Chapter Text
For all his reputation as a troublemaker, Ronald Bilius Weasley is not, in fact, ever looking for trouble. Neither is he industrious enough to stir up some if there isn’t any, although Hermione always tries to make it sound like he is doing it on purpose.
He isn’t.
In all honesty, Hermione is one to talk, because most of the times that Ron gets in hot water it’s either thanks to her activism or Harry’s saviour complex (which is perhaps another form of activism, or maybe Hermione has a kind of saviour complex too.) The rest of the times it is thanks to the fact that Ron has five older brothers who have seemed to use up the male generational luck already, leaving nothing for him.
Really, how else could one explain that thirty minutes after Bill and Fleur had left for their no-technology bio-eco-nature retreat thing, just when Ron finally managed putting Victoire to sleep on the only bed in Harry’s apartment (who is at Shell Cottage in France with Ginny, doing a house swap or something like that with Bill and Fleur, so that they can go on a no-phones no-clocks return-to-nature honeymoon) (marriage is clearly making people hate the city, good thing that he broke things off with Hermione before they could have gone down that route) (or, more accurately, Hermione broke things off, because Ron didn’t want to do it, but it felt like Hermione wanted him to do it so he just kind of said it, but then it looked like Hermione was angry that he had, so he’s still not entirely sure what that was all about)—
Anyway, the point is that just when Ron was ready to take advantage of Harry’s place having a tub, and take a long, relaxing soak with one of Ginny’s strongly-scented bubble baths and a cold pint, disaster strikes.
Ron opens the tap that was probably around to mourn the death of Queen Victoria despite the fact that it’s a single handle one, turns said handle all the way to the hot end (which he has checked, just in case it’s different from what he’s used to, because Ron, despite what everyone thinks, is fully capable of foresight and being careful) and when he lets go, the whole thing stays in his hand.
Just like that, a steady jet of boiling hot water begins bursting from the pipe.
“Oh fuck,” Ron says, just to say something, before rushing out of the bathroom to run up and down like a headless chicken, grabbing towels and stuffing them under the door, hoping to contain the water. The bathroom feels like a lost cause anyway, because what the bloody hell is he supposed to do with that? What blocks a water pipe without a tap? Who would be able to help him at 1 a.m.?
Neighbours seems to be the obvious answer, but there aren’t many of them, because Mrs. Figg managed to burn down half the building a week or two ago, so pretty much all but the six flats on the weirdly-shaped side are uninhabitable. The two downstairs have old people living in them, and Ron doubts he could rouse them at this hour. Neville, who lives just across the hall, would probably add nothing but more panic to the situation (nothing against Neville, he’s a solid lad, but he’s also a solid lad pretty low on Ron’s list of Solid Lads To Ask For Help In A Stressful Situation.)
That leaves the upstairs flats, and Ron bolts out of the door, having finally seen the light at the end of this particularly wet tunnel.
The upstairs flats, like the downstairs ones, are not exactly over (or under) Harry’s or Neville’s; thanks to some reckless architectural choices, it’s more of a partial overlap, all to accommodate the frankly disturbing stairwell with its uneven and snake-like turns. It takes a solid two minutes for Ron to run up a single flight of them, before beginning to bang on the door on the left. He has never met the bloke who lives in that flat, and he can’t even remember his name, although Harry has tried to tell him a million times. (Something Thomas, because Ron always remembers the Thomas, but that’s his surname.)
The point is that he’s apparently very handy and likes to help, which makes him the opposite of the other upstairs bloke, (with whom Harry has a kind of blood feud) Something Riddle. (Harry never calls him by his first name, if he even knows it.) It’s relatively important that Ron doesn’t wake him up by accident, because the blood feud is not exactly one-sided, judging from Harry’s rants (although Ron is not the world’s most attentive man, as Hermione has been saying for a long time.)
Thinking distracts Ron so thoroughly that he only notices the steps on the other side of the door when the door finally swings open, and he physically can’t keep banging on it.
