She figured she had about a 30-second head start, conservatively. His legs were pretty long. She was tempted to break out in a run, but even at her current pace, a brisk march, every clack of her heels reverberated conspicuously along the cold stone of the corridor. Could he follow the sound? Did he know which way she had turned out of the party?
Time was too tight—and her dignity too strained—to afford a look behind her. What if he was there, and thought she was checking to make sure he was following her? What if he thought she wanted to be chased? She wasn't the sort of girl who played games, but McLaggen wouldn't know that. He would assume she must be, because it would never occur to him that he repulsed her. He didn't know her at all, certainly not well enough to recognize that she wasn't playing hard to get—that she meant it, she didn't want to be followed.
Unless it was him.
She could not stop herself from thinking it as she pounded down the hall, cringing with every sharp slap of her stupid shoes. I'd want him to follow me. How many times in the last several, yawning, interminable weeks had she left a room wishing he would, listening intently for the swing of a door, slowing her pace to make sure he would be able to catch up if he came looking? Sometimes she even made sure to leave loudly, heaving a sigh, shuffling her papers unnecessarily, throwing her books into her bag with a little extra force to make sure he noticed, so he would know that he had the option to come after her. She was that sort of girl. Just not when it came to McLaggen.
Hermione felt her chest constrict at this humiliating realization. Not only had her scheme failed either to make him jealous or to prove that she could have a decent time with someone else; inviting McLaggen had merely revealed new depths to the misery of loving Ron. It had shown her yet another way that Ron was an exception to every other person on earth, the only one who could make her the kind of girl who did want to be followed.
As she neared the end of the hall, she reviewed her options, all bad. To her right would be the wide steps leading down to the Great Hall. She would be completely exposed in the massive, open stairwell, but it would lead to more chances to eventually shake McLaggen. To her left would be a tapestry concealing a small alcove, really more like a large niche that, but for the tapestry, might house a suit of armor or a gargoyle—something medieval. She and Ron had discovered it busting clandestine snogging sessions on their prefect rounds. If McLaggen was following her, if he saw her duck behind the tapestry, she would be trapped, not to mention thoroughly mortified to be caught trying to hide from her date. But as the night had already left her quite bereft of self-respect, and since she could not hear anyone lumbering after her (she still would not turn to look), she decided to risk it.
Darting quickly behind the edge of the tapestry, she mentally cursed her utterly pointless dress, with its too-swishy skirt of noisy taffeta. She held her breath and dared not move until she was sufficiently assured by the absence of approaching footsteps to slowly back into the far corner of the niche.
After several seconds, she heard someone approaching from down the corridor. Torches on the walls outside her hiding place backlit the ancient, threadbare tapestry, allowing her to make out McLaggen's tall and broad frame as he stopped just in front of her on the landing. Feeling possibly more foolish than she ever had in her life, she held her breath again and willed even her blood to remain still.
But then she heard a second set of footsteps, these from the stairs. McLaggen spoke before she could determine whether this was more likely to be a positive or negative development.
"Hey, Weasley—you pass Granger on the way up?"
Hermione very nearly cursed aloud. Apparently this Grand Guignol evening had still further horrors in store. She could only stare, aghast, as a taller, lankier figure ascended the stairs to face McLaggen on the landing.
"Lost her, have you?" came Ron's reply, and though she could not make out his face in any great detail, she could picture the smirk that accompanied his smug tone. It infuriated her.
McLaggen didn't seem to appreciate it either. "Did you see her or not?" he asked again, drawing himself up to his full height as he took a few steps toward Ron. It occurred to Hermione that in addition to being a better keeper, Ron was perhaps the only person at Hogwarts taller than McLaggen.
Ron didn't answer. He seemed to be staring at something over McLaggen's shoulder. Hermione glanced upward, searching for the source of his distraction. Then she realized: he was looking at the tapestry.
He knew.
Just say you saw me, Hermione pleaded silently. Ron knew about the hidden nook. He knew he hadn't passed her on the stairs. The jig was up. The best she could hope for was that he would help her get rid of McLaggen before exposing her. Please say you saw me on the stairs.
"Yeah," Ron finally answered. "Passed her going down."
McLaggen grunted in acknowledgment, brushing roughly past Ron as he stalked toward the steps. Air reentered Hermione's lungs for the first time in ages.
"Do you think maybe if you can't find her, mate, it's because she doesn't want you to?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. Well, Ron had almost managed to be helpful. Now McLaggen was returning to the landing, stopping mere inches from Ron as he adopted what was clearly meant to be an intimidating stance. Ron for his part removed his hands from his pockets and squared his feet beneath his shoulders, but remained otherwise casual by comparison.
