Author's Notes: Hey Everybody!!! Sorry that this has taken so long to get uploaded. The Holiday Crush is a killer.
There are so many things to say about this chapter. One of my biggest problems with this story in general is the anachronisms that are appearing throughout. As an historian, this really burns my…well, you get the idea. Since going back and changing everything would be horrifically time consuming, I am just going to pretend that our heroes live in a magical land where a playstation exists in 1997. HEY! They do live in a magical land…art imitating art! How avante garde!
Anyhow, this chapter is un-beta-ed. I want to give Fool4Sasuke33 a break. I didn't want anyone to think that I had abandoned this story, however. Therefore, it is the responsibility of you, gentle reader, to point out the mistakes. I think I got all the typos, but my grammar is rather poor. Sorry.
Enjoy!
"But…but…" Hermione sputtered, "how are we supposed to prepare for a test when we don't even know what we are being tested on?" She forced herself to take deep breaths, eyes darting around the room for a paper bag to breathe into.
"And NEWTs are coming up! What are they thinking?" Pity for her overcoming his still slightly out of joint attitude, Ron stood behind her and began massaging her shoulders. She needed to relax. It was probably nothing. It wasn't like they were going to test her on occlumency, when Merlin knew she was oh-so-skilled at that.
"Ouch!" Hermione turned her head around to look at him, "Ron, as much as I appreciate you trying to relax me, you are squeezing a bit too hard."
Ron released her hands and stared at her in shock. He was hurting her. He had hurt her without even realizing that he was doing it.
"I'm so sorry," he sat down, ashamed, and wouldn't even look at her. A few moments of silence passed.
"Ron," she began, sliding right beside him and taking his hand in both of hers, "I know this isn't the best of times, honestly, when have we ever had 'the best of times,' but anyway, I think maybe we should talk."
Oh great, here it comes. I'm about to get chucked.
"Ron, I am so sorry that you feel as though I've betrayed you. That honestly wasn't my intention," she whispered, "it was just that, there are things inside me that are terrifying, and I need to keep them hidden. I didn't want you to see something inadvertently that you would take the wrong way out of context." She sat back and exhaled.
"But I guess that happened anyway," she lamented.
"What do you mean there are terrifying things inside you?"
She sighed and looked away.
"We all have things that we would like to keep private. I was afraid that you would see something inside me that you would cause you to get disgusted by me."
He had to take a minute to process this.
"That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my entire life," he snapped quietly, "Hermione, I understand that you want to keep some things to yourself. But that's beside the point. There isn't anything about you that would get me disgusted."
"But don't you see? It already has," she said brokenly, eyes closing and a single tear running down her cheek.
"I'm not disgusted," he ground out, wonderingly exactly what he was, "I just feel…betrayed I guess."
"And that you can't trust me anymore."
"No, that's not it, really. I'm just…" he had to stop there, "I'm jealous of him. There, I said it. It's bad enough that you live with him. It's worse that he's almost as smart as you, way smarter than me. But now that you shared this experience with him, how can I compete with that?"
"Oh for God's sake, Ron," she snapped sadly, "don't you know that I love you? We…we made love. How could anything having to do with Draco Malfoy possibly compete with any of that?"
"Maybe not now…but eventually you'll see how much better you are than me, how much more you deserve…" At that she pulled away from him and hung her head in her hand in frustration.
"Ron, we can't keep doing this. I get that you have confidence issues. Don't think that I don't have them too," she turned to face him again, "but accusing me of something that isn't there simply because I am on friendly terms with a male of the species isn't going to work. It's not right and it's not fair. I love you so much…but maybe that just isn't enough." She stood and turned from him.
"What?" Ron's question came out in a low growl. She turned back to face him.
"I can't do this, especially not now, with everything that has happened. Maybe you weren't ready for us, maybe I wasn't. I don't know. All I know is that when I look in your eyes, all I see is accusation. And I can't stand it."
"So what are you proposing then?"
"I don't know. You're the strategist, give me some options."
He took a deep breath. "Do you want to break up?"
"Do I want to, no!"
"So you want to try to work it out?"