“What?” Something Thomas asks with a glare. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Harry’s friend,” Ron explains. “I broke the bloody tap, there’s water everywhere, I need help.”
Something Thomas narrows his dark eyes. Meanwhile, speaking to another person is starting to reboot Ron’s brain, meaning he notices several things in rapid succession.
First, that Ginny wasn’t kidding when she said that Something Thomas is fit.
Second, that despite it being 1 a.m., he’s still dressed like he’s ready to go out, not looking tired (nor coked up) in the least.
Third, that Ron himself is only wearing a towel.
“How tragic,” Something Thomas says lightly, and he doesn’t move.
“Yeah mate, it’s a whole thing,” Ron agrees. “Listen, do you know what do to, or do you have the number of anyone who—”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Something Thomas cuts him off, going in a millisecond from standing to striding past Ron and taking the stairs three at a time down to the flat. Ron, feeling like he can finally breathe again, now that someone has offered to help, almost breaks his neck trying to catch up.
“Bathroom’s that way!” he points, while Something Thomas is glancing around the flat, clearly looking for it.
“Great,” Something Thomas responds, which doesn’t make much sense. “Do you have a toolbox or something? A wrench?”
“Yes, wait—I know where it is,” Ron runs off, trying desperately to remember where Ginny, who knows how to fix just about anything, keeps her tools.
He finds them in the bedroom (where Victoire is somehow still fast asleep, thankfully) and when he brings the box to the hall, Something Thomas is searching for it in the living room, which looks like a very door-focused tornado has ripped through it. At least the man appreciates the severity of the situation, if he is also giving Ron more tidying to do later on.
All things considered, Something Thomas is even nicer than Ron imagined him to be, because he follows him to the bathroom without any complaints, carrying the toolbox while Ron braves the door. “It’s hitting the door,” he explains to Something Thomas. “So we just have to run in and slam it closed, alright?”
“Alright,” Something Thomas agrees easily enough, and then they charge in the bathroom, kicking the door closed behind them.
“Fuck,” Ron exhales, while Something Thomas lets out a whistle.
“Someone is going to be very unhappy when he comes back from his honeymoon,” he mutters, not sounding very empathetic about it. But before Ron could get mad (although he definitely shouldn’t get mad at the bloke trying to help him) he speaks up. “If I were you I’d drink my beer now, because there’s no way you can fix that. The whole tap broke off.”
“There’s no—” Ron begins to repeat, as his brain screeches to a terrible halt. “Mate, I can’t just flood Harry’s flat! We have to fix it!”
“Well, I’m not a plumber and neither are you,” Something Thomas shrugs. “That’s literally a broken pipe. What do you imagine we will do, weld it shut?”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know! But I can’t—fuck, I can’t—”
Ron knows that he is emotionally immature, frequently self-centred, and terribly childish (as Hermione has told him many times) but he still has no idea which one of these is making him burst out in tears at 1 a.m. next to a broken water pipe.
“Oh come on,” he hears Something Thomas groan quietly. “Alright, alright, I just thought of something, maybe it’s a brilliant idea that will save the day, wow, it’s so late, you can just go to bed and I’ll go work it out.”
Ron hiccups, feeling more miserable than he’s ever had, first for fucking up (again) and then for crying like a baby instead of staying calm and collected.
“Go to bed,” Something Thomas repeats, a little less unfeeling than before.
“I’ll help you,” Ron says, wiping his face, ready to prove that he is a decent person and an adult too.
“I don’t need help,” the answer comes fast enough to be reflexive, which is sad, but Ron can relate to that.
“I won’t just go to sleep and put this on you, mate,” he says, with all the steeliness that his mum has when someone tries to so much as imply that she would be uncaring and ungrateful towards someone doing her a favour. “C’mon, tell me what I can do.”
“Nothing,” Something Thomas emphasizes. “I’ll go fix it and you can clean up this mess.”
