Chapter 7
It was once more to the sounds of muttering that Hermione awoke the next morning. She didn't feel any better than she had the day before and for a moment didn't find it odd that she'd returned to her hospital bed without any recollection of how it had happened. When the realization did come it did so with a wave of dizziness for she'd sat up in bed in order to better locate the voice that had woken her up. Any concern she may have felt at having mysteriously been moved vanished instantly.
"Off" she muttered as she waited for her eyes to come back into focus and for the spots to vanish from her view.
When she was able to see properly again, she zoned in on the mutters she was still hearing. She almost expected to see Dobby or one of the other house elves about, for that was exactly what the voice sounded like, but instead she saw that it was Ron who was pacing at the other side of the room, hands clasped behind his back, and head down turned. He almost reminded her of Percy, minus the glasses, walking back and forth that way, and the idea was so preposterous that she might have laughed at it. Percy and Ron were about as alike as Harry and his cousin Dudley.
She couldn't hear what he was saying from her position on the bed but he didn't look very happy, that was for sure.
"Ron? What are you muttering about?" she asked as she rubbed her eyes, throwing the blankets off of her and setting foot on the cold stone floor.
Ron stopped pacing and talking immediately and turned toward her.
"That woman," he started, pointing vaguely in the direction of the infirmary exit.
"Who? Professor McGonagall?" Hermione asked, trying to clarify things.
"No," Ron answered. "Madam Pomfrey," he said. "Do you know what she?...She actually thinks…She's got something else coming to her if she actually believes…arrgh!" he threw up his hands in frustration and Hermione could only watch, attempting to figure out what he was on about.
"Complete sentences may help right about now, Ron," Hermione said and Ron shot her a look. His voice was still hoarse from his cold but it was now also incredibly cracky in his excitement. He almost sounded fourteen again.
"That nurse is imprisoning us in here for a week. A week, Hermione, that's seven days! How dare she do that? We're not even that sick!" though the last words came out as squeaks as his voice broke again.
Hermione might have said something had she not been in so much shock. A week? But, they were already missing one day of school today and Hermione had been planning on convincing Madam Pomfrey to attend her afternoon classes. But if the matron had already stated her intentions to keep them in here for an entire week, odds were she'd be hard-pressed to change her mind any time soon.
"Are you sure?" Hermione asked. Her voice had become nothing more than a squeak as well though not because of the news that she'd be spending a week in the infirmary but because of the sudden realization that she'd be spending a week in the infirmary with Ron. The idea alone was making her palms sweat and her heart beat at an inordinate rate. She was going to be spending a week, seven days, with him in the same room, in the bed next to his…of course he didn't seem to be seeing it in the same light. He seemed downright disgusted with the idea, in fact. A flash of disappointed bitterness slashed through her and she had to turn away from him, heading back to her bed to tidy up the sheets even though she knew very well that sometime during the day a house elf would be tending to it.
"Hermione, you can talk to her; she'll listen to you, won't she? She has to." But Hermione neglected to answer, not trusting her voice not to crack. Funny how she could go from total elation to absolute heartache in the space of two minutes. Why had she gone and fallen for her best friend, anyway? Why did stuff like this always happen to her?
~*~
The third of seven days in the infirmary passed just as the first two had. Ron was bored out of his mind and wanted more than ever to get out of the infirmary. He'd even told Hermione the night before that he would have taken Potions over the torture Madam Pomfrey was inflicting upon them. Of course, this wasn't absolutely true for there was on big advantage to being stuck in the infirmary with Hermione: he was stuck in the infirmary with Hermione. The fact was that she made it more than bearable to be here. In fact, he almost—okay, not even almost; he downright did enjoy being her with her. She just didn't seem to be sharing his views and the fact that she so obviously despised being there with him was indication enough for Ron that there was no way that she reciprocated his feelings…feelings that Ron now admitted fully to himself despite the fear that his feelings for her were in fact growing every day. Of course, she seemed completely uninterested, and why should she be anything otherwise when he was nothing to her but a friend? He'd probably be nothing but that to her for the rest of his life. Girls like Hermione just didn't go for blokes like him. Why would they? Okay, he and Hermione got along better than anyone he knew, and okay they'd been friends for seven years, had faced death together countless times and had probably seen more of each other than most couples and Hogwarts had, but point was that she was Hermione, the most amazing girl he'd ever known and he, well, he was just Ron. No wonder she didn't have any feelings for him. And here he was, absolutely and completely enamored with this girl.
"Ron, what are you doing?" he heard her ask from the next bed and pulled back the curtain between them in order to look at her.
