Hey there! I have been loving your stuff on Tumblr...I'm a newbie here but am enjoying reading what everyone here has to say about my favorite ginger (ok, favorite most lovable literary character ever) Ron Weasley. You know what I would love to read? Something from Dumbledore's point of view when he is deciding to leave Ron the Deluminator. I haven't come across anything like that. Thanks again for all the great stuff!
Thanks so much! :D Yeah Ron is my total fave. I’m kind of all over the place on fandom things (art, fic, headcanons, occasional Rps) so glad you like my stuff!
Dumbledore, the Deluminator and Ron
Dumbledore had always been a man with purpose. From a young age he was bright, capable, and driven. He had broad goals and plans he wanted to instate wherever he could. It was unfortunate that people often made things difficult. Every time he would connect with someone, that love and connection or duty would bind him and keep him from reaching his destination. For a time, in Gellert- he was able to find a person he could connect with in every way. The two of them were of the same make, and of the same mind. Together they could do anything. He didn’t want to be held back by the reputation of his father, duty to someone broken like his sister, or the talentless like his brother. He wanted to be free to live to his full potential and have his fierce ambitions met.
It took a long time for him to realize that those human connections were the most important thing a person could have in their life, and how ambitions without love were meaningless.
He started to see, far too late, the merit in people unlike himself- they were not only useful, but sometimes far more powerful than he could ever hope to have been. Love, family, kindness, loyalty, sacrifice- traits and bonds he’d not deemed as very important were stronger and more important than anything. It was too late for him to ever really have those bonds for himself- he quite gave up on that as well as his ridiculous ambitions- and instead would work hard to make sure others could have what he didn’t.
So he began to put his trust and faith in people, instead of just himself. He still was a man with plans and ambitions, but not for his own gain. After Gellert was defeated, he had all the time in the world to make plans, plant seeds for later use, and collect a dissolute group of people to protect this world. His plans could unfold in time, and all would eventually be well.
He still had to catch himself, at times. It was easy for him to fall into bad habits of not weighing people for their individual merits goodness or strength of character, but rather their gifts and usefulness. He had to admit that Ron Weasley was one of those.
When he saw Harry had befriended Ron Weasley, there was nothing bad about it of course- he was a good boy from a very good family- and that was useful. Harry needed more love and connection to the wizarding world, if one day he would come to protect it. He was surprised at the end of their first year, Weasley turned out to be rather clever and had defeated Minerva’s chess set, but it didn’t make a lasting impression for Dumbledore. Granger of the two friends was the one who everyone talked about. In many ways she reminded him of himself- incredibly smart, ambitious, from origins that would work against her.
Years went by- and Harry’s firm connection to the Weasleys was so ingrained that Ron Weasley had become quite necessary to all their plans, somehow. Hermione Granger’s intelligence was a boon that Harry would need in his future, but as ever Albus kept forgetting about the ever important connection to love and happiness. The end of Harry fifth year he could finally see the toll his actions were taking on the boy. Black was dead, Harry was losing himself to hate, and Albus had stupidly tried to isolate the boy a whole year and ignore the hurt he housed. Harry needed love and healing and light in his life. He’d try to work that in while he was strategizing his next move to track down Riddle’s horcruxes.
As it always happened, Dumbledore’s plans would always be foiled by his own indulgence in personal happiness, and his gall to think he could ever be trusted with something as grand as being the ‘master of death.’ He was too tempted by the ring, and was cursed to die on a timeline other than his own.
Time, which Dumbledore had always had so much of, was starting to run out. He was going to die. He would not be able to oversee his slow unfurling plans. He now had to put faith in others to a degree he never had before. And in this case, put his faith in three children.
Harry was destined to face down Voldemort and use his skills to take him down- and he would need the intelligence of Hermione to back him up with spells- but this time Dumbledore had to acknowledge- Ron Weasley’s place and importance in this trio had to be acknowledged.
Harry needed a family. He needed the Weasleys, and most importantly, needed Ron Weasley. Harry wouldn’t be able to make it through the journey without love and light- and for all the love Harry and Hermione shared- the two would not be able to make it through it all without the good humor, heart, and faith of Ron Weasley to light their way through the hard, dark, uncaring world and temptations they were about to be engulfed by.
That’s when Dumbledore made the deluminator Ron’s in his will. A Deluminator is able to light a path and guide its owner to the place they are most needed. If Harry were lost, he’d find help wherever he went. If Hermione were lost, she’d surely have a plan to get back to the group or they’d muddle through without her as they had when they were just twelve- but if Ron was lost, how would he get back to them? Who would bouy the group? Who would rally their spirits? And Dumbledore had to admit who would literally use themself as a human shield if needed… Ron Weasley would. He had a fire in him- a loyalty and love that was unwavering, and selfsacrificing- that would make the Deluminator listen to him and his heart that was not as stubborn or hard to access as Harry and Hermione’s.
Dumbledore passed on, as he had planned- at the hand of Snape- but was still able to watch from wherever he was existing.
Ron’s open/easy to access heart became a target of the Locket’s- but Albus’s faith in the young man’s loyalty and love for the other two came shining through, quite literally. He was a Gryffindor, and his importance to the group could no longer be ignored. Making sure Ron could find his way back to them no matter what had been integral to their success. He hoped he’d have a chance to say something to the boy he had underestimated for many years, who was so key to their victory- and many many decades later he was able to do just that, much as he had with Harry when the boy was just seventeen. He was able to thank a boy (now an old man with many great grandchildren) for all he’d done- for being the one to hold together a trio through everything.
