Fireside Chit-chat

The two girls stared contemplatively into the fire burning in the grate. The cheerful red and gold flames cast a cheerful red and gold glow over their cheerful red and gold common room, and quite frankly, in their current moods, made them want to cheerfully spew up red and gold puke.

"Men," Ginny Weasley snorted.

"Hmm," Hermione Granger agreed.

"Bastards," Ginny growled.

"Hmm," Hermione said compassionately.

It was well past midnight, and the Gryffindor Common Room was empty save for them. Ginny's fifth-year dorm-mates had been reluctant to hear yet another one of her Harry-bloody-daft-prick-Potter rants, and had locked her out of the dorm room, while Hermione's sixth-year roommates, Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, had been a little too eager to hear the sordid details of exactly why Hermione was going to hex Draco-sodding-inbred-moronic-nitwit-bastard-Malfoy.

So there they were now, lying on their stomachs on the plush rug (cheerful red and gold, by the way), surrounded by bottles of butterbeer and a tub of triple-chocolate-fudge-brownie ice cream that was doing absolutely zilch to lift their spirits.

"Mione?" Ginny said.

"Hmm?" Hermione said, rather lackadaisically.

"Do you think Harry doesn't notice me because I'm ugly?" the former questioned in a small voice.

This caused Hermione to bolt upright with such speed that Ginny wondered if she had been stung in the bum by a billywig. "Ginny Weasley, how dare you?" Hermione snapped.

Ginny gaped at her, quite frankly a little alarmed. "How dare I what?"

"Don't pull this low self-esteem crap on me, Ginny," Hermione commanded. "You're drop-dead gorgeous, intelligent, and a great person to boot, so quit fishing for compliments. It's not my style to hand them out."

Ginny sighed in exasperation. "Yes, well, all very well for you to think so, but Harry..."

Hermione interrupted her. "Harry, as you so eloquently put it, is a daft prick..."

"Bloody daft prick," Ginny supplied helpfully.

"...Who wouldn't know a beautiful woman if she rubbed up against him wearing nothing but a thong and handed him a slip of parchment saying 'I'm a size 42 DD, want to come out and play?'" Hermione said.

Ginny winced at the mental picture and then voiced a new doubt tentatively. "He's...he's not...uh...more partial to broomsticks than he lets on, is he?"

Hermione looked at her in bewilderment. "Huh? Gin, I may be Harry's best friend here, but even I can only answer questions that I can comprehend!"

Ginny turned a little green as she questioned, "Oh, you know what I mean...does he know all the designer brands of shoes? Does he fly for the other side? Is he prone to wanting to feel beautiful sometimes?"

Hermione still looked puzzled. "Genius witch, my ass!" Ginny rolled her eyes. "Is he gay, Mione?"

"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, understanding at last. "Why didn't you just ask that in the first place? I could have answered you if I just knew what you were talking about!"

"Well?" Ginny said hopefully. "Is he gay, then?"

Hermione shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know!"

Ginny growled and threw a pillow at Hermione. "What did you make me suffer so much for? I thought I'd get a little inside information here!"

Hermione grinned impishly. " Well, if Harry is playing for the other team, I'd be the wrong one to give you inside information, wouldn't I?"

Ginny groaned. "You are such a bitch, Mione!"

Again, Hermione's smile widened. "You sure you don't mean doggie?"

"Argh!" Ginny tossed another pillow at her. "Thank you! Now, for some unfathomable reason, I have the VERY disturbing picture of Harry with-with Draco Malfoy burned into my memory forever!"

Hermione scowled. "Why Draco Malfoy?"

"They're both so pretty, darling," Ginny replied breezily, and ducked as Hermione launched a discarded shoe at her. Laughing, she looked over at the older girl, who reluctantly smiled a fraction of her usual smile.

"Harry's just a little dense, Gin," Hermione told her. "He's not really used to evaluating what he feels, and for whom. I think that because he grew up never having anyone to lean on, when there are people who love him now, he just accepts and cherishes them, not questioning why or how."

