Any dialogue you might recognize from a book named Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince isn't mine; it's J.K. Rowling's. Just thought I should warn you.
The unexpected return of their best mate – or at least, of his voice – was enough for them to stop everything they had been doing and look all around them, hoping to find him. Harry finally noticed Ron's tall form a few steps away, covered by his Quidditch jersey, somebody else at his side.
Harry immediately signalled to Hermione to follow him and the two of them ran into something that the Boy-Who-Lived would rather have forgotten forever: Ginny and Dean, locked in an embrace and snogging passionately in the middle of the corridor.
Harry couldn't believe it.
He'd rather have forgotten this vision forever because it just made him want to break things and throw curses and scream himself hoarse – Ginny and Dean kissing. Or, rather, Ginny and Dean practicing ballet with their tongues.
And there was no beast in his chest.
Ginny and Dean. Kissing.
He was still feeling this terrible need to pry the both of them apart, but there was no monster roaring for Dean to be turned into a cockroach this time. Just an overwhelming desire to keep his little sister – Ron's little sister away from everyone who might hurt her.
"Oi!" Ron's voice resonated as the gangly boy drew himself up to his full height, chest puffing out slightly.
There was this cloud of righteous anger, but there was no jealous creature pawing at Harry's insides as he looked at Ginny's features. Brown eyes, freckles, red hair. No blood-scarlet locks, no golden highlights in her hair, no pouty lips that the Boy-Who-Lived longed to kiss, no impish and sparkling brown eyes.
Just a pretty girl that was his sister, and that he'd protect forever because her happiness mattered more than anything else –
Harry shook his head, hoping to clear it. Luna might have been on to something with all her talks about Nargles and wrackspurts entering your ears and messing with your thoughts.
Meanwhile, Hermione was just taking in the scene with wide eyes as fierce protectiveness was washing through her in waves. As Ginny said how she could do anything she pleased with anyone she liked, the memory darkened and shifted for a brief moment, and she remembered things – things she couldn't possibly have known in the first place – Ginny emerging from the Chamber of secrets, tear-faced and whimpering and just what kind of an incompetent big brother was he; Ginny waking up during the cold nights in Egypt and silently going to his room, and him lifting up his blankets so she could burrow in with him, not saying a word all the while; Ginny as she began to talk back to Mum, as she punched his arm – quite strongly for her size – when he said something she considered stupid; cold sweat trickling down his neck, nausea dizzying him as his throat clogged and dried and he could hear them down here, singing, mocking, Weasley is our King…
Ginny coming up to his room and she hadn't done that since she was seven but he felt her trembling under the sheets, and no matter how he rubbed her arms to warm her, she was still shivering and he could see tears trickling down her cheeks and he heard them sing Weasley is our King and he felt so horrible – and he never wanted her to suffer through that…
"D'you think I want people saying my sister's a –"
"A what?", Ginny shouted as she drew her wand, and Hermione, dizzied by the onslaught of reminiscences, was snapped right back to the actual conversation. "A what, exactly?!" Hermione very much herself wanted the answer, and she narrowed her eyes angrily at Ron's furious face.
A scarlet woman! Ron's ethereal voice mumbled angrily.
Hermione's anger dissolved into a much more pleasant feeling of fondness for the redheaded prat. "Scarlet woman"… really… figures that Ron could call Malfoy so many crude things but be left speechless when it came to insulting girls. It was… endearing.
"– just because the best kiss he's ever had was from our Auntie Muriel –"
She jerked back down to the world of Ron's memories as shameful anger bubbled within her, accompanied by a frantic sort of panic, and the distant, hazy voice of her best friend and crush suddenly boomed SHUT UP! while Ginny kept on yelling.
"If you went out and got a bit of snogging done yourself you wouldn't mind so much that everyone else does it!"
Cold fear crept up in her – in Ron's – spine, even as his face was burning in anger and humiliation and he drew his own wand, and Hermione would have thrown herself at him in that moment – she'd have done anything to stop the churning of Ron's stomach as he realized just what his little sister was implying.
