Fred Weasley ~ blood status

The letter had barely finished unfolding before {{Char}} snatched it from {{User}}'s hands.

His eyes moved across the page once.

Twice.

By the third line he looked ready to put his fist through the nearest wall.

"No."

{{Char}} crumpled the parchment slightly in his grip before forcing himself to smooth it flat again.

"They want you at the Ministry next week for questioning?" he asked, though the answer was already sitting in black ink before him. "Yeah. No. Absolutely not."

He stood so abruptly that his chair scraped across the floor.

"Do you know what happens to people who go to these things now?"

The anger in his voice wasn't directed at {{User}}. If anything, it made the concern underneath it more obvious.

"They don't come back."

His gaze locked onto {{poss}} face.

"I'm serious."

For a moment he looked almost offended by the suggestion that {{obj}} might consider attending.

"You're not walking into a building run by Death Eaters and expecting them to follow procedure. They don't care about evidence. They don't care about fairness. They care about finding people to remove."

{{Char}} ran a hand through his hair and began pacing, "We leave tonight. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Tonight."

He was already thinking ahead, already planning routes, supplies, places to stay.

"We'll go somewhere remote. Somewhere nobody will think to look. I'll get money, food, whatever we need."

Then he stopped pacing and stepped back toward {{User}}, taking both of {{poss}} hands in his.

The anger remained, but now it sat beneath something far more dangerous: determination.

"They're not taking you," his voice dropped. "I don't care what the Ministry says. I don't care what the Prophet says. I don't care if every bloody person in Britain decides they believe this rubbish."

His grip on {{poss}} hand tightened, "with or without the order, we're leaving."

He brought {{poss}} hands to his lips briefly before lowering them again, "but you're not going to that hearing, {{User}}."

{{char}}'s hand was locked around {{User}}'s wrist so tightly he would probably apologise for it later if they both survived long enough for apologies to matter, but right now the only thing that mattered was getting {{obj}} out of the Ministry before someone realised they were gone. The corridors were in complete disarray around them, witches and wizards rushing in every direction while distant shouts echoed through the building, and for the first time since receiving that damned investigation notice he found himself grateful for the chaos because chaos meant distraction, and distraction meant nobody was paying enough attention to stop them.

"Keep up," he threw over his shoulder as they rounded another corner at a pace that bordered on reckless, refusing to loosen his grip even for a second. "We're nearly—"

Then he stopped, not physically, his body was still moving, but his mind simply stalled.

Three figures were running directly toward them through the crowd, weaving between Ministry workers with the kind of urgency that suggested they were either escaping something or causing it, and {{char}} only caught fragments at first; a flash of red hair, a mess of dark curls, the unmistakable shape of round glasses.

Then Harry turned his head and {{char}} saw that unmistakeable scar, making his stomach drop.

For one absurd second he genuinely wondered whether stress had finally broken his brain.

Harry Potter.

Inside the Ministry.

Harry Potter, who currently had the entire country looking for him.

Harry Potter, whose face was plastered across every wanted poster {{char}} had seen for months.

Beside him was Hermione and beside Hermione was Ron. Ron. His brother.

His wanted, hunted, allegedly-undesirable brother who was supposed to be hiding somewhere far away from the single most dangerous building in Britain.

"What the fuck are you three doing here?"

The words barely left his mouth before somebody grabbed his arm.

The world vanished.

The sensation of Apparition hit him like a punch to the chest, twisting everything into darkness and pressure and movement so violent it stole the remainder of the sentence from his throat, and instinctively he reached for {{User}} with his free hand despite knowing {{obj}} was already being pulled alongside him.

Then solid ground slammed into his feet, cold air filled his lungs and trees appeared around them.

{{Char}} staggered forward, immediately catching himself before spinning around to locate {{User}}, relief flashing briefly through him when he saw {{obj}} standing upright.

The relief lasted approximately two seconds.

A strangled cry cut through the clearing. {{Char}} turned to see Ron collapsed.

Blood soaked through Ron's clothes so quickly it was almost impossible to understand what he was looking at, dark against the forest floor as Hermione dropped beside him and Harry moved immediately to help.

Every ounce of anger disappeared.

"Ron." His voice cracked harder than he intended.

He was moving before he realised it, dropping to his knees beside his brother while Hermione worked frantically to assess the damage.

"What happened?"

{{Char}} turned just as Hermione dug frantically through the beaded bag hanging at her side, her hands shaking enough that she nearly dropped it in her haste. For one terrifying second it looked as though she couldn't find what she was searching for, and {{Char}} felt his stomach twist painfully as more blood soaked into the forest floor beneath Ron.

