BLUE SEVENTEENS
This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.
Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewer, Bellegeste.
WARNING This fic contains HBP Spoilers. Enter at own risk if you haven't read HBP.
Hermione was not dawdling at the breakfast table in hopes of seeing Ron. People turned seventeen every day. She had better things to do with her time than watch him shovelling down his food or listen to him chattering about his presents and his plans or see him getting birthday kisses from his girlfriend. Of course she wasn't dawdling! It was just that the toast was so incredibly dry today that, even slathered with butter and raspberry jam, she needed to cut it into tiny squares to be able to swallow it.
Harry and Ginny hadn't come down either. She supposed bitterly that they must be still in Gryffindor Tower, celebrating with the birthday boy – man – prat. Unless Ginny was snogging Dean somewhere; he wasn't there either.
Parvati was cooing over what was obviously a birthday present in Lavender's hand, a rectangular box wrapped in red paper with voluptuous shiny pink hearts and blue seventeens dancing over it. Hermione thought she'd never seen anything so unrestrainedly ugly in her life.
"I don't know if I'll give it to him," Lavender was grumbling. "He was really strange this morning, mumbling something about one of those stupid fourth years, you know, the one with the long dark hair, Romania or Rheumatism or something."
Parvati shook her head, smiling.
"He probably just wanted to get it when you two were alone, more romantic that way -"
Hermione scowled at her plate. It had taken her over an hour to choke down one and a half slices. She didn't think she could manage any more. It all seemed stuck in a heavy spiky lump just past her tonsils. She reached out for her pumpkin juice to see if that could clear the obstruction.
Vaguely, she noticed that the Head Table seemed emptier and yet somehow louder than usual. Professor McGonagall wasn't there, though she hardly ever missed a meal, and Professor Slughorn was throwing up his hands in the air while the other teachers seemed to hang on his words. Odd! On any other day, she might have wondered what that was about. Not that there was anything special about today, of course. Everyone had to turn seventeen sometime.
She took a sip of juice and wrinkled her nose. Ugh, foul stuff! Were they using up last year's Halloween decorations or something? She pushed her glass away and stood up. The library would be open soon. Maybe she could find something to read till it was time for Apparition lessons.
Just before she reached the door, tall black billowing robes swept in front of her and turned to block her path. No doubt Professor Snape was glaring down at her with an even nastier sneer than usual on his pale grim face after that fight in his office two nights ago. Let him! She might have to listen to him here in the Great Hall in front of everybody, but she didn't have to look.
"Miss Granger," the hateful voice drawled. "Has unrequited passion prompted you to add poisoning to your list of exploits? Not quite up to your usual standards, I'm afraid, but if this experience doesn't teach him his lesson, no doubt you'll have many other opportunities."
What? Had the mystery attacker who put Katie in St Mungo's tried poison this time? And on Hogsmeade weekend again! So it hadn't been much use cancelling it, after all. But why was he accusing her? Her chest swelled but her head remained bowed.
"I don't know what you mean, sir," she muttered.
"No need to dissemble. Your impulse to rid the school of that empty-headed lout is eminently understandable, I'm sure."
She clenched her teeth. Who? Every boy except Malfoy was an empty-headed lout in Snape's eyes. She forced herself to take a deep calming breath before attempting to speak through gritted teeth.
"I didn't know there'd been another attack, sir, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. May I be excused, please?"
Snape loomed over her but she wasn't going to let him frighten her. He couldn't do anything here except threaten detentions or points docking. Probably he was looking for an excuse, but she didn't think he'd do it without one, not while she was under Professor Dumbledore's special protection.
"Presently," he said. "You're in rather a hurry for someone who claims to be innocent. Perhaps you can tell me who besides yourself had a reason to attack Mr Weasley?"
RON? The cheerful buzz of breakfast conversations became a hot roaring in her ears and the room spun. With Herculean effort, she forced the sick back down her throat to lie like stone just below her collarbone. Not that she cared if she threw up on Snape's boots, but it would probably delay the flow of information.
She stared up into cold black eyes. His sneer was quite as unpleasant as she'd expected. She didn't spare it a thought.
"What's happened to Ron?" she breathed. "Is he all right? Where is he?"
"It seems likely he'll recover. He's in the hospital wing under Madam Pomfrey's care. Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to your view, the poison was able to be neutralised by the rapid internal application of a bezoar." He moved past her through the door and down the corridor.
Immediately she darted past him, flinging over her shoulder, "I beg your pardon, sir, but I have to go."
She didn't notice at the time that he made no attempt to stop or slow her nor did she feel his considering gaze on her back as she ran.
