Hey guys! This is Lauren here, your faithful author-writer-friend lady…I hope you all enjoy this chapter, even though it's a tad shorter than usual…yeah, don't complain, you got a chapter, didn't ya? Haha, just kidding, I love you all! Okay, well, until next time, friends…

Lauren

Disclaimer: Now, as much as I love entertaining you all and thinking of clever, witty disclaimers, today I simply cannot expel one from my cluttered mind. I hope none of you take offense, and I will try again tomorrow. In the meanwhile, let me just say simply that I do not own Harry Potter, no matter how much I wish I did…

Chapter thirty-one

Evident Evection?

The sun was setting, and so it was time for them to retreat to the castle. The day had proven Malfoy not an enemy, though none of them were prepared to declare such a thing. As soon as Ginny pointed out the rising of the moon, Malfoy seemed to tense up. He rose from the snow, pulled his cloak around him tightly, and, without a word, headed off alone towards the entrance hall. Harry and Ginny exchanged confused looks, but at the same time were a little relieved. They were almost led to believe that Malfoy was becoming their...Harry couldn't even fathom including the words 'Malfoy' and 'friend' in the same sentence. It appeared that Malfoy had felt the same way.

Harry linked arms with Ginny, deciding to accept that what had just happened was just a holiday oddity, and so they weren't to think too much of it. They set off to find where the other two had disappeared to. When they finally caught view of them, they were leaned up against a tree--well, Ron was against the tree, Hermione was leaned against him--and they were both huddled up. Ginny couldn't suppress her coos at the sight of them sleeping against each other and the tree. She found it hard to disturb them, but she resignedly sighed and woke them up. After a few minutes of embarrassed mumbling, ("hmm, wha? where--blimey, what are we doing here?" Ron cried. He had been dreaming of being lost in a snowstorm, chased by a mutant snowman...) the four crusaders headed off to dinner.

As soon as they sat down at the Gryffindor table, Ginny caught a glance at the Slytherin table. Seeing Malfoy glare at her maliciously had never been a shock before, but this time it unnerved her a bit. Hadn't they just been having fun though? Another odd thing she noticed was that Crabbe wasn't sitting at the table with them. It then dawned on her that Crabbe had left--she had completely forgotten about his father and all of that...she looked at Harry with a bit of disdain on her face.

"Harry, Crabbe is gone..." she almost whispered.

Harry looked over his shoulder and saw that he really was.

Ron had overheard as well, but he didn't bother to look. He just snorted a bit and looked at his plate grimly.

"Well, that's just one less crony of Malfoy's to deal with then. Wonderful!"

Hermione elbowed Ron, making him scatter his peas across the table.

"'Mione! What?" he cried, half joking and half seriously.

"No matter how much we hate Crabbe, you have to understand what Malfoy's going through..." she had decided to end it there, but she continued at the sight of Ron rolling his eyes.

"Look, imagine if Harry suddenly had to leave, and you found out he weren't to return to Hogwarts. Ever. How would you feel?" she asked, and she immediately knew (by Ron's sudden blanching face) that she had gotten to him. Ron suddenly looked at Harry with the most caring and mournful face Harry had ever seen, and it was all Harry could do to laugh.

"Ron, don't mourn, it doesn't suit you."

Ron feigned hurt and loaded his spoon with the peas he had scattered earlier. Before Hermione could stop him, Harry was ambushed by an army of peas. "Harry, I thought you cared!" he whined.

"How could you...you heartless bastard! I gave you my heart, and what do you do? You rip it to pieces!" Ron was nearly laughing now, finding it even harder to hold back when he tried to keep a straight face.

"Sorry Ron, you just weren't my type! I don't go for red hair!" he teased, while propelling bits of yorkshire pudding at his bright head of hair.

Now Ginny was 'offended'.

"Oh you little weasel..." she growled at Harry.

"Nope, sorry, I think that would be you!" he retorted.

Needless to say, within minutes, the entire Gryffindor population was engaged in war. Hermione was scrambling under the table as quickly as she could, but not without a handful of Ron's peas and a spoon.

Hermione loaded up her spoon with peas and, without looking, flung them at whoever happened to be in her path. But as soon as she let go of the tip of the spoon, all she could hear was the sound of her own giggling. She felt panicked at the sudden, inexplicable silence, and she could feel trouble looming above her head as she peeked her head over the edge of the table to see what was happening. Her eyes met a very red-in-the-face (and pea-covered) McGonagall. She had come over to stop all of the nonsense when she had been unexpectedly attacked by warrior peas. Hermione gulped and reluctantly stood up to face her. McGonagall could barely speak the words that she was about to say, but when she did, they were no less frightening.

"Miss Granger…as a prefect, I would have expected behavior from you, but as it is Christmas break, I will forget this little…incident," she growled as a pea slowly slid its way down her cheek. "Next time I'd be more careful…" She slowly skulked off in the direction of the faculty bathroom, and Hermione could feel her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Ron seemed to be taking it much better than she was. He simply shrugged it off and joked about how funny it was to see McGonagall's face all blotchy and red when she got mad. Of course, he couldn't not point out the sliding pea. Harry was chuckling to himself, as it had all been very funny, and Ginny nudged his arm and glanced pointedly at the head table. Harry saw Dumbledore was even chuckling, though he received a piercing glare from the passing McGonagall. Dumbledore wasn't the only one receiving said look. Hermione was giving an exact replica of the look to Ron through her tomato-red cheeks. Ron heeded her anger, and he slumped deeply into the bench and stared at his plate.

Ron did his best not to make any jokes about the food fight after dinner, one because he knew that Hermione was very upset about it, and two because, well, if you were Hermione's boyfriend and you wanted to live through the night, you'd shut up about it too. As they were leaving the great hall, Harry gave one last hopeful glance at Malfoy, who was sneering more than ever. This usually would have comforted him, but for some reason he felt a tad let down, as though he were expecting at least a little kind acknowledgement. He pondered why he felt this way as he ascended the stairs.

Why does he feel that way?? Will Hermione forgive Ron? Will Malfoy start being nice again unexpectedly? Will McGonagall ever get the peas off her face? And most importantly, will we ever find out where Crabbe went and why?????

I guess we'll just have to wait until the next chapter of…

COMPLEX ATTRACTIONS!!!!!!

Heeheeheeheehee…