(A/N): Uhh...is there something wrong with my quotation marls? It looked
really weird when I uploaded it. Hopefully that's just a temporary thing.
Hopefully.....
"Ron, I'm not sure this water's very safe to swim in," said Harry uneasily, standing apprehensively at the pond's edge and gazing distastefully into the tea-colored liquid. "I think I see leeches."
He, Ron, and Mr. Weasley were taking a break from finding firewood, and had wandered off into the forest in search of some refreshment from the scorching hot noonday sun. The pond they had discovered was surely a sight of natural beauty- a gentle waterfall trickled onto smooth rocks at the far side of the pool, and willow trees overhung the east side. Turtles sat stupidly on a lazily floating rotten log, and Ron was splashing around in the shallow end.
"Oh, don't be selfish," said Ron, spitting out a fountain of water, "Leeches need to eat, too." He lifted his arm out of the pond, and observed three dark shapes hanging off it. "I'm naming this one Roger."
Harry looked on in shock and disgust. "I don't see how you can be so deathly terrified of spiders, who can't even hurt you, but can stand there and give names to those little bloodsucking slugs." He found a small boulder at the water's edge, and sat upon it. "I'd rather not sacrifice myself for their comfort."
Mr. Weasley came tromping down the nearby hill, hands full of small brown eggs. "Look what I found!" he cried, jogging towards where Harry sat and showing him the discovery. "I've got a great spell to fry these with."
"Cool," said Harry, gently picking an egg out of Arthur's hands and holding it up to the sun. However, no light shone through a certain bird- shaped spot in the middle. "Oh no, we can't eat these," he said, giving the egg back to Mr. Weasley, "There are baby birds growing inside of them."
Arthur shrugged. "We can still fish then, eh?" He looked towards Ron, who was spooking the poor turtles, causing them to slip off of their log. "Oy! See any trout in there?"
Ron paddled back towards the shallow part of the pond so that he could see through the water to the murky, brown bottom. "Erm...there are loads of little buggie things...and what looks like a miniature lobster, might be a crayfish...oh, there are nasty little olive-green plants down here too. I don't see any big fish."
"Quite a shame," said his father, still holding the precious eggs. "You mind eating bird fetuses?"
"Can't say, I've never tried those," answered Ron. He looked up towards Harry, who was observing the two from his position on the sun- warmed rock. "Harry! You ever eat a bird fetus?"
Harry gaped, his green eyes wide in contempt. "Of course not! Wait a minute- are you seriously considering frying those baby birds?"
"Well I don't know," answered Mr. Weasley, turning the eggs about in his hands as he thought, "I didn't pack much food, I suppose I was so preoccupied with the prospect of camping that I overloaded the tent with kayaks instead of hotdogs."
"Maybe the girls can cook something for us," offered Ron, violently shaking the water out of his hair and causing it to stick up in the air like thousands of little red spikes.
"With what?" asked Harry, "We're the men, we've got to provide for them. Maybe there are fish in other ponds, or that big lake down by the cliffs."
"I say we mount an expedition!" announced Mr. Weasley, puffing up his chest. "And we don't return until we've got enough food to last us for the next three days!"
Ron scrambled out of the pond, standing proudly next to his father. "Yeah! What d'you say, Harry?"
"I say that you're positively covered in leeches."
Indeed, there were at least twenty of the little fellows stuck to his legs alone. Ron winced as he picked each of them off, leaving himself covered in tiny red circles where the creatures had stuck themselves to him.
Arthur watched silently as his son painfully wrenched the small vampires off of his dripping wet body. "Well that's a bit of a bad omen to start our expedition with."
"You think we'll find anything?" asked Harry, "You know, after that bad omen with Ron..."
"Of course!" cried Mr. Weasley. "We're bound to find something or another in this forest, eh? Now as for it being edible, I'm not quite sure."
