Chapter 14 – The Secret Weapon
"What!" Shouted Hermione
"Hermione I think you know what I'm talking about" McGonagall stated knowing she was right.
"I've read it in books but I never believed that I would ever… be a part of one" Hermione sighed.
"Wait I've never read these books" Fred said sounding shocked and afraid.
"Muggle books Mr Weasley, they're called fairy tales" McGonagall informed him. Fred still looked confused.
"But Professor I don't understand, I had already tried a true loves kiss and it didn't work" Hermione stuttered.
"Miss Granger, as much as I would like to discuss how you've done what you've done, we have more important matters to deal with" Hermione shifted uncomfortably "Please sit, this might take a while" Hermione and Fred sat in chairs far away from each other.
"I hope you two realise that you should have told someone, an adult, a member of the order" She sighed "Molly Weasley" she moved around her desk and sat on her chair "however I have been informed about your relationship"
"Professor, it's not like that, it's more complicated" Hermione interrupted.
"I know Miss Granger, you and Mr Weasley are soul mates" Professor McGonagall smiled slightly before carrying on "However I have been told to keep an eye on you too. You can't just go breaking curses in the middle of the hall!" Hermione looked at the floor and Fred smirked,looking proud of himself. "Mr Weasley this is not the time for jokes. You two should have told someone about the curse! I've been told to keep an eye on you and I thought my job was easier than this now! You two should be ashamed of yourselves!"
"We just didn't want to get anyone involved" Hermione defended.
"Miss Granger, this is more important than that" she sighed and shuffled the papers on her desk. "You two go to dinner, but I will need to speak with you afterwards. This is something I will have to discuss with the Order before I talk to you, you are dismissed" Hermione stood up and motioned towards Fred to follow her. They walked out of the office and walked down the hall in silence.
"So you remember?" Hermione asked peering up at him.
"How could I ever forget you" Fred lent down to give her a hug but she pushed him away.
"Fred, come on there could be anyone here"
"So, we broke the curse, that's the only reason that we didn't tell people"
"What did you tell Lee?"
"Not to tell anyone, he was more upset that I didn't tell him, but I explained and said we didn't want Ron to find out"
"Find out what?" Ron asked. They had walked towards the Great Hall and Ron had come in from Quidditch training with Ginny trailing behind him. Hermione jumped away from Fred like he was contagious and made it far too obvious for Ron to guess.
"Right, I get it. You could have told me at least! I thought I had a chance! But no, Fred, she was seeing you behind all of our backs! YOU KNEW I LIKED HER! You're a terrible brother!"
"Ron it's not like that!" Hermione shouted. He ignored her and walked into the Great Hall. Hermione turned back to Fred who was stood with Ginny.
"He's just annoyed, Quidditch was terrible" Ginny stated. They all walked into the hall together; they spotted Harry, Ron and George at the Top of the Gryffindor table and went to walk over but Ginny stopped them.
"Do you really think that's a good idea?" Fred looked at Hermione and walked over to his twin. Hermione walked in the opposite direction and sat down next to Harry, Ginny sat down next to Ron. There was an awkward silence for ages. It seemed like the whole hall had gone quiet.
"Oh, I forgot to ask you," said Hermione brightly, glancing over at the Ravenclaw table. "what happened on your date with Cho? How come you were back so early?"
"Er… well, it was…" said Harry, pulling a dish of rhubarb crumble towards him and helping himself to seconds, "a complete fiasco, now you mention it."
And he told her what had happened in Madam Puddifoot's teashop.
"… so then," he finished several minutes later, as the final bit of crumble disappeared, "she jumps up, right, and says, 'I'll see you around, Harry,' and runs out of the place!" He put down his spoon and looked at Hermione. "I mean, what was all that about? What was going on?"
Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho's head and sighed.
"Oh, Harry" she said sadly. "Well, I'm sorry, but you were a bit tactless."
"Me, tactless?" said Harry, outraged. "One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid teashop - how was I supposed to feel about that?"
"Well, you see," said Hermione, with the patient air of someone explaining that one plus one equals two to an over-emotional toddler, "you shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date."
"But, but," spluttered Harry, "but - you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her?" "You should have told her differently," said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly. And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am, too," Hermione added as an afterthought.
"But I don't think you're ugly," said Harry, bemused.
"Harry she was trying to make you jealous" Fred said from down the end of the table.
