Just Friends?
Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of these characters. That belongs to JKR, Scholastic Books, Warner Brothers, etc. This is just something to pass the time while waiting for the next book.

Chapter Two

Lavender Brown, quite frankly, did not know what to do with herself.

On one hand, she was genuinely concerned about Professor Trelawney. The professor was such a fragile soul, who had to bear the burden of her great and terrible gift. Lavender was always impressed with how well Professor Trelawney managed to deal with weight of her visions. So it was only natural that she was worried for her beloved professor, who even now was silently convulsing on the floor.

On the other hand, her inner gossip wanted to crow at the professor's revelation. She knew it! She just knew it! Both she and Parvati knew that Hermione Granger was in love with Harry Potter all this time. It was so stunningly obvious that she was surprised that more people had not put two and two together. Or rather put H and H together.

After all, it was not normal for a girl to have her two best friends be guys. Lavender supposed that there were girls who preferred to associate with guys rather than girls. However, these girls were usually tomboys and whatever else Lavender had to say about Hermione, she was most definitely NOT a tomboy. She didn't even like Quidditch! All in all, she did not act anything like a tomboy. Ginny Weasley acted more like a tomboy, although that was not amazing what with her having six brothers and all.

Of course, Hermione did not act anything like Lavender's concept of a girl either. She did not take extraordinary pains with her appearance nor was she conversant on the many uses of cosmetics. She almost never could be cajoled into talking about guys. Lavender still remembered how she and Parvati were unable to get Hermione to tell them anything about Krum after the Yule Ball. And if Hermione was reticent about her date, then the word had yet to be invented to describe her silence on the topic of her two male best friends. Lavender lost count of how many times she and Parvati met with complete and utter failure when it came to getting anything out of Hermione about Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. In fact, they had long ago given up on any further attempts, as Hermione always reacted in one of two ways—either she pulled her curtains close with the excuse that she needed to get up early the next day so that she could study or she left the room with her books with the excuse that she needed to study for such-and-such class.

Unfortunately for Hermione, unyielding silence is often the best instigator of the most insidious and pervasive of rumors.

After each time Hermione had fled in retreat, Lavender and Parvati immediately turned to figuring out why she refused to speak. After all, what harm could come if Hermione disclosed to them Harry's favorite color or favorite sweet? The two friends soon came to the same conclusion. Hermione Granger refused to answer any questions about her male friends because she was undoubtedly in love with one of them. And once a person knew that she was in love with one of her friends, it did not take a large leap of faith to conclude that she was in love with Harry Potter.

If you asked any girl, Lavender thought, simply any girl at Hogwarts, who she would prefer to go out with—Harry Potter or Ron Weasley, each and every one of them would tell you that they would prefer to date Harry. After rolling their eyes at such a stupid question, of course. It's not as if Ron Weasley was not attractive in his own right, she pondered, it was merely that he wasn't Harry Potter, who was the most famous wizard in the entire world for practically forever. And while Lavender did not consider Hermione to be a normal girl, she was still enough of a girl to pick Harry over Ron. The fact that Parvati had completely agreed with all of her reasoning only convinced Lavender that she had hit upon the right explanation. And now that Professor Trelawney has such a strong vision of the truth behind the relationship between Harry and Hermione—well, it's putting it mildly to say that Lavender would continue to believe that Hermione Granger was secretly in love with Harry Potter even if Hermione married Ron, Krum, or any other wizard at all.

While Lavender was completely, absolutely, 100% sure that she had pegged Hermione's feelings, she had no clue at all as to what Harry thought about his female best friend. In Hermione's favor, she was the only girl that Harry paid any attention to at all. Well, if Lavender was to be completely frank, one could frequently catch Harry staring at Cho Chang, but if Lavender had to pick between Hermione and Cho in the Potter Sweepstakes, she would naturally chose the Gryffindor over the Ravenclaw any day. While she was not a big fan of the bookworm, house loyalty does count for something!

