Title: Go or Go Ahead
Author:
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Ron/Hermione, mild Draco/Harry (just speaking at this stage)
Rating: PG (as a caution)
Summary: Meet the second in my series of Harry Potter parodies. The last, parodying some truly terrible examples of slash I had read was alright, but I'm not sure I developed it enough. Here is what I hope will grow and spurt chapters everywhere. This is an example of terrible characterisation of Harry and Ron that I have seen. I'm not a particularly big fan of either but I do like things to actually work. I am working on realistic Draco dialogue though (obviously not his character).
This is a parody. It is intentionally bad.
Disclaimer:
Draco glared at Harry.
"I'm only saying," Harry reasoned. Draco smirked.
"Right, you're only saying." Harry rolled his eyes.
"Look, this is me, over here, not caring very much. You? Are over there. Caring quite a bit. And yet when I try to tell you something that you plainly need to know you look at me," Harry waved in Draco's direction, "yeah, you look at me like that."
"Potter? Don't flatter yourself. I'm over here because if I got any nearer to you I'd probably catch some filthy disease."
"Oh get over yourself."
"How come you're all chummy with me then. Ol' Weasely left you for dead?" He sat back in his chair with an air of satisfaction that Harry found unnerving.
"I'm not chummy," he said.
"Potter, contrary to apparent popular belief, I don't care, now bugger off."
"You should care."
"Stop saying the word care, Potter, you sound like a bloody girl."
"You're like some disgusting infestation, just being greasy and irritating for the hell of it." Harry stalked out the door after throwing Draco the most offensive and smouldering glare he could muster.
"The maestro, ladies and gentlemen," Draco muttered.
Harry walked down the corridor fuming. He stared at his feet as he walked, scuffing them on the floor. Malfoy was right. He was stupid. He walked directly into a column and fell over.
A fourth year Ravenclaw helped him to his feet but he brushed her off completely embarrassed. He ascended a staircase and went to his common room to find Hermione.
"Hermione?" She looked up from her homework.
"Harry! Good, now come here and give me a second opinion."
"No, Hermione, I need to talk to you in private." She rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Harry, you always do. It's a wonder you talk in public at all." Nevertheless she picked up her book and followed him to a secluded corner of the room.
"It's about Malfoy." She sighed.
"It always is."
"Once it was about that annoying rash on my…"
"It's a figure of speech, Harry." She gave him a patronising pat on the shoulder.
"Right."
"Well come on, what is it?"
"Just now…"
"Would you go and eat, please? You're always like this when you're hungry. I've already eaten but I think Ron's still down there."
"Oh. Well, OK."
Draco, still in the room where he and Harry had had their confrontation, took Harry's smouldering glance to mean that he had finally got over that silly aversion to Draco and had seen Draco for what he really was: a hunky beast. Draco smiled to himself. Finally, the dreams that had haunted him since the day he turned 16, finally they might come true!
Elsewhere, Harry was settling into a nice meal of potatoes and steak. He thought his steak was very well done and munched on it happily but found the potatoes to be a little under-cooked. Ron was sitting with him, though Ron's thoughts were not on the food he ate absently.
"Ron, what do you think of the potatoes?"
"Wha--?" Ron looked blankly at Harry, who shrugged and continued to eat.
"I think they're a little under-done," he murmured through his mouthful.
"Harry, what if I told you I'd fallen in love with someone?" Harry stopped, mid-chew and winced. Please God don't let it be me.
"Well I'd say congratulations." Ron looked unsettled and turned back to his plate. "Well come on, don't leave me in suspense. Who's the lucky girl?" He tried to slip in the word girl in a nonchalant fashion but ended up emphasising that little bit too much. Ron looked at him weirdly.
"Are you implying it might not be a girl?"
"No, I'm implying it might not be human," replied Harry, trying his best to keep the tone light but all the while grimacing into his butterbear.
