Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted (errrr, borrowed) from HBP.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but this twisted so-called "plot".
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That day Hermione learnt how it felt to unravel completely.
"...Who... drink... when... Slughorn..." said Ginny's voice, and "...Foaming... panic... bezoar... Dumbledore..." said Harry's.
She registered nothing, feeling demented and devastated.
The three of them had been standing outside the closed doors of the hospital wing for... oh, forever, while Madam Pomfrey worked on Ron. Dumbledore had whizzed in a while back, followed by Snape. Then Dumbledore had left. Each time, the doors opened and closed too quickly for her to be able to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside.
"...can't see Slughorn wanting to poison..."
How were they still summoning up the sanity to fucking speculate, while Ron was lying there in god knows what state, maybe even...
She was standing rigidly, uncomfortably straight. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms. She concentrated hard on maintaining this insane tension in her body, because if she let that go... she'd let go of a lot of other things.
If Ron didn't make it, he'd never grin in that wide, puckish, perfect way again... a grin that she hadn't seen in months... and may never...
She clenched her jaw.
Time was passing in flashes, inching forward in abrupt jerks every time she blinked.
"...then someone had to know that he planned to gift that bottle to..."
Blink.
The puddles of sunlight on the floor had shifted.
Blink.
McGonagall entered the hospital wing; Snape left.
Blink.
Theo laid a hand on her arm... "something to eat, please?" ...
Blink.
It was raining.
Blink.
"I'm sure Dumbledore will investigate every possible aspect..."
Blink.
Was that Neville?
Blink.
Lavender came to put on the most ludicrous show of distress. A mortified looking Parvati dragged her away after McGonagall burst out looking furious.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Night fell, and they were still waiting. Harry and Ginny had finally stopped conjecturing, and stood silently on opposite ends of the double doors, like a couple of sentries.
"Mum!"
Hermione twitched, and saw that indeed, Mrs. Weasley was hurtling towards them, followed closely by her husband, and Dumbledore. She didn't acknowledge any of them, tearing straight through the doors without a word. Mr. Weasley offered them a dismal nod.
Another age went by...
...After which Dumbledore and the Weasley's reemerged, the missus sobbing pitifully into her husband's neck as he held her.
"Dad??" Ginny asked in alarm, but neither of them spoke. They just continued to walk away, down the corridor. "Dad!"
Hermione's throat closed up, her vision blurred, her ears felt like they were on fire.
"What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?" Harry yelled.
"Calm yourself, Potter!" Professor McGonagall's command had Hermione, Ginny, and Harry spinning on the spot as if they wished to apparate. "He's fine. Ron Weasley is going to make a full recovery," she articulated each word slowly and thoroughly; and with each syllable, Hermione felt herself come out of her fugue state.
The doors opened once more, and Madam Pomfrey's face popped out, and she finally allowed them in.
"Yes, Mr. Weasley should be completely fine. Of course, he will have to stay here for a week or so, and be regular with his doses of essence of rue," the matron said as she led them to Ron's bed. Hermione's stomach muscles clenched tighter and tighter with every step she took.
There he was. His skin was the color of bleached corals, and dotted with beads of sweat. His scruffy hair was damp and swept away from his forehead. From chin-down, he was covered with a thick quilt. She came to a halt at the foot of his bed, her eyes glued to his faintly quivering lips, to his barely trembling eyelashes…
Ginny fell into the chair closest to his bed, picked up a soft looking cloth that lay by his pillow, and began to lightly dab at his clammy temple.
"You bloody prat," she whispered.
Then, as she brushed the cloth across his brow, Ron hummed. It was that clear, unassailable proof of his aliveness that got Hermione to uncurl her fists. She gasped.
"Why don't you sit down?" Ginny said to her, kindly.
She did, blindly shuffling over to the closest chair, her gaze not shifting off Ron for even a fraction of a second.
That day, Hermione felt relief in an entirely new... sharp and shattering... way.