"What would you know about it, Weasley?" McLaggen spat.
Ron shrugged. "I know you went to a party with a girl and she gave you the slip."
"That's not all she gave me," McLaggen answered, and now he was the one who sounded smug. Hermione regarded him with renewed disgust. She had given him nothing. He had given her his tongue, had foisted it upon her, thrusting it down her throat without invitation or warning as he restrained her by her upper arms. It had been one of the more hideously uncomfortable moments in her life, and that bar was high; she had once been partially transformed into a cat.
But would Ron know? Would Ron believe what McLaggen was implying? He hadn't responded immediately, and Hermione could see that his fists were now clenched at his sides.
"Sounds like she really enjoyed it," he eventually snarled. "So much it sent her running from a Christmas party." Hermione felt a rush of affection for him as he made it clear that he didn't buy McLaggen's story.
But McLaggen merely laughed. "Come on, Weasley," he said, coloring his typically condescending tone with a bit of false camaraderie. "You of all people know how Granger likes to wind blokes up."
Hermione winced, both at McLaggen's insinuation about her and at the way he had drawn Ron into it. What did he mean? Why Ron of all people?
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ron asked through gritted teeth, echoing her fury and her question.
McLaggen laughed again. The sound chilled Hermione.
"Seriously, Weasley? You know as well as I do what a little cocktease—"
She didn't get the chance to be outraged. There was a sudden flurry of movement and by the time she could make sense of the fuzzy scene in front of her again, Ron had pushed McLaggen several feet backward and had him pressed against a wall at the top of the stairs, his fists gripping the front of McLaggen's shirt.
Hermione stood paralyzed by shock until she saw McLaggen go for his wand. She reacted instantly, retrieving her own wand from the pocket of her skirt and moving to the edge of the tapestry. She was about to emerge when Ron violently ripped McLaggen's wand out of his hand, before he had even got it pointed in Ron's direction, and immediately chucked it over the bannister of the stairway. Hermione heard the faint clatter of it landing several floors below. Ron then managed to pin his captive's wrists against his own chest, a development McLaggen seemed too stunned to resist.
"From now on," Ron practically whispered, "you don't touch her, you don't talk to her, you don't even look at her, do you understand?" When McLaggen didn't answer, Ron restated his question, slowly. "Do—you—under—stand."
"Yeah, whatever," McLaggen conceded, still struggling to maintain an air of superiority in the face of utter defeat.
Ron yanked him toward the stairs and released him. "Probably want to go fetch your wand, yeah?" he said, but it was a command, not a question.
McLaggen gave Ron a final futile scowl before retreating down the stairs.
Ron waited a few moments for him to disappear, then sighed audibly and began to make his way to the edge of the tapestry. Hermione backed away into the far corner again, and attempted to adopt her own absurdly unconvincing air of superiority.
"He's gone," Ron whispered, as he ducked quickly inside to join her.
"Nobody asked for your help, Ron," she hissed back.
"Oh, shall I go retrieve him, then?" he deadpanned.
"I was handling it!"
He scoffed. "Hermione, you're cowering in a fourth-year snog spot."
She knew it was ridiculous, but she could hardly afford to lose any more face tonight. She changed tack. "Why do you even care, Ron? What are you still doing here?"
He fixed her with a withering glare, but she noticed his posture deflate slightly. "You're right. You want to go out with an arrogant pig you and I both know you can't stand, that's your business." And he turned to exit.
But she didn't actually want him to leave. "That's a bit rich, coming from you."
He turned and advanced back toward her. "And what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked loudly.
They both froze at the sound of distant footsteps. Hermione carefully retrieved her wand from her pocket and cast a quick muffliato. Ron raised his eyebrows, presumably at her use of one of the Prince's spells. She ignored him.
Their conversation no longer in danger of being overheard, Ron went back to being irate. "Well?" he spat impatiently.
Hermione crossed her arms over her chest and took a step toward him. "Really, Ron? You don't see the irony in you lecturing me about dating a vapid cow who I don't even like?"
His eyes narrowed. "I said 'pig'! And that's not the same thing at all! You don't know anything about my relationship—"
Hermione let out a disbelieving laugh at his use of the word "relationship" to describe whatever the hell was going on with him and Lavender. She was certain—most of the time—that their sudden association was, at least in Ron's mind, some sort of punishment aimed at her. For what crime, Hermione had no idea, but he had already started shunning her before taking up with her roommate, and always seemed to be sucking face in places Hermione would be likely to see. Whether or not Ron viewed Hermione as just a friend, his jealousy of other boys in her social circle had been obvious since Krum; his complete one-eighty after she'd invited him to Slughorn's party, she had surmised, must have had something to do with that tendency.
