A few nights later, Harry and Hermione had just returned to the Gryffindor common room following their nightly dance practice, when the twins plopped down on opposite armrests of the couch they were relaxing on.

At the table nearby was Ron, trying to build a card castle with a pack of Exploding Snaps. While they hadn't been paying more attention to him than they had to, Harry and Hermione knew from Ron's nonstop bitching about it that he still hadn't found anyone to go to the ball with him, doubtlessly due in no small part to the fact he hadn't actually asked anyone to go with him yet. But that hadn't stopped him from complaining, as if he just expected the prettiest girl in the castle to walk up to him and ask him out — doubtlessly in front of the entire school in his daydream, where he'd pretend to have to consider it for a moment, as if he already had countless offers made him, and he had to decide if he really thought she was pretty enough for him to take.

And apparently the twins also knew of his girl troubles, as immediately upon sitting down, George looked over at his younger brother and asked with faux innocence, "Got a date for the Ball yet?"

At that moment the castle blew up in Ron's face, so he turned towards his brothers and growled, "No."

"Better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone," said Fred.

"And I suppose you have a date already?" retorted Ron sulkily.

"Of course," replied Fred with a cheerful smile. "Angelina."

"Seriously? And she said yes?" said Ron in shock, though whether due to thinking it impossible that Fred might have already asked someone with still over a week to go before the Ball, or that someone would have said yes to his older brother, the four Gryffindors not named Ron were unsure.

"Good point," replied Fred thoughtfully, as if suddenly realizing that maybe he should ask the girl he was going with whether they actually wanted to go with him or not. So leaning his head back over the back of the couch to where he could see (an upside down, from his vantage point) Angelina talking to Alicia on the other side of the common room, he shouted, "Oi! Angelina!"

The Gryffindor chaser looked up at him, shouting back, "What?"

"Want to come to the ball with me?" asked Fred.

Contemplating the redhead for a second or two, she finally shrugged and said, "Sure, why not? And Alicia says she'll go with George if he wants."

After Fred and George had both given her and Alicia thumbs up and what appeared to Hermione to be mouthed 'Love you's, Angelina returned to her conversation with the other Gryffindor chaser, as if it were an everyday occurrence for someone to proposition her to the Yule Ball from across the room with everyone in said crowded room watching.

Looking back at Ron, Fred smirked, "There you go — piece of cake."

Ron just stared at his older brother in disbelief, until after a few seconds George broke the silence and asked, "Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?"

"Why?" asked Ron suspiciously, as if it were completely beyond reason that the twins might want to send a letter to someone, and use his owl to do so.

"Because George wants to invite him to the ball as a backup in case Alicia bails," retorted Fred sarcastically.

"Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat," added George.

"Who d'you two keep writing to, anyway?" questioned Ron, as if still finding it highly suspicious that his brothers could really just want to use Pig to send a letter, and not feed it Canary Creams or something.

"Sir None-of-your-Business," retorted Fred. "Now is Pig free, or do we have to use one of the school owls again?"

Finally relenting, Ron huffed, "Fine — I assume he's up in the owlery like normal."

"Thank you muchly," said George with a fake bow as he stood up, before looking over at Fred and saying, "Well...let's go find him."

Once the twins had left, Ron looked over at Harry and said, "We should get a move on, you know...ask someone. He's right. We don't want to end up with a pair of trolls."

"Excuse me?!" sputtered Hermione, incapable of believing that even Ron could be so callous and misogynistic.

"Well — you know," said Ron with a shrug, clearly not seeing the blaring neon signs with loudspeakers hinting to him in giant letters that he really might ought to change directions posthaste, if not quicker. "I'd rather go alone than with — with Eloise Midgen, say."

"And what exactly is wrong with Eloise?" demanded Hermione, glaring at Harry's former friend. "She's a really nice girl!"

"Her nose is off-center," shrugged Ron, still completely oblivious to the fact that he was digging himself into a hole he was never going to have any chance of climbing out of.

"Oh, I see!" snapped Hermione. "So basically, you're going to take the best-looking girl who'll have you, even if she's completely horrible?"

"Er — yeah! That sounds about right!" replied Ron brightly, glad she was finally getting the picture.

"You're disgusting," said Hermione, shaking her head in disgust as she stood up. Looking down at Harry, she said pompously, "I'm going to bed so I don't have to listen to this pig any longer — I'll see you in the morning."

And with that she swept off towards the girls dormitories and disappeared out of sight up the stairs.

"Congrats, Ron — that won't hurt your chances of finding someone to go with you if Hermione decides to tell anyone what you just said," said Harry sarcastically as he stood up, before Ron could try to defend himself or say anything else stupid. "I'm going to bed as well — goodnight."

