"At first, Lavender had been very annoyed that nobody had thought to tell her that Ron was in the hospital wing — 'I mean, I am his girlfriend!" — but unfortunately she had now decided to forgive Harry this lapse of memory and was keen to have lots of in-depth chats with him about Ron's feelings, a most uncomfortable experience that Harry would have happily forgone."
"Hey, Harry?"
Lavender was still angry about not being informed about Ron's condition, but she wasn't going to take it out on anyone. She didn't need a romance novel to tell her that alienating his friends would be a terrible idea, and since her relationship with Hermione, while never more than civil, had just gotten a lot more hostile, Harry was her only shot at getting back in the group's good graces.
He turned around and gave her a wary look, not excited to see her but not angry, either. "Yeah?"
Of course, it wasn't like Harry had any special reasons to like her. He was the Boy Who Lived, a hero, and she was a boring little nobody who'd encroached on his territory. Besides, last year she'd believed the Ministry of Magic when it tried to paint Harry as a liar, and though she'd come around eventually, she wondered if he would ever really trust her or any of the others who'd turned their backs on him.
She didn't want to talk about that. But what else did she know about him? There was You-Know-Who, of course, but that would just be depressing. Quidditch? She could barely follow it for Ron's sake; there was no way she could fake her way through an entire conversation. Besides that, Harry was an enigma, and she'd always been a little intimidated by him.
"Um . . . how's Ginny?" Lavender wasn't the most observant girl in Hogwarts, but she'd noticed that he'd been mooning over Ron's sister for the past several months. Since Hermione wasn't the type to talk about girl problems—she and Parvati had tried—maybe she could.
His face darkened. "Fine, I guess. Why?"
Maybe he didn't want to talk about it. She could always make him more comfortable by talking about Ron! That way he'd know that she understood how it felt to be in love with a Weasley who's . . . well, a little difficult. Besides, maybe she could get a glimpse into Ron's mind, see why he'd been so distant recently and what she could do to get things back to normal. Ron was asleep every time she visited—or so he seemed, even when she could hear his voice in the hallway before she entered the room—and when they'd normally spent time together, it wasn't often talking anyway. So where else was she going to get another perspective?
So she offered up her boy troubles to the most famous person she'd ever met, hoping that it would make her good enough to enter the Golden Trio's inner sanctum.
If not, she wasn't sure what else to do.