"Is that what she was doing?" Harry asked completely clueless.
"Harry you're completely useless"
"Coming from you"
"I could be a bachelor, a free man" Fred winked but Harry had looked away. Ron scowled and shoved his fork into his chicken far too hard,stuffing food into his mouth.
Hermione laughed. Fred looked over at Hermione, she smiled at him but he seemed worried, he nodded his head towards the staff table. There was McGonagall talking to Dumbledore; he had that twinkle in his eye and kept looking at where the group was sat. Hermione panicked and spilt her crumble down the front of her. She jumped and stood up quickly brushing down her clothes and pulling out her wand. She muttered a cleaning spell and placed it all back in the bowl. Everyone watched her and Fred was sniggering out of the corner of his mouth. Hermione sat back down and pulled at her jeans, not aware everyone was watching her.
"Mione are you alright" George asked. Ron looked up, he pulled a face and made a snide remark.
"Of course she's okay, she positively glowing"
"Ron now isn't the time" Hermione sighed.
"When is the time, Hermione? When will we discuss this?"
"Not now!"
"Ron just leave her alone, we can talk about this later" Fred said, trying to get his point across. Ron sighed and the whole group went quiet and looked at each other.
"Wait he knows?" Ginny asked.
"What do you mean? HE KNOWS!" Ron started turning red "You knew! AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!"
"Ron you can't blame it on her" Hermione said.
"Yeah you're right it's your fault, I hope you're happy Hermione! You have fun when he leaves you!" Ron stormed out of the hall leaving the hall in silence. Hermione looked down at her new dish of crumble as silent tears ran down her face. The whole group sat in silence.
"Miss Granger and Mr Weasley, my office now!" They both looked up at McGonagall and left their seats; the whole group sat in silence until they left the hall.
"Okay so, who knows" Ginny asked, the whole group nodded and said yes.
"Okay I know how George knows, How do you two know?"
"Hermione told me" Harry said.
"Fred told me after I caught them almost kissing. I can't believe they're going out! Are they going out? Or just kind of…" Lee looked over.
"No Lee! They are not just sleeping together! Is that really what you think?!"
"Well, think about it! They kept it a secret! What else was I supposed to believe?"
"They actually like each other you know" Ginny shouted.
"Alright, I'm going back to the common room, I've got to finish that essay for McGonagall" Lee left the table and Ginny lent in slightly.
"Do you think they were just messing around?" She asked Harry.
"No, Hermione told me everything" He sighed. Ginny went for a bath after dinner and Harry and George returned to the common room to wait for Fred and Hermione.
"Hermione come on he'll come round" Fred said as they walked down the corridor.
"What if he doesn't Fred, what if he always hates us forever?" Hermione replied.
"Then we move away and live in a city far away- somewhere like London or Wales?" Hermione laughed.
"Fred those are two different things, London is a city and Wales is a country" she informed him smiling.
"Did you have to ruin my nice gesture?"
"Yes, yes I did" She smiled and took his hand as they walked to McGonagall's office; they walked close to each other and continued down the empty corridor. Fred stopped outside her office and paused, he let go of Hermione's hand and knocked.
"Enter" Fred stepped through the door, blocking Hermione and stepping in front of her in a protective way.
"Please take a seat Mr Weasley and Miss Granger" Dumbledore said, he was stood with McGonagall in her office and they both looked sad and conflicted.
"I have known, for a very long time now, that the two of you have an interesting bond, a soul bond. However I did not know that you had set a curse on Mr Weasley, postponing your relationship and making our job harder. I have told Professor McGonagall to keep an eye on the pair of you to make sure you don't make it obvious that you two have this bond" Dumbledore paused.
"Professor I thought this was a good thing?" Hermione asked.
"In many ways this is a good thing, Miss Granger. However because of the upcoming war this might be a very big problem. By having this connection it makes you stronger and a more capable wizard or witch. We're not sure about the consequences of a soul bond, the first pair being Romeo and Juliet Miss Granger I'm sure you don't want your love story to end like there's?"
"Why not, Professor, were they not happy?"
"Mr Weasley, they both died a tragic death including suicide and massacre" McGonagall informed. Fred sunk lower in his chair and shaded slightly red.
"The both of you need to watch your backs, breaking a curse in the middle of the hall might not have been the best thing to have done" Dumbledore stayed calm and composed.
