This chapter is dedicated to the fanfiction user 'armagedonknight', you know what you did. I needed that. Thanks.

Harry's arrival at the Burrow had cheered things up for everyone really. It was concerning that Dobby had tried to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts, but it was nothing out of the ordinary, for now.

I was scared about the changes I was already making, looking at Sirius, no matter how much I enjoyed the mini padfoot nickname, I couldn't help but keep thinking about the possible ramifications of my actions.

I was lost in my thoughts inside my room and didn't hear Sirius come in. I jumped when he put a hand on my shoulder.

"They kissed him" SIrius said to me, his voice seemed grave, more like when he had just been released. It was hard to reconcile Sirius as the person he was now with the jovial, Sirius Black everyone else had known.

He was talking about Peter Pettigrew being kissed by Dementors, an action that leaves you a soulless husk of a human being. I was bitter at him pretending to be my pet rat and betraying his closest friends, but was I any better, I had betrayed my closest friend too, did I deserve the kiss as well?

"Yeah" I trailed off, there was nothing else I could say to him. "You okay?" I asked him.

He nodded. "I think I will be okay. I still don't understand why he did it"

I did. I wasn't going to tell SIrius that though. Their entire group was supremely talented. Harry's dad, Lupin and Sirius all were prodigious wizards and Peter Pettigrew, he just existed. No one was sure why he was even friends with them, my mother and father spoke about that at length when they thought no one could overhear them.

He was inferior, he saw a chance to survive, something he didn't think could happen otherwise, and he took it.

What were my reasons for betrayal? A loss of temper, not being able to be myself because of the horcrux. Everything I told myself seemed to not do it any justice. Maybe this was my kiss, maybe it was just an elaborate dream that I would wake up from. I had no idea.

"You okay?" Sirius asked me. "You've been zoning out, have you been thinking of your friend Hermione from school again?"

I didn't know that the teasing had already started. Harry and Sirius seemed to giggle with conspicuous looks at each other whenever they saw me writing a letter to her..I was in contact with Hermione throughout the summer after all, there was no way I was going to pass on the chance of doing things differently, better, this time around.

"Did you see the book list? SIrius asked me. I snorted. I had indeed seen the offending book list, it was plastered with numerous Gilderoy Lockhart books. What no one but me knew, was that the man was a complete fraud. My mother (and to my annoyance Hermione) seemed to love him to bits though, which was kinda funny at first, until it just wasn't funny.

The real important family occasion was Ginny starting her life at Hogwarts. She was the first girl born in the Weasley family for generations and she was always someone who received special treatment from my mum. Ginny would never know how much I wanted to be her when I was in school, how much I wanted to be free from expectations like she was.

There was no time to dwell on my personal angst, however. This was also the year that Ginny was going to be given the diary by Lucius Malfoy. The question was what I was going to do with the diary. The safe option was to stick with what I know and let her take the diary to school, but I did not want Ginny to get used to it at all, which is why I chose the second option.

I went with good, old fashioned stealing. The day our family went to Diagon Alley to buy things for our school, I stole the bloody diary. Ginny seemed to have noticed it was missing already, she asked me about a missing diary at least two times after we came back.

The diary in question was already tucked away in my trunk, where it was going to stay for quite some time.

LAter that night, when everyone was downstairs, I took my chance and looked at the diary. It was an old thing, the cover looked tattered but the pages looked surprisingly okay, despite the age. I suddenly felt the urge to pull out my quill and start writing in the diary, but I thought better of it and put it away.

'Horcruxes and me don't have a very good relationship, do we?' I thought to myself.

The first of September came by very quickly. I had finished all my homework in time, something that made Sirius and Harry look at me like they were a couple of gaping fish. The diary was still safely stowed away in the bottom of my trunk, I could hear voices coming from it sometimes, tempting me to write in it. I honestly didn't remember if Ginny faced the same temptation in the original timeline, maybe this was something that was special only to me.

Of course, I had almost forgotten about the sealed off barrier.

"The barrier Ron" Harry said in a panicked voice. "Why can't we get through to the barrier?"

The older Ron and Harry did not have the best idea at the time, although it certainly was one of the cooler ideas. I mean, how often do you get to race a train in a flying car, really? The current, slightly smarter Ron had better ideas though.

