Chapter 4 : The Confrontation

By the next morning, Ron still hadn't said more than two very short and improperly formed sentences to anyone in the house. It was mid-morning, July 30 and Ginny laid in her bed with nothing to do but wait for a reason to move. Though it was still only morning, the gloomy sky cast a depressing greyness across the room and the open window allowed a cool breeze to flutter the worn curtains. Ginny found this fit her mood quite nicely as the rain soaked clouds awaited the signal to saturate the ground below them. Hermione had seemed to feel the need to keep busy by cleaning but Ginny had no desire to clean today. Frankly, she had no desire to do anything but to lay on her bed and daydream about nothing.

Ron's current behavior wasn't helping her mood at all either. He was currently, not only still being silent around her and Hermione, but also being an incredible git. When he did happen to pass by them he would either cast them a dark scowl or ignore them altogether.

She half-heartedly thought of visiting the kitchen for tea but at that moment a large tawny owl flew through the open window and landed on the footboard of her bed. The letter tied to its leg was addressed to a Miss Hermione Granger.

"Oh, Hermione," she said talking to the owl, "she's downstairs. I can take it to her." The owl seemed satisfied with its delivery and held its leg so she could untie the scroll of parchment then took off through the window again.

The writing was small and oddly loopy and Ginny didn't recognize the penmanship but had a good idea who it was from. Ginny nearly tripped over her own feet as she hastily jumped from the bed and tore down a level of stairs as quietly as she could. She found Hermione in the drawing room with a white cloth tied around her nose and mouth, trying to pound the life out of an old, moth eaten sofa. Ginny watched and couldn't help chuckling as Hermione beat it with one of George's old Quidditch clubs, muttering to nobody.

"Stinking thing. I hate this house. I hate the dust. I hate that screaming old hag." Hermione paused while she caught her breath and surveyed her progress. Apparently, she wasn't satisfied because she began beating it harder than ever. Each swing had two to three words put to it, "What did…that cow do?...Put a…permanent sticking…charm on all…the dust in this…horrible house?....Ihatethis...sofa!" She finished with a fresh wave of thumps and a cry of frustration.

Breathing heavily, Hermione stopped trying to kill the sofa when she saw Ginny laughing in the doorway. "What?" She removed her cloth, "Every time I sit down, I am greeted with a cloud of dust. However, when I try to clean it-- It's as if the sofa replenishes itself from its lost dust! I can't take it anymore! It's like she wanted it to look like we're in the middle of a horror film!"

"Hermione, I gave up weeks ago trying to rid this place of dust. What's an ilm?"

"Never mind. What's that you have?" Hermione asked, indicating the parchment in Ginny's hand, which she handed over immediately.

"It's for you. Krum, isn't it?"

Hermione's face went pale as she took the parchment into her dirty hands. "Yes it is," she replied warily, biting her lower lip. "I don't want to open it. I already know what it says."

"Oh, you do not. Go on, open it."

"Yes, I do. He despises me for being selfish and uncaring." Hermione dramatically flung herself back to the sofa coughing and wheezing, a fresh cloud of dust in the air.

"He wouldn't think that. Hermione, read it!"

"You read it."

"Oh for goodness sake, alright." Ginny took the letter from Hermione's outstretched hand. She cleared her throat and read aloud.


My dearest Hermione,

I received your letter this afternoon. I do not deny that my heart breaks by what you have told me. I wish I could visit you now but you have told me not do so over the summer, which I will respect. I want to talk you out of this or to maybe fight for you (which I know you think is very silly). You are too special a woman to let go this easily. I blame myself for this, for not being there for you. I know you deserve better and I do understand your decision. I truly wish you would reconsider, but that is my own selfish desire talking. However, your happiness is what I want most of all. I know you are not content with our current arrangements, but unfortunately, I have not the power to change them. I will miss you my sweet Hermione but if this is what it takes for you to be happy, then so be it. I, too, wish us to remain friends. If you ever need anything of me, you need only to ask. I sincerely hope this will not be the last time I hear from you.

Always yours,

Viktor


When she finished, Ginny only gave a long, low whistle and Hermione stayed silent for several long minutes.

"It's worse than I thought," Hermione said finally in a small voice.

"No it's not--he doesn't hate you. He still wants to be friends."

"I would feel better if he did hate me."

"I didn't realise Viktor fancied you so much. Sure hope Ron doesn't go and screw this up," Ginny looked over the letter again.

"He will," Hermione shrugged her shoulders.

Ginny looked at her in surprise.

"He wouldn't be Ron if he didn't."

Ginny laughed loudly, "Too right."