"Well it is a girl." Phew, thought Harry.
"OK then, who?"
"It's, well it's Hermione."
"Oh come on, make it better than that. Even my love interest's more imaginative than that."
"What are you on about?"
"Nothing."
"Anyway. Hermione. You know how we made that pact in second year that we promised that if/when one of us fell in love with Hermione, we'd talk it over with the other to make sure it wouldn't be weird?"
"Yeah, I remember. It's hardly going to stop it from being weird though."
"So you mean you don't mind?"
"Ron, what's there to mind? My two best friends're shacking up together."
"Don't you feel a bit left out?"
"I've got other things on my mind right now," he muttered darkly, his brow deeply furrowed. He cut himself another piece of steak and quickly un-furrowed his brow, smiling at the bit of meat.
"Oh. Well OK then. See I was worried that you'd rail at me or something but this…this is good." There was a distinct hint of disappointment in his voice.
"No, I'm thrilled. So how are you going to break the news?" Ron was taken aback.
"Break the news? To Hermione? Mate, I'm not telling her," he scoffed.
"That was a mighty good scoff Ron but I think you are."
"Hrmmph."
"You can't tell me that and expect me to do nothing. All I'll get is awkward silences for the next few weeks until someone has a breakdown and it all comes out amid gushing and floods of tears. I'd rather skip all that if I could. You're telling her."
"I don't see how your opinion comes into it."
"You just asked me my bloody opinion!"
"Yes, but that was out of politeness."
"Ron. Do you really love Hermione?"
"Yes."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Well I dunno."
"How do you feel when she yells at you?"
"Like I've wronged her."
"Well yeah, but that's how I feel. I want some emotion here. Show me the hopeless romantic Ron, I know it's in there somewhere. When she's not in class, how do you feel?"
"When has she not been in class?"
"Ron, I don't think you understand what I'm trying to do. Answer me with relation to how you believe you feel about Hermione."
"OK. If she ever were not in class I would first of all be frightened because she never misses classes."
"Ron," warned Harry.
"And, and I would feel sad." Harry sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Sad?"
"Sad yes, in the beginning but that would grow into a feeling like a great gaping hole was growing inside of me, a hole that only the effect of her presence could fill."
"And now we're getting somewhere. Did you mean that?" Ron looked confused.
"Yeah, I think I did. Less dramatic, but yeah. When she's not around I miss her and when she is around, the sight of her makes my heart jump." Harry cheered.
"That's the stuff! Hit me with some more."
"And her hair, I long to be able to touch it without getting weird looks, and her eyes are so deep and hide all her knowledge and her wrists…"
"Her wrists?"
"They're slender."
"Hmm. Did not know that." Ron sighed, gazing at his dinner. "Are you going to eat that?"
"What? Oh, no. I don't think I could eat."
"Brilliant." Harry transferred Ron's steak to his own plate and tucked in.
"You're right. I have to tell her tonight."
"What have you got in mind?"
"Well I thought I'd just tell her."
"Ron, Ron. Have I taught you nothing? This will not work if you don't put any thought into it."
"Then tell me what to do."
"Try being soulful. Take her into a corner of the common room where there's no-one else and tell her how you've been feeling that there's a void in your life and until tonight you had no idea what it was."
"How'd you get so good at this?" Harry blinked before going on, pretending to ignore him.
"Then tell her that she's the one that gets you up every day."
"She is though, she comes yelling at me to finish homework."
"Ron, I ask only that you work with me."
"Fine."
"She's the one your mind turns to in its few absent moments, she's the one you write notes for, she's the only one who can make you smile when you're really down."
"But that's all true."
"Bonus points."
"Wow, I'm really going to do this."
"Yes, you are. Good luck, mate." Harry finished the last of Ron's steak and looked around for more he could pilfer. His eyes fell on Draco's plate, sitting on the Slytherin table, half-way across the room. Harry had excellent eye-sight.