The Bet

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The Bet

Chapter VII - Understanding Elusive Slytherins

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23 September 2003

Shit. Again, it's getting out of my control. Not that becoming friends with Potter isn't a good thing in the long run...it's just that I'm supposed to be driving him crazy with desire. And since he decided to take things into his own hands and talk to Raven, only to find out she likes him...he's going to think it's increasingly odd that I'm coming on to him as well.

And I was wrong about why I'm suddenly attracted to Potter. Although the similarities in appearance to Raven are an initial factor, there's still...something else. Something that Raven must not have, but Potter does. Not that I'm any less attracted to Raven because of it...it's just different, is all.

And...I was shocked, to say the least, when Potter started crying after I told him that I had needed him to keep me sane after the war. Not shocked that he was crying so much, but shocked because he felt comfortable enough to do so in front of me. To confess that he himself was shocked that I was the only person who needed him.

And all I could do was hold him.

And that shocked me as well. The second I saw his tears...it was all I could do to make him feel better, to make him know without a doubt that someone cares about him. Although I'm almost afraid to admit that. That I'm beginning to care. But I do. I think I always have. Otherwise, why would I have needed to always be a part of his life, regardless of the fact that I was actually trying to make it all harder for him?

Merlin, it's scary. To think that Harry Potter feels like he's never been needed for anything more than killing Voldemort and saving the world. What kind of friends does he have that he'd think something like that?

~~~~~

Ron led Hermione into his and Neville's room, closing the door and putting a silencing spell up.

"So, Neville, what did you find out?" Hermione asked, sitting on Ron's bed and tucking her legs underneath her. Ron sat down beside her, leaning back on his hands.

"Well..." Neville answered, sitting on the edge of his own bed, "I think I may have over-estimated the kindness of her."

"Really? Was she mean to you?"

"No...not exactly. Just...snappy. And a little cold."

"Hmm...well, what did she say, in any case?"

"That her and Draco were in an 'open relationship' and that Harry was only a friend."

"Only a friend, huh?" Hermione mused off into space, pursing her lips. "And Draco and her are in an 'open relationship'?" Neville nodded his assent.

"What are you thinking, 'Mione?" Ron asked.

Hermione tossed her braid over one shoulder to play with the end of it. "Well...'open relationship' probably means that Raven and Draco are seeing each other, but see no need to tie themselves down with only each other."

"Yeah, that's sort of what she said." Neville cut in.

"Oh? She told you?"

"No, I asked, and she had me guess that they were both free to date other people. She told me I was right."

"Hmm..."

"Enough with the 'hmms', Hermione," Ron said. "What do you think we should do?"

Hermione frowned. "Don't get snappy with me, Ronald. I'm still thinking." After another few minutes she said, "There must be something else that's going on. A reason that Raven's suddenly talking to Harry. We need to find out what it is before we can do anything, if we decide to anything at all. Do you know if they have any classes together? Maybe that's why they're talking."

Ron shook his head. "I'm not sure. She could be in one of his medical classes...we're not in any of those."

"True. I'm not sure what she's studying," Hermione said. "Well, this meeting was rather unproductive. I guess I'll just hunt her down tomorrow and have a little chat with her."

"Do you want me to go with you?" Ron asked, placing a hand on the small of her back.

"Why?" Hermione smiled mockingly sweet at him. "You want to defend me against the mischievous little Slytherin, Ron?" The redhead had the decency to blush.

"No...I was just saying..." Ron sputtered.

Hermione laughed. "That's alright. But I think I should do this by myself. You know, a little 'girl-talk.'"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Oh yes. 'Girl-talk.' I'll never understand you women. Always got to keep your 'talks' under lock and key."

"Oh? And you men don't hide things from us?" When Ron was about to reply, she said, "No. Wait. I don't want to know what goes on in your sordid and perverted little talks. Keep it to yourselves." But her face held a little grin.

"Hey! Our talks aren't perverted! Or whatever else you said! They're probably nothing worse than what you women talk about!"

Hermione crossed her arms over her chest. "Oh, so you guys talk about the guy who can't keep it up, or the pains of bleeding every month?"

Neville's eyes widened in surprise and he cried out slightly in disgust, clapping his hands over his ears. "Ew! Too much information, too much information!"

Ron's face was a little paler, and he completely ignored Hermione's last statement. "Is that...is that really what you talk about? I mean...I don't...do I?" He looked on the verge of tears.

Hermione was suddenly very serious, turning to fully face her fiancé and take his face in her hands. "No, silly. I don't talk about that. And no, you don't. I've never not been satisfied."

Neville suddenly stood. "Er...perhaps I should go. I'll talk to you later. Just don't...mess up the room. Again." And then he was gone, leaving the pair alone.

Ron and Hermione sat in silence for a moment. But finally, Ron broke it by speaking in a quiet voice. "That really hurt, Hermione."

"I'm sorry Ron, honestly. I didn't mean it. I wasn't even talking about you. Really."

He bit is lower lip. "Really?"

"Yes, really." She smiled at him. "Oh, come here, you big dolt." And she reached forward to bring him into a big embrace, holding him to her tightly. "I love you, Ron Weasley."

"I love you too, 'Mione," Ron whispered back, holding her in return.

Breaking apart slightly, they leaned back in to kiss, which soon escalated into a full snog-fest. After a break for a much-needed breath, Hermione moved to lie down on the bed, pulling Ron with her, where he laid his head on her chest, enjoying the soft fabric of her pink sweater on his cheek, and wrapping his arm around her middle. As she played with his shocking flame of hair, he smiled contentedly, and closed his eyes. After a moment of silence, Hermione finally spoke.

"Ron?"

"Hmm?" he murmured sleepily.

"Do you...do you think Harry's just lonely?"

"What do you mean?" Ron said, slightly more awake.

"Well...Harry hasn't really talked to us lately, have you noticed? He's been going off more on his own...doing his own thing... Which is fine, I mean, I think it's important that he find himself, don't you?"

"Yeah... But Hermione, what are you getting at?"

"Like I said before, I think Harry's just lonely. Almost everyone around us is in some type of relationship. And Harry's not. In fact, now that I think about it, he hasn't pursued a girl since Cho...and that was almost nine years ears ago, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, maybe that's why he's talking to Raven. Even if she is with Malfoy. Maybe they have a class together, and get along alright. Maybe they're just friends. Who knows. I just think that Harry's lonely. And with us going on about the wedding all the time, I'm sure it just becomes more apparent in Harry's mind how alone he might feel."

"So...do you want us to try and hook Harry up with someone?"

Hermione was quiet for a moment. "Maybe. I really do think that we shouldn't interfere...because that's all Harry's ever known...people interfering in his life. But at the same time...I want to make sure he's happy. And maybe a girl, even if it's Raven, will be the right thing to get him going again. Even if it's not happily-ever-after. At least it'll get him back in the game. It's been much too long."

"And for a while there, all anyone could think about was trying to stay alive," Ron reminded her.

"Exactly."

"So we wait? And see what's going on with Raven?"

Hermione nodded, kissing the crown of her fiancé's head. "We wait."