"It isn't time for the barrier to seal yet" I told him. "There must be some mistake, let's wait for mum and dad to come back and we can tell them about it"

Mum was indeed, very cross about it, but when Harry explained to her twice, she made up her mind that this couldn't possibly have been a prank to just skip school. They decided to side along apparate us to school..

Side along apparation is disgusting, but at least I didn't end up losing my lunch like Harry did.

We were greeted by Dumbledore and McGonagall at the gates of the school. Dumbledore hurriedly sent off my parents with McGonagall, while asking Pomfrey to take care of Harry, and quickly ushered me into his office.

"Lemon drops?" he asked me. I silently took him up on his offer, helping myself to a few.

"We have much to discuss" he continued.

"You think?"

"You mentioned the chamber of secrets" Dumbledore ignored my sarcasm. "You said there was a basilisk"

"Ah, yes" I said triumphantly before pulling out my wand and opening my rucksack. The diary flew into my hands, Dumbledore gasped at the non verbal performance of my spell, or the diary. I like to think it was the spell.

"Is that-"

"Yes" I interrupted him. "This is the second piece of the puzzle"

"I will take care of this shortly" he said to me.

"See to it that you do" I told him, internally glad that I was gonna be rid of that annoying voice asking me to write in it.

I spent the next five minutes watching Dumbledore gaze at the horcrux with a curious expression on his face.

"What are you looking at?" I asked him when I realised that he was not going to say anything unless I spoke up first.

"I'm looking at how far a person is willing to go when he wants something, really, really wants something" Dumbledore said with a pained voice, he looked older than his years again.

"It is something isn't it?" I asked him. "I can't ever imagine doing that"

"That's what separates you from him Ronald, you cannot imagine doing something like that. His evil, it is unimaginable. Even in my heyday when I was seeking power, I wasn't this-" he trailed off.

"Insane?" I asked him. It caused him to chuckle.

"Another thing" I told him, unbelievably almost having forgotten about this.

"There is a snake somewhere in the drainage system of the school that can kill you just by looking at you, so I think you should take care of that" I told him.

"Ah yes, the Basilisk?" Dumbledore asked me. I nodded. "Fascinating creature"

"Only you are barmy enough to find something like that fascinating" I told him honestly. It made him chuckle again.

"What do you find it Ron? What does it inspire in you?"

I thought about it for a while.

"I never actually faced it, but I do know that I went into a forest and faced some really giant spiders, you know, it's only my biggest fear, no big deal, a lot of students in our school year were petrified, that includes my best friend Hermione Granger, it also lead to you and Hagrid directly being removed from the school, so no, I don't find anything that has to do with the basilisk fascinating"

Dumbledore just stared at me for a while, there was a twinkle in his eye.

"That was succinctly put Ronald, well done"

With Harry and my timely arrival, and the diary and the basilisk almost taken care of, I wondered what the real drama was going to be this year. I didn't even want to start with the third year, SIrius Black had already been exonerated, so we were going to be in for a couple of quiet years.

That was alright though, we could all use some quiet years after everything we had been through. There was still the fraud of Lockhart that was probably now going to go unexposed. I cursed myself for not bringing it up with Dumbledore during our meeting.

I had decided that I was going to spend the next two years subtly preparing Harry for the challenges that he was going to face in the future. Meanwhile, I was going to start working on Hermione as well and bringing her up to snuff. WIth her talent though, she was going to be able to surpass both Harry and I soon enough.

I still couldn't believe she had greeted me with a hug when she saw me in the great hall, something that sent Gred and Forge into titters of laughter. She told me that she was worried when she didn't find me on the train, and I told her about my completely unremarkable journey to Hogwarts.

"Did you really side along apparate with your mother and father Ron?" Neville asked me after the sorting was done (Ginny made it into Griffyndoor, as expected) and the feast was underway.

"Yes" I told him. "I wanted to take a car and fly it into the Whomping Willow but Mr. Responsibility over here wanted to do the 'right thing'" I said in an exaggerated tone, pointing my fingers towards Harry.

"Wazzat?" Harry asked with a confused expression as he accidentally spit out the food he was eating. It only made me laugh.

The school year went by pretty normally, the first Gilderoy Lockhart class was as enlightening as I remembered it in the original timeline, everyone was convinced that the man was a complete nutter.

