It was early in the morning. Nearly everyone within Hogwarts had gone to bed and tried to sleep, or at least attempted to absorb the night's horrific events. Hermione Granger, however, sat stiffly in the Gryffindor common room, staring blankly into the fireplace.
How did this happen? How could it possibly be real? Dumbledore, dead…
Her normally racing mind seemed to have failed her. Instead of teeming with scenarios and possible motivations for Snape's…actions…it was grasping for halfhearted straws, and poorly-constructed reasons.
Suddenly, the portrait swung open to reveal Ron, jarring Hermione out of her reverie. His freckled face was ashen, while his eyes were red-rimmed and encircled in shadow.
"Hey," she greeted him.
"'Lo", he muttered gruffly.
She wasn't surprised to see Ron up at this hour, considering that he and the entire Weasley clan had been camped out by Bill's bedside for hours, save for one or two short trips back to Gryffindor tower.
Hermione tried to gauge the situation. "Is Bill awake yet?"
Ron shook his head no. She gave him a sympathetic sort of look, but, not knowing how to further comfort him, eventually turned back to the fireplace.
They sat in the darkness for a few minutes, each lost in their own private thoughts. Hermione couldn't even imagine what it must be like to have a family member come so close to death. It didn't seem fair at all. The Weasleys had already been through so much – after all, Molly's brothers had died during the first war. Not to mention Percy's current estrangement from the family, Arthur's near-fatal brush with Nagini last year, and now--
The long silence was broken by Ron, who released a string of colorful, choice epithets. Fortunately, Hermione only heard the last of his tirade:
"---bloody Felix Felicis!"
"Ron," she began, her tone puzzled, and containing the barest hint of reproach, "What do you mean, 'bloody Felix Felicis'?"
He scowled and cracked his knuckles, "I reckon that it was somehow faulty, you know, maybe from being in Harry's trunk too long. Or maybe it was brewed wrong in the first place. There's no way that potion still could have been lucky, not with what happened tonight."
"You think it might have been tampered with? Or had expired, somehow?" Hermione's voice held a note of skepticism.
"I don't know." Ron muttered, running his fingers through his disheveled red hair. "Maybe the potion stopped working properly after the first time it was taken. I mean, you saw Harry's expression when he swallowed it the other night. He was bloody euphoric! Not only did he manage to get the memory from Slughorn to take to Dumbledore, he even broke up the relationship between the love of his life and her boyfriend. It's a wonder he didn't have half of Hogwarts coming up to apologize for constantly being a bunch of idiotic, disbelieving gits. Cho Chang probably would have thrown herself at him, if she'd gotten the chance. Hell, I wouldn't have been surprised if Snape had even--"
Ron stopped, mid-sentence, as if the words had turned to ash in his mouth. There was suddenly a tangible frisson of tension present in the room, and neither of them wanted to acknowledge it.
Trying to circumvent the awkwardness, Ron cleared his throat and picked up where he had abruptly left off, "But when we took it, tonight, something felt wrong. I even managed to rack my brain enough to remember what Slughorn said in class --"
A flash of memory: "Two tablespoons taken with breakfast. Two perfect days." echoed in Hermione's ears.
"—but we didn't feel near that happy after taking the rest of it--"
Hermione chose to interrupt. "I still don't understand. Why should that mean the potion was faulty?"
"Have you even thought about all the things that went wrong tonight?" Ron asked loudly, as if she had lost her senses completely.
"Of course I have," Hermione retorted. "But why would you assume--"
"What's to assume? We only managed to have the worst luck in about a century! If this was Quidditch, we might as well have been the Cannons for all the luck we had tonight!"
"Ron," she attempted to be patient with him, "just think about if we hadn't--"
"Hadn't taken the potion? Yeah, a fat lot of good it bloody did us! First, Malfoy manages to fix the Vanishing Cabinet and let in a load of Death Eaters, not to mention Greyback, into Hogwarts," he spat.
"Okay," said Hermione. "That was bad, but--"
"Second, Harry and Dumbledore go to find Vol...You-Know-Who's Horcrux, and come back with nothing but a fake, planted by somebody named R.A.B.!"
"There was no way they could have known---"
"Third" and here his voice shook – with tears? Anger? Hermione couldn't tell – "the Death Eaters and Greyback manage to nearly kill my brother, as well as half the Order in the fight! Not to mention," here his voice darkened with rage, "Snape takes the cake in this little luck-fest by killing Dumbledore in cold blood, and escaping with Malfoy and the others! So don't tell me that it was luck, or fate, or any other damn whim of Merlin that kept us alive! This entire night has been--"
What the entire night was, exactly, Hermione never bothered to find out, for she was too incensed to let his tirade continue:
"For the love of Merlin, Ronald Weasley, will you hold your tongue for one minute!" Hermione exploded. "Did you ever stop to think about how many more things could have gone wrong, had we not taken Felix in the first place? Death Eaters get into Hogwarts, and you're not only the ones who know about it, but you're the force blocking them from getting to Dumbledore's office! Merlin knows they could have done so many things other than cloak their movements using Instant Darkness Powder! Instead of fighting, torturing, and killing their way – through you -- to the Headmaster's Office, they let you live!"
