Chapter 2
“But sirs, we can’t be giving much more…”
Ron has nearly eaten the Hogwarts kitchen out.
For the past two days, he’s been stowing away in the kitchen with the house elves, feeding on all the raw meat. He is single handedly causing the school to go into debt for more meat.
“Please… just a little bit more.”
“But sirs…” The female elf looks up at him with those big and round, innocent eyes, ears twitching.
Idiot.
Ron’s neck snaps up, flinging backward so quick that he falls off the bench. He flails before standing up. “Who said that!?”
The house elf stares at him worriedly. A second one comes up beside her. “Maybe it’s time to call the headmaster.”
She bites her thin fingers. “But we mustn’t! Master Dumbledore surely has bigger things to worry about than this.”
Ron is waving his wand through the air as though it’s a toy, occasional panicked spark coming out. “I swear, I know how to really hurt someone!” He faces the wall and squints at it, ready to attack.
They turn to each other and have a nonverbal conversation. Before either one of them can speak up or do anything, Harry appears out of thin air, paper in hand and invisibility cloak hanging off his arm.
Ron screeches, wand flailing out of his hand. He backs up against the wall he was just about to duel with. “Harry?”
Harry stares.
“Hey buddy…”
Harry licks his lips, unsure of what his next move should be. Despite what Hermione said, he thought that Ron needed his distance after that absolutely embarrassing stunt he pulled in front of everyone. Hell, he knows he wouldn’t want to be seen for awhile after that. But, when he didn’t come back… well…
“You’ve been away.” Harry points out the obvious.
Ron slides down the wall, eyes full of tears. “Sorry… I have been. Just a little bit.”
Eat him.
Ron twitches, head whipping around again, as though this time something will actually appear. “Harry is not food!”
Harry is officially creeped out. “Uhh.”
“I wasn’t talking to you. I AM NOT A MORON.”
Harry’s concern doesn’t lessen whatsoever at that. He sits down across from Ron, a safe distance between them. He opens and closes his mouth a couple times.
“Are you-“
Ron growls at him. He thinks it’s at him anyway. He backtracks. “Okay, uh…”
He thinks. “You missed the announcements mate.”
“Announcements?”
Finally gaining some ground, Harry continues. “Yeah, they’re having some crazy tournament this year, total bloodfest. We’re hosting some students from some German and French school.”
Ron, eating up the first distraction he’s had in days, says “Wicked.” He scoffs. “And I missed it.”
Harry looks away sheepishly. “Well, if you didn’t eat directly off the Headmasters plate…”
Ron groans. “Stop, just shut up.”
Harry laughs then purses his lips. “So…” He gestures at the exit. Ron reluctantly nods. “Good… good. Hermione was quite worried, you know?”
Ron mumbles under his breath, “That’s all I need.”
Harry, very very hesitantly, pats him on the back. When Ron doesn’t growl, or god forbid, bite him, he smiles. “C’mon, let’s head back.”
Just then, a house elf comes out with a bloodied pig. “Does sir still want his meal?” Ron waves his hands around frantically. “Haha no, me? I don’t- I don’t eat that. No, not me. Haha, right Harry?” He makes a ‘crazy gesture’ aimed towards the elf.
By the blood still staining Ron’s fingernails, Harry is not convinced.
—
Snape is pissed.
Ron knows it was him, but he has no logical explanation for what just happened. Maybe this really all is a dream and soon he will wake up with his sanity in tact.
“Mr. Potter.”
Oh no, Harry is getting blamed for his stunt. His?
Just moments before, Snape made a demeaning comment at Ron, a snarky statement about his old, secondhand books being unreadable.
Not even a millisecond after Snape turned his back, Ron saw his arm turn black and weird and reach out to the very front of the class and swipe all of the potion ingredients off the shelf, glass shattering all over the floor.
And now Harry is getting blamed.
He is too dumbstruck, staring at his arm like a toddler just discovering his limbs move.
He barely notices Hermione’s intense look of concern.
