Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ron’s brand new prefect badge was a little thing, barely bigger than a sickle. As he walked, Ron traced the curled lion on the badge with his thumb, feeling every gold-edged ridge. Prefect. That’s him.

The moon above him was new and clouded, making the London streets seem even gloomier. He clenched the badge tight, almost wishing that if he squeezed hard enough, it’d get crushed to dust.

Maybe the walk wasn’t working,

Ron thought, bitter. He had been utterly incapable of sleep, until he finally gave up at two in the morning to get out and take a walk. It worked more often than not at the Burrow. He looked up again, taking a deep breath to calm himself down, then scrunched his nose. Even the London air was different from the air back home. Darker and smokier about summed it up. It probably also summed up all the differences between Grimmauld Place and the Burrow: darker. Gloomier. Sadder.

Ron felt the prefect badge again and similarly found it impossible to be happy about it. It didn’t really feel like it was his. It felt like it was Harry’s.

Maybe a Ron of a few years ago would’ve been ecstatic about making prefect—after all, being prefect meant that he was skilled, liked, accomplished, worthy of standing next to his brothers. However, Ron couldn’t help but suspect that he didn't get this prefect badge for any of those reasons; rather, he had it because he was Harry Potter’s best friend. So where did that leave him?

Ron groaned and blinked his bleary eyes, miserable. That was the 2AM emptiness settling in.

He really couldn’t be thinking like this; Ron’s own feelings aside, Harry definitely didn’t deserve any jealousy. He had an entire dark wizard hellbent on killing him, for Merlin’s sake. Harry already had enough on his plate without Ron’s drama. Though Harry has forgiven Ron for how much of a prat he was during the Triwizard Tournament. Ron chuckled, bitter; he was being so petty right now.

And that was all there was to it. Ron hung his head, scrubbing his eyes. Maybe he’d be tired enough to sleep now.

He had turned around when a noise echoed out of the alley next to him, making him freeze.

There was faint sobbing coming from inside the alley.

He jerked back towards the main road and blanched when there was no one else in sight. He looked back towards the alley. Someone was in there. Should he get help? How do muggles do it when they want-

Clang

.

The sobbing stopped. Suddenly, Ron felt something unnatural settle into the air around him, cold and cloying. Petrified, he slowly turned to look over his shoulder, where his heel had rammed directly into a metal trashcan.

He looked up again just in time to see a blur in the air before a form slammed into him like the Whomping Willow, sending his whole body flying into the trashcan. Time seemed to dilate as the trashcan and its lid clattered away. He spasmed and gasped to scream, only for a hand to clamp his mouth shut.

Ron looked up into desperate, puffy eyes that were a hair away from insanity. He had just enough presence of mind to trace the tear tracks to a pair of parted bloodstained lips before teeth were upon him.

“Mmmmph!” he screamed into the other’s hand, thrashing as what felt like two hot irons were pressed into the side of his neck. “Mmmmpf-”

Something snapped.

As blood slid down Ron’s neck, something cold and slimy slid in. Black stars burst across his vision and he couldn’t move, like he was under a Full-Body-Bind curse. As his blood spurted out, the cold continued to pour in, crawling and sinking into his sinews, his veins.

He stared down at a bottomless maw. It was lined with rows of jagged teeth, some layered over each other, some embedded into raw gum.

The hand over his mouth cracked and frayed away into dust. His addled mind watched, fascinated by how the decay spread across his attacker and reduced them to nothing.

He didn’t remember jumping, but he was falling down the maw nonetheless. The teeth were everywhere, glancing past him, cutting him open again and again.

He felt like he was sleeping, yet he saw the trashcan vividly knocked down, lying about a meter away from him. None of his thoughts were sticking in his head except panic and pain and need to get home, need to tell someone.

Slimy hands reached out from their hiding spots within the shadows and teeth, ripping at him. He was torn apart, ripped open. Though his body always stitched itself back together, the teeth and hands would ruin him again.

By the time he reached 12 Grimmauld Place, he had passed out almost half a dozen times. Even the reason he was so desperate to get here had become murky. He didn’t really remember going into the house, finding his way to his room, but he does remember his soft, inviting bed.

When will I stop falling? He asked, getting torn apart again and again.

Something poked at him. Voices started swimming in and out of his head.

“Ron? It’s time to wake u-”

“Oh, look dear, he’s burning up-”

“A fever?”

“Let him rest.”

And the voices faded again.

Little did he know, he would never stop falling, for the maw of Hunger was bottomless, endless, eternal.

Chapter Text

Ron felt the pain before he even opened his eyes.

He hissed, screwing his eyes shut even tighter while touching his forehead. Everything hurt. His head was absolutely killing him, and his legs were sore like he had run for hours. Opening his eyes made it even worse, because the sun was already shining merrily through the window, way too bright.

What time was it? Speaking of which, what even happened last night?

He remembered the sleeplessness, then going out for a walk… then coming back, utterly exhausted. Everything in between was completely indistinct. Ron tried to swing his legs out of bed, shivering a little. It was cold out here. He looked down and groaned. He had slept in the same clothes he wore outside, and now everything was crumpled.

After swapping his clothes out, he finally made his way down the stairs, still blinking the sun out of his eyes.

“Ron!” Ron jumped and whipped around to see Molly, who looked taken aback. “Dear, when did you get out of bed?”

“Just now, Mum,” Ron mumbled as Molly bustled over to feel his temperature.

“Oh!” she said, pleasantly surprised, “your fever’s gone down.”

“Yeah, I feel alright. Only a bit peaked, ‘is all.”

“Well, if you’re sure. If you still need a chilling potion, let me know.” Molly mused. “Oh! You must want something to eat as well, you slept past three—”

He slept past three?! “Merlin, why didn’t you wake me up!” Ron groaned. “I slept past three?”

“If you slept that long, you must’ve needed it. I’ll make you something quickly—”

“Aw, you don’t need to, Mum.” Ron frowned. “I’m not that hungry, actually.”

