magnolia ~ h. potter

forty

[ CHAPTER 40 ]

A FAMILIAR FACE

[ I'm gonna write it in stone

That you were my home

My home ]

____________________

"YOU JUST DISSAPARATED?"

Ron looked bashful. On Christmas morning, they had all gathered in the living room, where Violetta and Fred had managed to light a small fire in the fireplace and Emily and Ginny had spent the early morning decorating the living room with lights and tinsel they had found in a box in the attic. Kate had bewitched some candles to float around, similar to the way they used to at Hogwarts. 

They had spent the morning gathered in the living room, sitting around the small fireplace in which bright green flames (the color had been Ginny's idea) danced around. Ron had been telling them about how he had ended up in Hogsmeade.

"I was seeing red. . . The horcrux feltlike it was magnifiying my anger to 100, it was blinding,"

Emily's eyes locked with his, and she looked borderline angry. "I don't care how angry you are, Ron, you don't leave your friends behind,"

"And after that?" Ginny asked hastily, knowing full well both Ron and Emily could be volatile and not wanting it to escalate to an argument.

"After that. . . well, I disapparated straight into a band of Snatchers," he concluded.

"A band of what?" Ginny asked with a frown, but Emily, Kate and Violetta knew what he meant. They had received several muggle-born refugees hiding from snatchers.

"They're gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there's a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured," Kate enlightened her.

Ron nodded. "I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited, thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to the Ministry."

"What did you say to them?" Violetta asked, from where she was sat on the floor leaning against Fred's legs.

"Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of."

"And they believed that?"

"They weren't the brightest. Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn't do it so well, Splinched myself again" — Ron held up his right hand to show two missing fingernails— "and I came out miles from where we were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank where we'd been . . . they'd gone."

"I spent weeks looking around for them, avoiding Snatchers. I was with Bill and Fleur for a bit, at Shell Cottage,"

Emily had heard of it. For extra precaution, not all Order members really knew the exact addresses of the safe houses, only those using them and the secret-keepers.

"And then I took off again. They suggested Hogsmeade because Aberforth was here. . . Bill was anxious to see how you were Gin, and they thought maybe Harry had come here. And then I ran into Emily. . ."