A/N: Strictly speaking, I'm not a fan of 'scenes in the books but from another POV' but I've always kind of wanted to write this one, even if I'm not overly happy with how it turned out.

Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns Harry Potter and while I am casually vacant.

When the World Had Ended

"You actually are joking, Perce… I don't think I've heard you joke since you were-"*

The noise that followed would haunt him for the rest of his life but he wasn't to know that as he was knocked to the floor. Scrambling to his feet, grateful beyond words that Pettigrew's wand was still in his right hand, Ron looked around and couldn't see a thing for the dust that clouded his vision, that he wished would settle. It seemed like he had got off lightly; he didn't appear to have thrown too far away from where he had been standing.

His ears strained to hear one of his friends or brothers but there was nothing but an eerie silence that wasn't really silent at all. All around him, he could hear spells and curses, bangs and crashes but nothing that indicated that he wasn't alone in this corridor

For all Ron knew, he could be hurt but it didn't matter. He could feel the cold air behind him and he was coughing so he wasn't paralysed and his lungs worked; further inspection would have to wait. He waved his hand in front of his face to clear his vision and all that he could see was rubble and stone and nothing moving. Impatiently, he scrubbed the grit from his eyes, and blinked away the pools of water that had formed there.

And, finally, he saw, just four feet in front of him, a blur of ginger hair.

Strangely, he wasn't scared as he put one heavy foot in front of the other. It was as though, somehow, he knew what was about to happen and he was just going through the motions. He was a time traveller, from three seconds in the future, merely retaking the steps he had previously walked.

As he opened his mouth, Ron swallowed a lot of dust and started coughing, sending dust particles into tiny tornadoes that whirled and twisted away from him, clearing his view slightly. The hair wasn't curly, the face wasn't bespectacled, leaving only one brother it could be.

"F-Fr-Fred?" he spluttered, the dust still dancing around him, thinning out now.

Three steps later and Ron saw Fred lying on his front, his head at a peculiar angle.

Days passed, as two and two kept making four against Ron's wishes. He knew what he was seeing, he knew what he would find the moment he had stood up but wishing hard enough would undo it surely.

Percy came into view from nowhere, his arm now the owner of a large gash, and, in slow motion, threw himself to Fred's side. Although his mouth was moving, Ron couldn't hear the words, sounds, whatever was coming out of it, because the moment his brother was rolled onto his back, his eyes staring, unseeing at the ceiling, something or everything broke.

Pinpricks of red, blue and green exploded into his vision, gaining intensity, until Ron was forced to close his eyes, only making the headache worse. The realisation grew heavier, weighing down his lungs, until Ron was forced to his knees. Wrenching his eyes open, he found Percy sobbing across Fred's chest and Fred…

With a gasp of air into his pleading lungs, time, sound and movement realigned and his bubble burst, taking with it the safety blanket he had been unknowingly using against reality.

A flash of light alerted him to everything else and Ron looked up to see Hermione staring at the same place he had been just seconds before, her eyes wide and pouring tears, her mouth open in horror… her wand, the only protection she had, limp at her side…

Instinct kicked in and Ron threw himself towards her, pulling her down. Percy's cries were filling his ears and making it hard to breathe so, with Hermione hidden as best as she could be and Harry alert enough to fight, Ron tried to pull him away but he couldn't.

Ron didn't understand why Percy wouldn't just fucking move. The thing he was clinging to was not their brother, it couldn't be. He wanted nothing more than to be as far away from it as possible. But Percy wouldn't stop crying and Harry was talking and everything was so fucked up but Ron still couldn't move Percy because he was still holding it, still acting like-

Hermione screamed and his attention automatically shifted to her. He spun around, visions of Bellatrix storming into consciousness –

But there was no Death Eater, or even human in fact. Instead, there was a gigantic spider and, for once, Ron wasn't scared of the huge arachnid because everything else was so utterly terrifying that it just didn't register in his mind that this monster was something to worry about. With the first spell he could think of roared into the night and the beast gone, Ron turned back to the floor, his eyes finding Fred's and nothing else mattered.

