Unexpected Love

Unexpected Love

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Unexpected Offer

Harry and his friends returned to Hogwarts for their sixth year, hoping that this would be a better year than the previous one.

Following the Sorting ceremony and the ensuing feast, Dumbledore rose to give some announcements. The one that caught Harry's attention was, 'Following the success of the Triwizard Tournament the year before last, and the associated visit by students of other schools --'

'Success?' whispered Harry. 'Cedric died, Voldemort came back, Karkaroff went into hiding and Hagrid and Madame Maxime got attacked by giants.'

'But the idea was a success,' Hermione whispered back.

'If that was a success,' said Ron sarcastically, 'my OWLs were a definite triumph! Nobody died during them -- nobody was even injured!'

Dumbledore was still speaking. 'It has been decided to institute a student exchange programme, whereby selected students will spend a year at one of the three other participating schools.'

'I hope Malfoy's gone to Durmstrang, then,' said Ron.

Dumbledore read out a list. Malfoy, unfortunately, was not on it. However, his friends Crabbe and Goyle were going to be at Durmstrang and Poughkeepsie Preparatory respectively. The students who were named came forward to the teachers' table.

'Yes!' crowed Ron, loudly enough that Malfoy heard him and glared across the Hall at him. 'Goyle will spend the whole year learning how to spell the school's name, and Malfoy will be too scared to move!'

'Shame Malfoy wasn't on the list too,' said Harry.

'No prefects were on it,' Hermione pointed out. 'I suppose it would disrupt the school's discipline if we weren't here.'

'No, he disrupts the school's discipline.'

'He does, rather,' she admitted. 'I suppose it's the principle of the thing.'

The students who were going to the other schools took hold of Portkeys and vanished. At about the same time, two other groups of students appeared, one at each end of the teachers' table, and safely out of the way of the departing groups.

Dumbledore introduced the students from other schools. Ginny's year had a girl from Beauxbatons joining them, and there were others, but they hardly noticed them, once they saw that the Slytherin sixth-years were to be joined by Marie-Susanne from Poughkeepsie Preparatory. Harry looked at her, and thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. Hermione practically had to spill his pumpkin juice down his neck to make him realise it was time to go up to the common room.

*

Sixth-year students, having dropped the subjects which weren't relevant to their hoped-for careers, or in which they'd failed to get the required OWL grade, were doing fewer subjects for their NEWTs. This also meant that sixth-year pupils from all the houses were together in each class. Hermione, of course, was an exception to the 'fewer subjects' generalisation; she wasn't sure what career she wanted, and was keeping her options open by doing every subject the school taught, having passed all her OWLs with Outstanding or Incredibly Outstanding grades.

'We didn't tell you about "I" grade before,' said McGonagall tartly when asked, 'because it was only invented this July, specifically to cope with Miss Granger's results. Happy?'

'Oh. Yeah, right,' said Ron unhappily. Hermione looked a lot happier than he did; Ron's results had ranged from 'E' down to 'R'. It had turned out that not only were the twins not joking about Troll grade, but there was an even lower Rock grade. Ron had managed 'R' in Divination, though he'd achieved 'E' in Potions.

'I do wish I hadn't made that mistake in Ancient Runes, though,' Hermione said as they went out of the Great Hall to start their first day of NEWT classes with Charms.

'It doesn't matter, though; you still got an "O", didn't you?' Harry said.

'Yes, but it would be better ...'

'Look! Hermione, nobody cares! Nobody thinks that you messed up your marks by getting one "O" instead of all "I"s! Got that?' Ron shouted.

When they arrived in Charms, Daphne was unsuccessfully trying to calm down Marie-Susanne, who was yelling at Malfoy. 'Ah wants to sit heah!' she snapped. The two of them were standing by the front-row desk nearest a window, having apparently reached it at the same time. Each seemed to have stopped the other sitting first.

'No!' said Malfoy, stamping his foot. 'I'm a Malfoy, and what I say, goes! And I'm a prefect! And I don't have a silly accent! I'm bigger and better than you in every way!'

She sneered, 'Then be bigger.' She pulled out her wand and aimed it at Malfoy. 'Etiolatus!' Malfoy started to grow taller and thinner.

Harry stared in disbelief. Malfoy was now almost as tall as Hagrid, but thinner: elongated, rather as if he'd been a gingerbread man who someone had rolled out to twice the length. Except weirder-looking.

'Detiolatus!' said Flitwick, who had been busily staring at Marie-Susanne, pointing his own wand. Malfoy merely started trembling. 'Oh. Well, Malfoy, you'd better get up to the hospital wing. Miss Parkinson, if you'd go with him?'

Pug-nose Pansy helped Malfoy out of the classroom, looking as if she was towing a bizarre stilt-walker.

*

They didn't see Malfoy for the rest of the day's classes, but he was lurking just off the Transfiguration corridor after their last lesson. 'Potter! Come in here!' he hissed as Harry passed. The trio went into the empty classroom he was in.

'Weird,' said Ron, looking up and further up at Malfoy. 'You're usually so short. This is the first time I've only morally looked down on you.'

'Didn't Madam Pomfrey cure you?' Harry asked Malfoy.

