"You know I love Ernie," Hannah said, "but you two are so ill-suited." She punctuated her remark with a stolen glance at the boy in question, who was sitting across the common room.
Susan tsked in indignation. "I can't believe you'd say that! You fancied him for all of third year."
"I had bad taste," Hannah shrugged dismissively. "When we were thirteen, overwhelming pretention was the way to my heart."
"Okay, he's a little pretentious," Susan admitted, "but that's because he's so smart. And talented. And cute. He has a lot to be proud of."
Hannah bit her lip and looked down, her good humor evaporated. Susan, half-pitying, half-exasperated, said hastily, "Hannah. Stop worrying about NEWTs. You have so much time to work out what to do next!"
Hannah's failure to pass her Transfiguration and Potions OWLs, coupled with her average marks in Charms and Herbology, had left her fairly distraught and delicate to the point of aggravating in these first few weeks of the term. Susan, who had listened to Hannah's academic anxieties for over five years now, knew the only course of action was to resist indulging in Hannah's favorite activity, spinning out worst-case scenarios.
Eager to change the subject, Susan reverted to Ernie's qualifications. "Honestly! You're his best friend, I don't know why you can't see this. We're perfect together!"
"Is he a good kisser?" asked Hannah skeptically, sniffing loudly.
"Well…" Susan thought of their first kiss, which had happened on the first day of term. Ernie's hands had moved businesslike over her body, his tongue probing her mouth somewhat stiffly before withdrawing. Ernie rarely looked sheepish, but he had after the kiss – a not-altogether-flattering facial expression on him.
"It's not like I have a lot of kisses to compare it with," she hedged.
"That means it was shit," giggled Hannah, apparently thoroughly cheered by Ernie's lack of kissing prowess. "I knew it!"
"It wasn't shit!" protested Susan, laughing too. "And it's only been a few weeks! This is just for fun anyway. Merlin knows we need it." She glanced at Eloise, who was crying openly in the corner adjacent to them, surrounded by friends and acquaintances. She'd just lost the fight with her father to stay at Hogwarts, and was reportedly withdrawing the following day.
Even as their giddiness dwindled, Ernie caught their eye from across the room and smiled at them, clambering to his feet to join his friends.
"Hello, ladies," he said as he reached them, and even this caused Hannah to snort conspicuously. "Pity about Eloise, isn't it?" he said conspiratorially. "Ah well, so we beat on, boats against the current." He paused for a beat, eyeing them to gauge their reaction, before plunging ahead. "Famous Muggle author, you know. Fitzgerald. American. Just started the unit in Muggle Studies."
Hannah rolled her eyes. "Come off it, Ernie," she said fondly. "Sit down and stop showing off." As always with Ernie, one had to be obliging yet firm.
To Susan's delight, Ernie sat on the couch next to her and slung his arm casually across her shoulders. Susan looked meaningfully at Hannah, who – bless her – immediately caught the hint and said, "It's getting late – I'm going upstairs. Night, you two!"
After she left, Ernie leaned over to Susan's neck and nuzzled it affectionately. At least, Susan assumed it was meant to be affectionate, but when he moved his lips slowly up her neck to her ear and promptly inserted his tongue into her earlobe, she couldn't quite suppress a shudder.
It wasn't unpleasant, exactly. She was just reminded of her dog at home with her parents, greeting her with a couple of licks before she could dodge his tongue.
"Do you like that?" Ernie said huskily.
The problem with Ernie's attempt at sultry seduction was he was normally so heartily longwinded that any other mood seemed superficial, even performative.
Susan thought she might be in love with Ernie, but she still wanted to cringe.
"Er…yes!" she said hastily, simultaneously shifting slightly so she was out of reach of his enthusiastic tongue.
"What are you doing tomorrow?" he continued, undeterred.
"I only have the one class, Herbology," Susan said, "After that, I'm not sure. Start that massive Charms essay for Monday, maybe, though I might not work up the motivation as it's Friday. I might write my parents."
To her embarrassment, Susan found her own eyes welling with tears. She blinked rapidly to keep Ernie from noticing. Her father was not handling the death of his sister well at all. Though Amelia Bones' funeral was in early July, her father was still barely functional, rising late and sleeping early, liable to stare off in the distance for hours at a time. They had been very close, and Susan had loved her too.
She'd hated to leave her parents in their grief, and had written at least half a dozen long letters even in their short time back at Hogwarts as a way to ease her guilt. So far, it had mostly failed.
Ernie didn't acknowledge her sudden swell of emotion, simply said, "Well, I completed my Charms essay with no trouble yesterday, so I'm happy to lend a hand if you feel you need it."
"Thanks," said Susan hollowly. She did appreciate Ernie ignoring her tears, but she wasn't at all sure he had even noticed them, which made her view his response less generously. Even a sympathetic hand squeeze would have helped!
They sat together for a while longer, chatting idly. Ernie played with her hair, which made Susan literally tingle. She'd never had a proper boyfriend before; she found she was most enjoying the casual physical contact, the small displays of affection. Ernie, while largely incompetent at kissing, seemed quite self-assured in this aspect, and Susan reveled in every touch.