“Nonsense!” Molly insisted, “you’ve been sleeping for the entire day, of course you’re hungry. I’ll make you a sandwich, I think there’s still a bit of corned beef left…”

“No, it’s really okay, Mum,” Ron said, blanching at the mention of corned beef. “I’m really not hungry. I’ll make something for myself later.”

Molly scrutinized Ron’s face, as if looking for any trace of hunger or lies. “Well, if you’re sure,” she murmured, “it’s really nothing for me if I was to make something—”

“Mum, I’m fine!” Rom groaned, swatting her hands away lightly, “I’m really not hungry right now, I’ll tell you when I am.”

After some more back and forth, Ron finally fended off his Mum. He sat down in the kitchen, kneading the bridge of his nose. The soreness from earlier was still thrumming, but without the sun in his face, his head felt a little better. He poured himself a glass of water, raising it to his lips. Some strange sickness! Maybe he got lucky with a weak bug—

He spat the water right out of his mouth. What the bloodly hell did he just have?

Looking down at his glass in disbelief, he tried it again, only for the water to taste just as bad as it did the first time, perhaps even moreso. It felt like liquified ash, without any of the smoky homeness of the warm fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. Just bitter dust.

Ron peered at the sink, not even sure what he was looking for. The water was fine before, right?

His memories chose this moment to give him a kick in the chest.

Gasping, he saw that night, the new moon, the alley. Blood. Blood and teeth.

He screwed his eyes shut against the pain, more and more of it coming back. He felt the two hot irons pressing into the spot at the side of his neck, the way he got pounced before he could even react. Most damning, he remembered the way his attacker turned to dust. It couldn’t be. There was no way. Ron scrambled to the cupboard, almost tripping over his own legs, and snatched out a slice of bread. He shoved it into his mouth, only to spit it back out again. It tasted exactly the same as the water: like ashes. A grape, an apple: ashes, ashes.

He hurled all of the food into the trashcan. After all, it must’ve all rotted. That was the only explanation. He crouched down, gripping the sides of his head, and the chill that’s followed him since he got out of bed became more pervasive and real.

Maybe it’s not the weather that’s cold,

his traitorous mind supplied, maybe it’s you .

Perhaps Ron would understand being bitten by a vampire, but also being cursed by one? That wasn’t supposed to happen to people like him! When the ministry captures vampires, they don’t imprison and execute them, they don’t use that word. They imprison and euthanize them.

Ron shakily stood up, thoughts in turmoil. Vampires had a healing factor, right? His eyes slid to the knife rack. There was only one way to be sure.

He took a small fruit knife and positioned it over his forearm, trying to brace himself. He’s had way worse than a small cut in quidditch anyway! Yet, no matter how much he told himself to just do it and get it over with, his hand was frozen. What if he didn’t get the answer he wanted?

“Ron?”

Ron yanked the knife away from him, whipping around to see Harry at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Harry!” he gasped, nervously laughing, “What are you doing here?”

“‘Dunno,” Harry answered, shrugging. “I was a little hungry. What about you?”

Ron’s eyes darted between his hands and the knife. “I… was just about to cut up an apple” What if Harry looked at him a bit more and just knew? Could that happen? “...D’you want to share one?”

“Sure.”

The silence between them stretched as Ron took another apple, washed it, and cut it into halves with the same fruit knife he was planning on mutilating himself with. Harry leaned against the kitchen counter, broodily staring into the distance, lost in his own thoughts.

Ron placed the two halves of the apple onto the counter, and Harry gratefully took one, biting into it. Ron stared at his half, the phantom aftertaste of ash still in his throat. Harry continued eating his half with no problem. Ron slowly moved to hold the apple, wanting to just try it, just a nibble, just to make sure, but his hand seemed stuck.

“Have you noticed?” Harry started. “Every year is crazier than the last.”

Ron paused, slightly off kilter. He remembered Quriell, then the Chamber of Secrets, then Sirius, then the Triwizard Tournament, then this year, with the dementors and the expulsion. Would you look at that. Harry had a point.

“Yeah,” Ron chuckled. “We’re sort of magnets for trouble, aren’t we?”

Harry frowned, and a shadow fell over his face. “Magnets for mortal peril, more like.”

“Hey—” Ron tried to protest.

“It’s going to be even more dangerous this year, what with Voldemort—” Ron flinched, “—being back, and Dumbledore won’t even tell me anything! I already got attacked by dementors! What if we all end up bloody dead, huh? What about that? Did he think about that before deciding to just keep all of us in the dark!?”

Ron was taken aback. Harry seemed to immediately regret his outburst. When he looked up fearfully at Ron from behind his bird’s nest hair, his eyes were crammed to the brim with fear and hopeless frustration.

“Sorry,” Harry whispered, shrinking into himself, and Ron suddenly saw that night in the summer of second year: the barred windows, and the small boy behind them.

Ron thought about everything that had happened, like, you know, the return of You-Know-Who, and Harry really wasn’t wrong. Given the enormity of what was happening around them, their world was inexcusably small.

“Well, I’m not going to lie and say that I think you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” Ron said, completely blunt, making Harry look at him in disbelief. Ron smiled.

“W-what?”

“I trust your instincts,” Ron said. “You’ve been through a lot, mate. Well, we all have, but you helped us through it. So how could I not trust you? I didn’t trust you during the tournament, and look where that got me.”

Harry ducked his head, abashed, and Ron nudged him in the shoulder lightly. “So trust us back that no matter what happens, mate, we’re all in it together, right?” Ron finished, “Me, Hermione, my family, we’ve got your back, even if the Order isn’t letting us in on most of their plans.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, a small, but genuine smile on his face. “That means a lot.”

And Ron decided then and there that no one could ever know about even the possibility that he had been cursed. Harry needed them, and Ron would not bring the Ministry to their doorstep.

—

By dinner, Ron was still not hungry. He staved off his mum’s protests that he wasn’t eating enough with some excuse about having too big a snack and retreated to his room, where his half of the apple from him and Harry’s talk was still sitting on the nightstand next to his bed. His eyes had drifted to it countless times as he did his summer homework, but even as evening came and passed, it still sat there, untested, unbitten.

