A fanfic by Ana
Please do not sue me, as I own absolutely nothing.
Everything in this story belongs to J. K. Rowling, who I am not. However, if
Ms. Rowling would like to give Ron to me, I'd be more than happy to take him. Ron
rocks~~~Peace out peoples.
Chapter
One: The Other Hermione
For once in Ginny Weasley's life, it was not the
alarm clock that woke her, but the sound of screams. They filled her ears,
sharp and tormented, and her eyes flew open instantly. She sleepily flailed out
her right arm, groping around the top of her nightstand in darkness for her
wand.
It wasn't there.
Ginny shot up in bed and threw back her quilts, a
shiver running down her spine as her feet hit the cold wooden floor. She peered
around in the darkness and reached for her bathrobe. Tying its soft pink cords
tightly around her slender waist, Ginny pushed open her bathrobe and stepped
into the hallway.
The screaming stopped.
Ginny strained her ears and eyes against the
darkness. The walls around her seemed to be glowing with a strange iridescent
light that she couldn't quite place. A single framed picture at the end of the
hall showed a portly looking red-haired wizard, probably a great-great
grandfather of Ginny's, standing at attention toward the staircase leading to
the top floor of the house in his shabby orange robes. Ginny peered closely at
him and saw him raise a single pale finger and point upward. The screams
immediately began again and, this time, Ginny could almost tell where they were
coming from. They echoed strangely off the walls and reverberated over and over
again until fading into muted silence. But Ginny was sure – almost sure – that
they were coming from Ron's room.
Catching her breath tightly in her chest, Ginny
looked back over at the picture on the wall, but the portly old wizard was no
longer in his frame. Shaking her head furiously she raced up the steps, red
hair streaming out behind her, and stood panting on the landing for a few
seconds before reaching a trembling hand out to the doorknob. The screams were
louder than ever before.
Ginny clutched the doorknob in her small white hand
and turned it; the door was locked. The screams stopped abruptly and a thin jet
of green smoke issued out from the crack at the bottom of the door. What was
happening in that room? Ron was in there. Was – was Harry in there too?
Ginny's face quickly paled and she frantically
began to pound on the door, the veins in her hand squelching and breaking from
impact. Hysterical sobs began to wretch her trembling frame as she slowly
lowered her hand and turned, defeated, from the door, from under which the same
eerie green smoke was still pouring. She looked up sullenly and her eyes met a
pair of brown ones nearly identical to her own, only they were several inches
above her.
"Ron?" Her breath caught in her throat and she
began frantically wiping tears out of her eyes.
"Ginny?" he hissed, giving her a strange look.
"What're you doing in my dream?"
Ginny felt her head spin suddenly and Ron slid
quickly in and out of focus.
"You're dream?" she whispered back, though
there was really no reason for her to be whispering. "I heard screams. I – I
thought you were –" Ginny broke off and looked down at the floor.
"Where'd the screams come from?" Ron's face took on
a look of anxiety.
"From your room. I tried to open it to see, but the
door's locked."
Ron stepped forward and pushed her out of the way,
wrapping his hand around the door handle. He turned it, pulled on it, shook it
back and forth, and whispered silent obscenities at it, but to no avail. The
door was locked tight.
"You're supposed to be in there," came Ginny's
voice over his shoulder. He turned to see her gesturing at the door. "Where've
you been?"
Ron let go of the door handle and leaned against
the wall next to the door. Ginny saw him avert his eyes from her and could see
his face turning red in the darkness. He racked his brain for something to say.
An excuse….an alibi……He awkwardly pointed up at the ceiling.
"I was…..er…….in the kitchen." Ron looked up at his
arm and felt his face growing red again. He swung his arm around so that his
finger pointed down the stairs. "Yep, in the kitchen…..midnight snack……."
Ginny eyed him suspiciously but pressed no further
on the subject. "Right," she muttered. "Now, what's all this nonsense about
dreams?"
Ron's face drained of its blush and he looked down
at her with a curious expression.
