Author Name: creamtea-from-FAP
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OoTP, HBP.
Genre: Book 7. Adventure, thriller.
Main Character(s): H. D.
Beta: Anise. Some test-reading by SUM.
Ship(s): Ships are touched on as part of the narrative, but the story isn't about the ships. Ships are: H/L, D/Hr. These ships: H/G, R/Hr, D/G are included – but not in a good way!
Summary: ALT BOOK 7: STORY ALREADY WRITTEN AND BEING PUBLISHED WITH FREQUENT UPDATES. FORTY CHAPTERS. What's it about? Love potions; emotional shoot-outs, expulsions, hex-fights, fist-fights, kidnappings, bank-jobs, secret weapons and castle-battles. And … DRACO!
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter 11
As Rita disappeared, escaping their grasp, Harry furiously turned toward Hermione. "Did you seriously think you had a right to potion me?" he hissed.
"But -" Hermione was looking as though she hoped she could chase after Rita, but she turned to Harry, half-pleading. "But Ginny liked you for years …"
"I knew that and it used to embarrass me! The only time I didn't mind her was in our fifth-form, when I found out she was going out with another bloke and I finally thought it was safe!"
Out of the corner of his eye Harry inadvertently saw Ginny look up at him, shocked; he ignored her.
"All this is getting out of hand," interjected Fred, "there was no harm done, nobody got hurt, these potions are just toys – we sell them for a joke. We've sold them to lots of people. Harry, just stop blowing it out of all proportion and causing trouble for people!"
"Harry, I stopped ages before you started going out with Ginny," Hermione pleaded. "You must've gone out with her because you wanted to. You must have! How else could you have? You didn't 'go barmy' like Ron did …"
She carried on talking as Harry caught stray words from George to Ron, "What about that other girl dosing you …?" … "She tried to slip it to Harry before Christmas but he didn't eat them, I ate them on my birthday." … "So it was brewing in the chocolates for three months? It would have really strengthened over time …"
"You must have some natural inbuilt resistance," continued Hermione, in a desperate, high tone, "because nothing happened. I was watching you and there were no signs!"
Harry stared at her, suddenly recalling all the funny looks and little smirking grins she'd given him last year. The thought that she'd been watching him like that simply fanned his anger, he snapped at her, interrupting, "It did work on me! It must have – because I ended up dating her!" He flung an accusing finger in the direction of Ginny. In return, Hermione looked pained, "But only because you must've wanted to!" she wailed. The argument went round and round … 'I dosed you, but nothing happened, so you must've gone out with her because you wanted to'… 'I didn't' … 'You must have' … 'I didn't' … 'You must have' … 'I didn't' …
"Er … Hermione …" It was George, he went unheard, he drew a full breath and roared, "HERMIONE!" The room rushed to silence. "When did you last dose Harry?"
Hermione squirmed at the question; confessing up to details made it all very real. "Well, there was that time in the pub – The Three Broomsticks – but that was when we were at Hogwarts before Christmas, the day Katie got poisoned by Malfoy's necklace …" Harry was aghast, suddenly recalling Hermione offering to get him a drink from the bar, how she'd handed him a particular Butterbeer and how he'd gagged on it when he'd taken his first sip …
"Well that settles it," announced Fred, "it was ages before they started going out." He turned to Harry, "You can't blame us or anyone else Harry!"
"… but that wasn't the last time," winced Hermione, "I did it a few other times – but only a few. The last time was when I dosed your pumpkin juice at breakfast, about the time of the start of the Quidditch season and - "
"What?" Harry was angry. "You dosed me then, and all that time you were ranting at me for the fact that I pretended to dose Ron with the Lucky Juice? No wonder you were so on edge about it! You were tense over the possibility of others dosing people because you knew you were doing it yourself!"
"That still doesn't count!" snapped Fred. "Quidditch try-outs are in the Autumn, which was well before you went out with Ginny. It wasn't a potion, Harry."
