-- Author's Note: With applying for college, applying for scholarships, applying for a job, and adjusting to my new semester schedule, I haven't had much time to spare for this writer's block that's been plaguing me. Finally, it's the weekend and finally I can spare a few hours to sit down and work it all out. This will be my sixth -- or was it seventh? -- attempt to write this chapter and I'm praying to the Mother of all things sacred that I'll be more than satisfied with it this time, so I won't go off on a tangent of having writer's block and delete the entire thing. Er. With that said, I'd like to say thanks to Josh and Jude, for putting up with me even more so over the past few days due to my bitching. I swear, I'll get it this time and shut up. _




For the first time in his life, Ron's feet had decided to work with him. They were overly large (to the point that he had outgrown every pair of shoes his mother had bought for him in the last six years) and usually very prone to tripping over themselves due to their size, which rivaled with all other sizes of feet in his family. However, for once, they cooperated in a way that made almost everything perfect. He didn't trip, or stumble, or get caught up, or tangled . . . or any of the usual things that generally made him feel like a complete idiot. And, best of all? I didn't know you could dance so well, she had told him, bringing him out of the daze in which he had fallen that was brought about by dancing with her. What could he say to that? I didn't either.

Certainly, his feet wouldn't kill him, but his mouth would.

Although he thought that she would find him more than simply a stupid prat, she laughed. Not just laughed, even, but giggled in the way he had heard Parvati and Lavender giggle over the cute boys in Teen Witch every month -- just not so bloody annoying. In fact, he liked the way she giggled like that, if the notion didn't sound insane. As she went on about how he was full of surprises -- being able to dance, pulling her chair out for her, and so on -- Ron simply drifted into a daze.

In fact, he hardly noticed when the song ended and he was being tugged from the dance floor over to a table brimming with bowls of punch, pitchers of pumpkin juice, and bottles of butterbeer. Finally, after several blinks, he found himself firmly gripping a goblet of punch (which had ice cubes in the shape of bats and jack-o'-lanterns and changed colors sporadically) and seated at the table around which they had all dined earlier. Hermione was gazing intently at him from behind her mask, making him feel as if he needed to say something. "Huh?"

"I asked if you liked the punch, but now I'm wondering if you're ill or something. Do you feel all right? You haven't said more than a two-word sentence since we left the dance floor. Did you not want to dance with me?" the last question was asked after a moment of lull, a tinge of disappointment and embarrassment coloring her nervously shrill tone.

That was Hermione. Whenever she was nervous, there was no getting her to shut up. A person could sit there for a half an hour worth of questioning and not get a word in edgewise because she was too busy asking more questions on top of the ones she asked before. Ron remembered the first time he noticed how she did that, before their Sorting Ceremony, and how he thought it was the most annoying thing in the world -- even more annoying than Percy's jabbering on about how he was a Prefect all summer long. After a surprised blink (which did well to clear his mind of random thoughts), Ron quickly shook his head and replied, "No." But, then he thought that might have been confusing -- no he didn't want to or no he did? "I mean, er, I did want to dance with you. And, I'm not sick. And, I do like the punch."

The punch, it seemed, changed taste when it changed color and the ice bats within flapped their wings faintly while the jack-o'-lanterns glowed an opposite color of the liquid.

"Reminds me of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," she replied, apparently soothed by his sudden return to reality and the conversation, after making a disgusted face behind her mask. "Don't drink it when it's yellow -- tastes like earwax."

"Ugh." He was about to ask what kind of joke it was to make a punch taste like earwax or how she knew what earwax tasted like, but he was nipped on the lip by one of the ice bats while drinking the grape-flavored color. "Ow!" The bat released him and flopped back into the goblet of liquid with a faint screech and splash.

Upon noticing the fact that the bats were more frisky that expected, Hermione pulled her goblet away from her lips and set it on the table, pushing it away quite a distance. "Maybe we should get some butterbeer?"

"I'm not really that thirsty. I could get some for you, if you are, though," he offered without thinking, already on his feet (which were still being very cooperative) before he noticed she had shaken her head to decline the offer. "Well, we could get some dancing in before they start that party game stuff?"

"To this music?" Hermione inquired, her tone reflecting her conservative attitude towards the upbeat music the skeletal band was playing by that time. "I can't dance to that type of music."

Ron secretly suspected that she only knew ballet and ballroom dancing, the first of which he had no idea about and the latter he could fake pretty well. But, with brothers like Fred and George, who wouldn't know how to dance to any other kind of music? They were insane, really, with the kind of dancing they knew . . . and their mother often complained whenever they knocked something over that required fixing. "Yeah, to this music. Are you admitting that there's something you can't do, Hermione Granger? I'm going to have to send an owl to Rita Skeeter and this time tomorrow it'll be all over the Daily Prophet -- Miss Know-it-all Hermione Granger Finally Admits There's Something She Doesn't Know."

Hermione gave an indignant short of huff, lifted her nose to the air, and crossed her arms over her chest. "It isn't that I don't know how, it's that I don't want to look like an idiot doing it."

