A/N: Hey everyone, sorry it's taken me so long to update but my writing has been interrupted by classes and such lately. I hope this chapter fits in well enough, and I'll try and keep updating on a more regular basis. Hopefully those writing classes I had will start to pay off now. I think it's starting to get interesting again. ;) Thanks for reading and reviewing! Love and kisses from me.
Disclaimer: Don't own this stuff, just being a copycat.
Inopportunities
Chapter 8: Seven's a Crowd
"Surprise!" yelled Fred and George as they descended upon us into the living room. Ginny glared at them, and Ron put his head in his hands. I laughed ironically. What else was to be expected on such a night but Fred and George, the two people most likely to incite an actual party, and to keep it going all night? There seemed little opportunity of being back on that couch now.
"We stopped by Grimmauld Place and Hagrid said you'd all come here!" George said, conjuring a bottle of Firewhiskey with a grin.
"You can't have a party without inviting us, don't you know?" Fred added.
"Doesn't look like it was much of a party, actually," whispered George to his brother. Harry was still distraught on the couch, Ginny was looking into her mug like she was contemplating drowning in it, and Malfoy was nowhere in sight. I walked over to Ron.
"I'm going outside to check on Malfoy – you try and get them out of here, alright?" Ron nodded at my plan and cheered up slightly.
I walked out into the Weasley's garden. The moon was flickering behind swift-moving clouds and the wind blew my hair into my face. Malfoy was leaning against the kitchen wall, his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face.
"What do you want, Granger?" he asked without looking at me.
"Nothing much, I suppose. What are you doing out here?" He sighed, still not looking at me.
"It seems it isn't as easy to get over grudges as some people like to believe."
"Understandable. Can I ask you something?"
"Go right head, I'm not busy."
"Do you still hate me?"
"Sometimes. Not as much as I used to. Do you like this brutal honesty?" His fingernails gripped the siding on the house behind him. Was I making him nervous?
"I think it's necessary at this point. One more thing – what did I ever do to you that you'd hate me for it?"
"Come on, Granger. Why do you think?"
"Besides the accident of my birth," I said, kicking a tree stump.
"We're too different. I couldn't tell you." He finally turned towards me. His gaze focused on me tragically. "Why don't we go back inside?" he asked. Why didn't Malfoy want to be alone with me? I looked around the yard one more time, the moonlight making shapes from the shadows.
"What's going on, Draco?" I asked him. Suspicion was something I never disregarded.
"I just don't think it's the best idea to be seen out here at night. You never know what could be watching." He was standing very close to me, his face partially lit by the light in the doorway. The voices in the living room carried out to us, expanding eerily in the silence after Draco's words. I needed to speak.
"If you're so into the blatant honesty tonight, let me ask you something else. Are the Death Eaters really after us?"
"Of course, Granger. Don't you trust any of us anymore since you became such a pureblood Muggle? They'll always be after us."
"Even you? Don't you still have the Dark Mark on your arm?" I asked and grabbed his left forearm. His muscles tensed beneath my grip and I let go quickly. For a moment it looked as though he was going to hit me. A second later, as we stood in the near dark of the kitchen doorway, he smiled slowly.
"Sorry, Granger – old habits, you know." He smirked and went back into the house.
I stood around outside for a while longer, trying not to imagine numerous pairs of eyes fixed on me, wands pointed, crazed minds whispering hexes or curses through the darkness. The danger thrilled me as I leaned up against the wall with my eyes closed, heart pounding, breathing heavily. I half heard the footsteps before the voice came.
"Hermione?" I gasped and was startled out of my reverie. It was Ron. He was walking towards me from around the house. I was still breathing hard when he finally got near enough. "Are you alright?" he asked, clamping my waist with his hand. All I could do was nod. I had no room for words. I couldn't see anything but the memory of Malfoy's smile in the pale light from the house. A shadow passed, and Ron's face came closely into view. What had been blocking the light? I had no time to ponder.
He leaned in and kissed me lightly, like I had done the first night he came back. I draped my arm around his back, and he pulled me in closer. All responsibility died while I pursued the high of Ron's presence. The thought flickered in the back of my mind that there might be consequences to such an open display of affection, but it only made me more passionate. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed uncertainty – peril.
He was sliding his hand up my shirt when I heard something crack. It might have been a fox, it might have been Fred and George, or it might have been someone apparating nearby. In the wizarding world, you could never be certain. I placed a hand on Ron's chest and pushed him off, as much as I hated to do it. Why was everything always happening at the wrong moment with us? We could never find the right time to be together.
"Did you hear something?" I asked quietly. He shook his head, but turned around anyway. His neck was tense as he scanned the yard. He lit his wand and ran it along the perimeters of the yard.
"I don't see anything. What did it sound like?"
