The Corpse behind the Hourglass

Hermione/Ron is only for two chapters, people! So please don't flame me saying Hermione/Ron sucks..I know it does...ermm..*eyes people holding rotten fruit* I mean..I like both of them fine (I am in a Ron fanclub for goodness sakes!) but .they make much better friends, trust me.:)

Happy holidays, everyone! (blame my festiveness on catching a glimpse of FF10 at Wal Mart-wooohooo!)

 

Angelina/Fred, Lee/Alicia, and Katie/George moments are dedicated to all those people who gripe that there will never be a story with all three couplings!

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The moment Hermione entered the girl's dormitories she was bombarded by none other than the duo of Parvati and Lavender, both of whom were just finishing up the extremely trying task of plucking their eyebrows. They didn't even have the patience to wait until after Hermione had changed out of her robes before they questioned her.

 

Inquisitive souls, both of them. Inquisitive and wanting to have the satisfaction of knowing whom each and every girl was going to the Yule ball with before the ball had even started.

 

"So, don't leave us in suspense. Who's the lucky guy?" asked Parvati as Hermione stepped out of her robes and a lifted a dress of soft, swishy material over her head.

 

Struggling to close the miniscule clasps that fastened the dress in back, Hermione spoke sarcastically. "Which? The one I snogged or the one taking me to the Yule ball? It is so difficult to keep track of them these days."

 

Lavender grinned as she put on a slathering of glitter. "I hear numbering 'em helps," she joked before suddenly turning serious. "Hermione, you do know Ginny's going with Harry, don't you?"

 

Hermione's hands slipped as she tried to slide a high heeled shoe over her foot, leading her to step on two of her fingers. Rubbing them for a minute in pain, she looked weakly back at Lavender and Parvati. "I know," she fibbed.

 

If she had admitted she had no clue what they were talking about, she would have had to hear every last petty detail of how Harry had asked Ginny. Lavender and Parvati were very accurate at relaying such information. Hermione highly suspected they were only, at most, two feet away from every major (and minor) crisis or event that happened at Hogwarts-the exception, she hoped, being the conversation that had taken place between herself, Draco, and Dumbledore in his office a few weeks hence.

 

However, both Lavender and Parvati, astute observers that they were, noted the expression on Hermione's face. Parvati smiled reassuringly in her direction.

 

"Oh, for goodness sake, don't take it so hard. It's not like they're getting married or anything."

 

"Else, trust us, we would have heard the proposal," added Parvati, with a similiar smile, trying to cheer Hermione up.

 

"And already know just what the bride was wearing so you could color coordinate with her dress," added Hermione, refusing to show how upset she was. She had refused Harry, after all.

 

"Why would we want to color coordinate with her dress? The bouqet is much more important," said Lavender.

 

"Very important," added Parvati. "Got to have the shoes match the flowers, you know. Otherwise, it's simply gastly."

 

"Oh, of course. Don't want all the munchkins invited seeing your clashing footwear," Hermione noted.

 

"Naturally." Lavender nodded mock seriousness. "They already have such horrible fashion sense as it is-we wouldn't want to set a bad example."

 

Harry and Ginny might as well be getting married, thought Hermione glumly. What happened if after the ball, they started dating? And then figured out from there that they did want to get married? Okay, so that was jumping to conclusions a bit, but just the same..

 

It's my fault. I never should have asked Ron, Hermione fretted. What if this is the way things turn out in the future? Me and Harry's baby, she thought, feeling strangely lonely. What about my baby? It may not exsist now, but if Harry and Ginny or me and Ron...well, it might never exsist. But to go back to the past and not be free to change it as you wanted to, for fear of how it would affect the life you had in the future, that was no better.

 

Part of Hermione wanted to admit she wanted to change the life she lived in the future-and how she came to live such a life. Her dating Harry, their engagement, marriage, life together-it all seemed the workings of a carboard fairytale. Perfect, but yet something was lacking. Something beneath the surface, threatening to froth over.