~~~~~

Hermione was surprised at how long it took to track down the Slytherin girl on such a small campus. First, she went to Dormitory Four, but she wasn't there, and no one who was could tell the Gryffindor where the Slytherin had gone. Then she went to Dormitory Three, in the hopes that Raven might be with Malfoy, but found, before Graham Pritchard quite rudely closed the door in her face, that neither Malfoy or Raven were in.

So that left her with the option of searching every single classroom on campus on her only free day of the week. She started with the Mixing Chamber, a low, flat building with one story above ground, and three below. Potion making required that a majority ingredients be stored in such a way that sunlight didn't interfere, as it aged certain things incredibly fast. The ground-level floor was filled with potions-theory classrooms, and while she found Malfoy working on what looked like a rather complicated potion theory, when asked, he couldn't tell her where the elusive girl was. He only raised a calculating eyebrow at her when she lied and said she needed to find her to talk about schoolwork.

So moving on, she searched the one building she, herself, spent the most time in, the Spell Weaver building. This building was a large stone structure, taller than it was wide, with small little towers here and there, giving it an almost castle-like quality. The building was designed to house not only the spell creation classrooms, but the general education ones as well, including Arithmancy, Charms, Transfiguration and the like, and also had numerous greenhouses on its roof for the Herbology studies. But again, the mysterious girl was nowhere to be found.

It was getting on to lunchtime when Hermione finished searching the tall building, and so she stopped by her dorm, Number Two, to grab something to eat. Stepping back outside, full and renewed of energy, the bushy-haired young woman went to the third school building in the circle. The Medi-Arts building. This building housed all of the medical-related studies needed to start a career in the arts of magical healing. Of course, after getting a degree in the theory and practicum of the medical arts, you had to do an apprenticeship for at least three years, preferably five, in order to become fully efficient and self-sustaining as a medi-wizard. Hermione caught a glance of Harry in one of the classrooms, and quickly moved on, but in vain. This girl was just nowhere to be found!

