The Hogwats Gaijin

Ron woke when the windows of the tower still showed thick, inky darkness. The dormitory was stuffy; around him came the quiet, steady breathing, snoring, and creaking of beds. He lay for a while staring at the folds of the canopy, but sleep would not come. There was a sense of wrongness and a sticky, unpleasant feeling of guilt.

He knew he had behaved like the most utter prat. The words had burst out, spurred by some stupid resentment and the sight of Hermione suddenly too beautiful and too distant in that soft blue silk. Ron had wanted to prick her, to see the familiar friend again instead of this cool beauty. In the end she had simply walked away, hurling a look of pure fury at him. He was wrong; that was obvious. But to admit it aloud, to confess to her that he had been afraid of losing her — no, let her think him a heartless idiot and a clod instead.

Unable to bear the silence, Ron pulled on his jumper and crept quietly down to the common room. He just needed to sit calmly by the fire, alone. On the spiral staircase he froze.

By the hearth, in the faint glow of dying embers, Morgan was already there. Who else? Ron had grown used to the fact that he barely slept, but this time the scene was stranger still. Kieran sat in an armchair, sleeves rolled up. At his feet on the rug lay an old grey rag, already thickly stained with dark brown spots.

Ron opened his mouth to call out, but the sound stuck in his throat. Kieran took from the side table a long dagger with a narrow blade and dark-wrapped hilt. Slowly, matter-of-factly, he pressed the point to his forearm and drew it hard across the skin.

Ron flinched: it looked horrifyingly unnatural. Morgan bit his lip; his face went white, but he made no sound. He set the knife aside; bloodied fingers reached for his wand.

‘Episkey,’ he whispered hoarsely.

A flash of light briefly illuminated the corner of the common room. The edges of the wound began to knit; the blood stopped flowing, leaving only a fresh pink scar. Ron swallowed, noticing that the entire forearm was densely webbed with pale scars; scarcely any living skin remained. Kieran exhaled heavily, stared into space for a second, then reached for the knife again.

‘Oi!’ Ron finally found his voice and almost ran the remaining distance. ‘Morgan! Have you gone mad?’

Kieran started at the unexpected sound; the dagger clattered to the floor. He yanked his sleeves down and stared at Ron. Such wild bewilderment crossed his face that Ron felt uneasy.

‘I…’ Kieran faltered, hastily covering the weapon with a stack of parchment. ‘…was practising. Healing. I’ve always struggled with it.’

‘Cutting yourself to practise a spell?’ Ron nodded at the blood-soaked rag. ‘Are you serious? It looks as though you’ve… I don’t know, lost the plot.’

Kieran swallowed and looked at his trembling hands.

‘At Mahoutokoro the teachers said I lacked precision. Couldn’t hold concentration. So I thought… if the cost of a mistake was tangible, it might improve matters. Stupid, isn’t it?’

Ron looked at him. He saw the bruises under Morgan’s eyes, saw how mechanically he straightened his cuffs.

‘Stupid isn’t the word, mate.’

Kieran wanted to protest but only let his shoulders slump helplessly.

‘Yes. Probably you’re right.’

A heavy silence fell. Ron felt he ought to leave or fetch someone, but the sight of this broken boy somehow held him. To break the tension he nodded at the side table.

‘Listen… do you play chess?’

Kieran blinked in surprise, staring at Weasley as though he had suggested jumping from the Astronomy Tower.

‘Chess? A little.’

Five minutes later they sat facing each other. Ron had fished an old board with chipped pieces from under the sofa. The common room was quiet; only the embers crackled.

Morgan played abominably. With some catastrophic, stubborn refusal to sacrifice even the smallest piece.

‘Who plays like that?’ Ron could not help laughing when Kieran, for the third time, exposed his queen merely to save a pawn. ‘You defend her as though she’s your only hope of survival. Pawns are expendable, Kieran!’

‘I don’t know how to sacrifice them,’ Morgan muttered, frowning at the board. ‘I always feel that if I give up even one, the whole defence will collapse. I’ve no talent for generalship, Ron. Strategy isn’t my thing.’

‘I’ve noticed that already,’ Ron teased without malice, easily taking his rook. ‘You build a fortress round your king with every piece at once, and in the end they’ve nowhere to move. You lock yourself in.’

‘Probably,’ Kieran lifted his eyes to Ron. ‘I thought the point of the game was to keep everyone alive.’

‘The point is to win,’ Ron said instructively, then added more quietly: ‘You know, I always thought all you ancient powerful families taught your children to think like generals. You know — influence, gold, calculation…’

‘Ron,’ Kieran leant back in the chair. ‘You keep talking about the Weasleys as though you’re accidental people in this world. But you’re no less powerful a family.’

‘Tell that to Malfoy,’ Ron said gloomily.

‘Draco understands perfectly well,’ Kieran cut in. ‘He just never admits it. He has money and a grand manor. You have a father, a mother, and six brothers and sisters. Nine wands. You’re a ready-made little army. Put you against the Malfoys in open field’ — he nodded at the board, where Ron’s white pieces mercilessly pressed the remnants of Morgan’s black army — ‘and you’d grind them to dust in the first minute. Who cares about patched robes when you can unleash nine curses at once and the enemy only three?’

Ron froze with a knight in his hand. He had never looked at his noisy, perpetually hard-up family from that angle.

‘That’s…’ Ron cleared his throat. ‘Sounds brilliant when you put it like that.’

‘I thought you understood it already.’

‘Listen… would you like… Would you like to come to the Burrow with Harry? This summer?’

‘I…’ Kieran looked almost frightened, then managed a faint smile. ‘Yes, of course. I’d be glad.’

They sat like that for another hour or so. Beyond the windows the sky began slowly turning cold grey. Kieran never won a single game.

‘It’s morning already,’ he said quietly. ‘Shouldn’t you try to sleep another hour before breakfast?’

‘Doubt I could,’ Ron replied.

‘Nightmares?’

‘No. More like realising what a load of nonsense I did yesterday.’

‘I’m no help there,’ Morgan shook his head with genuine regret. ‘But you’ve got older brothers — ask their advice.’

‘Yeah,’ Ron gave a crooked grin, rising and stretching his stiff back. ‘Fred and George would suggest turning her into a canary, and Percy would send a pamphlet on ballroom etiquette. I’ll have to sort it myself.’

He stood a moment, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. His gaze slid over the chessboard, where Morgan’s lone black king was cornered, then flicked to the side table where the bloodstained knife lay hidden beneath a pile of parchment.

Ron merely shoved his hands into his pockets and, already turning towards the stairs, threw over his shoulder:

‘And yes, Morgan. Next time you decide to… practise healing…’

Ron paused for a second, choosing his words.

‘Just wake me instead. Chess distracts just as well.’

Without waiting for an answer, Ron climbed the spiral staircase.