The more he stewed and thought about it, the more he convinced himself that he had only been bitten and not cursed. After all, the pervasive chills wracking his body and the sun-induced headaches could just be lingering sickness. He wasn’t thirsting for blood. He didn’t feel particularly enhanced, as vampires were often described to be; his sense of hearing seemed unchanged, and his sense of smell was as dull as ever.

He felt like… well, he felt like Ron.

So maybe everything was still alright.

The next day, Ron escaped breakfast again. The various members of the Weasley family were hilariously split between being either extremely early risers or extremely late risers, and with the added chaos of Hermione, Harry, Sirius, and whomever happened to be at the base at the time, Molly had resigned to simply making a portion of food for everyone, wrapped with a heating charm, to claim sometime before noon. Lunch was accordingly scattered and served in the same manner. With increasingly frequent Order meetings, even dinner had become irregular. In the end, Ron simply got away with just not taking any food.

However, when Ron woke up on the third day after that night, his nailbeds were turning pale blue and he was beginning to feel a little peckish. He had eyed the apple half that was still on his nightstand (now looking appropriately browned), but in the end he had convinced himself that he wanted something chilled, so the apple simply wouldn't do. Absolutely nothing was wrong about this.

During him and Harry’s summer homework cram session, he kept on smelling something strange in the air.

“Ron! Are you listening?” Ron flinched and turned to a miffed Hermione. They were sitting on Hermione’s bed, reviewing for a Transfiguration essay. Though Hermione and Harry were in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, Ron was comparatively bundled up in a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. The getup had drawn some strange looks, but no comments yet. After all, it was just about time for the weather to start cooling down again. Ron looked down at the book between them, Hermione’s impatient finger tapping at a section about different forms of the Fundamental Equation of Transfiguration. Gulping, he tried reading the first sentence, and was immediately lost.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, sheepish. “I keep on smelling something strange. Bit distracting.”

Hermione sniffed the air experimentally. “I don’t smell anything,” she said.

“I dunno, Hermione. I think I’ve started smelling ink my sleep,” Harry joked from the floor next to the bed, looking up from his inky draft parchment. Ron snorted.

“Boys,” Hermione snapped, “We’re back at Hogwarts in a week and a half! Let’s try to at least get this done before the Diagon trip.”

“But that’s in four days!” Ron groaned.

“So you better start reading,” Hermione sniped. Ron groaned again. Momentarily, he tried to seek out that smell again, somewhere between perfume and metal-

“Ron!”

He hurried back to reading.

—

The smell was only a precursor to what was to come.

On the remaining days leading up to the Diagon trip, Ron’s peckishness evolved into moderate hunger. Along with the hunger, the smell in the air began to define itself: metallic and savory, blended with some notes of sweetness. While he was by himself, the smell was faint. With others, it cloyed and swirled like a fog.

Deep in denial, Ron put on his usual smile and hotly ignored the fact that the smell was absolutely mouthwatering.

The day before the Diagon trip, the essays were being revised. As such, Ron was still obligated to be crammed into a room with Harry, Hermione, and the smell all the time. The sun was giving him a migraine. He was doing his best to breathe through his mouth and not his nose, but sometimes, a particularly strong wave of it would waft over and make him almost start drooling.

“Ron!” Hermione snapped, the third time Ron failed to answer one of her questions.

“What?” Ron startled.

“What is up with you today?” Hermione asked, exasperated. “Are you tired? Are you sick? What?”

“Yeah, you’ve been haggard since yesterday,” Harry said, twisting from his essay to look at Ron.

Ron flinched at that statement. “I do?” If possible, Ron felt even colder than he already was. Was it that obvious? If Harry could tell something was wrong with him, who’s to say that the rest of his family won’t? Another wave of the smell wafted over again, almost forcing another cough, and Ron suddenly didn’t want to be here anymore.

He slammed his quill back into the inkpot on the bed. “I’m done,” he announced, lying.

“You are?” Hermione exclaimed.

Ron quickly stood up and beelined for the door. He was halfway to his own room when Harry caught up with him and grabbed his wrist.

“Ron,” Harry started, “is this because of what I said a few days ago? I didn’t mean to worry you like that, I’m just always going on about the worst possible thing that could happen—”

“No, you don’t have anything to do with it,” Ron hurriedly said.

“Are you sure?”

“Trust your instincts, Harry,” Ron reassured. There was a pause as Harry looked at him, suspicious. Ron searched for an excuse. “I think I’m actually coming down with something.”

“Really?” Harry said, eyes widening, “maybe you should get some potions from your mom then—”

“It’s fine!” Ron whined. “It’s nothing. It’ll go away once I sleep a bit.”

“If you’re sure,” Harry murmured. He suddenly jolted. “Hey, does that mean you lied to Hermione about finishing?”

After shushing Harry aggressively, Ron finally sent him off to cover for him and retreated to his own room. Ron locked the door and pressed up against it, ever so cold. Footsteps, creaking, voices, and whispers from all over the house were slithering into his range of hearing, like the walls were thinner than before. Even though his curtains were drawn, it all still seemed too bright.

He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, perhaps trying to get at the ever-present tangled nest of pain in his head. Slowly, he shifted his shallow breaths back into full ones. Keep breathing. The air was so sweet, and just the smell of it managed to cool the heat behind his forehead. Licking his lips, he breathed in deeper, trying not to cry.

—

The sun was positively glamorous on the day of the Diagon trip. As soon as they arrived through the floo, Ron immediately felt the light stabbing into his head, reigniting his migraine and somehow making him hungrier.

“Everyone, we’re stopping at the bookstore first!” Molly announced from ahead of him.

Ron staggered into the alley proper, and suddenly got bludgeoned in the face with the full force of a whole alley’s worth of cloying air.

He burst into violent coughing to try to get it out of his nose, doubling over.

“Ron! Are you alright?” Molly exclaimed, turning around and rushing to Ron’s side.

With the sun beating down on him and the overwhelming mouthwatering smell, Ron finally realized just how hungry he was.

“He’s been looking a little under the weather all week, Mrs. Weasley,” Hermione chimed in.

“If you weren’t feeling well, why’d you agree to come?” Fred grumbled.