Cutting against Hermione was the fact that no one knew whether Harry realized that she was a girl. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Ron had already figured that out. However, Harry tended to treat Hermione as if she was just one of the guys and there was no clue that he even conceived of her as a girl. So Lavender, as well as Parvati and all the other girls she spoke to on the subject, was clueless as to whether Harry liked Hermione in that way at all. Compounding their confusion was given that Harry was a guy and that guys were known to be a tad daft about their feelings, there was always the possibility that Harry did like Hermione in that way but just had yet to figure it all out.

It was enough to make anyone's head hurt.

And it got even worse. Lavender did not know how to feel about a potential Harry-Hermione relationship. Like all girls at Hogwarts, she would jump at the chance to date Harry. If he asked her out, there was no doubt as what her answer would be. Rather, it would not be an answer at all—it would be a series of questions such as when, where do you want to meet, etc.

Yet Lavender had once confessed to Parvati (and Parvati had totally agreed), that if she herself were not in the running in the Potter Sweepstakes, she would have been completely supporting Hermione getting together with Harry. It would just be so romantic, quite literally like out of one of her dreams. The hero falling for his innocent, retiring best friend who had always been supporting him in the background. It was the stuff that romance novels were made out of. Lavender sighed at the thought of it. It was like a fairy-tale come true.

Suddenly, a hand appeared mere inches away from her face. Startled out of her wistful haze, she pulled back to see just who the hand belonged to. Of course, it belonged to Parvati.

"Finally," Parvati exhaled in exasperation. "I've been trying to get your attention for ages now."

"Sorry about that," Lavender apologized. "What is it?"

"Well, I'll make the obvious remarks till later," Parvati replied, with a knowing smile briefly appearing on her face, "But shouldn't we do something for Professor Trelawney. I mean, she collapsed on the ground and everything."

"We could try to carry her to Madam Pomfrey," Lavender pondered her suggestion. "But I think we'd most likely wind up dropping her. Maybe one of the boys can take her there?" Both she and Parvati looked expectantly at the guys.

The guys, being guys, just looked away from the girls and shuffled their feet nervously.

"Oh, come on," Parvati scolded, "We would do it if we could, but since we wouldn't want to hurt her by dropping her."

"I don't see why you couldn't do it," remarked Dean Thomas, "As you wouldn't need to carry her since you could just float her to the infirmary."

"Err—we didn't think of that," Lavender admitted rather sheepishly. "I suppose we could do that."

"Umm, excuse me." Lavender, Parvati, and the rest of the class turned around to look at Neville Longbottom, who had a very worried look on his face. "I hate to bring this to your attention but class is almost over, and after Divination we have . . ."

"Potions!" The entire class groaned at the thought.

"And not just Potions," Ron added, "but Double Potions with the Slytherins."

"We always have Potions with the Slytherins! If I didn't know better, I'd say that the Dursleys had made a contract with Snape and Malfoy to try and make my life miserable all year round."

"Lucky for you that they're such Muggles then. If we're late to Potions, Snape is sure to take off scads of points, that nasty git. I say we just leave her here. Hey, don't give me that look!" Ron added in response to the glares sent his way by Lavender and Parvati at his suggestion. "After all, she's a Seer, right? I'm sure she's 'fainted' before and knows how to take care of herself!"

"And just how is she supposed to take care of herself if she's knocked out cold on the ground!" Lavender glared at all the guys. "Fine! You all can go to Potions while I tell Madam Pomfrey that Professor Trelawney needs her help. I'm sure I can get a pass to class from her!"

None of the guys contradicted her, but that did not surprise her. Most of them probably thought Divination was a sham! She continued to mumble insults under her breath as she gathered her things to leave for the infirmary. Men! They were good for absolutely nothing! At the moment, Hermione Granger could have Harry Potter as Lavender temporarily wanted nothing to do with the opposite sex.nbsp;