Only instead of immediately heading up to his own dorm and bed like Hermione had, he first walked over to where Angelina and Alicia were still talking.

"Hi, ladies," he said quietly so no one could overhear him. "I just had one quick question for you — Had the twins already asked you out before just a few minutes ago?"

"Oh yeah," answered Alicia. "George asked me out the day the Ball was announced. Can't say for sure about Angelina, but I do know that wasn't the first time."

"Same," said Angelina. "I was studying in the library that evening, when Fred came up and asked. So when he asked again earlier — well, it was obviously just the twins being the twins. That, or it was the opposite ones asking us out that had the first time, since no one can tell the difference anyway, but I assume that wasn't the case."

"No, I don't think so," answered Harry. "And I was thinking they had already asked you. They'd just asked Ron if he'd asked anyone out yet, so when the younger redhead acted like there was no way the twins had asked anyone out yet either, that's when Fred yelled across the room."

"Ah — makes sense," replied Angelina, before saying, "And speaking of dates, heard rumors floating around from a number of the girls that you have a date already and have been turning down offers."

Harry nodded. "I do, and we're keeping it quiet till night of. No reason to give the rumor mills anything specific to gossip about."

"No worries — we won't ask," replied Alicia. "And if anyone asks us, we'll confirm you already have someone so hopefully they won't bother you trying to ask you out."

"Thanks, appreciate it," said Harry, before continuing, "Well, that's all I really wanted to know, so I'll leave you two alone again, and head off to bed."

~HP~

Friday morning, on the last day of classes for the year, Harry was getting dressed to head downstairs and meet Hermione to walk down to breakfast, when Ron looked over from where he was still lying in bed, and said, "Harry — we've just got to grit our teeth and do it. When we get back to the common room tonight, we'll both have partners — agreed?"

"Good luck — hope whoever you ask says yes," replied Harry honestly, completely avoiding the part where he was supposed to be included in this asking someone endeavor.

He hoped the redhead would wise up and ask someone he'd actually enjoy spending the evening with, but even if he didn't, Harry still hoped he'd find someone — just because they weren't friends anymore didn't mean he wished any ill luck on his first friend. But after that, Harry did avoid Ron for the rest of the day as best he could, so that the redhead couldn't try to ask him if he'd asked anyone out yet.

But though they shared three classes that day, Ron didn't try speaking to him at all during any of them, though that was probably aided by the fact he and Hermione had started picking seats away from the redhead, so the redhead couldn't try distracting Harry with games during class, and Harry could properly concentrate and take notes.

The last class of the term for fourth year Gryffindors was Potions. Like always, it was another abysmal hour and a half of sneering and snide comments from both the 'professor' and several select Slytherin students. Harry had diligently added every ingredient, and from what he could tell and Hermione whispered into his ear, had the second best looking potion in the class behind Hermione's own perfect one, yet as he'd set his flask on Snape's desk at the end of class, the Head of Slytherin had still sneered that it wasn't a blue enough shade of the color blue, and it looked like Harry was going to be getting bottom marks again.

But Harry really couldn't care less, as he didn't even have to pass exams that year due to his name coming out of the fiery goblet, not to mention the fact that there was no way Dumbledore was going to let him fail out of Hogwarts due to one bad grade after as many times as the headmaster had let him off with nothing more than a stern warning for flagrantly violating nearly all the school rules and even several actual Ministry laws. But more importantly, Hermione had smiled at his potion as she filled her own flask to take up, which meant it was clearly a well-made potion, regardless of what the Snake might hiss. So it was with a jump in his step that Harry exited the dungeons with Hermione, free from classes until January.

They headed up to supper together, noticing as they walked into the Great Hall that Ron had stopped in the entrance hall instead of going straight into the Great Hall like normal, but they thought little of it, more interested in what the house elves had cooked them up for supper that night than what the redhead might be doing. But walking into the Gryffindor common room a while later, they spotted him sitting with Ginny in a distant corner, looking like someone had just told him that Quidditch had been permanently banned from wizarding society and replaced with studying, as Ginny sat next to him trying to soothe him. Harry couldn't help but walk over to find out what had happened.

"What's up, Ron?"

The redhead looked up with blind horror in his face, gasping wildly, "Why did I do it? I don't know what made me do it!"

Harry gave him a confused look, having no clue where to go with that, before looking over at Ginny to see if she could give him an actual answer.

"He just tried to ask Fleur to the Ball," supplied Ginny, patting her brother's arm sympathetically.