A cold pit was yawning open in his stomach, and the sensation sent a full-body shudder wracking through him. The Diagon Alley school shopping crowds stormed past them, feet thundering and voices deafening. The freezing hunger cut through him, leaving him trembling with sick anticipation. He bit his tongue until he could straighten up without getting vertigo. When he looked into the faces of everyone, all he could see was how rosy they were, taunting him. If he just reached over, just tore, just bit down into skin, he wouldn’t have to deal with this euphoric smell and he’d have the actual thing—

Focus!

He screamed at himself, everyone’s watching!

“Maybe I am coming down with something,” he said, voice hoarse, “but it’s nothing too bad, and I can still shop.”

“Ron, are you sure?” Molly fretted, feeling his temperature and frowning at the lack of fever.

“Mum, it’s fine,” Ron forced out, his voice somehow managing to remain steady. “I’ll rest when I get back.”

“You owe him a broom, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry pointed out.

“Oh, alright,” Molly said, resigned. “But it’s straight to bed when we get back, alright?” Ron gave her the happiest smile that he could, tucking his trembling hands in his pockets.

As the books were bought and the broomstick picked out, the sun seemed to only get brighter. Ron trailed after everyone else, his gaze constantly sticking to necks before he wrenched it away. He was almost glad when they ducked into Madam Malkin's, out of the sun again. While Molly fretted over hair products for Hermione, Ginny spent most of her time shoving hats onto Ron, each one sillier than the last. Ron could only keep breathing through his mouth while trying not to salivate at her proximity.

"I didn't know the wizarding world had caps," Hermione spoke up, startling Ron out of his reverie. Molly, Hermione, and Madam Malkin herself were back, and Hermione had about five new bottles in her arms.

"That's what this is called?" Ginny clarified, pointing at the strangely brimmed hat on Ron’s head, "a cap?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say they're very common here," Madam Malkin admitted, "They're still quite muggle. But I do love new things, and there’s a certain charm to them. Three knuts a piece.”

“It looks good on you, dear. Cheap too,” Molly told Ron, smiling.

Ron plucked the cap from his head to actually look at it. It was pine green, and had only a frontal brim, unlike the full brim of the classic witch’s hat, which was more formal anyway. He put it back on and looked in the mirror mounted on the wall. He had to admit that it looked pretty decent, paired with his nape-length red hair.

More importantly—perhaps it would keep the sun out of his face?

“Let’s get one,” he told Molly, an almost manic glint in his eye.

—

It was 2 AM again, and Ron couldn’t fall asleep.

The situation was ironic in a bitter way, because that was where all of this started, wasn’t it? The after-midnight walk through the dark, empty streets of London.

After the trip, he’d been immediately banished to bed rest by Molly, who had felt bad enough for not letting him fully recover. It had been three days since then, and Ron wasn’t getting better.

He pretended to be asleep whenever Molly visited, letting her medicinal potions and glasses of water accumulate until he got up to dump them in the middle of the night. He let Harry and Hermione in to chatter at him until his hunger grew so all-consuming, he couldn’t help but salivate whenever someone got too close.

Sleep didn’t even help, because the smell had filtered into his dreams. His nights were feverish tangles of wishes and waking dreams, where he imagined getting out of bed, following that heavenly smell, and walking towards someone else’s room. He’d find them in bed, faceless and red, and his jaws would hover closer and closer to their neck until he woke up in his own bed again, breathless, drooling, and exhilarated. Sometimes, he would see the eyes of his alley attacker hovering in the shadows of the room, completely insane, and he’d wonder how much he’d become its reflection.

One time, he woke while dreaming of walking out of his room, only to find his body actually walking out of his room. The door remained locked after that.

Completely awake, he could only lie still as he felt the numbness of hunger creep over his shaking limbs, listening to the rest of the house snore away. Every single part of his body was consumed and twisted to chase out food, imbued with sheer, desperate strength.

Suddenly delirious, Ron got up and pasted himself against his door, writhing to get rid of the itch in his marrow. They were right outside. Not even far. Skin’s much easier to break than people seem to think, judging by his alleyway experience. Maybe he could go out and just… get one tiny bite! Then everything would finally stop itching and burning, it would even taste good, so good—

No.

Ron flinched the thoughts away, his nails gouging claw marks into the door. His body, seething with want, was trapped in this room by his own mind, and no matter how much this hunger battered against him, he’d keep it trapped as long as he possibly could.

—

On the eve of the day the Hogwarts Express was due to leave, Ron woke up in the evening, feeling fine.

Wait, what?

He scrambled out of bed, onto his feet.

He didn’t feel hungry.

The smell and sounds were muted, and he breathed in air that was mind-shatteringly clear. He was still freezing, and the sun still hurt, annoyingly reminding him that none of this was a dream, but maybe he’d weathered the worst of it. Maybe nothing else was going to happen?

He burst out his door and almost tumbled down the stairs before righting himself bursting through Hermione’s open door.

“Guess what?” he trilled, startling her from her packing. Ginny perked up from the floor of Hermione’s room.

“Ron!” Hermione exclaimed.

“Shouldn’t you still be resting?” Ginny asked, one eyebrow raised, “you looked pretty out of it earlier.”

“I just woke up, and now I feel right as rain!” Ron declared. “Just in time for tomorrow!”

“Finally!” Ginny laughed. “Come on,” she said, ushering Ron out the door, “let’s go tell Mum!”

Molly had evidently just got out of an Order meeting, judging by the dispersing Order members leaving through the door, but she was nonetheless overjoyed when she saw him.

“Oh, you’re finally up!” she fussed, pinching Ron’s cheeks and pecking him on the forehead. “You’re just in time for Hogwarts, really, I was really getting worried that you wouldn’t be feeling better before you’re all set to leave, everyone’s started packing—”

Fred suddenly appeared in front of them with a CRACK. “You can’t fault him, Mum,” Fred said, placing a very heartfelt hand on his chest, “he’s the second youngest and the most fragile. He can’t even use magic outside of Hogwarts. Tragic, that is.”

“Hey, so what does that make me?” Ginny asked, faux offended.

“Fred, finish your sweeping!” Molly yelled at him.