She watched him breathe in terror and wonder.
Fred and George joined Ron's bedside gathering a few minutes later – apparently, they had been waiting to surprise Ron at Hogsmeade – and like Harry and Ginny, they were both extremely eager to talk about the mystery surrounding the 'accident'. Vultures, she thought gracelessly. She didn't participate, only loosely following the discussion. It was mostly an endless regurgitation of the same old facts and speculations; it was all entirely pointless.
"So the poison was in the drink?" Fred asked for the second or third time.
Harry jumped to answer with same alacrity every time: "Yes, Slughorn poured it out —"
"Would he have been able to slip something into Ron's glass without you seeing?"
"Probably. But why would Slughorn want to poison Ron?"
Ron's lip twitched, and Hermione wished with all her might that her would open his eyes and frown grumpily at them with a "do you mind, I'm trying to recover from a near-death experience here!"
They went over the same stale questions: who was the poison really for, where did it come from, was Slughorn a Death Eater (honestly), was Slughorn in danger…
"But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas," Ginny unnecessarily reminded Harry, "So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore."
"Then the poisoner didn't know Slughorn very well," Hermione snapped before she could stop herself. Well, she didn't snap so much as rasp… twelve hours of complete muteness was bound to have some effect. "Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself."
"Er-my-nee."
Her heart stopped beating.
They waited for Ron to say more… but all they got was some incomprehensible mumbling, before he simply started snoring.
He'd said her name. Her name. Of all things… it had been her name.
With a loud bang, the doors were thrown open, and Hagrid came stomping toward them, pulling Hermione away from her attack of sentimentality.
"Bin in the forest all day!" he said; a fact that was corroborated by his damp hair, bearskin coat, the crossbow in his hand, and his mud-caked boots. "Aragog's worse, I bin readin' to him — didn' get up ter dinner till jus' now an' then Professor Sprout told me abou' Ron! How is he?"
"Not bad. They say he'll be okay," Harry replied.
"I don' believe this. Jus' don' believe it… Look at him lyin' there… Who'd want ter hurt him, eh?"
"That's just what we were discussing," said Harry. "We don't know."
"Someone couldn' have a grudge against the Gryffindor Quidditch team, could they?" Hagrid said with actual genuine concern. "Firs' Katie, now Ron…"
"I can't see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team!"
Thank you, George.
"Wood might've done the Slytherins if he could've got away with it," Fred joked.
For god's sake.
"Well, I don't think it's Quidditch," Hermione interposed, "but I think there's a connection between the attacks."
"How d'you work that out?" Fred asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed." She faltered at that point, frowning as she thought out aloud, "Of course, that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim."
Alas, they didn't get a chance to pursue this thought, as Mr. and Mrs. Weasley chose that moment to enter the ward. The first thing Mrs. Weasley did was engulf Harry in the hug, while sobbing, "Dumbledore's told us how you saved him with the bezoar! Oh, Harry, what can we say? You saved Ginny… you saved Arthur… now you've saved Ron…"
Harry had turned the colour of ripe cherries. He clumsily tried to dismiss her, but Mr. Weasley had his own bit to add – "Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I stop and think about it. Well, all I can say is that it was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Harry."
The cloying, mawkish display was not doing Hermione's unaccommodating mood any favours. As much as she wanted to spend the night sitting by Ron's bed, holding his hand, she chose to leave with Harry and Hagrid when Madam Pomfrey came by to remind them that Ron was allowed only six visitors at a time.
Hermione awoke from a deep, dreamless slumber and felt around for her watch in panic. It turned out to be one of those strange situations where she felt like she'd been asleep for ages, but really… it was just quarter to five in the morning.
It was completely pitch black outside. She shuffled out of bed and wrapped her warmest cloak around herself as silently as possible, so as to not disturb any of her dormmates.
