Dark Gods In The Blood
Chapter Twenty-Four
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A/N: Just when you
thought the plot couldn’t get any thicker ...
Thanks for reading!
Summary: A wandering
student comes home, a broken man pays his penance, and a gruesome murder is
both more and less than it seems. Some
paths to self-discovery have more twists and turns than others.
Rating: R, for intermittent
dark themes, violence, and language
Disclaimer: Nothing
you read here (save the plot and bits of the text itself) belongs to me.
property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (and someone else, probably, but not
me). All chapter headings are properly
credited to their sources.
Dark Gods in the Blood
by: Hayseed (
Chapter Twenty-Four
His
was an impenetrable darkness. I looked
at him as you
peer down
at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice
where the
sun never shines.
Heart of Darkness
Ron’s eyes ached as he
poured over Harry’s case file for the umpteenth time. He knew he shouldn’t be reading such a thing here of all places,
but he couldn’t seem to leave it at work.
So he contented himself by putting a Binding Charm on the folder every
time he put it away so that neither Nicholas nor Françoise could get into
it. Alice -- still too young to be able
to read -- wouldn’t have been interested in a boring stack of papers anyway.
Nonetheless, there was
always the risk of either Harry’s wife or his son reading over Ron’s shoulder,
seeing things that they shouldn’t, knowing things about Harry that no one
should ever have to know. Ron was
actually glad that they hadn’t sent Harry on to the Muggle coroner for an
autopsy like they had the Desmond fellow -- he could not have borne those stark
photographs and clinical descriptions peeking out of the file if they’d had
Harry’s face in them.
And Kingsley was finally
listening to Hermione, especially now that she could begin most of her theories
with, “Severus Snape and I think ...”
He wondered if Hermione had any idea how much credibility being the only
person on the face of the planet it seemed that Snape would speandiandidly with
brought her. Probably not.
But then again ...
She did seem to talk to
Snape an awful lot these days. It had
progressed from every week to every few days to, now, she was over there at
least every other day -- sometimes two days in a row -- armed with files and
photos and ideas. The Snape that Ron
remembered would have had a hard time dealing with Hermione in the throes of
research, as she was now, and he often marveled at the fact that Hermione
seemed to emerge from her meetings with Snape relatively unscathed.
“Uncle Ron!” Nicholas
shouted from somewhere within the depths of the house, jerking Ron out of his
semi-reverie. “Uncle Ron!”
Irritably, he replaced
the Binding Charm and stuffed the file into his briefcase.
“Supper’s ready!” came
Françoise’s answering cry.
When he reached the
kitchen, she already had Alice bundled up in her high chair, waving a piece of bread
happily in the air. “Supper supper
supper,” Alice crowed.
“As single-minded as a
Niffler,” Ron said, cheerfully tousling Alice’s curls.
“You and I are having
chicken primavera,” Françoise told him, holding out a wine glass full of a
honey-colored white. “But I figured
that the kids would balk at that many vegetables on one plate, so they’re
having plain old baked chicken.”
“Sounds great.”
“It’s a chardonnay I picked
up a few weeks ago on a whim,” she replied.
“Just thought I should ... expand my horizons or something.”
“Well, I like it,” Rsaidsaid with an easy smile. “It’s ...
fruity. Full, like.”
Laughing, she returned to
the stove and began fiddling around with plates. “When did you become a
wine critic?”
He stuck his nose in the
air. “Ah, yes ... this chardonnay has a
full flavor, with a fruity finish.
Clearly a heady, bold wine, wirevireviously unexplored nuances,” he
drawled, doing his best Draco Malfoy impression and causing Françoise to laugh
all the harder.
“Mum ... can I taste?”
Nicholas asked, tugging at his mother’s trouser leg.
She sobered quickly.
“Aw ...” he
protested. “Just a little taste!”
“If we were in your
native country, Françoise,” Ron teased.
Making a face, she
carried two plates over to the table, sitting one at Nicholas’ place and the
other in front of Alice. “Oh, all
right. But just a sip.”
Eagerly, Nicholas took Ron’s
glass out of his outstretched hand and brought it to his lips.
coughed and began to splutter.
Both Ron and Françoise
laughed.
“Yuck!” Nicholas
exclaimed. “It makes my throat stick
together!”
“Good,” Françoise said
firmly. “Now sit down -- both of
you. We’ll be ready to eat in just a
second.”