In particularly low moments, though, she was forced to entertain the devastating possibility that Ron actually liked Lavender—worse, that he liked her for qualities that Hermione herself would never be able to offer. Blonde hair. A gorgeous face. The perfect body. Even if Ron really did like Lavender, she was reasonably sure it was for purely superficial reasons. This was no comfort, however.
"And what do you and your partner talk about in your relationship, Ron?" she asked, taking another step toward him and tilting her head in mock inquiry. "What hopes and dreams for the future have you and Lavender discussed? Does she go on and on about British free trade policy like she does in the dorm?"
Ron rolled his eyes. "Of course you'd think a relationship is all about talking. It's no wonder you're single," he finished with a sage nod.
The physical response to his words could not be prevented; her face smarted as if she had been slapped, and she felt tears immediately spring to her eyes. Willing them to soak back in, she drew a deep breath and scrambled for a suitable riposte.
"I'd much rather be single than making a fool of myself all over the castle!" Hmm, not your best comeback, she thought to herself, but in for a penny, in for a pound. "Always with that simpleton surgically attached to your lap, 'Oh, Won-Won,'"—and here she adopted a treacly, high-pitched voice—"'you're ever so wonderful! If only I could crawl up your arse and live there forever, then we'd never have to be apart!' Really, Ron, it's embarrassing."
She could have sworn Ron had almost burst out laughing at her colorful characterization of his "relationship," but he quickly recovered. "The girl sneaking behind bloody tapestries playing hide-and-seek with her twat of a date thinks I'm making a fool of myself by kissing my girlfriend? Grow up, Hermione."
He had her on the ropes, she couldn't deny it: his argument was solid, hers didn't have a leg to stand on. Maybe it had been cruel of Ron to take up with Lavender after he had accepted the invitation to Slughorn's party; maybe this had all started as retaliation for some imagined slight. That didn't change the fact that he had every right to date Lavender and do whatever he wanted in front of Hermione. She had asked him to accompany her to a Christmas do; that was no claim to his affection. He didn't belong to her.
She was about to concede defeat when Ron opened his mouth again. Perhaps he had mistaken her thoughtful silence for stubbornness. Whatever his reasons, he decided to bring up the one name that always signaled he was grasping at straws and feeling defensive. "Besides," he started, moving toward her, "who are you to lecture me about making a fool of myself when you kissed sodding Viktor Krum?"
He was leaning forward and staring at her with his eyebrows raised as if to say, Well?—as if this point had clinched his argument rather than totally contradicted it. Hermione was equal parts surprised and invigorated by this turn in the conversation: she had no clue what he was getting at, but she was sure she could use it to win.
"No, I didn't."
Ron's eyebrows relaxed. "No, you didn't what?"
"I didn't kiss Viktor," she clarified, trying to keep an impassive look on her face.
Ron leaned back slightly, evidently staggered by her response. He ran a hand through his hair, and his lips parted as his jaw fell slightly open. Hermione noticed for the first time that he had his prefect badge pinned to his Henley. Letting out a low grunt, Ron pressed the heels of his hands to his brow and screwed up his face in frustration. "Don't lie, Hermione," he intoned. "I already know you did."
"Well, you might want to check your sources, Ronald, because I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about. I never kissed Viktor." Now she didn't bother to hide her self-satisfied grin.
Ron's hands fell to his sides and his expression was suddenly completely vulnerable. He seemed almost distraught.
"You really didn't?" he asked her earnestly, his voice soft, nearly a cry.
"No," she replied seriously, furrowing her brow in concern and confusion. Ron was looking down at the ground, shaking his head slightly, his mouth still hanging open. Hermione struggled to piece together what was going on. She had lost all sight of their row, and cast about for more she could say.
"I mean, he kissed me—"
Ron's head snapped up and when his eyes met hers they were once again stony. "Right," he said flatly.
Hermione tutted. "No, listen to me. It was a peck on the lips, I didn't see it coming and it was over before I even had time to react! It all happened so fast I've half convinced myself it didn't happen at all. It certainly doesn't count."
"'Doesn't count'?" Ron repeated. "Doesn't count for what?"
"A kiss," she said, as though it should have been obvious. "A first kiss. Surely it doesn't count if I didn't even get to participate in it." Choosing to overlook Ron's grumbled objection to the phrase "get to," she continued. "And tonight, with Cormac, that doesn't count either. He grabbed me and forced his tongue down my throat. It was horrible and disgusting, and it definitely doesn't count. RON!"
