Chapter Twenty-One

Answers

"Enter," Dumbledore called at the knock on his door, and looked up to see who his visitor was. Minerva McGonagall stepped through the doorway, confirming his suspicions. "Hello, Minerva," he said pleasantly. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, you could bring back reality, for a start," McGonagall said bluntly, sitting down in front of his desk and giving him her sternest look. "What, exactly, happened to Severus?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Please, don't play innocent with me, Albus," Minerva snapped. "I've known you too long for that. I have never seen anything quite as disquieting as Severus Snape was yesterday."

"He seemed rather cheerful."

"Exactly. Severus's only happiness is that derived from the suffering of Gryffindors. Where was he all weekend, Albus? Did you send him out on a mission for the Order?"

"Severus was attending to his own business, not the Order's," Dumbledore replied.

"And what business would that be?" McGonagall asked.

"I am afraid that is for Severus to disclose."

McGonagall sighed. "Well, could you at least tell me what happened between Severus and Miss Granger?"

"In what respect?"

McGonagall gave him a pointed look. "You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. How did those two end up working together on the prank war?"
"Did they?" Dumbledore said mildly. "I had no idea. How very interesting."

"One of these days, Albus, I'm going to steal your Pensieve," McGonagall said dryly. Dumbledore merely chuckled in response. "All right, fine, you're not going to give me any answers," McGonagall said sourly. "Would you at least tell me why you're making Miss Granger and Mr. Malfoy suffer?"

"I assume you are referring to the chain?"

She nodded. "Why won't you remove it? You know as well as I do that no good will come of it. They're going to kill each other, Albus; you'd have better luck with making two enemies into friends by chaining Severus to Sirius, and we both know Severus would chew off his hand within thirty seconds in that situation."

Dumbledore couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Snape and Sirius in Hermione and Draco's situation. "Miss Granger is not unreasonable, and Mr. Malfoy is not as bad as he pretends to be. Hopefully, spending time together will help them to overcome the past."

McGonagall raised her eyebrow skeptically. "And, what, Potter, Weasley, Granger and Malfoy will end up the best of pals?"

"Where Miss Granger goes, so go Harry and Mr. Weasley."

McGonagall snorted. "Granger may be reasonable, but she holds grudges, Albus. She won't forgive Malfoy very easily, especially after this prank war nonsense. We were lucky they both lived through the prank war before the chain, never mind after. They both have horrid tempers, a lot of pent-up anger, and a multitude of spells at their disposal."

"I have every confidence that they can work out their differences," Dumbledore said firmly.

McGonagall shook her head. "You will unchain them before graduation, won't you?"

"If the solution to their problem has been found, yes," Dumbledore replied with a smile.

"Come now, Albus," McGonagall said. "You've known how to unchain them from the start."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps, nothing. Do you really think there's anything to be gained by subjecting them to this? Surely you've heard about the rumors flying about?"

"I have heard a few," Dumbledore said with another chuckle. "I do so wonder who invented the tale that Miss Granger had murdered Severus."

McGonagall couldn't help but smile. "Honestly, Albus, Hogwarts can't take much more of this. Poppy is ready to quit, and Argus was very upset that he finally got over his cold only to have to mop up a flooded fourth floor and clean up cheese slices and pork chops in the entrance hall. They left a trail of food from the Great Hall to the prefects' bathroom, Albus. Surely you can't let this continue for too long?"

"They will work things out, Minerva," Dumbledore told her. "I am sure of it."

Oliver swallowed nervously, staring at the furious Weasley in his doorway. Normally, a seventh-year student was not something Oliver would fear, unless it happened to be someone who was highly intelligent and a Death Eater's offspring (and to be both smart and a follower of Voldemort was rare), and even then, Oliver was probably advanced enough to win a fight. His father had been in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for decades, and had taught Oliver everything he knew. On top of that, the members of the Order of the Phoenix had taught him plenty of spells and charms, both offensive and defensive, and Oliver had done a lot of his own research, having always enjoyed the subject. So his skills in a duel were rather sound.