Everyone? No, not everyone's bloody snogging each other! Neville wouldn't at least, he doesn't have a girlfriend –
How do you know? Maybe he does it in private? a pesky thought whispered, and the cold, painful sensation increased. Maybe you're just that pathetic, waiting for Hermione to give you your first kiss?
Hermione gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.
Meanwhile, Memory-Harry had come between the two siblings, arms outstretched in a little Christ-like posture, and the actual Harry wondered idly if he always looked this dramatic when he did this sort of stuff.
"Been kissing Pigwidgeon, have you?" shrieked Ginny as she laughed, a hysterical quality to her tone. "Or have you got a picture of Auntie Muriel stashed under your pillow?"
Harry's appreciation for Ginny's wit suddenly diminished when burning humiliation scorched through him. Those were Ron's feelings – and underneath the protective layer of anger, there was true panic, true hurt, true fear that people will know, they'll know I've never kissed anyone and that I'm pathetic –
A bolt of pure orange light suddenly shot out from Ron's wand, without him moving or speaking, but he seemed too enraged to notice. His thoughts were a constant litany of SHUT UP mixed with several swear words and the quietest plea of not in front of Harry. What spell had Ron just cast, Hermione was frightened to realize that she had no idea. Usually the light produced by magic was purely white or a primary colour or even green, but purple and orange were rare.
Memory-Harry had pushed Ron to the wall – the two mind-explorers felt a dull ache at the back of their own skulls – and the real Harry cringed at what he knew was going to happen. Hermione had wanted to know, well, she was going to know alright.
"Harry's snogged Cho Chang!" Ginny screamed as tears started to spring to her eyes – you're an arsehole, a thought informed them quietly as Ron gritted his teeth – "And Hermione snogged Viktor Krum –"
Harry had figured out that everything Ron felt and thought, they could feel also. With that knowledge in mind, he'd been trying to prepare himself for what Ginny's revelation would cause Ron.
First there was a blank. Ron's face had gone slightly slack as he processed the words.
And then, one simple, lonely thought.
Hermione…
Harry was submerged by such crushing despair he couldn't breathe; and oh, it was suffocating, a black abyss, worse than any Dementor…
It was as though suddenly he was empty. Void of everything. Of organs, of muscle, as if his body was hollow and frozen and… alone. Everything had just stopped and the world was so still, and so cold.
Hermione, so beautiful, so amazing and perfect, in the arms of bloody Krum, whisked away to Bulgaria on a ruddy Firebolt, her arms around Krum's waist, her doe eyes smiling at Krum, not Ron, her lips touching Krum's, not his…
And despite this sensation of utter void within him – within Ron – there was a sudden, throbbing pain in his chest; so he supposed his body did contain something; but something that hurt, hurt so much he wanted to rip it out with his bare hands so he wouldn't feel it anymore – and his eyes were getting misty but don't cry, don't you fucking cry you pansy, a thought urged as he heard Fred and George's laughter asking him if he was going to run to Mummy.
Hermione was rooted to the spot, her hand absentmindedly resting where she – where Ron – was hurting so much. A few months ago, she had believed that the word "heartbroken" was nothing but a silly metaphor, that the people who were said to "die of a broken heart" were just subjects to a coincidental heart-attack; until she had seen Ron and Lavender, kissing, and the metaphor had taken such a personal, ironic meaning it physically hurt.
And now she could feel it once more – Ron's heart snapping much like hers, yet weeks beforehand – leaving a hurtful hole in its wake; and she hadn't known. And she hadn't understood his anger – she should have known – she could have known – Harry was there, after all…
Harry.
She turned around, glaring at the Boy-Who-Never-Said-A-Damn-Thing, and he took a step backwards, gulping, eyes widened in fear. "Oh yes, Harry", she thought with relish, "you better have a very good explanation for this."
As if he'd read her mind – funny, considering the situation they were in – the jet-haired teen immediately started babbling, tripping over his words.
