Chapter 18

Disclaimer: Harry Potter etc still belongs to JK Rowling, plot still belongs to me.

Author's Note: This chapter is going to be utterly ridiculous, I make no secret of that. If you don't like it, blame my betas and the fact I've just watched all 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers in the space of a fortnight.

A/N: This remains one of my favourites... it's so stupid.

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Harry shuffled his feet. Oh God, what could he say? He'd stayed silent for too long to get away with 'I was sleepwalking'. He decided to go on the defensive.

"Why do you want to know?" He demanded imperiously.

"Do you realise how dangerous it is to go wandering round the castle at night?" Hermione snapped. "And as a Prefect, it's my duty to see that people don't do stupid things!"

Harry noticed with interest that she had not said it was her duty to stop people breaking rules. Even in his current situation, he much preferred this Hermione, who wanted to stop him doing stupid things, to the old Hermione, who wanted to prevent all forms of rule-breaking.

"Well?" She demanded. "What were you doing?"

He evaded the question. "How did you know I wasn't here, anyway?"

"I came down to the common room because I couldn't sleep – I was going to work on my Arithmancy homework. When I got down here, I met Ron and he told me you weren't in the dormitory!" She replied sharply. "Ron's gone to the toilet, but I said I'd stay down here and wait for you. So come on, tell me!"

Harry gave in. "Look, Hermione, it's complicated. There's this… person, right, that I really like… I've been meeting them. I've tried to hold it in-"

Without Harry noticing, Ron entered the room from the boys' staircase.

"-but I just can't hide how I feel any more!"

Ron immediately jumped to a conclusion. It happened to be one that was actually way off the mark, but he could be forgiven, as the situation did look quite bad. Hermione's face was softening more by the second, and Harry looked on the verge of tears and had just told Hermione he 'just couldn't hide how he felt any more'. Ron's sleep addled brain began issuing orders straight away, and within three seconds of finishing his sentence, Harry found himself flat on the floor, having just been hit by a Knockout Jinx. Fortunately, Ron had not put enough force into the jinx to knock Harry out, but he had successfully floored him.

"How could you?" Ron yelled at Harry. "How could you?"

"Oh my God, Ron, you mean you feel the same way I do?" The jinx, though weak, had had the same affect on Harry's brain as replacing his logic with puréed kippers. His puréed kippers had promptly decided that Ron must like Draco too.

"I can't believe it!" Ron yelled, still thinking that Harry had just been professing undying love for Hermione. "I've been so blind, I suppose I've been in denial!"

At this point, Hermione's brain began to put two and two together. Sadly, it came up with the answer five. "Ron, how could you do this?" She shouted. "I should have known, I mean it's so obvious! You two have been at it all along! Ron, I thought you cared about me!"

The conversation was going downhill every minute, with more misconceptions and mix-ups than a Friends Christmas party where the scriptwriters had been drinking all day.

"What?" Ron looked as if he had been hit with the remains of Harry's puréed kipper. "What in the name of all that is good and right are you talking about, Hermione?"

"You and Harry!" Hermione answered, still shouting, despite the fact that the penny was finally beginning to drop.

Ron did the 'hit by a kipper' look again, and cried: "WHAT? Don't you mean YOU and Harry?"

"Of course I don't! Harry was telling me about this girl he likes when you came in!"

"But I thought…" The look on Ron's face should have been in a museum.

"And I thought…"

All three of them looked at each other and, not seeing any alternative, started to laugh hysterically. Their web of misunderstandings had reached titanic proportions.

"Um, anyone who wants to do the counter-jinx is more than welcome," Harry said from the floor, as they finally stopped laughing. He was still not able to get up by himself. Still shaking with suppressed mirth, Hermione performed the spell and Harry slowly stood up.

"So, are you going to tell us who it is, then?" Ron said quickly.

"Yeah, who's the lucky girl?" Hermione joined in with the badgering.

"That's for me to know, and you to… not know." Harry grinned, and ran off up the staircase.

Harry's dreams that night were very strange. They featured purple, funny-smelling cabbages that were singing quite loudly. Then, just as Harry was getting used to the singing cabbages, a giant puréed kipper entered the room and stood swaying in time to the music the cabbages were singing, before suddenly morphing into Draco. Kipper-Draco then told Harry that he needed to buy a new broom because a family of Puffskeins had nested in the tail of his Firebolt. The dream ended with Dumbledore standing on a table singing 'Oops I did it again'.

When Harry woke up the next morning, he was actually rather disappointed that it was only a dream – the cabbages had been particularly good singers. Now that he was fully awake, though, his mind quickly swung to the events of the previous night. Christ, he was glad he hadn't said anything about Draco. Hopefully, Ron and Hermione would be too embarrassed by their parts in the whole mix-up to bring up the topic. Fingers crossed.

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Author's Note: This one seems to have got a bit shorter. Oh well, you can't stretch out a farce like this one for very long. Big thanks to my betas for the idea for this chapter!