Harry stared first at her, and then at Ron, in complete disbelief. He knew Ron had been way more affected by the veela at the Quidditch World Cup than he had (at least after Hermione had grabbed his arm to pull his fingers out of his ears to show him the referee flexing under the veela's spell), and then by Fleur since she'd come to Hogwarts, but he'd never have thought the redhead would be so delusional as to actually try to ask her to go to the Yule Ball with him. As far as he knew, Ron had never even tried talking to the French girl before, let alone actually gotten to know her at all.

When no one said anything for several seconds, Ron gasped out again, "I don't know what made me do it! What was I playing at? There were people — all around — I've gone mad — everyone watching! I was just walking past her in the entrance hall — she was standing there talking to Diggory — and it sort of came over me — and I asked her!"

So that's why he didn't come into the Great Hall for supper, thought Harry and Hermione (who'd followed Harry over to see what was going on) to themselves.

Ron, meanwhile, had buried his face in his hands, but continued mumbling away anyway, even though it was barely distinguishable. Harry had just managed to make out, "She looked at me like I was a sea slug or something. Didn't even answer. And then — I dunno — I just sort of came to my senses and ran for it," when Hermione interrupted him in a superior, 'I told you so' tone of voice.

"A troll's starting to look pretty good, isn't it?"

Ron looked up and glared at her for several seconds, before his expression suddenly changed.

"Hermione — you're a girl!" he said, the fact having obviously just dawned on him for the first time at that moment.

"Only took you four years to notice," muttered Hermione, causing Harry to have to turn away and bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud.

"So you can go to the ball with me," continued Ron, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"As your last resort? I don't think so," sneered Hermione. "Anyway, I couldn't even if I was willing to consider going with you after how you've treated Harry this year."

But Ron ignored almost everything she'd said, latching only onto the 'couldn't' part.

"Why not? It's bad enough for a guy to show up to the Ball alone, but it'd just be pathetic for a girl to show up by herself," he insulted.

Hermione just gaped at him, unable to believe, even with his years of abusive behavior towards her and his last few months towards Harry, that their former friend and recent hanger-on could really be that cruel. Harry also stared at the redhead in shock, and even Ginny looked at her brother in slight surprise and stopped rubbing his arm.

"Come on, 'Mione," whined Ron after several seconds of deathly silence that he apparently didn't notice was directed directly at him. "Harry and I need partners. We're going to look really stupid if we haven't got any — everyone else has…"

Deciding it wasn't even worth trying to get through his thick skull just how vile what he'd said was, Hermione changed tactics to something that might get through one day.

"Then you should have started asking a little sooner than a week before the Ball, shouldn't you have?" she said haughtily. "And maybe looked for someone you actually liked instead of trying to just get the prettiest girl you could see," before finishing with a growl, "Also, never ever call me 'Mione again if you value your life."

But Ron ignored everything she had said, and replied in a tone that indicated he thought he was making her a great, magnanimous offer, "But I'm offering you the chance to go with me now — giving you the opportunity to have someone to go with."

Giving up on talking any sense into the redhead, and beyond fed up with him, Hermione simply growled, "Someone has already asked me, thank you very much. Someone who realized a long time ago that I am in fact a girl, and asked me to go with them practically as soon as they found out there even was a Ball to invite me to."

"Oh, come on — who would ask you, the know-it-all bookworm?" scoffed Ron. "The only two friends you even have are me and Harry."

"You know what?! That's it!" exclaimed Hermione angrily. "I've had enough of you!"

And with that she turned and stormed off to her dorm for the second time in three nights.

Harry briefly thought about trying to follow after her, but by the time he realized what was happening, she had already disappeared up the girls staircase, and while he knew she'd come up to his dorm multiple times over the years, he didn't know how well she, or any of the other girls up said staircase, would appreciate him going up theirs.

So instead he turned back and looked down at the offending redhead again, thinking sadly to himself, Making her storm off twice in three days — that might be a new record for him.

But before he could say anything out loud, or decide what to do next, Ron looked at him and said dismissively, "She's lying. There's no way she's got anyone."

"She's not," said Harry quietly shaking his head, not really wanting to get into an argument himself with the redhead.

"Who is it then?" demanded Ron angrily, while at the same time Ginny said, "Are you sure? I haven't heard anyone say she has someone to go with yet."

"Sorry — if she wants to keep it a secret, I'm not going to break her trust by telling," answered Harry with another shake of his head. "You can ask her yourself if you like, but especially after this I sincerely doubt she'll tell you. You'll just have to wait until Christmas night like everyone else to find out. But right now I'm heading out to the library, in case she happens to come back down and has me lost."

Then he turned and headed towards the portrait hole, trusting his best friend would probably come find him soon enough, once she'd had a chance to cool down a bit and wanted something to take her mind off her row with the git.