"I'm dreaming," he said simply. "And you're in my
dream." He cast his gaze around the landing and shot his hand out at the
doorknob once more, giving it a hard twist.
"Damn!" he muttered, turning away. "Why's my door
locked……."
Ginny, however, seemed to be currently preoccupied
with other thoughts. "So this is a dream," she murmured pensively. "Well that's
good. But how can I be in Ron's dream, when it feels like I'm in mine.
I don't think I much like the idea of being part of someone else's dream……." A
light went off suddenly behind her eyes and she remembered something she had
once asked Ron. She looked up at him.
"So," she questioned, in what she hoped to be an
entirely offhand manner. "Who else is in this 'dream' of yours?"
Ginny smiled with vague satisfaction as Ron's ears
turned flaming red and he became suddenly very interested in his shoelaces,
which, incidentally, happened to be glow-in-the-dark neon pink. "No one," she
heard him mutter.
Unsatisfied with his answer, Ginny cleared her
throat to speak again, but was cut off suddenly by the sound of soft footsteps
climbing the staircase behind them. They both whirled around and caught sight
of a young girl coming into view at the top of the steps. She was rather
pretty; her hair was swept gently around her face in elegant waves and her body
was draped in very skimpy robes of vibrant red silk which revealed more than
they covered.
"HERMIONE?" Ginny exclaimed incredulously, and her
jaw nearly hit the floor.
Hermione, however, was looking quite puzzled. "Who are
you?" she asked Ginny, but her gaze fell on Ron and she no longer seemed to
care. "Ron," she sighed in what she probably hoped was her most
frustrated voice, her bottom lip jutting out in a slight pout (which Ron
happened to think was very sexy of her). "I've been waiting down there for
simply hours! Where have you been? You said you'd only be gone a
few minutes!"
With great effort to pry his eyes away from certain
areas of her body where her robes were particularly tight fitting, Ron looked
her in the eyes and gave her a weak but consoling smile. He immediately turned
on Ginny.
"Get – out – of – my – dream!" he snarled though
clenched teeth into the empty space that Ginny had occupied only seconds
before. The snarl fell from his face and he looked around wildly before the
sound of mad giggles coming up from the floor caught his attention.
Ginny was sitting in a little heap against the
wall, clutching a stitch in her side as hysterical laughter racked through her
body. She was nearly in tears.
"You're dreaming about Hermione?" she
exclaimed between giggles. "I never knew you thought of her like…..like that."
She waved one hand toward Hermione's scantily clad body.
Ron bit his lip and turned bright scarlet in a
mixture of embarrassment and anger. "C'mon, Hermione," he muttered dangerously,
ignoring Ginny, who was now rolling on the floor, desperately trying to regain
composure. "In here."
He moved toward the door to his room and,
momentarily forgetting that it was locked, pulled on the handle. To his
delight, then surprise, it flew open and a cloud of green smoke flooded out of
it and stung his eyes. Ginny choked on the smoke and quickly stopped laughing,
pulling herself to her feet next to Ron.
"What is it?" she whispered in his ear, a slight
edge to her voice.
He shook his head distractedly and waved his arms
around to clear some of the smoke. Ginny heard footsteps behind her and saw
Hermione's shadow fall over her own. Ron stopped flailing his long arms and
reached behind him, taking Hermione's hand in his. They stood together in
silence as the smoke slowly cleared around them and a figure came into view; at
first, it was nothing more than a blur sprawled out on top of a cluster of
orange bed sheets, but then the edges slowly became more defined and they could
make out what it was.
It was Ginny who screamed first. Perhaps she was
the first to see, but maybe she was just the more sensitive of the three. Ron
immediately clapped a hand over her mouth to stop her, then looked back into
the room. His eyes grew wide as saucers and he screamed too, dropping
Hermione's hand. Hermione eyed Ron silently for a moment, then pushed past him
into the room. She walked slowly, almost reverently, over to Ron's bed and
gazed down at the limp figure lying on top of it amidst the few remaining
traces of wispy smoke.