Ginny flopped back on the rug. "I feel as though I should sigh melodramatically or something," she said. "The boy I pine for doesn't see me because of the horrors of his past. It's like something out of a romance novel."

"Yes, well, I hope you don't intend to oh, I don't know, watch him silently from the shadows till the age of one-hundred and three, waiting for him to declare his undying love for you, "Hermione said tartly.

"Just a hundred," Ginny mumbled.

Hermione threw up her hands despairingly. "Don't wait at all, Ginny! Tell him! Give it a shot...at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you tried."

Ginny snorted. "Could you be any more cliché, Hermione? What about the risk of him turning me down? What about humiliation? What about the pain of him not loving me?"

"What about never knowing what there could be until you give it a try?" Hermione asked gently.

"Oh, that," Ginny said. "Hm. Yes. Well."

"Yes, that," Hermione mocked. "Chickenshit."

Ginny scowled. "Alright, brainiac, let's hear your tale of love and woe."

"And not necessarily in that order," Hermione said softly, rolling onto her back pillowing her head on her folded arms.

"What happened?" Ginny asked seriously, leaning closer to her. Hermione was many things...intelligent, feisty, loyal, courageous...but nowhere did the list state melancholic. This pale, drawn, distressed girl bore no resemblance to the acerbic and vivacious young woman Ginny knew and loved. "Tell me what's wrong."

"It's the ferret," Hermione sighed.

"You know," Ginny said conversationally, "It strikes me that you're the only one I know who incessantly calls the man she loves childish names."

"You know," Hermione retorted, "It strikes me that you're the only one I know who's too much of a chickenshit to tell the man she loves...what? Oh, yes, tell him that she loves him...what a novel idea. I wonder if anyone's ever tried doing that before."

"Retract those claws, Hermione!" Ginny raised an eyebrow, impressed. There was that old acid tongue, back again...so Hermione wasn't lost just yet. "I was making an observation. Now will you tell me what happened with Draco Mal-nourished?"

"He's slender!" Hermione said defensively, but mentally filed away the insult for later use. "And there's nothing wrong...not with him, at least. I'm afraid it's me this time."

Ginny stared at her. "Well, this is a departure from the ordinary...he's normally the one who screws up, and then I sit down with you and say, 'What did he do now?'" She placed her hand on Hermione's shoulder. "So..."

"So?" Hermione prompted.

"So, what did you do now?" Ginny queried.

For one so eloquent, Hermione said something that sounded remarkably like "Mumblegrumbledamnitallmuttergrowl."

"Come again?" Ginny blinked.

Hermione sighed in a way that would have made the heroine of a tragic romance novel quite envious. "He said he loved me."

"Well, I might be wrong here," Ginny said caustically. "But that's usually a good thing. What did you say?"

"Thank you," Hermione replied.

"What?" Ginny exclaimed.

"I said 'Thank you.'" Hermione repeated.

Ginny just stared at her, aghast.

"Would you say something, Gin?" Hermione said timidly.

Ginny got to her feet rather unsteadily (the effect of butterbeer and ice-cream together, which for some unfathomable reason was as yet undocumented) and quite unceremoniously thwacked Hermione on the head.

"OW!" Hermione squealed. "What?"

Ginny slumped down beside her on the rug, looking pleased with herself. "The next person to call you a genius is going to find himself chained to the giant squid with fish guts smeared all over him," she announced. "You ...you...dolt!"

Hermione sighed again. It was becoming rather a habit, she vaguely noted. "Yes, that's what Draco said."

Ginny looked over at her slightly-older-now-not-so-much-wiser friend and asked, "Well? What did he say after you so poetically accepted his declaration of love?"

"He looked at me like I was the scummiest pile of flobberworm dung," Hermione groaned, "And then he said, 'Right, then, if that's all, I'll be going. I just thought I'd try and see what utter humiliation feels like for a change. Thanks for helping me out with that.' And then..." Here, Hermione gulped, "Then he turned around and left me."

Ginny lay down beside Hermione and put her arms around the dispirited girl. "Honestly, Mione, I don't know whether to comfort you or curse you. I mean, I'm not one of Malfoy's biggest fans, but even I can imagine how much that must have hurt him. It probably took a lot for him to tell you how he feels."

