Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter nor any products related to it.
It was a rainy Saturday morning in the Gryffindor Boys' Dormitory. With Harry and Ron back on good terms, the air was friendly again. Harry was hunched over on his trunk, lazily waving his wand and practicing the Levitation charm for fun with the various objects lying on the floor. Ron was on his bed, reading the Sports section of The Daily Prophet. Having been best friends for three years, they could be utterly silent and still feel comfortable.
Ron's stomach grumbled and Harry looked up. He put his wand on his night stand and opened his trunk. Triumphant, he pulled out a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.
"Want some?" He asked, sitting on his bed.
"Ah I haven't had those in ages!" Ron joined him on his bed, sitting against the bed post.
He dug his hand into the bag and pulled out a handful. He examined a golden jelly bean and popped it into this mouth. Harry laughed when his face wrinkled up. Evidently, he had eaten one of the more unpleasant flavored beans.
"Ugh…earwax."
"I still don't understand why they have to make every flavor. I mean, it's not like everyone enjoys a bogey-flavored bean, nor a vomit-flavored one."
"I heard about the vomit-flavored one. It's probably one of the nastiest ones there is."
"Dumbledore ate one. He told me first year."
Ron shuddered, but then ate another one. He smiled. "Ah. Strawberry."
Harry pulled out a handful of beans out of the blue bag. He picked up a green bean out of his hand. With trepidation, he took a small nibble and was relieved to find that it was a spearmint-flavored bean. The boys sat there for a few minutes, delicately eating each bean and chucking the bad ones into the trash bin on the side of his bed.
"Say, do you have a date to the Yule Ball?" Ron asked.
Harry sighed. "Not yet. Well, I have asked someone, but she's already going with someone else…"
He spat out his bean. "Who?"
"Cho Chang."
"She's the Ravenclaw seeker, right?"
"Yeah." Harry reminisced to last year to the first time that he laid eyes on her.
"Who is she going with?"
"Cedric Diggory." Her voice echoed in his head, bringing back that horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Bah. You can do better than her."
"I guess…" He trailed off.
Ron noticed the far-off look in his eyes and ate another bean, grimacing at the dirt flavor. "But, if it makes you feel better, remember that when I asked Fleur, I looked like a total fool."
Harry smiled and laughed. "Yeah, I remember that. You looked like you had just seen a ghost."
"It just slipped out, remember?"
"I know, I know." He chewed on another bean and spit it out immediately. Diesel flavored.
"Do you remember when we were talking to Hermione that day in the Great Hall about the Yule Ball?"
"You mean that day when Snape decided to play Whack-a-Mole with us, with books as the hammer?"
"What's Whack-a-Mole?" Ron ate another bean and smiled. "Yum. Lemon."
"Never mind that. What about that day?"
"I don't get why she was so offended when I told her she was a girl. It was just an observation."
Harry sighed. Ron was like his brother, but sometimes, he could be utterly oblivious. "Well, you haven't exactly been treating her like a girl."
"Meaning?" He sat up straighter, really tuning in to what Harry had to say.
"You're not exactly sensitive to how she feels." Harry ate a bean without thinking and was glad that it was cookie dough flavored.
"Name one time."
"The Firebolt incident last year?" He thought back to it and internally winced on how he had treated her badly too.
"What about that?"
"We both knew that she did what she did because she was worried about me, and we're both guilty of treating her badly."
"Yeah, but why was she so sore?"
He rolled his eyes. "Because we weren't acknowledging that she did it to protect me."
Ron furrowed his eyebrows. "I think I get it…"
"Do you?" He ate another bean and winced; it was caviar flavored.
"No."
"Just…be more careful with what you say around her. Really process what she says before you respond."
"I'll try to remember that, mate." Ron munched on his bean happily. "Cinnamon. Reminds me of Christmas!"
"Want to go out on the Quidditch pitch?" Harry offered. He felt the sugar rush and needed to burn it off. Plus he noticed that the rain had stopped.
"Sure!"
With the bag empty, Harry and Ron went down to the broomshed, got their brooms (Ron stole Fred's) and flew out into the sky, temporarily leaving their troubles behind.
However, as Harry witnessed the tail end of the conversation between Ron and Hermione at the end of the Yule Ball, it was clear that he didn't take his advice.