The youngest Weasley present had finished drying himself off, and was now pulling his shirt on. He once again shook his head so that his damp hair stuck out savagely. "Isn't there some charm or spell you could use to locate the edible stuff for us?"
"Probably," answered his father, shrugging. "But even if I knew it perfectly, I wouldn't use it."
The boys stared at him in alarm.
"And why not?"
"Yeah, I'm hunnnnnngry!"
"Because that's not the Muggle way," responded Mr. Weasley, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "AND-" he added, noting the stricken looks on the teen's faces, "I agreed to take you camping in the mountains ONLY if we could do a few things the way Muggles do them. That's how I got off work for these few days; I told them I was doing research on non-magical survival techniques."
Harry seemed strangely pacified by those last few words. "Oh, alright! So you've read some books on how to hunt and start fires, right? So we won't die out here, RIGHT?"
Arthur glanced around nervously. "Erm...no, I didn't quite have the chance to read anything..."
"Oh GOD," cried Ron, holding his face in his hands and slowly shaking his head back and forth. "Dad's gone starkers and he won't use magic to feed us."
"We'll still eat!" quickly amended Mr. Weasley, "Listen, if we don't find anything, I'll whip something up with a nice spell, alright?"
"But you don't know the cooking spells," argued Ron, "MUM knows the cooking spells."
"You know what? That doesn't matter, because we're going to kill plenty of fish and rabbits, and pick loads of berries, and I won't even need to use magic in the first place."
***
Back at camp, Hermione was lying in the warm, luxurious sunlight of the mountain clearing and writing a Charms essay. She was working on the conclusion when footsteps grew progressively louder behind her, and stopped at her feet. Fighting the urge to turn around because she knew exactly who it was, she pretended to concentrate very hard on writing the letter "t".
"Hey Hermione," said a light female voice.
The now slightly perturbed writer placed her quill into her ink bottle, and rolled over onto her back to face Ginny, who was looking less than happy in a pink pleated skirt that matched the new shade of her hair.
"Do you know where the men are?" she asked, pulling at her skirt and brushing a white streaked lock of hair behind her ear.
"Well, they left for firewood about...seven hours ago," answered Hermione, shading her eyes against the afternoon glare. "So no, I guess I don't know where they are."
Uncomfortable silence followed. Ginny pulled at her skirt again.
"Are you mad at me or something?"
Hermione shook her head. "No. Why would I be mad at you?
"I dunno," said Ginny, shrugging. "It just seems like you've been avoiding me all day." When the older girl didn't answer immediately, Ginny added, "...Have you?"
Once again, Hermione paused before responding. "So I hear you kissed Harry."
Ginny jumped, and appeared slightly ruffled. "Erm...right. Right, I did."
"Why?"
"Because..." Suddenly she gained a bit of indignant courage. "Because I wanted to! I'm not a little girl anymore, I have sexual urges just like the rest of you."
The expression on Hermione's face remained solid and composed. "You want to have sex with Harry?
Ginny made sort of a squawking noise, and leapt backwards. "I- I- NO! That's not what I meant! Well, I guess I wouldn't turn him down if he offered...but I wasn't thinking that at all!"
Hermione shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"Why are you being so hostile?" asked Ginny, "You're acting like Malfoy right now, honestly, what's your problem today?"
"I don't know," said Hermione, sighing deeply and losing the hardened expression on her face, "It's like...I don't know how to put this in other terms, but right now I just resent you."
"For what?" curiously inquired Ginny.
"Because that was MY kiss!" cried Hermione, letting her feelings pour out. "I wanted to kiss Harry, I wanted to give him that dramatic passionate kiss, but NO, you do it before I can! Sure, maybe you're less shy about that sort of stuff, but...oh Ginny, I'm so jealous."
Ginny clasped her hands to her chest. "No, I'M sorry; I should have told you about it beforehand. It's all my fault!"
"No, it's my fault!" cried Hermione.
"I'm so sorry!"
"No, I should be the sorry one! I was so mean to you!"