"R-Ron."

He couldn't run-

"R-Ron, p-please move."

-he couldn't hide and as much as he wanted them to be-

"P-please."

-his eyes were working and his mind had finally caught up.

"Ron!"

Fred, his brother, was gone, nothing, dead.

"RON!"

Something was pushing feebly against him and looked to his left to see Hermione's tear-streaked face, looking up at him pleadingly, urging him to do something that Ron doubted she even knew.

There was another crash and Ron looked up to see men, women and children fighting still, further down the corridor.

And with that, something snapped.

"I'm gonna kill 'em," he growled and went to take a step forward towards the bastards that had ended his brother's life.

Hermione darted in front of him and pushed against his chest, saying something he couldn't give a shit about right now, not when they were right there and were responsible for the scene a few feet to his left. Just as he went to push her aside, Ron saw Harry push her back down the corridor, shouting at him to move. Temporarily caught off guard, he was pulled away from Harry, who darted to Percy.

Still being dragged backwards by who he assumed was Hermione, Ron stared at Harry, who, with Percy's help, was carrying Fred to the other side of the corridor, his head lolling around sickeningly.

The further away he was, the smaller they all seemed, as though they were shrinking into nothing and Ron thought stupidly that he was passing out and that his vision had been the first thing to go.

A sharp turn in direction and he felt his back hit a wall, snapping him out of this delusion and reawakening his burning desire for revenge, justice and whatever else he could get.

"Fucking kill 'em."

"No!"

His movement forward was stopped once again by Hermione, shoving him backwards. Didn't she understand?

Ron kept fighting but she wouldn't let him leave their hiding place. She was crying and part of Ron, the part that was always looking out for her, was trying desperately to get the rest of him to pay attention because Hermione was upset and it was his job to fix that.

Nothing could stop the stampede that was his determination to kill every fucker who got in his way as he tore down his brother's murderers using any means necessary.

"You can't go out there! You'll get yourself killed!"

"I DON'T CARE!"

"S-stop, please stop-"

"Fucking move!"

"No, calm down-"

"Can't let them get away - now move!"

"Ron-"

"I don't care-"

"I care-"

"I can help-"

"Harry, in here!"**

Her words didn't fit with their argument but he didn't care; he had stopped listening to her a while ago. Ron didn't understand why he was unable to fight Hermione restraining him when he was so much stronger than her. The sound of his own shallow breaths woke him up to how suddenly weak he felt and the warm tears on his cheeks.

Still furious at the world, still feeling oddly numb and every emotion he could name at the same time, Ron tore his gaze away from the back of the tapestry and the battle that he knew still raged beyond it and onto Hermione's face.

The sound had turned off again and Ron's other senses sprang to life to compensate for it.

He could taste the strange mixture of the dust and his thick saliva, forming a horrible substance that he would swallow if he could remember how.

He could smell the metallic scent of blood and he found that he didn't know or care who it belonged to.

He could feel Harry shaking beside him and wondered when the hell he had joined them in the passage.

But most of all, he could see Hermione, her scared eyes trying to reach out to him as tears leaked from the corners. Her jaw moving up and down, the muscles in her neck straining, as she spoke to him, no doubt saying something important or smart or both. Her hair, tangled and burnt, surrounding her head, looking worse than ever. He could see her scratched hands, pressed into his shoulders, keeping him place.

It was weird how half of the time she was his reason for standing as well as the thing that had knocked him down. She was his reason to breathe and the thing choking him. She could stop and restart his heart without even moving.

As she turned to Harry, saying something that he still couldn't hear, Ron pushed everything else aside and took a deep breath that was received with some discomfort, his chest having spent most of the past few minutes empty. He didn't know what was happening or what to do now but she was here and that had always been enough to keep him together, to keep him moving forward, in the past.

He just hoped it was enough now.

*From Deathly Hallows, Chapter 31

**From Deathly Hallows, Chapter 32

The title and parts of the summary were also lovingly stolen from the above two chapters.

Thanks for reading :)