-II-
Ron looked for Harry in all of Gryffindor tower – with the exception, of course, being the girl's dormitories – in vain. He was nowhere to be found, and no one he asked seemed to have seen him. He did not want to go rummaging through Harry's things in search of the Marauder's map, so he stepped out of the common room with the alluring prospect of having only a whole castle to search. In a lucky coincidence, though, he met his sister Ginny in the hallways.
"Hey, do you by any chance know where-," he began to ask her, only then noticing that she made a rather downcast impression. "What's wrong? You alright?"
"It's nothing," Ginny evaded, failing to conceal her apparent sadness. "What did you want to ask me?"
Ron was reluctant to play along for a second, but given the not so little chance this would have something to do with girl-stuff, he decided not to push the issue.
"If by any chance you would know where I can find Harry," he finished his question.
Ginny winced slightly and Ron was about to ask her yet again about her condition, but his sister kept herself together and answered with somewhat exaggerated indifference:
"At the Qudditich pitch, I guess. I saw him downstairs with his broom."
Ron nodded, eying his sister with suspicion.
"Thanks," he just said.
She simply nodded at him and left.
Ron watched her go and shook his head. "I'm sure it's just girl-stuff," he thought to himself.
He walked along the corridor, made his way downstairs to the castle's ground floor and headed straight for the great doorway that lead outside. It was not the worst of autumn days, with only some clouds here and there, covering a gray-blue sky and a sun that did its best, though it was quite cold nonetheless. Ron saw Hagrid near his hut in the distance, apparently working on something. His big boarhound Fang was animatedly jumping around his master, which did not seem to be as much fun for the man as it was for the dog.
Ron continued approaching the Quidditch pitch, even from the distance making out a single figure that was flying up high above the ranks. Given the specific way that person was flying, Ron had no doubt that it was indeed Harry. Walking through the locker-rooms, he grabbed one of the practice brooms and stepped outside onto the green pitch. He kicked himself off the ground and rose up to reach Harry's varying height. Luckily, his friend noticed him after only a few seconds and came flying towards him, halting just a meter to his side.
"Nice to know where you are," Ron greeted him.
"Sorry, mum," Harry quipped.
Ron hesitated for a moment, choosing to look around and take in the view instead.
"Say, Harry," he started, unsure of himself. "Is everything… alright with you?"
Harry mustered his friend for a second before answering.
"What do you mean?"
Ron puffed out some air.
"Come on, you know what I mean," he claimed, giving Harry a telling look.
Harry watched him expectantly, refusing to say a word. His friend sighed.
"You've been acting… a little strange today," he carefully explained his motivation for talking to him.
Harry remained silent.
"What, you don't think so?" challenged Ron.
"I don't know."
"You don't know," Ron repeated incredulously.
"It's been a strange day, for sure," Harry offered his own version. "But I don't see how I could be the exclusive source of that strangeness."
Ron scratched the back of his head. This turned out to be a bit more complicated than he had dared to hope.
"Harry, mate… you've been behaving weird all day. Your sudden… jolly display alone is reason enough to wonder, considering the weeks of full-time brooding that preceded it."
"I'm sure as hell getting jolly fed up with this," Harry groaned. "Is there a problem with me being happy or something?"
Ron was growing impatient.
"Now don't be ridiculous. That's nonsense. It is only the abrupt change in your mood that is conspicuous, not your mood itself. I just want to make sure you are alright."
It was Harry's turn to let out a heavy sigh.
"But that's the point: I am. Or at least I was. I don't know."
Ron thought for a moment.
"Well," he said. "Whatever you're going through, I'm sure we'll figure it out. You are – or were – having a good day. Alright, let's accept that for a second. But, dude… what the heck's going on with you about Hermione? Having a good day does not cover that."
"So that's what it's about?"
"It's certainly not the most insignificant part of today's weirdness."
"And why is that? What is so awfully weird about it?"