They embraced each other tightly. "I'm so glad we're women and not idiot men," said Ginny, pulling out of the hug.
"Yeah, we have enough sense to apologize when we go too far," added Hermione.
The girls sat facing each other on the rough country grass, their legs crossed and their hands clasped in their laps. They chattered for a while about school, friends, handsome young men, and Italian food. The sun was beginning to set, and twenty toenails had been painted sparkly lavender, when the duo realized that their male counterparts had been missing for nearly ten hours.
Ginny pictured the worst: her father wounded, and her brother being mauled by a bear, as Harry tried to intercept the beast's blows.
Hermione pictured the most rational situation: Mr. Weasley was looking dumbfounded as he tried to read his upside-down map, Ron was throwing rocks into the shadowy darkness of the twilight forest, and Harry was trying to find the direction to the tent by licking his finger and holding it up to the wind.
The reality was that all of the men were really quite unharmed, and knew their way back to camp. The reason that they hadn't returned yet was because they were having little luck at finding food. When fishing ended up yielding only several sickly trout, and only one rabbit had been stabbed to death by Mr. Weasley's magically sharpened wand tip, Harry had resorted to picking roots and berries while the two redheads leapt about the trees like savages in their quest for sustenance.
"Listen mates," said Harry, exhausted from a day in the wild, "We really should go home, the girls have been alone for near ten hours and they're probably thinking we're dead."
Ron turned around from his perch in a tree branch, holding a mesh bag of deceased fish that were starting to stink. "You know what? You're absolutely right. But my dad won't go back until we've filled our quota of dead creatures."
"Well," sighed Harry, "I don't think we're going to catch anything in this darkness. I can barely see you in that birch up there, I don't know how three clumsy blokes are gonna successfully kill those agile little nocturnal creatures." Ron nodded and peered into the shadows, trying to escry his father's lean figure.
"Dad!" he called, "Dad! Where ARE you?"
"Right here!" responded a far-off male voice. "I think I spot something!"
The boys paused, trying to hear the details of Mr. Weasley's hunt. Something crashed through the underbrush, a man yowled, and then another crashing noise before complete silence.
"Let's just go!" cried Ron in the direction of the activity.
"Wait! Wait I think I've got a chance with this one!" responded Arthur's disembodied voice.
Ron sighed and leaned his tousled red hair against the tree trunk, gazing pathetically at Harry. "I want to go home," he half-whimpered, half- snapped. "I'm tired, I'm starving, and I'm sick of the forest. And- and LOOK at this, I'm carry a bag of smelly dead fish. I'm sitting in a bloody tree right in the middle of the bloody fecking night, carrying- of all things, of ALL things Harry, a bag of dead fish. Can it get ANY worse?"
A pause. An owl hooted, and pine trees bristled in the evening breeze.
"You know," said Harry, holding up the bottom hem of his shirt so that it held at least two pounds of roots and berries, "Now that you asked that, you KNOW it's going to get worse somehow. You just screwed yourself, mate."
"I miss the girls," remarked Ron thoughfully.
"Me too," agreed Harry.
***
Meanwhile, the girls were not idle in the tent. Ginny had revealed the crystal ball that Ron really hated to Hermione, who was now eyeing it with interest as she sat on the counter, picking at her fingernails.
"I think we should use that thing," she said, staring at it intensely.
Ginny stood up from the couch and walked over to the counter, picking up the orb and setting it in her lap as she sat at a barstool.
"Who d'you want to look at?" she asked.
"Harry and Ron, of course," replied Hermione, "I'm really anxious to know why they aren't home yet.
The young redhead concentrated deeply upon the ball, and boldy stated her brother's name.
It was deep blue twilight. A lanky, freckled young man was sitting in a tree, lazily swinging back and forth a mesh bag. A slender boy with almandine-shaped green eyes and pale skin was leaning against the tree which already contained his friend, and was staring at some mysterious item that was sitting in his upturned shirt. The adult was nowhere to be found, and his son spat upon the ground. A nightingale flew past the scene, and the dark-haired teen briefly closed his eyes.