"Nothing," he replied, glumly. It wasn't even lunchtime and already he was bored completely out of his head. "You?"
"Same," Hermione said. "I was reading but my head starts pounding every time I try working out one of these Arithmancy problems." Ron nearly snorted.
"Maybe Arithmancy is the problem rather than your head."
"Ron! Arithmancy is really a very valuable subject, you know! Merlin himself hailed its advantages and in 1783 Sir Richard Knightly of the Wizarding House of Earls said that—"
"Oy, Hermione, now I'm getting the headache," he cut her off before she could continue. Hermione sighed.
"Well, what do you want to do, then?" she asked. Harry had brought up Ron's chess set earlier in the week. He also brought up their homework daily though he wouldn't be there for another several hours.
Ron's chess pieces had gone on strike for they had been used too repetitively over the past few days. In lieu of using chess as a distraction, then, Ron and Hermione had had to devise unusually ways of diverting themselves.
"Bed pan snap?" Ron asked, knowing what the answer would be.
"Ha! I think not," Hermione replied huffily. They'd developed the game the day before. Essentially a deck of exploding cards was split in two between both players. Each player then took turns aiming cards at a series of bed pans a few feet away from them. The goal was to flick the cards at the bed pans in such a way as to make them explode. The further bed pans counted for more points, of course, but the problem was that upon exploding, the cards made a sooty mess of the pans. Madam Pomfrey had been livid at discovering this and had assigned each the task of cleaning said bedpans. The fact that they were practically fighting for their lives was apparently of no concern to the woman!
So, armed with a bar of soap each they had cleaned up the mess they'd made and in so doing had invented another game: soap rolling. It looked as though Hermione was thinking of the very game as Ron watched her eyes dart over to the storage cabinet and come back to meet his own.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.
She answered with a large grin and a twinkle in her eye.
~*~
"It's inside the line!" Hermione was protesting, but Ron shook his head.
"It's outside! Look, get up and come look at it from an aerial point," Ron argued. Hermione raised herself to her knees and leaned over to see, throwing him a "you are so going to be proven wrong" look as she did so.
"You see, I told you it was—grrr," she stopped mid sentence upon realizing that he was, of course, as right as could be. Ron bit his lip, then the inside of his cheek, and finally his tongue before he could hold it no longer. He burst out laughing.
"Oh, shut up," Hermione stuck her tongue out at him, her cheeks turning pink.
"Are you two still at it?" they heard a voice behind them and Ron turned to Harry, grinning.
"Are you kidding? Pretty soon we'll be forming our own association! We'll call it the SRA; that has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
"It sounds like some kind of government war group," Hermione wrinkled her nose.
"Exactly," Ron grinned and saw her roll her eyes. He also heard her mutter something that sounded suspiciously like "boys" but decided to let it go.
"So what's the damage?" Ron turned to Harry as his friend handed him a small stack of papers. Ron looked at the papers and smiled. "That's it, eh? Well that's not so bad."
"Actually," Harry answered, reaching into his rucksack, "that's for Herbology." He pulled out an enormous stack of notes and assignments. "The just wouldn't fit into my bag; these are the rest of the notes and we've a three-foot Potions assignment to complete for Friday. Snape made sure to mention that you two aren't excused no matter how sick you are."
"Still has that gherkin up his—"
"Ron!" came the expected admonition and both he and Harry grinned knowingly at each other. It was so easy to get Hermione going…which was probably why they did it as often as they could.
"Sorry, Hermione," he said in a sing-song voice and she fought a smile.
"Yeah, yeah," she laughed. He noticed that she did not start coughing as she might have originally. Obviously she was getting over her cold which was a good sign…though it doubtfully meant that they would be getting out of there anytime soon. Madam Pomfrey was as stubborn as they came, probably even more so than McGonagall for that matter. It didn't matter how many times he and Hermione begged to get out of the infirmary, every time the answer was exactly the same as the last. At least she hadn't blackmailed him again, at least not with words. This, he suspected, was due mostly to the fact that Hermione was always in the room when these conversations took place. Madam Pomfrey was a clever witch, after all, and would never risk the chance of revealing herself though the meaningful glares (usually followed by secretive smiles) let Ron know unequivocally that she certainly meant business.
"Well, I suppose I should leave you to your soap throwing," Harry broke into his thoughts, making as if to leave.
"Soap rolling, Harry," Hermione corrected him. "And please don't go yet? It's so boring when it's just the two of us. You've seen what we're capable of. Do you really want to leave us to our own devices? Pleaase?" she pouted, batting her eyelashes. Harry laughed and threw his hands up in defeat. Ron's heart skipped a beat at the victorious grin Hermione gave him and he managed a meek little smile in return.
