Cyanide

“Harry! Harry, guess what I heard!” Harry rolled over and sat up at the sound of his best friend's voice. Half an instant later, Ron had thrown the red curtains that surrounded Harry's bed aside and jumped up next to him. Harry blinked sleepily.

“What did you hear?”

“You weren't actually asleep, were you? Gin said you just went upstairs fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yes. No, I wasn't asleep.”

“You weren't waiting up for me, though,” said Ron, a playfully fake pout crossing his features.

“I knew you'd wake me up anyway, if you wanted to. I just thought you and Hermione would be gone a lot longer than this.”

Even in the partially dark room, Harry knew that Ron's face was quickly turning the color of his hair.

“Well, that.” Ron did his best to ignore Harry's statement, and then found that he couldn't. “Hermione and I just went walking away from everyone else for a bit.” Ron continued to blush, and Harry did his best not to imagine in great detail why his two best friends had decided to get away from the rest of the students who had been celebrating Christmas at the party in the Great Hall. “We thought we were alone, but then we walked around a corner and we saw McGonagall and Snape. Alone. Together. Nice and private in an abandoned hallway.” Ron raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“WHAT?”

“Just kidding. McGonagall and Snape were fighting, like usual. Guess what she was saying-- you'll never guess.”

“What was she saying?”

“She was gloating, you know? And she was saying 'Severus, tell me again after that display that Harry Potter hasn't got the mindset to be a prefect!' They saw you talking to that kid in first year who lost all those points!”

“It was only ten.”

Ron rolled his eyes as if Harry was missing the point. “I don't care. I'm not going to hunt him down over it. But you made Snape mad without even trying! Isn't that great? He can't even punish you.”

“He'll find a way.”

“Yeah, he probably will. But isn't that great?”

Harry cracked a grin. It was pretty great.

“There's something else I want to talk to you about. But I reckon we'd better talk to Hermione too.” He hesitated.

“All right. Do you want to go back down to the common room or should she just sneak in here?” Hermione was ordinarily fond of rules, but she had never had a problem with crossing into the fifth year boys' dormitory when only Ron and Harry were staying there. Both Harry and Ron had teased Hermione about this habit, but Harry had found that he was sorry when, during their fourth year, Hermione had been unable to visit them on Christmas morning because virtually all of the school had remained for the holiday.

“She'll be in in a minute. I told her to let me make sure you were awake and all. Really, I just wanted to tell you about McGonagall and Snape without her lecturing. And, er . . .”

Harry was getting tired of Ron's inability or unwillingness to finish a thought involving Hermione. Was it going to be this way for the rest of their Hogwarts career? Hermione was one of Harry's best friends! Ron knew that full well.

“What about Hermione?” Harry finally prompted, hoping that his slight annoyance did not show in his voice.

“Oh. Well, the thing is, after we were walking and saw McGonagall and Snape and she wouldn't let me eavesdrop anymore, we-- we ended up alone, really alone-- and I kissed her.”

“And?” asked Harry warily.

“I know, I know, I have to tell you this or Hermione and Ginny will. She said she was going to tell Ginny. We started laughing.”

“You and Hermione and Ginny?”

“No! Hermione and me. When we tried to kiss each other.”

“I'm sure that happens a lot,” said Harry, though he was sure of no such thing.

“You don't get it.”

“No, I don't,” Harry admitted.

“It was so stupid. I thought I liked her. You know, liked her.”

“I know.”

“And she thought--”

“I know what she thought.”

“Did she tell you?” asked Ron suspiciously.

“No. But I spend a fair bit of time with both of you. You might have noticed.”

“I guess. Harry, we don't like each other.”

Harry summoned all of his willpower to keep himself from saying “we don't?” He decided to wait for Ron to speak again.

“I mean, I'd do anything for Hermione. Anything. Like I would for you, or for my brothers and Ginny. But I'd never tell her that. She'd go all girlie and cry, or she'd make me mad at her and I'd be sorry I said anything nice.”

“You want her to be your best friend, and not your girlfriend?”

“Yes!”

“She already is.”

“Yeah. I feel so stupid. When she started getting pretty, I was jealous, really jealous of Viktor Krum. And she was mad that I didn't ask her to the Yule Ball until late.”

“I remember.”

“I don't think that was about admitting that we like each other. I think it was about admitting that we like each other. And on top of that, well, I had just realized that one of my best friends is a girl. And a pretty girl. It never mattered before.”

Harry nodded. “Got it.”

“About time. You've been rather thick.”

“And you . . . ?”

“I understood what I was saying just fine.”