“I’ll clean it later. It doesn’t make sense to do it now anyway, the water’s still going.”
Something Thomas lets out a tortured sigh. “Fine,” he says, about as happy as if Ron was offering to do a root canal without anaesthetics, instead of a hand with whatever he needed to do to fix the water. “You can help. But only if you can keep a secret.”
“Sure,” Ron agrees easily, but this doesn’t seem to convince Something Thomas.
“I mean it,” he says, managing to look ominous and dignified while standing in ankle-deep water at 1 a.m. in a bathroom. “You can only come with me if you promise you won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else. Not your best mate, not your sister, not anyone. Am I being clear?”
“Crystal,” Ron nods. “I promise I won’t tell anyone anything. Won’t even let Harry and Ginny know that you were helping, if you don’t want them to feel like they owe you something.”
“Good,” Something Thomas says, finally satisfied, and he puts the toolbox on the sink, only to grab the pint glass and empty it in one go. It’s impressive, and also fairly fucking hot. “Let’s go, then.”
Off they go, apparently downstairs, to the lift that hasn’t worked once in this century, and the metal service door right next to it that is so rusty that even looking at it is a tetanus risk. Despite the building’s heating being broken (again) and turning the whole place into England’s saddest greenhouse, the night is still chilly, and Ron shudders in his bloody towel.
“You can go back upstairs,” Something Thomas offers, fishing out a set of keys from the pocket of his pretty tight black jeans (in which Ron is only indirectly interested, as a man who never fares well with tight clothing) and unlocking door.
“I’m fine,” Ron lies, and then the rusty door swings open soundlessly. Something Thomas flicks a switch on without having to feel around for it, and a single lightbulb illuminates a set of steps, worn so smooth by feet that it might as well be a spine-breaking slide. “That’s a trip hazard, mate.”
“That’s why no one ever comes down here,” Something Thomas says, despite the two of them clearly going down there. “That, and the giant snake.”
“Giant snake,” Ron rolls his eyes, more than familiar with people taking the piss. He had to live with Fred and George for a long time. “What does it eat down here, dust?”
“Gingers in a towel,” Something Thomas responds, before ducking his head to avoid a massive spider web with an equally massive spider in the middle of it.
Ron freezes.
The spider sways a little, either because his web has been moved by a grown man passing by, or because it is preparing to jump.
Ron takes a step back.
“Are you alright?” Something Thomas asks, finally noticing that Ron isn’t following him anymore. “Please tell me you aren’t going to get a stroke now.”
“I’m fine,” Ron says, keeping his eye on the spider.
“You look like you’re about to drop.”
“I’m fine,” Ron repeats, sounding even more faint. Is the spider looking back at him, judging the distance? Are there more spiders around? (He can’t check, because they the spider would surely move.)
Something Thomas passes by the spider again, with no worry at all about it casually dropping on him, and then he is between Ron and the spider. “What now,” he doesn’t ask so much as he groans.
“Nothing,” Ron swallows hard, trying not to look like an idiot who is scared of a little bug that is much more scared of him (he knows, Hermione, thank you very much, he knows he is bigger than a spider) but he can’t just take his eyes off of it. That’s when spiders skitter away, to hide in places where Ron can’t see them until it’s too late.
Something Thomas follows his eyes. “What?” he asks, squinting in the flickering light, trying to see what Ron is looking at.
“The spider,” he admits, the words squeezed through his teeth. He knows it’s fucking stupid, he knows he’s a grown man, he knows a spider can’t hurt him, but he’s still having goosebumps and it’s not because of the cold.
“Do you want me to kill it?” Something Thomas asks, not sounding particularly annoyed.
“No,” Ron says without thinking, because it’s the morally correct answer.
“I can also grab it and throw it somewhere, but it’s still going to be here.”
