"Why is it that your family lacks anything at all?"
He floundered for an answer, the anger he felt at Tom's insults giving way to confusion and uncertainty.
"Because of people like Malfoy," he wrote back, pressing the quill as hard as he could into the page without snapping it, trying to project the confidence he wished he felt.
"Lucius, or his son?"
"Both of them. They think they're better than everyone else."
"Are they?"
He almost laughed, clearly he hadn't told Tom enough about the Malfoy's if he even needed to ask that, but just before he put quill to page more words appeared in Tom's usual tightly flowing script.
"They are worse people of course, you know this to be true, but better is not the same as good."
He paused, a single drop falling off of the worn nub and onto the page.
"Goodness is a virtue, to be sure, but what use it to those who have nothing? For the great, for the powerful, it is surely paramount. It is the virtue of goodness that drives leaders to care for their people, to provide for them, but they cannot do so if they have not the means. To be 'better' is to be better at life, at 'playing the game' as it were."
The writing stopped, then the page went blank before a moment later being filled again with five words.
"Is Arthur a good man?"
"Yes," wrote Ron, so certain of that truth at least that it required no thought at all.
"Then why do you have nothing?"
The quill trembled in his hand, and he glanced around the empty dormitory, desperately wishing that someone, preferably Harry, would walk in and take the book out of his hands. But there was no one there. Just him, him and Tom, a book full of all the things he wanted to know, all the things that would help him stand out, that would put him on a level with his brothers. Or maybe even over them, some small part of him whispered. A book full, too, with all the things he didn't want to hear.
"Your father is an accomplished wizard, your mother a skilled witch, your eldest brother unravels the most dangerous of magics as a career and all the rest have skills of their own. Surely, between the seven of them, they could use their power to change things? To end the squalor?"
The seven of them. Seven. Not nine, not six, seven. Ron and Ginny weren't counted. Of course, they were too young, but then so were Percy, Fred, and George. Not even Tom thought he could do anything.
"We're happy just as we are," he wrote bitterly.
"Of course, of course," replied Tom, "given enough time even a prisoner can grow to be happy in their chains."
Ron blanched.
"I'm sorry," wrote Tom, "I did not intend to compare your home to a prison, I misstepped."
Ron nodded, then, remembering that Tom could only see what was written on the page, replied.
"It's nothing, don't worry about it."
"Are you certain? I know you are sensitive to this sort of thing, Draco brings it up too often for it to be merely brushed aside."
"I said it's fine."
A pause, then, "Of course."
But it wasn't fine, it was never fine. It wasn't fine when he got Fred's old sock, or Percy's old rat, or Charlie's old wand. It wasn't fine when Hermione tutted at how he didn't have the proper silver plated knife for potions, or how Harry got him something straight out of the order catalogue at Quality Quidditch supplies while Ron got Harry a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. It wasn't fine that people like the Weasleys, good people, had scrounge and scrape to get by, when people like the Malfoys stepped on top of everyone else to walk lightly up the mountains Ron had climbed.
"Better isn't the same as good", he quitely recited.
"Are you still there?"
He refocused on the page, confused at first, then flushing red as he realized how long he'd been sat there without doing anything.
"Yea, I'm here," he scribbled.
"Would you like for me to leave?" wrote Tom.
An unexpected and irrational surge of panic surged through him, and he was so quick in his refusal that it came out as a barely legible scrawl.
Another pause.
"Then, what do you want?"
He froze, the quill poised over the page as Tom put voice to a question he'd never let himself ask. What did he want? What could he want? What was he allowed to want? His thoughts drifted, onto and past all the things he didn't have, beyond the places and things he'd always wondered about but never had the opportunity to experience, and onto the words that had started it all.
He was already good, he reasoned, so now, now...
"I want to be better," he wrote. Firmly, slowly, etching the words into the parchment like a mason carving stone. They didn't dissapear. The ink faded, but the impression of each letter remained, dug into the page.
Another moment, and then,
"Very well Ronald, then let us begin..."