Both of Ron's socks were back on his feet. He was dressed in his full uniform and prefect's badge and heading out of the bedroom, Harry hauling on his arm.
"Wait until morning, Ron. There's nothing you can do about it tonight. By now Pansy will be shut up in the Slytherin dungeon, and she may have not even heard what's happened."
He shook Harry off as they descended the stairs to the common room. "Then I can be the one to tell her first."
"What's all the noise about? What are the two of you doing?" Hermione hissed from the foot of the girls' stairs.
Harry waved at Ron. "He's gone and had a change of heart. Came on the moment he found out he wasn't enchanted today and now he wants to find Pansy and beg forgiveness."
"I didn't have a change of heart," Ron rushed. "I had a change of mind, once you confessed you'd tricked me and everything started making sense again."
"I hardly see how this is my fault - "
"Ronald, stop," Hermione said in a tone of heavy finality. "First things first. Up there, right now," she pointed to the stairwell behind her, "my roommate is sitting on her bed with her friends celebrating her new boyfriend. She's rosy and giggling and crazy about you. That has to be settled before you take one more step in Pansy Parkinson's direction. Your forgiveness begging begins here in the tower."
Ron blanched. She was right. "Fine, I'll just go back to bed."
"Ronald, that is not what I said - "
"I'm sorry, I hardly know Lavender. I have no idea how to break up with her."
"Which is why you should slow down and wait until the morning," Harry said. "Things won't be any worse by then."
Ron hung his head, nodding at his feet.
"Promise me you won't skip the part where you break up with Lavender first," Hermione demanded.
"Right, I promise," he said, eyes clenched shut in anguish.
Hermione was shaking her head, turning to climb the stairs when Ron called her back. "One more thing," he said, "would you cut my hair tonight, Hermione? Pansy told me to cut it, months ago. And I told her no. But tonight - I feel like I'd better. Like it's a sign of my good faith."
Harry coughed out a laugh.
Hermione pursed her lips, nodding. "I think that's a lovely sentiment, Ronald. Change your clothes and meet me back here in a minute."
Shirtless, Ron sat under a towel in the common room as Hermione combed out his hair. "Short," he said. "So every inch of my neck is visible."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Like you're in the Muggle army?"
Ron ducked his head. "No."
"I wasn't about to," Hermione said, righting his head. "Hold still. Right, show off your neck but leave a bit of length up top."
"But don't make me look like a ginger Malfoy," he warned.
She scoffed. "No chance of that."
Snape was in the last place he wanted to be: mounting the steps to the front doors of Malfoy Manor. It was late at night, dark, silent. As much as the headmaster's most infuriating flaw was an over-abundance of patience, always calling on Snape to wait, the Dark Lord was flawed in having no patience at all. The mark on Snape's arm was still burning as he let himself inside the mansion.
Narcissa, as she always was now, was sitting just inside the door, at the piano. Despite the lateness of the hour, she was not wearing a nightdress. Instead, she sat as if ready to make her escape, to surrender her husband and son's ancestral home to the devil who had taken it over.
She spoke Snape's name as she rose. "You must leave something with me to soothe him, Severus. I am also a skilled healer, allow me - "
"Thank your stars, Narcissa, that he expects nothing from you in this regard," he snapped, swooping past her, not to the drawing room this time, but upstairs, to where the Dark Lord lay in bed.
A hex crashed against the doorframe as he entered the room, aimed to scare rather than to kill. "You've come alone," the Dark Lord growled.
"I have, my lord," Snape said, locking himself inside.
"You have not brought her to me," the Dark Lord shouted, the taut tendons in his neck pulling his head off the pillow. "You dare delay. You dare not bring her when you are the only one who can, now that the headmaster keeps his students tucked safely inside his school, no outings, completely out of our reach. I await your explanation for your defiance of my order, Severus."
He stepped closer to the bed. "My lord, it is true that both you and I harbour doubts as to whether Miss Parkinson is indeed the caster of such an atrociously persistent charm. And if she is not its caster, and I risk my position at Hogwarts by snatching her away for you, I will not get a second chance to take the true caster. I will be shut out with the rest of your servants."
The Dark Lord thrashed in his bed.
Snape reached for the wounded hand. "I beg you, my Lord, indulge me in interviewing the girl through normal channels, as her teacher and head of house, before I resort to kidnapping her and exposing all we've worked for."
An ominous laugh rose from the bed. "If young Malfoy succeeds, we shall have no need of your normal channels or sneaky second chances. We will have full rein to take every witch at Hogwarts and interrogate them systematically, one by one, until they beg us to drag the guilty one away."
Snape fell to his knees. "How, my lord? Tell me. What is this aspect of Malfoy's mission that you keep hidden from me? There is no need to wait on his inexperience. I can help him. It could be done."
Another dark chuckle. "He succeeds in hiding it from you, does he? A pleasant and unexpected development. No, Severus. It is too risky to employ a servant who knows too much. I trust you, treasure you. And I will grant you the mercy of withholding all that I know from you. For now," he said, extending his closed fist, "I will allow you to interview the girl at the school. Bring me the right witch and bring her soon. In the meantime, I require relief."
