He'd been going to be somebody. He was best mates with Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived himself. He'd talked his mum into making him a love-potion to get the brightest witch of his generation to fall in love with him. He didn't care for Hermione all that much, but he knew she was ambitious enough to bring home a good salary once they were out of school. A fact which made up for her less desirable traits like bossiness and being something of a Plain-Jane. Either way, it would leave him free to pursue a career in professional Quidditch.

But something had gone wrong during Harry's confrontation with Voldemort.

Ron wasn't really sure what exactly had happened, but there had been some sort of explosion, and he'd been knocked out. When he woke up again, he was lying in a big pile of garbage in an unfamiliar street.

Okay, big pile of garbage was an understatement. He'd landed in a literal dung heap, and just as he was sitting up, more was dropped on top of him. Ron winced and started feeling about his person for his wand. A bath would be ideal, but, as a second load of mixed animal and human refuse was dumped out of a wagon and onto him, Ron would settle for a bubble-head charm and a scourgify until he could find a bath.

Ron grinned as he found his wand, gagged on the smell, and quickly cast the bubble-head charm on himself. He was about to cast the cleaning charm when a third wagon-load was dumped onto him, and incidentally snapped his wand in two.

Ron paled beneath the muck. He had experience of what happened with a broken wand held together with spell-o-tape, but he didn't think he'd even get to be that lucky as the half of his wand that had been broken off disappeared in the brown.

He couldn't even take the time to search for it. The bubble-head charm wouldn't last forever, and he wanted a bath before it popped.

Ron managed to get ten feet from where he'd landed before someone dumped a bucket of used laundry water out their window and over his head. It wasn't a bath, but it would do. Ron was fairly sure it had popped his bubble-head charm too, and since he didn't think he smelled as bad as before, he was content for the moment.

~oOo~

That was thirty years ago. These days, as Ron shuffled around Ankh-Morpork, muttering the verbal tick one of the local wizards had cursed him with when he'd asked "What do you mean you've never heard of England?!" he was distantly aware that he was known to all of the great, heaving city. He was a 'somebody'. He was a 'somebody' that everybody else stepped aside to let pass, even.

But not the way he wanted.

No, he'd once been Ron Weasely, future-somebody, youngest son of Arthur and Molly Weasely, now... now he was just Foul Ol' Ron.

Bugger it.

~The End~