"It was," said George. Fred swiveled to his twin as Harry looked wide eyed at this unexpected source of confirmation. George looked at Hermione, "You followed the instructions to the letter, right?" - she nodded compulsively - "including the ones about not hitting the dosee on the head?"
"Well of course! Everyone knows how serious that is! Ron tapped him on the head that first morning at The Burrow, but it was only a tap, and honestly I was watching Harry really closely for signs that morning, it didn't make any diff -"
"But you were dosing him off and on for months." Hermione cringed at George's words; when someone said it as baldly as that, it really did sound clinical. "So when he got hit on the head," George carried on, "you didn't think that counted?"
"He didn't get hit on the head! When I dosed him, I didn't hit him on the head -"
"So when he was in the infirmary for three days with a CRACKED SCULL," George roared, "that didn't count as being 'hit on the head'!?"
There was a stunned silence from all present.
"But that was long after I -"
"Long after you dosed him last?" George cut off Hermione's attempted defense, "WHO CARES? You'd been administering so much different stuff: yours, ours and whatever else that who knows what was in his system or what the effects were of various things combining! It's like that Golpalott's Law: things combine to be stronger than they are separately. He got smashed unconscious! His scull was split open!" He abruptly turned to Harry, "After that, was that when it really took off with you? Is that when you really got … er, 'interested'?"
"I could barely get my mind off her from then on."
George turned back to Hermione again. "So that's it then, isn't it? He got love potioned, he got smashed on the head and then he fell in luuuurve with our kid sister!" He glared at Hermione. "Yes he was love potioned," he stormed, "and it was all your fault!"
Hermione looked around the astonished group, "But Harry liked her - and she really liked Harry."
"She 'really liked' me, so you thought you'd step in and give me to her?" Harry's tone was a rising tide of anger. "How would you feel if someone did that to you? Just dosed you up and pointed you at – at -" he cast about for a name, "- at McClaggan!"
Hermione went bright red, it was a few seconds before she could speak. "But it wasn't like that! I didn't even like McLaggan – you liked Ginny! You were getting on so well with her at the end of fifth-year! You began to talk to her -"
"Only after you said she was over me! And that was obviously a lie, wasn't it? You were supposed to be my friend but you lied to me and then you set me up!"
"I – I never lied! I never told you she was 'over you'," Hermione sounded rather desperate, pushing a lock of heavily-frizzing hair out of her face, "I said that she 'gave up' on you, that's not the same thing. She was still pining for you but she thought she had no chance of getting you! If you'd listened carefully you'd have seen that I never actually lied to you!"
"What! You 'never actually lied to me'? - instead you just tricked me, but that's okay because tricking people with words instead of 'lying' to them is clever?" Harry could feel his voice growing raw with the effort of not actually shouting. "Do you think it makes you a better person because you can deceive someone without actually lying? You didn't actually lie? What difference does that make? Your intent was to deceive! You poisoned me, you deceived me, you set me up and now you're splitting hairs over whether or not you actually, technically lied? Do you think that makes any difference after what you did? It just makes you a full-of-herself pompous little madam! You made me feel something I didn't! You used me!"
"Oh for heaven's sake!" Hermione was starting to become exasperated. "It didn't seem to me that you were too unhappy at being used, I had to practically peel you off her. You weren't exactly struggling to escape her. You were all over her!"
There was a horrible silence, then … "You filthy LIAR!" Harry's roar filled the tent, Hermione stepped backwards. "Why should anyone believe anything you say?" he roared on. "You lied to me, you lied to Ron, you accused us of doing the very thing you were doing yourself! You smug, self-congratulatory - "
"I am not a liar!" Hermione screamed.
"When I think back to the time you warned me that Romilda Vane was planning to dose me. No wonder you knew everything about how Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes smuggled their stuff into the school – you were doing it yourself! And you even lied then!"
"I did not!"
"You did! You chanted 'I don't go round putting potions in people's drinks', when you'd been doing just that. Or do sweets don't count because they're not liquid?"