"Of course; if we can."
"No, no, no! If we do this, it can't be half-assed. If we try, we have to go all the way. Would you be committed to that?"
"Yes," she hissed, angry now.
"Well, then. I guess we have some work to do," he walked forward toward the door and held out his hand. She took it without a second's hesitation and they walked out together.
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Draco sat outside an empty classroom. Blaise was being tested inside the sealed room. He would be next. Hermione was being tested in the room adjacent to Blaise. Hannah Abbot and Terry Boot were in the far classrooms.
Hermione had been a wreck ever since these new specialized tests had been announced. Added to her nerves was the fact that Ron had been AWOL for quite some time now. Draco was starting to feel odd, as though things were incomplete.
Unfortunately, it appeared that the situation was about to get quite a bit odder. Before he knew what was happening, Ron was sitting beside him on the bench.
"Hi," Ron said, arms crossed over his chest, not looking at him.
"Hi," Draco replied questioningly, "what are you doing here?"
"I'm scheduled to go next, after Hermione."
"Ok. What are you doing on this bench?"
"I wanted to talk to you," he still wouldn't turn his head to grace Draco with eye to eye contact.
"And you are…"
"What did you see?"
"What?"
"Shut it, you know what I'm talking about."
"Oh," Draco understood, from Ginny, that Ron and Hermione were barely on speaking terms, mostly due to his teaching Hermione occlumency, which was all her idea, by the way. "What do you care?"
Now Ron turned, and gave Draco a death glare.
"You want to know what I saw?" Draco turned to face him, "I saw you. Image after image after image. You as a little boy on the Express, you a little bit older at The Hovel, you playing Quidditch, you in class, you, you, you, you. Over and over again. She's obsessed, that one. And how she sees you," he grunted, "like some sort of god sent down from on high to mingle with us commoners. It was disgusting really. Luckily she picked up the skills relatively quickly, otherwise I may have been forced to vomit."
That's my girl.
Draco's diatribe was interrupted by the sound of a door being opened. Blaise had completed his test and Slughorn was now waiting on Draco.
"See you around," the blond said, getting up off the bench and walking through the door, which was closed with a soft click. Blaise minded his business and left immediately. Ron sat in silence for a few moments until it was broken by the sound of another door opening. A tired, but very satisfied, looking Hermione was exiting. Ron felt his chest constrict as he looked at her for what felt like the first time in weeks.
"Hey, baby," he said softly, using a voice Hermione barely recognized. Between the tone and the look on his face, she was just about ready to burst into tears, again.
"Hey," she replied, standing where she was, not really understanding what was going on.
"I talked to Malfoy," he said, figuring out her confusion and knowing the simplest way to alleviate it, as their time was short.
"Did you?"
"Yes," he stood and approached her.
"I'm sorry," he said, reaching her and pulling her into a hug. He felt her give a shaky sigh and hug him back.
"Me too," she said.
"I love you," he said, separating enough to look down into her face.
"I love you, too," she answered, giving him a watery smile. He bent to kiss her, but any full-on snogging would have to wait as McGonagall discreetly cleared her throat from the doorway.
"Whenever you are ready, Mr. Weasley."
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"So what were the tests like?" Ginny asked over the ice cream spoon that was currently lodged in her mouth.
Since Ron and Hermione had successfully reconciled (there was something to be said for making up after fights now that they were a couple), a slushy Sunday afternoon in February found Harry, Ron, and Ginny lounging in the Head Suite once again. Harry and Draco were enmeshed in a game of Mortal Kombat while Hermione snuggled up on Ron's lap, reading. Ron watched the two boys battle it out while offering color commentary. Ginny sat on the floor by Harry's legs, eating ice cream and watching the antics on the TV.
"I think that everyone was given different tests," Hermione began, "mine mostly dealt with logic and problem solving. 'If you needed to enter building A and entrance B was blocked, what would you do?' 'What sources would you use to research topic C?' That kind of thing. They were actually kind of fun."
Ron nodded. "McGonagall made me play chess on three different boards while she asked me all kinds of questions."