 

And now, back in the past, she was taking the chances and risks; seeing the possibilites she'd never thought of before. But would the outcome still be the same? Or was her asking Ron to the dance (and, in some wierd sense, Draco being alive again) more than just a possibility?

 

A voice interrupted Hermione's pondering. "So you really don't mind?"

 

Hermione knew Parvati was still on about Ginny and Harry.

 

"I'm fine with it," she said, the tone of her voice sounding and her features looking a bit more convincing on this matter than they had when she had first been privy to the news. "In fact, I'm going with someone else."

 

Hermione finished her last minute preparations for the ball and was about to work her hair into a french twist when she got a good look at the clock and instead opted for two strands in braids held together at the back of her head, the rest of her hair flowing freely down past her shoulders.

 

She then left the girl's dormitories altogether, Lavender and Parvati pestering her all the way to the door, trying to come with the answer as to whom her date could possibly be.

 

"Neville?" guessed Lavender.

 

"Dean?" questioned Parvati.

 

"Lee?" Lavender took another guess.

 

"Nope, nope, and definitely not," replied Hermione. "You should save your breath. You'll be seeing him in ten minutes, after all."

 

"We will?" asked Parvati, puzzled. "But why? The girl's dormitories aren't the best place for snogging," she said in a confedential tone. "I suggest you stake out a spare closet, instead."

 

"Or, in Seamus's case, a greenhouse," Lavender said with a snicker.

 

"Mind your own business," grumbled Parvati, blushing. It was obvious who her date was.

 

"Thanks and all, but I don't need snogging spot reccomendations," said Hermione, finding herself grinning a bit at the other two girl's cheerfulness-it was infectious. "You aren't going to be meeting him in any dormitories. You'll be meeting him at the ball."

 

"It starts in ten minutes!?" shouted Lavender in horror, fiddling to put in a pair of earrings.

 

"Only ten minutes?" exclaimed Parvarti in an equal amount of shock (though, part of that shock could have been the result of her thirty watt hairdryer being used on still damp hair.)

 

Pandemonium began as both girls hurriedly started running this way and that to get ready, the end result of this being Parvarti stepping on Lavender's eyelash curler.

 

"See you there!"

 

Hermione quickly shut the door behind her, hustled across the hall, and down one flight of stairs after another to reach the place where the dance was being held.

* * * * *

Draco, unlike Hermione, was not lingering around his house's dormitories simply because he needed to prepare for the dance. No, he had been dressed since long ago (or thirty minutes ago, at least) and the only reason he had not yet left for the ball was because more important things had kept him.

 

More important things being an owl swooping up to the tower Draco was in, and-in an attempt to get inside and deliver his letter- pecking with his beak furiously at the latch that held the windows shut, not stopping until Draco had unlocked them.

 

The bird flew through the now ajar window with so much force he nearly bowled Draco over altogether. Amid the flurry of feathers and sharp talons, Draco snatched the letter. Recognizing the seal and the owl that was still flapping around agitatedly almost at once as belonging to his father, Draco gave the letter only a cursory glance over.

 

As he expected, the lettter was his father's usual cherry missal. Draco's eyes skipped over the words "Voldemort", "death" and "Harry Potter" several times, but it was the small parcel that dropped out of the envelope that intrigued him.

 

Draco fingered the thing curiously. A ring? But why on earth?

 

Unless his father wanted him and Blaise to become engaged, which Draco hardly doubted. The whole contrived thing couldn't have been more obvious if Blaise's parents had bought him a tux and his parents had bought her a veil. Too bad his father didn't know he wasn't taking Blaise to the ball. Draco would have loved to see his face upon hearing such-probably would have brought a whole new angle of meaning to the term "spontanously combusted."

 

Draco turned his attention from the ring back to the fragile leaf of paper in hand. Scanning the ending of the letter, he found the answer to his question. A ring as a gift for tonight's "occasion"?

 

Looking at himself in the mirror, Draco ran a hand through his hair and turned to go out the door, dropping the letter into the fireplace as he went.