'Do I look cured? Any more stupid questions from you? Your turn, Mudblood.'

'Why don't you learn some manners?' Hermione asked him.

'I don't need to learn manners. I'm a Malfoy.'

'Yeah, well, we left another Malfoy for the Aurors to lock up a few months ago,' said Ron, grinning. 'Maybe you've heard of him -- he might be your father.'

'Shut up, Weasel!'

'I'm going,' said Ron. 'He's got nothing I want to hear.' He left.

'Well? You can go too, Granger, I only want to talk to Potter.'

'I'm not leaving Harry alone here with you,' Hermione said evenly. 'I don't trust you farther than I can throw you.'

'What do you want to say, anyway?' Harry asked.

Malfoy crouched down, bringing his head down to Harry's level, and said quietly, 'Look at me. Look what that stupid American girl did to me.'

'It's hard not to look,' he said, trying not to smile.

'You know what she's doing now? She's demanding that Snape make her the new Seeker, because I can't fit onto a broom now I'm this tall. Well, not without destroying the balance of my Nimbus Two Thousand and One.'

'Why her? Is she any good?'

'She's claiming "right of conquest" -- since she defeated me, she says she has the right to take my place. It's a stupid idea she's trying to foist on us, some idiotic mediaeval idea of justice.' Malfoy paused, then added in a quieter voice, 'And it's in the Slytherin house rules, so she's going to get away with it. Especially because Dumbledore's told Snape that I have to learn to take what life brings -- and apparently, he thinks that should include curses!'

'So? Why should I care?'

'It's that stupid girl. I mean to say one thing, and I complain about her instead. What I wanted to say was ... well, it began with that day in Madam Malkin's, before we started here. Do you remember that?'

'Yes. You didn't know who I was, and you were rude to Hagrid.'

'I was honest about Hagrid. I wasn't rude to you, though. No, I didn't know who you were, I just knew I liked you at first sight. I offered to be your friend on the train, but you were rude to me.'

'Well, you weren't exactly serious!'

Malfoy glanced at Hermione, then said, in a voice so quiet that Harry could hardly hear him, 'Yes, I was. I liked you, but you didn't like me. You rejected me, so I've been trying to get back at you ever since.'

It was hard to take Malfoy seriously, with his stretched out body reminding Harry of a cartoon character run over by a steam roller, but it was obvious Malfoy was trying to be serious.

'Why are you always trying to get me in trouble, then? Or gloating every time anything goes wrong?'

'It's how I've been getting back at you for insulting me like that. But I thought about it over the summer; I think you did me a favour getting Father out of the way like that. Now I run the Manor. I was going to be nicer to you this year -- and then that stupid girl did this to me!'

'This doesn't have anything at all to do with Crabbe and Goyle not being here, though. It's pure coincidence, of course,' said Hermione.

Malfoy admitted, 'It would be easier without them. They're like two big annoying puppies you got as a present and can't get rid of because your aunt will want to know what happened to them, and will hate to hear they fell into the fire and died like the last ones.' Harry swallowed, and looked at Hermione, who looked as disgusted as he felt. Malfoy didn't seem to notice their reactions, and explained, 'That's how I got them, you know. When I turned nine, their fathers brought them to Malfoy Manor, and Father told me that they were my bodyguards.'

'I'm not interested in any of this,' said Harry. 'I don't even see why you wanted to talk to me.' To Hermione, he said, 'Let's go and find Ron before this conversation gets any stranger.'

'Oh, Ron!' Malfoy snapped, emphasising Ron's name oddly. 'It's always Ron! Ron who you made friends with on the train. You're always with Ron, aren't you! You and that Weasel even sleep in the same dorm, and I bet you just love that. Nobody notices when you two share a bed, do they?'

'What?' Harry asked.

'Oh, don't play so innocent! I know what's going on with you and Ron.'

'I think you're mad, and now I am leaving.' Harry left the room, followed by Hermione. 'What is he on about? Why would I have to share a bed? There's one each. Do you think he means at the Burrow, because the Weasleys aren't as rich as him?' he asked as they started up a flight of stairs.

'No, I'd say he thinks you're gay,' she said quietly. 'He seems to think ...'

'That's ridiculous! Why would he think that?'

'I suppose he is, and he's hoping that you are.'

'But you know it's not true!' Harry said, panic entering his voice.

Hermione laughed. 'Of course I know that! After all that business with Cho last year, I don't think you're interested in boys! Though, if you don't mind my saying so, I think your taste in girls could do with improvement. Anyway, he might just be jealous of you and Ron because you're friends. Do you think he's got any friends, or just people who are scared of him?'

'Yeah, that's true.'

Once they reached their common room, they sat beside Ron, who asked 'So, what did the ferret want?'

'Uh ...' said Harry.

Hermione grinned. 'You might as well tell him; he'll get a laugh out of it.'

'He wants to be my friend. Possibly more than that -- he thinks I sleep with you. Isn't that ridiculous?'

'Yeah. Ridiculous. Why does he suddenly want to be your friend now he's lost his goons?'

'He says he always did want to be, but I was rude to him on the train when he offered.'

