Harold's secret love for fair Gwendolyn
"What?" he said, shaking his head.
"You were gawking at Hermione like a jack-in-the-box," his friend replied.
Trying to cover up for his lack of public self-control, the love struck teen quickly studied the chessboard trying to find a mistake in Harry's chess play that could help him cover up the embarrassment. Indeed there was one, shining out at him like a fluorescent flamingo. Harry had left his king uncovered on the left, Ron's somewhat violent bishop could just zero in and Checkmate!
"Ha! Tricked ya! I won!" Ron proclaimed proudly as his bishop continued to hit Harry's king over the head with the blunt of his own sword.
The raven-haired boy only shook his head and stated that it was a rather lame cover up.
"Just admit it, Ron. You like her. What the heck! You probably LOVE her!" he exclaimed.
They say that blood rushes to the cheeks of those who are blushing. In this case, Ron's blood cells had decided to hold a mini-Olympics complete with steroid using athletes and hypo spectators.
"Um… this sounds cheesy but I'll tell if you do," he answered shakily.
It was now Harry's turn to become magenta.
"Er… okay. You go first."
The boy had a plan and if it worked he wouldn't be grilled until at least a few weeks.
"Well, erm… I don't know when it started and I was in the middle of it before I realised it had begun but now I'm almost positive that I'minlovewith'Mione."
Harry smiled to himself.
"Well! Now that you've finally admitted it, you just have to go tell 'Mione. Bye!" With that he stood up.
Unfortunately for Harry, Ron had a lot of practise being Gryffindor's Keeper and had grabbed hold of his arm before he could say 'Slytherin sucks'.
"You haven't maintained your end of the bargain."
"Maintained?" Harry replied, trying to get off topic. "You're even sounding like 'Mione. Okay, okay. Let go of my arm. It's the same thing just erm… I err…"
By now Ron was becoming quite impatient. "Just spill it out will ya? It's not like you're in love with Moaning Myrtle!"
Harry took a deep breath before saying "I'minlovewithGinny" and then making a wild dash for the stairs.
"YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH MY SISTER?!" Ron yelled.
A roaring wave of silence swept through the room. Harry Potter, THE Boy Who Lived, Heart-throb Harry Potter, in love with shy Ginny Weasley?
Realising the mistake he had made, and seeing the horrified look of his friend's face, Ron made a quick recovery.
"Practising a play, peoples! Do you REALLY think I would CARE if my bestfriend liked my sister?" he said dramatically, shaking his head. "Harry, your line."
Harry gave a massive grin of appreciation before doing a rather theatrical spin up the stairs.
"Yes, err…. Renaldo," he proclaimed in a baritone. "I, um… Harold Darcy am in love with fair umm…Gwendolyn Bennett. But take heed that I shall confess to my feelings and not keep them from the maiden of my dreams like you have kept yours from, Henrietta. I bid you good night."
A spectacular bow from Harry and an enthusiastic applause later, Ron found himself back in the boys dormitory, not one inch closer to asking Hermione to the ball.
~*~TIME MANIPULATOR PROJECTOR~*~
As far as the wall clock was concerned, it was "Bed Time" but as Ron knew that Hermione would be up studying until "Ungodly Hours of the Night" he decided to creep down to the commonroom. He was going to get this over and done with and if she said no, he could just walk away and say it was a figment of her imagination in the morning. That was the good thing about Hermione's allergy to coffee, she was normally in a stupor by the fifth time she'd reviewed the revisions of her revised History of Magic revision notes.
Slowly gaining confidence as he walked, Ron crept carefully down the stone staircase, muttering a few obscenities along the way as he crashed into the unlit parts of the winding staircase. As he was about to walk into the commonroom he saw Neville standing next to her looking like he was trying to say something. Harry's words rung in his ear, you don't wanna lose her again, do you? And no, he didn't.
Quickly making up his mind he shouted down to Hermione.
"'Mione, can you come here for a sec?"
He saw her looking up at him with a surprised and relieved expression on her face. Muttering a monotonous 'Sorry' to Neville, she quickly ran up the stairs to where he was standing. It was only after having thanked him furiously for 'rescuing her' she finally asked him what he wanted.
It was now his turn to ramble excessively, first talking about the date February 14th, then a pair of navy dress robes. After being told to slow down for the tenth time, he finally spat one of the sentences a Hogwarts attending boy dreaded most.
"Willyougototheballwithme?"