 

And the edges of the letter burned and smoltered under the heat of the flames, but the true intention and malice hidden behind those ink words scrawled in a spidery print could not be vanquished so easily. The ring Draco held clutched in his palm was proof enough of that; a ring that would have burned Harry Potter's skin more black than the letter itself.

A letter which was now merely a smudge blending with the coals in the grate. A letter, that, in its own way, would burn Malfoy as well.

 

For it did not discern between different wizards-it controlled them, and he controlled it. He, who was, in turn, ruled by the most powerful dark wizard of them all. One that may have ceased to exsist in body but had-in spirit, mind, and soul- lost none of his potency.

 

Draco puzzled over the trinket as he made his way down a winding flight of steps, the staircase closely compacted by the stone walls on either side. He understood what his father wanted him to think the ring was for, a celebratory sort of gift for both his upcoming sixteenth birthday and the ball-hah, now that was really bloodly likely- but what was it really for?

 

Shrugging, Draco slipped the ring onto his right thumb. Once in contact with his skin, it happened. The jewel embedded in the middle of the ring turned a funny sort of green color, a green color that swirled around the center as if part of a miniature cloud.

 

Draco felt as if by the ring's touch, a venom had entered his very skin. A venom, and with it, a flood of feelings, thoughts, and memories that were not his own.

 

That was when it hit him exactly what the ring's purpose was-he felt dim for not having noticed it before, the death eater's ring. The very ring his father, Wormtail, and a good twenty other or so number of Voldemort's lackeys were.

 

Of all the ridiculous things-how could he have not noticed it? He'd been through his past once before, he should have remembered..

 

But the long and short of it was, he hadn't. Panicking slightly, Draco tried to twist off the ring, but to no avail, it stayed firmly and securely fastened around his finger, refusing to budge insomuch as an inch.

 

"You will be a most welcome addition" Draco thought he heard a voice whisper in his head. And it did not stop there. All the way to the place where the dance was being held, Draco fought the sound of it, trying to block it out in his mind, but it prevailed.

 

Whispers in Voldemort's voice and another voice, as unpleasing to the ear as his. Whispers of killing, turmoil, and mudbloods being swept out. Whispers of dark promises in return for loyality. Loyality...such a simple thing to ask..a death eater..

 

Memories of terrible things. Destruction, pain; things he had previously possessed no memory of. Feelings of revenge-revenge on all mudbloods. Revenge for what?

 

"For living" answered the voice, and it sent a chill through Draco; he who had learned to live with fear long ago.

 

Only upon Draco's reaching the ball in all its bright splendor did the voices, memories, and feelings not his own cease.

 

But not for good. Never for good. He was connected to both Voldemort and Salazer Slytherin now, as were all death eaters, even though Draco was not one yet.

 

Yet. There was a vague threat to those words, one that had already been implied when he had said as much to Hermione earlier that evening.

* * * * *

George, Fred, and Lee broke into the Gryffindor sixth year girl's dormitories breathlessly, all barging through the door nearly at once.

 

"Really, Katie we meant to get here earlier-" gasped Lee.

 

Katie, Alicia, and Angelina took one look at the three guys standing in the doorway and gave identical screams. You see, they hadn't quite finished dressing for the ball yet. Quite meaning that all three girls (luckily already dressed) were never the less running around barefoot with towels in their hair and faces covered in beauty masks of the green avacado and cucumber kind.

 

"OUT! NOW!" screeched Katie, grabbing Lee by an arm and shoving him out the door.

 

"Is this the way you treat a guy who learned prose for you?" he protested.

 

Katie rolled her eyes. "You didn't learn it for me-you learned it because Professor McGonagall forced you read Romeo and Juliet after you cussed out the Slytherin quidditch team exactly fourty four times in one match, remember?"

 

"My memory holds only your face," said Lee as gallantly as he could considering Katie's elbow was in his face, still trying to push him out the door.

 

"Aha, so that's what under all that green stuff. I was wondering.." said Fred.

