-- Author's Note: It's pretty freaking short, but I felt the need to stretch the whole thing a little, instead of squishing it all into a chapter or two. Yes, I'm adding water to my plot milk. =P Anyway, thanks for the reviews and thanks (and much, much love) to Josh and Jude. Yes, they both know how Ron feels in this chapter, especially in reference to me. ^_^ And, by the way, the Grilney mentioned in a previous chapter is the creation (and property) of my good friend, Scott (xian shadmoore).




"Son of a bitch!" Ron's mud-caked knuckles once again made contact with Harry's face, the freezing rain which drenched them both numbing his hand to the point that he could barely feel the impact. If there was a time in his life that Ron had ever, truly, felt a single ounce of hatred for Harry Potter, it was at that precise moment. "You believed him!"

The heated words -- especially about his mother -- revived Harry with a passion and caused him to struggle beneath the knee that had him pinned between a torrent of punches and the mud. "I saw them!" he retorted. Though practically shaking with anger, he still managed to topple Ron backwards and onto the saturated ground. It was his turn.

"Liar!" Ron roared over the thunder booming all around them and the crackle of lightning just about their heads, barely noticing anything beyond the face before him. He didn't notice the tides had turned, he was on his back, and that his own nose was bleeding. All he knew was that he needed to give Harry a good thrashing. All he knew is that Harry had insulted his baby sister. "You're a liar and you believed him!"

Harry made no reply, as he was busy with something else entirely. Having let up from tackling Ron and pummeling him, his muddy hands were searching frantically inside his robes for something . . . his wand.

There wasn't anything Ron could think of to yell at Harry -- liar, back-stabber, bastard, traitor, idiot, prat. What could you call someone who would be your best friend one day, but would insult your sister and hex you while you're down the next? Nothing. There was nothing to call him. There was only something to do. Springing up, Ron knocked the length of wood from Harry's filthy grasp with his left hand, sporting a fist with ghostly white knuckles as he drove his right hand into Harry's stomach.

As Harry doubled over in pain, Ron had meant to carry on. He wanted to keep beating Harry forever. For being a prat, for being golden boy Harry Potter, for having the nerve to ask him if he could dance with his sister then go and make her out to be some kind of . . . scarlet woman. And, not just that, but for also standing in the spotlight, being famous, being a hero, being on the Quidditch team since his first year, having the best broom in the world and a vault filled with gold. Everything he had once admired about Harry was suddenly fuel for his anger. It had all been pent up, locked away. All the jealousy, all the anger . . . it all rushed back to him, ten times painful and powerful than the first time he had ever felt the slightest prick of envy. Why did Harry have it all? Why was he just a pathetic sidekick? Somehow, seeing that the mud covered Harry's new robes just as they covered his own hand-me-downs made everything better. Somehow, knowing that Harry bled the same color blood, and just as easily, as he did made him less of the Boy Who Lived -- less of the famous Harry Potter and more of the regular guy who mumbled about Quidditch in his sleep. They were on the same level out in the soggy field, they were finally equals.

But, something pulled him back. Something pried him away from pushing, kicking, or punching the already bruised and bleeding seventeen year-old any longer. He struggled with whatever it was, wishing with all his might that he could break free of the grasp and have another go with the boy who had beaten You-Know-Who so many times. It was an addiction, seeing his best friend's blood, seeing the fact that Ronald Weasley could knock him down. "Let go!" he shouted after much struggling, feeling the grasp on him slip momentarily and allow him to inch forward. Through the blur caused by tears and rain, he saw figures in muted crimson and gold help Harry from the mud.

"No!" came a shout, right in his ear, startling him to the point that he stopped struggling. It was Hermione. Hermione was holding him back. Why?

"What are you doing?" he demanded, tearing himself away from her as soon as he felt her grip on his arms relax. The effort was futile. His feet stopped cooperating, as there was no need to do so any longer, and sloshed in the mud, causing him to trip. Again, he felt momentarily restrained as Hermione reached out to grasp his hand and attempt to prevent his fall, but eventually the bitter taste of mud pushed through his lips.

The slick, almost slimy, earth squished against one side of his face, onto which he had fallen after jerking away and tripping over his own feet. A moment passed before he realized that she had fallen in her effort to keep him upright, too, and was struggling to disentangle herself from him and the mud weighing heavily upon her robes. Forcing his hands into the muck, Ron pushed himself up and onto his knees (which sank at least half an inch into the soft ground) and squinted through the rain pelting his face to look at Hermione. She looked almost as dirty as he felt, like she had been in the fight, too. "Why'd you stop me?" he muttered, though another, less anger-muddled part of his brain yelled at him to ask if she was all right.

"It was enough," she replied, resigning herself to the fact that she would be dirty and sitting back upon the soggy ground. "It's not his fault."

"You're defending him!" his anger flared again, not believing anything of what he was hearing. This was the girl that supposedly loved him, that would die if he found out she did, that thought his ears were cute when they were red . . . and she was defending Harry. "How could you -- "

"It's all Malfoy's fault," Hermione cut in, her voice rising to the same shrill tone it always did when she was upset. "Dean and Seamus -- " at the beginning of an explanation, she stopped. ". . . let's go inside. Everything will be explained."

Ron simply stared, his eyes again filling with tears and making him thankful that his face was covered in mud and the rain was pelting him like tiny needles of ice. All he could do was stare. It was Malfoy's fault, but that didn't make anything right or change the fact that Harry had called his sister a liar or had given them all some potion that was making them act insane.

"I'm sorry, Ron," she looked pleadingly to him. The looked stabbed him right in the heart. There she was, trying to keep him from killing his best friend, drenched by the rain and splattered with mud . . . then she did that thing where she somehow made her eyes look big and tearful. Combined with a quivering lip and it was enough to make Ron willing to do anything. He would fight off He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and all the Death Eaters in the world if it meant she wouldn't ever give him that look.

All at once, the ground was interesting. He groped around for the right words, eyes darting frantically from one patch of mud to the next as if someone had written what he was supposed to say just there. "I'm sorry, too, Hermione. I just ... I don't know what came over me."

"I think I do," she replied after a moment of collecting herself. Without him having taken notice, Hermione had stood from the field and began to tug on his arm to help him stand. "And, if I'm right . . . we'd better get to the Hospital Wing."

That struck Ron harder than any punch Harry had thrown. Stumbling again, though due to a strange weakness in his knees rather than his large feet, he clutched suddenly at Hermione to keep from falling. And, which was the cause of a feeling of extreme exultation, she gripped him back in a steadying manner, tugging his arm over his shoulders and wrapping her own around his torso. "Hermione," Ron sputtered through the rain and the shock of the numbness of his legs. "Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but I really hope you're wrong for once."