"So," Harry broke the silence once more. "Show me how to play this game," he said and Ron was happy to turn away for a moment to get Harry a bar of "regulation" soap.
~*~
Night time was always the worst and most boring. No visitors were allowed after nine o'clock and Madam Pomfrey promptly kicked out any stragglers. Tonight it had been Neville who'd been shooed from the wing. He'd practically yelped when Madam Pomfrey had quite firmly announced that it was time for him to go, but he had given them an encouraging smile on his way out that told them to hang in there.
"How're we doing?" Ron asked Hermione. Having run out of any fun activity, they'd decided to get cracking on that day's homework pile. Ron had written all of two words of his Potions assignment—his name.
"Fin; I've finished copying down the Herbology notes and organized the new plants we're to learn in taxonomical order according to their Latin name, properties, and distinguishing characteristics. I also made a special section for those having medical properties. I haven't started my potions assignment but three feet is really nothing to worry too much about, especially considering how much there is to discuss on deprivation draughts. I could get three feet on just ocular deprivation draughts, especially after reading the Prophet article on the Irish wizard who accidentally put one in his neighbor's herd's drinking water and caused all the sheep to walk right over a cliff."
"Well if you're that gung-ho about it maybe you can help me write mine," Ron replied while he could get a word in edgewise. Hermione always got so excited about school. Even now she had a pinky glow to her cheeks and glitter in her eyes. Ron never felt that way about anything except maybe for Quidditch and chess. About school, though? He admitted that come the end of every summer there was an excitement at the prospect of returning to Hogwarts, every year with the resolution that he would be more like Hermione: more studious and less of a procrastinator. But about a week into classes, without fail, all of his good intentions crumbled. It seems as though Hermione was perpetually in that end of summer excitement stage, and it always amazed him to see her like this. But then again, he conceded, everything about her amazed him.
"We can go over it tomorrow, if you'd like," Hermione was telling him, snapping him back to reality. He nodded his head and gave her a non-committal "uh-huh." Hopefully she'd just give him the information he needed to write a mediocre paper and that would be that. Considering that Snape was still just as surly as ever, even if he handed in a stellar paper he wouldn't be seeing a grade fit for it, so what was the point in trying, anyway?
"I know what you're thinking, Ron, and if you think you can just regurgitate the information I give you into your paper then you're sadly mistaken. You should really try harder, Ron. You're really incredibly intelligent and yet it's like you don't care. You know if you tried just a little you could do so well."
"I'm doing okay," Ron defended.
"I know, and you barely do any work. Imagine how well you'd do if you just put some effort into it."
"Hermione—" Ron started. She'd been giving him this lecture for seven years and though he was flattered that she thought so highly of him, he knew that it was she who was sadly mistaken He certainly wasn't anywhere as intelligent as she seemed to think he was. "Hey, what's that?" he said wanting to change the subject. He pointed at the small roll of parchment hanging at the foot of her bed and saw that there was an identical, though slightly longer, roll at the foot of his. Hermione looked at what he was pointing.
"Oh, well they're our medical records, I would assume."
"You mean like what's wrong with us?"
"From the looks of it," Hermione unrolled her scroll, "it's everything we've ever been here for since we've gotten into Hogwarts."
"Wow, seven years of cuts and bruises and hexes gone awry," Ron marveled, scanning quickly over his files. "Imagine how thick Harry's scroll must be," Ron pointed out and Hermione chuckled.
"Or Neville's," she added and they both smiled.
"Hey, let me see yours," Ron said, holding out his parchment to her as means of a trade.
~*~
Hermione's eyes scanned quickly once over the scroll Ron had handed her before settling at the top and reading over each of the entries one at a time from when he'd been knocked out by the giant chess queen, to when he'd had his leg broken, to the night he'd been attacked by the brain. The most recent entry was very obviously the once concerning their present visit, but it was the entry just before that that caught her attention and made her chest constrict painfully.
The words blurred in front of her face as she read them, a list of bizarre symptoms which weren't "symptoms" at all and then a note in the margin in Madam Pomfrey's hand: "Mr. Weasley seems to be suffering every effect of someone having been administered a love potion though no such potion was detected in his system. As someone seemingly in love he is, however, denying such implications at this point. No treatment was administered."
Ron? In love? Hermione was afraid she would start crying. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Any second, now; any second the tears would come rolling down her cheeks and she'd make a fool out of herself. Could one feel one's heart break? Hermione certainly could feel her shatter at the realization that the one person she felt closest to in the entire universe, the one person she couldn't imagine living her life without, was in fact in love with another.