"You know – I just thought – well it was kind of ridiculous, right, it happened years ago – so I figured you'd get angry at him and I didn't want the two of you to be mad at each other –"
"So you decided to let him treat me like he does Malfoy instead?" Hermione said through gritted teeth, getting closer to Harry, who felt very much like a little mouse quivering under the stare of a hungry alley-cat. "Of course I'd have gotten angry – that's exactly why I didn't tell him about my relationship with Viktor in the first…"
Hermione's voice trailed off. Harry had the sudden, bizarre urge to hire the best security trolls on the market and have them protect Ginny from the wrath of the bushy-haired witch at all costs.
"Ginevra Molly Weasley", Hermione hissed so venomously that he mistook the sound for Parseltongue for a second, "once we rescue your brother I will show you just how much you have to learn about perfect Bat-Bogies Hexes."
Harry was very afraid.
… been going on for two years, with her writing her bloody love letters right in front of me! How could I be so stupid?! Ron's voice suddenly boomed, its ethereal quality unable to hide its hurt and bitterness, and the mind-walkers startled. "Oh, Vicky, if only you could come with me to Slughorn's party, I invited that loser Ron so he'd just shut his trap, luckily there's Harry"…
There was an odd wobbling sound and Ron's memory seemed to dissolve around them both, only to have them catapulted on the breakfast table of Hogwarts – yes, on it, luckily since they weren't corporeal the food was safe enough. And even then, it was a memory so who cared about what happened to the décor anyway, Hermione thought…
Her reflexions came to a screeching halt as she heard her own voice declare snippily "Oh come on, Harry, it's not Quidditch that's popular, it's you! You've never been more interesting and, frankly, never more fanciable."
She heard Ron choke on his morning kipper and she saw herself – this pretty, beautiful Hermione that only Ron could see – shoot him a look of disdain. And even though this was her own self, even though she was merely experiencing Ron's feelings, she had never felt so low, so… insignificant in her entire life.
Hermione realized that she had the terrible power to make Ron feel like a very small, very stupid, very worthlesschild; she felt his heart skip a beat, but not in the nice way, more like the way she'd herself felt when she discovered that she had gotten an E on her O.W.L. in Defense… but this was – felt – so much more important than a passing grade.
It's just that she thinks other people think he's fanciable, right? A panicked thought voiced. She doesn't really think Harry's fanciable. She doesn't… And I've got scars too, and they're bigger than the one on his hand, that's gotta count for something!
She could only watch with growing horror as Ron shook back his sleeves so Memory-Hermione could get a peek at the silvery welt on his wrist – a welt that went all the way up to Ron's neck, curling and curving on his pale skin. As her doppelganger, to her great despair, kept on ignoring the redhead, self-consciousness suddenly washed through him and he quickly put his sleeves back in place.
… Yeah, but those are pretty much self-inflicted, Ron's voice remarked with such dejection that Hermione had the overwhelming urge to hug him and never make him feel so miserable ever again. They're not heroic or whatever – I Accio'ed that ruddy brain, I was the useless idiot who knocked himself out in the first place... It's nothing to be proud of.
Nothing.
"… and it doesn't hurt that you've grown about a foot over the summer, either", Memory-Hermione concluded as the real Hermione decided that she had never wanted to slap herself more, and Ron remarked loudly "I'm tall!", which he was, oh he was indeed, he was six feet of neglected, adorable best friend; and she wanted to cup his face in her hands and kiss the tip of his long nose and tell him that she knew, that she didn't mean to imply he wasn't fanciable, but that Harry needed a boost in confidence and… and… and what, exactly? Ron needed a boost in confidence too. Ron needed to feel better about himself too.
Godric, how had she never noticed?
She watched with uneasy knots in her stomach as Lavender – that bint – smiled to her Ron and how his slumped shoulders and bowed head rose back up, as he grew back into his six feet tall, gangly, bony frame, and his usually self-conscious, fast-paced gait slowed a little as he – quite simply – strutted his stuff to the Quidditch Pitch.
Behind her, Harry was shaking with silent laughter.
"Oh, Harry", Hermione lamented, which caused his hilarity to dissipate in a heartbeat. "I can't believe I… Why would he take this seriously? I just wanted to make you feel a bit better, why couldn't he see that?"