The Dark Lord opened his hand, like a foul flower blooming. Even without the diagnostic aid of his wand, the mark of Granger and Malfoy's charm was visible to Snape. It was no longer a flickering glow, but had resolved into faint white lines, almost like runes carved and scarred over on the skin of the Dark Lord's palm. Nothing about the marks was readable nor recognizable, but as he looked at them, Snape felt as if he was just on the verge of understanding.
The balm he had been bringing slowed the progression of the injury but did not stop it. The Dark Lord was unsatisfied with it and Snape didn't dare use it again tonight. Instead, he applied a poultice, packing it into the palm and binding it to the Dark Lord's hand.
"I have reserved this treatment until now," Snape explained, "because I did not wish to interfere with the use of your wand hand."
The Dark Lord took his wand, cradling its handle in just the tips of his fingers. It would do.
Snape bowed his head. "May this give you relief, until I report again."
Between knocking his glasses onto the floor and Ron's new haircut, Harry barely recognized the boy standing over Neville's bed early on a Sunday morning, raving about gillyweed.
"See, if she locks herself in the dungeons and won't see me, I don't know how else I'll reach her. If she was in Ravenclaw, all it would take would be a ride on a broom to get to her dorm window. Digging to the Hufflepuff dorms would be harder. But Slytherin is full-on underwater, init? So gillyweed will do the trick, I reckon."
Neville lay crusty-eyed, as if stupefied. "Or," Neville said, "Or you could wait and catch her in class on Monday?"
"Monday?" Ron sputtered. "Monday? That's ages away."
Harry found his glasses and rushed in. "Ron, all the gillyweed in the lake won't get you past the mer-people. Not to mention the trouble you'd be in, creeping around the girls' windows."
Ron spun away from Neville. "Oh Harry, you're finally up."
Had Ron slept at all?
"It's early, Ron. Leave everyone alone. Or better yet, go wait in the common room for Lavender. You need to talk, remember?"
He went downstairs to pace in his pajamas. Parvati Patil came down first, smirking at him, giggling as she trotted back up the stairs to fetch Lavender. His body, the wicked thing, reacted to the sight of her - the sweet, softness of her face, the flowery smell of her hair. His face was flushed and she was reaching for him, moving to ruffle the short hair at the nape of his neck. He caught her hand and laid it back by her side.
"Lavender, I'm so sorry…"
By the time breakfast was served in the Great Hall, Ron's early morning mania was over. He sat with his forehead against the tabletop, eating nothing.
"I'm the worst," he said to his shoes. "I'm the worst person."
Harry clapped him on the back, but Hermione said, "Yes, yes you are."
Ron sobbed dryly beneath the table.
"Put your head up and eat something anyway," Harry said. "If you stay like that, you won't be able to see - the one you do want, when she comes in."
Ron groaned and rolled his head so he was lying on his cheek, looking at Harry. "I don't deserve to be with her. I don't deserve to be with any of them."
"True enough," Hermione said.
"I made a floozy out of one of the nicest people in our year." He groaned again.
Hermione sniffed. "You don't have that kind of power over her. Now stop your wallowing."
"You were up all night. If you can't eat, at least go back to bed." Harry said, cutting the last syllable short with a sharp intake of breath.
Ron heard it and sat up straight. Pansy had entered the hall.
She startled only very slightly at the sight of him, shorn hair and everything, before lifting her chin and looking away. Her gang walked primly alongside her, not wasting a single glare on him. At the Slytherin table, Pansy forced her way between Blaise Zabini and Theo Nott, nudging them aside with her hips. She glanced at Ron as she leaned into Blaise, laughing.
Ron didn't go to the library with Harry and Hermione after breakfast. He was too tired to study but not tired enough to shut down his self-induced heart-ache and actually sleep. Instead, he left the castle, trudging toward the quidditch field house, where he would find his broom and fly until he was exhausted enough to sleep.
He kicked off the grass, missing the feeling of wind in his hair. He set off for the lake first, flying low over the water, catching a glimpse of the roof of the submerged Slytherin dormitory. He pulled up as the Forbidden Forest rose before him, the snaggled tops of the twisted trees along its perimeter clawing up toward his feet.
Something flashed in his peripheral vision. Maybe he was too much like tasty bait, flying so close to a forest full of dangerous magical creatures. He flew higher, wheeling back in the direction of what he'd only half seen. It turned out to be just another broom, another student flying over the Hogwarts grounds on a Sunday, during the highest, warmest sun of a late autumn day.
The other broom wasn't racing but trick flying, the other flyer drifting along with both their arms spread wide, their spine bent backward in a delicate curve. Ron couldn't help but be impressed at the smooth line of flight, the control they were able to maintain with just their thighs gripped around the broomstick.
He gasped. "Pansy."
Ron leaned over his broom, bearing hard toward her. She saw him and grasped her broom again, turning sharply, tucking in low over the grassy hills, flying along their contours.