"Harry…" Ron nearly pleaded. "Come on! Her hair looks nice?"
"You don't think so?"
Ron took a moment to rub his temples with thumb and middle-finger of his left hand.
"Okay," he seemingly spoke to himself before addressing Harry directly again. "The sculpture? Her hand?"
Harry avoided looking at him and instead turned his broom in slow circles. Ron thought that it was probably an improvised substitute for shuffling his feet on the ground, what with the ground being a hundred feet below them and all.
"It's that bad, isn't it?"
"I don't know," Harry said again. "I guess. She doesn't feel the same way, though, so it doesn't really matter."
Ron shook his head in disbelief.
"So you're basically telling me you're in love with Hermione now, or what?"
"I wasn't saying that," answered Harry. "But I am."
Ron lost his grip on the broom and abruptly sank a few feet, immediately recovering to regain his former height.
"Why is that so shocking?" asked Harry.
While being steady in the air again, Ron was still not feeling all that stable inside his head.
"It's just – isn't it a bit… sudden?"
"What, you think I fell in love with her today at breakfast and kicked the whole thing off by mentioning how nice her hair looks?" Harry asked equally incredulous as Ron had so many times before.
"I guess not," Ron mumbled, rolling his eyes. "But… you never mentioned it. We never talked about it. And you most certainly never, ever talked about her that way. There was no indication whatsoever that you were thinking about her like that."
Harry raised his eyebrows at his best friend.
"I'm not the one who only noticed that Hermione is a girl when I was running out of time to get a date for the Yule ball."
"Guess you were not," Ron said, mumbling nearly inaudibly.
They looked at each other for a few seconds, the one with a distant sadness in his eyes and a halfhearted smile on his lips, the other with the complete loss of faith in the workings of the world written all over his face.
"Man," Ron said, again shaking his head. "I can't believe this. So that hand in McGonagall's class, your sculpture… that really meant… man."
"How is she?"
"What, the hand?"
Harry grimaced at his best friend.
"Right, right," Ron caught up. "Well, uh… I guess she's… she's… I'm sure that… she… well, to be perfectly honest: I have no idea how she really is. I mean, you saw her. One might say she didn't take it… all that well. I'm inclined to say that she's the best proof for what I've been trying to tell you the whole time. Or would you say that her reactions were those of a person who was experiencing something she was totally expecting?"
"Not exactly... I wasn't saying that my feelings were absolutely obvious the whole time," Harry defended his point. "But I know for sure that there are quite a few people in Hogwarts – hell, the whole wizarding part of the world who presume, who expect, who gossip about… well, Harry Potter and his female friend. Isn't there a whole monthly column in the Daily Prophet that's only about the love life, or lack thereof, of the boy-who-lived?"
"Yes, yes. They got it all figured out," Ron confirmed. "It's weakly, though."
Harry shook his head in disgust.
They spent a few minutes in silence, each of them following his own trail of thought. Ron had a hard time figuring this out in its entirety.
"So," he finally broke the silence. "We've officially managed to miss lunch. And here I was, thinking this day couldn't actually get any worse. But rescue is near! We could end it all by committing suicide through actually missing Potions."
Harry laughed.
"But why would we?" he joined the jest. "Are you not sick of this fresh air? Let us seek refuge from freedom in jolly old Snape's damp dungeon of many smells and nauseations."
"Would you please not catch me when I let go of my broom in a second?"
~•~
Harry was used to Potions classes being an ordeal for him, border-lining on fully fledged torture. Well, truthfully, it had actually improved with time, since Harry had gotten much less susceptible to Snape's attitude towards him, which had made his tormentor lose interest in the whole routine in turn. Since, in addition, he was not half bad in Potions, there was not much left for Snape to work with. Nevertheless, Harry was somehow so used to Snape's class being his personal hell that he still considered it to be just that, no matter if Snape himself could deliver or not.