Ron, however, was a different matter. Ron was tough, maybe not as skilled as Harry or Hermione, but still a natural butt-kicker and on his way to being an Auror. Not only that, but there was something intimidating about being glared at by a guy who had been barely seventeen when he had helped defeat the most dangerous Dark Wizard of the age, if not ever. It was even more intimidating to be glared at by just such a guy when he was holding his wand and probably knew that Oliver had seen his girlfriend's ass.

"Um… Ron. Hi," Oliver stammered, wishing his office had an exit other than the one Ron was standing in. "What can I do for you?"

Ron smiled a maniacal sort of grin that made Oliver even more uneasy. "It didn't click at first, Oliver," Ron said silkily, taking a step forward. "I was too shocked about the tattoo and the hickeys. Then I remembered what Malfoy had said. 'I do believe Wood and the Little Weasel already knew.' Mind telling me how you knew about my girlfriend's tattoo?"

"Hey, it's not what you think," Oliver said desperately, standing up in case he needed to run. Who the hell came up with that dumb rule about not Apparating inside Hogwarts? "She's never cheated on you. Not that I know of, anyway. Honest."

Ron's face darkened even more at that last word. "You have any idea how long I've liked Hermione?" Ron said dangerously. "Since before we became friends. Since my first year. I finally asked her out last summer. She said yes. We agreed to never act too boyfriend/girlfriend around Harry. We've had a really good relationship. We still bicker all the time, but people do that, now, don't they? Then I find out that she's going behind my back with other guys?"

"Listen, Ron, I'm serious, I haven't touched her since you two started going out!" Oliver insisted.

"But you've touched her before that?" Ron raised his wand up to point at Oliver, pure fury in his eyes.

Oops. "Well… well… a little."

"Define 'a little.'" Ron's face was slowly turning as red as his neck and ears.

"A… a little… um… not a lot! We… we hardly ever did anything!" Well, that was a blatant lie, but at least Ron was looking at him more with suspicious anger than undiluted rage.

"If you've 'hardly ever done anything,' then how did you see her tattoo?" Ron demanded.

"Um… well…" Oliver searched for something to say. He'd seen it several times, but Ron did not need to know that. It wasn't Ron's business, anyway; Ron wouldn't be hearing anything if he wasn't a pissed-off guy who was strong enough to help kill Voldemort. Oliver knew he'd have to be careful; Ron's temper was infamous.

At last, the answer came to him: tell him the first time you saw it… and pretend you never saw it afterwards. It was genius. It was genius and it just might work. He'd be telling a half-truth, which was less detectable than a lie, and the first time he'd seen it had been rather innocent, as a matter of fact. He was fairly certain that Hermione hadn't told anyone, though; from what she'd explained during their time together, she'd only told Ginny about her tattoo, and that was a very abbreviated version; Hermione had told Ginny not long after it had happened, and only because she'd been sharing a room with Ginny later that summer and Ginny had glimpsed the tattoo on accident when they were changing, and demanded to know about it. Ginny also knew about Hermione and Oliver, but not nearly everything; Ginny had been the only person Hermione had ever told about their kiss at the World Cup. It had been the first secret she'd ever told Ginny, actually, and Ginny keeping Hermione's confidence was what had made them friends in the first place.

Oliver swallowed, hoping Ron believed him, and that telling him this wouldn't make Ron even more homicidal.

"I was there when she got it."

Ron went rather still, frowning, obviously not having expected that. "What?"

"I was there when she got it," Oliver repeated. "In the tattoo parlor."

Ron gave him a thoughtful look through narrowed eyes. "All right," he said, "go ahead and explain. But this had better be good."

Oliver nodded and sighed, wondering where to begin. "Hermione ever tell you that she and I used to hang out in the summers?"

"At Grimmauld Place?"

"No. I mean, yes, but last year, when she went back to her parents' house for a few weeks, I visited her sometimes when she was hanging out with her friends."