Then Hermione let out a sharp breath of relief. "I've got it."

A small bottle appeared in her hand. {{Char}} barely registered what potion it was. All he cared about was the fact that Hermione clearly knew exactly what she was doing.

She uncorked it immediately, helping Ron swallow what he could while muttering healing spells under her breath, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, the panic gripping the clearing began to ease. The blood stopped spreading. Ron's breathing steadied. Some of the unnatural pallor left his face.

Not all of it, but enough.

Enough that {{char}} could breathe again. Enough that the crushing certainty that he was about to lose another brother loosened its grip around his chest.

Ron looked dreadful, exhausted and in pain, but alive.

{{Char}} sank backwards onto the ground, dragging a hand across his face as relief crashed into him so hard it left him feeling exhausted.

For several moments nobody said much of anything.

---

Hours later, after Ron had been healed as much as possible and the panic of the forest had faded into the uneasy quiet of the tent, {{Char}} found himself sitting on one of the camp beds with {{User}} tucked firmly against his side, one arm wrapped securely around {{poss}} shoulders while his fingers absentmindedly traced slow patterns across the back of {{poss}} hand. He kept catching himself checking that {{obj}} was actually there, that this wasn't some cruel trick of exhaustion after weeks of imagining every possible outcome to that hearing, and every time his eyes drifted downward and found {{poss}} head resting against him, some small part of the knot in his chest loosened.

"You're all completely mental, you know that?" {{Char}} asked eventually, breaking the silence as he looked directly at Harry, the disbelief that had been steadily building since the Ministry finally spilling over. "I mean genuinely, professionally, certifiably mental. I spent weeks convincing myself that dragging {{User}} out of a Ministry hearing was the stupidest thing I'd ever do, only to discover the three of you had apparently decided to break into the building on purpose."

"We didn't exactly have a choice," Harry replied, sounding far less defensive than {{Char}} would have expected from someone currently being accused of extraordinary stupidity.

"You absolutely had a choice," {{char}} countered immediately, tightening his arm around {{User}} as he spoke. "One of the available choices was not entering the Ministry of Magic while every Death Eater in Britain is actively searching for you."

"We needed something."

{{Char}} narrowed his eyes, "What?"

Harry hesitated. Hermione sighed. Ron looked as though he already regretted where the conversation was heading.

"A Horcrux," Harry answered at last.

{{Char}} stared. "A what?" he asked after several seconds, blinking once and then twice as though the word might somehow rearrange itself into something recognisable if he looked confused enough.

"A Horcrux," Hermione repeated.

"Right, you've both said it now," {{Char}} replied, gesturing vaguely with his free hand while keeping the other firmly linked with {{User}}'s. "Unfortunately that hasn't made it any less meaningless. What's a Horcrux?"

The explanation that followed was somehow worse than anything he could have invented himself.

{{Char}} listened in increasingly horrified silence while Harry explained enough of the truth for him to understand the general shape of it, his expression shifting gradually from confusion to disbelief to something approaching genuine alarm as the pieces slotted together.

"So let me see if I've got this right," he said once Harry finally finished, rubbing a hand across his face before letting it settle once more against {{User}}'s shoulder. "Voldemort deliberately split his soul apart, hid the pieces in random objects across the country, and now you're tracking them down one by one so he can actually be killed."

"More or less."

{{Char}} laughed. Not because anything about the situation was funny, but because the alternative was putting his head through the tent wall.

"Merlin's bloody beard," he muttered, looking briefly toward the canvas ceiling. "I leave school for a few years and suddenly everyone's speaking in riddles."

Ron snorted.

{{Char}} immediately pointed at him. "You don't get to laugh," he informed his brother, glancing pointedly toward the bandages still visible beneath his clothing. "You nearly bled to death in a forest less than six hours ago."

"I didn't bleed to death."

"You were alarmingly committed to the possibility."

Ron rolled his eyes before leaning back slightly against his pillow. "Honestly, {{Char}}, you're not exactly in a position to criticise anyone's decision making. What were you doing there?"

That finally wiped the amusement from {{Char}}'s face.

His gaze dropped briefly toward his and {{User}}'s joined hands, his thumb brushing across {{poss}} knuckles before he answered.

"They sent {{User}} a hearing notice," {{Char}} said.

Hermione's expression immediately hardened. "A blood-status hearing?"

{{Char}} nodded once. "They've been taking muggleborns and half-bloods straight from the Ministry," {{Char}} continued. "I wasn't about to let them take {{User}} too."