She flinched and ducked as Ron pounded his fist against the stone wall above her left shoulder. He was breathing heavily and staring past her, his face a mix of rage and anguish. "Fucking—prick—" he growled haltingly. "How dare he…"
Now he was looking at her again, a question in his pained features. She knew he was wondering why she had gone to the party with McLaggen. She was wondering that, too.
Ron looked away but did not move for a long moment. Eventually he dragged his fist—which remained pressed against the wall at the point of impact, and which he was half leaning on in apparent emotional exhaustion—down to her shoulder, where she felt him first lightly touch, then pick up a lock of her hair. She had relaxed the frizz slightly with some potion or other borrowed from Ginny and pinned back the front sections on either side of her part—not much, but noticeably more effort than she put in most days. Ron regarded the curl he held between his fingers. After a moment, his eyes roamed to her face, shifting all around it. She sensed that he was trying to figure out why she looked different (a bit of blush, mascara, and lipstick). She could not remember ever being this close to him; his breath blew through her eyelashes and the fine hairs around her forehead as he examined her.
He straightened up again, slowly, pushing off from the wall to resume the cold distance which had marked their relationship in the last several weeks. She felt the loss of his warmth more acutely now that it had briefly returned after such a long absence. She couldn't tell if Ron felt it, too; he merely slouched in the corner opposite her, rubbing his abused knuckles.
"I can't believe you did all this for him," he said, his voice a mix of disbelief and disgust. "You look—"
He stopped himself and lifted his gaze slightly from his hands to about her waist.
"That a new dress?" he muttered sullenly.
"Yes," she replied, standing taller and squaring her shoulders in anticipation of his next barb.
He considered it for a moment before continuing to work at his knuckles. "Shame you wasted it on McLaggen."
Hermione was briefly flustered by the combination of insult and compliment. Ron had never mentioned anything about her clothes one way or the other. "Well," she began, thrilling as a dangerous rejoinder formed in her mind, "when I asked Mum to send me a new dress, I was actually going to the party with someone else."
Now he glanced up at her face, and there was that unguarded expression again, full of regret and open longing. She watched as it was slowly replaced with a sheepish sort of pride, the corner of his mouth pulling up like it sometimes did when he had effortlessly trounced her in another game of chess and felt a little bad about it. He abruptly stuck out his arm and clutched at her skirt, loosely fisting the rustling layers of emerald fabric near her right hip.
"It's a good dress," he said, pulling himself to her by the hand in her skirt. Hermione followed the hem toward him, staring dazedly into his face as he drew closer. Somehow she was tripping forward and being pushed back into the corner of their niche at the same time. Ron's other arm snaked between her waist and the crook of her elbow; she saw his Adam's apple bob as he flattened his palm against the bare skin between her shoulder blades. "Where's the rest of it?"
"Har har," she replied, but the sarcasm was weakened by a trembling delivery. "Would you rather I'd worn a jumper?"
"No," he said. She felt him curl his fingers at her back. "Would you?" And he slowly trailed his knuckles down her naked spine, the pad of his thumb following along, as if to smudge the ashes in his smoldering path. He stopped where the V of her backless dress closed up just below her waist and spread out his hand again so that the tips of his long fingers slipped under the edges of folded silk. Hermione, who had forgotten how to breathe, abruptly sputtered out a hard, choked sigh through her nose as she reckoned with both the idea of Ron's hand underneath her clothes, and the sensation of Ron's hand underneath her clothes. He continued to shuffle forward while pulling her toward him by the waist and she breathed sharply again, this time through her open mouth, as her back met the cold stone of the castle walls and her front met a wall of heat coming off of Ron. The unfussy scent of generic bar soap, rendered somehow intoxicating through contact with his body, radiated through the waffle weave of his shirt. At the thought of his clean skin her right hand lurched upward to touch the buttons of his placket. Her left arm still hung tensed at her side, her elbow angled away from the arm he had wrapped around her waist as though it would scorch her to touch. As she stared at his buttons, she felt the hand that gripped her skirt relax to hold her hip. She bit her lip and closed her eyes to keep everything in.
"Hermione." He had said it, but the sound was so low and so close that it resonated in her own chest. Her entire body clenched as her name reverberated through it. She glanced up at him, releasing her lower lip from between her teeth.
"Can't we just…pretend I went to the party with you?" His voice was still pitched an octave lower than usual, but its tone was soft and pleading. "Maybe—maybe we would have ended up here…" He trailed off, eyes drifting to her mouth. For several seconds she tried to turn thought into sound, but only managed to vocalize an embarrassing whimper, accompanied by a vague nod. The last thing she saw as her eyes drifted shut once more was Ron's nervous smile.