Following yet another lunch without Ron, everybody seemed fed up with his behavior and no longer attempted to be civil to him. It was now almost suppertime and Ginny and Hermione sat at one end of the long wooden table of the kitchen, waiting to be fed. Mrs. Weasley stood by the fire stirring the stew while Mr. Weasley chopped away at the vegetables. Bill sat at the other end of the table checking his pocket watch every few minutes and George and Fred huddled mysteriously in a corner examining a map of Diagon Alley.

"Ginny dear, go fetch Ron for supper," Mrs. Weasley said breaking the silence.

"Mum, no!" Ginny whined. "I went up there last time."

"Go and don't come back without him this time," Mrs. Weasley demanded, pointing a threatening wooden stirring spoon at her.

Ginny reluctantly agreed but grumbled and pouted all the way up the basement stairs.

Mrs. Weasley returned to the stew mumbling to herself, "I swear that boy is acting so odd these days… Moping around the house…" Several more minutes passed and Ginny still had not returned. The stew had finished cooking and was waiting to be ladled onto plates and Mrs. Weasley was growing impatient. "Hermione, be a dear and see what's taking them so long."

Hermione did as she was asked and silently went up the narrow basement stairs, into the hall, and up the stairs. She was on the second landing when she could hear muffled voices coming from Ron's room. As she drew closer, she could hear Ginny's voice coming through clearly from behind the thick door.

"YOU STUPID GIT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA-"

"COME OFF IT, GINNY. I KNOW YOU'RE A TRAITOR!" Ron shouted. "YOU DIDN'T THINK I'D FIND OUT?"

"YOU'RE EVEN THICKER THAN I THOUGHT, YOU MENTAL PRAT!! I CAN'T BELIEVE I ACTUALLY ENCOURAGED HERMIONE TO GO THROUGH WITH THIS!" Ginny battled back. "YOU ARE SO...SO...... YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"

Ginny wrenched open the door to find Hermione listening. Though startled to find Hermione standing there, she was not angry for the eavesdropping.

Instead, she spoke loudly enough for Ron to hear, "Forget every good thing I have ever said about my brother, Hermione. Now I wish you hadn't sent that letter to Krum! He doesn't deserve you. Mental that one is, Hermione. The idiot! Tell Mum I've lost my appetite!" With that said, she took her leave stomping briskly to her own bedroom and closing the door with force.

Hermione entered Ron's room and shut the door quietly behind her.

"Bloody hell, not you too," he stated sharply. He felt satisfied at the shocked look on her face. "Well? Come to have a go, have you?"

"I didn't deserve that, Ron," she was determined to keep her voice steady, even in the anger that was building in the room again.

"No? I can't believe I let myself-- The other night I-- If you like that git so much you can have him!" he stumbled intelligently.

"What are you on about, Ron?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Oh, don't act innocent with me, Hermione! I know all about your stupid letter to Krum, the chocolates you sent to him--you were talking about them in the taxi. And Ginny helping you! I figured it out, Hermione. I don't need you to tell me what's been going on, unless you'd just like to rub it in a little more. Could've been less obvious about it though."

"Well, obviously I do Ronald Weasley! You have no idea what we were up to yesterday!"

"I know you were looking to send a letter to Krum." He mimicked Hermione in a high pitched girly voice, "We wish to send him a bit of fan mail but don't know where to send it."

Hermione gaped at him, horrified. "You were spying on us!"

"I was standing outside the Quidditch shop window and saw you coming down the street. I wanted to talk to you, but not with Ginny there so I lost my nerve and ducked inside the shop. You followed me in and I hid in a corner behind a magazine rack, hoping you wouldn't notice me. I knew you were still together but, Hermione, fan mail?" he said this last bit with disgust in his voice.

"FAN MAIL?" Hermione felt herself involuntarily explode. "IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK OF ME? IS THAT WHY YOU'VE BEEN ACTING LIKE THIS? YOU COULDN'T BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!" Hermione took a deep breath trying to keep her voice from cracking with resentment. She managed to lower her voice level but Ron could still see her eyes boiling, "That was just an excuse, Ron. I had a reason to contact him. But whenever Viktor would write to me, I would just send a letter back with his owl so I never knew exactly where he was because he traveled so much. I had to find him first. Fan mail! When have you ever known me to send fan mail to anyone?"

Ron raised an eyebrow in answer.

"Okay, besides Lockhart...which, by the way, was over three years ago?"

He couldn't give an answer because he knew she was, unfortunately for him, right. She wasn't the type to do that sort of gibberish and had learned her lesson with Gilderoy Lockhart in their second year.

She continued, her voice wobbling terribly, "As for the chocolates, they're for Harry's birthday! I was concerned that chocolates wouldn't be a special enough of a present because I'd sent chocolates last year as well. Ginny was reassuring me that with his horrible family around he could always use them. You didn't seem terribly keen to speak to us in the taxi so I saw no reason to inform you of them."

