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.
Don't Judge a Book By its Cover
by Mad Maudlin
12 / Fade
There are times when I think my life can't possible get any worse than it already is. That's usually right before it does.
Neville came into the dormitory, and very nearly ran back out. I lay on my bed, staring at the canopy, which was bloody boring but better than nothing. "Hello, Neville," I said.
"Er…hello, Ron." He apparently decided I wasn't going to jump on him, and slipped inside.
I watched him dart over to his bed and start rooting around underneath. "Don't ever have sex, Neville," I told him.
He cracked his head on the bed frame and leapt to his feet. "We haven't!" he yelped.
"It only complicates things."
"Er…"
"I think I'm going to become a monk."
Neville stared at me. I stared at the canopy.
"Ron?"
"Hmm?"
"Why are you going to become a monk?"
"Celibacy."
"Ah."
It stopped raining outside.
"This has nothing to do with Ginny, then?"
I looked up. "'Course not."
"Oh! Oh…well…of course. Not. I mean, I knew that."
Crazy sod. "You know why else I'm becoming a monk?"
"…why?"
"Vow of silence."
"Er."
I had told Harry. I had told Hermione. They hadn't screamed at me—which was a miracle worthy of sainthood for someone—but they weren't happy. Oh, no, they weren't happy at all. I'd told them everything I'd done (well,more like edited highlights) since last summer, more or less, including Malfoy and all his various evil plots. I suppose it could've been worse, like if I'd lied to them (which I hadn't, and Harry could stuff it—) but it could've gone better. I just hadn't been able to make them understand, was the problem; I kept repeating myself and trying to explain they'd still stare at me like I was a lunatic.
"But it's
Malfoy!""I thought I'd said that already."
"How could you?"
"The usual way, mostly."
"Not funny, Ron."
"Ron, you hate Malfoy."
"'Course I do."
"So how could you…be with him, like that, if you hate him?"
"…"
"Ron?"
"…it's
Malfoy."You know, maybe I am a lunatic.
Neville cleared his throat and looked at his watch. "Er…d'you know where Hermione is?"
"She's not speaking to me."
"D'you think Harry does?"
"Neither is he."
"Er."
I had broken up with Allison, too, which was even worse. I'd been dumped so often by so many people that I'd thought it would be easy, but when I tried to tell her she looked so confused, and unhappy…and then she punched me in the stomach. Oh, not hard; and anyway, I deserved it. But still…Harry and Hermione weren't happy with me, but they'd come around—that I could count on. Allison was probably going to hold this against me the rest of her life. Trouble was, I think I deserved that, too.
I rolled off my bed and stretched. "I'm going to take a walk," I announced to the room.
Neville was still looking at me oddly. "Are you sure you're, well, okay? With everything?"
I snorted. "Mate, I'm not sure if I'm okay with anything." For some reason, that made him turn absolutely white.
I stomped down to the stairs because I felt like it and met Ginny in the common room. She seemed nervous. "Where are you going?"
"I'm taking a walk."
"You didn't, er, happen to see Neville upstairs, did you?"
"'Course I did, we share a room."
"Then you're okay? With us?"
What the hell was she talking about? "Sure. Fine. You're both peachy."
She jumped up and hugged me around the neck with the biggest, dumbest grin I'd ever seen on her. She yelled "Oh, thank you so much!" and then she ran up the boys' staircase.
…or maybe everyone else is a lunatic and I'm sane.
I tried to take a nice, relaxing walk around the lake, but I ran into Justin and Michael coming the other direction. I tried to have a nice, relaxing walk around the Quidditch pitch, but Lisa Turpin and Zacharias Smith were up in the stands. I resolved to have a nice, relaxing walk somewhere, but it started to rain again, at which point I decided to damn the whole thing and sulk.
I ended up at the greenhouses, sitting on a potting bench beneath the eaves. It wasn't raining terribly hard, just enough to get you soaking and make things go foggy at a distance. I huddled in my cloak and stared at the drops falling off the roof of the greenhouse. Harry had told me to be honest, and I had, however much good it'd done me.My friends were angry with me, I had no girlfriend, and Ginny would probably have a fit as soon as she quit acting like a bloody lunatic. Maybe I deserved all of it, though…maybe now I could just start over. Put the past in the past and look ahead and get over it all and forget the past ten months.
Well, most of them. Some bits I'd like to keep.
I heard a funny sort of squishing sound on the grass, and suddenly Malfoy came around the corner of the greenhouse. He was soaking wet; he still looked slightly less alive than normal, but he wasn't smiling, which was a significant improvement. "Not necessarily," he announced.
"Excuse me?"
He tried flick a tangle of hair out of his eyes. "You asked me a question. That's my answer."
I stared at him. It couldn't be. He was crazy, remember? "Not…necessarily?"
"That's what I just said." He rolled his eyes but then went back to staring at me.
I said the first thing than could force itself out of my mouth. "It took you two days to come up with 'not necessarily?'"
"Shut up, Weasley."
He sat down on the bend next to me and pushed his hair out of his face. He must've been walking around the grounds for ages, and what kind of an idiot doesn't wear a cloak? Rainwater dripped down his face and neck, into the collar of his robes, and licked a droplet off his upper lip.
"This doesn't mean I like you," he added.
"Feeling's mutual."
He stared at me. I stared at a tree.
We sat next to one another for ages on the stupid bench, and it kept raining, and everything else just sort of hung there. He shifted closer to me. I shifted away. He examined his nails. I shifted closer. I tried to stretch my arms, and he scooted all the way to the end of the bench and glared at me; once I'd crossed them again, he came back, closer than before.
"I'm still not going to put up with the pureblood bullshit of yours," I said in the general direction of the tree.
He snorted. "Don't expect to be seen with me in public."
"What makes you think I'd want to?"
"And I'm not going to be nice to those…friends of yours."
"Same here."
"Mmm."
I felt him staring at me. He was dripping on my cloak. I looked at the tree and the grass, and the castle and the rain clouds up above; when I finally looked at Malfoy, I couldn't quite stop. There weren't any fireworks and cinnamon when we kissed, just cold rain, wintergreen, and that funny indescribable feeling that was bigger than us both.
"You're dripping on me," I muttered.
He growled. "Shut up, Weasel."
It rained the rest of the afternoon.