WRITTEN FOR THE HOUSES COMPETITION, YEAR 7, ROUND 9

House: Ravenclaw

Class: Muggle Studies

Standard

Theme: Drama

Prompt: [Dialogue (multiline)] "Trust in your gut." / "What's your gut telling you?"; Prompt 2: [Action] Baking a cake

Word Count: 1820 (google docs)

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A Terrible Trial

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Harry and Ron stood in the middle of a battlefield.

They were surrounded by debris, white powder and sloppy goo covering every surface near them. Their wands were too far away to touch, too far away to help – and, Harry thought with a sinking feeling in his stomach, even if their wands were within reach, neither of them knew the proper spells to fight their way out of this mess.

Ron massaged his right bicep, hissing as his exhausted muscles spasmed. "Harry – I don't know what to do."

Harry huffed, air escaping him in a rush. His knees wobbled and gave out beneath him, and he fell into a crouch. The very object that they sought lay directly in front of them, illuminated by hot veins of fire threading through the box that encapsulated it.

He felt like he had just run a marathon, gasping and panting his way through kilometres of uneven ground and thick woods. Hurdling the obstacles that surrounded this prize had been no easy feat, but they had managed. Yet now, when they came to this moment – when the prize was right in front of them, so close that they could practically taste it – Harry couldn't pull another trick out of his repertoire.

Now, he was so far out of his depth he was drowning.

"Harry." Ron eased himself down beside him. "What do we do?"

Harry inhaled and exhaled, deep, measured breaths. It felt like an immeasurable accomplishment for the air to reach his lungs without him choking on any of the pale dust particles swirling hazily around him. He steepled his fingers solemnly, green eyes caught on the prize.

"Trust in your gut," he said hoarsely.

Ron's eyebrows began to inch up his forehead, and he glanced at Harry sceptically out of the corner of his eye. "What's your gut telling you?"

Harry snorted, finally dragging his gaze away from the heated box to roll his eyes at Ron. "We can't trust my gut, Ron, my gut told me to cast Expelliarmus at Voldemort."

"It worked."

"That's not the point," Harry waved him off. "What's your gut saying?"

Ron blew out his breath, his lips jumbling together. Harry turned his head fully to look at him. His thighs were burning from crouching before the prize for too long, but hell if he was going to get up before they had figured out how to overcome this one, last hurdle it had thrown at them.

His shoulders tensed as Ron's eyes darted to him uncertainly. "It's saying that – that we are so far out of our depth, Harry. That we need help."

Harry's thighs were on fire. He gave in and stood, taking his glasses off and wiping them on his shirt. They were terribly smudgy from the heat, and the dust, and the goo the prize had spat at him was crusted onto the edge of one lens. One hand darted towards his hair out of habit, and he winced as his fingers tried and failed to get through the clumps that had formed after his running a goo-covered hand through his hair too many times before.

He had never known anything like the trials this prize threw at them. It was more excruciating torture than the pain in his scar, back when Voldemort was alive; it had left Ron's arm practically paralysed, and almost destroyed Harry's will to go on. He wanted to lay down on the goo-covered, slippery floor and sleep for the next ten years.

But they needed this prize. Its importance was unparalleled.

"Right," Harry sighed. His shaking hand fell to his side, dusty and riddled with cracked, drying goo. "Let's call Hermione."

"No!" Ron yelped. "Have you forgotten that this is for Hermione, Harry? We can't ask for her help with this! If we do – if we do –" He gripped Harry's forearm, looking Harry straight in the eyes. "If we ask Hermione for help, all is lost."

"Merlin," Harry rasped. "You don't think Malfoy will –"

"Oh, I know Malfoy will," Ron cut him off. "It's not a question, Harry. We can't bring Hermione into this."

Harry's stomach flipped as he glanced back down at the iron-veined box, at the prize waiting within. He wished they could ask Hermione; wished that they could trust her not to go running straight to Malfoy with tales of this prize. No, Ron was right. This was for Hermione. They were doing this for her.

They couldn't bring her into this.

"Right," Harry said, the line of his jaw hardening. "Then we get your mum."

Mrs Weasley was the second most formidable witch of Harry's acquaintance. If Hermione was out of the question, then Ron's mum was the only other person Harry could think of to help them.

Ron's violent reaction illustrated his disagreement.

"No! Worse! So much worse!"

"How could she possibly be worse?" Harry demanded. His shoulders ached, he had immeasurable grains of general detritus stuck in his shoes and his hair, and he couldn't touch anything for fear of spreading more of the gelatinous mixture that had attacked him and Ron about the place. "You said we need help, Ron. I'm getting your mum."

Harry turned, heading for the exit to the prize's lair, refusing to grant it one last look goodbye.