Her excuse was one of the worst he had ever heard and he felt even more inclined to tease her out onto the dance floor. "Pfft. You're wearing a mask. The only people who know it's you are the Gryffindors in our class. What do they care and what do you care if they care?" Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed her hand and pulled her from the chair she was sitting in (which was rather easy, considering she was making some sort of verbal protest at the time). "Besides, what if it comes time for girls to pick dancing partners again and some dog-like Slytherin chooses me by mistake and I never make it back over here to dance with you again?"

"That would be such a tragedy, Ron," Hermione replied with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice, which was otherwise rather jovial. Hadn't she not wanted to dance?



No dog-like Slytherin chose to dance with Ron at all that night. Some girl, who claimed to be in Hufflepuff and sounded to be in one of the lower classes, stepped on his toes throughout an entire song, while Hermione chose to disappear off to the punch bowl. Other than that, the rest of the night was perfectly fine, blissfully unblemished by negative events, and was winding down when Ginny came and seated herself right next to Hermione, thoroughly interrupting their conversation. Which, annoyingly, had just turned rather serious.

"I'm not sure why I feel -- oh, hello, Ginny," Hermione greeted, pushing away the topic of their conversation in a way that caused Ron to glare at his little sister . . . until he noticed she looked rather tearful behind her half-mask.

"What's wrong? I didn't think Crabbe and Goyle dancing was that bad," he made a vague motion with his overly lengthy arm towards the dance floor, where Crabbe and Goyle had been dancing moments before and Dumbledore was currently announcing another ladies' choice dance. Wonderful, he thought sarcastically, for a moment feeling rather upset that Ginny had chosen that point in time to plop her emotional self in the middle of his conversation with Hermione. It was only for a moment, where upon he felt terribly guilty for thinking it. But, still.

"I can't find Harry anywhere," she mumbled, paying no attention to the fact that Crabbe and Goyle had stumbled off the dance floor hand-in-hand due to their own stupidity. "He just up and disappeared."

Ron glanced over his shoulder towards the crowded dance floor -- which was packed with an assortment of participants ranging from thirteen to seventeen -- and noticed that there were so many wearing various shades of red that it would be impossible to tell if he had been dragged onto the dance floor by someone else. "Maybe he went to the restroom or something."

"Or spilled punch on his robes. You know, those ice bats -- "

" -- are melted," Ginny finished glumly, having been at the punch bowl herself to see the pathetic chunks of ice melt, screechingly, into the colorful liquid. "I guess I'm being silly worrying about it, though, huh?"

Comforted by the fact that the bats melted, Ron moved to retrieve his goblet and punch and take a sip -- only to find that it was yellow and did taste like earwax. "Ugh."

"You are," Hermione reassured her in a rather soothing voice. "Don't worry about it. It's crowded in here with all these people, he just got separated in the uproar over Crabbe and Goyle. He should be back soon."



Be back soon. Harry wasn't back at all that night. Not for the remaning songs, not for the post-party party in the Gryffindor common room, not for anything. Colin had eventually offered to dance with Ginny, owing to the fact that Harry was missing in action, and after the last dance of the night she was nearly worried sick. Hermione and Ron had offered to stay in the common room until their friend showed up, but eventually wound up falling asleep on the sofa. If Harry had been there, he hadn't bothered to wake his two best friends up and hadn't stayed until anyone else in the dormitory woke up.



Sunday morning, Harry was found wide awake (though looking quite haggard) at the Gryffindor table having a breakfast of toast. Although harassed with questions, especially from Ginny, about his whereabouts that entire evening, he refused to answer and eventually left the Great Hall. His actions left most in a state of total confusion, though none more than Ginny. For the rest of the weekend, she stayed well within the boundaries of the sixth year girl's dormitory.



Monday brought no end to the silence that had settled over Harry like an unearthly shroud. He said nothing, ate almost nothing, and did only what was asked or expected of him. If called on in class, he merely shrugged and in Care of Magical Creatures he positioned himself apart from everyone else to feed his Grilney shredded dragon intestines, sending Hagrid into the state of curious worrying with the rest of the Gryffindors. By the end of the day, his two friends were concocting a plan of action -- Ron would be his partner in Potions, which meant they had to talk. It was his charge to force something out of Harry or, if not, wrestle him into a binding charm after class was over so he and Hermione could take him to the Hospital Wing. That was, of course, going to be a last-ditch effort.

"Potter," Professor Snape spat from the chalkboard behind his desk, where he had just written the ingredients for the highly advanced potion -- a truth serum -- they would be brewing that day. "Come up to the front, here, and sit with Malfoy."

It was unclear whether Malfoy had requested to be partnered with Harry (as he did, certainly, look pleased at the announcement) or if Snape had stooped to a new level of disdain for Harry and partnered him with Malfoy out of sheer spite. Nevertheless, with his cauldron filled with his supplies and books, Harry did as he was told without a word and moved to the front, leaving a perplexed Hermione and angered Ron in the back of the room with the other Gryffindors.