"What friends?"

"Her Muggle friends. People she was friends with before Hogwarts."

"Like who?"

"There were over a dozen of them. It doesn't matter. The point is, we had plans one day to get together with some of her friends, and when I showed up Hermione and four of her girlfriends were already there, talking about getting tattoos. I was really confused, Hermione was kind of tipsy—"

"Hermione was drunk?" Ron interrupted in disbelief.

"No… she was kind of tipsy. The others were pretty drunk. Anyway, the next thing I know they're dragging me to a tattoo parlor. I was there when she picked it out, hung out with her while she got it done. The idiot tattoo artist gave her the bright idea of squeezing my hand to distract herself from the pain. She about broke my finger."

"She let you sit there while someone put a tattoo on her ass?"

"It's not on her ass, really. It's on her lower back. Couldn't really see anything important," he added quickly.

Ron still looked suspicious. "You expect me to believe this?"

Oliver struggled desperately to come up with some sort of proof. "I… wait!" He shoved up his sleeve, revealing a tattoo of the Puddlemere United Quidditch team's logo. "I had them do this while I was there. Ask Hermione to show you the picture of it. We met up with some more of her friends right after that, at a bar in London, and one of them wanted to take a picture. It's a Muggle photo of five girls, showing off the tattoos on their backs. You can see my arm in the picture. Hermione pulled me in at the last second, demanded I be in the picture too. One of her hands is pushing her shorts down just enough to see the tattoo, the other is holding my arm towards the camera."

Ron thought about this for a moment. "And you haven't done anything with Hermione since we started going out?" Ron asked, his eyes flashing a warning brighter than Polaris.

"Of course not. She wouldn't do that, and neither would I." Unfortunately, Oliver added silently.

"Okay," Ron said, nodding to himself. Oliver struggled not to breathe a sigh of relief, lest Ron think he was lying. Ron stood up and smiled coldly. "If I ever find out that you're lying to me, I'll Stun you, then cut you into little pieces with a rusty knife, understand?"

Oliver nodded vigorously and Ron swept out of the room without a backwards glance.

Oliver sighed, feeling drained as the adrenaline left his system… and even more hopeless about Hermione than he'd felt all year.

Oliver sank back into the memories of Hermione. Her Sorting, how she'd stood out because she was the only first-year whispering excitedly and looking around in wonder rather than trying not to wet their pants. He'd thought she was pretty, but, seeing as how she was only eleven, he'd tried to put it out of his head. It had clicked that he couldn't ignore her forever right before Harry's first Quidditch match, when he'd been watching Hermione try to get Harry to eat and reminiscing about his own first match. Then he'd seen Harry finally take a bite of toast from Hermione's hand, just to shut her up, and he'd had an overwhelming urge to strangle his own Seeker. The day he'd realized he liked her, when she'd been force-feeding Harry toast… and how his Gryffindor bravery had completely failed him when it came to plucking up the courage to do something about it.

He hadn't said anything to her over the next three years. While hanging out with Harry—usually "as a team," with Fred, George, Angelina, Alicia and Katie, and Lee, Hermione, Ron and sometimes Neville and Percy (who was a roommate of Oliver's) hanging on—he'd managed to pick up a few things about her. Like the fact that she was Muggle-born, and that she was actually only a little over three years younger than Oliver, rather than a full four, as she was almost twelve when starting Hogwarts. But he'd only interacted with her one-on-one during his seventh year a few times, and their conversation had centered around the first Quidditch match Harry had ever lost. Two days before Ravenclaw's match against Hufflepuff, Hermione had decided to tell Oliver off.

Flashback

Oliver and Percy were the only two in the dormitory at the moment, and Oliver wished Percy would leave. Exiting the dormitory meant he'd be subjected to the twins' boisterous jokes and teasing—their own special version of "let's cheer up Oliver," which usually led to Oliver or someone in the vicinity visiting the hospital wing—or Angelina, Alicia and Katie's overly nice tones and attempts to make him feel better. So he'd chosen to remain in the room—but Percy was best taken in small doses, especially since he'd made prefect.