When she bid him good night later, she was happy until she heard Eloise's muffled sobs, two beds down from her own. Grimacing to herself, she climbed into bed and tried to sleep.
Over the next few weeks, she learned more about Ernie than she ever had in five years of fast friendship. Some was superficial – she'd never noticed the only vegetable he would eat were peas. Some, less so. He was deeply invested in his study schedules, lovingly crafted every Sunday night. He even included her, in squares simply marked Time with Susan.
At first she found it unbearably endearing, and Time with Susan in Ernie's neat, round handwriting floated across her mind in quiet moments and made her smile.
After just a few weeks, though, she found his strict adherence aggravating.
"You're welcome to follow along to map your own study habits," he'd told her superciliously. "I've simply found this to be an effective way to ensure I give all of my subjects due consideration. And after my OWL results, I think I'd have to say it works quite well." Remembering his numerous mind-numbing recitations of his study schedule last spring when they'd been in OWL frenzy, Susan hadn't dared say anymore.
Hannah maintained her friendly disbelief. She quickly perfected a Well, what did you expect? look she directed at Susan whenever Susan told her of an outrageously pompous behavior from Ernie. Susan, however, found it rather adorable.
Yes, Ernie was a bit grandiose, never one to pass up the opportunity to slip in an obscure reference or correct someone's grammar or pronunciation. But she liked and valued intelligence, and she loved he was so excited about sharing his mind with the world that it all tended to burst out of him uncontrollably.
Susan and Hannah both found their coursework nearly overwhelming several weeks into term. Hannah was still hopeless at nonverbal spells – she could barely manage them in practice, and almost never in class – and Susan found them frightfully difficult as well.
Combined with the lengthy reading assignments each teacher heaped on them, and the ever-longer essays and homework assignments, Susan was barely keeping her head above water, and that was without factoring in her parents, who she thought were struggling as well. She still wrote long, detailed letters to them, but the letters in return from her father were brusque to the point of hurtful, and her mothers' were doleful and avoided any mention of her father.
One Charms class in early October, Professor Flitwick stopped by their table and remarked to Susan and Hannah, who were both struggling to make the quills in front of them even wiggle when they were meant to be writing out letters in perfect script, "More practice on your own, please! You girls mustn't let yourself fall too far behind on nonverbal spells so early in the year!"
Beside her, Ernie's quill was scrawling excitedly, crafting perfect As over and over again. As Flitwick moved away from them, he whispered, "If you like, I can help you in our free period after break."
She realized only later that Ernie had previously scheduled Transfiguration homework into that free period, and his good-faith suggestion actually did acknowledge and respond to her mortification at being singled out in class. In the moment, though, she snapped, "Merlin, I get it, you got an O in Charms, could you stop showing off for five seconds, please?"
Under the table, she jerked her leg away from Ernie's hand, which had been resting on her knee a moment before, a display of affection Susan usually loved.
In their free period, she obstinately retreated to the sixth year girls' dormitory, where Ernie couldn't follow.
There were wonderful, perfect, utterly gratifying moments with Ernie too, of course. Romantic was not an apt description of him, but he was fastidious, often thoughtful to the extreme. He often didn't notice if she was drained or upset, but he would charm anything to make her smile, from a flower to a quill to a slice of tomato at dinner. He would draw small woodland creatures on parchment and animate them with his wand, so they would wave at her with a speech bubble saying Hi, Susan!
Ernie was a pleasant boyfriend. But she wasn't ecstatic now when she considered Time with Susan, as she had been a few weeks ago. In fact – and she hated to admit it, even to herself – she found it a little tiresome. She resented feeling as though she had an appointment with her boyfriend, and she certainly resented his inattention to her at other times.
And he was undeniably condescending.
Ernie was a great friend. She just wasn't sure he was a great boyfriend.
Further, she knew her boyfriend at almost-seventeen didn't dictate the rest of her life. She and Ernie weren't serious. What was stopping her from dating him for a few months and letting matters develop organically?
Nothing, she reasoned…if the thought of Ernie's stiff lovemaking and daily Time With Susan didn't leave her feeling unavoidably unfulfilled.
She wished things were like they had been before, when they were friends, or even over the summer when they wrote each other long, overtly flirtatious letters.
But they weren't, and couldn't be anymore, so she had to break up with him.
This decided, Susan dawdled. Of course, the moment she determined her course of action, things seemed to improve. Ernie relaxed his schedule slightly, though their workload didn't slacken. Something clicked inside her, and nonverbal spells were suddenly easier. Ernie began to relax when they snogged and their intimacy brought her more pleasure.
They spent a day in Hogsmeade together and talked incessantly over glass after glass of butterbeer; as they walked back to the castle in the bitter cold, Susan realized her cheeks ached from smiling and laughing.