 

"You know, this cucumber is just the same size as your nostrils," pointed out Angelina, glaring at him (or what was in all likelyhood glaring-it was hard to tell when her eyes were covered by cucumbers and her face was covered in green paste.) "I could always just throw it at you and hope it gets stuck there."

 

"Alicia, before you get any similiar ideas, let me just say that that green gunky stuff looks absolutely..umm. positively.errm...green," said George and was rewarded by a cucumber bouncing off his ear.

 

"Really," said Lee, now fending off a similiar attack from Katie. "It's quite becoming. Makes you look.."

 

"Like aliens-," muttered Fred. Angelina swiped some of the green paste off of her face and smudged it in his hair.

 

"-Minus the extra arms and legs," stated George (un) helpfully. He gave a very worried look towards Alicia, having a very scary feeling that she was planning something similiar. Those girls thought alike almost as much as he and Fred did.

 

" You forgot to mention tentacles," added Lee. "No, no, not that you have tentacles," he backtracked under Katie's furious glare. "I'm saying that George forgot to mention you don't have them. I mean, really, they're almost as common with aliens as the whole head twisting thing. I even saw this one comic where they even had tentacles sprouting from their-"

 

Lee Jordan's fascination with comics was not an asset in this particular conversation-not an asset in helping to placate the girls, either.

 

"Not helping," hissed George to him. Both boys were rewarded in the same way as Fred-green gunk being flung into their hair.

 

"You think we have tentacles hidden under our dresses?" demanded Alicia angrily. "Ooh, that's real flattering."

 

"Under your dresses? No way! We don't think that! That's absurd!," exclaimed Fred. "Now, underneath those towel turbans, maybe.."

 

"What the dunderhead means to say is that with your robes and all, you look the spitting image of.."

 

"Dobby after someone clamps a set of sugar tongs on his nose?" guessed Angelina, and Fred, sadly, didn't realize she was being sarcastic.

 

"Stole the words from my mouth!" joked Fred.

 

Angelina made to grab her towel off her head and wap Fred with it, but for once, decided Fred could go without a bit of violence.

 

She took one look at his appearance (Fred's hair was now as green as her face from the flung avacado stuff) and doubled over with laughter. Alicia looked at George and snickered. Katie looked at Lee and snorted.

 

"I suppose we'll have to forgive you guys for your comments this once. Especially seeing as you guys look like you accidentally used Gremelen's Grass Gro on your heads instead of shampoo," said Katie. Unable to hold it in any longer, she too burst out laughing.

 

"Grass? Looks more like miniature tentacles to me," noted Alicia, grinning at George.

 

Far from being worried over their sudden change of hair color, the boys all crowded around the vanity mirror in the girl's dormitories.

 

"Cool," said Lee in awe as he examined his now pea green strands.

 

"Beyond cool," muttered George.

 

"Wicked," said Fred.

 

"We've been wanting to dye our hair for ages," explained George to Alicia. "Thanks for helping us out!"

 

"Might I point out that there's a bunch of what is essentially avacado paste now stuck in your hair?" said Alicia.

 

George shrugged. "Gives it texture." He began twisting his hair into small spikes with the help of the mirror. "There, how's that for tentacles?"

 

"Great. Now I'm going on a date with a guy who's hair contains mini bean stalks," moaned Alicia to Katie and Angelina.

 

"Now now, " comforted Angelina as she watched Fred do the same thing. "You're not alone. At least it's not bleached. And their ties," she pointed out as she realized that the boy's ties were all covered in the facial mask stuff as well. "Will match-"

 

"Your faces?" guessed Fred.

 

Before Angelina could retort, George spoke to Alicia. "Wait a minute. A date? What date? I haven't even--I mean, we aren't going to the Yule ball together."

 

Alicia grinned at him affectionately. "Oh yes we bloody well are. Otherwise, why else would you, Fred, and Lee be here?"

 

"To set off a dungbomb," said Fred promptly.

 

"Or enchant your pillows so that you'll dream of us," said George.

 

"Or take your perfumes and rearrange all the labels," said Lee.