Harry really hoped this was a rhetorical question but when Hermione turned to him, he quickly understood that this wasn't one. "Uuh… I dunno, maybe he was just –"
But once again, as if Ron's subconscious itself had heard her question, the weird wobbling sound returned, Ron's prideful form dissipated and the Quidditch Pitch faded away; they were back into the Gryffindor common room, or, well, Ron's vision of the Gryffindor common room, little midgets – students – looking with wide eyes at the lanky redhead who was busy rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter.
Harry's gotten a kiss! Harry's gotten his first kiss! Bloody amazing, things are finally going right for him for once – shit, how'd it go, I want to know everything, I've gotta prepare if I ever get the chance to ask Hermione out –
Hermione gave a whimper of what was probably self-loathing as Memory-Harry described the kiss as "wet", which made Ron pause in his guffawing, head cocked to the side and looking bewildered – absolutely, adorably, thoroughly bewildered.
What, "wet"? Was Cho under a Drooling Hex or something?
"Because she was crying", Memory-Harry explained.
"Oh", shit, a stray thought added in passing as Ron's mirth diminished a bit. "Are you that bad at kissing?" and Hermione felt his intention, felt how he wanted to distract Harry from what was probably a really lousy first kiss –
"Dunno. Maybe I am", Memory-Harry said, and he seemed rather worried all of a sudden, which prompted Ron to search for something funny to say… Something like I wouldn't complain if I were her, after all you're Harry Potter… No, that'd probably make him angry – maybe a well you can practice on me if you want, with an exaggerated wagging of his eyebrows? Yeah, that'd do…
"Of course you're not", Hermione's voice piped up.
What?! Immediately all thoughts of reassuring Harry went flying through the window. Ron's head whipped to Hermione, his neck giving an audible crack. "How do you know?" he asked, maybe more aggressively than he had intended.
Did she kiss Harry – how does she know – she couldn't have, I'd have known – I'm always with them, I'd know it if they were together…
The wobbling sound returned, and Hermione prayed – begged – internally for this to be over. She couldn't face any more of her own idiocy…
But as Ron's mental world changed and became another place, this time the changing rooms of the Quidditch Pitch, a heavy weight dropped in her stomach and she swallowed the lump in her throat with great difficulty.
This… She knew what was going to happen.
There was still the sharp pain in Ron's chest, and the feeling of emptiness, but it was diminished by a warm contentment, a feeling of pride – maybe with a tiny bit of guilt, but he was too happy to worry at the moment.
The sense of relief, accomplishment, joy – oh, he was so glad he'd played so well… and sure, it was all Felix Felicis, but at least he hadn't been Gryffindor's downfall…
And then, Hermione arrived in the room.
The actual Hermione cringed. She wanted to push herself out of here, to slap her own face, to cast a Silencio on herself – anything, but to listen to her own words when she knew what they were going to be.
"I want a word with you, Harry." Deep breath, and Ron groaned inwardly. "You shouldn't have done it. You heard Slughorn, it's illegal."
"What are you going to do, turn us in?" Ron said defiantly, even though he felt his stomach tie in a knot. Damn it, couldn't Hermione just let things go, once in a while? Let him enjoy a little bit of glory… even though it wasn't real?
Harry grimaced, already knowing how the scene was going to end – how Ron would get angry – and he really didn't want to experience his best mate's heartbreak again.
Hermione shared the exact same feelings, but for another reason altogether – she didn't want to be there when he'd be kissing Lavender. She wanted it to end – she didn't want to see more. She had gotten her wish, she had realized how ridiculously insecure he was – she didn't want to suffer through this.
"… that's why everything went right", Memory-Hermione was saying, her tone righteous and offended. "There were Slytherin players missing and Ron saved everything!"
They felt Ron press his lips together so the swear words his thoughts were screaming would stay in his head.
"I didn't put it in!" Memory-Harry declared happily as he brandished the still-sealed vial of Felix Felicis in a very dramatic fashion – "I'm acting like Lockhart!" the real Harry gasped in horror and Hermione giggled – "I wanted Ron to think I'd done it, so I faked it when I knew you were looking."