“Well, glad to see that nothing changed in my absence,” Ron sniped.

“You wish it could!” Fred snickered, bopping him on the nose before disappearing again with another CRACK.

“Just they wait,” Ginny grumbled. and Ron tucked his hands in his pockets, trying to feel happy. He was up, he was in the thick of everything, and the hunger was gone.

So why did it feel like something terrible was looming over his head?

—

“Ron! Harry!” Molly yelled from downstairs, “Hurry up!”

Harry started brushing his teeth more furiously than before as Ron attacked the knot in his hair harder than before.

“I can’t believe you left all your packing until today again!” Molly was hollering, “You get down here in less than 5 minutes or else!”

“Tick tock!” Fred teased as he and George passed their doorway, levitating two trunks behind them.

Harry spat and rinsed, bundling out of the bathroom. “Good luck,” he said, looking back at Ron sympathetically.

“Yeah, get out of here!” Ron groaned back, and the door shut. Ron slammed the comb down and put his green cap on, only for his arm to spasm and jolt.

He gasped at the sudden numbness and looked down at his right arm. As he twitched it, it erupted into pins and needles like it had fallen asleep. He hissed. What on earth?

Something deep and primal shuddered through him, a mental yearning for something to eat that echoed his aches and itches from just the day before yesterday. The emotion was desperate, curling, and still right in the forefront of his mind, quivering as his numb arm shook.

With a sudden alacrity, Ron realized that the reason he stopped feeling the hunger was because he was too hungry to be hungry.

Desperately, he shook his arm again, only for it to feel more leaden than it had seconds ago.

“RON!”

Terrified, he abandoned the bathroom and raced back into his room to try to lift his trunk. When he pressed his numb hand to it, the hand seemed to bulge like it was being stuffed with cotton and refused to exert any force on the trunk. Panic twisted into his lungs. How was he going to keep this from everyone? What in the bloody hell was he supposed to do now?

Ron took a few deep breaths. First things first: get down there!

He lifted the trunk with his remaining arm and winced at the strain, finally racing down the stairs with everyone else. The space was teeming with order members.

“Ronald Weasley, what in Merlin’s name took you so long! The Order cars have been here all morning!” Molly snatched the trunk away from Ron and immediately ran outside. Ron gulped as she immediately rammed three others out of her way to load his trunk.

“We’re with Ginny and George,” Arthur said, walking up to him. He patted him on his numb shoulder, making him jolt, but Arthur didn’t notice. “Nice hat, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Ron croaked.

20 minutes behind schedule, all the cars finally departed. Through Ginny’s final homework dash and George flicking the brim of his cap at least once every 5 minutes, Ron steadily grew more panicked as both his arms eventually turned numb, then lost all sensation.

He suffered through an entire crisis as Ginny and George carried their own trunks out of the car trunk, but was thankfully saved by Arthur, “I’ll carry it Ron, don’t worry—”. They met up with all the others, and Hermione was happy to talk his ear off about prefect duties, none of which registered with him.

“—and we’ll have to get to the prefect compartment immediately—” Hermione was saying, when a creeping, tingling sensation suddenly seized Ron’s legs. Ron completely froze.

Distantly, he felt Sirius in his doggy form nudging him. What was he pretending for? Why did he bother going through all of this if he would’ve just crumpled down walking anyway?

His body was wrenched around to face Hermione. Harry, and even Sirius were looking at him, worried. “Ron, are you okay?” she asked cautiously. Belatedly, Ron noticed that her hand was on his shoulder. Funny, that he hadn’t felt it at all.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he blurted, and ran.

“Ron, what—”

“Hey!”

He ran into a crowd of people, pushing people out of his way as spots began to wink in and out of his vision. In a blur, he was outside the station, on the streets of London, thickets of people with suitcases all rushing past him. The sun was still too bright, always too bright even through his cap, so he ran into the darkness of an alley. There, his legs finally went numb under him, sending him crashing to the grimy concrete under him.

He burst into shrieks of laughter. His thoughts were all whorling around in his brain like soup. The sun blinded him, his heart wasn’t beating, and human blood smelled like the best thing he would ever have. What did he think this was, the flu?

The Hunger had taken his appetite, then his will, then his health, then his limbs. Somehow, he knew deep down that if couldn’t sate the Hunger now, it would take his mind and hunt for itself, and then it would all be very out of his hands.

Footsteps.

His head snapped up, almost involuntary. A muggle with a star-studded cap and an official looking coat had walked into the alley. All his limbs strained, and suddenly, that muggle and the blood thrumming through his veins became Ron’s entire world.

“Don’t come any closer,” Ron whispered, but the muggle just narrowed his eyes, his gaze darting to Ron’s shaking body and dilated eyes.

“Alright boy, hand the dope over.”

“Don’t,” Ron hissed, nails gouging into the concrete beneath him.

The muggle huffed and took another step towards him.

Ron lunged.

He bowled the older muggle over, eliciting a roar.

“Get off me, you little—”

He bit down on the muggle’s neck. Like his body knew what was coming, it worked together in perfect fluidity and clamped the muggle’s mouth shut before he could scream. Ron’s dull teeth weren’t piercing deep enough, so Ron just bit harder.

Blood.

It flooded into his mouth, like hot chocolate, like iron, like honey, like tea, like everything he thought tasted good but yet like nothing he’s ever had. His eyes drifted shut in ecstasy. A well of magic seemed to rise up in him as he drank, circulating through his veins. It chased away the pins and needles and cured his atrophy. He couldn’t stop himself from drinking even after he stopped feeling the aching need in his stomach. Just a bit more, just one more gulp—

Something suddenly pushed against his gums, gently pulsing behind his skull.

Pass it along.

Ron’s eyes snapped open again. He yanked his teeth from the unconscious muggle, almost yanking out a chunk of his shoulder, and the suggestion instantly fizzled away.

Reality slammed back into him like a stunner. He slowly looked down at his soft hands, still as pale as ever, but no longer shaking. His hearing was dimmed, and he couldn’t even smell the blood like he could before. He felt like… just Ron, again.