It wasn't that Oliver disliked Percy. They had a lot in common. They were both very driven people—they just drove in different directions—and they shared the almost foolishly brave quality of all Gryffindors, and the tendency to stand up for themselves and others. But Percy got boring on occasion, and there was nothing worse than being around Percy while he Studied. It wasn't that he was talkative or distracting. It was that he chewed his quill loudly, and rubbed out his mistakes loudly, and said "SHH!" loudly when anyone in the room spoke above a whisper, and ruffled parchment and book pages and muttered to himself and often let out loud cries of dismay whenever he couldn't remember a fact or he happened to lose something vital to the process of doing homework. So Oliver was lying flat on his back, trying to block out the annoyance that was Percy While Studying, timing himself to see how long it would be before Oliver snapped and trying to think of something to do when he did have to storm out of the room. Then, without warning, someone banged on the door.

"Oliver, could you get that?" Percy asked distractedly, sounding irritated at the very thought that someone dared come knocking during Study Time.

"Sorry," Oliver said, yanking the hangings shut around his bed, sure the girls had come looking for him. "I'll give you my last chocolate frog if you tell them I'm not here."

"What would I want with a chocolate frog?" Percy asked contemptuously.

"Penelope collects the cards," Oliver pointed out, and grinned to himself when he heard the door open.

"Oh, hello," said Percy, sounding surprised. Oliver hoped that meant it wasn't someone from the team; Percy usually sounded bored or casual when greeting most of Oliver's friends, or exasperated when the twins came by. "What can I do for you?" Percy continued in a polite, almost formal tone. Oliver frowned, confused.

"I've come to see Oliver, Percy," came, to his shock, Hermione's voice. Oliver's eyes widened, wondering what she wanted with him. Probably something to do with Harry, he told himself with a sigh. Hermione was nice to him, but she didn't exactly pay him much attention.

"Oliver's not here," Percy lied. Oliver cursed himself for ever making that deal and thought fast, trying to come up with a way to pop out of his bed without looking like an idiot. He could probably say that Percy just hadn't noticed him come in and lay down…

"Oh, really?" said Hermione. Oliver sighed. She didn't even sound a little disappointed, just… sort of… determined?

"HEY!" Percy exclaimed suddenly, amidst the sounds of a scuffle. Oliver's confusion just had time to deepen before the hangings around his bed were thrown back, revealing Hermione. Oliver jerked into a sitting position.

"Hey!" he yelped, utterly startled. "What if I was naked in here?"

She rolled her eyes, as if it was laughable to think there might be consequences to yanking aside the hangings around a seventh-year guy's bed without knowing if he were clothed. She shot a glare at Percy before turning back to Oliver. "Hello, Oliver."

"Hello, intruder," he shot back. He knew the generally accepted practices when talking to your crush—especially when said crush had just burst into your bedroom—were to act pleasant, but she'd just scared the crap out of him and didn't exactly look like she was here to throw herself at him. She looked more likely to throw a punch at him.

"I was invited," Hermione said imperiously.

"What are you, a vampire?" Oliver retorted.

"You weren't invited, anyway," Percy muttered. He was rubbing one arm with his other hand, looking sour. "That hurt."

"Percy, could you give us a minute?" Oliver called over her head. He didn't know what Hermione wanted, but he figured it would probably go better without Percy Studying in the background.

"I was studying," Percy complained.

"Which you can't do when people are talking in the background," Oliver pointed out.

"Fine. Hurry up," Percy said sulkily. He shut the door behind himself, still rubbing his arm.

"So?" Oliver asked Hermione. "What do you want?"

"I want you to stop acting like a prat."

He gaped at her, nonplussed. "When was I acting like a prat?"

"You haven't stopped sulking like a two-year-old ever since that match. If I hear someone comment that you're off drowning your sorrows one more time, I'm going to really drown you!"