In response, Harry pulled his pillow from beneath him and threw it at his friend. Ron scrambled away and reached for his wand, and soon they were having a pillow fight that was much more fun than the Muggle kind.

At last, Hermione entered the room without knocking. “Honestly,” she said. Harry and Ron turned around, and five pillows fell to the floor with soft thuds.

“Well, it took you long enough,” said Ron as Harry tried to remember which pillow belonged on which bed.

“I was talking to Professor McGonagall. She wanted to know if I'd seen any rule-breaking at the party-- we don't usually do this, you know, but since there are more students here than usual for break because their parents think they'd be safer from You-Know-Who here--”

“We know,” chorused Ron and Harry.

Hermione avoided Ron's eyes but looked pointedly at Harry. “AND since the OTHER Gryffindor prefect was nowhere to be found--”

“You didn't think of trying my dormitory? Where I live?”

“--I had to talk to her for an extra-long time. What did you want to talk about, Ron?”

“I was just thinking.”

“That's a surprise,” said Hermione at the same time as Harry said “It gets easier after the first time.”

Ron looked at both of his best friends with a long-suffering expression on his face. “This is serious.”

“Okay, we're sorry. Aren't we, Harry?”

“Yes,” agreed Harry.

“Right, then,” said Ron, apparently not too traumatized by his friends' estimate of his cognitive capacity. “This time last year, we were worried about who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, and what the golden egg meant. The year before, Sirius had escaped and we thought he'd hunt us down, or rather hunt Harry down and get Hermione and me in the process. Then, Christmas second year, we made the Polyjuice Potion.” Hermione shuddered. “And first year, Hermione wasn't here, but we were trying to work out who Nicolas Flamel was.”

“And this year, we aren't doing anything but going to class,” completed Harry.

“Except for getting attacked on a field trip!” Hermione objected vehemently. “Have you noticed that I only have one roommate now? Have you noticed that sometimes Seamus barely makes it through a class without grabbing his head the way Harry does when You-Know-Who kills someone? Besides, we're prefects, we have to set a good example for the younger students, and it gets more dangerous every year for us to break rules, it's obvious You-Know-Who--”

“Hermione, would you let me finish?” Ron asked.

“Finish.”

“There's always something going on around here. And loads of times we've been able to help.”

“We haven't gone looking for trouble, though. It's come after us,” said Hermione convincingly.

“I think it has. I mean, I think it's come after me. I mean, I think it's come after, well, did you see Percy at the Christmas party earlier?”

“No,” said Harry.

“He was there. Is it normal for Percy to be somewhere and not let everyone know it?”

“You think something's wrong with Percy?” asked Hermione, looking suddenly concerned.

“He was here, and he didn't come talk to us. He was hiding from us, even. He got distracted and Ginny practically jumped him and held him down. We tried to make him talk, I even asked him about work, and cauldrons. It just isn't like Percy to shut up like this.”

“Maybe he thought you were teasing him when you mentioned cauldrons?” Hermione suggested.

“I don't think so. Even if he did, he'd answer anyway. That's how he is. He likes to pretend he doesn't notice when people are making fun him. He thinks he seems more dignified that way.”

“He could just have been distracted today, or had somewhere to go,” Harry offered.

Ron shook his head again. “It's not just today. It's been off somehow for a while. That's why Ginny jumped him. Mum and Dad usually send us owls telling us how well he's doing, and how we should emulate him. They haven't said anything about him lately. It's hard to explain, but I know my brother, and I know how weird it is for him to be acting like this!”

“Ginny agrees with you?”

“Yeah. I thought I was imagining things until I talked to her at the party when you were both off being prefectorial. She noticed the same things I did.”

“What about Fred and George?”

Ron sighed. “Haven't asked them yet.”

“Bill and Charlie?”

“Them either. Can I borrow Hedwig tomorrow? Fred and George are using Pig for something with their joke shop.”

“Yeah, of course. We'll do that first thing tomorrow, and we can talk to Fred and George. Have you asked your parents, specifically?”

“No. They'd never give me a straight answer. There's a better chance of them telling Bill and Charlie and Bill and Charlie telling me.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

“We'll find out what's going on, Ron,” said Hermione in a voice that would have been soothing has it not been interrupted by a yawn. She struggled to her feet, suddenly looking exhausted.

“Are you all right?” asked Harry concernedly.

“Fine. Just tired. Long day, lots of stuff happened.”

That was certainly true. Harry closed his eyes and was asleep almost before Hermione left the room.

