We belong together || Harry Potter x Reader

Chapter 43

"Y/n, he might be wanting to face him alone," Hermione reasoned, walking right behind you as you targeted the forest. 

"Too bad he isn't going to be doing this alone," You responded, your blood heating up. "Not after everything. I am not going to let him die." 

Ron was walking alongside Hermione, his knees making his legs feel weak as he strode. He kept on glancing around, wanting to see any familiar face. Harry's face. The face that was always with him during his time at Hogwarts. Who made him feel less alone, like he was worth something, not just another Weasley added to the family. Like an actual person. A friend. A best friend, at that. Ron misses his best friend terribly, he would do anything to have him by his side again. Free of harm. Free of walking straight into his death. 

"Ron, Ron!" Hermione repeated, tugging at his sleeve. "Why is Fred following us? I thought he was going to help with the Order?" 

Ron, half sunken into his melancholy and half in reality, blinked a few times before registering what Hermione asked him to notice. Following her nervous glances beside him, Ron turned to find his brother staring at the three of them from a distance. Fred was no longer advancing, his feet were planted to the ground. His eyes, buried under the gravel and dirt from the ruined castle, were piercing the back of Y/n's head, all void of sparkle. 

Hermione gasped at seeing this inhuman-like expression coming from one of the few people who always found a way to make a situation funny. Fred was not smiling, it seemed like he never did. All that was left on his face was that of pure hatred. A scowl so profound it was worse than what she had seen from any professor. 

"Ron," she whispered, hoping the distance between them and Fred would help carry her words only to Ron's ears. "What's going on? Why does he look like that?" 

Instead of answering her right away, Ron searched for Y/n, who was not aware of anything happening a couple of hundred yards behind her. "Where's Y/n?" 

Hermione searched the forest, hoping to find a shadow of a familiar figure walking through there. It was empty. For miles and miles on end. No sign of any life. "She's.... where did she go?" 

Ron felt an uneasy feeling and turned to where his brother was. He was gone. 

Fred was not there anymore. 

"Fred?" Ron pleaded, feeling his heart race with anxiety. "Something is not right. I think he's going after Y/n... Oh bloody hell, she told me he was being off..." 

"Off? Can you tell me what's going on?" 

"She saved my brother from dying." 

"The necklace..." Hermione concluded, closing her eyes to prepare herself for the consequences. "The same one that she was hearing the voices about, not using it? That same bloody necklace that I asked her time and time again not to mess with? She used that?!"

"She saved my brother, Hermione." 

Hermione bit her tongue as she looked into Ron's saddened eyes. She couldn't believe how much his features had changed in the last year. He looked like he had aged a decade in the past nine months. 

"We have to do something about Fred, Ron," Hermione instructed. "That necklace might have done something to him, something even we aren't aware of that happened to him. We don't know what on bloody Earth that necklace had, look what it was doing to Y/n! I can't imagine..." 

"We'll talk more about that later, I have a feeling he was going after Y/n." 

"Really? Why? Didn't you just say she saved him?" 

"Maybe that's why he's going after her," Ron answered, a cold sweat causing perspiration to fall on his forehead. "Maybe he feels lost? Or wants to thank her?"