Ron looked back behind him, and his green cap was still on the ground, having flown off when he… attacked. He looked back down at the muggle and knew he wasn’t dead because his wound was already knitting itself together. That’s right, he thought faintly, vampire spit is supposed to be a healing agent.

There was no denying it anymore.

He was a vampire.

Chapter Text

There had never been a time when Ron Weasley wasn’t hungry.

Molly still remembered the horrible two months during which she had to breastfeed Ron and Ginny at the same time. Ron’s teeth were coming in, and unlike any of the Weasleys before him, Ron would wail and bite when Molly tried to unlatch him, leaving Molly swollen and bleeding. Thus, Molly most certainly fed Ginny more than she did Ron. More food, more clothing, more cooing, more affection. Mealtimes became nightmarish as toddler Ron screamed for more food over Fred and George’s food fights.

After Ron got old enough to understand that their family wasn’t particularly well off, he stopped crying and settled for what he was given. Christmas quickly became his favorite holiday, only partly because of the presents, and mostly because of the Christmas feast. Slowly, he got so used to being hungry that he stopped thinking about it.

But with age came the chronically crushing necrosis of being the sixth son.

Bill was head boy and Quidditch captain. Charlie was suave and worked with dragons. Percy was book smart (albeit only when he wasn’t being an utter prat and disowning his family), and the twins were a force of nature. The novelty of being the youngest went to Ginny. Even at Hogwarts, the mantle of Harry Potter’s best friend floated over him like a storm cloud.

So this was what he was reduced to, picking through the scraps left for him like an emaciated dog, starving, ravenous, curled up on his bed and not being able to sleep until he convinced himself that he wasn’t as hungry as he always bloody was—

There had never been a time when Ron Weasley has been fulfilled.

—

Ron wanted to throw up.

He checked again that the door of the bathroom compartment was latched and finally slid to the floor. Nothing was right. The sun was still blinding and piercing on his skin, though his cap helped a little.

Wincing, he grabbed his cap off of his head in the dim light of the bathroom. Its rim was stained with little patches of grime, an unfortunate reminder that the events of the alley did in fact happen, and he drank blood, and the blood was inside him—

He scrambled to the toilet and retched and retched again.

Nothing came out.

He almost wanted to cry, because he knew exactly where the blood was, didn’t he? It was in his limbs and brain, keeping them running clear. It was in his muscles, bones, and veins, making him feel normal, alive. He’s laughable, utterly laughable, because the only way he could continue feeling like himself, not a grindylow sniffing at blood in the water, not a boggart hiding in the dark, not like a bloody fucking vampire, is to drink blood.

Time seemed to meld and slip around him as he slid back to the floor, holding his knees. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when something suddenly cracked, and he looked down to see that the force of him gripping onto the floor had cracked the tile. Ron took a deep breath and forced his breaths to slow. They slowed until, with a shock, Ron realized they stopped entirely. He wanted to cry again. His mind, it seems, has given his body permission to stop pretending it was alive.

“Get it together, Ron,” he whimpered, running cold fingers through his hair, “no one can know about this. Just. Pretend.”

He slowly pulled his wand from his pocket, gripping it tightly. At least they’d be allowed to use magic again, starting from the train. He pointed it at the tile.

“Reparo,” he muttered, and his whole arm sparked up in agony like someone tried to Accio the bone in his forearm out the tips of his fingers.

He wheezed and swallowed his scream by biting hard into his tongue. The offending wand slipped out his hand and clattered onto the floor. Clutching his arm close to him, he breathed as the pain faded away. He took a few more deep breaths just for the sake of it and tried not to absolutely lose it. His tongue prickled with pain, but after a few seconds, it faded away.

That’s—great. That’s lovely. How bold of him to assume vampires could even be wizards!

In a flash, he snatched up his wand and whisper-yelled Reparo as he pointed its tip at the cracked tile before he could stop himself. His arm flared up in even brighter agony as the wand sparked. Tears pricked at his eyes.

Ron looked at his hand in unfettered horror, then looked back at the floor. The crack remained, stark black on off-white.

—

As the prefect compartment doors slid open to reveal Ron, replete with his new green cap, Hermione jumped to her feet.

“Ron!” She stomped up to him and shoved a finger in his face. “Almost missed the train,” she started, rapid-fire, “for the second time, mind you—though the first time you actually did miss the train—made all of us worry out of our mind, ran off—”

“I’m sorry,” Ron said, listlessly pushing Hermione’s wrist away and tugging the brim of his cap lower, hiding his eyes. “I’m fine.” He walked right past Hermione and silently sat down on the furthest seat possible from Hannah and Ernie, who were already giving them alarmed looks. Hermione startled as she remembered that Hufflepuff prefects were also there. She pursed her lips and quickly slotted herself into the seat right next to Ron.

“So what happened?” she hissed, low, “where did you go?”

“Dunno,” Ron murmured. His bright blue eyes almost seemed duller, unfixed on anything.

“Ron?” she snapped, “are you listening to me at all?”

“Yeah,” Ron murmured, almost autopilot. Then, he looked at his hands, looked at Hermione, and suddenly burst into high brittle laughter. “Actually, no, sorry. I’m really not.”

Hermione surreptitiously looked at the Hufflepuff prefects. “Ron,” she fumed, “you disappeared in the middle of King’s Cross—”

“Mum said it all when I got back onto the platform,” Ron interrupted. “I just had to go to the bathroom again. It was stupid. I know. I’m sorry. Can I just…can you just— let me be for a bit?”

Just as Hermione was about to explode with every single choice word she could muster about Ron’s attitude, in the prefect compartment of all places, the compartment doors slid open again. Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson stepped into the prefect compartment.

A silence engulfed the room. It’s them? was Hermione’s first thought, followed by a furious, exasperated, of course it's them. She saw the same emotions play across Malfoy’s face in the form of a genuine double take followed by a second, faker, but more theatrical double take.

“Weasley?” he taunted, “where’s your handler? Did Potter get arrested a second time?”

“Well, I suppose it’s no surprise that you’d be here,” Hermione retorted, protectively angling herself in front of Ron, “given all the tact and compassion you possess in abundance.”

