Work Text:
Ron was coughing up hairballs of equations.
He ejected them out, mathematical flotsam that slapped, noisily, against an invisible chalkboard in the middle of the room. "Could use a hand!" he yelled, but what projectiled out was, "iψ∂ψ† ∂t i∇ψ† · (γ0 γψ) = mψ† γ0 ψ."
"Could use a hand, here," he said through his and Draco's newly-discovered telepathic link. It appeared to be yet another perk of Ron's new trove of creature enhancements.
Holding his Hogwarts staff walkie-talkie to his lips, he said, "Silvertree? There's maths coming out of my mouth."
What came out of his mouth sounded like a gramophone record played backwards. "∇2ψ 8π2 m(E – U)ψ/h 2=0"
The symbols splatted at a 90 degree angle to their friends, for reasons unknown.
"Gnarly!" Draco said, after a long, sultry whistle that turned Ron on despite his predicament.
"Not helping."
"Why're you holding a rabbit?"
/////
Thirty minutes earlier…
/////
"Got a situation." Hogwarts' squib caretaker, Anne Harris-Jones's Scottish brogue blared on Ron's walkie-talkie. "Bunny gone rogue."
"Sounds like a personal problem," Ron said, his banter with her a long-practised, easy pattern.
"Very funny. The owner's a Ravenclaw first year. She's here with me, upset. Her bunny's lost in the Ancient Runes wing and she has to be in class."
"Why aren't you barking up Silvertree's, well, tree? He's Ravenclaw Head of House."
"He's teaching. Look, the rabbit, Bandersnatch, is in one of the unused classrooms. Prank gone wrong. Room 334. Gotta go. Harris-Jones out."
She made a Muggle staticky sound and then Ron's walkie-talkie went silent.
"A rabbit?" he said to himself.
He rolled his eyes, mentally mapping how long it would take to rescue some first year's adorable ball of fluff. To his surprise, he'd discovered a recent inexplicable draw to a rabbit as a pet himself. It wouldn't bork his afternoon too much, though he was supposed to be meeting Draco in his potions lab in twenty minutes.
The improbable start to their relationship, finding a rogue goblin element at Gringotts had kidnapped and imprisoned Millicent Bulstrode, only made the relationship more precious to Ron. That, and together they were incendiary. Draco broke Ron's brain with innovative ways potions could be used in an erotic playground. Having unleashed latent creature magic in himself that came with massive, awe-inspiring wings, Ron felt a challenge to try everything. He felt invincible.
Then he picked up Bandersnatch, and instead of low murmured cooing baby words coming out of his mouth, "− 1 (g 0 (x))2 g 00(x) = 1 (h 0 (y))2 h 00(y)" vomited up and out into the air.
/////
"Weasley! Why are you holding that rabbit… without gloves?"
Arithmancy Professor Amos Silvertree, vampire and Kewpie doll enthusiast, gave Ron a look of pity from the doorframe.
"What's going on with him?" Draco asked.
Ron, after downing another shot of Scotch, belched his irritation in the form of two-dimensional strings of symbols and numbers.
"There's a hex on the fucking rabbit," Ron tried to say. "𝑓(𝑥)=1𝜋∫∞0𝑔(𝑦)𝑥 𝑦d𝑦" instead ululated from him as though possessed by a number demon. If such a thing even existed.
"Hex on the rabbit," he sent to Draco as Silvertree delicately tapped at the unrimmed, hexagonal pink sunglasses that were eternally perched on the bridge of his nose.
"I'm so sorry. That's Thompson's – Beatrixa Thompson, one of my Ravenclaw First Years – rabbit. She's from a long line of renowned Arithmancers. The hex is magical signature based. If anyone but her picks up her companion, they're hit with a Schrӧdinger's Hex. Charmed gloves against it make the hex easy to avoid. Harmless, but humbling."
"Ask Silvertree how to break it!" Ron yelled telepathically to Draco. Aloud he belched a, "Why me?" which burst into a shimmering black zinger "V – E F = 2" that slammed with a tinkling crash against the transparent wall of formulas.
Ron held out the rabbit at arms length, nodding at it for the Arithmancy professor to come retrieve it and take it back to Ravenclaw tower. Amos lovingly reached out to Bandersnatch, who eased over without concern. Her twitching button nose mesmerised Ron as effectively as any spell cast on him by any human. Professor Silvertree's hands were cocooned in coruscating mustard yellow, bespoke leather gloves. Ron's world stood still for a moment as he thought of gloves like that on hands belonging to his lover.
