Cupboard Space

Cupboard Space: A Snog Scene From a Weasley Point of View

It happened so fast, she barely saw the wand flick.

One minute, her brother was knocking over brooms and mops in his attempt to climb up a wall of the cupboard.

A quick Stupefy later, he was lying stiff as a board, smushing both Harry and the spider that started it all.

"What?" hissed Hermione, as she repocketed her wand. "He was going to attract attention. We don't need Filch to find us!"

Ginny sat and stared at Hermione, mouth hanging open. Neville had warned her, once, not to cross Hermione. Ginny was beginning to think that Neville had hidden depths of wisdom.

With a thud, Harry shoved Ron off of him and onto the floor. Hermione sank down to sit beside her victim.

"Well, at least we got food before we had to go into hiding," Harry whispered, pulling some rather mashed biscuits out of his pockets. "Go on, have one."

Ginny chewed on her biscuit and perked up a bit. It was just like Harry to give away his midnight snack, he was so sharing, so noble, so completely un-Weasley-like...

"Umph," she said around a mouthful of biscuit. "You know, I always hid in the cupboard when I was little... Ron never wanted to look for me there. Doesn't this remind you all of playing hide-and-seek?"

"Not really," Harry said, rather shortly.

Ginny reckoned he was probably hungry. That always made her a little testy. "Oh. Do Muggles not play hide-and-seek, Harry? What do they play?"

Maybe it was the darkness of the cupboard, but Ginny found she couldn't read Harry's expression at all.

Hermione reached over Ron's still-inert form and laid her hand on Harry's arm, giving it a squeeze. "They play a really marvelous game," she said glacially. "It's called Silence. The first person to speak loses."

Ginny opened her mouth and closed it again. It was hard to tell, but it looked like Hermione's hand was inching towards her wand pocket.

The quiet stretched out between them. Harry stared at the floor, occasionally stopping a spider with his hands and setting it on a path towards the back of the cupboard.

Ginny was impressed. So brave, so fearless, so not-prone-to-throwing-fits-because-of-small-insects...

But when she tore her gaze away from Harry to check on Hermione, she went from very impressed to extremely uncomfortable. She had never believed Trelawney and her Evil Eye ramblings, but now she was suddenly convinced that there was such a thing.

And that Hermione was quite good at it.

"Er, yes. Er, I think I'll be going now. Thank you for having me." In what seemed like one fluid motion, Ginny was up and out the door.

She'd take her chances with Filch any day.

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

Ron woke slowly, in bits and pieces, but didn't move. Didn't open his eyes. Sometime in the past six years, he'd learned the value of letting yourself be forgotten, of biding your time, of letting your attackers mark you down as out for the count.

Whoever these attackers were, they were awfully quiet. All he could hear was some soft whispering; it sounded like there were two of them, one on either side.

Without warning, Ron found himself being pressed between his assailants like some kind of sandwich spread. Wonderful. Death by suffocation. My favorite.

Ron cracked his eyes open, but it didn't do much good. Wherever they were, it was awfully dark. He could barely make out a shifting blob above him, making strange sorts of noises.

Wait a minute. He'd heard noises like those before. Behind the curtains on Seamus' bed when Lavender came to visit... in the loo at the Burrow right before he'd walked in on Fred and Angelina...

Panic began to set in as Ron wondered just what his role in the ongoing... activity... was to be. Must be Slytherins, he thought grimly. Evil, cunning, sexually depraved.

Visions of whips and chains and hands in way too many places at once danced behind Ron's eyelids, until finally he could take it no longer. He shot to his feet, knocking the lump apart and banging his head on the ceiling in the process. "You're not getting a piece of Ron Weasley!" he shouted.

"What?"

In retrospect, Ron realized that the situation could have been handled more effectively. Perhaps he could have trained his wand on the attack blob in a dashingly heroic gesture. Or, at the very least, found the doorknob.

Because recognizing the voice had been easy. After all, he'd lived with and been best mates with its owner for quite a few years. And all at once Ron remembered exactly where he was, and why he was there; and more importantly, he realized the significant impact this new blob's existence was going to have on his life.

"Alohomora! Alohomora! Alohomora!"

When Ron's spell finally found a door, he left without looking back. Throwing himself at Filch's mercy suddenly seemed like a grand idea.