On this day, though, the two hours of brewing steaming potions in the windowless bowels of the castle were torturing Harry for a completely different reason, and he would have much preferred the old version over this. Today, as it was regularly the case, they had again to work on a more challenging potion that would be – as even Snape accepted – impossible to complete for only one person within the two hours they had, demanding fluent and well coordinated teamwork. Normally, Harry would team up with Hermione and they would always have a good chance of finishing not only ahead of class, but with very respectable results, too – much to the displeasure of a certain Professor. They didn't even have to talk most of the time, simply complementing each other's work steps; sharing knowing smiles and a stifled laugh or two once in a while. Harry had always deeply appreciated these joint ventures with her.
Today, Hermione was not working with him. She had teamed up with Neville, which might just have been a consolation for Harry, since his fellow Gryffindor could really need the help and actually – when not throwing uncertain glances at Harry – seemed to be quite thrilled at the prospect of brewing a potion that worked as intended for once. The lump in his throat, the pressure on his chest and the chaos in his mind, however, made it rather hard for him to sympathize with Neville.
Hermione had, at the beginning of the class, simply announced that she would be helping Neville today, if that were okay. Harry had neither the opportunity nor the presence of mind to respond anything, so matters had just taken their course and he instead worked with Ron, who felt utterly helpless in the middle of it all.
With Harry's mind all over the place, but never exactly on the task at hand, and while he further stole fleeting glances at Hermione all throughout the duration of the class, who sometimes seemed to be looking at him in those same instances, yet always looked away so fast that Harry couldn't even be sure it happened at all, it's safe to say their potion was not quite top of the class – much to the scornful delight of Professor Snape. So while Hermione had already cleaned up and left together with most of the other students, Harry and Ron were still listening to Snape's private lecture about everything they had done wrong, which, as it turned out, had been quite a lot apparently.
When they had finally fled the indiscernible amount of nauseating odors that hang so heavily in the dungeon's thick air and made their way into the entrance hall, Harry had no hope of catching up with Hermione, although he was not even sure if he really wanted to. He came to a sudden halt, Ron nearly bumping into him.
"So now she's avoiding me," Harry stated, raising his arms in a desperate gesture. "That's great. Just great."
"Maybe it's a girl thing…" Ron began with uncertainty, but Harry cut him off.
"What did I do that was so wrong?" Harry asked, more sadly so than angrily. "Tell me, Ron, 'cause I don't know. I really don't get it."
"Well, it could-" Ron slowly contemplated, but again got interrupted by an agitated Harry.
"I was just being honest! And I couldn't help that thing with the hand, Professor McGonagall explained that much. I embarrassed her, okay – I got that. But it pretty much feels as if I outright offended or even hit her or something."
Ron watched his friend increasingly worried, for he seemed to get more upset with every word he said.
"Calm down, now," he carefully said. "Just give her some time. I told you, it's really been a weird day. Just think about what happened for a second, and how that must have been for Hermione – no matter how she actually feels about it."
"You think I destroyed our friendship today?" Harry asked, his face more stricken than it had been all those weeks before.
"No!" Ron desperately tried to stop his friend's obstinate pessimism. "Don't get all depressed on me, now. Just… let me talk to her."
"Right," Harry sighed quietly, not showing any sign of hope. "I'll be off then, if that's alright with you."
"Yeah, you just go on ahead and get some rest or something."
Harry nodded absent-mindedly and walked away with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes, his friend watching him with both concern and confusion. For Ron Weasley, life sure had felt simpler before he had woken up that morning. He might have felt rather helpless, but there was one thing to do and Ron was determined to live up to it. It was time to search for his friend yet again; only this time, the other one.