“Detention. Tonight. And Mr. Weasley, next time, try and put that focus towards what exactly you’re putting in that cauldron.”
With a dramatic flare, he turns back around to his own mess. Chuckles ring out, particularly from the Slytherin side. He can feel his ears turn red and lips turn down, Malfoy already having an insult ready.
Ron feels an appendage burst from his back, reaching out and smashing Malfoy’s head into his bowl of goat blood faster than the speed of light.
Ugly.
Ron’s tether to sanity lessens even more, him automatically jerking around and knocking against his own cauldron in the process. It remains upright and in one piece.
Class is dismissed and he leaves, basically running.
He’s getting hungry again, this is ridiculous. He can’t do this today, he wants his bed.
In the hallway, he smashes his head against the wall, trying to force the sanity back in.
“Ron…?”
Ron turns around, mild blood dripping down his forehead but soon to heal. “Oh, hey Fred.”
He can’t remember ever seeing that expression on his brothers face before.
Ron swerved around him easily due to the influx of students, aiming for his room. One more day, he just needs one more day off.
Maybe he should’ve stayed in class however.
As soon as he makes it to his empty shared dorm room, that voice speaks again.
Stinks. Like socks.
Ron basically cries out at this point, “Please, what’s happening?!”
His body moves on its own. I’ll fix it. With four tentacles protruding from his body, everything in the room is uprooted, a tornado essentially.
“Stop. Stop!”
It doesn’t do anything. So Ron acts. He fights in the only way possible, throwing his body all around. As he flails, so do the tentacles. Comforters fly, drawers fly, a bed frame is smashed in half. A hole goes straight through the wall.
It’s a right mess.
A black, absolutely horrifying creature emerges from his own body, pinning him up against the wall, making him make an “umph” sound.
He is struck speechless, mouth stretched wide and open. He physically cannot speak.
His cannons poster in the background falls off the wall.
“…What are you?”
The creature looks into his eyes, at least he thinks it does.
“Not what, but who.” Its mouth opens, gross saliva dripping everywhere.
“I am Venom. You will do.”
Ron feels hysterical. In a high pitched, almost whiney voice, he asks “Are you what’s been… inside of me?”
“Yes.”
“Euughhh.” He is horrified. Head drifting off to the side to get out of the line of bad breath, he whispers out “So gross.”
Venom flicks his head against the wall again, pure pain flowing through his skull, but only for a minute.
“You were in that muggle lady, weren’t you?”
“You’re stupid. I didn’t think you were this stupid.”
“Okay… okay…” He stares. “But, what are you?”
Venom stares back. “A symbiote.” Ron is still confused. “Okay…”
“Why didn’t you just… show up beforehand…?”
“I liked to watch you squirm.”
Great, the foreign guest in his body is sadistic.
Venom disappears back into his body. Ron feels even more violated than he did when learning he slept in the same room as a grown adult death eater on and off for a decade.
Classes must’ve just let out, because this is what his roommates walk in on.
Ron, in the middle of an obliterated room.
The magical lamp on the ceiling falls, landing right on Harry’s broom.
Crack.
—
He’s heard the whispers of his craziness trickling around, and he knows his continued habit of skipping classes isn’t helping.
That’s why he finds himself taking a midnight stroll, no people around to judge or question him.
What do owls taste like?
“Absolutely not.”
He turns around, far far away from the owlry.
What is he going to do?!
This is beyond anything even Harry level crazy. Even Harry doesn’t have a foreign parasite in his body. How is he going to tell them about this? Won’t Hermione tell the teachers? Should he let her tell the teachers?
He doesn’t want to be experimented on but he also doesn’t want a monster using his body as it pleases.
Rude.
“Sorry…” Ron mutters out, freaked at possibly offending the thing.
“I can’t believe this, this is just- I don’t even know!”
Move.
“What?”
He feels himself climb halfway up a tree, spell fired at the spot he was just at previously. “Huh?!”
It’s the newest defense professor.
“Professor?!” Merlin, now his own teacher was trying to end him?
Not.
”Not what? Not what?! Finish your sentences man!”