She remained completely still, afraid that motion of any kind would shatter the moment's fragile potential. It was Ron who tilted his head and closed the gap, his nose nudging briefly against hers before he sealed his mouth over her top lip. She instinctively pushed back against him, sucking lightly as she did.
Surely they had invented this. This—this—could not possibly be what everybody else in the world meant by "kissing." This was intolerably, fatally perfect; it liquefied her organs, melted off her skin; she stopped breathing and soon saw fireworks burst behind her eyelids, a telltale symptom, she had read, of the human brain slipping away into permanent sleep. As Ron's lips erased her, she imagined that the vapor to which she had been reduced by his kiss wrapped around his torso and became indistinguishable from his own heat and breath.
Their mouths disconnected and her physical self reintegrated in an instant. It now felt alien. The cold air stung as it flooded her lungs, and the light penetrating her pupils blinded her. Desperate to be a ghost once more, she flung the arm which had been dangling uselessly at her side around the back of his shoulder and held him to her. She needn't have worried; without even opening his eyes, Ron merely adjusted the angle of his head and dropped back down to her mouth as if tethered to it by elastic, fitting himself against her even more seamlessly than before. He was bolder now, moving and turning different ways as he kissed her repeatedly. She likewise grew less passive; her hand flitted across the sharp planes of his shoulder to meet the base of his neck, her thumb teasing the sensitive area behind his ear as a side effect of threading her other fingers into hair she had wanted to stroke for six years. Ron reacted with a groan that vibrated against her teeth, and all her blood pooled below her navel. Her legs quit functioning, but Ron squeezed her impossibly more tightly to him, and propped her up by thrusting his knee between her thighs. She slid the hand on his buttons up to meet the other one in his hair and dug her nails into his scalp, eliciting another groan—more like a growl, really—from Ron. His work became sloppier, his mouth more open, his tongue more engaged in the business. He seemed to lose track of her lips, and dragged his own down to her chin, where he kissed wetly along her jaw. When he clamped down on her neck she began to noisily hyperventilate so that her chest undulated against his. His fingers crept up her sides to grab her ribs just below her breasts, the web of his thumb outlining the curve of her underwire, a show of restraint so skillful and deliberate on his part that she knew it could only have been designed to torture her. He breathed near her earlobe and she let out a moan that ended as a hum when his mouth covered hers again.
After several seconds he pulled away, breathing heavily, his swollen lips split into a wide grin. Her head was tilted back from kissing someone so tall, and she could have simply fallen asleep there against the corner of their niche, could have died and floated away to a heaven that would never live up to her last few minutes of waking life.
"This counts, yeah?" Ron asked, and he actually giggled as he dove back down to her. She laughed into his mouth. It certainly did count, she thought, as she swept her tongue behind his top lip and bit down. ("Mmm," said Ron.) Viktor's attempt to snog her had been so chaste it was practically theoretical, McLaggen's…
Hermione's synapses labored through the fog of sex to bring something to her attention. Ron thought you kissed Krum, she remembered hazily, as Ron's hand sailed southward past her waist. He was angry with you before he started dating Lavender, she thought, as he tugged her bottom lip. This all happened because he thinks you kissed Krum, she realized, as his knee displaced her skirt.
With a decadent smack she ripped her mouth away from his. "Hermione?" he asked. She blinked at his chest as though recovering from a stunning spell. "Hermione?" Ron asked again, trying to catch her eye.
"You…" Hermione breathed, shaking her head, her hands falling from his hair to his chest, where they pushed him away from her with all the strength she could conjure in her kiss-weakened state.
Ron stumbled back several steps, eyes wide with shock. "Hermione!"
"You've been ignoring me for weeks, treating me like dirt—parading her in front of me!" She shrieked as the ardor she had channeled into their embrace combusted into anger. "And all because you thought I kissed Krum?!"
Ron remained too bewildered by his reversal of fortune to respond coherently. "No! I—I didn't think—I wasn't—"
"You're an idiot," she said, pinning him with her eyes. "I can't believe I—" She choked on a sob. Under the guise of straightening out her dress, she took a beat to compose herself. "This"—she looked back up and gestured between the two of them—"didn't happen." And she moved across him to leave, heart just barely fluttering as their upper arms touched and she heard his pained gasp.
"Fine," Ron finally managed, not turning to follow her. He seemed beyond frustration or disappointment, reduced to utter blankness.
Pausing at the edge of the tapestry she looked over her shoulder at his unreadable back.
"I never thought I would say this, Ron," she added, exchanging vitriol for bitter sincerity, "but Lavender deserves better than you." And she left, hoping it had made for a cutting last word, never imagining that it was by far the most devastating thing she could have told him.