"I wonder what they're doing right now," said the boy reclined upon the tree branch.
"Hermione is probably reading or writing or doing some other boring thing," answered the second person, "and Ginny is...Ginny is...well I don't think I know her well enough to judge what she'd be doing. Maybe trying to get those ridiculous stripes out of her hair."
"Not to sound loony or anything," slowly began the firey-haired young man, "But those colors look a bit cool. I mean, it's like...like some trendy new fashion you'd see in Teen Witch magazine.
The other boy was quiet for several moments before responding. "That was weird, Ron. I think you need to eat something, or rest a little. Tell your dad we're heading back, he can meet us back at the tent later."
The father was informed, and the two males left their positions against the birch and began trekking home through the brambles and creeks. They hopped over ditches and kicked flowers, all the while the taller boy swung his mesh bag and the shorter boy stared sleepily at the ground. At one point the mesh bag charged off course, and smacked the green-eyed boy in the face. The victim of the attack yelled angrily and wiped his cheek disgustedly while the antagonist tried hard not to laugh.
Just as Ginny lost her concentration and the image faded into mist, male voices stomped and clattered through the tent's entrance. Minutes later, a dirt-stained Harry trudged into the kitchen, pulled a bowl from the cupboard and dumped the contents of his shirt into it. Ron followed shortly afterwards, and tossed the mesh bag into the sink. The girls watched silently as their friends walked right past them down the hallway without saying a word of greeting or how they spent the last ten hours.
"Well that was strange," said Ginny, watching her brother disappear into a hallway bathroom.
"They didn't even acknowledge us," added Hermione, seeing Harry leave his bedroom and enter a different bathroom.
"Think we should do something about that?" asked Ginny.
"Give them ten minutes to get all clean and ready for bed. Then we'll talk," answered Hermione, grabbing the crystal ball from its position on the counter and staring interestedly into it. Her female friend shrugged and picked a berry out of the bowl that Harry had recently filled.
"Ron, I'm not sure this water's very safe to swim in," said Harry uneasily, standing apprehensively at the pond's edge and gazing distastefully into the tea-colored liquid. "I think I see leeches."
He, Ron, and Mr. Weasley were taking a break from finding firewood, and had wandered off into the forest in search of some refreshment from the scorching hot noonday sun. The pond they had discovered was surely a sight of natural beauty- a gentle waterfall trickled onto smooth rocks at the far side of the pool, and willow trees overhung the east side. Turtles sat stupidly on a lazily floating rotten log, and Ron was splashing around in the shallow end.
"Oh, don't be selfish," said Ron, spitting out a fountain of water, "Leeches need to eat, too." He lifted his arm out of the pond, and observed three dark shapes hanging off it. "I'm naming this one Roger."
Harry looked on in shock and disgust. "I don't see how you can be so deathly terrified of spiders, who can't even hurt you, but can stand there and give names to those little bloodsucking slugs." He found a small boulder at the water's edge, and sat upon it. "I'd rather not sacrifice myself for their comfort."
Mr. Weasley came tromping down the nearby hill, hands full of small brown eggs. "Look what I found!" he cried, jogging towards where Harry sat and showing him the discovery. "I've got a great spell to fry these with."
"Cool," said Harry, gently picking an egg out of Arthur's hands and holding it up to the sun. However, no light shone through a certain bird- shaped spot in the middle. "Oh no, we can't eat these," he said, giving the egg back to Mr. Weasley, "There are baby birds growing inside of them."
Arthur shrugged. "We can still fish then, eh?" He looked towards Ron, who was spooking the poor turtles, causing them to slip off of their log. "Oy! See any trout in there?"
Ron paddled back towards the shallow part of the pond so that he could see through the water to the murky, brown bottom. "Erm...there are loads of little buggie things...and what looks like a miniature lobster, might be a crayfish...oh, there are nasty little olive-green plants down here too. I don't see any big fish."