 

"But you'r absolutely right this time. We did come to ask you," admitted Lee. He frowned. "Katie, you don't even look slightly surprised."

 

"Neither does Alicia or Angelina," said George.

 

"Let's just say we had an educated guess this was going to happen," said Alicia.

 

"Realized it when you thought up those fourty four ways to cuss out the Slytherin team after Blaise knocked me off my broom," said Katie to Lee.

 

"And when you sent me the pack of bubblegum that kept singing about Wrigley Spearmint Beer," said Alicia to George.

 

"And when you kept pretending to fall asleep on my shoulder during Wood's speeches," said Angelina to Fred.

 

"You knew I was pretending?" asked Fred.

 

"Keeping one eye open the whole time sort of gave you away," admitted Angelina.

 

"So, you will go to with us to the ball, won't you?" asked Katie.

 

Lee looked flabbergasted. "But your asking us? That's not right. We came here to ask y-"

 

"Yeah, well we're doing the asking."

 

"But girls never ask the guys," protested Fred.

 

"And guys usually don't stand around commenting on the girl's facial masks," remarked Angelina.

 

"And girls don't usually grind said parts of the facial masks into the guys' hair," said George.

 

"And guys don't-" began Alicia.

 

"Alright, alright. A simple yes or no will do," said Katie.

 

 

"Yes."

 

"Yup."

 

"You bet."

 

"Good then," said Alicia. "Now that that's settled, will you all kindly get out? We have face masks to take off and hair to put up."

 

"We could help," suggested George, Lee, and Fred simultanously.

 

Angelina, Katie, and Alicia raised their eyebrows.

 

"Or simply stay out of the way and watch," the trio of boys corrected themselves.

 

"Sorry, not a chance," said Angelina. "Now scoot."

 

"Right."

 

Lee, Fred, and George walked off towards the door.

 

"Farwell, my darling Katie!" shouted Lee as he left.

 

Katie dimpled. "Actually, it's Kat."

 

"A rose of a name would smell just as sweet," quoted Lee inaccurately.

 

"Actually, that's a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet," corrected Fred, poking his head around the door.

 

" Oh yeah. A name by any other rose would smell just a sweet," Lee said.

 

Fred shook his head and retreated from the doorframe. "Forget it."

 

The door shutting behind Lee, Fred, and George was the cue for all three girls to give in to delighted little squeals that they had been asked (or rather, done the asking) as expected.

* * * * *

Once at the Yule ball, Hermione spotted Ron almost immediately. He was standing next to the wall and noticing the couples already spinning around the circumfrence of the dance floor (or, in Angelina's, Fred's , George's, Alicia's, Lee's, and Katie's case, doing the funky chicken) as he waited nervously for Hermione to show up.

 

She waved at him from across the room to reassure him and moved through the throng of people to meet him.

 

"Whew. Lucky I made it here at all," said Hermione, smoothing out her dress. "Sorry I'm late," she apologized, "but Lavender and Parvati held me up because they kept-"

 

"-Acting like Lavender and Parvati?" guessed Ron, looking less nervous. He had been trying to think of just what he was supposed to say to Hermione during the ball-it wouldn't be a problem, normally, but as he was her date-well, he couldn't exactly act like the best friend and chatter about stuff per usual, could he? Ron had no idea about this kind of thing and- as Seamus had pointed out to him- he was so nervous over it all, it was amazing the whole school hadn't flooded under his sweat.

 

"Exactly!" said Hermione with a nod. Thank goodness, thought Ron happily. Guess still acting like best friends is alright, after all.

 

"I thought I was going to end up missing the dance altogether," Hermione continued," and get here only just in time to see the clean up crew of house elves."

 

"And knowing you and S-P-E-W and all, you'd probably start a ball for them instead and have them all dancing the polka with brooms."

 

Hermione frowned at Ron as she picked upa glass of pumkin juice from the table and sipped it. "I wouldn't do that! Too dangerous."

 

"To the house elves or the brooms?" questioned Ron, effectively managing to distract Hermione from the entrance of both Harry and Ginny (as well as Draco's lone entrance.)

