and that idiotic denial thing that they had going on."

"I remember, Ron. I was there, remember?"

"Just give me a minute. I'm getting there." It was nice to be able to tell Hermione things every once in a while, and here she was, ruining it. "So you also remember that they were getting better just before you were attacked? But you'd never guess how well everyone was cooperating by the end of the war. You should have seen it, Hermione. It was amazing. There were huge talks and they actually listened to us. Well, Harry mostly, but me too, because I was helping with strategy. They made Harry an official War Mage, did you know? That's dead rare! The last one was back in the fight against Grindelwald. Of course, he went off and got himself killed, didn't he...

"But anyway, the point is that it was going really well." It was something that he still felt proud about even now, no matter what Voldemort did to his mind. They'd followed Dumbledore's ideals. He and Harry, Luna and Susan and Neville and Ginny and everyone else - okay, maybe not quite everyone, although even Malfoy had helped in his own twisted way - had pressed for the greater unity among the fractions of light. Together they truly had been stronger.

"Of course, then there was Malfoy and his bloody Third Reich." Ron still couldn't believe that the git hadn't changed the name even when Emma Dobbs had pointed out that a Muggle monster had used it. "They went and wandered off to have their own Third Kingdom almost before You-Know-Who was dead and cold. Not that we really gave a toss. I guess that after having a Dark Lord kicking about, a bunch of dissatisfied teenagers just didn't seem that scary. We just thought it showed how dumb they were, leaving when everything was good."

He ignored his love's amused look. No one at the time had wanted to remember that Malfoy had single-handedly concocted a plan that resulted in the death of the most powerful light wizard that the UK had seen that century. Perhaps they should have all known that he was up to something.

"What happened then?" asked Hermione.

"Well, you know how it is. People hear that the danger's gone and start coming back from abroad. It was almost amusing how many people claimed to have just incidentally been travelling through Europe visiting friends and relatives while there was a war waging in their own home country. I swear that half of them acted like they hadn't even noticed that there was a war on. Just kept pretending that it was wild, strange luck that they were out of harms way of Voldemort's rampages."

"I suppose that no one likes to admit that they're a coward, Ron. And some of them will have had young children. Or they'd never have been good at fighting anyway. They were probably best off out of the way. We were probably best off with them out of the way."

After seeing how they'd acted since returning, Ron was inclined to agree. "I suppose that's true enough. But I just fucking wish they'd stop pretending that nothing's changed." Hermione frowned at his language, but otherwise made no mention of it. Which showed that she, at least, had been changed by the war, if only a little.

Reaching a set of stained glass doors, Ron stopped. "We're here."

The doors were beautiful works of art, each sporting a brilliant backlit phoenix in flight, and intended to show the country's gratitude to those who had protected it while it had been blind to the danger. Hermione's reflection seemed to waver from lead-lined panel to lead-lined panel, but, even distorted, she looked beautiful. Eternal, even. Her long, wild mane spilling down slender shoulders and engulfing her curves.

Yes, Hermione had changed. If not in her coma, then before, in the war, when things had progressed too quickly for him to fully process them.

Ron didn't remember reaching for her, but suddenly Hermione was in his arms, her breath escaping a surprised squeak.

"What's this for?"

"I love you. That's all."

Her arms tightened around him. "I love you too, Ron. So everything will work out; just you see."

The moment was broken by a loud throat clearing. Springing away from Hermione, Ron damned Snape once and then damned him again. Firstly for not leaving with Malfoy and the rest of that lot, and the secondly for still making them act like guilty school children.

"As much as this heart-warming scene delights me, I have a meeting to attend - if you don't mind?" He gestured to the door.

Ron could feel himself flush to the roots of his hair. "Strange!" he snapped. "I don't remember you putting on so much weight that you couldn't get through one side of a double door."

"Ron!" Hermione tried to look shocked and disapproving, but her heart wasn't in it. Snape brought out the worst in everyone.

However, Hermione did take his hand and drag him away from Snape, through the doors and into the first of the rooms beyond, effectively killing any further arguing. They remained silent until they entered a spacious meeting room and Hermione let out a brief murmur of delight. "Oh, look at the ceiling!" The ceiling was, indeed, worth a look, maybe even several. The phoenix mural had carried through into the suit of rooms and here the ceiling displayed a huge night-time panorama in which two phoenixes seemed to dance.

Seating themselves just down from the chairperson - Snape settled into a corner chair, far away from them, and as much as Ron would have liked to say that the ex-spy was avoiding them, he knew better than to flatter himself; Snape was just an antagonistic, antisocial bastard - Ron turned his attention to the doors, waiting for other people to arrive. Hermione started to take notes, apparently some description of the methods she thought were used in the construction of the ceiling.

"What happened next?" she asked after a few minutes.

"What?" He'd almost forgotten that Hermione was next to him; she was so quiet.

"What happened when everyone came back from Europe?" Hermione whispered, as more people started to file in.

"Oh, the usual. They were all really rather right wing and conservative people. You know, the type. The ones who actually do have family on the continent to go and hide with. Some of them fell in with us. A few fell in with Malfoy. Most fell in with each other. It all rather depended on their view of politics. And, of course, that Malfoy didn't seem too delighted at the prospect of being lumbered with a bunch of turncoats and liars. Ran them off pretty sharpish.