The next morning, Ron, Harry, and Hermione walked to the owlery before breakfast with a short note to Bill and Charlie in hand. Harry asked Hedwig to hurry this letter if she possibly could, and she seemed to agree. Harry was certain that Hedwig was taking special pride in this job because it should have belonged to Pigwidgeon, whom Hedwig thought was something of a disgrace to the name of owl.

They began a whispered meeting with Ginny over their breakfasts, but the meeting was hard to keep private because the twins considered a whispered conversation an invitation to begin snooping. At last, Ron decided to forgo all planning and simply attempt to pry information out of his brothers. George was the slightly more sensitive, less outgoing twin, and so Ron turned to him first. The brothers' eyes locked.

“Do you think there's something wrong with Percy?”

George snorted sarcastically. “Ron, it would take all day and all night to list the things that are wrong with Percy. If that's what you really want to do with your time, we'll help you get started, but you're better off playing Exploding Snap or something.”

Ron fought the urge to rise to his brother's bait. “I mean, do you think he's acting differently than normal?”

“Don't know.” It was Fred that answered, as one really could not have a conversation with just one twin when the other was in the room. “We haven't seen him since before the term started. Have you?”

“Well, the day we were attacked.”

“That's right, and Percy showed up to play hero. That sounds normal for him.”

“Then he was here yesterday. For Christmas.”

“That is weird, Fred,” said George, suddenly interested enough to put down his fork. “Mum wrote and said he'd visit us for Christmas, remember. But he didn't. Did he?”

“He was here, but he tried to avoid us. He would have, too, if Gin hadn't grabbed him.”

“Why did you do that, Ginny?” asked Fred.

“Because I agree with Ron,” said Ginny, her voice strong and confident as it always was when she attempted to talk sense into one or more of the six imbeciles she called “brother.” “Percy hasn't been acting like himself. He'd barely even talk to us yesterday.”

“Probably because you didn't try to talk about cauldron bottoms,” returned Fred.

“We did,” replied Ron and Ginny flatly, in unison that rivaled anything that Fred and George could manage.

George sighed deeply. “Look, you two-- since when do you plot together, anyway? I thought ickle Ronniekins was embarrassed to have his little sister hanging around?”

“Last night my little sister went to the dance with my best friend. She also happens to be friends with my date. And when our respective dates decided to play prefect, we started talking.”

Ginny nodded, ignoring the poke at her position of annoying little sister. Ron was the best friend she could have imagined when they were not at school or in public, and the twins knew it. He had been gradually dropping the more annoying of his dueling attitudes toward her over the past year or so, and even if circumstances had been different, Ginny was too smart to fight Ron when she intended to fight Fred and George.

“You're determined to get into some kind of trouble, aren't you?” queried Fred.

“Pot. Kettle. Glass house. Rock.”

“Not the same, Gin. Not the same at all. No one is ever in danger when Fred and I pull pranks or sneak around. We're just helping people relax. Every time Ron and his friends start planning something, at least one of them ends up unconscious in the hospital wing.”

“And since the aforementioned former perfect prefect isn't here to be the one who gets the lecture for not looking out for his younger brother, it falls to us,” took up Fred. No change in inflection or accent. Twins.

“We don't think there's anything wrong with Percy. Maybe you haven't noticed since you're younger than us, but he's been getting more distant for years. This isn't something new that we have to worry about now.”

“No, it isn't. Hey, Harry?” Fred's brown eyes pierced Harry's green ones.

“Yes?” asked Harry with some trepidation. He had never seen the twins act quite like this.

“Is Percy good at Quidditch?”

“Er . . . I guess so.” Fred, George, Ron, Ginny, and Charlie varied from talented to spectacular.

“You guess so. But you don't know for sure, because you've never seen him play. You've never come to our house in the summer and played with him, have you?”

“No.”

“No.” Fred turned to Ron and Ginny as if a great point had been proven. “He used to play with us. Then a few summers ago he locked himself in his room and didn't do anything but write to Penelope Clearwater, who, by the way, he did not even tell us he was dating. Percy's private. He's got something going on he doesn't want to tell you about, maybe, but I don't see why you want to go finding out.”

“It's dangerous,” George completed. “No sneaking out of the castle. None of that. Not now. You know what happened the last time we were all out of the castle.”

“But maybe,” Hermione suggested hesitantly, looking as nervous as Harry felt in the midst of someone else's family meeting, “maybe he knew you wouldn't leave him alone if you knew about Penny. You tease him about everything. Not telling you one thing so you won't make fun of him constantly and publicly isn't the same as not telling anyone anything.”

Fred gave Hermione a look Harry had previously seen members of the Weasley family reserve for members of the Malfoy family, or at least for Professor Snape. “Don't tell me you know my brother better than I do.”