"Quite a shame," said his father, still holding the precious eggs. "You mind eating bird fetuses?"
"Can't say, I've never tried those," answered Ron. He looked up towards Harry, who was observing the two from his position on the sun- warmed rock. "Harry! You ever eat a bird fetus?"
Harry gaped, his green eyes wide in contempt. "Of course not! Wait a minute- are you seriously considering frying those baby birds?"
"Well I don't know," answered Mr. Weasley, turning the eggs about in his hands as he thought, "I didn't pack much food, I suppose I was so preoccupied with the prospect of camping that I overloaded the tent with kayaks instead of hotdogs."
"Maybe the girls can cook something for us," offered Ron, violently shaking the water out of his hair and causing it to stick up in the air like thousands of little red spikes.
"With what?" asked Harry, "We're the men, we've got to provide for them. Maybe there are fish in other ponds, or that big lake down by the cliffs."
"I say we mount an expedition!" announced Mr. Weasley, puffing up his chest. "And we don't return until we've got enough food to last us for the next three days!"
Ron scrambled out of the pond, standing proudly next to his father. "Yeah! What d'you say, Harry?"
"I say that you're positively covered in leeches."
Indeed, there were at least twenty of the little fellows stuck to his legs alone. Ron winced as he picked each of them off, leaving himself covered in tiny red circles where the creatures had stuck themselves to him.
Arthur watched silently as his son painfully wrenched the small vampires off of his dripping wet body. "Well that's a bit of a bad omen to start our expedition with."
"You think we'll find anything?" asked Harry, "You know, after that bad omen with Ron..."
"Of course!" cried Mr. Weasley. "We're bound to find something or another in this forest, eh? Now as for it being edible, I'm not quite sure."
The youngest Weasley present had finished drying himself off, and was now pulling his shirt on. He once again shook his head so that his damp hair stuck out savagely. "Isn't there some charm or spell you could use to locate the edible stuff for us?"
"Probably," answered his father, shrugging. "But even if I knew it perfectly, I wouldn't use it."
The boys stared at him in alarm.
"And why not?"
"Yeah, I'm hunnnnnngry!"
"Because that's not the Muggle way," responded Mr. Weasley, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "AND-" he added, noting the stricken looks on the teen's faces, "I agreed to take you camping in the mountains ONLY if we could do a few things the way Muggles do them. That's how I got off work for these few days; I told them I was doing research on non-magical survival techniques."
Harry seemed strangely pacified by those last few words. "Oh, alright! So you've read some books on how to hunt and start fires, right? So we won't die out here, RIGHT?"
Arthur glanced around nervously. "Erm...no, I didn't quite have the chance to read anything..."
"Oh GOD," cried Ron, holding his face in his hands and slowly shaking his head back and forth. "Dad's gone starkers and he won't use magic to feed us."
"We'll still eat!" quickly amended Mr. Weasley, "Listen, if we don't find anything, I'll whip something up with a nice spell, alright?"
"But you don't know the cooking spells," argued Ron, "MUM knows the cooking spells."
"You know what? That doesn't matter, because we're going to kill plenty of fish and rabbits, and pick loads of berries, and I won't even need to use magic in the first place."
***
Back at camp, Hermione was lying in the warm, luxurious sunlight of the mountain clearing and writing a Charms essay. She was working on the conclusion when footsteps grew progressively louder behind her, and stopped at her feet. Fighting the urge to turn around because she knew exactly who it was, she pretended to concentrate very hard on writing the letter "t".
"Hey Hermione," said a light female voice.
The now slightly perturbed writer placed her quill into her ink bottle, and rolled over onto her back to face Ginny, who was looking less than happy in a pink pleated skirt that matched the new shade of her hair.
"Do you know where the men are?" she asked, pulling at her skirt and brushing a white streaked lock of hair behind her ear.
