Making Harry Happy

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. All copyrighted material is used without permission and no profit is made from this work.

Summary: After Ron is confined to the hospital wing, a depressed Harry tries to find happiness by asking out Millicent Bulstrode, to everyone's confusion.

Timeline: AU sixth year.

Chapter One

"It was my fault," Harry muttered as he and Hermione stared down at Ron's sleeping form. "I shouldn't have let him play."

"Harry, you couldn't have known," Hermione told him gently.

"I knew something wasn't right," he growled. "I knew it."

Hermione sighed and put a comforting hand on Harry's knee. Last weekend had been the opening Quidditch match of the season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, and Ron had been hit with a jinx shortly before the match. The other members of the team had noticed Ron's odd behavior, but had chalked it up to his usual pre-Quidditch jitters and ignored it.

The jinx caused excessive sleepiness, and Ron had passed out in midair. Harry had seen him fall off his broom and had flown to intercept him, catching Ron just before he'd hit the ground. Ron had suffered only minor injuries, but Madam Pomfrey was having a hard time sorting out the exhaustion curse that had been used against him—if, indeed, it had been a curse, rather than a potion or a cursed object. Without knowing the nature of Ron's ailment, no one knew how to cure him of it, and he was having trouble staying awake for more than a few hours at a time. Even when he wasn't sleeping, he was often groggy, and lately he had taken to babbling about strange things in his sleep.

"What if he doesn't get better?" Harry wondered. "What if he gets worse? What if one day he just goes to sleep and never wakes up?"

Hermione's jaw clenched. "He won't."

"He might," Harry countered flatly. "He might have been slipped some sort of slow-acting or badly brewed poison, Hermione. He might die, like…"

Hermione swallowed, feeling her eyes burn with the threat of tears. It had only been a few months since the Department of Mysteries, when Sirius had fallen through the Veil. Harry had been coping well, all things considered, but Ron's predicament certainly wasn't helping Harry deal with his grief.

"He could die," Harry said again. "He… he could die just like… like Sirius."

Hermione didn't know what to say. She couldn't very well say that she would stop Ron from dying—somehow that would imply that Ron was more important than Sirius, that Sirius could have been saved if they'd been a little more determined. She couldn't say that they would save him when Madam Pomfrey, Professor Snape, Professor Sprout and even Professor Dumbledore were currently stumped.

"I'm tired, Hermione," Harry said suddenly. "My parents, and Sirius, and now Ron. This war, this war with Voldemort is coming and I've no idea how I'll survive it, let alone defeat him. I just… I don't know what to do anymore. I'm not sure if I can keep going. Moreover I'm… I'm not sure I want to try."

Hermione gripped his shoulder, and he put his hand over hers briefly before standing up. He muttered a goodbye and left the the hospital wing.

Hermione stared dully at the door as it swung shut behind him, at a loss. Voldemort was rising and good people were dying and now Harry was wavering and Ron was sick and she didn't know how to help either of them. She didn't know how to fight Voldemort. She didn't know how to ease Harry's suffering. She didn't know if Ron would recover.

She shook her head, frustrated, and put her face in her hands. She had to do something, had to find whoever had cursed Ron and make them confess, make them reveal the cure. She had to keep Harry from faltering and keep Ron from dying and keep Voldemort from triumphing and put the world back together, make it all make sense, make everything be the way it should. She just didn't know how.

Yet.

Harry was still depressed come morning, especially after Madam Pomfrey refused to allow him to visit Ron before breakfast. The nurse insisted that Ron needed his rest and sent Harry away, where he met up with Hermione on the way to the Great Hall.

As usual when Harry was deeply upset or nervous, Hermione practically had to force him to eat. By their sixth year, Hermione had gotten a bit better at it—or a bit pushier at it, depending on how one looked at it.

"Drink this, Harry, you'll feel better," she insisted, lifting his goblet up to his lips. Harry had to open his mouth or risk a chin covered in pumpkin juice; irritably he took a swig for her, then tore a chunk out of the roll she practically smushed into his teeth. Eventually, Harry started feeling better; he stopped fighting her somewhere around the eggs and began feeding himself.

"Thanks, Hermione," he told her when he'd had enough food to qualify as a decent meal. "I'm sorry I've been so down lately. You must think I'm a pain."

"Nonsense," she said. "We're friends, Harry. You're going through a lot and someone's got to cheer you up."

Harry smiled at her, and from then on he did seem cheered. He went down to double Herbology without dragging his feet and actually managed to concentrate on Professor Sprout's lecture. He spent Potions commiserating with Seamus about what an evil git Professor Snape was and ate lunch without being force-fed. He even managed to be enthusiastic about the afternoon's Charms lesson, and by the time they went to dinner he was in high spirits, no doubt looking forward to visiting Ron after they ate. Hermione, who hadn't left his side since they'd walked down to breakfast together, finally felt comfortable leaving Harry to his own devices and went to the Ravenclaw table to speak to Anthony Goldstein about her Arithmancy homework.

