Because We Are Snakes

Untitled Part 12

Because We Are Snakes – The Wizarding Brutus and his Caesar

And so it happened that one morning Ron put his foot and the whole of his leg all the way to his thigh in his mouth... and all the way down his throat...

Just as Harry had predicted and expected.

"I think even Dumbledore is starting to get a bit iffy about that whole lot if you ask me. Won't even look at the bloke in the eye since the school term began and runs the other way like his trousers are on fire the very second he comes into a room. I know he is helping us with the 'thing' so we pass out OWLs and all that but lately, I don't know, something is weird about him and he disappears for hours sometimes and doesn't tell me where he is going. I'm his friend, right? He should be able to tell me where he is going and what he is doing. Unless he is doing something he is afraid we will find out about, might even be going a bit Dark all on his own for all we know."

It has taken two weeks after his conversation with Hermione for Rom to finally do what they had both expected and run his mouth with utter stupidity. Harry blamed it on the fact that Mr. Weasley had almost died last night because the Healers could still not figure out how to heal Nagini's bite, but still, it was no excuse to be spouting nonsense in the middle of breakfast in the Great Hall... where anyone –Umbridge and Slytherins most distressingly- could hear.

All Harry had hoped for was that when this eventuality did happen, it was in a less public place. Fate had no such mercy for him it seemed.

Hermione was trying to do damage control at the Gryffindor table and trying to shush Ron at the same time.

The twins, thankfully, were also running interference – there were questions such as 'is he your wife that he has to give account to you for his every movement?' 'Are you his mom and he a naughty child that needs to minded every second of his life and not have a moment of peace of his own without you breathing down his neck?' 'What gives you the right to demand he tells you everything he does, say or thinks? You don't do that for him and you don't see him getting all jealous like a disgruntled lover.' And 'does being his best friend makes him accountable to you for every waking moment of his life?' being through at Ron by his irritated brothers- which only seemed to incense Ron more, if he be honest.

He was only grateful the whole conversation had been hushed whispers and hadn't spread to the other tables... there were still small mercies left in life with his name on them, it appeared, and that at least was something.

Harry took the whole picture in silence as he stood behind Blabbermouth-Ron, Hermione sat across from the ginger menace and being the more observant of the group had already spotted him and looked at Harry with an apologetic grimace as if trying to convey "I couldn't get him to stop" with her eyes without actually saying it out loud. And truly, how could anyone really get Ron-the-self-entitled-moron to stop running his mouth when he got going? It was an amazing feat when actually accomplished, almost as hard as stopping Hermione's 'lecturing mode' when she got going.

Those who had been listening to Ron, and looking at him like he had lost an essential part of his brain that connected him to reality, had too realized Harry was just standing silently right there behind Ron. They too sported apologetic looks; it seemed that the DA had served to at least fix his reputation a bit now that people got to hang around him more often and by interacting with him for those hours they got to see he was indeed not as loony as the Ministry would have you believe. Besides, they all knew something –a family emergency of some sort- had happened to the Weasley family on Halloween, though they had no idea what since it was kept hush-hush as per Dumbledore's orders. All they knew was that something had happened that was so bad it took the Weasley kids home for three days before they were able to come back to school –someone theorized Ron's really old great aunt or something like that died... or something... but no one was denying or confirming any rumor- what did get theorized and accepted as truth by the general Gryffindor population was that, whatever it was, Ron was not dealing with it well and was reacting the same way he reacted when he wasn't dealing with something well... by lashing out at Harry.