Harry was already waiting outside the hospital wing when she got there.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"It started with one of those love potions you warned me about," he muttered, staring at the floor. "A box of chocolate cauldrons. He thought they were a birthday present. But when he punched me, I knew they were from my trunk from Xmas -"
Hermione blinked. At any other time, she'd have asked why he was still holding on to drugged chocolates three months after receiving them, but it didn't seem important now. She didn't see what punching had to do with anything either, but there were more important things to think about.
"So it was the chocolates?" Was it Harry they were trying to poison? Only then why hadn't Katie tried to give the necklace to him when they followed her out of the pub?
"No, those were from Romilda Vane, like you said. He punched me for insulting her – I only said I thought he was joking – so that was a dead give-away. I had to trick him into thinking she'd be in Slughorn's office so he'd come with me. Slughorn mixed him the antidote and also gave him some mead as a pick-me-up. He said it was a Xmas present he didn't get around to giving Dumbledore. But as soon as Ron drank it, he fell down and his arms and legs started jerking and his face was turning blue!" Harry's face was white and pinched-looking as he said it. He took a long gasping breath and continued.
"It was horrible. His eyes were all bulgy and he was drooling. Slughorn didn't seem to notice anything wrong at first and when he did he didn't know what to do. But luckily I knew he probably still had that bezoar in his kit. The one I gave him in that lesson, remember?"
Hermione nodded wordlessly. As if she could forget! She'd been so angry with Harry about the bezoar, but if he hadn't cheated Ron might not be alive now. There was an awful icy emptiness in her chest.
"So I grabbed the kit and I pulled everything out," Harry explained. "I could hear Ron struggling to breathe. He sounded like he was gargling, all hoarse and raspy. Slughorn was still just standing there. I didn't know if I'd find it in time! I thought I was too late."
Hermione's hands fisted and her jaw clenched. Too late! Were they sure it wasn't too late, even with the bezoar? But Snape had said Ron would probably recover. She clung to that reassurance as Harry rattled on.
"But I did and I got it down his throat. After a bit he was breathing again and Slughorn ran and got McGonagall and Pomfrey. They brought him up here and then Dumbledore came and I had to tell him what happened. Then McGonagall came out and I had to tell her and then Madam Pomfrey asked all the same questions all over again. But she says he'll be all right. He'll have to stay here a week or so and keep taking Essence of Rue. She was going to speak to Slughorn, after he finished breakfast, about brewing a fresh batch. They won't let us in. I tried."
At that moment, Ginny hurtled up to them, her hair wild and her face flushed.
"Where's Ron? McGonagall said he was poisoned?" Her voice rose unnaturally high and squeaky. "Why would anyone want to poison Ron?"
Hermione winced. Snape had accused her of poisoning Ron, but only to annoy her. If he'd believed it he'd have interrogated her longer. She tuned out Harry's explanations, which he was giving again from the beginning, and pressed her cold face against the cool doors.
Oh, Ron, Ron! How could she have been so stupid? Blind and petty and just bone-achingly stupid, to stop talking to him just because he was kissing Lavender? Only let him get better and she'd let him kiss a hundred Lavenders! Ron! Ron, don't die, Ron! Don't, she couldn't bear it! Never to see his dear funny face as he grimaced at another half-done Potions essay. Never to hear his teasing bemused voice complaining that she was spending too long in the library. Never to feel his large rough hand grabbing hers to pull her out the door into sunshine or snow. How could she ruin six years of friendship for a silly dream?
It wasn't his fault if he didn't like her that way, if she'd only been fooling herself to think that maybe he was just shy.She should have just accepted that it wasn't meant to be and let him like who he wanted to like, kiss who he wanted to kiss. It wasn't her business if he liked someone else. If she were a true friend she'd have been happy for his happiness. Tears welled up in her eyes. Only let him get better and she'd never criticise his love life or his laziness or his loud laugh again!
It was an endless day. None of them was willing to move away from the doors but they weren't allowed in. The closest they got was occasional glimpses of the room as people came and went.
Slughorn came back with extra potion, a third year went in with large white cauliflower ears and came out ten minutes later with flowerlike white earrings instead, and a first year rushed by, sneezing red and yellow frogs. Madam Pomfrey gave up shooing them away and came out at lunch and dinner with plates of sandwiches and a jug of pumpkin juice but she had nothing fresh to tell them.
By the time Ron's parents came at seven, Hermione felt as if she'd lived through aeons of time and weathered oceans of feeling till she was as old and dead and dried-up as a fossil embedded in rock.Mr and Mrs Weasley rushed past the waiting three, stopping just long enough to tell Ginny she couldn't come in with them, and stayed only a short while before leaving to speak to the headmaster.