Ron and Nicholas sat
obediently, the empty seat that Ron still abse con considered Harry’s
Soon enough, Françoise plunked a steaming plate down in front of Ron and
seated herself. “All right?” Nicholas
asked, hand hovering over his fork.
In response, she just
rolled her eyes and watched her son plunge headlong into his meal.
“I like to see a young
man with a healthy appetite,” Ron said, twirling a fork through his pasta.
“There’s a difference
between healthy and grotesque,” Françoise replied sharply.
your plate for decoration!”
Silently, he wiped his
mouth and placed the napkin neatly in his lap.
“So ... how was school,
Nicholas?” Ron asked as he swallowed a bite of chicken.
The boy shrugged and
scraped up a bit of rice onto his fork.
“All right. We finished reading James
and the Giant Peach today.”
“What?”
“It’s a book
Ron’s ignorance. “A Muggle book.
about multiplication. She’s going to
make us memorize the whole times tables!”
He was slightly more
comfortable with Muggle mathematics.
“Well ... that’s a good idea, Nicholas,” Ron said apologetically.
later, it’ll be useful.”
“That’s what she
“I always liked math,”
Françoise said reflectively. “It was
nice to be either absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
“I bet there are,
though,” Ron replied through a mouthful of tomato -- she frowned at him and he
swallowed quickly. “Sorry -- kids,
don’t talk with your mouth full, okay?”
Nicholas grinned up at
him cheekily. “I
“I bet you did,” Ron
retorted playfully. “Just like you know
that your elbows don’t belong on the table.”
Reddening, he jerked his
elbows from the table’s edge where they’d been resting.
For a good while, the
only sounds in the kitchen were the clattering of forks against plates and the
rattling of ice in glasses as drinks were sipped. Every now and again, Alice would make some sort of garbled noise,
waving a piece of chicken in the air and laughing at nothing in
particular. And sometimes, Françoise
would glance over at Ron as if she was about to speak but would stay silent in
the end. Ron tried to focus all of his
attention on his plate.
“What did you do at work
today?” Nicholas asked thickly, wiping away a milk moustache.
Ron sighed.
water cooler this morning.”
The boy laughed.
her hair color to whatever I ask for.”
“I’m sure she has just as
much fun with that as you do,” he replied.
“But she hasn’t come over
for a long time,” Nicholas continued,
wide-eyed and guileless. “Not since ...
since ...” he faltered.
Françoise reached over
the table to pat his hand comfortingly.
“It’s all right, Nicholas,” she said.
“It’s okay to be sad.”
“I know,” he said,
looking down into his lap and fidgeting with his napkin.
“It’s okay to be happy,
too,” Ron told him gently, resisting the urge to touch him.
Nicholas’ answering smile
was rather watery. “It’s a forever sort
of sad,” he said. “But it’s a sad that
I can be happy through, too.”
And now Françoise’s eyes
were looking suspiciously misty.
“That’s the best way to put it that I’ve ever heard, Nicholas.
“Funny,” Ron said,
affecting cheer with some effort, “I’ve never seen it on a cross-stitch
sampler, though. All the best
schoolbooks.”
Françoise grinned,
forgiving the single expletive for a change.
“What’s a sampler?” Nicholas asked curiously, not smiling.
“A picture, like.
cloth, usually. I’ll show you some
time,” he promised. “Mum used to do
them when she was pregnant with us kids.”
“You know what, Uncle
Ron?” Nicholas asked, looking up at him.
His smile was more
genuine this time. “Obviously I don’t.”
“I forgot to tell
Hermione the last time I saw her -- will you tell her for me?”
“Tell her what?” he
questioned.
Nicholas’ eyes flittered
away from his for a moment, skittering around the table, not focusing on
anything in particular. “I dreamed
about her,” he said shyly. “Only this
time, I knew who she was.”
“Oh, you did, huh?” Ron
inquired mock-sternly. “Just what did
this dream entail, young man? Do I have
to defend my best friend’s honor?”
Nicholas giggled,
relaxing a bit. “Not like that, Uncle
Ron,” he replied. “But I did
Her and the dragon.”
“Dragon?” Françoise
echoed with interest.