“It can’t help being a spider,” Ron repeats what Hermione said after Harry had killed a spider for him once, except Ron just can’t muster the kind of moral conviction that Hermione has. That spider is as big as Victoire’s hand.
“Right.”
“And it’s not like it made its web there on purpose,” Ron continues, cringing.
“And it’s not like your mate’s flat is getting flooded with every second we spend here.”
“What are you going to kill it with?”
Something Thomas huffs out a little laugh-like sound, plucks the bloody spider from its web as if it were a dust bunny, flings it on the ground, and squashes it under his leather boots. “There,” he says. “Dead as a doornail.”
“Cheers,” Ron says, grateful for both the act and the lack of mocking. They keep walking in companionable silence, until finally the narrow corridor widens into a large basement that is so full of dripping and groaning pipes that it could easily double as a horror movie set. “Are we supposed to be here?”
“I have the keys,” Something Thomas says, which is the kind of non-answer Ron is very familiar with, on the account of having lived around troublemakers his whole life.
“So that’s a no,” he concludes. His guide to the underworld of the building, who does have the keys indeed, pretends not to hear it. Their new silence is broken half a minute later, just when Ron is beginning to wonder how long it will take, and how much water will get out of the bathroom in that time.
“Hold this,” Something Thomas says, and then he throws something at Ron, which turns out to be a mini torch. It has the kind of blinding light that Ron absolutely did not expect from an unassuming little flashlight, and it makes him very glad that he hasn’t been accidentally pointing it at his own face. “Come on.”
Something Thomas is moving into the jungle of pipes, ducking and shimmying through the space like a black-clad snake. Ron follows as best as he can, but he is pretty much a towel-clad bloke, so he can’t avoid touching some of the pipes on their way to the back wall of the basement. There’s another rusty door there, although this one is child-sized, and when Something Thomas opens it with yet another key, it turns out that it doesn’t really lead anywhere.
“Light,” he says, and as Ron directs the torch’s light, it bounces back from a mass of surprisingly shiny and well-maintained pipes and valves. Something Thomas reaches into the confusion of plumbing, and turns a spigot until there is a subtle change in the groan of the pipes. “There. It’s fixed for now.”
“It is?” Ron asks, not even daring to hope.
“Water’s shut off,” Something Thomas explains, standing up after locking the magic basement cupboard that controls the building’s water supply.
“Oh no,” Ron feels dizzy with fear. “We can’t, people will be bloody furious, it’s—”
“It’s only off for Potter’s,” Something Thomas stares at him as if he were an idiot. “Obviously I’m not going to shut off my own water, Ron. Call the plumber in the morning.”
“Bloody hell,” Ron groans, the horrible weight of his most recent fuck-up lifted off of his shoulders in the span of three sentences. He practically sways with relief. “Thank you so much, mate, you saved my life. I’ll buy you a pint or something.”
“You already did,” Something Thomas says, apparently not very interested in being thanked. He looks vaguely like he just can’t believe that he’s helped Ron in the middle of the night with an utterly mad problem, which is a look that many people have after helping Ron with anything, to be fair. At least he isn’t berating him for being a bloody idiot. “And remember, not a word of this to anyone.”
Ron mimes his mouth zipped shut. In all honesty, he would lay his life down for Something Thomas, first of all because of his help, and second because he is being so nice about it.
“Sorry about this,” Ron tells him as they make their way out of the basement. “I know it was a bloody great nuisance in the middle of the night.”
“Eh,” Something Thomas shrugs.
Ron only understands that nonchalance three weeks later.
“Did you take some stuff?” Harry asks him on the phone, sounding slightly incensed and as if he is running up and down in the flat, the phone put on speaker. “When you were staying over last month, did you take anything?”
“Nah,” Ron tells him after thinking it through. “Why?”
“I can’t find the mug,” the answer comes, entirely unlike Harry. He sounds a little like Gollum looking for his precious. “Or the snake.”
“Um,” Ron says, pretty sure that Harry has taken something. “The what?”
