CHAPTER SIX: MODERN TEEN WITCH
"Where were you last night?"
It took Harry a moment to realize the voice was speaking to him. He looked up from his breakfast, a little surprised to find that it was Ron who was talking to him.
"I was here," Harry answered, even though he knew the reply wouldn't be good enough to satisfy Ron's curiousity.
"What I meant was you didn't sleep in the dorm last night," Ron said, clarifying his earlier question.
For someone who had spent most of yesterday pretending he didn't exist, Ron was showing an obnoxious interest in his nighttime whereabouts. "I was with Cho," he said quietly, hoping that Ron would get the message and drop the subject.
"So you spent the night with her but the other day you didn't even want to go up and say hi to her?"
He couldn't have said it any louder. Dean and Seamus had stopped their conversation to stare at him with curious expressions, and even Neville looked interested. Harry noticed Ginny sitting on the other side of Neville. She gave him a quick look he couldn't interrupt before going back to her breakfast.
"Nothing happened," Harry said in a hushed voice.
There were snickers from Dean and Seamus. Their brains couldn't fathom the possibility that a seventeen-year old guy could spend an entire night with a girl and have nothing happened.
"We just talked, that's all," he insisted, growing annoyed. "Now, can you guys drop it?"
He wasn't sure if they believed him, but that was their problem. He wasn't about to make up some erotic story about the other night with Cho just for his friends listening pleasure. The damage had already been done though. Watching Ginny pour over her morning post, he wondered how much of the conversation she had heard.
"Is that Lavender's magazine you're reading?" Ron asked Seamus, mildly disgusted that he would want to read anything to do with 'women stuff.'
"Have you seen the pictures in this thing?" Seamus said to him. He closed the magazine and showed Ron the cover of Modern Teen Witch. A very pretty brunette was winking at them from the cover. "I borrowed it from Lavender,"
Ron knew a better word might have been 'stolen.' "You have a girlfriend, Finnigan, why do you need to look at that for?"
"So do you Ron," Dean spoke up in defense of his friend, "but I'm sure you still look,"
"Well, maybe on occasion," Ron admitted. It was true, he and Harry talked about other girls sometimes but that didn't mean he loved Hermione any less. "But I don't start flipping through Modern Teen Witch looking at the photos," he added as an afterthought.
Seamus pointed to the brunette on the cover. "Are you telling me you don't think she's attractive?"
"She's pretty enough I suppose," he said with a shrug.
"Neville," Seamus said turning to their accident-prone friend, "do you think she's attractive?"
"Very," he responded, his face reddening.
Turning back to Ron, Seamus said, "then why don't you look through this, Ron, and find someone you like,"
He pushed it across the table so it landed in front of Ron, who cast a sidelong look at Harry before opening it.
Harry shrugged in return. He had no desire to flip through a female magazine and read about all the different things teenage girls said about guys. He felt he was better off not knowing.
"Morning," Hermione said cheerfully, joining them at the table.
"Morning!" Ron said a little too quickly in return. He kissed her while trying to maneuver the magazine out of sight with his free hand.
"What are you looking at?" She asked, interested.
"Uh, nothing," he said lamely, trying in vain to cover it with his hand. "It was just some magazine Seamus wanted to show me. It's all about Quidditch, you wouldn't be interested,"
Hermione wasn't daft. The worst thing Ron could have done was lie to her when she was sitting right there and from her vantage point could clearly tell it wasn't Quidditch, even with his hand covering half the page.
She lifted his hand from the page covering a photo of a blonde witch, showing off the new summer line of bathing suits. Every few seconds the picture would change and she would be clothed in a different one.
"You know, you'd be surprised at the amount of good articles Modern Teen Witch has," he said to her. "Right?" He shot meaningful looks at the other Gryffindor boys.
"A good read," said Seamus automatically.
"Very," Dean agreed, nodding.
"And the photos are amazing," Neville supplied.
Ron visibly cringed. Putting on his best innocent expression he turned to look at Hermione. He found his breathing slowed back to normal when she didn't appear angry. She didn't even seem to care for she was already reaching for the jug of orange juice and unfolding her morning copy of the Daily Prophet. Not wanting to put his foot in his mouth any further, he pushed the magazine back to Seamus. "Thanks, Seamus,"
"Hey, my magazine," said Lavender Brown, sitting down on the bench beside Seamus. "If you wanted to look at the pictures that badly you could have asked instead of just taking it," she scolded him. She was speaking to Seamus but she was glaring daggers at her boyfriend Dean when she said it.
"Did you get all of the transfiguration homework?" Ron asked Hermione, hoping to draw her away from the conversation.
"I did, yes,"
"Then maybe you could check over mine to make sure I did it right?"
Harry smirked into his food. Ron was using homework to take Hermione's attention off the magazine, and it seemed to be working. His quick thinking had probably saved him from a very embarrassing row in front of the entire Great Hall.