She crept up staircases, down hallways, and soon she was climbing the stairs of the murky tower where Sirius had been locked up, before Harry and she (and Buckbeak) had rescued him. It looked exactly the same, untouched by time – and time-turners. In the illusory dark, she could pretend Sirius was sitting crumpled in a shrouded corner. She walked over to the window to which they'd flown up to, remembering the look of supreme astonishment on his face when he saw them…
All that was visible outside were a few flickering lights. If she unfocused her eyes, they bloomed into enormous spheres, and she could have been looking at the solar system.
Ron was alive, and life could go on.
Hermione thought that perhaps it was time to gather abandoned half-thoughts, and piece together a theory about what had happened the day before. She didn't think she could do worse than the collective mind-power of Potter, Weasley, Weasley, and Weasley.
Someone had poisoned Slughorn's bottle of mead, hoping it would reach Dumbledore. Most likely, Katie was supposed to deliver the cursed necklace to him as well. She was fairly certain that someone was hell bent on assassinating the headmaster. The motive wasn't clear, but the most obvious and serious one would have something to do with Voldemort, and that exponentially intensified the gravity of both these incidents.
When Hagrid (to Harry's great glee) let slip the tidbit about Snape and Dumbledore's argument, Hermione was struck by the sudden conviction that Dumbledore knew exactly who was behind these attacks, and yet was perfectly as peace with letting them continue their mission, albeit under Snape's watchful eye.
A 'mission'… Snape's involvement…
These factors brought her to a most discomforting conclusion: What if Harry was actually right? What if… What if it was Draco Malfoy after all?
Whether or not he had been officially branded a Death Eater was irrelevant; if he was out to kill Dumbledore, he was exactly as dangerous as Harry feared. But… was he? She had too many contrary ideas about him. He was egotistical, arrogant, and horrible. He could quote fucking Shakespeare, and Theo swore he wasn't unsalvageable. This was a boy she'd slapped silly once. The boy she could surely take down in a duel with her eyes closed.
However, circumstantial evidence was still evidence, and she couldn't think of a justifiable alternative.
What a ghastly world they lived in. A simple, mediocre schoolyard bully could possibly turn out to be a diabolical killer – a ruthless minion of the most malevolent wizard alive. At the age of sixteen.
A weak hint of light was creeping up from behind distant shadowy trees. Hermione turned away from the window and began the long walk back to the Gryffindor tower. She told herself quite firmly that she would be getting answers from Theo. He dare not prevaricate this time; Ron had nearly died.
Her mind raced, but her legs dawdled; it was nearly daybreak by the time she reached the sixth floor. As she rounded a corner… she stopped short with a jerk, narrowly missing colliding with someone. She blinked disconcertedly at the black cloaked chest standing like a wall in front of her. When she looked up, her blood ran cold.
His pale skin was stained with the dusty blue cast of early dawn. It brought out the deep purple rings around his eyes, and he looked like a bloodless Inferius. He was every bit as startled as she was, looking down at her in surprise, rather than the usual revulsion.
Hermione was, honest to god, scared. With all the notions she had been entertaining, all she could think at that moment was... he's a killer. She stood rooted to the ground, watching as surprise made way for loathing, as soon enough, Malfoy was proper sneering.
Sneering, and (possibly, probably) capable of murder.
She couldn't move. She couldn't tear her wide, panicked stare away from his strange mist-and-steel eyes. He didn't move either. They were trapped in a vortex of fear and odium, and... move move move... she remained inert.
Would he pull out his wand? Would be spit abuse and vitriol? Would he physically assault her?
He blinked twice, straightened his shoulders, walked around her... and away.
Hermione didn't turn, even after the sound of his footfalls had faded. She took a few fortifying breaths, then half ran all the way back to her bed. She really, really hoped Harry wasn't awake and having an early morning crack at his map.
'Say, Hermione, I saw you and Malfoy having a showdown at dawn... did you find out what he's up to?'
'Oh, no, Harry! I was paralysed by irrational terror, so he just glared at me and left.'
'Ha Ha! How quaint.'
