"Marie!" Ron's voice called as she emerged from the office. He and Hermoine raced down the hall towards her.
"We've been looking all over for you," Hermoine scolded, looking slightly worried.
"I was in Snape's office," Marie informed her.
"What did you want with that git?" Ron asked, frowning.
"I came across a word that wasn't in the dictionary. He helped me find out what it was," Marie answered.
Hermoine let out a breath of exasperation. "I thought you were going to stay out of wizarding business."
"Don't you at least want to hear what we found?" Marie asked.
"No," Hermoine said firmly.
Marie was about to tell them anyway, when a boom resounded from the other end of the hall. Ron and Hermoine ran to the door at the end of the hall, fearing some nefarious spell cast by dark wizards.
"Someone left cursed cards lying around," Erin said, standing as far from the desk she had been sitting at as possible.
"It's just an Exploding Snap deck," Hermoine said impatiently to Ron, who was panting in the doorway with his wand out.
"They're supposed to do that," Ron gasped to Erin, putting his wand away.
Hermoine swept out of the room and said firmly to Marie, "Stay in one spot from now on," before storming down the hall in a huff.
Marie glared daggers at her back.
Ron rested a hand on Marie's shoulder and said, "I hate to admit it, but she's right about this one."
Marie looked abashed at seeing his expression and said, "I'll be asleep in the library," before trudging down the hall.
"Honestly, she's impossible," Hermoine said, flopping down in a chair in front of the fire burning brightly in the Gryfindor common room.
"I dunno. Weren't you just the least bit curious when this was all new to you?" Ron asked, lying down on a nearby couch.
"There's a difference between healthy curiosity and just plain stupidity," Hermoine insisted with a sour look.
"I guess," Ron said, staring into the fire.
"You're not attracted to her, are you?" Hermoine asked him suspiciously.
"No, I just feel sorry for her. And you shouldn't get worked up like that. It can't be very good for you," he said, glancing back at her.
She made a little hmph sound and crossed her arms, noticing that Ron got a very saucy grin on his face as she did so.
"Something funny, Weasley?" Hermoine asked in her most haughty voice.
"No, of course not," Ron said, his grin broadening.
She pulled out her wand, racking her brain for a good spell to wipe the grin off his face.
He beat her to it. "Accio!"
Her wand shot forward, pulling her along with it. She fell onto the couch on top of him.
"You did that on purpose!" she exclaimed, trying to straighten her robes.
"Yep."
She stared at him for a long moment, realization finally dawning on her. "Ronald Weasley, if you were that interested, why didn't you ever say something?"
"Didn't want to upset Harry, and wasn't really sure you felt the same," he said with a shrug.
She laughed and shook her head, wondering how she could have been so blind. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth. She was amazed to find that she felt the same way as Ron apparently did.
"Good night, Ron," Hermoine said dreamily after a long pause, getting up and heading toward the girls stairwell toward the room she knew was lying prepared for her.
"Night," Ron's voice came after her.
Marie had not had a good night. A very loud, badly dressed ghost had thrown things at her, until she stood up and vividly described him and offered suggestions about what he could do to himself in such colorful language that had anyone living heard her they would have dropped dead on the spot from shock.
Peeves, being dead already, simply said wickedly, "My, my. If I'd known naughty muggles were so much fun, I would have haunted them instead."
Marie got stiffly down on the floor, crawled under the couch, and pulled the pillow over her head, which protected her from objects, but not Peeves' voice, which regaled her with rude songs for several hours until he got bored and went away. She slept fitfully the rest of the night, using the salve Snape had given her every once in awhile to dull the pain, and was greeted the next morning by the sound of the couch tipping over and light shining into her eyes.
"What are you doing?" Erin asked.
"Getting away from the ghost," Marie said, forcing herself to a sitting position.
"There's ghosts?" Erin said eagerly.
"What do you want?" Marie asked her impatiently.