"About that, Professor, how did we break the curse?"
"You see Miss Granger; it wasn't you who kissed Mr Weasley. It was he who kissed you, meaning that he wanted to. When he lost his memories he couldn't remember that he was in love with you, but the soul bond was still there so he knew you were important as his feelings didn't go away. You also said that you trusted him, meaning that you would have loved him even if he never got his old memories back." He paused and took an uncomfortable breath in.
"However because you two broke the curse in the hall way, showing people that you two are going out and have something different, when you kissed, according Professor McGonagall, there was a bright light? Because of this you're going to have to decide, stay together and risk the ministry finding out or Voldemort using your power against us, and against each other, or you break up?"
Harry had been struggling with a new star-chart for Astronomy for half an hour when Fred and Hermione turned up.
"Ron and Ginny not here?" asked Fred, looking around as he pulled up a chair, and when Harry shook his head, he said, "Good. We were watching their practice. They're going to be slaughtered. They're complete rubbish without us."
"How do you know?" asked Hermione sitting down on the opposite side to Fred.
"I went and watched the practice with Lee; anyway we were talking about Ginny being terrible?"
"Come on, Ginny's not bad," said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred. "Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us."
"She's been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren't looking," said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books.
"Oh," said George, looking mildly impressed. "Well - that'd explain it."
"Has Ron saved a goal yet?" asked Hermione, peering over the top of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms.
"Well, he can do it if he doesn't think anyone's watching him," said Fred, rolling his eyes at how Hermione mentioned Ron. "So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday." He got up again and moved restlessly to the window, staring out across the dark grounds.
"You know, Quidditch was about the only thing in this place worth staying for."
Everyone took a sharp breath in and held it. Hermione cast him a stern look, but didn't say anything; she sat there in silence looking at the floor.
"Is there something we're missing?" George asked them.
"No! No – no –no" Fred and Hermione said too quickly.
"Right" said George sarcastically.
"What's that supposed to mean!" Hermione said, standing up and trying to be intimidating.
"Nothing!" George exclaimed.
"Hermione leave him alone" Fred said "If you're angry at me just say something!"
"Yeah! Big headed Fredrick always thinks he knows what's best!"
"I did know what was best!"
"No you don't, what I did was for the future! So that we would have a future!"
"Yeah well I don't want a future without you!"
"THAT'S WHY I DID WHAT I DID!"
"NO YOU DID IT BECAUSE YOU WERE SCARED!"
"YEAH I AM SCARED- I DON'T WANT TO LOOSE YOU!"
"WELL TOUGH, YOU ALREADY HAVE! IF YOU CAN'T STAND BY MY SIDE THROUGH THICK AND THIN, then I don't think there would have been any future for us" Fred turned away, the tears rolling down his cheeks. Hermione watched him walk away before gathering her books and following him up the staircase and into the girl's dormitory. She sat down on the bed and thought about what she had said. Was it good enough? Had she really just said all those things? She collected her pyjamas and went to have a shower thinking the hot water might just make her feel better but it didn't. Not once did she cry, not even a single tear ran down her cheek. I did what was best. She stayed in the shower for hours, only coming out when her skin had gone all prune-y and horrible, she dried herself and put her pyjamas on and checked her watch. '3:10AM' Hermione panicked and dried her hair faster- she looked herself over in the mirror and thought she looked fine, so she headed down to the common room. There was a tall slender male sat on the sofa in front of the fire. She snuck up behind the sofa and jumped on him landing in his lap.
"AHHHHH! Hermione!" Fred screamed.
"Shhhhhhh someone will hear us!" Hermione said and kissed his cheek.
"Is that all I get, after we 'broke up' for 4 hours and all I get is a kiss on the cheek"
"Hey! We didn't really break up; we just pretended that we did"
"I know but I'm going to miss not being able to look at you or sit next to you or anything"
"Do you think they believed it?"
"Dumbledore did"
"You know, now that I'm technically single I might go after Ron!" Hermione joked.
"Don't you dare! It's going to be hard enough for me as it is without that jack ass all over you"
"He's your brother!"
"He's still a jack ass!"
"Also nice touch with the crying"
"I was not crying!"
"Yes you did, don't worry though it was very manly" She kissed he cheek and went to move off his lap.
"Was it?" He said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her closer, she flung her arms around his neck.
"Very"
"How manly"
"Shush" and with that she pressed his lips to his