It was a boy, his black hair disheveled and
sticking out at odd angles all about his head, making him appear to have been
electrified. The boy's eyes were opened wide and thick red blood was pouring
from his mouth in frothy cascades. Hermione gasped as she noticed three large
poison green and red serpents slowly twisting themselves around him; one around
the leg, one around the body, and one around his neck. Hermione looked back
over at Ron and Ginny, her eyes vacant.
"I think he's dead," she whispered.
Ron screamed again.
* * * * * * *
Sunlight flooded through the Weasley household and
Ginny Weasley awoke to the sound of an alarm clock ringing madly in her ears.
She reached out and shut it off, sluggishly pulling herself up out of bed. The
wooden floor felt extremely warm under her bare feet. Stifling a yawn, she
drearily walked over to her closet and pulled it open, trying to shake the
peculiar feeling that was running through her veins.
"What an odd dream," she sighed to herself, pulling
a light pink robe from her closet and holding it in front of her reflection in
the mirror. She dismissed the thought and smiled shakily at her reflection,
which smiled pleasantly back at her.
* * * * * * *
Ron woke up in a cold sweat, his limbs trembling
and his mouth frozen open in a look of absolute horror. He immediately threw
back his orange bed sheets and looked over at the figure sleeping blissfully on
the extra bed in his room.
Harry sighed in his sleep and rolled over under the
blankets.
Ron grinned slightly and fell back onto his pillow,
muttering "Just a dream" over and over to himself. Despite the enormous amount
of sunlight pouring into his room through the window and the fact that the
clock on the wall proclaimed it to be half-past noon, Ron managed to drift off
to sleep and back into his dreams.
It was a familiar dream, one he had had very often
in the past several months. Yet each time he awoke, he could scarcely remember
exactly what had happened in it. The only image from it he was able to grasp
was the fleeting silhouette of a beautiful girl who smiled as if the world
would go on forever and told him she loved him. No matter how much he pondered
the matter, when he was awake he just couldn't put her face to a name. Yet,
while still in his dream, he knew her well.
"Hello, Ron," said Hermione, smiling brightly, and
the world went on forever.
It was a dream, yes, but it was beautiful. He
reached out and grabbed her soft hand, pulling her close to him. She smelled
peculiarly of daffodils, brown sugar, and the musty scent of old library books.
"Surprised to see me?" he whispered as he wrapped
his arms around her.
And then he kissed her.
* * * * * * *
The next week flew by quickly for Ron. He spent
most of his time practicing Quidditch with Harry, who had come to stay at the
Burrow at the beginning of August for the remainder of the summer holidays
before they would be off to begin fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry. Ron's twin brothers, Fred and George, often joined them for
Quidditch practice, as they both held positions, along with Harry, on the
Gryffindor Quidditch team at school.
Today, however, they had decided not to play. Mr.
Weasley had managed to get the day off from his busy job at the Ministry of
Magic in order to take Harry, Ron, the twins, and Ginny to Diagon Alley to buy
supplies for the next school term. Harry had written to Hermione and they had
arranged plans to meet at the Leaky Cauldron at precisely three o'clock in the
afternoon.
At 2:59 p.m. on August 28th, a familiar
cry echoed through the Weasley household.
"Fred! George! Get down here this instant!"
Mrs. Weasley called up the stairs in frustration, stomping her foot on the
floor. She turned, fuming, to her husband, who was waiting patiently by the
fireplace, a bottle of Floo Powder in his hands. "What on earth could be taking
them so long?" she demanded, as if her husband had any idea at all of the
comings and goings of the twins.
"Molly, dear," Mr. Weasley began soothingly. "Why
don't we just let Harry and Ron go on ahead. I'm sure they'll be fine on their
own."
Mrs. Weasley cast Harry a worried glance.
"Mum, come on. We'll be fine!" sighed Ron,
waving his hands in frustration.