She could see Ron's anger lighten considerably at this new information and he looked at the floor guiltily, but this only fueled her own fury more. She already felt terrible about having possibly hurt Viktor, and now he had the nerve to stand there trying to look sorry for insulting her further after everything she had done for him, as if being sorry should be enough for Hermione to forgive his idiocy.

"Has five years worth of friendship meant nothing to you?" she said, not being able to prevent her voice from shaking out of control. "I knew I was probably fighting a losing battle trying to get you to notice what I'd been putting in front of your face all this time, but I didn't think you were void of all emotion."

Ron could only examine his shoelaces.

Hermione felt nauseatingly horrible but tried her best to suck in her tears and regain at least a little dignity. She kept her voice level and spoke slowly and deliberately, "You've said some horrible things in the past, but I don't think anything quite compares to being called a silly little fangirl twit. And here I was, stupidly thinking that you knew me better than that. I daresay I am glad to finally, after five years, know exactly what you think of me."

When Ron was unable to say anything to prove her wrong, she turned and opened the door but stopped and turned back again. "By the way, Ron, if you really must know what I had written to Viktor then here you go," Hermione removed a piece of parchment that had been folded neatly in the back pocket of her muggle jeans and cast it on the floor to his feet, "there's his reply that you can read. I received it this morning," her voice cracked at this and she could feel a fresh wave of tears threatening to bubble through.

Ron glanced at the parchment on the floor but then returned to his laces.

Before Ron could see her cry, Hermione turned sharply on her heel and ran through the open door and into her own room. She slammed the door behind her hard enough to rattle the walls. Immediately, the shrill, earsplitting cry of Mrs. Black's portrait rang from the hall. Ron winced at the sound of the slamming door, but it was a cowardly reflex reserved more for Hermione's deserved anger than the noise. He heard Mrs. Weasley run up from the basement kitchen to replace the heavy velvet curtain before the old hag woke the other paintings and Ron scrambled down the stairs to help. He struggled to close the curtains that hid the portrait from view as the old woman screamed in his ears about blood traitors and clawed desperately to attack him from beyond her oil brushed surface while his mother bustled around him, stunning the other portraits.

The instant all was quiet again, Mrs. Weasley turned on him and gave him a furious whisper that Ron knew would have been a full-blown shout had they not been in the hall.

"What in the name of Merlin are you doing up there? Why are you slamming doors? We could hear that all the way from the kitchen! You're lucky we're not in a meeting, Ronald Weasley," she waggled an angry index finger at his face.

All Ron could do was look sheepish and say, "Sorry, Mum."

"Supper is waiting," she dropped her hands to her hips. "I've already sent up Hermione and Ginny after you and I expect you downstairs to eat with the rest of us tonight! No more moping, no rude comments... and you will eat something if I have to jinx you and shove it in your mouth myself!"

"Yes ma'am."

"Between you and Hermione sulking around all day long, I'm about to lose my mind and then you go around waking iher/i," she scolded, pointing a finger to the closed velvet curtains that covered Mrs. Black's portrait. "What were you thinking? What is going on up there anyway? Never mind, stew is getting cold and I'm not going to reheat it for you." Mrs. Weasley turned on her heel and silently went back through the hall door to the basement.

Ron headed back upstairs, past Kreacher's dead relatives and into his own room. He saw the folded piece of parchment lying on the floor where Hermione had thrown it--ominously waiting for him to read it. From the way Hermione had reacted to his accusations about her and Krum, it couldn't be good news and he dreaded reading it. He picked it up and sat on his bed, staring at the writing on the outside. Slowly he unfolded it and read what lay inside.

Ron felt his heart stop and his blood run fridged as he read. He was glad he was sitting down; he didn't think his legs would have held him. He reread the letter six times before believing it himself. He wasn't sure what he had expected but it wasn't this. Hermione had dumped Krum?

Ginny's words echoed in his ears. i"I actually encouraged Hermione to go through with this! Now I wish you hadn't sent that letter to Krum! He doesn't deserve you."/i

Was it possible? Had Ginny encouraged Hermione to give Viktor Krum the boot? Had she done it for him? Ron didn't know if that part was true, but from the letter he could tell she had definitely broken up with him and that was enough to bring a broad smile to his face.

He now thought he understood what she had meant, though at the time he had been too angry to pay any attention. Ron began mentally filling in the blanks that he had been too upset to recognize before. Slowly, things began to fit in a more logical order as the realisation of what had just happened sank in.

The other night he had meant to tell Hermione how he felt about her but he had no idea she might have feelings back. Now he had probably just ruined the best thing in his life and driven her away from him forever.