""At least Dumbledore is a talented wizard who is one of the all time greatest wizards" Harry told me later. "That makes up for him being a nutter" I nodded enthusiastically.

Dumbledore and I met up again at the end of the week.

"How were your classes?" he asked me as he handed me a lemon drop.

"Can I just take some of these to my dorm room?" I asked him. He nodded, with a smile on his face.

"My classes were absolutely hogwash" I said, sitting down in the chair. "Why do you have such terrible teachers teaching us Defence Against The Dark Arts?" I asked him. "The first one had a dark lord in his turban, and the current one is a complete moron"

Dumbledore sighed. "I can understand the intense feelings you have about the subject Ron, but the thing is, we seem to have hit a dearth of actual teachers who are worth their salt when it comes to Defence Against The Dark Arts"

"Remus Lupin" I said simply.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows at me, I hadn't seen him do that before. I didn't really have to say anything, since he immediately chuckled.

"Message received, but let us give Lockhart some time, maybe he will be able to show us something that you didn't get to see the last time around"

That was obviously not going to happen.

"The purpose of the meeting today Ronald, was to ask you what other horcuxes you found on your travels" he continued.

"The locket, Slytherin's locket, I mean" I said, my voice was hesitant.

"Have you destroyed the horcrux yet?" I asked him. He shook his head.

"Things like these take time Ronald" he said to me. "I have been observing it, perhaps I can destroy the diary and the basilisk in one fell swoop?"

I thought about it, maybe that was a good idea. It was going to be impractical to actually conjure cursed fire every time that could easily lose control, even wizards with skill like Dumbledore found it hard to actually control the flames of Fiendfyre.

"Is the locket the only other horcrux you know about?" he asked me. I nodded.

"There was something related to Ravenclaw, and something related to Hufflepuff. A cup and a diadem I believe, but Harry, Hermione and I were not even close to destroying the horcrux we had, let alone finding the ones we did not have.

I had no idea, after all that was what had demoralised me to the point of abandoning my two best friends.

Dumbledore did not seem happy, I didn't know if it was because of the lack of progress we had made, or how little he had given us to go on in the first place, what that man thought was something I left to him. I chose to focus on the other, less important things.

One such thing was Malfoy buying his way on to the Slytherin Quidditch Team with seven Nimbus Two Thousand And Ones.

The encounter was pretty fresh in my mind despite all this time, primarily because of the fact that Malfoy had called Hermione a mudblood the last time this had happened. The boat had already sailed on that in our first year in this new timeline, but it was still pretty annoying to watch him brag about having a better broom, and usurping the quidditch pitch.

"We had permission" Wood said, repeatedly, in a daze as he watched the rival quidditch team practice with their shiny new broomsticks. Even Fred and George were looking at the brooms with what was clearly envy.

"I can't believe we controlled ourselves Fred" George said to him. Malfoy had insulted our entire family, telling us how we couldn't even afford to look at the broom.

"Yeah, not only that, I can't believe that Ron managed to control himself too"

I scoffed at that, coming back in time meant that I could let little things like these go, but really, I was still somewhat of a bitter prick, and there was no way I was going to let this go.

"Maybe we should do something about it" I said to them in a quiet voice, Harry and Hermione were engrossed in a conversation and didn't really pay any attention to me.

"Are you suggesting another series of pranks, brother dear?" Fred asked me.

I smiled. "Let's make this an yearly Weasley family tradition shall we?"

George smiled. "A tradition I can get behind"

The days slowly melded into weeks, as people began to realise that Gilderoy Lockhart was all talk and no walk. Even the female contingent was now quickly souring on him. Meanwhile, I had begun to make slow overtures into training both Hermione and Harry, teaching them spells that were beyond their years.

They seemed to be confused as to why they needed to learn combat spells that were clearly above O.W.L level, but Hermione wasn't confused for long, her desire for being the best and learning everything quickly taking over. Harry protested for a while, before he too threw himself into it.

Overall, it was shaping up to be an uneventful year, that is until, the incident.

I didn't know exactly how intentional Lucius slipping Ginny the diary was, but it was clear that he had noticed something was amiss, because he had asked his son to repeatedly torture my sister mentally.