~•~
It didn't take Ron long to figure out where Hermione would probably be, and so he unsurprisingly found her sitting at her favorite spot on a cushioned bench next to one of the windows of the library, right at the end of a corridor between the ceiling-high bookcases that were filled to the brim with big, dusty tomes which had probably been touched solely by Hermione in recent years. With a respectable pile of books to her side and nearly a handful of tomes openly stretched out before her, she looked her usual busy self. Seeking refuge in books and study seemed a lot like her, so Ron was anything but surprised. He was surprised, though, when Hermione looked up at him as soon as he sat down on the bench on the other side of the table, and immediately said:
"Good, I need to talk to you."
Ron looked at her perplexedly, his eyebrows raised.
"Something's wrong with Harry," Hermione hastily proclaimed.
Ron's degree of confusion did not benefit from that utterly unexpected statement.
"Okay…" he slowly said, while trying not only to make sense of what Hermione had said, but also to get a grip on just how much stranger this day could get.
"Isn't it obvious?" Hermione asked, puzzled seemingly only now at Ron's very own display of confusion.
"I'm confident you'll explain, so I'll spare me the shame."
"But you noticed it yourself, didn't you?" Hermione appealed to his reason. "At breakfast, even."
"Well, yeah," Ron replied, taking an awful lot of time to speak each individual word, nagging at Hermione's patience while doing so. "He behaved kinda... sorta odd, for sure, but there are a lot of potential explanations for that…"
"He is under the influence of some kind of magic," Hermione stated straight out, not willing to wait for Ron to catch up.
"What?" Ron yelped, evidently beginning to lose his sanity.
"Though I do not know if the source is a spell or a potion yet," Hermione simply added, ignoring Ron's bewilderment.
He looked at her, mouth open and unmoving.
"Again, what?"
Hermione sighed exasperatedly.
"Come on, Ron," she said. "It is the only explanation for Harry's behavior."
"But…" Ron practically stammered. "What are you saying? That someone has put Harry under the Imperius to get him crazy about you?"
Hermione snorted, though her face did seem to redden ever so slightly.
"Of course not. It would be the silliest use of the Imperius I have ever heard of," she casually refuted his thought. "But it is something similar, at least as far as the effect is concerned."
Ron thought for a moment.
"So you are saying that Harry has fallen victim to some kind of love potion?"
"Not the average, commercial love potion, no," Hermione objected.
"Why not?" asked Ron, maybe intending to simply question everything on this day, just to be safe.
"Because he's not showing the appropriate symptoms," Hermione said naturally.
Ron gave a rather lost impression, looking at her querulously.
"He's not acting that crazy," Hermione elaborated further. "Under the influence of the standard love potion, he would be walking around in a dazed condition and not be thinking about anything but the object of the potion's magic. The term love potion is, in my opinion, ill conceived, for it evokes much more a blind, hormone-driven obsession than feelings with any kind of substance or sincerity to them."
"Right," Ron said, if only for the lack of any basis for objection. "Okay. So then what is going on?"
"I am not sure. That's what I'm trying to find out here," she replied, motioning to the multitude of books around her.
"And what If you're wrong?"
"I'm not."
Ron laughed out loud at that.
"And what makes you so sure of that?" he challenged. "What made you even come to this assumption in the first place?"
"Ron," Hermione said, getting irritated with her friend. "Harry is not like that. He does not see me that way. You know that as well as I do."
"Do we, now?" Ron wondered. "And what if he told me otherwise?"
"Told you what?"
"That he's in love with you."
The briefest flash of change hushed over Hermione's features and her breathing seemed to stop for a mere second, but she held her composure so well that one might have missed it completely.
"If he had indeed said that," Hermione spoke again matter-of-factly. "It would obviously have been due to the effect of the spell which he is currently affected by."
"Because it is so totally unimaginable that he could truly feel about you like that?"
"Yes," Hermione said with clenched jaws. "Just drop it, Ron. Don't try to tell me that you believe that yourself."
The young Weasley sighed and looked out through the window for a few seconds.
"I just don't like it when you treat yourself like that is all," he said softly. "As if you were Millicent Bullstrode or something."
