An Irresistible Photo

An Irresistible Photo

by Icarus

Ron smuggled the photos under his robes, breathing anxiously. He tried to look calm standing outside the passage to Gryffindor tower.

"Mulligatawny," he mumbled to the fat lady in the portrait. It was 'M' words this week.

She nodded pleasantly and the portrait swung open. Ron clambered up into the room behind. The common room was quiet for a change. There were several Gryffindors about, mostly the girls, decorating for the holiday. Paper pumpkins bobbed and floated in midair. Seamus batted one of the pumpkins across the room, to a squeal of irate complaints. Ron backed slowly away from the impending chaos. Well, what did they expect? It was irresistible really.

He avoided Lavender Brown especially, who was trying to get one of her paper black cats from Fred. It hissed and spit, and Fred suddenly dropped it, nursing a paper cut. Luckily she was too busy to notice Ron at the moment. These were Lavender's photos he and Harry had offered to pick up, and she'd best not know he had them yet. Ron reached the stairs and then finally gave in to his desire to bolt, nearly running into Harry at the top step.

"You got them?" Harry asked.

"No problems," Ron grinned and held the package out triumphantly. "How 'bout you?"

Harry flashed a smile and held up Colin Creevey's camera.

For the rest of study period they waited impatiently in their room, hovering protectively around where they'd hidden the photos. At long last the Gryffindor tower cleared out for lunch. Harry locked the tower door with a charm, and started getting undressed. Ron sprawled out on Harry's mattress. He pulled the photos out from under the pillow, dumped them unceremoniously on the bed and flipped through them.

They were pictures of various Gryffindors. A lot of them were of Lavender's friends. There were several of her best friend Parvati at Divinations class - Professor Trelawney blinked up at him beatifically - and a bunch with both Lavender and Parvati and some Ravenclaw girls at a Quidditch game. They were all giggling and grinning and flipping their hair at the camera. He found one of Harry, zooming about practicing Quidditch, disappearing in and out of the picture. Most of the photos were just kids smiling and waving, although there was a better one of Fred and George making goofy faces right behind a dignified Percy. Ron silently promised himself never to turn his back on those two when a camera was about. There was a funny one of the smiling Gryffindors at lunch, which erupted into a full-fledged food fight. Bet that didn't come out how she wanted, Ron snorted. Finally he found the photo they were looking for.

Well. It wasn't so bad after all.

He and Harry were standing together by a large oak off the Quidditch field, Ron's arm slung about Harry's shoulder. They stood rather a bit too close, but other then that, there was nothing wrong with it. Harry in the photo winked at him. Ron breathed a sigh of relief, and started to put the lot back in envelope any which way.

Just as he was about to slide that photo into the sleeve, he glanced again. As Ron watched, the Ron in the photo pushed Harry's back up against the frame, french kissing him; then he started unbuttoning Harry's shirt. Harry playfully batted him away, laughing, clearly not fighting very hard. Then, shirt half off, the Harry in the photo seized Ron by the front of his trousers and pulled him close, attacking Ron with rough kisses.

The real Harry glanced over Ron's shoulder, buttoning a clean shirt.

"That's a good picture. Lavender's got talent, definitely - " he said as finished tying the windsor knot in his tie, " - takes insight to get something detailed as that."

There was little to see now in the photo except Ron's bare bottom and one of Harry's flailing knees. The Ron in the photo had wrestled Harry to ground.

"It got cut off a bit here at the end though," Ron pointed out.

His bottom reappeared in the frame for a few deep thrusts. All you could see of Harry was a foot, then he disappeared entirely.

"Yeah, too bad about that. It's still a keeper. Well, are you ready, Mr. Weasley?" Harry unspelled the door and held it open.

Ron shoved the photos under the pillow after stealing a last glance. He hadn't needed to change. Ron bounded up, caught the door above Harry's head and pushed it wide.

"After you, Mr. Potter," he said cheerfully.

He followed Harry through the now empty common room. There were far fewer pumpkins about. The bedraggled survivors looked decidedly less than round. A pair of paper eyes glowed at them warily from under the couch. It was a pity they had to do this at lunchtime, Ron thought. Ron's stomach growled now that he didn't have any photos to distract it.

They slipped through the empty halls without any trouble. Lunch, Ron decided, was a much easier time to sneak around than nighttime. As he and Harry should know. Professor Sprout even walked right by them without so much as a curious glance, thinking about food, probably. Outside, the wind caught Harry's hair, and they hurried to beat the showers that were quickly moving in to spoil their plans.

Moments later they stood under an oak by the Quidditch field. The very oak in Lavender's photo. They were dressed exactly as they had been on the day it was taken. Harry set Colin Creevey's camera on a stump, and then turned to Ron, who swung his arm around Harry's shoulder.

"Now no fooling around this time! Watch what you start, or we'll get a 'photo finish' again." Harry pointed his wand at the camera, and commanded it: "Ignus Luminate!"

There was a blinding purple flash. They stood there blinking.

They took a few more, just to be sure.

******************************************************************

A couple days later, Lavender was in her room gleefully inspecting her work. The pictures from the Quidditch game had come out so well! She snorted in disgust at the one of Fred and George. They ruined every photo they were in. She decided to keep the one of the food fight though.

The big disappointment was the one of the inseparable Harry and Ron. She had had such high hopes of that one. But, there it was. The lighting wasn't very good, and it was slightly off kilter. Worse, they both had these rather false-looking guilty smiles, and Ron had his fingers crossed. They kept whispering to each other conspirationally, laughing, and then beaming those phoney toothy grins at her. Too bad. Lavender's shoulders sagged with a sigh, and she wrapped her arms around her knees. She remembered them looking so happy and relaxed when she took it. She could still picture it; she'd been so sure it was going to be one of her better efforts. Ron's face had this healthy glow, while Harry looked like he'd ridden his Firebolt to cloud nine or ten. There was such an energy and vitality to the moment, Harry was so dark and Ron's hair caught the sun and flamed against those black robes. That's why she had taken it, on impulse.

Lavender frowned. There was something wrong with the photo she held in her hands. Other than the sneaky look on Ron's face and Harry's guilty smile, that was.

"Wait a minute," she said aloud, "It was sunny... Wasn't it sunny when I took these?"

She quickly paged through her other photos. Sure enough, it was sunny in all of them. Except this one.

Now Lavender Brown was no fool. It dawned on her. The helpful Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Volunteered to develop her film for her, did they? They switched her photo! Lavender was furious, picked up her wand and dropped their fake in the trash. She stormed out of the girls' tower and down towards the common room, determined to give them a piece of her mind. And get the real one back.

In the picture in the trash can, a grinning Ron Weasley suddenly jumped, clapped a hand to his bottom and punched a laughing Harry Potter in the arm. It looked suspiciously like Harry had pinched him.

Finis.