 

Hermione gave an impish smile. "Both."

 

"Aha! A disparaging comment on the house elves! You have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say one."

 

"Not as long as I've been waiting to have a chance to make you actually do the waltz," replied Hermione.

 

"What?" Ron spluttered. "But I don't..."

 

"At least," said Hermione as she dragged Ron unto the floor already filled to its capacity with couples, "it's not a polka and I'm not a broom."

 

"And thankfully, I'm not anywhere near taking up wearing a tea cozy," said Ron.

 

"Don't generalize. Just because Dobby wears one doesn't mean all the house elves do," Hermione said irritatedly as she showed Ron the steps of the dance. If all she and him were going to do was argue the whole time...

 

"Maybe not in the same place," muttered Ron, luckily low enough that Hermione didn't hear him. He didn't want the entire night to turn into one long arguement-especially not over house elves, of all the dumb things.

 

Then, the musicians playing the current song switched to a slower endeavor and both Hermione and Ron stopped talking completely. She started to move off the floor, but something inside Ron caused him to grab her hand in protest.

 

"Please stay."

 

Hermione looked surprised,- Ron couldn't get through a conversation mentioning the word "like" without blushing and now he was asking her to dance to a slow song?-but not adverse to the idea.

 

"Well, alright then."

 

Ron put his arms around her and she in turn reached up on her tippy toes to put her around him (he was too tall for his own good.) She didn't see the pair of eyes watching, gray and expressionless as slate.

* * * * *

Draco never should have spotted Hermione among the scattered pairs and groups of fifth years. He wasn't one to pick certain people out from the crowd with his gaze. They were all the same to him-except for perhaps, those in Slytherin. Or, more specifically, those in Slytherin with brains ( as much as Draco hated to admit it, Slytherin was not synonomous with intelligence.)

 

But Hermione was easy to tell from the rest. At least, in his eyes, she was. And that realization (along with another one) bugged him more than a little.

 

The outside of the Malfoy Manor was surrounded by trees, and Malfoy Manner itself was full of stained glass windows. Draco had, on occasion, watched the sun shine on the windows within his home; shadow dancing in between patches of light. Hermione's dress was like that, made of a shimmery, gauzy stuff that seemed to change and show off a different hue with each move she made.

 

It took a few minutes (Draco would never admit he was staring) do determine it was a pastel sort of seafoam green and blue. Matched her eyes, which, to Draco, didn't seem to be just one color, either, but rather changed upon whim.

 

But such study was dangerous and Draco instead turned his focus back to his fingers, flexing each experimentally and noticing that they were actually shaking, each individual finger trembling.

 

She can do this to me? he thought in disgust, clenching his fingers back in a small, tight fist. Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. Nothing changes you from what you are, he reminded himself. Certainly not some insignificant mudblood.

 

An insignificant mudblood who his eyes were following inadvertently on their own. Granger obviously had no intent to make her future the same as it had once been. She was dancing with that Weasley and at the real Yule Ball- the one when she and he had truly been fifteen-Draco seemed to remember her dancing with Potter. ONLY Potter.

 

However, he himself had no plan of changing the future at all-well, besides his tragic demise, of course (and even that hadn't been so bad when it all came down to it-at least he hadn't had to bother with his father then.) No plan of telling Hermione something he had never gotten past his lips, not when he had really been fifteen and not now, either.

Something he never ever meant to.

 

Feeling as he did wasn't something he could control, though the number of times he had tried didn't bear counting. Showing or speaking it-now those were two things within his power to strictly avoid doing.

 

The thoughts he held for Hermione were incomplete, and it was best for both that they stayed that way..forever. He didn't want such thoughts and he didn't need them, Draco told himself as he avoided staring at anything above the hem of Hermione's dress when she and Ron twirled by where he was standing. But then, he didn't want to be a death eater either, not really, (a puppet on a string to someone else? Not the sort of thing Draco was fond of) but he was born to it-as, perhaps, Potter had been born to love and security.