He wasn't prepared for Ron to tackle him from behind.

"No!" Ron bellowed. "I won't let you do this to yourself! You don't know what will happen! I do! I've lived through it before, I won't do it again, Harry! Not even for you!"

"Let me go!" Harry howled. "Ron, we need help!"

Ron abruptly let go of Harry, stumbling backwards. Harry fell forward, bracing himself against the mantle and turning his head to look at Ron with wide, manic eyes.

"Not from her," Ron whispered, his eyes wide. In their depths, Harry saw the echoes of past trauma, of sounds better left unheard and sights better left unseen. "Never from her."

"Your mum," Harry started, "your mum is good at this, Ron. This is her speciality."

"Please," Ron begged. "If you trust me at all, Harry, don't bring my mum into this."

An ominous hissing sound emanated from the box the prize was held captive in, and Harry's eyes slid out of focus as his attention shifted.

"Then we're doomed," he said, and his earlier desire to collapse on the floor of questionable cleanliness and never rise again reared its ugly head once more.

Ron's mouth quivered, and he did collapse, sitting on the floor and holding his head in his hands.

Harry drew in a shaky breath, staying on his feet by pure force of will. The box, with its ever-elusive prize, seemed to taunt him.

This was their last chance to fix this, to fix their Hermione problem, and they had failed so miserably. They would never see her again, Harry realized. She would never be at another Weasley family brunch, never meet Harry for coffee in the mornings for work again, never complain with Harry for ages over a bottle of wine, never reminisce with him about their Muggle childhoods, never break into Grimmauld Place to harass Ron and Harry into tidying up for themselves...

"What in God's name is this mess?"

Harry jumped about a foot in the air at the sound of Hermione's voice. He turned, slowly, and when he saw her standing in the doorway, her work-bag slung over her shoulder and her hands on her hips, he could barely believe his eyes.

"Hermione?" he gasped, and on the floor, Ron echoed his shock.

She was here. She was so gloriously here, her curls spiralling out around her face as she gazed around Grimmauld Place's kitchen in shock, and – oh.

Harry fell back on a heel, spinning around and taking in the scene that Hermione was witness to.

"Right," he said faintly. "A mess."

Flour covered every flat surface available, and as much of the cake batter had made it into Harry's hair and glasses, twice that amount had splattered across the walls and spilt across the floor and even, inexplicably, made it onto the ceiling.

"Er –" His hand reflexively travelled towards his hair, and Harry had to forcibly shove it down, remembering how much it hurt when his fingers caught on the sticky clumps of partially dried batter that had tangled in the strands.

"We're so sorry," Ron moaned on the floor.

Hermione's eyes were dancing when Harry turned away from the oven, holding inside it the fruits of their labour, the prize they had toiled towards for the past five hours: a single layer cake. She looked like she was about to burst out laughing. "Sorry? What for?"

"For calling Malfoy a ferret-face and not making an effort to be friends," Ron said quickly. It was only a fraction of the long, scripted, melodramatic apology he and Harry had been concocting ever since they made the mistake of being less than cordial to Hermione's new boyfriend – their habitual enemy.

"We, er, made a cake?" Harry said, and this time he couldn't help himself as he scratched the back of his head. "Well – it's in the oven, at least."

"The eklectic oven," Ron input helpfully.

"I couldn't remember how long it was supposed to be in for," Harry confessed. "And Ron broke the electric mixer I bought, so we had to do everything by hand, and it's all been a bit of a disaster, but we meant to bake it as a part of the apology because we're really very sorry, Hermione, forgive us?"

Hermione bit her lip, smiles dancing in the edges of her mouth as she crossed the kitchen and crouched to peer through the window at their cake. "It's about done, I think," she said. "Shall we take it out and have a piece?"

"Hermione…" Harry swallowed around his dry throat, pulling Ron off the ground as Hermione began to take the cake out.

This, he thought. This was why they shouldn't have been so openly hostile when she introduced Malfoy to them as her boyfriend. This was why he and Ron were both going to do better and make an effort when they spent time with Malfoy again. This was why when Malfoy inevitably found out about this disaster and mocked them dreadfully, they'd take it with nothing but a smile on their face.

Well. Maybe they'd mock him back, but they'd stay away from any mention of ferrets.

Hermione was worth it. Screw her questionable taste in men; she was the type of friend who wouldn't make them grovel, who would only save them from their folly and take the cake out of the oven, and likely teach them some new cleaning charms after they'd each had a slice. She was brilliant – she was their best friend.

And that was all that mattered.

a/n: beta love to RowenaHermioneRavenclaw, Theoretical-Optimist, and Sapphire402!