"Well, they left for firewood about...seven hours ago," answered Hermione, shading her eyes against the afternoon glare. "So no, I guess I don't know where they are."
Uncomfortable silence followed. Ginny pulled at her skirt again.
"Are you mad at me or something?"
Hermione shook her head. "No. Why would I be mad at you?
"I dunno," said Ginny, shrugging. "It just seems like you've been avoiding me all day." When the older girl didn't answer immediately, Ginny added, "...Have you?"
Once again, Hermione paused before responding. "So I hear you kissed Harry."
Ginny jumped, and appeared slightly ruffled. "Erm...right. Right, I did."
"Why?"
"Because..." Suddenly she gained a bit of indignant courage. "Because I wanted to! I'm not a little girl anymore, I have sexual urges just like the rest of you."
The expression on Hermione's face remained solid and composed. "You want to have sex with Harry?
Ginny made sort of a squawking noise, and leapt backwards. "I- I- NO! That's not what I meant! Well, I guess I wouldn't turn him down if he offered...but I wasn't thinking that at all!"
Hermione shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"Why are you being so hostile?" asked Ginny, "You're acting like Malfoy right now, honestly, what's your problem today?"
"I don't know," said Hermione, sighing deeply and losing the hardened expression on her face, "It's like...I don't know how to put this in other terms, but right now I just resent you."
"For what?" curiously inquired Ginny.
"Because that was MY kiss!" cried Hermione, letting her feelings pour out. "I wanted to kiss Harry, I wanted to give him that dramatic passionate kiss, but NO, you do it before I can! Sure, maybe you're less shy about that sort of stuff, but...oh Ginny, I'm so jealous."
Ginny clasped her hands to her chest. "No, I'M sorry; I should have told you about it beforehand. It's all my fault!"
"No, it's my fault!" cried Hermione.
"I'm so sorry!"
"No, I should be the sorry one! I was so mean to you!"
They embraced each other tightly. "I'm so glad we're women and not idiot men," said Ginny, pulling out of the hug.
"Yeah, we have enough sense to apologize when we go too far," added Hermione.
The girls sat facing each other on the rough country grass, their legs crossed and their hands clasped in their laps. They chattered for a while about school, friends, handsome young men, and Italian food. The sun was beginning to set, and twenty toenails had been painted sparkly lavender, when the duo realized that their male counterparts had been missing for nearly ten hours.
Ginny pictured the worst: her father wounded, and her brother being mauled by a bear, as Harry tried to intercept the beast's blows.
Hermione pictured the most rational situation: Mr. Weasley was looking dumbfounded as he tried to read his upside-down map, Ron was throwing rocks into the shadowy darkness of the twilight forest, and Harry was trying to find the direction to the tent by licking his finger and holding it up to the wind.
The reality was that all of the men were really quite unharmed, and knew their way back to camp. The reason that they hadn't returned yet was because they were having little luck at finding food. When fishing ended up yielding only several sickly trout, and only one rabbit had been stabbed to death by Mr. Weasley's magically sharpened wand tip, Harry had resorted to picking roots and berries while the two redheads leapt about the trees like savages in their quest for sustenance.
"Listen mates," said Harry, exhausted from a day in the wild, "We really should go home, the girls have been alone for near ten hours and they're probably thinking we're dead."
Ron turned around from his perch in a tree branch, holding a mesh bag of deceased fish that were starting to stink. "You know what? You're absolutely right. But my dad won't go back until we've filled our quota of dead creatures."
"Well," sighed Harry, "I don't think we're going to catch anything in this darkness. I can barely see you in that birch up there, I don't know how three clumsy blokes are gonna successfully kill those agile little nocturnal creatures." Ron nodded and peered into the shadows, trying to escry his father's lean figure.
"Dad!" he called, "Dad! Where ARE you?"
"Right here!" responded a far-off male voice. "I think I spot something!"
The boys paused, trying to hear the details of Mr. Weasley's hunt. Something crashed through the underbrush, a man yowled, and then another crashing noise before complete silence.