Hermione, blinked, shocked, as though she'd just unexpectedly tripped up over her own shoelaces.
Harry's tone grew much harsher, "You deceiver! Trying to tell me that I did those things with her of my own accord – that I wanted - you filthy, filthy, LIAR!"
"Don't call me a liar!" Hermione was now shrieking. She suddenly looked as wild as Harry. "Do you want to know how I squared it with myself? Do you want to know the real reason I dosed you? I couldn't have cared less about Ginny! It was because I wasn't prepared to have you going off the deep end again, I wasn't going to take another year like my fifth-form. All fifth-year you were snappish, aggressive, dismissive, no-one was allowed to disagree with you, I couldn't reason with you, and if the only way to ensure that didn't repeat itself was to keep you happy and distracted by getting you interested in a girl, then that was what I was going to do!"
"Do you seriously think that me rowing with you justified you poisoning me?" Harry shouted. "If Ron and I argue, do you think we resolve it by poisoning each other?"
"I had tried every other possible method. I couldn't cope with you any other way!"
"You tried no 'other method'! Stop kidding yourself!" Harry suddenly felt a flaring disgust, not only at what she'd done but also at her sheer self-deception. "The reason you didn't know how to deal with difficulties was because you only know what you read in books - and they don't have books on how to live life!"
Hermione looked like she'd been slapped, hard. For a second nothing happened, and then -"How dare you! How dare you! I tried reasoning with you and you weren't listening to me. What else was I supposed to do? No wonder I tried to dose you as soon as I could, I was justified!"
"How can you possibly claim you were justified just because you lost a few arguments?" Harry was outraged.
"Because it wasn't about a few arguments!" she shouted. "You can't see it even now, can you? I have to explain everything to you! You were in a raging temper in fifth-year – you were foul after Cedric's death so," she hauled a breath in and then shot her words out, "what do you think you were going to be like after Sirius' death?"
Harry felt a crunching blow in his chest, "I – I would have handled it …"
"You?" she screeched, "how? The only reason we all ended up in the Department of Mysteries was because of you! You were rash. You insisted we go. You made us do it. We were all nearly killed there – someone actually flung a Killing Spell at me and the only reason I lived was because they got cut off after the first word! After you'd convinced yourself Sirius was there, you never even considered doing anything other than racing to the Department. We had Umbridge's Floo open, instead of talking to Kreacher you could have gone to wherever Sirius lived, you could have checked that way. You could have gone to The Burrow and from there instantly contacted Order members. You could even have tried to get into the Head's office and asked the paintings for help. You didn't do any of those things because you didn't want to. You wanted to go gung-ho to the Department of Mysteries, arrogantly thinking you could take on whatever Death Eaters were there, when groups of trained adults could not!"
Harry tried to ignore her shouts but felt a dreadful chill because he could add something to the list of things he could have done: he could have used the Two-way mirror …
"I was justified in dosing you!" she screeched. "You were lethally rash. I had to throw a distraction your way in sixth-year just to make sure you didn't get us all killed. Do you know why I dosed you that time in The Three Broomsticks? Because five minutes earlier you'd been choking the life out of Mundungus – literally. You had him pinned to the wall by the throat. He was turning blue! I asked you to get off him but you wouldn't and in the end someone had to shoot you off him! And you weren't any better later! You Sectumsempra'd Malfoy, you tried to cut him in two -"
"That's not fair!" roared Harry.
"Fair?" she screamed, "you're talking like a child! 'That's not fair!' … You wouldn't have handled Sirius' death. All that blaming Snape, saying it was his fault Sirius died? – you were just throwing the responsibility for what happened onto someone else!" She heaved in a huge breath, swept away by anger, beyond any circumspection, "You were the reason Sirius was even in the Department. He wouldn't have had to be there in the first place if it wasn't for you. It was your fault he died!" Her voice rose to a scream. "It was your fault! You killed him, just as you would have gotten us all killed later if I hadn't stepped in! I had to stop you from grieving for Sirius, and I did it by potioning you up and pointing you at the first girl I could think of! I had to do it to save us all!"