Finally, Hermione wandered into the library, the second building she spent most of her time in. She always found comfort in the smell of the old tomes; centuries of knowledge being passed down through quill and paper. But again, Hermione's search was unproductive. Just as she was about to leave, thinking that perhaps the girl went into the village, or maybe she just kept missing her, a door off to the left of the foyer of the library caught her eye. She wasn't sure why she had never noticed it before, but it clearly lead into another chamber, and was smartly labelled, Art. Hermione mused about the need for such a room, when she pushed open the door and entered a small, circular antechamber with many doors, each one labelled. Scanning her eyes over the small brass plaques, her eyes read: Painting, Photography, Drawing, and Clay and Metal. Hermione realised then that these were art classrooms, used for extra curricular activities, kind of like Quidditch and the Wizard's Chess Club. Approaching the door closest to her, Painting, and opening it, she was awarded immediately with the sight of Raven, standing alone in the middle of the classroom, facing the door, looking musingly at whatever it was that she was painting. She looked up when Hermione stepped inside.

With a cool and indifferent look on her face she said, "Granger. I didn't know you were into painting." Raven swirled her brush around in a metal bowl, tapping it sharply on the side and then brushing it back and forth on a shoddy-looking wire rack that was set off to the side. Then she used her fingers to smooth out the bristles. Hermione watched, fascinated, and took in the room around her as well. The room had floor to ceiling windows on two sides, and Hermione wondered why she never noticed that feature from the outside of the building before, and then realised that it must have been enchanted to look like normal stone on the outside. Looking around the medium-sized room, she saw all kinds and sizes of easels, and many paint-stains on the floor and walls. There were a few large shelving units with vertical slots in them, filled with different sized canvases. There were also two large sinks in one corner, and many, many candles floating up near the ceiling, but none were lit.

As she re-gained eye contact with Raven, she realised that she had never responded to the other girl's comment. "Er, no. I'm not into painting. I was just looking for you." Hermione realised just how stupid she sounded, and took a breath to get her composure back.

Raven raised an eyebrow and said, "Well, you found me. What do you want?"

"To talk to you. About your intentions with Harry."

"You know, Granger, you're the second person in two days that's asked me about that. And I'll tell you the same thing I told Longbottom: Harry is currently just a friend."

But Hermione thought quickly and read between the lines. "'Currently?' What does that mean? Will you be expecting something more than that later?"

Raven stopped the cleaning of her space and said calmly, "I don't believe that's any of your business."

"If it's about Harry it is," Hermione said, narrowing her eyes and stepping closer to the other girl.

Raven sighed. She knew that she couldn't scare this one away as easily as she had the other. The ex-Gryffindor was too smart for that. Raven knew she'd have to let enough information go to satisfy the other girl, but not raise suspicions about the absolute nature of what was going on.

"Granger, we've never been friends. In fact, I'm sure this is our first time speaking to one another." Hermione wanted to just tell the girl to get to the point, but refrained. "And I certainly wouldn't want someone I barely knew stepping into my best friend's life for reasons unknown. But let me ask you this: have you noticed how Harry's been doing lately?"

Hermione was thrown off by the question. She wasn't exactly sure what information the girl was asking for. So she stayed on the safe side and asked a question back. "Why do you want to know?"

"I already know. I was wondering if you did."

Hermione gazed steadily back at the longhaired girl. She still didn't trust her, but knew that she had to figure out what Raven was thinking before she left the room. "I...I might have noticed something. Why don't you tell me what you know, and then we'll see if it's similar to my knowledge."

Raven smirked. "I was right. You are a smart one. Well, seeing as I believe we both have Harry's best interests at heart here, I'll let you know that I've been watching Harry for some time now. And...he's not finished healing."

"Healing? From what?"

"For how smart you are, you don't use your eyes too much, do you?" Hermione's look turned icy, and Raven continued as if she didn't notice. "Harry's not finished. Dealing with the burdens the fight with Voldemort put him through. He's not finished at all. And everyone else has moved on. Without him. And he's lost. And alone."

Hermione regarded the girl with mild appraisal. "To be honest, I've just recently noticed the same thing myself."

"Were you planning on doing anything about it?"

The Gryffindor crossed her arms over her chest. "Actually, I was waiting for you."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "For me?"

"Yes. Harry seemed fairly happy to have found a new friend in you. And since I saw you two holding hands...I was wondering if it was more than that. I wanted to know, before I tried to interfere, what you really felt for him. Because I really don't want you, me, or anybody else interfering in his life, unless it's absolutely necessary. He's had more than enough of other people's meddling. And I think that Harry feels like the one thing he's missing...is someone by his side. I believe that Harry just needs to find love."

"I agree."

Hermione quirked up an eyebrow. "So? What intentions do you have involving Harry? Especially since you agree with me?"

"I'm here to be his friend, his lover, anything he wants from me that I can give."

The older girl frowned. "But what about Malfoy?"

"What about Draco?"

"I thought you two were together."

Raven smiled through her eyelashes. "We are. Of a fashion."