"Poor Ginny Weasley" Malfoy said to her one day, in the Great Hall when it seemed particularly empty. "It must be so shameful to have so many oafs in the family"

"Yeah, have you seen their mother?" Pansy Parkinson asked no one in particular, which made Draco titter. "How many pups did she birth Ginny? Ten, fifteen?"

They hadn't realised that Harry, Hermione and I were around listening to the whole thing.

"You clearly haven't learned a lesson, have you Pansy?" I asked her. She seemed to know what I was talking about, because she paled immediately.

"Yeah, I thought as much" I told her. "You both should really watch your mouth"

We were drawing a bit of a crowd and Hermione began pulling my arm, probably trying to tell me that maybe I should let the matter rest for now and take it up later, but I was slightly carried away.

"Stay out of this you blood traitor" Malfoy snarled.

"Hard to stay out of something directly involving my family Malfoy, you shouldn't have done that"

Malfoy sneered. "Don't tell me what to do, you don't know just how well connected my father is-"

"Yeah yeah" I interrupted him. "I know your daddy took a dick up his arse from Lord Voldy on the daily, but in case you haven't noticed" I said, drawing my wand, which caused him to pale and step back. "Voldy is not around, is he?"

The other students seemed shocked by it, the Griffyndoors were already laughing at my vulgarity.

"You are making a mistake here" Malfoy continued, I was surprised how the sneer was not permanently plastered on his face by now. "Your bitch of a mother-"

He didn't get to finish the sentence as there was a flash of light and suddenly he found various bats attacking him.

He began shrieking. I turned around to see that McGonagall was rushing over, a furious expression on her face.

"You are going to pay for this, my father-" Malfoy continued to rant as she took him away, casting me a furious look as she went.

"What was that?" I asked Ginny after she was gone from the hall, and we settled down to eat.

"I read that in a book" she said. "Didn't know that it was going to come in handy"

"That was wicked" Harry added his own two knuts in. The compliment caused Ginny to blush furiously.

"This just gives him an excuse Ron" Hermione said disapprovingly. "You should have stayed out of it"

"How could he Hermione?" Harry asked her. "You saw the things he was saying about his family, I love the Weasley's too, I'm surprised he managed to hold back as much as he did"

"Not going to hold back too much" I told them. "The little shit is going to get what is due"

"Ronald, Language" Hermione said, but before she could chide me any further, McGonagall swept into the room.

"Detention, after the last class today Weasley" she said to me, she did not look impressed. At all.

I found myself in her office as soon as the last class ended. Harry had offered words of support and wished me the best with my detention, Hermione had taken the silent route and refused to talk to me till I promised to work on my language.

I loved the woman but she could seriously be helped by buggering off once in awhile.

"What you did, was unbecoming Weasley" she said to me.

I didn't say anything, but I didn't look too ashamed, something which I'm sure irked her.

"You are older than you appear, I expect better behaviour from you" she said to me. "All this agent of time and fate hogwash notwithstanding"

"You can punish me Professor" I told her. "But don't punish Ginny, she's new here"

"I am aware" she said, not unkindly. "I have given your sister a warning, and resisted from actually informing your parents about the incident, but rest assured Weasley, if you keep this up, there will be a Howler in your future"

"Understood ma'am" I told her.

"Now, as for your detention" she continued. "You have to go help the headmaster with an- errand" she said the last word after a bit of a pause.

"That's my detention?" I asked her in disbelief. "Do something I would do anyway?"

"We can discuss harsher punishment if you so choose Weasley" she said in a dry tone. I shook my head, telling her that I would prefer the current detention.

"I suggest you not get caught" she said to me as I began to leave.

"Huh?" I said dumbly.

"Exacting your revenge, you fool" she continued. "Don't get caught"

I just stared at her. She was giving me her tacit approval to prank Malfoy. I couldn't believe it. Stranger things have happened, however.

I rushed over to Dumbledore's office as soon as I was done.

"It's time Ronald" he said to me with a rooster in his hands.

I smiled. It was time to go wreck some shit.

I am back. I've been gone a while haven't I? Would you forgive me dear readers, it is getting harder and harder to write and keep up with things that go on in my personal life. This chapter was a bit rusty but I will get back in my groove soon enough.

None of the stories on my profile are dead, I can, and will finish them. I just hope you stay as patient as you have been. The second year will be a quiet one, as will the third year, and I will mostly gloss over it. So keep reading, and reviewing. Thank you for sticking by me.