Mrs. Weasley gave them an appraising look, then
turned to her husband, who raised his eyebrows slightly at her. "Oh, all
right," she consented. "But you boys make sure and go straight to the
Leaky Cauldron. These aren't safe times –"
"Thanks Mum! Bye!" Ron cut her off as he grabbed a
pinch of Floo Powder from his father and threw it into the flames of the
fireplace. "Diagon Alley!" he called loudly as he vanished into the fire.
Harry took a bit of Floo Powder in his own hands
and turned to give Mrs. Weasley a reassuring smile. "We'll be fine, honest," he
called back to her as he threw his powder into the fireplace. The flames inside
of it burst up into a bright green. "Diagon Alley!" Harry called, stepping
inside of them.
And then he was gone, too.
* * * * * * *
The first thing he saw when he pulled his face up
from the hard wooden floor was Hermione standing over him, tapping her foot
impatiently and brandishing a watch.
"Hello, Ron. It's 3:15. What took you?"
"Nice to see you too, Hermione," Ron grumbled back
up to her as he felt Harry's hand grabbing at his robes and dragging him to his
feet. He rubbed his nose, straightened his robes, and looked over to see Harry
doing the same.
"'Lo, Hermione," said Harry when he'd finished
readjusting his glasses.
"Oh, Harry, it's so good to see you," said Hermione
excitedly. Then her voice took on a note of concern. "You are all right,
aren't you?" She peered at him anxiously.
Harry tried his best to smile reassuringly,
something he had lately been developing quite a talent for. "I'm fine,
Hermione. I'm perfectly fine."
Ron finished dusting off his now sooty robes and
looked up at Hermione. For some reason, he felt his stomach do a little
flip-flop and jump up to his throat. He swallowed hard and saw that Hermione
was now staring at him curiously.
"Are you all right, Ron?" she asked, noticing the
look on his face.
"Yeah, just a little dust in my mouth, I think. I'm
okay." He pulled his eyes away from her and forced his stomach back down.
"Let's go get a table, shall we?" Hermione led
Harry and Ron over to a small circular table in the corner of the pub and Harry
went over to the counter to get them all Butterbeers.
"So, er, Hermione," Ron began once they were
seated, eager to break the silence. "Did you, er, have a good summer?"
"What? Oh, did I have a good summer?" Hermione
shook her head slightly and focused her attention on Ron. "Yes, I did
actually."
"Oh," said Ron simply, at a loss for words. Then a
thought began to cross his mind. "So did you do any, er –" he fiercely bit back
the word snogging, "– traveling?" Ron struggled to keep his voice as light and
casual as possible.
Hermione eyed him suspiciously but chose not to
answer.
"You know," began Ron, trying a different approach.
He could feel a wide variety of emotions begin to rise inside him. "It's been a
really hard summer, what with You-Know-Who back in power and all." Ron grimaced
as he said this. "It's hard to be certain about people. Especially people
who've been trained in the Dark Arts. Or people who's schools have a
Death Eater as headmaster."
Hermione's face grew red at this and she started to
reply, but at that very moment Harry returned with three steaming mugs of warm
Butterbeer in his arms. He set them gently down on the table and plopped onto a
chair, carefully choosing to overlook the hostile way in which Ron and Hermione
were now staring at one another.
"So," he began, trying to break the tension
mounting at the table. "Who do you think they'll get for the Defense Against
the Dark Arts job this year? Maybe a banshee this time……"
Soon, the three were talking
excitedly about their summers, their families, and life in general. Evidently,
Hermione's parents hadn't been able to take the day off and had instead
arranged for her to do her school shopping without them and then meet them on
the Muggle side of the Leaky Cauldron at six o'clock sharp. As soon as Harry, Ron,
and Hermione had finished their drinks, they filtered out of the little pub
onto the sunny streets of Diagon Alley. As usual, Harry and Ron were eager to
hurry of to look at Quidditch supplies, but Hermione urged them to look for
Ron's parents first. After much persuasion, they grudgingly agreed with
Hermione, but only after she'd promised to go with them to the Quidditch store
as soon as the rest of the Weasleys had been found.
