Ron Weasley was not choosing this life blindly. He was doing it with head high and eyes wide open, just as he had from that Hallowe’en during his first year. Yes, there was a troll, but he needed to take responsibility for his own actions that had put Hermione in danger.
That had been his thinking then, and none of that had changed. Now here he was, two years gone and his recently-broken leg propped up, staring at the ceiling in the hospital wing, unable to sleep. The night had been the most chaotic and terrifying since You-Know-Who had taken Ginny down to the Chamber of Secrets the year before, and after hearing that Harry and Hermione had had to do it all over again and been chased by a werewolf and fought off an army of dementors?
Guiltily, Ron could admit that he was kind of glad that he’d gone with Harry last year. Hermione had taken this one and done a better job than he could have. He also had to come to terms with the fact that the pet rat that had been in his house since he was a baby (and yeah, now he realized that that had been bloody suspicious, but give him a break, he was only thirteen and not exactly known for his brilliance, unlike any number of his siblings who were and also hadn’t thought about it) had actually been a mass murdering Death Eater who was responsible for killing the parents of Ron’s best friend. And that his favorite teacher was a werewolf.
He sighed. There had to be something to that theory that the DADA position was cursed. Also, Harry was probably cursed too, given the warning signs that tended to show up on Hallowe’en, then the near-death experiences at the ends of the school years...
Before he could start theorizing too much, Ron made the decision to stop thinking about it. After all, Bill had always said that some curses gained strength when acknowledged and believed in, so best put a stop to that. And never mention it to Hermione for fear that she might actually find proof of a curse and make it worse.
That girl would be the death of him, but he supposed it was fair, considering he was almost the death of her, in the literal sense, that Hallowe’en during first year.
He glanced over to where she and Harry had fallen asleep in the next bed over. They had all been talking until about an hour ago when the pair had passed out near-simultaneously. He figured it was probably the backlash from using the timeturner in combination with their second adrenaline crash of the night (a concept Hermione had explained in first year after Harry had been passed out for three days following his encounter with You-Know-Who) and having gone a full twenty-four hours without sleep.
Hermione had been closer to the head of the bed and had ended up sprawled in a semi-comfortable position with one arm bent a little awkwardly under the pillows and her head leant to her shoulder, hair wilder than usual and probably hiding more sticks and leaves than the few he could see from where he lay. She had shifted so that one of her legs was on the bed flung over Harry’s, but the other was still propped up on the chair that she and Harry had been using as a footrest. Harry was on his side with both feet still on the chair but with both shoulders flat on the bed on Hermione’s other side, near arm flopped palm up across her waist in a position that would probably be hurting his elbow tomorrow, and the other hanging off the bed on the other side. He had managed to lose his glasses again, Ron thought, until he saw the moonlight glinting off of them where they lay on the floor.
Ron smiled a little, but pulled out his wand and quietly levitated them onto the bedside table. He would never tell them, since they would both get all pissy about it, but they were both kind of adorable, at least, when they were sleeping. The rest of the time they were getting into trouble, Hermione with her incessant need for knowledge and Harry with his obliviousness, and both of them with their general lack of people skills. Harry was always suspicious and Hermione was always self righteous. They were also utterly terrifying sometimes, unknowingly pulling off all kinds of things that shouldn’t be possible, and they were brilliant, connecting so many little clues until they uncovered terrifying plots that were just his life now.
That being said, he wouldn’t trade them for anything, not even Hermione. He’d been ready to give his life for them once already before tonight, then followed Harry into the Chamber of Secrets to face a bloody basilisk save Ginny, and he would do it again, and given how things had been going so far, he would probably be held to that promise.
As he was mulling this over, he felt a thump on the end of his bed and looked up to see Crookshanks sitting by his knees and staring at him, eyes shining in the dark. He gave the cat a long look. “I was wrong about you,” he finally said, staring the cat down. It had proven itself to be as intelligent as its owner, so he figured he knew why it was here. “To be fair, you were the one going after Pettigrew, but I didn’t know that you were trying to do anything besides eat him. I’m sorry, and will try not to doubt your motives in the future. Also, sorry for calling you ugly all the time, that was rude of me.”
The cat eyed him for a long moment, then stood and plopped onto Ron’s stomach, purring loudly and demanding pets. Fair enough.
The next thing Ron knew, he was waking up spitting out cat hair to the sound of his friends, who had looked so exhausted the night before, giggling at his misfortune as the morning sunlight blinded him and he couldn’t find it in him to be upset.
“Yeah, alright, I deserved that,” he grumbled, just to make his friends giggle louder.
Ron Weasley was not choosing this life blindly. He definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say that he laughed in the face of danger, but he had started to see the warning signs.
You-know...Voldemort had tried to regain his body twice in the years before and he was going to keep on trying until he succeeded. There was another war coming and Harry would be right in the middle of it, and despite that, Ron would be right there beside him when it came.
So what if he wasn’t brilliant or fearless or all that smart? He kept his friends fed when they were obsessing over things (and yeah, Harry did it too, though he generally stuck with fixating on Malfoy rather than particularly fascinating bits of theory or exchange rates between magical France and America, which may actually have been more worrying now that he thought about it, but at least they would have beautiful children when that finally ran its course—Ron was starting to sound like his mother, dammit) but he would keep them fed and stop them from breaking too many laws or committing treason as they went, and he could live with that. The late nights scheming, the howlers from his mum, the hours in the library, the near-death encounters—this was him making a choice, a promise to himself, that even if he occasionally stumbled, he wouldn’t give up on Harry Potter or Hermione Granger for anything.
And that was just how it was going to be.