Ron did not know how he had walked out of the Great Hall.
He was like an empty shell with its soul torn out.
Every sound around him had become a blurred, malicious buzzing.
Those looks of sympathy, contempt, or gloating...
Were like vines in a swamp, cold, damp, and slimy, winding tightly around his limbs and suffocating him.
He fled.
Like a dog without a home.
He did not return to the Common Room. To him, that place was now a courtroom.
He simply wandered aimlessly through the Castle.
Up one flight of stairs after another, down one corridor after another.
The portraits hanging on the walls whispered among themselves.
The suits of armor in their alcoves cast cold, mocking shadows.
All of Hogwarts was laughing at him.
Before he knew it, his footsteps stopped at the end of a familiar, dust-covered corridor.
The fourth floor.
The storeroom where the abandoned Trapdoor lay.
As though possessed, he pushed open the creaking door.
A stale smell of dust and old wood hit him.
The room was filled with discarded desks and chairs, piled into little mountains.
But Ron saw a different scene.
Huge black-and-white squares on a chessboard.
Cold stone chess pieces as tall as people.
He had once played the most brilliant game of his life here.
He had been the knight who commanded an army, willing to sacrifice himself to protect his friends.
It had been the proudest moment of his life.
He curled up in the darkest corner of the room and buried his face deep in his knees.
At that moment, glory and humiliation formed the sharpest, cruelest contrast.
Why?
He had only told the truth.
He had only felt that Hermione should not be so close to the enemy.
*He had only wanted to defend