"Yeah, like that's--"
"I am not finished! And can you even comprehend how lucky you are to have escaped from this battle with little more than a few scratches? This time last year we were nearly permanent residents in the Hospital Wing, just from fighting a very similar crowd of Death Eaters!"
"Yeah, well, you weren't there tonight," Ron shot back. "So you have no way to compare the two!"
Hermione's eyes narrowed, "How dare you! Maybe I wasn't in the thick of battle like the rest of you, but I was doing my part!"
"Right, because sitting in Snape's office was so useful!" Ron mocked.
"I was doing what Harry had asked me to do in the first place! My apologies for not being closer to the fray while I was accomplishing that! You have no idea what it was like for us in there!"
"I'm sure it was terrible," Ron snapped, "You must have been terrified, being near all of those flobberworms--"
"—You know what, Ron? It was terrible. Terrible because I felt completely and utterly useless! Terrible because I felt helpless! Terrible because I could hear every sound of the battle raging upstairs, no matter how faint!" she raged at him. "With each echoing thump, I wondered which of my friends might be dead from a Death Eater's curse! With each ricochet of curses on the flagstone, I prayed that you, or Harry, or anyone from the Order had conjured them rather than felt their sting! I hoped that each jinx, hex, or curse flung your way would somehow be deflected before it could strike you down! With every sound I heard I hoped, feared, and dreaded for all of you! So while you were out fighting for your lives, defending this place – your home – from intruders, I was sitting in Snape's office with Luna, paralyzed with worry, and all the while attending to someone who had simply been Stunned by a traitor!"
Ron opened and closed his mouth, as if to speak, but no words came out.
"So don't you dare insinuate that I am not a part of this because I didn't fight in this one, single battle!" Hermione shrieked. "Although I'm sure I'll get my chance to make up the deficient soon; will that make you happy? Would you like me to try and get injured as well? Maybe that will qualify me as useful! Or better yet," she put on a mock-thoughtful voice, "I'll just go ahead and get killed outright so I can become a martyr to the cause!"
"Stop!" Ron burst out, sounding suddenly choked. "You know I don't want that to happen to you! Not after…" he waved his hand in an encompassing motion. "…Not after everything that's already taken place."
Hermione took a deep, steadying breath, and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Then, Ron, what do you want, exactly?"
Ron exhaled loudly, and steeled his nerves, his ears growing steadily pinker. "I….I just… want a future. I want to see this entire thing end, maybe have a somewhat normal life after it's all over. I want to live somewhere safe, in a place where I don't have to worry about being attacked by You-Kn….Voldemort's cronies every second of the day. I want to be around my family…even that git Percy, if he ever comes crawling back," Ron added ruefully. "I want my friends to not constantly feel worry, and fear, and all this other rubbish. And…" he met her gaze unblinkingly, "I want you there with me."
Hermione drank in what he was saying – the words themselves, the unspoken promise they held, as well as the underlying regret behind his words, the apology for everything that had happened between them this past year.
"I want that, too," she murmured, and on hearing that, Ron drew her into a sound hug. She felt tears running down her face, but didn't even bother to wipe them away.
They stayed frozen for several minutes, or possibly even hours. They might not have moved at all had they not heard a faint cough issue from the direction of the portrait hole.
Stepping into the moonlight streaming from the windows, Ginny made herself visible. "Ron, I just came to tell you," here a wan smile alighted on her tired face, "Bill's finally awake. He's asking for everybody."
Ron's face lit up, and he hugged Hermione even more tightly to him, then released her and stepped back, almost as if he wasn't sure what to do. She smiled up at him before chiding gently.
"Go on, what are you waiting for?"
He moved to go with Ginny but stopped to ask: "Will you be here when I get back?"
"No, I'm rather tired, actually; I'll probably just go to bed, or perhaps read for awhile." Ron's exaggerated eye-roll didn't escape Hermione's notice so she added, just for good measure, "But if you don't get moving in the meantime, I swear I'll hex you into next week."
"Okay, okay!" He held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm going!" Ginny seemed to agree with his decision, as she grabbed his arm and steered him out of the portrait hole, muttering something about boys and obnoxious flirting. And as he was being dragged away, Ron couldn't help but mentally replay what had just happened, and wondered how his luck could change so dramatically in a matter of minutes.
Felix Felicis was obviously sneakier than any of them had realized.