“Everyone!” Hanah exclaimed, voice vibrating like it was balancing on the edge of a wire, “we’re all prefects here, so let’s act like prefects!”

“Wait,” Pansy started shrilly, “you actually mean that Weasley’s prefect instead of Potter?”

Hannah came to a very telling pause. She and Ernie looked at Ron, guiltily unsure.

“Of course he is!” Hermione snapped. “Why else would he be here?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Malfoy sneered. A laugh exploded out of him. “Weasley instead of Potter? Oh, that’s a good one, that’s a bloody good one!”

“Hannah’s right, Malfoy,“ Hermione snarled, “we’re all prefects here, so why don’t you act like one for once in your miserable life?”

Malfoy’s laughter trickled to a stop, and he took a good look at Hermione’s pinched face. He looked at Ron as well, who showed no sign of leaving. Realization dawned. “You’re serious.” Malfoy laughed again in disbelief. “You’re actually serious! So this is what Hogwarts has come to, then? Anyone, including that—” he pointed at Ron, “—can just waltz in and be a prefect now?”

Ron stood up.

“You’re right, Malfoy,” he said, stunning everyone into silence. Under the brim of his cap, his eyes were dark and dead. “Who’d take me seriously as prefect anyway, right?” Ron cast his gaze all around the prefect compartment, sweeping past a bug-eyed Hermione to linger on Hannah’s eyes until she cringed. “I’ll admit it. I’m a stand-in. A worse stand-in. You happy now, Malfoy?”

“Erm, well,” Malfoy coughed, trying to regain his composure. “Coming to your senses now, Weas—”

“In fact,” Ron continued, voice rising in hysteria, “I’m not much of a wizard anyway, aren’t I? I’m shit at all my classes, all my friends know that.”

“Ron,” Hermione attempted, before Ron cut her off.

“Forget wizard, maybe I’m not much of a human!” Ron roared. “Maybe I don’t know how to live! Is that what you bloody wanted to hear?”

There was a crackling in the air, and then the entire Hogwarts Express shook, violently. Hannah and Ernie were knocked against the wall, while Hermione grabbed onto the window frame with an eep. Ron miraculously held his ground, but Malfoy wasn’t so lucky. He was knocked backwards into Pansy, sending the both of them sprawling into the hall. The train’s body squealed, righting itself, and it sent the two back at the compartment. While Pansy banged against the outer wall of the compartment, Malfoy tumbled back through the compartment door, rolling past Ron and straight into Ernie’s legs in a disheveled heap.

Ernie gaped down at Malfoy, whose face turned beet red when he stared up only to see Hannah trying her hardest to hold in surprised laughter.

Hermione almost laughed too, until she registered everything Ron had said. She whipped her head around to look at Ron, who was staring at his hands in shocked confusion. He met Hermione’s gaze like a proverbial deer in headlights, and as a deer would, he bolted from the room.

Malfoy had scrambled up at this point, face still flushed red. “Fine!” he yelled, “laugh all you want, I’m leaving.” He dragged Pansy to her feet and sharply turned out of the compartment, Pansy in tow.

Moments after Malfoy left, Ravenclaw prefects Padma and Anthony finally deigned to show themselves.

“Some rough spot back there,” Anthony started, then side-eyed the hall, towards the direction Malfoy left from. “What happened with him?”

Hermione could only shake her head helplessly.

—

Ron couldn’t feel his fingers really, but that much seemed rather unimportant.

Because that was undeniably him, back there. He felt the magic explode out of him as he yelled.

At the very end of the train, Ron found what must’ve been one of the last remaining empty carriages and shakily slipped inside. Finding his chest too still for his liking, Ron wheezed more air through his dry throat.

He looked down again at his tingling hands and now the pain was starting to really kick in. It felt like his fingers got trampled by a horse. It was somehow worse than his two goes with his wand, his bones weren’t actually Accio’d out of his arm. Now, it really felt like all his knuckles had exploded.

Ron started to giggle, and then really laugh. But he could use magic. It’s still somewhere in him, despite the fact that he wasn’t human anymore. Even if it meant he had to mangle his fingers, he could, and maybe that’s all that mattered.

“Ron?”

Ron’s head snapped up, and Hermione was at the compartment door.

“Hermione!” Ron cradled his hands in each other nervously. “Erm.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Hermione said. On Ron’s frozen look of confusion, she cleared her throat nervously. “You’re not a stand-in for prefect.”

Ron shrunk into himself. Right. He said that. And to Malfoy, of all people. Ron Weasley, everyone, glamorously going mental on the Hogwarts Express because of Malfoy.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Ron groaned.

“Well, you did,” Hermione insisted, “so I want you to know that you’re wrong. You’re bullheaded sometimes, but you’ve always got everyone’s best interests at heart, Ron, okay?”

“I didn’t mean what I said,” Ron tried, drawing his cap lower over his eyes, “it was a spur of the moment thing. Malfoy, you know. His greatest talent is making someone feel both awful and angry at the same time.”

Hermione grabbed his wrist, biting her lip. “You really didn’t mean it?”

Ron swallowed. The last thing he wanted to do was worry anyone more, so could only steel himself and give Hermione his best grin, though even that was a little wan. “Really.”

Hermione for a few more seconds and tentatively smiled back. She adjusted his cap, lifting it higher. “Well, don’t say it again, alright? You’ve always come through for us when it mattered. Come on. Let’s go find Harry.”

Ron stared at her, thinking back to all the nights in which he dreamed of tearing her, and, well, everyone’s throats out. However, what could he do but follow?

—

Ron and Hermione joined Harry’s compartment sooner than he expected, given the extent to which Hermione had spoken about the prefect compartment. Typically, Malfoy was the Slytherin prefect, and immediately got into a spat with Ron, leading to both of them leaving. After all, there was no hard rule saying that prefects had to stay in the prefect compartment.

Though Ron and Hermione were cagey about the argument, Harry, Neville, Ginny, and Luna were all immediately entreated to a retelling of Malfoy’s huge pratfall following the rough ground. Harry felt nothing wrong until Ron left the compartment to go change. As soon as the door snapped shut, Hermione seemed to… tense.