"Easy-peasy," the vampire said, wrenching Ron from his too-short reverie. Silvertree's smile was too bright and voice too pinched for Ron to believe him. "You just need to share your deepest truth with somebody you care about. See? You'll lift it in no time flat."
"1∩ Z = uˆ (−1, . . . , 0kDk)" gurgled in Ron's throat before floating over to its mathematical compatriots. It was a half-hearted articulated whine about the world being unfair.
"Thanks again!" Silvertree gushed. "Ciao and apologies!" With preternatural speed, Amos and part of Ron's heart in the shape of a hexed bundle of needwant fluff was gone.
"Guess you'll need to write it down," Draco said, shaking his head. "He owes you."
"Parchment and quill, please?" Ron sighed, accepting a kiss that he wished could do the trick instead.
/////
A couple of hours later…
/////
"Well, that was utter carnage," Ron groaned to his temporary host, finally able to speak in words rather than equations.
On the parchment now shut away in a drawer, over a dozen heartfelt truths with long scratch-throughs told testament to the difficulty Ron went through to get to regular speech. At the bottom, almost as an afterthought to the wide-ranging, self-incriminating proclamations to Draco that hadn't worked, Ron had written,
With you, I can be filthily authentic. Every nasty truth of myself, out on the table. Because when I'm with you, there's nothing for me to hide.
The intensity of the truth garnered a quick shag back in their rooms before Bulstrode demanded they both come to her suite of rooms for a hex breaking post-mortem and drinks. Millicent laughed as she handed him a violently neon tangerine-coloured cocktail.
"Are you kidding? It was brilliant," she said as Ron stared at her. "More entertaining than emptying a Wheeze's Bag of Dicks, and I'd know."
Ron tried to sip on his cocktail while marvelling at any world in which Bulstrode had ever gone into George and Fred's shop. He decided it was best that he focus solely on swallowing down the drink which seemed made from shattered glass laced with quantum tangerine fizz.
"Seems an awfully personal way to break any hex, especially for young kids," Draco observed, his tone and thoughtful expression indicating more a sense of admiration than condemnation. "Surprised I'd never heard of it. Then again, Slytherin isn't known for its Arithmancers, as a whole."
"Who knew that mathematicians were so…" Millicent swirled her drink as she appeared to wait for the perfect word to arrive, "inventive."
A specialised charm doorbell sound caused the three professors to look at Millicent's door.
"Yes?" she called out.
"It's Silvertree!"
Millicent arched an eyebrow at Ron and Draco, then waved her wand at the wards.
Silvertree swept in, brandishing a luminous blue hare in an equally resplendent blue-metal cage.
"Gift for you, Weasley," he said, feigning breathless excitement. Being a vampire, of course, he didn't actually use his lungs for respiration. "Courtesy of Thompson's parents, who are terribly, excruciatingly sorry that you were inflicted by their daughter's pet's hex. I might also have heard a rumour that you've been inquiring about adding a rabbit to your own household."
Ron swallowed hard as he looked at the impossibly beautiful cerulean creature, now edging forward with an adorably twitching nose. Unable to tear his eyes away, he reached out and waited for Draco to hold his hand.
"I might be up all night making sure our rooms are safe for her. Him?"
Silvertree shrugged, a dramatic gesture. His robes responded with a susurration as they swept across the floor.
"There's a guide in the cage. Good luck! So sorry about the projectile equations. You look good as new. See you at breakfast!"
For the second time that day, quite unusually, the extroverted vampire obviously couldn't wait to get away.
Ron sniffed, then forced himself to take what felt like a laboured, shaky long inhale. Who got a life like this? First wings, then Draco, now… Balthamos.
"I couldn't—"
Bulstrode kiboshed Ron's wind-up.
"NOPE. Not in this room, you don't. Do sentimental on your own time with your own hooch. Speaking of, drink up then get out of here. He is handsome."
She winked, heatedly, at the blue hare.
One leporine ear dropped partway and turned to her, a periscope landing on… land.
"Okay. That's totally not weird," Draco snapped. "Cheers. And don't think knowing laws and contracts is going to get you out of Azkaban if— "
"Precious," Bulstrode purred.
Ron had backed away with the cage to the door, just in case new hexes started flying. If Moaning Myrtle showed up, as she often did, she'd only add into the melee with phantasmagorical glee.
"Draco," she continued, "Consent is everything. Toodles."
/////
Sometime later…
/////
"This may be the best day I've ever had," Ron said, snuggled on his side with Balthamos sandwiched between their chests.
"It's very… fairytale," Draco said, his fingers brushing the back of the hare's skull.
"The Hex and the Hare," Ron said.
Balthamos wriggled his nose, sneezed, and fell asleep.
… and they lived …