And Draco loathed him for it-while not really knowing (or choosing to know) why he did so.

 

Hermione was dancing with a Weasley? Ugh. Even she could do better. And wasn't she married to Harry in the future? So she was just stringing Ron along...behavior almost worthy of a Malfoy, there.

 

"Touching, isn't it?" said Blaise beside him at the punch table by way of conversation, sneering. Draco knew just to what tableau she was referring.

 

"In a horrible sort of grandma pinching their cheeks way, yes," answered Draco.

 

"Another words, not at all." Blaise laughed.

 

"Not unless by touching you mean completely mental. Although I could be forced to shed a few tears at the sight if given an onion."

 

"Sickening, more like," commented Blaise as she watched Hermione and Ron spin 'round.

 

"Completely. Her tastes have gone from terrible to gag-worthy," drawled Draco, his face as unreadable as he himself was. Malfoy's were not known for being honest-whether it was in emotions, actions, or otherwise.

 

"Just remember," said Blaise, "if you have to hurl, throw up to the right. I'm wearing a new dress and don't want to muck it up."

 

"Your attention to your apparell, is as always, astonishing. Almost as much as your devotion to Crabbe."

 

"Well, I didn't notice you asking me," snapped Blaise.

 

"No. You didn't. But that isn't saying much considering you didn't notice the entire back of your dress was covered in cat fur. Or are you beginning to shed too, Blaise?"

 

And with that, Draco walked away from the punch table, not sure of the destination he was heading for--except that it was as far away from Blaise as humanly possible.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, as they danced, Ron could literally feel his face turning redder and redder. The silence, far from being comfortable, seemed to fill the very air. What did she expect him to say? Or do? Was he actually her boyfriend or something now? For some reason, Ron had a feeling at the pit of his stomach that as much as he wanted to be, he didn't know what he would do if he was; how he would act or what he would say, which was the problem at hand.

 

"Well," said Ron for lack of something better as he looked up at the enchanted ceiling. "The weather's nice."

 

The Yule ball was taking place in the Great Hall-completely devoid of half of the furniture. Last year, Hogwarts' staff had gotten rid of nearly all the tables, but forgotten to take out the chairs, leading to a multitude of scraped shins-and two bumped noses in Fred and Angelina's case (Everyone had decided not to ask about that.)

 

"Umm..Ron," said Hermione gently. "It's thundering."

 

"Oh yeah..ermm.."

 

"Ron, come on, it's just me. Hermione; your best friend, remember? No need to try and act like Professor Lockhart."

 

Ron's lips curled at the memory of their-if not the best, at least the most humorous- professor for Defense Against The Dark Arts. The only dangerous thing Professor Lockhart had probably ever killed were the fruit flies that suffocated inside his hairnet.

 

"Didn't think that was possible without a blonde wig and a tutu."

 

 

Hermione grinned in spite of herself. "A tutu?"

 

Ron shrugged, his shoulders raising underneath Hermione's arms. "He seems like the sort. Plus, it'll go with his kimono."

 

"Glad to know you're still your usual self."

 

Ron looked at her quizically. as the melody ended, the echo of it drifting softly in the Great Hall. "Why wouldn't I be?"

 

He dreaded the answer as much as he anticipated it. Ron was confused. He liked her, right? Then why didn't he want things to change?

 

Because he didn't. Ron wished feverently that things could stay just the same as they always had been. That she, him, and Harry could all just be friends with nothing else to worry, confuse, or cause them think otherwise.

 

But the expression on Hermione's face as she said "no reason" and told him she was going to go get some pumkin juice told Ron all too clearly that things had changed. That and when Ron happened to see Lavender dancing with Dean. Lavender looking resilent in a clinging dark purple dress covered by a misty layer of see through lilac dancing with Dean.

 

Is struck Ron then that two seconds after Hermione had left, he couldn't for the life of him remember what color her dress had been. A sort of blue maybe?

 

On the contrary. Things hadn't changed, they (him, Harry, and Hermione) had. A good deal too much.