Harry turned to her. “What?”

Hermione looked torn. “Ron just seems… too upset, after what Malfoy said,” she finally whispered to Harry.

“What did he say?”

Hermione chewed her lip. “It’s fine,” she finally decided. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

—

“The sorting hat’s never done that before!” Hermione was whispering, hushed. “A warning! Not since Grindelwald, at the very least.”

“I’ll bet,” Harry muttered, taking a pause to serve himself a draught of soup. Presiding over his empty plate, Ron’s eyes traced Harry’s throat as he gulped down the soup. Shaking, Ron looked back at his own plate again.

He hadn’t actually attended a meal since the alley. With the discordant schedule at Grimmauld Place and his following…sickness, he hadn’t actually needed to eat in front of other people until now. Before, the Great Hall smelled like every food under the sun balled together into a bundle of mouthwatering delight. Now, gripping his fork tighter, Ron smelled nothing but putrid ashes. It could be worse, he reminded himself. At least I can still use magic.

“Ron?” Hermione asked, covering her mouth with her hand as she spoke around a mouthful of chicken salad, “aren’t you going to eat anything?”

Ron physically resolved to pull his shattered sense of self together. “Yeah.” He smiled jerkily at Hermione, going for a plate of pudding. “Obviously! I’m just…thinking about the hat.”

Worry flashed across Hermione’s face, but quickly disappeared. She quickly looked at Ron, then Harry, who was mostly focused on a piece of pie, and fell silent herself.

Ron stared down at his pudding, carefully lifting a spoonful. His eyes darted from beneath the brim of his cap to Hermione’s eyes and when their gazes met, Ron snapped his away. Without giving himself any more time to think, he shoved the spoon into his mouth.

The instant the pudding hit his tongue, liquified disgust rammed into his brain. Both chalky and sticky at the same time, ashen, bitter, burning. Now that he couldn't spit it out like he did at Grimmauld Place, it got worse every second.

It needs to go down. It must go down.

He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. It burned all the way down and dropped like a stone in his stomach. He was already breaking into a cold sweat.

With a plunk, a piece of chicken landed on his plate. Snapping his head up, Ron saw that Hermione had slid it there.

“What's up with you,” she chortled, trying for lighthearted, “Ron Weasley, forgetting to eat?”

“Yeah,” Harry laughed, having noticed their conversation, “who are you and what did you do to Ron?”

Sweating, Ron’s eyes skittered over all the food on the table. He finally picked out a plate of peanuts, small enough such that he could swallow them whole without chewing. Hermione was still looking. Under her gaze, Ron scooped up a peanut with his spoon. Hermione was choosing the worst time to be uncharacteristically attentive to him.

The unchewed peanut slid down like a bitter, swollen lump, but at least it wasn’t explosively bad like the pudding.

Harry had long returned to finishing his soup. Hermione was still watching.

Ron swallowed a second peanut, then a third, faster and faster. Hermione stopped watching after the fifth, but strangely enough, Ron couldn’t stop himself at that point, even though his entire throat felt like splinters after the tenth.

By the time the food vanished itself for Dumbledore’s speech, Ron was on the thirty-seventh, which he knew, having been counting.

—

At the Gryffindor Tower, Ron and Hermione were ending off their first-year tour (which Hermione had commandeered anyway) when Ron saw the flier on the wall.

QUIDDITCH TEAM TRYOUTS!

FRIDAY, 4PM

MEET US AT THE QUIDDITCH FIELD!

The flier couldn’t have been brighter if it tried. Hermione was still speaking to the first years in the background, telling them that schedules will be distributed tomorrow and that curfew was at 10 and that they’d better not try to go into the wrong dorm, but Ron couldn’t stop staring, his thoughts so fast he was almost lightheaded.

Hermione said something and sent all first years off, snapping Ron out of it.

When Hermione saw the look on his face, she bit her lip, definitely about to badger him again. Ron hurriedly took a step back.

“I’ll just be in my room then,” he said.

Hermione swallowed. She almost looked like she wanted to argue before she stepped back too. “Alright,” she finally conceded.

Not even waiting to see if she would say anything else, Ron immediately booked it up the stairs to the dorms. His cleansweep was right beside his trunk, and he held it up almost reverently.

This doesn’t have to change anything, Ron thought feverishly. It’s not like I can’t be a vampire and a Hogwarts student at the same time. What’s stopping me from just… practicing and getting into the team?

Outside the window, the sun had just dipped below the horizon. With a laugh, Ron tossed the cap off of his head and stood up. It was time to take his life back.

—

As the September nights were long enough, the Quidditch pitch was deserted after dinner.

Ron stood in its center, Cleansweep in hand, almost nervous, as his stomach was roiling. Gingerly, he sat on the Cleansweep and brought it to a low hover.

“Yes!” Ron laughed under his breath, and spun around in a few circles. Heart racing, he instantly flew higher into the sky that was rapidly sinking into glittering dark. Whooping, he whooshed between the goalposts, then tucked in for a dive. Not quite a Wronski Feint, but the dive was close enough to lurch his heart up, which was awesome.

He dove and flew again and again in dipping circles, exhilarated. Finally, one of his dives went a bit too close to the ground, and the moment of suspended gravity sent Ron tumbling into a heap on the ground. He didn’t care that he felt nauseous: the pain was nothing except maybe a reminder that he was alive.

“I’m getting into the team!” he roared into the air, then burst into wild laughter. “I’m getting—”

He choked.

The past hours of nausea caught up to him all at once, and he retched, and then retched again.

Something was stuck in his throat and he couldn’t breathe.

You’re dead, you don’t need to breathe, he thought to himself, but that thought suddenly made breathing the most important thing he should be doing in the moment.

His coughs finally dislodged something, and he watched in horror as he coughed out a slimy, entirely undigested peanut onto the grass.

Suddenly, he was aware of the column of thirty seven peanuts coming back up his throat. Retching them all up would be utterly, laughably impossible.

Ron couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

Everything was rushing by way too fast, spinning upside down and inside out and he could not take this. He couldn’t.

Finally, his vision blotted out to black.