He was getting closer. He could see her black bobbed hair rippling in the wind. In a moment she would be able to hear him if he called her name. Her family was wealthy and her broom was new and fast. But he was the Gryffindor keeper who had just played a perfect game without magical help, and she couldn't outpace him.
She looked over her shoulder, sneering as he closed in from behind. He extended his left arm, driving toward her at full speed, and scooped her off her broom. Pansy yelped as it fell away.
"Steady!" he called over the rush of the wind as she struggled against him.
"Ronald Weasley, you set me down."
"Steady, Parkinson!"
They were descending in a steep, erratic line, Pansy barely balanced on the broomstick, pulling at his arm, clamped around her middle, his fingers pressed into her flesh. Ron held her with one arm and fought to control the broom with his other hand.
"Pick your feet up. We're landing," he called.
She wasn't quick enough and her foot came down hard against the grass, jarring and twisting her ankle. She squealed in pain as he howled in remorse.
"Are you hurt?" he said, dropping the broom and falling to his knees next to where she sat. He was taking her foot between his hands.
She slapped at him. "Of course I'm hurt, you idiot. You sprained my ankle."
He was unlacing her trainer. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Oh, I bet you are."
He held her foot, rotating it gently before bending to kiss it.
She yelped again. "What are you doing?"
"Begging forgiveness," he said. "Everything with Lavender Brown - it was all madness. I thought I was enchanted and I may as well have been. It was awful."
She snarled. "That's not how I heard it. Get off me, Weasley."
He released her foot. "It was awful. It wasn't me and," he swallowed hard, "it wasn't you."
Pansy was labouring to stand.
"Parkinson, listen to me," he went on, taking her arm, leaning into her as she leaned on him. "You're the only one I want to fly with. You're the only one I want to be close enough to smell. I want to bring you medicine when you're sick. I want to cut my hair to look like one of your Slytherin gits. I want your plum lipstick smeared all over my face and neck. I don't even mind if you bite. I want to…"
He glanced around the empty field, looking for something else to confess. "I want to carry you back to the castle and get your ankle fixed. I'm so sorry, Pansy, for everything. I fancy you rotten. Please..."
She looked everywhere too - at her shoe-less foot, her broom lying where it fell on the grass, at the red tips of Ron's ears - before she let out a long breath. "Weasley, I will not be the one to kiss you first this time."
His arms clamped around her middle and he stooped to kiss her, speechless with relief. His heart cheered, his mind shrugged, and his body roared in approval. Her lips were smaller than Lavender's but more sure, confident as a commander marching back into rightful home territory, opening against his mouth. The palms of her hands moved up his neck, over the short, squared ends of his newly cut hair.
She broke away to speak as Ron kissed along her jawline, down her neck. "No more kissing anyone else."
"No," he breathed, "just you."
As ordered, Malfoy was first to arrive, getting to Snape's office just after curfew, dressed as a patrolling prefect, watching over his shoulder for Hermione.
"Leave the door ajar," Snape said as he came in, his occulmency protection fully engaged. Draco waited in an edgy quiet for Snape to begin. Snape did not turn to face him yet, but stood twirling his wand, saying nothing until he heard a second set of footsteps moving through the door.
"Shut it," he said, finally rounding on Draco and on Hermione who had come as well. The two of them stood a full metre apart before his office door, their arms at their sides.
"The happy couple."
Six years on and everything Snape said still made Hermione feel like a helpless idiot. She shifted on her feet, fighting not to glance at Malfoy.
"Since the Yule Ball?"
"Yes, sir," Draco answered.
"A long time to be - infatuated."
"Yes, sir."
Snape lunged suddenly, forcefully over his desk, gripping its edges with both hands. "Though it is not possible that your feelings are deep. If they were, then you, Miss Granger, would not have risked the safety of the entire Malfoy family by charming a love token into the flesh you knew the Dark Lord reserves for his mark."
Her mouth fell open, working but not speaking.
Snape threw himself upright. "Do not deny it, Miss Granger. The Dark Lord has told me what he found on Mr. Malfoy. You and your sentimental, childish, foolhardy, ignorant - "
"Draco doesn't belong to the Death Eaters. They're forcing him. He's not theirs. He's mine." The words exploded from her, too loud in the small, crowded, underground space. Her eyes stung as if she was about to cry.
Snape sneered but sat down, satisfied somehow. "Show me," he said.
Hermione took a quick, obedient step in Draco's direction, reaching for his sleeve. He jerked his arm behind his back, shaking his head. Each of them trusted Snape, but only one of them knew the kind of double-dealing agent he truly was.
"No need for the heroics, Draco," Snape said, rising to his feet. "I have been asked to investigate - "
"You're not touching her," Draco said, pushing Hermione behind himself, his voice quiet but his wand drawn.
"I have been asked to investigate," Snape continued, as if uninterrupted, "by Professor Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix."
Draco gripped his wand. "No. No, you're - "
"Draco, it's alright," Hermione was saying from behind his shoulder. "Professor Snape's role in all of this, it's - "
"None of your business," Snape finished. "I have the headmaster's confidence as well as your mother's, Draco. Allow Miss Granger to show me what remains of your charm, and perhaps we can help."