Harry felt as though he'd been clapped about the ears. He rocked back on his heels but Hermione raged on, "You're calling me a liar? – YOU'VE DONE NOTHING BUT LIE TO YOURSELF!"
There was a stunned silence in the marquee, it went on for several seconds.
It was your fault. You killed him …
Harry thought he might actually pass out. His vision was darkening, his hearing filling with white static. But – no! He wouldn't listen to what Hermione had said – she was wrong, he wasn't going to listen to her. How could she be trusted anyway after what she'd done? And what she'd done – she'd taken it upon herself to put a cap on his mourning for Sirius! She'd stopped him grieving, it was almost as though she had stopped him from paying his respects! He felt a buzzing in his ears akin to Muffliato – the implication that somehow Sirius wasn't worth grieving over -
"Get out of my sight!"
"Don't be absurd!" she snorted, "you need me!"
"What for? So you can fall over a lot in battles and I have to save you? It may have escaped your notice, but you – and you," he included Ginny in his accusing glare, "– neither of you are much good in a fight!" He snorted at Hermione, "At the Department of Mysteries you treated it like netball practice," - the other wizards looked blank at that - he mimicked her, "'oh good shot Harry!' No wonder you got knocked out, you weren't watching what you were doing!" He turned on Ginny, "And all you've ever done is run around screaming, then get hexed or fall over!" Looking down upon Ginny he realised that he had almost forgotten she was even there – the story of her life …
He recalled her earlier clinginess at the garden gate when he had arrived at The Burrow, her horrified look as he had pushed her away – she had known all along he was being dosed, she had known way before tonight, she had known last year, she had admitted it just earlier. That explained the huge fights and terrible atmosphere between she and Hermione during his stay at The Burrow.
Looking down at Ginny Weasley, he felt as disgusted with her scheming passivity as he had with Hermione's self-deception. "And I suppose you're priding yourself that you're a better person because you didn't actually do the potioning, are you?" he spat at Ginny. "Telling yourself you're not guilty because all you did was hang around and let someone else do the dirty work for you? You knew what she was doing – you just admitted it before - and you didn't stop her! Instead you took advantage!"
Looking up at him, Ginny's face seemed to melt under his shouted scorn, he thought she was going to start crying. "Oh don't turn on the waterworks," he snarled, "you're wet enough already!"
There was a terrible, ringing silence and then -
"Stop talking about me as though I'm some piece of failed meat!"
Harry blinked at Ginny's scream. Her face had not melted to tears but instead had re-set into something very, very angry.
"Just who do you think you are!" she screamed. "Do you know how many years of my life I wasted on you?" Her voice began to crack, "I made myself popular! I got sporty! I went out with boys!" She sounded at the edge of tears now. "I turned myself into the kind of girl you like! And you still ignored me! Other boys liked me – I could have had my pick," her voice cracked, "- why couldn't you like me?"
There was something high and wailing about her now, she sounded like an animal with a paw caught in a snare from which it had never been able to gnaw free.
"I had to do something, you weren't paying attention to me!"
Harry stepped back but she simply stepped forward, grabbing the front of his robes and shaking his lapels. He began to get hot: sheer embarrassment.
"See? You're doing it now! Pay attention to me! What have I got to do to make you see me? Do you know how many words you spoke to me in my second-year – four! - when you snapped at me on the train ride to school, telling me to get off your lap, 'Not here, I'm here!'. And in my third-year you never spoke to me at all! Even when I spoke to you! You knew I was talking to you and just pretended I hadn't spoken! You never looked at me!"
Harry felt his face going red and his hair beginning to stand on end as though it might singe with the sudden heat.
"You didn't even hate me!" she howled, "you just ignored me!"
Harry stared down at her wildly grieving face with a vague horror.
