This is a birthday fic for beemadib... Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry or Ron... but I do have some food at home...
Ron's Conundrum
Ron was hungry. Very hungry. So hungry, in fact, that he was salivating at the mere thought of food as he trudged through the snow with his two best friends, Harry and Hermione, on their way back from Hogsmeade.
This was not an uncommon occurrence for the voracious redhead. He, Ronald Bilius Weasley (call him Ronald or Weasel at your own peril), unofficial champion of not-so-fine cuisine, made it is business to devote large amounts of time thinking about the art and practice of devouring and, in some cases, inhaling the delectable scrumptiousness that he ate on a daily basis.
Ron tripped over the stairs. Apparently he had been lost in food drenched thoughts. Again. A remarkable occurrence, he decided, since he made it a point not to think too much outside of food-related matters. And chess.
Finally, nostrils flaring, eyes half-lidded, Ron finally caught a hint of something; delicious, freshly baked shepherd's pie. Following that, the smells cascaded by so quickly Ron could only smile in childish wonder. Sizzling turkey, the sharp aroma of peppermint humbugs, the meaty goodness of lamb stew, interspersing and meshing with each other to create a wonderful blanket of aromatic goodness.
Ron wandered in with a dazed look on his face, unaware of the amused and exasperated glances thrown his way. Acting on pure habit, he floated over to the Gryffindor table… before throwing himself upon all the food in sight.
And if you were to listen to the chatter in the hall, you would hear a great multitude of things.
"Absolutely appalling!" snorted Hermione.
"Scandalous!" chimed Fred and George.
"What a horrible infestation of Nargles…" murmured Luna.
"Tell you what, Potter," Draco Malfoy smirked. "If Weasley here ever learns some proper table manners, I'll transfer to Gryffindor for a week."
"You're on, Malfoy."
Snape, sweeping past, commented, "As there is not the remotest chance that Mr. Weasley's eating habits will change for the better, dunderhead that he is, I feel quite safe in placing a small wager of my own. I…" the rest of his sentence was lost in the rising volume in the hall.
"Preposterous," sniffed Ernie Macmillan, over at the Hufflepuff table.
"Ridiculously imbecilic…" snorted Neville.
And so on. Such was the nightly ritual of Hogwarts… until one day, everything changed.
7:17.42 Dorm Room
It was time for breakfast, on that dark, dreary, fateful morning. Well, maybe not so dark and dreary.
But certainly fateful.
Possibly not so fateful. Just go with it for now.
Ron, as usual, was excitedly contemplating breakfast.
"Hey, Harry!" he yelled. "Stop hogging the bathroom! We need to get to breakfast! I'm starved!"
Harry slouched into the dorm, grumbling something about flying grindylows along with the lack of hot water.
"Cheers, mate!" Ron grinned, scrambling to get ready.
Soon they were off.
7:34.52 Breakfast; Great Hall
"Did you finish your potions essay, Ron?" Hermione asked, twining his fingers with hers. Ron gave her a sheepish grin, kissing her lightly on the nose. "We-ellll..."
Hermione rolled her eyes and smacked his shoulder.
"It wasn't my fault! Harry dragged me off to the Quidditch pitch to try out his new Windstalker, and then it was dinner, and then I spent time with you, 'Mione!"
Giggling in a very un-Hermioneish manner, she skipped down the last few steps and tugged him into the Great Hall. "Once you've finished eating and gotten your concentration back, we'll keep… talk… ing…" She trailed off, staring bemusedly at him.
"Nah, we can keep talking. I don't have that short of an attention span."
Ron snickered good naturedly at Hermione's gobsmacked face. "C'mon, 'Mione! I haven't seen you this surprised since you saw that, that… erm… pooflog-watcha-ma-call-it sit on Dumbledore during last year's Welcoming Feast."
"Panda, Ron," she replied faintly. "Not 'pooflog'. Honestly. Panda."
"Oh. Right." Ron pouted, taking the final few steps to the Gryffindor table, before noticing how quiet everything was. Confusedly, he squinted suspiciously and lifted his head in slow motion.
The scene was frozen.
Food dripped off the ends of forks and out of mouths, onto the floor. The shellshocked staff table stared.
The Slytherins choked.
The Ravenclaws exchanged knowing glances.
The Gryffindors fainted.
The Hufflepuffs politely looked away.
As Ron uneasily sat down and warily picked up a piece of toast (a single piece of toast!) and slowly began buttering it (with a knife), Harry walked in.
"What in the world–" He spotted Ron. "Oh. OH!" Harry spun around gleefully and ran to the Slytherin table, screaming his head off. "DRACOOOOOOO!"
His abrupt entrance unfroze the hall. In the resulting chaos, some claimed to have seen a twinkling Dumbledore choking down countless lemon drops. Luna Lovegood swore that Snape had been led from the hall in hysterics. Others wondered why Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy had been running around the Great Hall, cackling.
Ron, completely oblivious to the reaction he was creating, continued to daintily bite his toast, chewing each bite thoroughly before swallowing.
Should I mention that he normally never even chewed his food?
Well, he didn't. Normally.
The morning classes flew by and the efficiency of the Hogwarts gossip mill was proven yet again. Within twenty minutes, every resident in Hogwarts was aware that Ron Weasley had a severe eating problem. Or a miraculous cure. None of them knew for certain what exactly had happened to make this wonder happen, and yet everybody seemed to think that their particular theory was correct.
Most of the Hufflepuffs believed that a backfired curse had hit him as a youth, causing the redhead's metabolism to speed up and leading him to eat ever increasing amounts of food to stop his stomach from devouring him from the inside.