He suddenly felt very alone at the Gryffindor table. He and Neville were the only seventh year boys who hadn't managed to find themselves girlfriends. You might be lonely but you're not alone, Hermione's words came back to him. Instinctively, he found himself looking down the table at the spot occupied by Ginny Weasley only moments before.
It was the first and probably last Friday where Harry and his fellow seventh years had received only a minimal amount of homework from each of their professors. After the other Gryffindor boys had left him abandoned to a table by himself (likely to spend time with their significant other), he spotted Ginny sitting alone on the couch by the fire, scribbling on a piece of parchment with a textbook open beside her.
"Hey," he greeted, walking over to where she was stationed.
"Hi," she said, barely looking up from her work.
"What are you working on?" He asked with as much interest as he could.
"The first half of my Potions homework,"
"Need any help?"
"No, I'm fine, thanks,"
He was bothered by her distant behaviour. She wasn't exactly acting cold towards him but she didn't seem to be too interested in talking to him either, leaving Harry to speculate if it had anything to do with what she had overheard at breakfast.
He moved so he was sitting on the arm of the couch, his feet resting on the cushions beside her hand. "Er, you know nothing happened with me and Cho last night,"
"What?" She said distractedly, looking up from her work.
"I spent the night in her room, but nothing happened,"
"It's really not any of my business," she said briskly.
He was confused. Why was she acting like this? He'd seen the way she'd looked at him in the Great Hall, like he had committed some gigantic scandal. "I just wanted you to know that all we did was talk. We're really good friends, but that's it,"
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Harry, okay? I'm not your mother,"
Of course you're not because she's dead. The comment stung a lot more than he would have liked.
"I'm heading up to bed," he said stiffly. "I've got an early practice tomorrow,"
She looked sorry for what she had said, but regardless of that he climbed the stairs to the seventh year boy's dorm, deciding sleep was definitely in order. His last thought before his head hit the pillow was why anyone even bothered with relationships. To Harry, girls seemed like one, gigantic headache.
"You're pretty quiet tonight," said Ron, running his fingers through Hermione's hair. She was lying snuggled up against his chest and hadn't said much more than a couple of sentences in the last half hour.
"I just have some things on my mind," she told him.
They had come up to her room earlier that evening to get started on their five-foot long parchment for Professor Lupin on the ten most commonly used defensive tactics for wizards. They had gotten barely a foot written when Ron realized her heart just wasn't in it and suggested they take a break. Usually she would fight him on it, but not that night. That told him there was definitely something wrong.
For now, their parchment and books sat on one side of the bed, while they laid on the other half. He had a feeling he knew what was bugging her, even it seemed utterly ridiculous to him.
"You're not still thinking about that magazine, are you?" He asked her.
"No,"
She was one of the worst liars he'd ever met, even worse then Harry – and that was saying something. "I told you Seamus handed me the magazine and I was just quickly flipping through it," he said sitting up.
Hermione moved so she was sitting in a cross-legged position. "Why did you lie then?"
He heaved a sigh. "Because I knew you'd get all worked up like you are right now, and it would be for no reason."
She wished she knew why it was bothering her so much. She was thinking it was just a stupid magazine when she felt Ron tilting her chin up.
"Hermione, I love you," he said looking her straight into her brown eyes. "None of those witches in that stupid magazine can even compare to you. Now do you really want to fight about this?"
"We're not fighting," she clarified, "we're having a discussion,"
"I'm not going to apologize for looking at it, if that's what you're waiting for. In case you haven't noticed, Hermione, I'm a bloke! There's nothing wrong with looking. I'm sure you do it,"
She looked at him sharply, but he was right. Dating Ron didn't mean that she ignored the fact that there were other guys at Hogwarts, but that didn't mean he had to go and point that out. "So you're saying you wouldn't have a problem with me looking at other guys?"
"Are you crazy? Of course I don't want you checking out other blokes!"
She found she was growing as irritated with him as he probably was with her. "So you can look, but I can't, is that it?"
"Is there someone in particular you're interested in?" He wanted to know. "It's probably that Ravenclaw Nancy boy, Preston. Someone needs to tell him that being Head Boy isn't a sacred duty to mankind,"
"His name's, Paul," she informed him, "and he may be very studious, but he's actually a very nice guy,"
"Why don't you go be his girlfriend then, since you seem to fancy him so much,"
"Ron, you're being ridiculous,"
"I'm being ridiculous? Who's the one who's getting all worked up over some bloody magazine?"
Maybe she was getting worked up over nothing, but Ron wasn't helping matters. "I think you should go," she said, keeping her eyes fixed on her comforter.
"You're kicking me out because of this?" He exclaimed incredulously. She couldn't be serious. She was blowing the whole Modern Teen Witch thing way out of proportion. When he realized that she being serious, he got off the bed and began shoving his books in a hurried fashion into his school bag. When he reached her door he turned around and said, "next time don't tell me I'm the one who's always starting stupid fights,"
Then he flung the door open and let it slam shut behind him.