Goodness, she really had been paralysed, and completely sodding useless.
"...As if any of those twits could hurt you . Specially now, since you can crush all their bones with one casual hand gesture..."
She laughed to herself bitterly.
Ginny came sprinting towards Hermione and Harry as they were exiting the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom later that morning.
"He's awake," she panted, "Ron's awake!"
Within an instant the three of them were dashing toward the hospital wing. Harry charged straight in, but Hermione stopped dead at the door, suddenly assailed by insecurity.
"Herms?"
"Yes... Ginny, I... you go on. Perhaps it's best if I –"
"You can't be serious!" Ginny cried, "You still don't want to talk to him?!"
"I don't think he'll want to talk to me. I just –"
"Oh Morgan. Don't be a stupid cow. Of course he will. Come on," Ginny grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her inside.
Ron looked like... himself. His cheeks had regained their colour, his hair was shiny and shaggy, and he was laughing at something Harry had said... until he spotted her.
His eyes got round and dimly apologetic, and his breathing picked up a touch. She wasn't doing much better – the thrumming of her heart was sure to shatter her ribcage.
"Hi."
"Hi, Ron."
Harry rolled his eyes. So did Ginny, but with a grin.
"So. Um. Was, uh... was it really necessary to celebrate your birthday in such a terribly dramatic manner?"
And he gave her that wide, puckish, perfect grin. She could hear her blood rushing and churning about inside her.
"You know me," he quipped, "I never do anything by half."
"Except homework," she reminded him, barely managing to fight against the pull of a manic smile to do so.
"Except homework," he agreed, laughingly.
Ginny jumped in then, listing out all the many, many, many things that Ron did by half. Harry and Hermione interjected occasionally. Ron gave them a sour look, but said very little besides the occasional, "almost died," and "give me a bloody break".
The banter and ridiculousness went on for a while, after which Ron was instructed to nap, and they had to leave. In that while, Hermione collected six full grins, two fond chuckles, and one secret, overwhelming, exhilarating, significant glance.
"Fucking finally. There you are!"
Hermione looked up from her essay and Theo smiled, setting his bag down on the table in their favourite quite corner of the library. He was wearing the scarf she'd gifted him.
"I've been trying to catch hold of you all day. So, Weasley's well out of the woods, then?"
"Yes," she replied, tersely.
"That's good. And I suppose things between him and you are all peachy again?"
She glared, silently daring him to go on.
"And that's a yes. Brilliant. What a lucky break for him, in that case."
"Lucky?" she spat in disbelief.
Theo shrugged, arranging his books and things in front of him.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine."
He peered at her, looking annoyed. "Why the hell are you being so short with me?"
"Oh, I don't know. Why would I be? We're best friends, after all. So what if you're constantly lying to me? We're buddies, you and I."
"Excuse me?" Theo retorted indignantly, "First of all, don't ever use the word 'buddies' again. And secondly, I have never lied to you. Not once."
"Oh, really?" Hermione shot back, incensed, "Okay, Theo... who put Ron in the hospital? Who poisoned that mead?"
"How should I know?!"
Hermione slapped both her palms down on the table. "Stop. Lying. Tell me it was Malfoy."
"It wasn't," Theo denied immediately, but Hermione saw his face blanch.
"Stop ly –"
"I'm NOT fucking lying. Why the buggering hell would Draco want to kill Weasley? He doesn't love him, sure, but he's isn't going to –"
"It wasn't Ron he was after. He made a mistake. Like he had earlier with Katie Bell."
Theo paled even further. "No. That wasn't him. He... he wouldn't... No. No."
"Either this is your worst attempt at perjury so far, or you're up to your ears in denial," Hermione snarked.
He frowned at her in utter confusion and devastation. It was an expression she couldn't quite label – was it horrified resignation, was it shocked disbelief? – all she knew was that it was raw and upsetting, and she instantly eased her hardened stance.