Erin grinned broadly, and pelted Marie in the face with a freshly scooped snowball before bounding away like an oversized bunny rabbit. Marie struggled to her feet and stumbled after her as fast as her muscles would allow. Erin led her to the courtyard and pelted her with another snowball as soon as she came out. Marie was only too happy to send another one back to her.
The fight stopped dead a few minutes later when a stray snowball pelted Snape right in the face as he stormed around the corner into the courtyard. Once she saw what had happened, Erin let out a little 'eep' and took off as fast as her legs would carry her. Marie stood frozen to the spot.
Snape approached with slow measured steps, his black eyes appraising her coolly. He stopped a few steps away, and she caught the glint in his eye a second before he hit her with the snowball he was holding behind his back. She was too stunned to retaliate, so he simply gave her a superior look and continued walking. Her eyes narrowed and she scooped up another snowball and tossed it into his back. He whipped around to glare menacingly. She scooped up another snowball, returned the superior look, and waited. It was a short wait.
She discovered that it was hard work dodging his snowballs, he was quicker and a much better aim than Erin. She deliberately threw a few of them short to lure him in closer, so she could get ahead on points. He recognized the strategy and danced just out of her reach. Finally she gave up on the idea of beating him fairly and just pounced. He had been expecting that and caught her arms, but she twisted at the same time and pulled him to the ground.
"Surrender or die, punk," she said.
"You're giving me orders?" he said in his most threatening voice.
"Yes," she answered confidently.
"I don't have to obey you. I'm winning," he said, his stern voice and sour face not quite disguising the mischievous glint in his eyes or the smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
She reached for the snow next to his head, but he saw what she was planning and rolled her onto her back before standing up.
"I have work to do. It was…fun," he said with a shudder, as though fun was some sort of terrible infectious disease.
Marie watched him leave, amazed that there was a vestige of an actual human being inside that pasty shell. And it had a sense of humor, no less.
"You learn something new every day," she said to herself, getting carefully to her feet.
"RON! Are you there, son?"
Ron woke up with a start. His father's head was floating in the barely licking flames of the dying fire.
"You got my owl!" Ron said, stumbling to his feet.
"Percy forwarded the letter to the house. I didn't find it until a few minutes ago, buried under a stack of Howlers…" Mr. Weasley's head muttered.
"Dad…"
"I swear, that boy…"
"DAD!"
"Oh, right. Listen, Ron, there's no word on Harry here, but I came across a spell that might do you some good. Let's see…ah," he said, holding up his hand in the flames.
Clenched in it was a piece of parchment. Ron grabbed the fire tongs and took it. Scrawled hastily on the page was a spell for identifying unknown objects.
Mr. Weasley's head continued, "Thought it might help with the body. It's a bit basic, never tried it before in my line of work. Let me know for certain how it goes one way or the other, hey?"
"Sure thing."
"I'll have the dementors standing by, just in case."
"Thanks, Dad."
Mr. Weasley's head vanished. Ron pounded up the stairs and banged on Hermoine's door. She answered the door in her nightclothes, bleary eyed.
"I need your help with a spell," Ron said, brandishing the paper.
Hermoine added another ingredient to the beaker. "And your father was sure this would help us identify the victim?" she said.
"Well, no. But it was the best he could come up with."
The liquid turned purple, then green.
Hermoine ran her finger down the paper, and said, "I think that's done it. All we need now is the hair and the slip of parchment."
Ron dropped the clump of hair from the body into the beaker and stirred it. Then Hermoine took the parchment in the tongs and dipped it into the potion. The paper turned black.
"Um…" Ron said.
They both stared.
"No, it's working," Hermoine said, as words started to appear on it.
She waited a few more moments, took the paper out, and blotted it on an old cloth.
"This can't be," she said, as the writing became legible.
"What?" Ron asked.
Hermoine took a step back and motioned him over. Ron looked at the paper and his mouth fell open. Scrawled across the paper were two words, Severus Snape.
There's my evil plot twist for you. Ron/Hermoine pairing idea (well, more like insistence) courtesy of Grouchy HP Fanatic (yes, the one from the author's notes in the first chapter)