No sooner had they started looking than they
spotted a large cluster of red heads standing at the check out counter in
Flourish and Blotts, a notable wizarding bookstore.
"Oy! Harry! Hermione!" Fred called, spotting the
two of them as they pushed their way through the large glass front doors, Ron
trudging behind them.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione rushed over to the
Weasleys, who were all very pleased to see that none of them had been harmed or
injured in any way, with the possible exception of Fred and George, who
probably could have used Ron's room as extra storage space for their massive
joke collection, should something dire ever happen to him. Ginny looked
especially excited to see Hermione and immediately pulled her away from the
group and began chatting steadily in fast, giggly whispers.
"Girls," Ron muttered under his breath, turning to
look at his mom, who was explaining to him that she had already taken care of
his school supplies and that all he needed to do was go and buy some new
quills. She handed him a small bag of silver Sickles.
"Now, Ron, this is for quills only. We can't
afford to have you go off wasting it on a worthless pile of junk that you don't
need any –"
"I won't waste it, Mum," Ron grumbled, cutting her
off. He shoved the bag deep into his pocket and looked over at Harry, who cast
a sideways glance at Hermione. She was still deeply immersed in conversation
with Ginny, their hands waving animatedly as they talked.
"You coming, Hermione?" Ron asked her crossly.
Hermione glanced at him over her shoulder
distractedly. "You two go on ahead of me, all right? I'll be there in a
minute." She turned and went back to talking with Ginny.
Ron shot her a furious glance and grabbed Harry's
arm, dragging him from the store with Mrs. Weasley's loud voice following them
out, "Do be careful, dears!"
An hour later Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat outside
of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor, happily licking on raspberry cones,
parcels of books and potions ingredients piled on the ground beside them. Ron
had a package of Dungbombs, three packs of Filibuster's Fireworks, six
Chocolate Frogs, and one very inexpensive quill stuffed deep into his pockets.
His small bag of Sickles had been completely emptied. Hermione had met up with
Ron and Harry shortly after they had left Zonko's Joke Shop, but this had not
prevented them from having to endure a lecture about lying and wasting (or, as
Hermione put it, 'squandering') money. At this very moment, however, all
thoughts of lectures and Sickles were gone from her mind as she sat eating away
at her ice cream, feeling as if she were five years old.
Evidently, Ron had been having a similar thought,
because a slightly sad looked crossed his face and he looked curiously down at
his ice cream cone. "Do you think we'll be able to do this forever?" he asked.
"Do what?" said Harry.
"This," answered Ron, gesturing at his ice
cream. "Just sit here and do nothing but eat sweets all day in the middle of
Diagon Alley. It's not the kind of thing you can do when you're an adult."
Hermione sighed slightly. "I suppose we'll have to
grow up someday."
"But when we do, can we still have ice cream?"
asked Ron, giving her a childish grin.
Hermione smiled back but didn't answer. She instead
let her gaze wander beyond Ron and over to Harry, who was staring vacantly down
at his ice cream cone as it began to melt and dribble down onto his hand.
Hermione noticed something peculiar about the way his eyes looked; they were
cold and sort of closed off, making it nearly impossible to read his
expression. She saw that Ron was looking at Harry, too. He shook his head and
turned to give Hermione a sideways glance, his eyes full of questions. Hermione
shrugged her shoulders and looked back down at her own ice cream, which was
also slowly beginning to melt.
Even years later, Hermione would never be able to
figure out why she chose that particular moment to start crying, perhaps it had
something to do with the slightly haunted look on Harry's face. Whatever the
cause, silent tears soon began to form in her eyes and the light purple color
of her ice cream blurred in front of her. Hermione felt someone looking at her
and turned to see Ron staring quietly at her, and odd look on his face, as if
he had never seen something quite like her and didn't know what to make of it.