"I happen to be a little upset, okay?" Oliver said dryly. "This is my last year, Hermione. If I don't win the Cup this year, pro-Quidditch scouts and teams aren't going to pay one bit of attention to me. I'm a great Keeper. It's all I've ever wanted to do. And I can't do it if I'm just 'the Keeper from the Hogwarts team that hasn't won a game since the great Charlie Weasley left.'"

"Well, you're depressing Harry," she said severely. "It's not Harry's fault the dementors came inside the grounds, it's the dementors' fault."

Oliver glowered at her. "Oh, well, excuse me. Harry knows I don't blame him, and if he doesn't then he's not going to believe it if I tell him again. I don't know what you want me to do about it."

"I want you to stop whining."

"I haven't been—"

"You've been sulking, which is bad enough. I don't know a thing about Quidditch, but I do know about numbers, and from what I understand from Fred and George you're only down by a hundred points and Ravenclaw's Keeper is better than the Hufflepuff Chasers and Cho Chang is supposed to be a better Seeker than Diggory—"

"So was Harry," Oliver muttered.

"So there's a good chance Ravenclaw could beat Hufflepuff by at least a hundred and fifty points, maybe more," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. "They'd only have to be up fifty points when they catch the Snitch, and given that Hufflepuff beat you, they'll probably want to beat the pants off of Hufflepuff, if they want to keep their hope for the Cup alive, which they'll be thinking about for the first time in years. Ravenclaw will be thinking that if they squish Hufflepuff, then all they'll have to do is narrowly defeat you and Slytherin, and they'll have the Cup. So I'd imagine their captain will tell them to hold off until they're way ahead by goals. You could still win the Cup if you'd stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself."

Oliver raised his eyebrows. He hadn't thought about the fact that Ravenclaw might be seriously entertaining hopes of getting the Cup; Gryffindor had been the only one to give Slytherin a run for it for the past decade. Now that Hufflepuff had beaten them, the rest of the school probably thought the Cup was fair game.

His jaw clenched. That was his Cup. His.

"Maybe you're right," he admitted slowly.

"Of course I am," she said pompously, reminding him forcefully of Percy. "Now get out of bed and start thinking strategy. Harry's life is hard enough, especially now that he's got a murderer after him, the whole school's making fun of his dementor problem and he actually lost a match."

Oliver felt a twinge of guilt, but he smiled at her. "Are you always this… inspirational?" he asked teasingly.

She grinned back. "No. I'm usually much worse."

She turned to go. "Hey," he called after her, not wanting to see her go just yet. She looked questioningly over her shoulder at him. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

He shook his head. "Not just for this. I keep meaning to tell you how great that was when you cast that spell on Harry's glasses back during the match."

She shrugged. "I just wish it had helped."

"It did. If we had won the match, it would have been because of you. Right before Harry fell, I shouted that the Snitch was behind him. If you hadn't cast that spell, he wouldn't have known what I was talking about, wouldn't have seen it. The dementors are the only reason we didn't beat them, but if they hadn't shown, we still wouldn't have beaten them. Not without you. That was bloody brilliant of you."

She blushed and struggled to sound modest. "It was nothing."

"It was a hell of a lot more than nothing. It wasn't just good spell work, it was great thinking. I've known that spell since fifth year and I didn't think of it, and you were smart enough to think of it and to do it two years before it was taught to you. You're amazing."

She beamed at him, her face as scarlet as his Quidditch robes. "I… thanks."

He nodded at her, and she left. Oliver grinned happily as he lay back down, well-aware of the fact that while she had coming looking for him in order to help Harry, she'd also managed to help him as well, and she'd been quite pleased to hear him compliment her.

