Chapter 178 - Ron and Hermione

Lavender plopped down on the edge of Ron's bed.

She sat right beside his hand, close enough that Ron had to pull his arm inward to make room.

"Won-Won!" Lavender yanked his hand out from under the sheet, gripped it tight in both of hers, and pressed her cheek against the back of it.

"I wasn't even the first to know!" Lavender's voice went mournful and lilting, like an Augurey crying in the forest. "If something had happened to you... my heart would have wilted — like an autumn flower!"

She sang it out like the heroine of an opera: "I was so worried I couldn't eat a thing! But Parvati said I had to pull myself together before I could come see you..."

COUGH COUGH COUGH.

Madam Pomfrey materialized out of nowhere and said, with great tact, "Child, I do understand how you feel. But if you disturb the other patients, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to step outside and take some air."

Harry and Hermione watched Lavender's theatrical expression collapse in under a second. She lightly dabbed under her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled.

She had barely reined in the operatics when she started getting handsy.

Harry immediately turned toward Hermione. Hermione immediately looked down. Their eyes met anyway, two equally flustered people finding the same helpless discomfort reflected back at them.

Ron was even more uncomfortable. It seemed to dawn on him only now that his public display of clinginess had gone a bit far. He turned his head to the other side as well, unable to watch.

Lavender's lips brushed past his face and stopped, hanging stiffly in midair.

That was the moment Ron seemed to realize what he'd done. He called out in a slightly panicked voice, "Barren! Barren! I'm not feeling well!"

Barren was in the middle of giving Harper his potion. He set the small bowl down and walked briskly over, taking up a position on the far side of Ron's bed.

"Weasley, what seems to be the trouble?" he asked quietly.

Ron hedged. "My stomach's a bit off. Kind of... queasy."

Barren nodded. "I'm going to lift your blanket now and examine you."

The boy was still too green. If Madam Pomfrey were the one standing here, she'd have had the blanket off without a word and the hospital gown right up with it.

But Barren hadn't reached that level yet. He pressed gently on Ron's stomach through the fabric and asked, "Where does it hurt? It doesn't hurt? Then what kind of discomfort is it — something strange? Can you describe it? All right, you feel queasy, is that it?"

He worked through the whole abdomen, then said, with genuine professionalism, "I believe this is a reaction to the Bezoar Potter used to neutralize the poison. Over the next few days, a reduced appetite and occasional nausea are both completely normal. Nothing to worry about."

He scribbled quickly on a scrap of parchment and hurried over to Madam Pomfrey, murmuring something. Only after she nodded did he come back.

By the time Barren returned, Ron had closed his eyes again. He said weakly, "Barren... I think I'm also a bit dizzy."

"Dizzy?" Barren stalled.

That appeared to exceed his current scope of knowledge. He rushed off to Madam Pomfrey again.

He was back shortly, but his manner had cooled somewhat.

"Weasley," he said, calm and businesslike now, "I'll prescribe something light for the nausea. As for the dizziness, more sleep should sort it out."

Then he looked at Lavender and said politely, "Weasley hasn't fully recovered yet. It's best if visitors don't stay too long."

Lavender had been angry at first. She hadn't expected Ron to actually dodge her kiss. Was it because of Hermione? He'd never had any problem kissing her right in front of Hermione before!

But then Ron had called for the trainee healer, and that sent Lavender's heart lurching with real worry. She forgot to be angry. It wasn't until Barren said everything was normal that she let out a slow breath.

The moment Barren finished speaking, the dissatisfaction came flooding back. Lavender pointed across the room and raised her voice. "But she got here before me!"

The logic was perfectly clear to her: Hermione had arrived first and had certainly been here longer. So why was she the one being asked to leave?

As it turned out,

They were both shown out.

In the corridor.

Well, Lavender thought, at least she wasn't the only one kicked out. It was just a shame she hadn't gotten more time with Ron.

Hermione seemed preoccupied. She walked straight ahead with her head down, lost in thought, not sparing a glance behind her.

Lavender quickened her pace and stepped in front of her, a bit sharply. "I thought you knew that Won-Won is my boyfriend."

"I do know." Hermione surfaced from her thoughts without missing a beat.

"But you kept visiting Won-Won on your own!" Lavender said, indignant. "Back before Harry was even in here!"

Hermione stayed perfectly composed. "That's right. As his friend, I went to see Ron. Harry came with me."

"Friend." Lavender gave a scornful little laugh. "Oh, please. Ever since Ron and I got together, you two have been on the outs! You went weeks without speaking to him — I saw it!"

"Yes." Hermione was faintly surprised to find she felt no anger at all. Only a dim sympathy. "That's because I started seeing someone, and Ron and Harry were both cross with me for not telling them."

She added, a bit grumbling, "But I wasn't hiding anything! Boys are so oblivious about everything and then they turn around and say I'm the unreasonable one. I think they're the unreasonable ones. Why should I be the one to apologize?"

Lavender stared. This was not what she'd expected the cold war to have been about.

For a moment she was completely at a loss, her hands fidgeting in turns with the ends of her hair. "O-oh," she managed. "So that's... who are you seeing? How did I not know?"

"He goes to a different school." Hermione's voice was unusually gentle. "It's perfectly normal you wouldn't know. You were busy with your own romance at the time, weren't you?"

"Right! I did misunderstand you!" Lavender's expression instantly turned warm and bright. "I'm Ron's girlfriend, aren't I? I really do love how passionate he is with me! What's your boyfriend like?"

"He's a man of few words — a real quiet type — but he loves telling me things..."

After they parted ways, Hermione finally glanced back at Lavender's bouncing retreating figure. Her eyes were thoughtful.

"Something is completely wrong here."

Hermione told Praeris over the two-way mirror, her voice sharp with irritation, "Ron did it on purpose! He pretended to be asleep when Lavender arrived. He deliberately dodged her kiss. And yet before all this, he used to kiss her so passionately!"

Praeris had not expected to open the mirror and walk straight into something this substantial. She held up a hand. "So, after you misunderstood Ron, and Ron came out on top of it, he and Lavender got together. A passionate romance. Right?"

"And now, after being injured, you've noticed he's pulling away from Lavender. Deliberately avoiding her kiss. And he faked illness with Barren to cover for himself."

Praeris said with genuine admiration, "You noticed all of that."

"I learned it from you." Hermione ducked her head, a little embarrassed. "You're the one who showed me that every truth is buried in the details. If you observe carefully enough and gather enough of them, finding the truth isn't nearly as hard as I used to think."

"You could have done this without me." Praeris's expression was warm. "You've always been this sharp."

Hermione smiled, a little flustered, then seemed to catch herself. "Let's get to the point, we really shouldn't just sit here praising each other!"

Praeris usually gave Hermione concrete, practical advice and helped her work through things. But this time, something in her approach had shifted.

"What is it you actually want?" Praeris asked. "Do you want Ron to admit he was wrong? Or do you want him to go back to being perfectly happy with Lavender?"

Hermione went quiet. She hadn't put it to herself that plainly. She'd just instinctively reached for the mirror.

"Hermione," Praeris said, her tone honest rather than gentle, "this isn't your relationship. It's Ron's. Even if he's your closest friend, how can you tell him who to love, or how?"

"But what he's doing isn't right." Hermione's voice came out urgent. "If he still loves Lavender, he has no business hurting her like this. If he doesn't, then he should be honest with her, not fake illness, not lie, not paper over the cracks!"

Hermione knew Lavender suspected something improper between her and Ron. People had made the same assumptions about her and Harry for years. She had long since resigned herself to a world that could only ever read relationships between boys and girls as something romantic.

"Then tell Ron that," Praeris said, with a meaningful look. "Say exactly what you just said to me. He won't dismiss it."

Hermione hesitated. Something still felt slightly off, though she couldn't put her finger on what, and yet Praeris wasn't wrong.

After Hermione left, her expression still tangled, Praeris shook her head quietly. What a knot these few people had made of themselves.

Over the summer, Hermione had still been going back and forth between Ron and Krum, until she finally settled on Krum.

Even after she and Ron fell out, she was genuinely glad he was with someone.

Hermione had always felt that Ron carried something inside him, a vague, shapeless insecurity he couldn't quite name. But he had his good qualities too. Just as Praeris had once said: only someone with a truly good nature could stomach a friend's success without it souring into resentment.*

This relationship could do something for Ron. It could show him that someone loved him fiercely, that he was worth that. It could help him see himself more clearly. Hermione had been so happy for him.

She'd noticed Lavender's unease from the very beginning. She had hoped, quietly, that Ron would sit down and properly explain things to his girlfriend, explain what he and Hermione actually were to each other.

They all had their own partners now. There was no reason friendship should become an obstacle to love.

But Hermione had never imagined she would watch Ron deceive Lavender with her own eyes.

Praeris had seen further than that. She suspected Ron and Lavender's relationship had been built partly on impulse, partly on spite. Now that the impulse had cooled, the thing underneath was starting to show.

More precisely: the person Ron's impulse and spite had been directed at, Praeris thought, was probably Hermione herself. But Hermione's heart was already elsewhere. She didn't look at her history with Ron through that lens, and so she couldn't see what was actually there.

That was why Praeris had nudged her to say it out loud.

She set Hermione's tangled mess of feelings aside for now. There was something else occupying her.

The Horcruxes.

Praeris was clever, no one would argue that. But she wasn't in direct opposition to Voldemort, and that gap limited what she could see. The Horcrux investigation had hit a wall she couldn't push through on her own.

If she wanted to go further, her only real option was Dumbledore. And Dumbledore would inevitably ask her about Draco.

When two sharp minds shared a willingness to be candid with each other, things moved quickly. When they didn't, those same sharp minds could make even the simplest things impossibly difficult.

Right now, Praeris and Dumbledore were locked in a silent standoff.

Dumbledore knew that Praeris knew exactly what Draco was doing. Praeris knew that Dumbledore knew she knew.

Neither wanted to be the first to blink and lose the initiative on Draco. So they had both arrived at the same solution: pretend to know nothing, and wait for the other person to crack first.

Praeris couldn't hold out indefinitely. Draco couldn't afford for her to. He could make his move at any moment, and it wasn't guaranteed to be a good one.

Dumbledore couldn't hold out indefinitely either. Three students had already been hurt. Ron and Harper had gone down practically one after the other.

The Ministry and Scrimgeour couldn't be sitting idle. There would be pressure on Dumbledore, pressure that might push toward closing Hogwarts entirely, even temporarily.

At the very least, Dumbledore had already spoken with Professor Snape. No one knew what had been said. But Dumbledore had almost certainly pressed him, find out what Draco is doing, sooner rather than later. Deal with the Harper situation, quickly.

Ah.

Praeris sat with that, feeling a faint, reluctant flicker.

If she were to "discover" that Dumbledore was pressing Professor Snape... she could use it. She could frame it as the other side blinking first, as Dumbledore yielding the initiative. And Dumbledore, in turn, could maintain that he hadn't yielded at all, only that he hadn't expected Praeris to notice.

Hold on.

Praeris sat up straight.

What if that was exactly the point?

What if this was Dumbledore's design all along, a way out he had built for both of them?

He knew neither of them would give an inch on Draco. So he had constructed this instead: a two-birds, one-stone concession. The kind only Praeris would ever find. The kind that wasn't, technically, a concession at all.

➤ Next: Dumbledore's Plan — Face to Face