The Professor aims at him once more, so Venom takes appropriate action and tree hops, half Ron half Venom.
Once again, Moody aims, this time the spell red and ominous feeling. Venom lets it hit him this time, curious. It bounces right off him.
“I am not a toy to experiment with! But that was kind of cool….”
Venom cuts him off and takes control, leaping thirteen feet down directly onto Moody, taking them both to the ground painfully.
Moody stares up at him with a gleam in his eye, insane like the rest of his lot. “You’re one of his, aren’t you? My lord?”
Why won’t anything make some damn sense for Ron?! “My lord who? What?”
Quiet.
“For fucks-“ Venom fully takes over. Ron’s body doubles by feet, widening too. That nasty saliva drips onto Moody’s face.
Seeing this, he backpedals. “You have the same narly feel, but you’re not one of his whatsoever, are you?” Now, Moody has a scared look in his eye. He holds his wand, ready to fire the killing spell at the monster.
“What are you?”
“I am Venom.”
Venom leans his head forward and sniffs around Moody’s neck. The man won’t shut up so he shoves a hand in his mouth. Moody voices out a stifled “Feck off, arsehole.”
Once Venom removes his hand after his inspection, Moody spits up at him, flecks landing on his chest.
Venom bites his head off.
The body falls backward with a thump, a disgustingly gory sight. He turns around, leaving it a free for all. He runs away on all fours, not stopping until he’s on the other side of Hogwarts where the Gryffindor dorm is up above.
“I’m gonna spew.” Don’t. Venom doesn’t let him. It’s almost like he can feel the food being vacuumed back inside of him.
Ron can’t muster up anything besides a terrorized “Why?”
I was hungry.
“Oh that’s it? That’s all you have to say for using my body to commit… cannibalism?! Oh Merlin, am I a cannibal? Was it worth it now?? Are you finally full you big fucked wankery demon?”
…Could’ve been tastier.
Ron let’s out a scream.
It’s been decided, no one can know about this now. Being banned from Hogwarts is the least of his concerns if anyone discovers he just ATE A MAN.
And Venom refuses to let him vomit.
We need the fuel.
Ron wants his mom. Oh no. “You can’t eat my family, please!” Ron would find a way to end them both if Venom ever even hinted at eating the people he cares about.
Ok.
That’s it? “You’re just… agreeing?”
No family. Just teachers.
“No! No teachers! Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if Snape… no, no, no! No eating anyone at Hogwarts! Do you need… human to survive?”
It’s delicious.
“Criminey… okay, okay.” Ron’s tweaking. “But like, you don’t need it specifically… right? There literally has to be something else.” (Please.)
Meh.
Ron holds his head in his hands, crouched over on the ground with a massive panic-induced headache. “I’ll… I’ll try to figure something else out but please, for the love of Merlin, don’t eat anyone here.”
Just outside? Ok.
Ron cries.
“I wanna go home.”
Venom takes this as an unwanted cue, taking over and crawling up the side of the building, smashing through the common dorm room window with his full body. Ron re-emerges and is covered with glass shards.
He takes one look back at the smashed window and shakes his head, bewildered.
He shakes like a mutt and slowly walks to his room, noticing a blood trail following him. Venom licks it up in one swipe, covering their tracks.
Ron whines.
Making it to his room, he changes at once, shoving the dirtied clothes in a bag under and his bed.
He tries to talk to Venom, to try and get any speck of information out of him that he can. But all Venom does is take control and suffocate him to sleep with his own pillow.
He passes out, blanket not even on.
Unbeknownst to him, he was speaking in his sleep (forced unconsciousness).
Through the am, Harry, Dean, and Seamus hover around Ron’s bed holding their pillows, watching in bafflement as Ron sleep argues with no one.
“Yo, something is seriously wrong,” Seamus couldn’t help but say. Dean nods. Harry is at a loss for words. Hermione was right, Ron doesn’t need space right now, he needs a visit to the hospital ward.
“No lion internals…”
Harry scratches his head. They watch him till the sun comes up.