End Flashback

Oliver sighed at the memory. That moment had managed to change something between them. She'd become his friend. Not a close friend, to be sure, but a friend nonetheless. Once she'd started fighting with Harry and Ron so much, she'd chatted to him whenever she wasn't studying—which was frighteningly often—and even ate a few meals with him. Even though she was fighting with Harry and Ron at the time, she'd come to Oliver to tell him that while in the girls' bathroom she'd overheard that Cho Chang would be the Seeker for the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw match. She'd even managed to listen sympathetically while he ranted to her about how Cho wasn't supposed to make a full recovery so soon after that tumble down the Ravenclaw Tower dormitory stairs, and it was because of Cho that Hufflepuff had lost so badly to Ravenclaw, although there were rumors that if Cedric Diggory hadn't been so enamored with Cho he might have been paying more attention to the Snitch… and somehow that had led to an embarrassing argument over whether or not Cedric was too old for Cho. Cedric was a sixth year, after all, and she was a fourth, but given the placement of their birthdays they were almost three years apart. Oliver supposed he shouldn't have said that bit about "That's like saying you and I couldn't date," because after that she'd turned pink and run off soon afterwards and he'd kicked himself but good for it.

It wasn't until the World Cup that he'd truly let himself think that she might return his feelings. He'd come across her giggling over by the water tap line, and she'd told him that he looked good, then blushed and hurriedly said that she'd meant he knew how to properly dress like a Muggle. He'd teased her a bit, and she'd finally said something about Harry and Ron and run off. Then they'd gone for that walk together… both unable to sleep, worried about Voldemort… and he'd somehow managed to pluck up the bravery to kiss her goodnight in front of her tent. He'd felt the urge to run afterwards, but she'd grabbed him by the jacket and they must have been making out for nearly a half hour when Bill came out of the tent, scaring them both to death. They'd both stammered pathetically—Oliver vaguely remembered Hermione saying something about braces being stuck together, though neither he nor Bill had a clue about what braces were—but Bill had been cool about it; he'd said he was just on his way to wake up the girls and they'd better say their goodbyes if they didn't want the twins to see what they were up to.

They'd started writing letters after that, him telling her all about his frustrations at being only a reserve Keeper for Puddlemere and her telling him about Rita Skeeter and Harry's troubles with the Cup. He'd been utterly surprised to see her at Headquarters when she'd joined the Order; after managing to distract the twins, the two had hung out for a bit in the attic and she'd explained that she hadn't written him because the Order was reading all their mail to make sure they weren't giving anything away to Harry, and she hadn't wanted to explain why she was writing to him. They'd spent an ungodly amount of time together that summer and the next; he'd even missed a few of his first practices as starting Keeper just to see her. By the summer after Voldemort's defeat he'd felt utterly privileged that she'd invited him to hang out with her while she was with her Muggle friends. The Muggles Harry and Ron hadn't even known about. They'd accepted Oliver, and he'd overheard on more than one occasion someone referring to him as "Hermione's hot boyfriend from her boarding school."

After Harry's birthday, at which he'd put in an appearance, he'd left Hermione's side to go back to training for the upcoming Quidditch season, finally a starting Keeper for Puddlemere, but he'd felt very positive about Hermione on the whole. Their time during the summers and their letters during the school year had become more and more serious. Then he'd gotten injured, decided to teach at Hogwarts to be closer to her… and she'd dropped this bombshell out of nowhere that she was with Ron now and planned to stay with him and she was so sorry. God, he'd wanted to strangle Ron.

In the end, he'd decided to wait, see how things panned out. Here it was just before Christmas, not even six months into her relationship with Ron, and it didn't seem to be going very well. He'd had a very heartening, very secret talk with Ginny early in the year—apparently Ron's own sister, Hermione's best friend, didn't think it was going to work out, either.

"He'd be marrying his mother," Ginny had told him. "They're just not compatible, Oliver. It's not that Ron isn't smart, it's that he's uninterested in being smart. It isn't that Hermione doesn't want to break rules and walk on the wild side, it's that she knows when it's a bad idea. Hermione needs someone who knows what it's like to be passionate, driven, focused. Ron's only along for the ride. Ron needs someone to laugh at his jokes and take care of him, not boss him around. I think they're together because they like each other. I don't think that'll be enough. You need more than attraction—even emotional attraction—to keep a relationship going. They're better off as friends, and I hope they realize that before it's too late."