“A big
mouth. A scary
my dream, Hermione was running. Running
down a long hallway, and at the end of it was a door. The dragon was behind the door and I knew the dragon was behind
the door, but she didn’t know. So when
she opened the door, the dragon knew she was coming but she didn’t even have
her wand.”
Ron didn’t like
thspanspan style="mso-spacerun: yes"> “And then ...?”
“The dragon roared at
her. And tried to hurt her with its
claws. But Hermione just stood there
and ... and shouted at it.”
“What did she say?”
Françoise asked, by now genuinely curious.
Nicholas shrugged.
it.”
“That’s ...t’s t’s true,
Nicholas,” Ron said after a long pause.
“Thank you for telling me -- I’ll be sure to let her know.”
His eyes were wide and
guileless. “She won’t be mad, will
she?” he asked worriedly.
“Mad?” Ron echoed,
incredulous. “Why on Earth would she
...?”
“Well,” Nicholas hedged,
shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“She didn’t like it before when I told her about my dream.
was scared of me. And that’s why I
didn’t say anything else. I don’t want
her to--”
“Nicholas,” Françoise
began, but she trailed off nearly immediately, clearly at a loss as to how to
assuage her son’s worry.
Taking up the challenge,
Ron ducked his head so he could meet Nicholas’ eyes clearly and
forthrightly. “Nicholas,” he said in a
gentle voice. “Hermione isn’t afraid of
you. She worries about you sometimes,
I’m sure, just like I do every now and again.
But it’s not fear, boyo.
Although I admit, it was pretty scary the way you acted the first time
you saw her. I’m sure you had her
scared, but not of you.
you, maybe.”
“I was scared of her,” he
admitted lowly. “Of what she meant.”
“What do you mean,
Nicholas?” he questioned, trying not to blink and eyes watering with the effort.
He ran his fingertip
nervously over the rim of his milk glass.
“I didn’t think she was real,” he replied. “I thought I’d imagined her all those years ago.”
Both Ron and Françoise
paled as they stared at an increasingly uncomfortable Nicholas.
“Ever since I can
remember,” he continued, not looking at their stunned faces.
afraid of her. Afraid of why
They were never good dreams. Not
very scary, but not good either.
moments.
“Nicholas ...” Ron said
hoarsely, his efforts at being comforting falling flat.
“So when I saw that she
was real,” he finally said.
that was even worse.
she asked. Because I knew that she
wasn’t the reason I was afraid of my dreams, afraid of her.
either. Did I do the right thing, Uncle
Ron?” he asked, concern dawning in his eyes once more.
you think I should. About the tiger,
and the dragon, and the man with the blond hair.”
He was absolutely
baffled. Briefly, Ron toyed with the
idea of taking Nicholas over to the Aurory after supper, having him speak with
Hermione immediately. But then, a
calming wave of rationality washed over him and he dismissed the idea as a fit
of fancy. “I don’t think so, Nicholas,”
he said as calmly as he could.
“Hermione’s got a lot on her plate right now.”
But still ...
Nicholas’ eyes mirrored
his own inner conflict.
But still ...
“Maybe you should tell
her later,” he continued. “After she’s
been here longer and everything’s not so crazy. Who yoo you think about that, Nicholas?”
The turmoil in the boy’s
eyes faded and he relaxed visibly.
“Okay, Uncle Ron.”
-- -- -- --
“Explain something to
me,” Ron exclaimed as he walked back into the sitting room.
“What?” Françoise asked,
glancing up from her book.
Sighing, he sat beside
her on the sofa and leaned back, stretching his arms over its back.
“Well ... she’s a
two-year-old girl. It’s all about dolls
and ordering you around, mostly,” she said with a grin, laying her book to the
side.
“She was literally
falling asleep in place,” Ron complained.
“In their playroom. But when I
pick her up to carry her to bed, all of a sudden, she’s wide awake and ready to
play. I just don’t get it ...”
“As I said, Ron,” she
said, “she’s a two-year-old girl. Being
fickle is her prerogative.”
“I don’t think it has
anything to do with age,” he grumbled, earning himself a playful swat on the
arm.
Laughing at his pained expression,
Françoise tucked a lock of her hair over her ear. “Watch it, Ron Weasley.”
“All you girls fight
dirty,” he protested teasingly, flinching as her fist raised in the air
again. “All right, all right!”
She sniffed, but she was
smiling as she spoke. “We have the vote
now -- we don’t have to put up with chauvinistic sods like you any more.”