Draco sneered at Harry as he sat his cauldron on the table and began removing the various items from it. Once the class was bustling with the typical noise made by brewing preparations and he was already well into preparing the first portion of ingredients for his serum, Malfoy spoke up. "I'm glad you're my partner today, Potter," the drawling voice announced, though not loud enough to be overheard by the rest of the class. "I noticed you and Pansy getting a free show the other night."

The first comment had caused Harry to grip the vial of dragon's blood he had in hand to the point of nearly bursting the glass, the second almost causing him to drop it to the dungeon floor. His new resolution -- to completely ignore what happened until he had further proof of what went on -- shattered almost as easily as the vial in hand would have if it had slipped from his grasp to the stone below. Yet, somehow, he found it within himself to make no reply and continue preparing his own ingredients.

Malfoy was silent for some time, apparently wanting to begin the first stages of brewing the serum before bringing up the topic of conversation again. Having purposefully positioned his cauldron further down the table than usual from Harry, more or less to avoid splattering should anything be broken, Draco spoke again as he meticulously sliced at the bat wings that would be included in the potion during the final stage of brewing, "I was almost sorry that Pansy brought you down there, Potter, but then I got to thinking about it and realized you do have a right to know."

Harry clenched his teeth to prevent any retort from flying in Malfoy's direction, concentrating on the work before him instead of the quietly uttered words seeping into his mind. They were a slow poison, too. Just like her lips.

"I didn't want to do it," he claimed, letting out an almost silent sigh. "I mean, she is a Weasley, after all, and I do have a reputation to uphold." His words were steady, cold, and calculated precisely to push all the right buttons. "But, she practically begged me. I'll spare you the details of what she did while she was on her hands and knees to convince me. I suppose even you can use your imagination."

The knife used to slice the occamy intestines slipped from its course and sliced the side of Harry's left index finger open, spraying his own blood into that of the winged snake's entrails. "Potter," he heard Snape spit from over his shoulder. "Pay attention! I will not be giving you another -- nor you, Longbottom -- so try not to butcher them. They're imported from India and unless you'd like to be paying the rest of your life for a new batch I suggest you pay more attention." The billowing of the Potion Master's black robes foretold that he had stalked away from leering over Harry's shoulder and moved to bark at another student.

Dropping the knife, Harry fumbled for something to wrap around his finger in order to stop the bleeding, eventually settling for his robes for lack of anything better. The intestines were gathered and thrown into the bubbling, brown liquid in his cauldron, the pain in his finger momentarily distracting him from what Malfoy had said. "You're lying," he hissed, finally coming to his senses and pushing away the insane urge to keep his mouth shut.

"Why would I lie about something so disgusting as that? Disgusting," he repeated, appearing to be rather amused, as he continued to slice at the wings, "but ultimately very worth my time."

The knife used for slicing various ingredients was picked up from the wooden table and held in a tightly clenched fist, Harry's face coloring in anger and teeth gritting together to the point of agony.

"Oh, please," Malfoy finally glanced up from the table, staring at Harry as if he were no more of a threat than a half-dead flobberworm. "If there's anyone you should be killing, it's her. After all, I'm not the one who pleaded for it."



By the time the class -- which seemed even longer than usual -- ended, Harry's truth serum was the wrong color, bubbling without the need of flame, and had the consistency of mashed potatoes. "Potter!" the vein on Snape's forehead bulged as his enraged voice echoed through the dungeon classroom. "Ten points from Gryffindor! You're almost as hopeless as Longbottom. At least his was salvageable!"

Laden with something as bad a detention (having to redo an assignment on his free time), Harry began to pack his things into his then empty and washed cauldron, not noticing that Malfoy was still off to his side, perched on the edge of the table and wearing a smug look. "Too bad, Potter. I was going to suggest you slip a bit of it into your girlfriend's drink. That's the only way you can be sure, isn't it?"

With shaking hands, Harry gripped the handle of his cauldron and hauled it from the desk. "Sod off, Malfoy," he muttered, turning towards the door where Ron and Hermione were waiting for him. The last thing he wanted to do was to admit that Malfoy was right, which caused him to push the entire idea from his mind.

Slipping from the edge of the table with ease, Draco moved to follow Harry, catching him before he took more than three steps towards the door. "Here, Potter. Think about it." Before a protest could be given, a vial of the freshly brewed truth serum was slipped into Harry's cauldron, after which Malfoy swiftly turned on his heel and stalked back to gather his things.

"What the hell was that all about?" Ron questioned, giving a look to the cauldron Harry was carrying as they exited the dungeon, obviously thinking whatever Malfoy had placed into it might cause it and the supplies within to explode at any moment.

"Nothing," Harry muttered, forgetting that he had not wanted to speak with anyone. With a surge of anger -- mostly at himself, actually -- he pulled away from his two friends and started off in a completely opposite direction.

"Hey!" Ron called after him. "Don't forget Quidditch practice today!" He, apparently, forgot the plan about the binding charm, much to Hermione's chagrin.