"Hermione!" both teenagers shouted. Harry and Ginny made a mad scramble to clean themselves up, put their shirts back on (although Harry accidentally put on Ginny's shirt once) and get themselves picked up enough to be able to go downstairs.

Suddenly, as they were both nearly ready to return—

"HARRY AND GINNY ARE DOING WHAT?" Ron shouted.

Harry cringed.

"HARRY! HARRY I'M GOING TO KILL YOU—!"

"RON! DON'T!" Hermione shouted.

There was a creak and a crash.

"Ow," said Ron.

"Idiot," said Hermione.

Harry and Ginny opened the door and spotted the stairway, which had disappeared into a long slope.

"Ron?" Ginny tried.

"GINNY!" said Ron. "GET DOWN HERE!"

"RON, YOU PRAT, STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!"

"I'm going to kill you, Harry!" Ron called up.

"Ron!" said Harry. "You're back!"

"DON'T ACT ALL HAPPY TO SEE ME YOU HOUND DOG!" Ron shouted. "I LEAVE FOR TEN SECONDS AND YOU START BANGING MY SISTER!"

"RON!" shouted Ginny and Hermione instantly.

"Just a second," Ginny said, suddenly poised to kill. She pulled out her wand.

"Ginny..." said Harry cautiously, attempting to grab the back of her shirt. "Don't do anything you'll regret..."

Harry was now trapped upstairs completely.

"Ron, for the last time—!"

"What is the matter with you? Huh? What is the matter with you? You're acting like some kind of crazy—"

"Crazy what, exactly, Ron? Hm? Answer that sentence and I'll finally be able to try out that Crucio thing Bella's so fond of—!"

"GINNY!" Harry said, stepping onto to the stair instinctively. This was a mistake.

"Argh!" Harry cried, as the staircase creaked and turned into the slope once more.

"There you are you stupid—"

Ron grabbed Harry's shirt collar, called him a few dirty names, pulled him off the ground, and pointed his wand right into Harry's face.

"Ron!" said Hermione, pulling out her own wand.

"DO IT AND I FINISH YOU RON!" Ginny screeched.

"What? You're going to kill your own brother?" Ron shouted at her, indignant.

"And you're going to kill your own best friend?" asked Hermione.

Ron looked back at Harry.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Hermione shouted, pointing her wand at Ron.

Ron's wand flipped out of his hand and disappeared behind a couch.

"Hey!" said Ron, dropping Harry. He whirled on Hermione, furious.

"You weren't honestly going to kill him, Ron," said Hermione rolling her eyes. Ginny was still holding up her wand, glaring.

"He's been having sex with Ginny, Hermione!" Ron shouted, pointing at Harry.

"Yes, and you've been having sex with me—" Harry turned green "—as EVERYONE knows, so just get over it. He doesn't deserve to die," said Hermione, putting her wand in her pocket.

Ron turned and looked at Harry in a loathing way.

"Look, Ron—"

And Ron punched him in the nose.

Harry stumbled backwards and hit the wall.

"OW," said Harry. "Mother fu—"

"RON!" shouted Ginny, running to Harry's side. "You idiot."

"Stop being an idiot now, Ron, will you?" asked Hermione, bored.

Ginny took one look at Harry's nose and whirled on Ron—she punched him back.

"OW!" said Ron, tripping over a chair and stumbling into it. Hermione walked over to him and looked at his face.

"You're not hurt," she said.

"Stop being a bitch!" Ron yelled at her.

"WELL STOP BEING A JACKASS!" she screeched, storming up the stairs to the girls' dormitory.

"HEY!" Ron shouted. "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

He followed her up, still yelling. She slammed the door behind the both of them—there was yelling, muffled arguing, and then nothing.

"Hypocrite," said Ginny, rubbing Harry's nose.

"Nice to have them back," said Harry bitterly.

"Well they didn't really find out in the best way," said Ginny. "We should have just told Hermione or something, so she could tell him when they were in the middle of...well, you know."

"Ugh," said Harry.

"Well, she's got to get him in a good mood."

"And hearing that his best friend and his sister have been—well, you know—for a month and a half wouldn't kill the magic, then, would it?"

"Well...there's always tomorrow. Or an hour later. You know how they are."

"Point taken," said Harry.

Harry and Ginny took a walk in the courtyard and decided to stay as far away from the Common Room as they could manage—it wasn't until that evening that they saw Hermione and Ron again, in the Great Hall, for dinner.

Harry and Ginny sat down across from McGonagall, voting that to be the safest spot. Rebekah and Alex came in a few minutes later, sat down next to Binns, and started to ask him about death. Ron and Hermione came in, widely welcomed, and sat down at the end of the table, as far away from Harry and Ginny as they could manage. Rebekah stared at Harry, eyebrows raised. Alex shot him an evil grin.

"How ever did you find her?" asked a young Hufflepuff dreamily, staring at them with wide-eyed admiration.