It was at that moment that Memory-Harry turned to Ron – and Hermione felt the strangest flutter when she saw those familiar emerald eyes glittering with pride.
"You saved everything because you felt lucky. You did it all yourself." He was smiling brightly – a smile that filled Ron's empty carcass with soft warmth and dulled the throbbing in his heart.
I did it? a thought said numbly. It was really me?
A few swear words followed – disbelieving, hopeful, giddy, as both Harry and Hermione had this incredible surge of joy that left them breathless, like they were flying without brooms, a complete euphoria like nothing he'd felt before, he felt so light and triumphant…
Mate… shit, mate…
It was so perfect – he couldn't believe it – Harry, Harry Potter, his Harry believed in him – really did – and it was almost enough for Ron to forget what Hermione had said –
Hermione.
Hermione lying to him and saying Krum was her pen-pal but he was a bloody rich famous Seeker that needn't ruddy Felix Felicis so he could have a bloody confidence boost to play right –
The giddy, wonderful, warm euphoria that had engulfed Ron dissipated in an instant and his heart was so cold all of a sudden – it left Harry and Hermione gasping and shivering.
Then he turned to Memory-Hermione, Hermione who didn't look as pretty now but was still beautiful no matter how hard he tried to convince himself, and he spat bitterly, imitating her know-it-voice: "You added Felix Felicis to Ron's juice this morning, that's why he saved everything! See! I can save goals without help, Hermione!"
"I never said you couldn't – Ron, you thought you'd been given it, too!"
Pathetic. Pathetic. He couldn't tell which was more pathetic. Her excuses, or himself, for pining after a girl who had it all, famous and rich Quidditch players included, himself, for thinking he'd ever had a chance – with long strides, he was already walking back to the castle, broom over his shoulders and angry tears on his face – why couldn't she ever, ever believe in him, just a little –
And it wasn't the first time she had done that, either, Ron remembered as he wiped his stupid crybaby tears with a clenched fist – when he'd been named prefect, she had just thought it would be Harry – he'd thought it too but it had been him, Ron, not Harry, he'd been named prefect – and Hermione had looked at him like he was some sort of error in her little bubble of perfection –
… and she had called Harry fanciable…
She always believed in Harry… never in stupid dumb Ron…
She had said Harry was fanciable…
Stop crying you useless twat! Who even cries over a bloody girl?! Can you get any more pathetic?!
Harry and Hermione. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, that bloody rhymed, how convenient. They were Harry James and Hermione Jane – their initials were the same – Potter-Granger and Granger-Potter – just written in the stars, right – and how could he compete with that… she was so, so smart and he was a hero – of course they'd be together in the end. Of course it would be this way. He was so stupid, so ruddy blind… no one would settle for a poor, idiotic Weasley…
Harry, the actual Harry, couldn't take it anymore. It was unbearable, just how much misery Ron radiated, how much pain he was in; the Cruciatus Curse almost felt small compared to this, to the maelstrom of self-loathing and fury and doubts Ron was stabbing himself with.
"STOP!" the Boy-Who-Lived ordered, and again, it seemed as though Ron's unconscious mind was actually listening – for the castle grounds and Ron's furious, defeated self disappeared, leaving in their wake only an inky black abyss.
Harry took a few deep breaths to calm himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers – and a small sob made him turn around to face Hermione.
"How can he think this of us", she whispered, blinking back tears, but she wasn't expecting any answer; Harry's regretful glance told her he knew just as much as she did.
They had missed it, missed what was right under their nose…
Harry contemplated his semi-sister as she rubbed her eyes. There was enough misery here as it was, there was enough sadness already, and they couldn't afford to let Ron bury himself deeper in his hurt.
"Ron?" Harry spoke tentatively to the darkness. "Did you… before all that happened, I mean… you ever… thought about the future… how you'd ask Hermione out, or…"
Hermione's head snapped up in confusion at her semi-brother's request – and she was met by a beautiful, giddy light that engulfed the darkness, seemingly eager to comply to Harry's request; and she closed her eyes to better feel this warmth that she pretended for a second were Ron's arms around her.