"Theo," she murmured, reaching out to lay her hand over his, "I do believe that you aren't lying to me, alright? But you have to admit to harbouring certain... suspicions. You must have noticed... that is to say, with the way Malfoy's been acting, the awful things that have been happening... what I mean is..." she felt distressingly inarticulate, "Look, you're the closest to him. Surely you can muster something substantial, and we can put a stop to this madness."
"How?" Theo croaked, his eyes fixed on hers with disconcerting directness.
"Um... well, we could talk to some of the professors..."
He snorted. "Like who? Dumbledore? And he'll do what...? Expel Draco? On the bases of a bit of farfetched guesswork?"
"It isn't all that farfetched," Hermione grumbled. What would Dumbledore do, though? All evidence pointed to the fact that he already knew... "Can't you get Malfoy to admit...?"
Theo pulled a face and looked away.
"This is serious, Theo!"
"Oh, really?!" he replied, affecting a guise of facetious disbelief, "Serious, is it? Oh, dear me! I thought we were all just larking about! But it's serious! Ah! Thanks for letting me know, Hermione."
Hermione threw up her hands.
"Clearly you are larking about! Do you honestly think keeping Malfoy's nefarious secrets is more important than –"
"Than what? Your insatiable curiosity?!"
"It's NOT about my sodding curiosity! Ron could have died!"
"And Draco had nothing to do with it!"
"You don't know that!" Hermione hollered.
Theo dragged his chair back loudly, making her cringe.
He packed up his bag in a towering rage, while saying, "I'm sure pinning this shit on Draco is very convenient for your lot, but leave me the fuck out of it. I am not going to sit here and help you bolster such despicable allegations. Good night."
And he left her with the coldest look he'd ever aimed her way. She growled under her breath; her anger, distress, and frustration boiled over, and she stood up to pace feverishly, in an effort to calm her nerves. How could he point-blank reject everything she had set forth? There had to be a limit to personal loyalty when lives were at stake... when there were far bigger things at play...
...It was TOO MUCH. Everything was TOO MUCH.
She circuited the medium sized library table until she was dizzy.
Of course, the day just had to end with a confrontation with Lavender Brown.
"Well, you've been out late," she noted resentfully when Hermione walked into their dormitory.
Hermione was in no shape to deal with such puerile cattishness. She ignored the huffy blond bint, and stomped straight into the bathroom, letting the door close with a slam. She stood under a stream of hot water for a long time. Steam swirled around her, laden with the scent of oranges and cinnamon.
Oranges... Dead oranges.
Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.
What a day.
Outside the bathroom, Lavender had been waiting for her with a face like thunder.
"Where have you been all evening?" she demanded.
Hermione shrugged offhandedly, sparing her a perfunctory half-glance before crawling into bed. Lavender got even more riled up at such cavalier treatment.
"Where you with my Won-Won?" she yelled, marching right up to Hermione's bed.
"I did go see him, yes," Hermione answered vaguely, as she looked over the stack of books on her bedside table, hoping to pick something diverting to end the day with.
"WILL YOU PAY ATTENTION?!"
Hermione gave her the exact look of mock surprise that Theo had displayed earlier. She knew from experience that it was bloody lethal.
As predicted, Lavender seethed. "So you want to be his friend again? He's become the star of the school, and you've suddenly decided you want to make up with him?"
"Star of the school?!" Hermione laughed incredulously, "He was poisoned, you idiot. And yes, it put our differences in perspective –"
"Oh, Please. Spare me that bullshit. You need to stay away from him!" Lavender fumed when Hermione laughed at that, "I'm serious! You stay away from him!"
"Go away, Lavender. You have no business telling me what to do. If you have problems, go talk to Ron."
"Oh I will," she avowed menacingly, "The second he wakes up."
Hermione raised a brow, but decided not to bait the crazed termagant any further. "When he wakes up. Right."
With pointed finality, Hermione wandlessly, wordlessly closed the curtains around her bed, shutting out Lavender... and the rest of the world.