The next morning, however, her good humor vanished and she fortified her decision to break up with him. After Susan mentioned in passing cleanliness was not her forte, Ernie corrected her pronunciation of the word in one sentence and launched into a long-winded explanation of the word's etymology in the next. She left breakfast glad she'd agreed to spend the day in the student greenhouses with Hannah so she could clear her sudden bad temper.
The moment Hannah and Susan cleared the threshold of the castle, heading toward the greenhouses, Hannah turned to Susan, clutching her arm in excitement.
"You will not believe what I have to tell you!"
"What?" asked Susan, startled.
"It's too cold to talk out here," Hannah said, towing Susan along against the wind. "I'll tell you inside."
"What is it, then?" Susan repeated as the humidity and merciful warmth of the greenhouse enveloped them.
"So," began Hannah dramatically, beginning to unpeel the various layers of clothing she'd donned for the short walk, "I was talking to Ernie last night. After you went to bed. He was telling me about your day in Hogsmeade."
Hannah crossed the entryway to her small row of pepper plants, a personal project she'd started this term. "He's obsessed with you," she continued, looking back at Susan, who was still disrobing. "He was going on and on about how he can't stop thinking of you, that he wants to tell you he loves you but he's afraid it's too early. Seriously! It was a true Ernie monologue."
"Why was he going on about it to you?" Susan asked, playing for time.
"I think he wanted me to relay it to you so I could gauge your reaction, honestly," Hannah said. "Either that, or he couldn't help himself after you left him so lovestruck. Though if he asked me how you responded, right now I'd probably have to lie so as not to break his heart…what's up? I thought you'd be excited!"
"Actually…" Susan began, wondering if it wouldn't be easier to beam, squeal, and pull Ernie aside to reciprocate his sentiments that evening.
"I was thinking of breaking up with him," she confessed in a rush.
"Susan! Why?"
"Well, he can be a bit overwhelming!" she said defensively. "And he's so focused on school. He doesn't have that much time for me, to be honest. And when you're his friend you can, you know, sort of rein him in when he's being long-winded. But as his girlfriend you can't! I'm just supposed to listen to him!"
"I mean, I said all this from the beginning," Hannah said, half amused. "But he's going to be so upset," she continued somberly. "He has no idea at all. How are you going to do it?"
"I've been putting it off," Susan admitted. "I figured we were just mucking about. But if I don't break up with him now, aren't I…leading him on?"
"Can you add the fertilizer to the plants? Then I'll charm them after," Hannah said abruptly after a pause, and Susan began pouring enhanced fertilizer into Hannah's pots. "And yes," Hannah added, following behind Susan, poking her wand into each mound of soil. "You would be leading him on. You have to do it soon." Nothing discernible happened after each wand thrust, but Herbology was Hannah's best subject and Susan was inclined to trust her.
They didn't speak of Ernie again the rest of the morning, but that afternoon, after choking down half a sandwich at lunch, Susan broke up with him.
It was quick, and easier than Susan expected. She'd never broken up with anyone before, didn't really know how, but she tried to be quick and kind. She told him she wanted to remain friends.
He said nothing, stonefaced, very still. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, "Ah well, we had a good run, you and I." Then he walked away from her, leaving the deserted corridor she'd pulled him into, and when she followed him back into the common room after giving him a tactful head start, he was gone.
He didn't show up for dinner that night, nor for Defense Against the Dark Arts the following morning. Susan was alarmed; Ernie never skipped class. She knew he had a free period immediately following Defense, and headed to the library, hoping to head him off.
He was there, mounds of paper and several books piled around him; evidently, he had skipped class not to wallow, as Susan had feared, but to immerse himself in study. Or perhaps, Susan realized, it amounted to the same thing.
"Ernie?" she said tentatively, and he jumped, catching her eye for just a moment before mumbling, "Oh, hi, Susan, I was…er, just leaving." He packed his belongings at a breakneck pace while Susan stood in front of him awkwardly, trying to think of something to say.
"I'm really sorry," she whispered finally as he slung his bag over his shoulder.
"You have nothing to apologize for," he said stiffly, and brushed past her without another word.
He'd left a paper; it had floated onto the chair across the table from him when he'd packed up. Susan examined it; it was his schedule, presumably crafted the evening before, as was his Sunday habit. She saw with dismay he'd filled in every hour with reading for class, essay writing, spell practice. There were no free hours, no breaks, no time with Hannah or his other friends.
Most glaringly, there was no Time with Susan.
Susan sat down, schedule in front of her, and put her head in her hands. She stayed that way for a few minutes, breathing softly, trying to soothe herself with darkness in front of her eyes.
Finally, she stood, folding the paper once in half, tucking it into her own bookbag. She would give Ernie today to mope.
Then tomorrow, she would give him back his calendar, smile tentatively at him, and ask him if he wanted to join Hannah and her in a three-way game of Reusable Hangman.
I'm not sure there's any interaction with Ernie in the books where he's not described as pompous. Having dated more than one person who reminds me of Ernie myself, I wanted to try and capture that personality with a few more redeeming features thrown in. Thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts!