Chapter 181 - Soap Bubbles — What Was Lost

Ron was secretly a little pleased that Hermione cared about his feelings. He still had no idea how to handle Lavender.

When a man likes a woman, no matter how clingy she gets, it all seems adorable. When a man stops liking her, that same clinginess turns into something he can barely stand.

As for why he'd gotten together with Lavender in the first place, it was nothing more than a fit of spite over Hermione's relationship.

Ron knew perfectly well that an impulse like that sounded childish. Which was exactly why he couldn't bring himself to tell Hermione the truth. It was easier to let her think he'd just been an idiot.

"Uh, well, that's because — because..." Ron hesitated. "Harry! What did Praeris say before? Hor-men or something?"

Ron had garbled the word so badly, slurring right through the middle of "hormone," that it came out as something closer to "hor-men."

The Harry he was appealing to had long since pulled his blanket over his head and was playing dead with full conviction.

Harry thought Ron was in the wrong, too. And on top of that, Lavender was constantly cornering Harry to gush about her love life, which was seriously eating into his time investigating Draco Malfoy's movements.

He had only just escaped the whole Half-Blood Prince's potion notes disaster and was trying to keep his head down. The last thing he wanted was to get dragged into something that might blow up in his face.

But Harry couldn't quite shake the thought: when he'd used the Half-Blood Prince's book to win the Felix Felicis, Ron had spoken up for him. Now Ron was the one drowning, and Harry was just lying here playing dead. That wasn't exactly great either, was it?

He went back and forth on it long enough to miss his window entirely. Now answering felt wrong, and not answering felt wrong, and he was more wedged in than ever.

"Stop bothering Harry!" Hermione hissed at Ron. "It's called a hormone!"

"Oh, right, hormone." Ron muttered. "I remember thinking at the time — that sounds a bit like your name."

That nearly made Hermione laugh despite herself.

"Every animal has hormones," said Hermione, who had attended Muggle primary school and had a point to make. "But that is exactly where we humans differ from animals — we have morals. We take responsibility for our feelings."

It all went in one ear and straight out the other. Ron's head was spinning.

Honestly, plenty of witches and wizards got together one day and called it off the next. Why did Hermione always have to turn everything into a moral lecture?

"Responsibility?" Ron said, sulky. "What, you want Lavender to keep hanging off my neck? My neck can't take it anymore."

"Can't you see how much Lavender cares about you?" Hermione said, startled. "She gave you her genuine feelings. Even if you don't love her anymore, you owe it to her to respect that. Don't you?"

Ron finally understood. Hermione wasn't talking to him about Lavender out of jealousy.

She was standing up for Lavender.

She thought Ron had let Lavender down.

Ron's stomach turned over. Something was churning inside him.

"Genuine feelings?" He looked at Hermione, voice going flat and sharp. "I don't think Lavender's feelings for me were all that genuine."

"If I hadn't had a brilliant match in Quidditch, would she have even looked at me?"

"If I weren't Harry's friend, the Chosen One's friend — if I didn't have any of that reflected glory, would she still have come to me?"

"Yes, I acted on impulse. But I don't think she was exactly pure about it either," Ron said, and his voice had an edge to it now. "So why are you defending Lavender? Just because I'm the one who wants out first?"

Under his blanket, Harry wished with everything he had that a troll would come and knock him unconscious. He'd rather face Voldemort in a dream than lie here listening to this. He'd take anything over this.

Hermione stared at Ron. She hadn't expected him to say any of that.

"Yes, you played brilliantly," she said, her voice tight with disbelief. "But you weren't the only Gryffindor who played brilliantly. Why didn't Lavender go after Harry, then?"

Don't ask Harry. Harry knew nothing.

In fact, he was so busy not knowing anything that he found himself mentally running through some of Praeris's notes. His study efficiency had improved enormously.

Hermione pressed on. "Has Harry only just been forced into the spotlight? Did he only just become the Chosen One? Is today your first day being his best friend?"

"How can you say that about someone who genuinely cares for you?" She had completely forgotten Ron was in the hospital wing. She fixed him with a look that could have stripped paint. "You've gone too far."

If Lavender ever found out that the feelings that made her heart flutter had been born from one of Ron's petty, spiteful moments...

Hermione thought of the Christmas gift Praeris had given her. A book called Klingsor's Last Summer. There was a line in it: The world is a soap bubble, an opera, a riotous absurdity.

Hermione wanted to swap out "the world" for Lavender's love.

The riotousness had been Lavender's. The absurdity was Ron's.

Perhaps Lavender's love, from beginning to end, had been nothing more than a brilliant soap bubble. An opera performed alone, for an audience of one.

And thinking of how she herself had once held something warmer than friendship for Ron, Hermione felt a quiet, bone-deep relief. She didn't know whether Ron would grow into something better someday. But the person he was right now was a good friend. Nothing more than that.

Ron saw the disappointment in Hermione's eyes with perfect, awful clarity. It hit him harder than any shouting could have. He would have taken the shouting. He would have preferred it.

He felt it then, that sick, panicked certainty that he was about to lose something he couldn't get back.

"Hermione, don't look at me like that!" The words came out before he could stop them. "I was wrong. I know I was wrong — but I just wanted you to regret it."

"Regret what?" Hermione frowned. She genuinely couldn't think of anything she had to regret.

Ron's lips moved. A long moment passed.

"...Regret being with Krum."

THUD!

Both of them spun toward Harry's bed. Nothing there.

They stared. They both wondered if they'd imagined it.

Ron had finally said it, the thing he'd never managed to say out loud, and it had come out here, in the wreckage of this argument, of all places. Hermione's head was ringing.

Ron liked her?

If it had been before the Yule Ball, if Ron had asked her then, and said something like this, maybe she would have felt something. A flutter, at least. But standing here now, Hermione felt nothing but anger. A deep, clean, very quiet anger that had already settled past the point of noise.

She pressed a hand to her forehead. She looked at Ron.

"No," she said, her voice entirely level. "No, Ron, I don't regret it. Even if Viktor and I couldn't make it last, I will never regret it."

Hermione and Krum were a long-distance relationship across countries, with age and miles between them. But Hermione had never felt that the distance was too great.

Krum always said he hoped Hermione would "think it through clearly", yet the letters kept coming, one after another. The words said one thing; the letters said another. The first was his reason. The second was his heart.

Krum was more mature than Hermione, but sometimes a pessimism bled through. He believed Hermione only admired something specific in him, some quality that could just as easily be found in someone her own age. That it didn't have to be him.

Then why do you keep writing me so many letters? Hermione had dashed back. If you don't trust me, why write at all? You say one thing and do another, you impossible, contradictory man!

Krum had written back: Hermione, forgive me. My feelings for you have gotten away from me, and I have no excuse for it.

I tell myself I only want you to be happy while you still like me... though I'm not entirely certain that's true.

When that letter arrived, Hermione had spun in circles around her room, light as a bird in full sun.

No matter how the relationship ended, she had never stopped believing it was worth it. Viktor barely strung this many words together in years, and he had given every one of them to Hermione.

As long as both people treasured what they had, there was nothing to regret. She believed that.

"Relationships between witches and wizards aren't only about romance," Hermione said, and her voice was deliberate now, each word placed with care. "Ron, in my eyes, you and Harry are exactly the same. You are both my good friends. Nothing more."

She drew a slow breath.

"I'm glad you know you were wrong. But I don't think you actually understand where you went wrong."

"Courage isn't recklessness. It isn't acting on impulse. It isn't making decisions on a whim. Whether it's friendship or love — you have to be sincere. You have to genuinely hold the other person in your heart."

"I hope you'll think carefully about where things stand between you and Lavender."

She stood. And she walked out of the hospital wing without looking back.

Ron lay there staring at the old vaulted ceiling. He couldn't piece together what he'd just said. All he felt was a hollow, wrung-out exhaustion, like the words had taken something out of him and left nothing in their place.

A rustling came from the bed beside him.

Ron turned. A hand had appeared, gripping the bed frame.

Harry, one hand on the frame and the other cradling his head, was hauling himself up from the floor.

He made it upright. He met Ron's eyes. He scratched the back of his neck and grinned.

"Hey, Ron. Guess what. I fell out of bed in my sleep." He hissed through his teeth. "Ow, my head."

Ron managed something that was almost a smile. "Your head's taken more hits than a Bludger by now."