The faintest hint of a smile played around the corner of Hermione's lips, but within a second she was completely serious again.
"I'm simply being realistic," she insisted. "Now let's focus on the issue at hand."
Ron nodded reluctantly and took a deep breath.
"Like who would do this and for what purpose?" he asked. "I mean, who would profit from making Harry act like your personal Prince Charming?"
"I don't know," Hermione replied – and grudgingly so, for it was certainly the answer she most despised to give. "But I think finding out the specifics of the magic that was used is the more promising way of inquiry."
Ron nodded again, this time in honest agreement.
"What have you found out so far?" he asked, taking a more attentive look at the books on the table for the first time.
Hermione let out a frustrated sigh.
"My progress has been… somewhat marginal," she admitted. "There is just not enough to go on and there are myriads of different spells and potions that have something to do with the general issue we are facing."
"Sounds great. Can I still get out of this?"
Hermione made a face at him, then returned to her musings about the events of the day.
"How would you personally describe Harry's behavior today?" she asked him thoughtfully. "You have spent more time with him."
Ron pondered over that for a moment.
"Well," he began slowly. "It's hard to describe, to be honest. It's really weird, now that I think about it. Looking back at it with your supposition in mind, it really is… kind of absurd. The way I see it, he was only acting strange in an obvious way whenever you were around, like during breakfast and in McGonagall's class, while he did seem practically normal besides all that. You know what I mean? I don't think he was acting crazy at any time during the day. At least not crazy crazy. We even talked about Quidditch and stuff. The only crazy thing is… the thing itself. That he's… like… all crazy about you and all that. That's weird, but not the way in which he acts on it. Uh… you know?"
Hermione smiled benignly at Ron's attempted depiction of the events, then grew thoughtful again.
"I think I do know what you mean, actually," she affirmed, though she chose to contemplate it further.
So it was Ron who continued to vocalize his musings about Harry's behavior.
"I mean, he might have said something strange or behaved awkwardly, but then again, it might really come down to the fact that the only odd thing is his alleged affection for you, if that's what we want to call it. If it weren't for the fact that I didn't know about his – alleged – feelings for you before today, I think nothing could be seen as weird in his behavior. He would just be a guy who's in love. That's really all the condition it takes to act strangely, right?"
"Yes," Hermione agreed, listening to him with only one ear. "A remark like the one he made during breakfast would simply be a normal pleasantry if only we were used to hearing such from him. One might say that he's acting disturbingly normal about something that is utterly weird."
Ron nodded eagerly at this felicitous summary of what he tried to express.
"Well," Hermione said, making a tired impression. "That might narrow the range of possible spells and potions down, but I have not yet read anything that really fits as an explanation."
"What, you're telling me there's no spell that makes someone fall in love and act totally normal about it?"
Hermione smiled weakly at her friend's unwavering attempts to lighten a mood wherever he found a bad one. She looked outside towards the western horizon, over which the sun had begun to set; rays of light breaking through clusters of light grey clouds.
"I think we'll have to consult an authority, as delicate as this matter might be," she seemingly spoke half to herself. "I can imagine Harry won't like this, but we cannot eliminate the possibility that it might actually be something dangerous, even if it does not look that way as yet."
Ron concurred and knew instantly what his next job would be. He was kind of getting used to it.
"I'll talk to him," he said dutifully.
Hermione gave his hand a light squeeze and looked at him gratefully.
"You coming back to our tower?" Ron asked.
Hermione shook her Head.
"I'll rather stay a little while longer and read some more."
Ron nodded and gave her a sympathetic smile. He hadn't expected her to respond any different, really, so he left the library and let Hermione be absorbed in her books. When he stepped through the portrait of the fat lady to enter the Gryffindor common room a few minutes later, he silently thought to himself that if this day was good for anything, then it surely had to be the fact that he would definitely have more of an understanding for the troubles a wizard's owl had to endure.
Well, back to Harry it was.
~Ω~