"Let's just go!" cried Ron in the direction of the activity.
"Wait! Wait I think I've got a chance with this one!" responded Arthur's disembodied voice.
Ron sighed and leaned his tousled red hair against the tree trunk, gazing pathetically at Harry. "I want to go home," he half-whimpered, half- snapped. "I'm tired, I'm starving, and I'm sick of the forest. And- and LOOK at this, I'm carry a bag of smelly dead fish. I'm sitting in a bloody tree right in the middle of the bloody fecking night, carrying- of all things, of ALL things Harry, a bag of dead fish. Can it get ANY worse?"
A pause. An owl hooted, and pine trees bristled in the evening breeze.
"You know," said Harry, holding up the bottom hem of his shirt so that it held at least two pounds of roots and berries, "Now that you asked that, you KNOW it's going to get worse somehow. You just screwed yourself, mate."
"I miss the girls," remarked Ron thoughfully.
"Me too," agreed Harry.
***
Meanwhile, the girls were not idle in the tent. Ginny had revealed the crystal ball that Ron really hated to Hermione, who was now eyeing it with interest as she sat on the counter, picking at her fingernails.
"I think we should use that thing," she said, staring at it intensely.
Ginny stood up from the couch and walked over to the counter, picking up the orb and setting it in her lap as she sat at a barstool.
"Who d'you want to look at?" she asked.
"Harry and Ron, of course," replied Hermione, "I'm really anxious to know why they aren't home yet.
The young redhead concentrated deeply upon the ball, and boldy stated her brother's name.
It was deep blue twilight. A lanky, freckled young man was sitting in a tree, lazily swinging back and forth a mesh bag. A slender boy with almandine-shaped green eyes and pale skin was leaning against the tree which already contained his friend, and was staring at some mysterious item that was sitting in his upturned shirt. The adult was nowhere to be found, and his son spat upon the ground. A nightingale flew past the scene, and the dark-haired teen briefly closed his eyes.
"I wonder what they're doing right now," said the boy reclined upon the tree branch.
"Hermione is probably reading or writing or doing some other boring thing," answered the second person, "and Ginny is...Ginny is...well I don't think I know her well enough to judge what she'd be doing. Maybe trying to get those ridiculous stripes out of her hair."
"Not to sound loony or anything," slowly began the firey-haired young man, "But those colors look a bit cool. I mean, it's like...like some trendy new fashion you'd see in Teen Witch magazine.
The other boy was quiet for several moments before responding. "That was weird, Ron. I think you need to eat something, or rest a little. Tell your dad we're heading back, he can meet us back at the tent later."
The father was informed, and the two males left their positions against the birch and began trekking home through the brambles and creeks. They hopped over ditches and kicked flowers, all the while the taller boy swung his mesh bag and the shorter boy stared sleepily at the ground. At one point the mesh bag charged off course, and smacked the green-eyed boy in the face. The victim of the attack yelled angrily and wiped his cheek disgustedly while the antagonist tried hard not to laugh.
Just as Ginny lost her concentration and the image faded into mist, male voices stomped and clattered through the tent's entrance. Minutes later, a dirt-stained Harry trudged into the kitchen, pulled a bowl from the cupboard and dumped the contents of his shirt into it. Ron followed shortly afterwards, and tossed the mesh bag into the sink. The girls watched silently as their friends walked right past them down the hallway without saying a word of greeting or how they spent the last ten hours.
"Well that was strange," said Ginny, watching her brother disappear into a hallway bathroom.
"They didn't even acknowledge us," added Hermione, seeing Harry leave his bedroom and enter a different bathroom.
"Think we should do something about that?" asked Ginny.
"Give them ten minutes to get all clean and ready for bed. Then we'll talk," answered Hermione, grabbing the crystal ball from its position on the counter and staring interestedly into it. Her female friend shrugged and picked a berry out of the bowl that Harry had recently filled.