"That's odd," Ginny noted, furrowing her brow, "what did you lot have to do?" She addressed to her two former boyfriends on the sofa.
"I had a lot of problem solving, like Hermione," Draco replied, "I also had to fill in family trees and answer questions about wizard politics."
Harry sat for a moment, thinking. "I had questions about Quidditch and how I was faring as captain. It didn't really feel like I was being tested, per se."
"Why would they all be different tests?" Ginny said almost to herself.
"That's not what worries me," replied Hermione absently, "I'm more concerned about what we were being tested for."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, only the remaining 7th years of each house were tested and we were all given different tasks. Whoever made up the tests obviously knew our strengths and these were just to get a scope, however limited. But who are they and why did they need to know?"
Hermione's musings brought Harry up cold. Ron noticed him start and decided to do a little digging.
"Malfoy, how much can we trust you?" Ron asked, seemingly out of the blue. Hermione looked at him, but he just nodded for her to keep quiet.
"You can't," was Draco's reply.
"That's what I thought." Ron stared very hard at Draco.
"Knock it off!" Draco jumped off the sofa and threw his controller to the ground, "do you really think you would be able to get anything out of me that way?"
"It was worth a try," Ron replied, aloof. By this point Draco was panting and sweating.
"Ron, what did you do?" asked Ginny.
"He tried to read me," Draco answered for him. Time in the suite stopped.
"So what? It's not like it's the first time," Harry said, ignoring the tantrum.
"No, it's nothing like the first time. This was by force." He wasn't calming down.
"Oh, relax. I didn't get much of anything anyway."
"What did you see?" Draco marched up to and stood in front of the chair that Hermione and Ron occupied.
"What did you see?!?!" he was screaming now. Ron very carefully lifted Hermione out of the chair to stand. When he rose, he gently pushed her behind him to keep her from getting caught in the crossfire.
"What's the matter, Malfoy, nervous about something?"
"Draco, I don't understand. You know how to use occlumency, why didn't you?" asked Hermione.
"I don't have it on all the time! I didn't know I had to use all the time here!" With that, he stormed into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. As soon as it was closed, Harry cast an imperturbable around the common room.
"Something on your mind, Harry?" Ron asked mildly, sitting back down on his chair and dragging Hermione after him.
"That was some wicked trick, Ron," Ginny muttered in shock.
"What? We have things we need to discuss, he was in the way, and if we all left the room at the same time it would look mighty suspicious. Not to mention that he would just come looking for us."
"An excellent strategy," Hermione said.
"So, Harry, what's up?" Harry turned to look at them.
"Do you remember when Percy came to tell all of us we were under house arrest?" Ron and Hermione nodded, "he said that the Ministry was planning something. What if these tests are part of what they are planning? What if they are amassing an army, and they are trying to determine who will be generals and who will be foot soldiers?"
"But why would they only test the 7th years?" asked Ginny.
"Think about it, Gin, who are the only ones legally able to do magic outside of school?" Harry replied, "My guess is that they will filter through the 7th years and then go one to the 6th years, looking for people who can help protect the school while enrolled next term."
"It makes a lot of sense," Hermione backed him up.
"So this is it, then. It's starting," Ron thought that he would be happier about that.
"We don't know that for sure," Hermione continued, "Harry, maybe you should owl Lupin. Feel around to see if he knows anything. I wish we had more contacts in the Order."
"I can ask Kingsley some innocent, yet well worded questions," Ron said, "he offered to answer any questions I might have about…well, it was supposed to be the occlumency stuff. Hermione, maybe you can help me word things so they appear more inconspicuous."
"Good plan," Hermione agreed, before turning to the last Gryffindor in the room, "Ginny, I think it's a good time for you to write your favorite brother, Percy. See if he'll brag about anything going on at the Ministry."
"If he believes he's my favorite brother, I don't know how useful he'll be as a source," Ginny quipped.
"Well, feel him out anyway. He's the closest person to the Minister of Magic that we can get to."
Harry stood there as realization dawned. His generals were in place. They had a plan. Things were moving forward. The time was dawning to take down that serpentine bastard once and for all.