"You never even remembered I was possessed!"
Harry felt trapped in a capsule of rising heat. He felt almost paralyzed with shock. How could she be accusing him of all this, why was it his fault? "It isn't my fault that you wasted your time – it was your decision!"
"It was your fault!" she sobbed, still fiercely gripping his robes, still shaking him although it was ineffectual, now crying with sheer anger. "It was your fault because you never told me to stop! You never told me I had no chance! You never said it! You just let me carry on, living on crumbs of hope. You knew I wanted you!" Her voice cracked with sobs again. "You admitted it just before, when you said you knew I had wanted you and that it embarrassed you! You knew and you did nothing to help me by telling me to stop!"
Harry wrestled with her wrists, trying to get her off him, "It wasn't my fault!"
"It was! It was your fault!" Ginny was weeping angrily now, voice fracturing. "It was your fault because you didn't have the guts to tell me to stop! I had to carry on for years because you were too gutless to face just two uncomfortable minutes! You knew, but you just left me hanging!" The last word dissolved in a series of wails.
Harry finally prized her hands off him and she staggered, weeping, into the arms of her mother. There was a horrible silence. Harry was dreadfully aware that Molly Weasley was glaring at him with real anger. Hermione was grim-faced with antagonism. Mr. Weasley and the twins looked bemused.
Nobody seemed to actively support him.
He felt as though it was all sliding away from him. It wasn't his fault, none of it was his fault … he wasn't responsible for any of it! Ginny Weasley was wrong, Hermione was wrong - he hadn't killed Sirius! He hadn't! His mind jerked away from even the possibility. He turned to Ron, desperately hoping for some help, "Ron …?"
Ginny interrupted, "Don't you dare turn against me, Ron," she sobbed, looking up from her mother, her face blotchy and wet with tears. "I'm not wrong!"
Harry stared at Ron. Ron would stand by him, right? He couldn't lose Ron!
"You might not be wrong, but you're not right, either." Ron sounded more tired than anything else, he indicated both Hermione and Ginny, "Neither of you are."
"I'm your sister! He's just your friend!"
"I know," said Ron, "that's the point: I pick my friends, but family's just something you're stuck with."
"Ron!" gasped Mrs. Weasley.
"Harry said that being love potioned was like the Imperius," continued Ron, ignoring his mother, "well, he was wrong, it's not like the Imperius - it's worse. At least with the Imperius you know you've been taken over, you may not be able to do much about it, but at least you know. With a love potion, well, at least the one I had, you don't even know you've been taken over. It all seems normal, part of yourself, even though it's totally mad. You don't even know you're being manipulated. And when you come-to, you feel totally used. As though someone made you dance to their tune in any embarrassing way they liked, and not only could you not stop yourself you didn't even know that you needed stopping. It was like somebody had picked me up, toyed with me for fun, wrung me out and then flung me aside when they'd finished having their laughs at my expense. I went completely barmy under the influence: I hit out at Harry, turned violent on him …" He looked at Hermione and Ginny, "I don't care why you think you were justified – you weren't."
There was a pause, then, with Ginny still crying, Hermione recovered.
"Oh, typical of you!" she shot. "Go on, do what you always do – back Harry! He nearly got you killed in the Department of Mysteries. All I did was try to stop him from doing it again. I acted with the best of intentions: to stop us all from getting killed – Harry included! What makes you think there won't come another time when your life's in the balance because of something involved with Harry – but maybe next time you won't be so lucky! Everyone's natural luck runs out sometime Ron – you've only got so much of it!"
She whirled on the rest of the Weasleys.
"That's the problem with all of you - you grew up thinking Harry is so special, it's practically mindless adoration. You've never known anything but the wizarding world. You've got no perspective. You don't even see him as a person. It's 'let's just all worship Harry, shall we, especially when he's wrong!' Well I did what I did because I had to!We're in a war and sometimes you have to do things you wish you didn't. You have to do what's necessary – and I did what was necessary to stop Harry from killing us all and killing himself!"
