(no subject)
Ron was never told that he looked like his Uncle Bilius. He was never told a lot of things about his father's brother, whom he had never known. All he knew was Bilius had been his uncle, the one he was named for.
It never dawned on Ron that they might see people they had only heard of when Dumbledore's spell sent them back in time. Those people were still like fairy-tales, long ago war heroes who he'd have to settle on admiring, but there they were. Frank Longbottom, his future wife, Alice, James and Lily Potter - though now her name was Evans - his uncles Gideon and Fabian Prewett, even a young set of Sirius Black, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and Severus Snape, right there before his very eyes! He could see them, touch them, speak words to them. They were as real as could be.
But there was one more, or rather two. One he'd never met, and one he never thought he'd see again.
It wasn't until January that he'd begun to feel uneasy, well, more uneasy than he'd already been. After all, waking up from hearing your father's last breath to find yourself back some twenty-odd years before it happened is a rather unnerving experience. He began having dreams, ones where he would take a walk off the main path in Hogsmeade during the break, though which one he wasn't sure. The sky was dark and the more he walked, the darker everything seemed to become. Each night they progressed, and he was able to walk a little further each time, the voices of Harry and Hermione and Hogsmeade fading far behind him, until the night he came upon the body.
There before him that night lay a fallen man, clad in a traveling cloak but Muggle attire otherwise, his wand laying not far off. Ron rushed forward, hoping to help the man, see if he was still alive. 'Bloody hell I don't want to see another one' he thought, and swore again as he turned the man over only to stare down and see his own face.
Ron awoke early that morning in a cold sweat, his roommates only mildly concerned (except Sirius who just grumbled and rolled over in his sleep.) Lupin suggested he just try getting a few more hours rest, but honestly, who would be able to after seeing themselves stone cold dead?! Sleep was unable to claim Ron again, and he chalked up his lack of rest as the reason the dream occurred again the follow night.
But he got a full ten hours the next two weeks, and still the dream occured. This time with more characters.
Ron again strayed from the normal path during a Hogsmeade expedition. The air was thick with fog, covering the ground to his left and right, as if directing his feet along a narrow path he was supposed to travel. 'I don't want to go here!' he tried to tell himself. 'I know what's up there and I don't want to fucking see it!' But onward he walked, until there again was the same fallen man. Unable to stop himself, Ron turned the body over, and the shock returned when he saw the features still matched his own.
'Bilius!' a voice from behind him called. 'Bilius! Where are you?!'
'Over here! Ron called, rising to head back through a patch of bushes which had seemingly appeared out of nowhere to shield the body. He emerged through them without a scratch and was immediately embraced by a man he knew only too well, full head of hair or not.
'Bilius!' the man called him. 'Thank Merlin! We thought we'd lost you.' Tears fell onto Ron's shoulder as he just stood there, dumbfounded. He wasn't Bilius. He was Ron! Wasn't he? 'No,' he told the man.
'You've got it wrong. I'm Ron. I'm Ron!' The man pulled back and held Ron far enough away so he could stare into the fearful and confused face of his father.
'Not Bilius?' the man holding him inquired. 'But of course you are! You look just like him! Don't joke at a time like this.'
Ron shook his head in protest. 'But I'm not! Here, look!' He didn't think about the pain that would show on his father's face as Arthur followed and gazed down upon the lifeless body of his younger brother. 'I... found him. Dad... I... 'M sorry.... I'M SORRY!' he cried out again as the golden flash of sunlight burst through his curtains - a wakeup call from a concerned Harry as Ron hadn't even made it down to breakfast.
That day it was harder to hide that anything was wrong. Harry had noticed, of course, and Hermione, but it was Ginny who pounced on him the moment she plopped beside her brother on the bench at lunch. She refused to let the topic go until the full story was told. It took a crack about Ron being the next Trelawney to clear the morbid aura that had grown in the air, but after that the four friends were able to laugh about it the rest of the day. Ron would have laughed more, had it not reminded him of the future moment he would share with his Dad so much.
Ron went to bed that night, determined to make the dream end better, if not end it once and for all. Again he strayed from his friends, and again his father appeared after he had found the body. This time, Ron let his father think of him as his brother, and take him back to the Burrow. Ron felt the joy of being pampered by his Mum, a feeling he deeply missed. Bill and Charlie and even Percy were around to entertain him, even if they were a lot younger than he had ever been able to imagine them. Ron didn't even mind being sent back to school as Bilius Weasley, a Fifth Year just two below the Marauders with whom he should have been studying. As long as the dream went well, he was going to enjoy himself.
But good dreams are often the ones which fly by the fastest, no matter how hard our subconscious tries to slow them down. Ron's progressed at a blinding pace, sometimes making him feel as though he were standing in one position and watching a cinema about what he had done the past weeks or months or even years as it played out for him to take in, memorize. Balls, train rides, explosions, battles, training, lives being taken, lives being born. Even without knowing the details of their end he saw his uncles Gideon and Fabian as they held their ground.
The next thing Ron knew there he was, walking down the same path as before, only now he was Bilius, the uncle whom he'd never known.
Again there was a man, only this time he was accompanied by three others. Ron crouched behind a bush and listened as they spoke of their Lord and the reign he would have once the world was purged of those unfit in his eyes. A twig nearby snapped, and the group of evil men whirled in his direction. Ron barely had a chance to raise his wand before a green light engulfed his world.
The nightmare refused to end, showing Ron the moment he opened his eyes the same body he had found near the beginning, blue eyes wide, wand cast to the side. He hadn't noticed it before, not until his Dad arrived and cradled the body, but he - Bilius - could not have been more than the fifteen years of age he was at the beginning of all the dreams. Unable to bear it any longer, Ron turned away to glance down the hill, where Hogsmeade should have stood. In it's place was a valley of graves, with one in particular settled by his feet --
Bilius Weasley it read, with a date ending on 1 March, 1976.
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Not sure where I was going with that, but that's where the inspiration ends, so I'll end it there.