"Is it that 'open relationship' thing you told Neville?"

"Yes. It is that."

"I hear an 'and' in there."

Raven laughed. "And he supports me in my endeavours to heal Harry's heart and help him find love."

"I'm not sure I follow completely. Are you just going to string along two guys? And besides, if I know Malfoy, I'd like to think that he doesn't like sharing."

"No, I do not plan on stringing along two guys. And you're right; Draco doesn't like sharing. But it's a bit more complicated than that."

"Do tell."

"Granger, you know my most recent history, involving the Dark Lord and such."

"Yes..."

"I've never liked anyone outside of Slytherin House. Even Harry. But after Sanctuary...things changed. I still may not like you, or Weasley. But I do like Harry. I do care about him. I've let most of my prejudices go. And I'm trying to get Draco to do the same."

Hermione thought for a moment. "So you're...doing something to get Malfoy to start liking Harry? Just like that?"

"No, of course not 'just like that.' And I'm not really doing anything."

"Then how...?"

"Oh, it's all Draco. I've tricked him into doing it himself."

"You've tricked him?"

"Well, I am a Slytherin, after all."

"And Draco doesn't know he's doing this? I'm confused. Malfoy's too smart to just befriend Harry out of nowhere."

"You're right. So he knows."

"Then why is he doing it?"

"Because he loves me. And he knows it'll make me happy."

Hermione stood there in stunned silence. "So...Malfoy's befriending Harry?"

"Yes."

"And you...like Harry?"

"Yes."

"And Malfoy?"

"And for a third time, yes."

Hermione understood, but she still frowned. "But...but I don't understand. Even if you and Malfoy have an 'open relationship,' what about Harry? Where will he wind up in all this?"

Raven regarded Hermione for a long moment. "To be completely honest, I'm not sure. I suppose that will ultimately be up to Harry." When Hermione opened her mouth to undoubtedly retort, Raven spoke again. "Granger...Hermione. I don't wish to hurt Harry. I really don't. But if he needs someone to love him, and help him through, or even forget, whatever it is he needs to, then I will try to be that person for him. I'm not saying that you and Weasley don't love him, but I think we both know that you two will be getting busy with your new engagement, and I think we both know that Harry won't want to put either of you out. So, be there when you can. And Draco and I will be there the rest of the time."

Hermione was rather shocked. Is this girl really a Slytherin? She seemed much more mature and thoughtful than Hermione had originally thought. And...her logic did make some sort of sense, but this was Harry. And Hermione really didn't want to see him get hurt. Hermione walked over to a window and looked outside, musing at the golden leaves falling from the trees like snow. Sighing audibly, she finally turned around and said,

"Raven, I do see where you're coming from. And you're right, in a lot of ways. Ron and I will be getting increasingly busy as the time to our wedding draws near, but I...I just don't know. What does Harry know about all of this?"

"He knows that I care about him and that I like him, and that Draco is learning how to get past his hatred."

"It just seems too simple. There must be something else going on."

"Well, there isn't, Granger," the dark-haired girl lied. "All I can assure you is that I will make sure Harry knows what the consequences and the inevitable outcome are if he decides to take things any further than friendship. But like I said, it's eventually all up to him. Draco and I will be here for whatever he needs us for."

"Are you really sure about Malfoy? I just don't believe that either of them could bury the hatchet after all these years."

"They'll have to grow out of it at some point, Granger. I honestly think they're both tired of constantly holding grudges. Draco tries to hide it, but I think it's been a nagging feeling that he's never bothered to look into. If anything, it'll be my life's goal to help Draco get rid of the past his family's tainted him with. He really doesn't need his father's mistakes, or his, for that matter, hanging him up."

Hermione looked calculating at the girl in front of her. "You're different than I imagined, Raven. I didn't think you'd be so...unselfish."

Raven smiled softly and then continued to clean up her workspace. "People change, Granger."

"Indeed they do."

Raven looked up and smirked. "But don't get me wrong, I'm still a Slytherin at heart."

Hermione smiled ruefully. "As long as yours doesn't play with Harry's."

The younger Slytherin girl smirked, but they both knew the seriousness of what they were really saying. "If he's ever hurt, it won't be intentional. I wasn't lying before when I said that I'd make sure he knows what he's getting into, if he feels the need to take things a step further than friendship. Because honestly, I think one of the biggest parts of loneliness, is not having a physical and emotional connection with someone. It makes the intellectual loneliness that much harder to bear."

Hermione regarded the girl for a moment, then nodded once and left the art room, comfortable with the strange understanding that had just occurred. Now, how to convey in layman's terms the information to Ron and Neville, knowing that the men probably wouldn't understand 'girl-talk'.