"So the nice, conservative, yet still dark lot got split into two lots: a bunch of old duffers without an ounce of honesty between them, hence forth known as the Right Dark, and Malfoy's lot. The Right Dangerous. Just in case anyone alive hasn't heard about what they did in the war." Ron rolled his eyes. Personally he thought that anyone who hadn't noticed how curse-happy that lot had been getting was probably asking for everything they got.

"And there's a Right Light?" Hermione asked, lips tilted into a smile.

Ron matched it. "Don't be daft. That would sound dumb. No, the light-leaning oops-we-were-on-holiday lot seem to have run back to their earlier friends and alliances. I suppose that they don't want to be reminded that they didn't support the winning side."

No one else had seemed to feel particularly betrayed by either the Right Dark or, as Hermione had named it, the Right Light. The later made sense, because they were good people, if cowardly, but as for the former... Ron would have liked to pretend that their friendly reception back into British Wizarding politics was entirely - rather than mostly - due to some rather hefty and well-placed donations, but he had to admit that a large chunk of the good-will was probably relief that they'd sat the war out on the side-lines and not helped Voldemort. Which perhaps made it a little hypocritical for the Right Light to have found their return so much easier considering that they'd only done the same thing.

Of course, there was Malfoy's famously shouted comment of 'yes, but you damn well didn't help us, you tossers. You left us to bleed and die' which might begin to cover the general cheated feeling that Ron got when he saw anyone who had gone and visited Switzerland. Suspected enemies sitting it out was one thing; suspected allies was actually rather a betrayal when you thought about it.

As they had sat there, the room had rapidly filled up. There were a surprising number of old faces among the new. Snape was present; he'd had half his face ripped off, but that had mostly healed by now and his long lank hair covered most of the scars. Percy was there too; a painful blast of irony. His eyes had widened momentarily when he'd spotted Ron and Hermione before he had nodded a cautions greeting. Their mum had forced a truce within the family's ranks.

Seamus waked in just as Ron had finished exchanging cautious smiles with Hagrid. At his side, Hermione was just breaking away from a hug with Lisa Turpin. She sat up very straight for a moment and Ron thought he saw the glimmer of tears before she managed a wavering smile at Seamus.

She lent sideways to hiss at Ron, "What on earth happened to Seamus?"

"Found out that his best friend sympathised with Death Eaters and was facing execution. Not that they decided to, in the end."

"Christ! But he looks..."

"Yeah. Got rather a grilling after Dean was taken in. Too close an association with dubious people."

"Must have been rough."

"Yeah. It is."

Hermione's gaze was stricken. Damnit, but he hadn't meant to make her think of Harry. Why did he have to turn every conversation into one about him and his troubles? Why couldn't he just let Hermione feel sorry for Seamus? Merlin's beard, was he really so jealous of Hermione giving anyone else attention, even if it was to say that they looked pathetic?

Gentle hands on his arms brought Ron back to reality. Hermione was gazing intently up at him, and now there definitely was a sheen of tears in her eyes. "Don't think about him, Ron." For a moment he thought she was talking about Seamus, which didn't really make sense. "Just don't think about him. I didn't mean to remind you, but you know how I get. I've just got to have the answers to everything, and sometimes I just don't see that it's upsetting to other people. I'm really sorry."

Oh, she thought he was thinking about Harry.

Which he had been. Sort of.

And anyway, what she'd said wasn't really right at all. Hermione always saw more clearly than anyone else that Ron knew. She never used to cry like this either. But Ron decided that it took a better man than he to correct the woman he loved when they looked at you like Hermione was looking at him then. He felt far too lucky.

Taking her small hands in his, Ron kissed their backs. "I won't think about him anymore, Hermione. We'll just sit through the meeting to get up to date with what's going on and then go home to bed. We can worry about Harry and all of this mess tomorrow." That was how Hermione always coped: she compartmentalised everything and tied it up with plans. Study plans, holiday plans, war plans - she controlled them all with ease.

And right now she was smiling, some of her sorrow lightened. "I can see that some of my teaching stuck."

"Just a little." He offered her a lopsided grin. "And we haven't done NEWTs yet. Think about how much more you'll get to boss me about. It'll be your biggest test."

"I think you mean your biggest test, Ron."

"Nope. If it was left up to me, I'd happily drop out just like George and Fred." It'd be easy. He just had to figure out what he was going to do afterwards...

"You're planning to be just like those two? If they weren't so successful, I think Molly would have strangled them just for setting such a bad example. They really have managed to make it all look too easy, leaving with just OWLS. Seriously, Ron, what would you do if you left school?"

There were times - times very like this one - when Ron thought that whoever it was that looked into Hermione's family history had definitely missed a thing or two. There had to have been some sort of telepathic being back in the mists of time. "Maybe flying car sales."

Hermione looked sceptical. "That's not quite how I expected the soul of Voldemort to manifest, but it doesn't sound like the Ronald Weasley I know speaking either."

He'd lost his breath laughing before he realised that Hermione was the first person to have joked about his current situation.

It was a short-lived amusement. Kingsley killed the mood soon enough.

After a brief welcome to Hermione, he plunged straight into the evening's big debate: What exactly was to be done about Harry J. Potter...