"Simmer down now, Hermione," soothed Mr. Weasley. "We're wizards, we do things differently."
But Hermione was not going to 'simmer down', instead, she heated up.
"You're wiz -? And I'm not? And you 'do things differently'? It was your sons' potions I was using!"
"You're a Muggle-born, Hermione. Things are different for you."
"I'm a - ? What's that got to do with it!" Hermione glared around at all of them: "My grandfather battled for this country when it was fighting for its very existence in the Second World War – in his own way, he fought!" Harry recalled Mr. Weasley's earlier reference to 'Bletchley Park', whatever that was. "And what did you lot do? – nothing! Millions of Muggles were dying to save civilisation and stop a madman, and you did nothing! You were just vaguely distasteful at all the fighting! Tutting that Muggles couldn't be nice and tidy about it – smug about how Dumbledore got rid of Grindelwald with a nice wave of the wand. Well I've got news: you are in a war and wars are won because people struggle to win them. Wars aren't won by enlightened civilised debate, or the 'power of love' – war is what happens when all that fails: war is a fight to the death." She looked wildly about at them, "And you're so smug and complacent. Muggles gave up slavery centuries ago – with the house-elves, you still have it!"
She glared as though holding a torrent of invective back, but then couldn't keep it in and her voice became a shriek. "Do you know the real reason my parents didn't come to the wedding? Because you make them feel uncomfortable! You treat my parents like freaks. Patronizing them. Treating them like a couple of 'sweet harmless Muggles', like a couple of Cute L'il Mugs. When it comes to Muggles, you lot are prejudiced when you don't even know that you are!"
Ron looked as stunned as the rest of the Weasleys.
Hermione looked almost wild, as though now she'd started, she couldn't stop.
"I've been called plenty of filthy things in my time by the likes of Draco Malfoy," she screeched, "but at least with awful people like him you know exactly where you are! I know he hates me. He doesn't make any bones about it. He comes up and gives it to me straight. And that's got one thing going for it – I'm openly being attacked so I can openly defend myself if I choose to! I can give as good as I get if I feel like it, because at least he's honest about looking down at me, he doesn't disguise it! He just comes straight out with it and gives me the chance to slug straight back! With you lot – all pursed lips and patronisation – I'm made to feel it's my fault if I feel hurt because obviously I'm just a hysterical, over-sensitive Muggleborn! I'm not even allowed to fight back, I have to smile and simper and pretend it's alright!"
Ron blinked – face going slack with incomprehension and shock.
She whirled on Harry: "And you don't care! So long as you're alright, that's fine! So long as you're happy at The Burrow, everything's okay! Even when it isn't! You don't listen to anything once you've made your mind up. If you've decided that white is black and black is white, you'll stick to it no matter what. Sometimes I think there's definitely something wrong with you," she jabbed a finger at her scull, indicating where she thought the problem lay. "You just don't think straight! And while I'm on it, I'll say what else has been on my mind. What your mother said to Voldemort, 'Not Harry, kill me, take me instead', made no sense whatsoever! If he was bent on killing you, why would 'killing her instead' save you? He'd simply have killed you two seconds after killing her – which is exactly what he tried to do. It only makes sense from one angle, otherwise it's just a stupid -"
"DON'T CALL MY MUM STUPID!" Harry's wrath roared out of him.
Hermione was stunned, "But I never meant she was stupid, I never said that she was stupid, I -" her voice now sounded almost lost, "I said -"
"I think you should get your things and leave, dear," Mr. Weasley was very quiet but very firm, "I think people need to take time to calm down and consider. I can't see any benefit from further sniping." Hermione's face seemed to crumple slightly … "I think you need to spend tonight in your own home." Hermione looked about her at Mr. Weasley's words but no one met her eye; Harry was glaring away.