Harry pulled a face. "Hope I don't turn into an idiot..."

Hermione left the hospital wing at a run.

She went down the second-floor corridor, down the stairs, out through the castle doors, and kept going until she reached the edge of the Black Lake.

She wanted to talk to Viktor, to Praeris, about the tangle of feelings she couldn't quite name. But Viktor wasn't here. So she reached for the two-way mirror without thinking.

She'd asked too much of Praeris already. More times than she could count. Sometimes she found herself tiresome just thinking about it. But Praeris had never once seemed to mind.

Since Viktor, Hermione had made herself a rule: unless it was urgent, she would wait for a letter from far away rather than pull Praeris away from whatever she was doing.

The mirror lit up quickly. Through the glass, Hermione could see open sky, Praeris wasn't underground.

"Hermione?" Praeris composed her expression. "Did something happen?"

Hermione caught it immediately. The exhaustion behind her eyes. Even during the worst of the busy season lately, Praeris hadn't looked like this.

"No," Hermione said softly. "Nothing happened. I just wanted you to sit with me for a little while."

April in Scotland, and rare enough to be remarkable, a clear day.

From the lakeside everything was green, a deep and spreading green that went on as far as she could see. The sky was a pure, endless blue with only a few thin clouds drifting through it. The wind moved like the light hem of a dress, skimming across the lake, brushing past Hermione, brushing past Praeris up on the Astronomy Tower.

Neither of them spoke. They simply kept each other company.

From the wide blue afternoon all the way until the sky burned orange and red.

"Praeris." Hermione's voice came softly through the mirror. "Do you know what a French pilot once said? He said that when people are sad, they fall in love with sunsets."

Praeris stood at the Astronomy Tower window. On the table behind her, two empty bottles. She looked down and found Hermione's shadow at the edge of the lake, stretched long, so very long, across the ground.

"The sun is going down, Hermione." Praeris's voice was a little distant, a little blurred. "It'll take our troubles with it when it goes."

"And tomorrow will be a brand-new day."

Hermione repeated it quietly. "Tomorrow will be a brand-new day."

She had a feeling, vague but certain, a sense that something between her and Praeris was shifting, had already been shifting, without either of them marking the moment. She was no longer the girl who could only lean against Praeris and talk and talk until there were no more words.

She could hold her own feelings now. And she could see Praeris's. She could sit with Praeris the way Praeris had always sat with her.

Time pushed people forward. It never stopped to ask how they felt about it.

In the days that followed, Praeris settled into a quiet stretch.

She hoped Harry could get Slughorn's memory. She also hoped he'd fail. Because success meant the plan she didn't want to think about could move forward at any moment.

"Draco!" Crabbe came jogging from somewhere, his brow furrowed. "Why are you still lounging around here? We should be, you know!"

Draco had his eyes closed, leaning against Praeris beneath a copper beech tree. Sunlight came through the gaps in the leaves in scattered patches, falling across both of them. The wind shifted it as it passed, like small golden things, dancing.

Praeris had a book open in her hands. She read from it in an unhurried, idle voice: "The world grows more and more beautiful... I want nothing else, only to be soaked through by the sun. I long for maturity. Ready to die, ready to be reborn..."

Her voice wasn't particularly lovely. But the rhythm was slow and easy, and it moved with the April air, and it was pulling Draco steadily toward sleep.

Crabbe's arrival broke it apart.

Draco's brow creased. He opened his eyes, rolled them with mild irritation, and pushed himself up from the grass with one hand, brushing leaves and bits of twig from his robes.

Crabbe started to think Draco was heading out with him.

Instead, Draco crouched back down. He lowered his head and touched his lips briefly to Praeris's ear.

"I'm going," he murmured.

Crabbe clicked his tongue.

He could not stand these two.

What Crabbe didn't see was that the moment Draco straightened, Praeris's gaze slid past his shoulder and landed on Crabbe with something decidedly unfriendly in it.

Wrecking a perfectly good afternoon. What a way to ruin things.

A chill crept down Crabbe's back. He couldn't account for it. His instincts weren't sharp enough to tell him someone was sending a glare directly into his spine. So he just ambled off with Draco, none the wiser.

➤ Next: Things Men Do