Hermione blushed and raised a hand to wipe the
tears out of her eyes, but Ron stopped her by catching her hand in mid-air and
squeezing it gently in his. Hermione grew even redder and looked down at her
hand inside of Ron's. She could almost feel the heat coming from Ron's face as
he began to blush furiously as well, dropping her hand instantly as if it were
something extremely dirty and smelly, and turning quickly to look away from
her. Hermione gazed beyond him and caught sight of Harry, who was looking at
the two of them with a bemused expression on his face. Hermione flushed deeply,
turned back to her own ice cream, and began to lick in once more as the
afternoon sun shone high above them in its brilliant canvas of blue sky.
* * * * * * *
That night at the Burrow, Harry and Weasleys ate a
quick but satisfying dinner and went to bed early, as they were all very much
exhausted from a long day of shopping, with the possible exception of Fred and
George who were grinning ear to ear as they skipped up the staircase to their room.
As much energy as they had to spare, however, Ron lacked any at all and no
sooner had his head hit the pillow than he fell into a deep sleep. The girl was
there in his dreams and he was happy to see her again. Something about the way
she looked at him made his pulse quicken and his stomach tie up in little
knots. He was in his bedroom and she was with him, sitting next to him on his
bed. But something about her didn't quite seem to satisfy him. It was as if
something was somehow…….missing. He quickly dismissed the thought from his head
and was just about to kiss her when the door to his room banged open.
"Ron?" Ginny breathed from the doorway.
"Ginny? What're you doing here? This is the second
time I've dreamt about you this month! I've never dreamt about you before."
"No, Ron, this is the second time this month that I've
dreamt about you!" Ginny snapped exasperatedly. Her eyes moved from Ron
to the figure sitting on the bed next to him and she suppressed a giggle. "Thanks
for mentioning that I'm not important enough for you to dream about. But
apparently Hermione is. Still dreaming about her, eh?"
Ron blushed. "She's not Hermione! I don't
think about Hermione like that." Ron shuddered at the horror and absurdity of this
thought.
Ginny walked over and slowly surveyed the figure.
"She looks like Hermione to me. Same face, same body, same hair –"
"Well she's not," Ron sneered. He looked
over at the girl sitting on the bed next to him. She did look exactly like
Hermione and sometimes even acted like Hermione. What was wrong?
Ginny smiled curiously and plopped down on the bed
next to Ron.
"You like Hermione, don't you?" she asked
bluntly.
Ron's ears went pink and he wished his sister
wasn't a girl so he could punch her out for suggesting such a thing. "Of course
I don't," he muttered murderously. "She's my friend, that's all."
"Then why're you dreaming about her."
Ron looked sheepishly from his sister to the
not-quite-Hermione on the bed next to him. "You know," he said slowly. "I'm not
really sure." Then he peered down at Ginny anxiously. "You're not going to tell
anyone that I dream about Hermione, are you?" he asked nervously, then slapped
a hand to his forehead. "Wait…..you can't tell anyone. Because you're
nothing but a part of my dream!" Ron looked extremely pleased at this
revelation.
"I've told you before, Ron," Ginny snapped. "This
is my dream…….and I'm going to wake myself up now."
She took one final look over at Ron, pinched her
arm sharply, and disappeared.
Ron was alone now. Well, sort of. He looked over at
Hermione silently.
"Who was that?" she asked.
"No one," Ron answered, and he pinched down on his
own arm and disappeared, too.
* * * * * * *
Breakfast the next morning was quite a strange
affair indeed. Ron and Ginny kept eyeing each other suspiciously across the
table while Harry cast puzzled glances between the two of them. Fred and George
came down from their room halfway through breakfast still in their pajamas and
sat down, yawning and stretching, at the table. Fred kept nodding off in his
chair and George even fell asleep facedown in his bowl of oatmeal.
After Harry and Ron had eaten their fill of eggs,
bacon, oatmeal, sausages, and toast, they hurried up the stairs toward Ron's
bedroom to grab their broomsticks for a morning of Quidditch. In the hall on
their was back downstairs, Ginny appeared suddenly in front of them, grabbed
Ron by his arm, and hissed at him under her breath, "We need to talk."