The Ravenclaws, on the other hand, openly scorned this idea. They imperiously told off everybody for gawking at Ron while openly studying him like a lab rat. Eventually (within ten minutes) they proclaimed that his eating habits were exactly the same as they had always been. When others asked how that was possible, the older Ravenclaws stated that Ron had always eaten like this, but everybody's memory had been wiped so they all thought he was eating differently.
Needless to say, the Ravenclaws didn't find much support for their idea.
All the Gryffindors publicly sniggered at the quandary the school found themselves in, and put up a united front. The rest of the Houses, however, knew that the Gryffindors were just as confused as the rest of them.
Slytherin House, on the other hand, quietly smirked and said that he would snap out of it within a day or two.
So nobody seemed to know what was wrong with Ron Weasley.
They should have just asked Luna.
And to add to the unusual sights Hogwarts was host to this day, a smirking Draco Malfoy was stalking around decked in all out Gryffindor colors, Harry Potter by his side.
What was going on?
9:15.00 Transfiguration; Transfiguration Classroom
Apart from the unexpected tension, the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Transfiguration class started without incident. Ron sat next to Hermione, absentmindedly twiddling his wand in one hand, while Hermione shot venomous glares at any and all curious glances. Draco (still in red and gold) sat next to Harry, as they whispered and snickered in low voices.
Professor McGonagall cleared her throat, garnering the class's… well, not complete attention, but most of their attention nonetheless.
"Now," she started off sternly. "Today, we will be working on transfiguring food from one state to another." As Professor McGonagall talked, she flicked her wand at the plate of sandwiches on her desk. They shimmered and turned into a steaming apple pie. The scent of the pie wafted towards the back of the classroom, to where Ron was sitting, in billowing clouds of heat and steam.
Professor McGonagall twitched her wand again, causing the pie to revert back to its normal state. The entire class turned and looked expectantly at Ron.
"What?" he asked, confused, coughing somewhat on the choking cloud of apple-pie-scented … stuff.
Disappointed groans filled the room as the cloud dissipated. Professor McGonagall looked absolutely scandalized.
"No, really, what?" Ron asked, truly clueless.
McGonagall seemed to compose herself. "Never mind all that, Mr. Weasley. Now, this particular type of transfiguration requires a great deal of concentration, so if you would all take out…"
The rest of the class flew by.
HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP
"Mione," Ron whispered in her ear, "Why is everybody staring at us?"
Hermione looked around and saw that this was, indeed, true. They were under careful scrutiny from all directions. As she glanced up, she saw a pairs of bright eyes peeking from the banisters on the stairs. She sighed and face-palmed.
"You haven't noticed yet, Ron?
"Noticed what?"
Hermione sighed again. "Never mind."
10:43.26 Potions; Potions Classroom
Ron was almost late for potions, as the crush in the corridor seemed to be following him as he sprinted down to the dungeons. He skidded to a halt, almost crashing into Draco and Harry as they animatedly chatted along with the other students outside the Potions classroom. As soon as he arrived, everybody was back to staring at him. Again. What was up this time?
"Oi! You lot!" he yelled. "What's going on?" A sudden outbreak of coughing came from the group in front of Ron as they stared—past him?—at…
"Weasley, yet again you have managed to land your bumbling incompetent self into another… situation." All the students turned away and dutifully filed into the classroom, leaving Ron to deal with an irate Professor Snape.
"Oh, Professor… um…" Ron swallowed.
"You incompetence, Mr. Weasley, has landed me in this rather compromising position. Tread carefully." With a final glare, the Potions Master swept past him into the classroom.
Ron stood there, utterly bewildered for the—sixth? Seventh? Tenth?—time that day.
Why in the blazes did Snape have short, spiky, red and gold hair?
12:00.04 Lunch; Great Hall
"STOP BLOODY STARING AT ME!"
The yelled exclamation startled most people into dropping their pumpkin juice.
"PEOPLE! LEAVE ME ALONE! WHAT'S GOING ON? HELP!"
Professor Dumbledore, who was passing by the Great Hall, peered around the doors.
Ronald Weasley was sitting at his customary spot at Gryffindor Table, holding onto a half-eaten apple. A quick glance at the surrounding area revealed the reason for his discomfort. Over half the school was sitting around him, staring without blinking as he bit into his apple.
Ron was becoming increasingly redder and redder, his eyes popping out.
Dumbledore turned around and quickly left, but not before he heard an earth-shattering scream.
"NO! STOP—REALLY! HERMIONE! HARRY! SOMEBODY! HELP! AHHHH!"
2:45.00 Charms; Charms Classroom
Ron swept a bunch of unopened candy off the table that someone must have left behind, slamming his books down. Why wouldn't people just leave him alone?
4:30.00 Care of Magical Creatures; Grounds
"An' tha', class, is wha' a cow is." Hagrid then turned and uncovered a platter of… something.
"Now, thi' is cooked cow. Ter make it, ye' got to add a lo' of spice and stuff. Tastes real good too. It's called steak."
Ron yawned.
7:00.00 Dinner… or lack of it
Ron skipped dinner. He couldn't stand all the strange attention he was receiving today.
9:00.00 Be- You get the idea.
Ron was sick of everything. He couldn't understand why everybody kept bugging him about food, of all things! Since when had he been an expert on food? To make it worse, Luna Lovegood was telling everybody that the Nargles and Wrackspurts had teamed up against him to create a vacuum in his stomach that all the food he ate was siphoned into. Really? Even he wasn't gullible enough to believe that.
As Ron fell asleep, he thought to himself that maybe he actually was a little hungry…
The next day, Ron woke up and sprinted to the Great Hall. He got there just as the food appeared. He threw himself on the table, scarfing down everything in sight.
Everybody was relieved. Ron was uncomfortable for the next few days as he was still the recipient of stares and glares.
The relative peace lasted for around a month, when…
The End
Happy 15th Birthday Madi!
~Tiki O'Toole