“The lighter,” Ginny’s voice answers, sounding exasperated and not making anything clearer.
“The what?” Ron repeats, because neither Harry nor Ginny smokes, so there’s no reason why they would have a novelty lighter, which is what Ron assumes the snake is.
“Harry’s trophy,” Ginny explains, and Ron can practically hear her eyes roll. “It’s missing.”
“And the mug!” Harry’s voice comes faintly, from afar.
“And the Holy Grail too,” Ginny adds, before raising her voice. “What about the evil diary?”
There’s a pregnant pause. “Gone!” Harry howls at last. “All gone, how did that soulless fucking demon even take them? Did Ron leave the flat unlocked?!”
“No,” Ron scowls. “Why would I do that?”
“You wouldn’t,” Ginny tells him calmly. “Harry’s just mad because it took him so long to get his trophies.”
“I’m mad because Riddle broke into our fucking flat, Gin!”
“And then locked the door behind himself? And put everything back in order? Oh, and he didn’t feel like touching anything but the things in the living room?”
“How am I supposed to know why that arsehole does things?!” Harry yells, and Ron finally connects the points.
“Wait, it’s actually fine,” he says. “I think it was the other bloke, the nice one. Something Thomas. He helped me fix the tap at night, he was looking for your toolbox in the living room, Ginny. He probably moved things around and I put them back wrong when I tidied up.”
“You didn’t say Dean helped you with the pipe,” Ginny notes idly.
“Yeah, well, he asked me to not mention it. Very nice bloke.”
“Dean wasn’t even here!” Harry screams, the sound getting loud very fast as he approaches the phone. “He was visiting Seamus’ family in Ireland!”
“I don’t know what to tell you, mate,” Ron responds, starting to lose his patience. “I sure as shit didn’t just hallucinate a bloke helping me.”
“Yeah?” Harry asks, about as reasonable as an attack dog. “Then what does Dean look like?!”
Fucking fit, mate, Ron wants to answer, just to piss Harry off, but Ginny is also listening, and she’s been on somewhat of a crusade ever since things with Hermione ended. If she knew that he thinks Dean (Something Thomas didn’t look like a Dean, but oh well, his parents couldn’t have known that when he was a baby) is hot, she would absolutely do something mortifying about it. (Such as preparing an intervention, which Ron doesn’t need, seeing that he is fully, exhaustingly, boringly heterosexual, it’s just that he also has eyes.)
“Tall, kinda thin,” he says. “Black hair, dark eyes. Do you want me to tell you what he was wearing too, or are you done, Sergeant Potter?”
The moment of silence on the other side is like the calm before the storm, and Ron holds the phone away from his ear with instincts honed by thirty years of terror from the twins.
It’s a good choice, because both Harry and Ginny begin howling, the former with fury and the latter with laughter.
“Ron! Ron!” Ginny wheezes. “Oh my god, Ron!”
“What?!” he snaps, not exactly happy to be screamed or scream-laughed at.
“SeRgEaNt PoTtEr!” Harry repeats, in a tone that sounds mocking, outraged, and entirely unhinged all at once. “How could you betray me like that! You! Ron! The last man who should’ve been seduced to the fucking devil’s side!”
“And he helped you?” Ginny continues, sounding like she is choking on air. “He helped you fix our tap? Oh my god!”
“How did he do it?” Harry demands. “What did he touch?”
“What the fuck, mate,” Ron tells him, hoping it would knock some sense back into him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?! With me?! You fraternize with the fucking enemy, and—”
“Ginny, what the bloody hell is going on?!”
“Oh my god,” Ginny moans painfully, having probably sprained something by laughing too hard. “Ron, that wasn’t Dean.”
“Yes it was, it was the upstairs bloke—”
“Ron,” Ginny interrupts him, clearly on the brink of another mad laughing fit, while Harry keeps on ranting in the background, “that was Tom Riddle.
Oh.
Oh fuck.