Hermione's face was a shocked mask: staring eyes in pale skin. Without saying a word she turned and left, walking stiffly, her back very straight, her face hidden by shanks of hair that was now back to being a thick, bushy mass; it was impossible to tell whether she was crying or not.
"Well, I suppose we've had a clearing of the air and now have a better idea of what people think," said Mr. Weasley, "though I must say, I don't quite understand some of it." He blinked and then shook his head in incomprehension. "In any case it could get a bit sticky from now on. Love potions aren't illegal but they are banned at Hogwarts and she was using them there, and Rita Skeeter heard that. The Ministry could even hold Professor McGonagall to account as head of Hogwarts, even if she wasn't Head at the time. It's hard to say how things are going to go now."
As soon as Hermione had left with her belongings, everyone returned to The Burrow.
It was dark now and things had been so confused and chaotic that Harry saw that some of the guests had even left their Thestrals in the paddock.
As they moved back to the house an angry Harry tried to ignore Mrs. Weasley screeching at the twins: "The disgrace on the family – your sister involved in the potioning, and your own potions involved too! You'll end up like Mundungus Fletcher! He's in Azkaban for his messing about! Do you want to join him?"
He didn't know how Ron felt about the accusations Hermione had slung at the Weasleys but he knew how he felt about what she had done to him. And she'd called his mum stupid – called her stupid in her dying moments! Saying she'd made no sense! And she'd accused him of something awful: getting Sirius killed. 'You were the reason Sirius was even in the Department! … It was your fault he died! IT WAS YOUR FAULT! YOU KILLED HIM!'
Harry jumped as Mrs. Weasley's shouting grew so loud it broke through his thoughts. She wanted the twins to close Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes as a public acknowledgement of shame. "Why, so we can be poor on top of everything else? We know you like to think of us all as 'poor but honest', Mum, but the honest part's just publicly gone out the window and adding 'poor' won't bring it back." … "Yeah, we're already known as shady, Mum, so we'll take 'rich and dishonest' over 'poor but truthful' any day. If we lose our money we're not going to be poor and redeemed, we'll just be poor and dodgy."
"I can't stay here after tomorrow, Ron, I just can't."
Ron turned to him, "We'll go," - Harry felt a small but very welcome relief at that 'we' – "we'll be off tomorrow, like we said we would."
"We'll make a list of stuff to take with us and then we'll go."
Harry immediately jolted, a word cannoning through his mind … Oh hell!Oh hell!Oh HELL!
"What's wrong?" Ron jerked him a look.
"Hermione's bloody list!" Harry tried to keep his voice low. "She made her – her thingy list, don't you remember? She said she'd destroy it but then we rowed and she stormed out! I can't remember what she did with that sodding list and now she's gone!"
"Balls! Come on. Quick! We'll look for it in the house!"
Racing upstairs they rifled through the rubbish in Ron's waste-paper basket, with Ron finding the note from Petunia that Harry had only part-read. Right now though, they had to find Hermione's list.
The screaming now came from below them as everyone else was in the kitchen; Ginny and Mrs. Weasley were still screeching at each other.
"You silly girl! Do you think you can potion people and have nothing happen?" … "You can talk, Mum! You put Draught of Peace in that vase of flowers in his bedroom when he was here last year"… "Well only as a scent! Only as a mild sedative!"
"God, the women in my family are such an embarrassment!" cringed Ron, desperately flipping through paper.
"You just had a crush on him!" … "Well you had a crush on Gilderoy Lockhart and you told us about love potions!" … "What? When? - Do you think I wanted you to go round poisoning people?" They couldn't hear Ginny's next words, only Mrs. Weasley's shrieked response. "What? You don't want to go back to school? You're going back, my girl! You're safer there than you are here! I don't care what the other children will think! You should have thought of that before you started all this! Do you think you can just do something like this and have nothing happen? There are going to be consequences to all this!"
And then, as if on cue, there came a mighty knock at the door like the clap of doom and a voice that almost echoed.
"Ministry Security! Open up!"