“Aw ... Françoise, you
know you like having me around,” he said with a chag grg grin.
Putting a finger to her
chin, she pretended to consider it.
“Well ... I do like having you around to carry heavy boxes down from the
attic.”
With a huff, Ron
frowned. “That’s what a Levitation
Charm was designed for.”
“Did your sense of humor
curl up and die somewhere today, Ron?” she asked, giving him an amazed look.
>
“Somewhere in between all
of the serial killer monographs that Kingsley is insisting we all read and
Hermione’s presentations, I rather think it did,” he said heavily.
Françoise’s expression
sobered instantly. “Is she close?” she
asked hesitantly.
“As close as any of us
are,” he admitted. “Kingsley was
doubtful at first, but he’s finally come full circle. The problem is, she and Snape know about as much about serial killers
as the rest of us.”
“Why don’t you just call
in the Muggles to --?”
“Too many,” he replied,
interrupting her question. “We’d need
at least fifty men to launch a full investigation, and that’s just too many
leaks at once. Actually, that’s one point
that Kingsley’s been firm on this whole time -- both Hermione and, believe it
or not, my father have pushed on more than one occasion for more Muggle
involvement.”
“Your father?” she asked
dubiously.
He stifled a sigh.
some Order people,” he said. “Tonks is busy
on other cases, you know, and besides, I don’t know what sort of help she’d be
-- she’s more of a field operator than anything else. And Dad’s closemouthed, as far as that goes, and for all that he
puts on that scatterbrained air, he’s good at looking at a bunch of puzzle
pieces and coming up with solutions that no one else has thought of
before. I think his official position
is a liaison of some sort, but Kingsley’s got him fully briefed.”
“I hope ...” she began
quietly, tears forming under her eyelashes.
“I hope that no one else has to die.”
“So do I,” he agreed.
“Oh, and I wish, Ron
...” Her tears were flowing more freely
now. “I wish Harry
His mouth was dry.
She buried her face into
his shoulder, her nose cold even through his shirt. “Sometimes, when I’m alone at night, I wish it had been anyone
someone else had died, and not him.
Isn’t that horrible? “You’re not an awful person.”
“I miss him,” she
sobbed. “I miss him so much it hurts
chest, Ron.”
“I know,” he
muttered. And he did.
Tear-stained eyes gazed
up at him trustingly. “You do
It was not a question.
“I do,” he repeated,
looking down at her, mesmerized by her eyes.
xt2>
And suddenly her lips
were on his and his hands were sliding over her shoulders, down her back.
Ron’s mind was on
fire. He was kissing
He was kissing Françoise.
And it was beautiful.
Her lips were sweet
beneath his -- he could taste the salt of her tears and the wine from supper and
the tang of Françoise. He drank her in
and her arms tightened around his neck.
It wasn’t until her mouth
opened and her tongue touched his that Ron recollected himself.
And then he was off the
couch, arms wrapped around his middle, nearly shivering with the realization.
Françoise.
Harry’s wife.
Her gaze was a mixture of
desire and hurt. “Ron ...” she
whispered, sultry and sweet and holding her arms out invitingly, and Ron knew
then that he wanted her.
Something in him cried
out and Ron stiffened. “I ... I gotta
go, Françoise,” he stammered, his tongue feeling too large for his mouth as he
spoke.
Confusion blossomed in
her eyes. “But ...”
He did not wait to hear
what she had to say, knowing he would be lost if he did.
to her.
Not wanting to bother
with the Floo, Ron simply Disapparated, staggering only slightly as the sitting
room in his own flat shimmered into view.
“Hermione?” he shouted as
soon as he was able.
Silent and dark, nothing
moved in the flat, save his voice echoing through the air.
frustration. Of course she wasn’t here
-- she would be over at the Aurory, muttering over maps and photos with
Kingsley Shacklebolt.
But he didn’t want to go
to work. Didn’t want to have to deal
with anyone.
Still treading
unsteadily, he moved into the bedroom, stripping off his robes and collapsing
onto the bed wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.
The sheets smelled like
Hermione. Soap and detergent and good,
clean things. He buried his head in her
pillow, breathing in some spicy sort of fragrance that he knew had to belong to
her. And he wished he could talk to her,
lay his head in her lap and pour everything out.
Curling into a ball on
the bed, Ron began to cry.
-- --
-- --