"Er, well—" said Ron.

Hermione raised her eyebrow, gave him a doubtful look, and neither of them said anything.

"Well, er—it was nothing," said Ron, and both of them fell silent. Rebekah giggled.

"My guess is that the s—"

"It was nothing!" said Hermione. "I really wasn't all that lost. You know...the...he didn't really have to look."

No one said anything.

Harry and Ginny had a nice conversation between the two of them, but it both were quite curious about how Ron actually did find Hermione. Neither of them were sure they'd ever be able to ask, however, seeing as how Ron and Harry seemed to be quite in to punching each other.

Harry and Ginny giggled themselves all the way back to the Common Room (full of smuggled firewhiskey from Rebekah and Alex) and stumbled through the door.

"EW!" said Ginny. "STOP THAT, BOTH OF YOU!"

Ron and Hermione were all over each other on the couch in front of the fireplace. Ron's hair was all stuck up in the back and Hermione's face was flushed.

"You should knock, you know," said Ron, pushing Hermione off of him.

"You should do that in private," said Alex, tripping completely on her way through the door and sliding on to the floor with a crack. As usual, her and Rebekah were the more drunk than everyone else in the castle combined.

"I'll take you to the candy shop!" Rebekah sang badly, staggering through the door. She grabbed Ginny for support. "I'm good," she said.

"I'll let you lick the lollypop," sang Alex. They started giggling. Alex and Rebekah started to dance.

"SHAKE THAT LAFFY-TAFFY!" they sang, dancing around.

"Whoops," said Rebekah, and she fell on her arse.

"I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger!" said Rebekah.

"But she ain't messing with no broke—broke!"

"Can you two can it for awhile," said Ginny, rolling her eyes.

"Ooh, the pregnant girl's angry, imagine that," said Alex, opening up another bottle of firewhiskey.

"Ok," said Harry, sitting down across from Ron and Hermione a safe distance away. "What happened?"

Ron and Hermione glanced at each other.

"Well..." Ron started.

Ginny sat down next to Harry. Rebekah pulled herself up off the floor slowly and draped her arms over the couch.

"My guess," she said, blasting Harry and Ginny with stale whiskey-breath, "is that...that, he was using his sex-sense."

They stared.

"Hah," said Alex from somewhere on the floor. "You're like Spider-man, only dirtier. "

Rebekah plopped back onto the floor and crawled over to the coffee table between the two couches.

"Anyway," said Hermione, rolling her eyes. "Well, the Death Eaters took me to Hogsmeade and apparated to somewhere in London—"

"London?" asked Harry, surprised.

"Yeah, well—someone found out that Ron was after me, trying to get me back—"

She beamed at him randomly.

"Well, so, the Death Eaters decided that they didn't want some obnoxious little prat after us, so they went looking for him too...

"They brought him back, and they locked him in the room next to mine, but they hadn't said anything to us in days...I couldn't figure out what they wanted, because they used to come up to me and say things like "You should be proud! Even if you are a mudblood" and stupid things like that...so, I didn't know what to do.

"Well, then, one night, Ron was in the room next to me, and heard all the Death Eaters go into the room. They were talking, I heard some shouting, and then—well, suddenly..."

Hermione went silent. Her eyes got really red, and she looked at Ron.

Harry and Ginny stared at them.

"They, uh..." said Ron, itching his nose. "They wanted to know something about Ginny, I told them to go do something to themselves, and they used the crucio curse on me—"

"I got so angry," said Hermione, sniffing, "that the door just...exploded. I walked in there, punched Neville, stole his wand, and—"

"—Rictusempra'd the bloody hell out of them," finished Ron.

"The door exploded?" asked Ginny doubtfully.

"Yeah, well," said Hermione, scratching her head. "You know how they said that sometimes when a wizard gets angry, or whatever..."

"So we left," said Ron.

"We went back to the Leaky Cauldron," said Hermione.

"Shagged the bloody hell out of each other," said Ron.

Ginny, Harry, Rebekah, and Alex's jaws all dropped.

"Ew," said Ginny, turning red.

"Speaking of the sex," said Alex, and she got up. She staggered over to the door, opened it, and screamed "DRACO!"

Harry shivered.

"Right," said Rebekah. "That wasn't too much information at all."

"Honestly."

"ARGH!" screamed both Ron and Hermione.

Icicle was floating over in the corner, appalled.

"Icicle?" said Hermione, aghast. "You're dead!"

"Good one, smart girl," said Icicle bitterly.

Hermione looked over at Harry, confused.

"She, uh—" tried Harry. "She poisoned herself."

"Why would you kill yourself only to come back as a ghost?" asked Ron, confused. "Isn't that the same as living?"

"Like you would know," she spat.

"It was an accident," said Ginny, shaking her head. "She was cutting herself, and the knife was poisoned."

Hermione giggled.