The Morning

Morning sunshine poured into the room. No one in the girl's dormitory was ready to greet the day, however. Everyone had a headache and was rather grumpy. Hermione was having the worst time of all. If the girls didn't know what had happened the night before, they would have thought she was dead instead of lying like a mummy with her face under her pillow trying to forget life.

"Morning," Lavender said to Hermione's pillow, trying her best to sound cheerful. Lavender felt responsible for Hermione's deep depression, seeing as it was her who had asked Ron the now-to-be-unspoken-of question. "How are you this morning, Herm?"

Hermione didn't respond in the slightest.

"Er, nice weather, don't you think?" Lavender continued.

Nothing.

Lavender sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll just go... clean up a bit."

Lavender brushed her teeth, washed her face, brushed her hair, made her bed, and folded her clothes, all the time watching Hermione "sleep". When she didn't stir, Lavender brushed her hair again, dusted a little, remade her bed, rebrushed her teeth, all the time with no comment from her friend.

"Oh, come on. He probably doesn't even remember!" Lavender said finally, ripping the sheets off of Hermione.

Slowly, like coming out of a trance, Hermione took the pillow off her head and spoke. "Of course, Lavender. No one remembers! Everything is fine, and things are back to normal. It was a dream! That's all! Just a dream..." she trailed off. Hermione walked to the bathroom. Soon a spray of water could be heard from the pipes.

Parvati sighed. "You know she'll be in there forever, right?"

·~··~··~·

Back in the boys' dorm, not much was different. Ron was lying on his stomach with his head in a pillow, his curtains pulled around him and his sheets covering every inch of him. Harry, Fred, George, Neville, Seamus, Dean, and Lee Jordon were crowded around his bead, each, in turn, trying to get Ron up.

"Ron, you'll miss breakfast!" Neville said.

"Yeah, can't you just smell the bacon and eggs? Mmm..." Dean put in.

"Want a game of exploding snap?"

"Wizard chess?"

"Swap Chocolate Frog cards?"

"Want to spend the rest of your life in that bed?"

"Doing nothing?"

"Except smelling up the place because you'll never shower?"

George groaned. "Okay, Ronnie. I don't think any of us really liked what happened last night. I can hardly stand up, and any second now I'm gonna puke all over you. You're not the only one suffering." (George's dare was to do 50 jumping-jacks after eating 10 Chocolate Frogs, 9 peppermint humbugs, 12 couldron cakes, and a whole pack of Bertie Bott's every Flavor Beans.)

"But you can still have a normal conversation with your best friends, because you didn't tell one of them that you were in love with them since the moment you met!" Ron said in a muffled voice to his bed sheets. Everyone went silent.

Ron slowly climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom. He, too, turned on the shower and attempted to drown his thoughts.

Lee sighed. "You know he'll be in there forever, right?"