Hermione groaned again. "I know, I know...I just...I didn't know how to react...and then, the words just came out of my mouth before I'd had a chance to think them through, and once they were spoken, there was no way to just reach out and stuff them back in my mouth, no matter how much I wanted to."

"Why is it that you want to hex him, then?" Ginny wondered.

"Because he wouldn't accept my apology," Hermione scowled. "He said...he said...oh, Gin, he said he just couldn't take me hurting him or doubting his love or any of my insecurities anymore...he said it was over." Hermione tried to swallow the proverbial lump in her throat, only to illogically think that the lump couldn't be just proverbial, because then she wouldn't have to try to swallow it. Damn it all, despite this circumnavigation of thoughts, the tears still threatened to come. Ah, yes...there they were.

Ginny, in true best-friend-and-confidante form, let Hermione's tears fall silently, holding her hand. When the torrent had ceased, she ventured a question. "You love him, don't you?"

"Of course I do, you dolt," Hermione sniffed. "Don't ask redundant questions."

"I'm just hazarding a guess here, Mione," Ginny said, "But I'll bet you didn't exactly tell him that when you were busy messing up your wonderful no-strings-attached relationship, huh?"

"Oh, that's pure genius of you, Gin," Hermione rolled her eyes. "How did you ever find me out?"

Ginny glared at her. "And where along the line did you fall in love with him?"

"If I had known I would be asked these questions, I can assure you I would have kept a record pinpointing the precise month, day, hour, minute and second that I realized my feelings for that insufferable toad," Hermione told her.

"Look," Ginny said patiently, "The only thing I can ask right now that could be of any consequence is this: What are you going to do to get him back?"

"Get him back?" Hermione echoed blankly. "Gin, do you have any idea how stubborn the boy is? Even if he wants to be with me now, he'll stay away...just to make sure he gets his point across."

"What point?" Ginny asked wearily. Heavens, these two were complicated!

"How it hurts when the one you love snubs you," Hermione told her.

"Your problem," Ginny informed Hermione tartly, "Is that both of you have egos the size of ten Quidditch pitches combined. You'll stay away from each other even if it makes you miserable, simply to prove a bloody point that isn't even worth proving!"

"Yes, I thought we'd already established that," Hermione said in a tone that made Ginny want to yank her hair out in sheer frustration. She settled for merely gnashing her teeth.

"Mione, sweetheart...before I march down to the Slytherin dorms and haul his lily-white arse out of bed to talk to you..." Ginny said in a would-be calm voice, "What are you going to do?"

Hermione regarded her carefully. "I'm guessing 'Mope and sulk' is not the answer you want to hear, huh?"

"Oh, that's a correct assumption right there," Ginny snarled; but the sparkle in her toffee-coloured eyes took the edge off her voice.

"I'll try talking to him tomorrow," Hermione said slowly. "I don't know what good it'll do, if any at all..."

"Don't be silly," Ginny said briskly. "You love him and he loves you...it'll do a world of good for you to tell him."

"Yes, so he can crow about it for the rest of his life...he got Gryffindor's Princess Priss to fall in love with him," Hermione said in a tone that hinted at derision, but her cinnamon eyes danced with fondness.

"Well, he did, didn't he," Ginny remarked. "That is something to crow about...if it was me you'd fallen for, I'd shout it out from the tower-tops."

Hermione looked over at her. "Why, Gin, I'm flattered...I never knew you felt that way!"

"Don't start that again!" Ginny groaned. "I believe we've had quite enough mental pictures to unhappily last us a lifetime!"

"True," Hermione giggled. She looked over at Ginny shrewdly. "What are you going to do, then?"

Ginny stared into the fire and smiled. "To quote a very unwise woman, 'I'll try talking to him tomorrow.'"

Hermione nodded in satisfaction. "Now that that's settled, pass along the Butterbeer, you hog!"

And the two friends resumed staring at the cheerful red and gold flames in the grate. This time around, they felt warmed.