"It was just a crack, I don't know. I was a little distracted." I smiled at him, and he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. The moment for us had passed within my paranoia. My mind clicked back into full gear as I suddenly remembered how anxious Malfoy was.
"Ron, I need to tell you something." I dragged him around to the tool shed on the other side of the house. "When I came out here to talk to Malfoy, he seemed quite nervous. I think he was expecting someone would follow us here." I told him about the rest of Draco's actions. Ron's jaw clenched when I got to the part about him hating me, and almost striking me.
"I wish I knew why we keep him around. He may have killed Snape, but what does that prove?" Ron grumbled into the blackness. I gaped in disbelief.
"Are you telling me that you don't believe Snape was really guilty for once?" My incredulity was genuine. Ron had always been one to use Snape as a scapegoat, and abandon all other possibilities inside his hatred for the man. Ron and Harry were both alike in that respect, until Harry grew to understood nuances in people's personalities. I was glad to see this rational change in Ron, but it still made me slightly uneasy. If he was really at the point of redeeming Snape in his reasoning, then we had no real reason to trust Malfoy. My stomach started turning itself inside out now, where before it had been feather-light in Ron's embrace.
By the time Ron got around to answering me, a few minutes had elapsed. I knew he wasn't always the one to be quickest at finding a solution, but he always had good instincts.
"Hermione, I don't know what to think anymore. Since both Dumbledore and Voldemort are gone, loyalties have been shifting about. We didn't know whose side Snape was on, even at the very end. We just assumed that Malfoy had changed his ways and killed Snape because of everything that happened sixth year. But, when Luna and I talked, she brought up the possibility that Malfoy only killed Snape to appear as a changed man in our eyes. We have no way of knowing what happened to him after he killed Snape. There have been rumors that the Death Eaters who are after us also had their doubts about Snape's loyalty to their master, and that they plotted to have Snape killed. It could go either way, and I'm almost with Harry when he says he wants to kick the git out of the house. But, even though there's a possibility Malfoy is working against us, there is also the possibility that he truly has changed – and we might need him when it comes down to it. He could be the Snape to our Dumbledore." Ron paused and listened to the noised outside the tool shed.
I bit my lip and sighed. Ron's reasoning made sense, although I was surprised that he could have grown up so entirely to consider an enemy as a friend, and a newly-made friend as a foe.
Fred and George could be heard on the third floor, in their room. I wouldn't go in the place since their telescope punched me in the eye. They were laughing riotously. The living room was painfully silent. I realized we had mistakenly abandoned the other three for far too long. As soon as I opened the door of the tool shed, I heard another crack. It might have been someone stepping on a stick, or it might have been the pop of one of the twin's pranks.
Instead of walking back to the house, I apparated. I was too nervous to waste time in the interval. When I reappeared in the living room, the three of them looked up at me startled. Harry even jumped from his seat, where he had been glumly kicking the coals in the fireplace. I breathed out a sigh of relief that Malfoy hadn't done anything to them, and that they hadn't done anything to Malfoy.
"What the bloody hell did you do that for?" Ginny shouted at me. I made a gesture to shush her, and put a hand on my thumping chest. I glanced quickly at Malfoy, just to ascertain that he was as startled as the others were. Being satisfied that his bewilderment was real, I sat down heavily on the couch.
"I heard a noise out there, and I wanted to make sure you were alright," I explained, nearly out of breath.
"Where's Ron?" Harry asked me. I glanced behind me and all around the room to make sure he wasn't there.
"He was right behind me!" I shouted, panic setting in once again. I raced out into the yard, and yanked open the door of the tool shed. I shined my wand into every corner, but Ron was nowhere to be found. I ran all the way around the house, calling his name, disregarding all fears of discovery. I walked into every shadowy place, hoping to bump into something that was shaped like him. On my third lap around the backyard, I ran smack into something tall and solid. I screamed. Hands clamped around my upper arms.
"Calm down, Hermione!" It was Harry. I collapsed into him.
"Where is he? Is he in the house? We haven't searched in there yet."
"Hermione, please stop for a minute. I'm sure he'll be okay. Calm down." I breathed in sharply, the night air searing my lungs. We got back into the house, and met Ginny just as she was thundering down the stairs.
"He's not here, Harry," she said. She clutched at a stitch in her side, and I plodded down onto a chair in the kitchen. Fred and George followed her shortly, equally breathless, their fear rocketing around in their eyes.
"Tell us what happened, Hermione, from the moment you went outside."
"I just went out there to talk to Malfoy, to see what he was up to. He was acting strangely – more than usual. He said something about not wanting to be seen outside at night, and… Harry, where's Malfoy?" I looked pleadingly into each of their faces. They were all frozen, ears strained, trying to hear any footfall, any hint that someone was still in the house or outside of it.
There was nothing. Malfoy was gone, and they'd taken Ron.