Which was why she didn't realize something was wrong until one-fourth of the Great Hall went deathly silent, as if the entirety of the Slytherin house had vanished. The Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors looked round in alarm and were quick to find the cause of the lack of commotion, especially since every Slytherin in the Great Hall was currently staring at it.

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was sitting at the Slytherin table.

Hermione's jaw dropped and she went quite still, as did most of the rest of the school. Pansy Parkinson, sitting directly across from Harry, looked absolutely livid. Goyle to her right was staring at Harry in hopeless confusion, and on Goyle's other side Draco Malfoy's face was twisted in rage. What was Harry up to? Was he trying to get himself killed? Sitting down without invitation at another house's table was rude, and given Gryffindor's history with Slytherin, to say nothing of Harry's, his presence was likely to incite a riot.

Before any of the Slytherins could decide how to handle their least favorite Gryffindor having the audacity to plop down at their table, Harry turned to his right a bit, looked Millicent Bulstrode square in the eye and said, "Millicent, will you go out with me?"

A giggle came from somewhere on the other side of the hushed hall and quickly cut off, as if whoever had made it wasn't sure if he or she were supposed to laugh. Otherwise, the silence continued unabated, all eyes riveted on the Slytherin table.

A few more tentative laughs finally sounded, at which point Millicent stopped staring at Harry in utter disbelief and looked askance at her fellow Slytherins, hoping they might explain Harry's madness, but they were still frozen in horrified fascination.

"Will you?" Harry prompted finally.

"Will… will I what?" Millicent asked, sounding quite lost.

"Go out with me," Harry said, as though it was perfectly natural for the arch-nemesis of Voldemort to ask out a girl from the house that boasted more dark wizards than any other. "I was thinking tomorrow, if you're free."

Millicent rolled her eyes. "All right, who put you up to this?"

"Put me up to…? I don't know what you mean." Harry shook his head and smiled at her. "Anyway, there's Hogsmeade tomorrow—would you like to go together?"

She rolled her eyes again. "Sure, Potter, I'll go to Hogsmeade with you."

She had intended to finish this statement with "right after I drink the Draught of Living Death," but Harry's sudden grin startled her, made the words die in her throat. "Great!" Harry said happily, getting to his feet. "Meet me in the entrance hall after breakfast, yeah?"

"Right," Millicent said with a snort.

Harry stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled out of the hall, smiling. The rest of the student body and most everyone at the staff table stared after Harry in shock, until Hermione leaped up and chased after him. Her sudden motion jolted the Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors out of their stupors and they dissolved into scandalized whispers.

The Slytherin table stayed frozen for quite some time, until at last Draco Malfoy recovered enough to choke out, "Did… you… just… agree… to… go… on… a… date… with… POTTER?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Millicent told him, looking offended at the very idea. She picked up her fork and stabbed it sharply into her food. "It was probably just some lame Gryffindor stunt. I just said that get him to go away. He's Potter, for Salazar's sake."

One would have assumed most of the school to be buzzing with gossip about the incident, but in all honesty most people found the prospect of Harry Potter asking out Millicent Bulstrode too random and bizarre to be worth thinking about; by the time dinner was over, most people had forgotten (or rather, repressed) the whole thing (including Millicent).

That left Hermione to explain what had happened to the infirmary-bound Ron, who took it better than she expected.

"HE DID WHAT?"

"He asked out Millicent Bulstrode," Hermione repeated miserably. "Today at dinner."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm not."

"Then he is!"

Hermione shook her head. "I don't think so, no."

"Then why isn't he in the hospital bed next to me?" Ron demanded. "You can't ask out Millicent Bulstrode unless you've had a serious brain injury! Maybe he's under the Imperius Curse or he's eaten some poisonous chocolates or been snatched by someone who took Polyjuice to impersonate him and didn't realize that under no circumstances would anyone in their right minds ask out Millicent Bulstrode!"

"Ron, I…" Hermione gulped. "I have something to tell you."

Ron groaned. "Please, don't, Hermione. I've had enough news for one day. Unless Malfoy got run over by the Knight Bus or Snape's leaving Hogwarts to go teach at Durmstrang, save it for later, okay? Oy. I'm already missing Hogsmeade weekend and Madam Pomfrey's got no idea how to cure me and she's saying if I don't clear up soon I might have to transfer to St. Mungo's, so now that my best friend's gone round the bend I think I'll just go back to sleep before life gets any worse."

Hermione gave him a thin smile as Ron nestled down into his pillows. "Don't worry, Ron," she said. "Everything's going to be fine. I'm going to figure out what happened to you and you'll be out of the hospital wing soon enough."

Ron yawned. "I know, Herm. It'll work out alright. Always does in the end."

Hermione nodded. "Yes. It always does."