Oliver didn't know if she'd been telling him this because she knew about Oliver and Hermione—he knew the first secret Hermione had told Ginny exclusively was the kiss at the World Cup, that it was one of the things that had cemented the two girls' friendship. However, he sincerely hoped it wasn't. He cared about Hermione… but lately there was a nagging little voice in the back of his head that said he might not be all that depressed if things didn't work out with her.

He just wasn't sure how much more he could take. The insanity that surrounded her and Harry and Ron didn't appear to be slacking off anytime soon. He had noticed this over and over again—hell, he'd been dancing on common room tables when Harry had become Seeker, only to discover that Harry had an odd knack for ending up in the hospital wing or fighting giant snakes or being hunted by mass murderers or being accused of mental instability by the entire world. There were rumors that the three of them wandered into the forest periodically to battle evil creatures, chat up the centaurs and even hang out with a real-live giant. And the prank war… no prank war had ever been this intense. Oliver's own seventh-year prank war had been so tame he barely noticed it, except for when Fred and George (who didn't care at all about the fact that they weren't seventh years at the time) got bored and targeted Percy and occasionally Oliver himself (although that was rare, as Oliver had the power to kick them off the Quidditch team or make them practice until two in the morning).

He'd seen other people get sucked in by it, too. Neville Longbottom was great at it—and if there was one person who didn't need any more freak accidents, it was him. Luna Lovegood… well, it was hard to tell if it was Harry's cosmic problems or hers that put her in awkward situations. But Oliver had had many a problem with it himself, most especially this year. He didn't know if he could handle any more of it.

And it was still only the first term of his employment.

"Ron? Why aren't you in class? Finally becoming a full-fledged Weasley?" Fred asked as he turned towards the Defense Against the Dark Arts office and nearly ran smack into Ron.

"Wanted to talk to Wood," Ron said darkly. "Had a few questions for him."

"Why didn't you let us ask?" George said. "You know we could have dragged it out of him."

"I got the answers I need," Ron muttered.

"What about?"

"Hermione," Ron growled. "He says he never did anything with her while we were going out."

"I could have told you that," Fred said, rolling his eyes. "Hermione wouldn't cheat on you; did you really need to bother asking Wood?"

"What about the hickeys, though?" Ron said. "The ones Malfoy mentioned."

"Oh, come on, Ronniekins, think about what you just said," George said with a sigh. "Malfoy? Not the most reliable source in the world."

"He was telling the truth about the tattoo."

"Doesn't mean he was telling the truth about anything else," George said bluntly.

"Even if he was," Fred added, "that just means he saw hickeys on her neck that he's sure were from Snape. Didn't you say Hermione was messing with his head the whole time, making him think all sorts of things about her and Snape?"

Ron frowned thoughtfully, then perked up a bit. "Maybe you're right."

"We're always right," George said. "It's probably not half as bad as you think."

"Hmm." Ron sighed and started walking, figuring he'd wander around aimlessly until it was time for his next class. "That still doesn't mean I should forgive her for this tattoo thing, though," he pointed out.

"Oh, come on, Ron, she knew you'd just give her hell about it if she did tell you," George said.

"Yeah, like we're gonna." Fred grinned. "Look, if you don't want to apologize, then don't. But the longer you wait, the less chance there is that she'll want to hook back up in the future."

"I don't care," Ron lied, feeling like he'd been punched in the gut. He adored Hermione. Yes, she could be annoying with her bossiness and stubbornness and homework devotion and her temper and her cluelessness about Quidditch, but he still really cared about her. He didn't want to lose her, not as a girlfriend, and not as a friend.

End Notes: People who read this story before the editing often asked for more of an in-depth look at Oliver and Hermione, and I finally decided it was time to make something up. Hope it's not too shabby.

…

Almost Cheese Spirit time.

Cue evil grin.