A Sudden Realisation

It’s summer now. Harry’s spending July with us for his birthday – you must have heard, the Boy Who Lived is turning seventeen. He’s rather excited. We’re throwing him a party. Nothing big. Just a small little get-together.

Our backyard has never been so crowded.

In Mum’s dictionary, a “small little get-together” equates to roughly the size of an Italian wedding.

I pushed my way towards Harry, who was trying to avoid this mad cousin of ours who has nearly every magazine clipping of him posted in her bedroom with Spell-o-tape. Honestly. Some people just get obsessed with him.

Wait, stop right there.

You realise, I only have Harry’s pictures up on MY bedroom walls because I’m in them. Really. So HAH, Cousin Elisabeth, I’m the one with the connections! One day you will see me standing next to him as he accepts his award for bringing world peace to the muggle and wizarding worlds. And he’ll take out a crumpled piece of paper and begin reading: “I knew that when I met Ron Weasley that my fate was sealed – not only would I end world hunger, violence, and conflict in the Middle East, but I would also find a cure for that elusive common cold started by that old Alchemist, Richard E. Christensen, in 432 BC.”

The paparazzi, especially Rita Skeeter with her Quick-Quotes Quill, would be simply dazzled by Harry’s brilliant speech, writing, snapping photos, and dabbing at their eyes with Harry Potter pocket tissues (manufactured by Weasley Wheezes – I was rather astonished to hear they were doing brilliantly).

See, Cousin Elisabeth? If he hadn’t met me, he wouldn’t have been able to do all of those wonderful, brilliant things that he… hasn’t really done, except for in the strange areas of my mind. Right. You can’t really hear me, either.

I’m talking to myself, aren’t I?

Wonderful.

~

So. Beside’s Harry’s party, the summer’s been quite nice, seeing as summers tend to be nice and all. Then again, how could it not be? You know… the lack of school and things… and Snape, in particular.

Usually during the day Harry and Ginny have been off doing their happy little seekers-in-loooovvveeee thing, whizzing around outside on their brooms grinning a-little-too-happily at each other, and in the meantime Hermione has been pretending she is my therapist in order to cure me of my really quite annoying Harrycrush.

She has this random theory she pulled out of absolutely nowhere that I don’t really like Harry in the way that my sister likes him. You know, the whole “Oh, Harry, I want to have your babies and raise them on a little plot of land with enough room for our very own Quidditch pitch” package. Hermione reckons my sister has had a hero-worship crush… thing on Harry since God knows HOW long, and besides that, there’s a good deal of lust worked in there as well.

To be honest, she doesn’t really quite make sense to me. Especially considering that all I just said up there was all a paraphrase. Hermione used lots of big words that she had to define for me.

“Look, Ron. Perhaps you like Harry in a platonic-friend-love sort of way. Except for some reason, you’re discovering your secret hidden tendency for...” she grinned wickedly again, which she had been doing a lot. It was really quite strange. I mean, she’s smart and all, right? That’s scary enough! She doesn’t need to be wicked as well!

“For….?” I prompted.

Again with the wickedness. God, it really was quite unnerving.

“The manlove,” she said with emphasis.

I burst out laughing. She smiled. Normally, this time.

~

I suppose that since I’ve given you background information on nearly everyone, I owe you some on Hermione.

God, she’s so confusing… confusing in her brilliant, young prodigy-genius sort of way.

You see, she’s confusing the way books are confusing. Sort of like I have to figure them out, like someone’s making me figure them out, and I don’t want to. Well, I want to, but it takes so much damn work! All the reading, and the big words, and it can’t all be straightforward and just there, it’s all hidden and you have to search for it, and it makes my head hurt, it really does. I do like books, I suppose – some are really quite brilliant and exciting, with all these different sorts of things going on and they make you just want to sit there for hours, finding out more.

And then some books just make you want to pick them up and hit yourself on the head repeatedly because if reading them makes your head hurt, why not just skip the reading and get to the outcome faster?

I suppose when I was younger I used to fancy Hermione. I say “I suppose” because I’m still not really quite sure if I did or not. I never had those mushy feelings that my sister has for Harry, or vice-versa, really, because for a bloke, he’s really quite girly around her. Hermione and I were always different. We’d scream at each other about the most random things, seeing as she always needs to be right and I just liked provoking her.

Somewhere in our fourth year, the Yule Ball came up, however, and that’s when it all just became very, very bad. I mean, I had figured out by then that all our fights were the result of my yearning teenage hormones, but I didn’t know if she felt the same way. Easily not my fault, although I’ll bet she’ll tell you it most definitely was. And besides that… I wanted a good looking date.

Okay, back off! I know that’s horribly rude of me, but you’re talking to a seventeen-year-old about the rudeness of his fourteen-year-old past self (if that makes any sense). I was bound to be rude like that. After all, I was left to the ruling of my hormones.

Right, I’m sure you’ve heard the story already. It’s famous in Gryffindor Tower. I went to the ball in my stupid old ratty dress robes and with Padma, who was of course as good looking as she had always been. It was horrible. I looked… well, I’m sure someone’s shown you pictures, and I really don’t want to get into it.

And Hermione was there, with that stupid hulking Bulgarian man person, and her teeth were perfect and her hair was perfect and pretty much everything was perfect, if you get what I mean. And all of a sudden, from the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t looking, and the way she glared at Padma even when I was looking, it hit me that she felt the same way.

It was obvious that Hermione didn’t want to be seen with the previously-mentioned stupid hulking Bulgarian man person (yes, I know his actual name, of course I do!). But when I told her so after the ball, she really got quite upset and started screaming about how I should ask her first next time.

What, like that would be my punishment for calling her date names?

~

So. You remember that girl, Erika Anderson, I told you about?

Well, things didn’t seem as though they would work out between Hermione and I. Ever since that huge fight about who should’ve taken her to that stupid dance, we had pretended it hadn’t happened. We stuck to other things, such as… oh, the return of You-Know-Who from God knows wherever he was hiding.

But seeing as I was still a teenaged boy, I had needs. Major needs. And I suppose I’ll be honest with you, I always have been. I wanted Hermione. But she didn’t want me. She wanted to solve all the puzzles of the universe with her excessively smart brain.

This is where Erika came in.

Personally, I like to think of her as the Anti-Hermione. Beautifully perfect in an annoying way. Everything Hermione wasn’t. Most glaringly, she was completely stupid. Although beautiful – the classic combination.

To be perfectly honest, I suppose at first I was using her. It was really quite fun, after all. And with all the darkness and blah blah blah in the world that Hermione kept ranting on about, I needed a bit of fun in my life. However, somewhere down the road Erika started using me. I mean, at first it was quite nice. Someone actually thought I was good enough to use!

Soon after that, it became quite insulting. So Erika had to go. And go she went. Good riddance.

~

And now Hermione figures I fancy Harry in a platonic way and I’m simply hormonally charged. And bisexual.

I suppose it makes sense.

Okay, not really. But she’s Hermione. She’s smart. So it should make sense!

God, I hope it makes sense. Secretkeepingis not one of the things I do well. Which is why I hope no one ever needs me to use that damn Fidelius charm.Think of the damage.