At eight, Madam Pomfrey opened the doors and let them through. Finally! Ron was asleep and a good colour. Occasionally he turned over or mumbled, but even the arrival of two of his brothers ten minutes later didn't rouse him.
George and Fred had come from Hogsmeade, where they'd apparently been scouting Zonko's. Hermione listened with half an ear as they asked all the same questions that Harry and Ginny had been asking each other all day. No, of course it wasn't Slughorn trying to poison Harry, how ridiculous! But why would the twins know better when they'd never met him? Was the poisoner after Dumbledore? Perhaps, but only if he knew as little of the Potions master as the twins did.
"Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself," she explained wearily.
"Er-my-nee," croaked Ron from between them.
She stared anxiously at him but he only muttered something inaudible and went back to sleep, snoring this time. Hermione blinked back tears of relief. He was going to be all right. He even recognised voices.
At that moment, Hagrid strode in. It must have been raining again today because his hair was wet and his footprints were muddy. He'd only just heard about it from Professor Sprout because Aragog was worse and he'd been in the Forest all day, keeping vigil over his oldest friend just as they had been over theirs.
He had even sillier ideas. Bumping off a Quidditch team one by one? Even Slytherin players wouldn't have sunk that low, not now that Malfoy had quit. In fact, she doubted even he would have been crazed enough to attempt murder for the sake of a game. Or was that just because she didn't understand the lure of the sport? She never had. It just seemed silly to her, racing around trying to knock balls into hoops or catch a winged walnut or knock each other off the broom.
Whoever was trying to kill people was very incompetent. Neither the poison nor the necklace seemed to have reached their intended target. On the other hand, his very incompetence made him all the more ruthless; he didn't seem to care how many people he finished off in reaching his victim. She said so.
Just then, Mr and Mrs Weasley came rushing back in to thank Harry for saving Ron. How many Weasleys was that he'd saved now? Ginny in second year and Mr Weasley last year and, if one thought about it, all of them perhaps when he'd defeated Voldemort as a baby.
"All I can say is that it was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Harry," Mr Weasley said as Mrs Weasley crushed Harry in her arms. He was too limp to resist.
Hermione couldn't resist a stab of hurt. She knew it was silly and petty and unfair, but she couldn't help it. She'd been friends with Ron since first year Halloween, only two months less than Harry, but Harry was an honorary Weasley and she wasn't. They hadn't spared her a glance either time they came in, they obviously hadn't missed her at Xmas and she couldn't help remembering how Mrs Weasley had believed the worst of her two years ago on Rita Skeeter's say-so. She'd been disappointed with her tiny Easter egg that year but this year she wasn't sure she'd even get one; so easily could they excise her from their lives.
Madam Pomfrey returned then, before Harry could answer, and reminded them there were only supposed to be six visitors at a time. She'd told them that when Hagrid came, but there had only been six then. Now there were two too many. Hermione and Harry knew they should be the ones to leave.
Hagrid came too. It was a good chance to talk things over privately. He was worried about more than Aragog and Ron. If the attacks continued sliding through Hogwarts' defences, the board of governors might decide to close the school down permanently. She could hardly believe it. Where would they all study if the school closed? Where would she study?
Then Hagrid let slip news that stopped her in her tracks. Professor Dumbledore was angry with Professor Snape? They'd been arguing in the Forest? Professor Snape was saying that the headmaster "took too much for granted and he didn't want to do it any more"?
Didn't want to do what any more? Surely not her lessons? She'd known she'd made him angry, but as angry as that?
If she'd thought the miseries of the day had dried up her ability to feel, she'd been wrong. She was hot and cold and heavy and light-headed all at once. Her head was whirling and her stomach was spinning. Had she somehow got to Snape, the way he was always getting to her? Did he hate her that much?
Luckily the other two didn't seem to have noticed her shock. She gulped and walked forward with hasty steps, catching up in time to return Harry's meaningful glare when Hagrid mentioned making investigations in Slytherin House. Could it be that simple, that Dumbledore wasn't satisfied with his attempts to identify the killer? Harry thought so, but when had he ever been right about Snape?
Besides, Professor Dumbledore trusted Professor Snape implicitly. He'd told her so.
A/N "Winged walnut" is a nod to book 1, ch 11, Quidditch, and Harry's first impressions of the Snitch. Harry's account of Ron's poisoning and the subsequent conversations are based on HBP, ch 18, Birthday Surprises, and ch 19, Elf Tails.