"So talk," Ron grunted.
"Not here," Ginny whispered urgently, casting a
look in Harry's direction and nodding at the room behind her.
Ron gave her a puzzled look and turned toward
Harry, who just shrugged.
"Oh, all right," said Ron, following her into her
bedroom. "But make it quick. I want to get out there before it gets too hot."
Ginny ushered Ron into her room and shut the door
behind him. She began pacing the floor, a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Ron," she began tentatively, stopping in her
tracks. "What did you dream about last night?"
"Huh?"
"You had a dream, didn't you? What was it about?"
Ron racked his brains. He could remember a
girl……that same girl……and then…….Ginny had been there, hadn't she?
"What does it matter what I dreamed about last
night?" he said offhandedly.
Ginny sighed exasperatedly. "Look, Ron," she said
quickly. "I had a dream last night and you were in it, only you told me it was your
dream, not mine. Only it wasn't your dream, it was our dream –"
"Ginny, slow down."
Ginny took a deep breath and began again. "Did you
have a dream last night?"
"Yes," admitted Ron.
"And was I in it?"
"Yes."
"And was Hermione in it?"
Ron thought. That girl…….that girl…….the one he
always dreamt about…….could that be…….could it possibly be……..no, there
was no way.
"There was a girl," said Ron slowly. "But I don't
think it was Hermione."
Ginny sat down on the bed next to Ron. "O.K.,
listen to me and try to understand. About a week or so ago, I wrote to Hermione
telling her all about this dream that I had had and about how you were in it
but you kept insisting that it was your dream. Do you follow me so far?"
Ron nodded. "Good. Well, Hermione wrote me back with a six page long
description about all these weird things that can happen in dreams, though she
thinks most of it is entirely preposterous, but that's beside the point. The
point is that she thinks what we had is called a convergent dream, which means
that two people share the same dream at the same time. Basically, we both had
the same dream and neither of us was the one being dreamt up. We were both
real."
Ginny paused and Ron quickly closed his mouth,
which he realized a little too late had been hanging open in disbelief. He let
out a small laugh. "But you don't really believe that, do you Ginny?"
Ginny looked away from him.
"You do," he said incredulously, giving her
a funny look. "Look, I know Hermione's smart and all, and she knows a lot of
stuff, but even she doesn't believe in weird things like Divination and……and this."
"Fine. Don't believe me if you want. But all that
really matters," said Ginny slyly, "is that I know what you were dreaming about
last night. You were dreaming about kissing Hermione, weren't you Ron? And the first
time we had a dream together, you were dreaming about her then, too. And then
we dreamt that……." Ginny trailed off and looked away.
"We dreamt that Harry died," Ron finished for her,
his face quickly paling.
Ginny shuddered, but pushed the thought from her
mind. "Oh, I can't wait to tell Hermione that is wasn't just me dreaming that
you were dreaming about her. It really was you dreaming about her! Oh,
she'll be so hap –" Ginny cut off abruptly and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Ron, however, didn't seem to notice her little
slip. He was looking frantic and worried. "Ginny," he said urgently. "You can't
tell Hermione that I was dreaming about her like that. I didn't even realize it
was her! You can't. I swear if you tell her, I'll kill you."
Ginny gave Ron and appraising look, as if trying to
decide whether he would actually go through with his threat. He must have been
looking particularly murderous, because she nodded her head slowly and
muttered, "All right. I won't tell anyone."
"Good," said Ron, looking highly relieved. "Now
I've got to go and find Harry. He'll've been waiting."
And with that he left the room, leaving Ginny alone
with her troubled thoughts.
* * * * * * *
Everything seems to be going quite nicely for our
heroes, doesn't it? Fear not, gentle reader, for this will not last. The author
is an evil soul who thrives on awkwardly nasty situations. I promise you plenty
of Impossible Circumstances and Horrid Scandals in the chapters to come.
For Canada and President Bush. We salute you!
