milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Ron's been around. Mostly cooped up with Harry and Hermione (Hermione especially, haha) but around.

However, today was one of the first days he felt social in a long while, and thus he'd come down read the notice, freaked accordingly, and sat at the bar.

Then he noticed that his tab had been paid off, and freaked over that, because when it came to money and the fact that he had none, he had a bit of a mental thing...

Bloody son of a...

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Slayer!

Nearby table!

Suitable for freaking at!

He went over!

"Somebody paid off my tab!" he declared, as if it were a high crime.

Faith raises her eyebrows at him.

"Yes, and?"

He raised his arm and gestured towards the tab board, in a sort of angry flail.

"That was my tab, for me to pay off," he groused.

Faith eyes him, calmly.

"Gonna hit whoever did it?"

"No!" he said. He considered, "Unless it was Harry. I'd wallop him one for it." A frown. "I just hate when people pay for stuff for me--I can pay on my own. I might have to work a bit at it, but I can."

"Wasn't Harry," Faith says, and waits for the light to dawn.

"What, you know who it was?" he asked.

Forgive the boy. He isn't the brightest Wildfire Whiz-bang in the box.

"Yeah, I do. And I'm glad you're not gonna hit me, Ron, you're developing a pretty impressive right cross."

He drooped. "You...?" Faith was on the receiving end of a long-suffering sigh. "Why did you do that?"

"Because I had stuff sitting around back in my world that was serving no purpose at all, and I don't have a tab to pay off."

"Faith!"

"Ron!"

Ah, mockery.

If Ron thinks having his tab paid off is worth getting his briefs in a twist over, he's seen nothing yet.

I don't believe it. It's the Weasley boy, he says to himself, recognising the flaming red hair. What's the blood traitor's son doing here?

Frowning at the tabboard for a moment, Ron looked up, and caught the man staring.

He stared back, an eyebrow raised.

Yes?

"You're one of the Weasley br- kids aren't you?" he asks warily. "I'd recognise that red hair anywhere."

Always with the red hair.

"That and the freckles gave it away, eh?" Ron said, holding out his hand, even if there was hard-earned caution in his eyes. "Ron Weasley. You a wizard then?"

Rabastan stares at the hand for a moment. He knows this boy, at least by face. Name is another story. After a moment he takes it and shakes it.

"I'm a wizard all right," he says with some measure of smugness in his tone.

I was right. One of the Weasley brats.

"And you might have heard my name before. Lestrange? Rabastan Lestrange?"

Ron snatched his hand away as it it'd been burned, and backed away, hand reaching for the wand in his back pocket, though he didn't pull it out.

"You..."

"Yes?" he asks as the room temperature seems to plummet about him. Clearly the boy does know his name. He should. It's a name most people in the wizarding world know.

And curse whenever it's brought up. If they're not too busy cowering in fear that is.

"I am who I say I am, if that's what you're getting at."

"So you're proud of answering to the name of a murderer?" Ron asked, with narrowed eyes. "Jolly good for you then."

"You make presumptions boy," Rabastan says in a deceptively calm voice. "I'm proud of my name, and proud to be a true wizard, and I am content to serve him, but that does not extend all the way to what I do in his name."

He waits, wondering if the boy will draw his wand. If he does Rabastan may be forced to do battle. And despite what his job description entails, he'd rather avoid bloodshed if he can.

"There need not be violence boy."

"But there might need to be self-defense for all I know," Ron said, still not taking his hand off his wand, "and if you think I'm going to trust you to follow the rules here, you're bloody mental--it wouldn't be the first time one of your lot disobeyed them."

He added angrily, "And true wizard my arse--you're just another murderer. Least you could do is own up to it."

"I didn't ask you to trust me, Mr Weasley," he says, trying to maintain his inner calm. "Nor do I expect or want you to. I did not come here seeking the trust of others."

He draws in a breath, slowly.

"I know what I am and what I have done. And for who and what I did it for. I admit to it all. All of it. Every last crime."

He gives Ron a searching look.

"Did you expect me to deny everything?"

"...Yeah," Ron said slowly. "Yeah, I think it's a bit hard accepting that there are people out there daft enough to think that just because they're purebloods they can do whatever they want--throw other people's lives away for nothing. I'm a simple bloke, you know? It's hard to wrap my head around that--how easy it is for you lot to be monsters."