“But she's right, his keeping Penny a secret was different--” Ginny put in, but she was overwhelmed by George, who had given Fred a warning look.

“Excuse my brother, Hermione, he's tired. Out late last night with Angelina.”

Fred nodded. “Sorry, Hermione.”

“Little brother, little sister, honorary little brother, and honorary little sister,” proclaimed George. (Harry and Hermione both attempted in vain to look as if they were not touched by the addresses used for them.) “I am telling you right now to stop making more of this than it is. Stop looking for trouble, or you'll find it. End of lecture.”

“That was a waste,” muttered Ron as Fred and George punctuated the discussion by leaving the table. “Stupid hypocrites.”

“We'll just wait for Hedwig to come back. We've got a better chance with Bill and Charlie, anyway, right?” consoled Harry.

“I hope so.”

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny spent most of the next two days wandering outside and scanning the sky for a glimpse of Hedwig's distinctive white feathers. On the morning of the third day, she arrived with breakfast and deposited a letter on the table between Harry and Ron.

Ron tore it open eagerly, and the other three huddled around him to read it as Hedwig took her pick from their abandoned plates of food.

Dear Ron,

Thanks for your letter. Our holiday was great, and we're glad yours was too. Say “hi” to Fred, George, and Ginny for us.

No, we haven't heard anything from Percy lately. He hasn't owled either of us in ages, but he doesn't usually unless there's a reason. You know how that is. (Got any more dragons you need evacuated to Romania?) We have no idea why he rushed away from you on Christmas. He may have been distracted or in a bad mood. It had nothing to do with you or Ginny. Trust us. We're older brothers. We know these things. Mum and Dad didn't say much about him when they were here. They just said he'd gotten his own flat and seemed to have gotten less uptight about work.

Charlie thinks Percy's got a new girlfriend, and Bill thinks he's taken a position in a top secret crime fighting agency. While we are older brothers and therefore know all, we sometimes get mixed radar signals. We are working out the kinks in the system.

In short, do NOT spend your time wondering about Percy. He's fine. We promise.

Love,

Bill and Charlie

“Load of help that was,” muttered Ron.

“Who's the letter from?” the newly arrived twins asked.

“Nobody,” Ron grumbled, shoving the parchment into his robes.

“Aw. Ickle Ronniekins still mad at us?”

“Better things to do with my time. You lot ready?” he asked his sister and friends. As Hedwig had cleared their plates, they were indeed ready, and they adjourned to the Gryffindor common room.

Once they were alone in a corner of the room, Ron demanded “Anyone have another plan?”

“No,” said Ginny.

“No,” said Hermione.

“Maybe,” said Harry.

“Well?”

“Well, right after that mess with Parvati and Padma, McGonagall and Dumbledore interrogated Remus and Sirius about the Marauder's Map.”

“The what?” asked Ginny.

“It's a map they made when they were students here. If you look at it, you can see where everyone in the school is. Like, you can see if Snape's in his office.”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. Anyway, I was using it, but Professor Moody, who wasn't Professor Moody, took it from me and McGonagall and Dumbledore took it from him.”

“How did you get it?” asked Ginny, interested.

“They're twins and they're related to you, but that's not important. Dumbledore gave it back to Remus and Sirius. Didn't think it was a danger in the right hands, and thought they had a sentimental attachment to it.”

“But they gave it back to you.”

“Yeah. Sirius can never decide whether or not he wants me to break every rule I come across.”

“You had it back and you were holding out on us?” asked Ron, sounded something like outraged.

“I didn't want to be tempted to use it unless it was an emergency.”

“If you say that as a prefect--”

“Has nothing to do with being a prefect and loads to do with not wanting us to end up in the hospital wing at the end of this year, like Fred and George said the other day. There must be some way to monitor it. A schedule for watching, or a charm to let us know if he comes here.”

“I know one that will work,” said Hermione immediately. “Of course, we'd have to leave it on all the time.”

“We'll hide it. And you have your own room.”

“Not for long. Lavender's coming back, even if Parvati doesn't.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Ron enthusiastically. He, Harry, and Ginny stood up.

“One thing,” said Hermione, making no move to join her friends. “Everyone has to promise to go for the others if they see anything. No tailing Percy alone, in case something is really wrong. Promise?”

“Promise,” said Ginny, pleased that Hermione, Ron, and Harry were including her.

“Promise,” said Harry, knowing how dangerous these situations could become.

“Promise,” said Ron, knowing all that Harry knew but crossing his fingers nonetheless.