Hermione was looking quizzically at Ron.

'He was rude to me first,' said Ron bitterly. 'You were just sticking up for me -- and thanks for doing that, by the way.'

'Yeah, well, no problem. He just rubbed me up the wrong way.'

'He's good at that. But what about that thing he said -- he thinks I sleep with you?' Ron asked. 'Why does he think that?'

'I expect he's projecting his own desire for Harry onto you,' said Hermione. 'Don't look so shocked, Harry! There must be some reason he thinks you're gay and, as it's nothing about you, it must be something about him.'

'It's ridiculous, though. I'm not ... well, you already said you know I'm not. Ron? You believe me, don't you?'

'Yes. Yes, I believe you. You're as gay as ... well, Remus.'

'I know something that'll take both your minds off this subject -- it's just about dinner time,' said Hermione.

*

That night, Harry was lying in bed awake, worrying. How could anyone think he was ... that he liked boys more than girls, in a romantic way? OK, so Cho was generally hard to talk to, but Hermione wasn't, at least not usually, so all he needed to do was to find a girlfriend who he could talk to as easily as Hermione.

Ron seemed to be talking in his sleep. Harry grinned, and went to listen. Maybe it would be something like tapdancing for spiders again, and he could think about that instead of Malfoy's stupid idea, until he fell asleep.

'Harry, Harry,' Ron was moaning, while he hugged the pillow and had an expression on his face that Harry finally described as ecstatic.

Harry backed slowly away until he reached his own bed, and sat there, staring at the bed hangings that hid his friend from him. Was Ron dreaming he was hugging someone else -- such as him? Was he ... like that? Could it just be a nightmare caused by Malfoy? It had to be. Ron couldn't be that sort of person, Harry knew him too well, and there'd never been any suggestion, any hint that he didn't like girls.

*

They heard during breakfast next day that Marie-Susanne had been made the new Slytherin Seeker, despite what Nott described as the handicap of her being a girl.

'Handicap?' bristled Ginny.

'I don't remember them ever having a girl on the team,' said Harry. 'I don't see why not -- Millicent Bulstrode has all the qualifications they usually go for. She's big and violent.'

'Why do you think they didn't just cure Malfoy?'

Harry shrugged. 'Maybe they don't want to.'

'I don't like unexplained things like this,' she said, frowning.

*

During Transfiguration, the trio were concentrating on the task they'd been set, which involved transfiguring each other to have different hair colours. By the end of the lesson, Harry's hair had been brown, red, blond, grey, and every shade they'd ever seen Tonks with, as well as three different patterns of tartan when Hermione got bored with plain colours. Ron's hair should have been Harry's black, but the red was resisting any change, and Ron seemed intent on making Hermione's hair zebra-striped rather than Weasley red.

McGonagall nodded approvingly as she looked round from restoring the colour of Hannah's blonde hair to see that Hermione had returned Harry and Ron's hair to their usual colours, and then corrected her own back to hers. They left the classroom to go to lunch, while McGonagall continued to undo the worst results of the lesson.

There was a loud crack from behind them, as Malfoy, ignoring McGonagall calling him back, hurried out of the door, forgetting to duck once again. He caught up with them as they walked along the corridor towards the Great Hall. With his stretched-out, double-length legs, it was easy for him to catch them.

'What's wrong with you, Potter? Why aren't you my friend?'

Harry looked up and laughed. Malfoy's hair was a strange melange of green and orange.

'You think my feelings are just to be laughed at?' Malfoy snarled, drawing his wand.

'It's your hair!'

'What colour is it? What did Pansy do to it? It suits me, doesn't it?'

Hermione waved her wand, returning his hair to his usual bland blond. 'Now it's your usual colour.'

'I don't trust you, Mudblood.'

'Don't call her that!' snapped Ron.

'You won't know whether you can trust me or not, until you find a mirror,' said Hermione evenly.

'I can ask people. Or ...' Malfoy started looking in his pockets. 'Oh, I don't believe Blaise stole my mirror again!'

'You carry a mirror around with you?' Ron asked, grinning at the vain Slytherin.

Hermione grinned too, and said, 'You can ask people, but you won't believe what they say, will you?'

Malfoy frowned at her, apparently lost for words.

Harry had words of his own, though. 'I have no reason to be your friend, Malfoy. If you really wanted to be my friend, you wouldn't be so rude to the people who really are my friends.'

'I don't want to be their friend.'

'Then you don't want to be mine, either.' Harry turned his back on Malfoy and continued his journey to the Great Hall.

'Thanks, Harry,' said Hermione.

'You should have made his hair some horrible colour,' said Ron.

She shook her head. 'No, this way he'll know he could have trusted me. That's a better lesson.'

*

That evening, a new sheet of parchment appeared on the common room noticeboard, headed 'Why didn't they cure Malfoy?' Below it was a list, which read, '1. He's a git. 2. Would you? 3. It's polite to one of the exchange students. 4. Blonds don't have more fun. 5. It's time they had a girl on their team. 6. It's more than he deserves for being a Malfoy,' and was clearly in Ginny's handwriting. She'd left a lot of space for more reasons.

Beside the list were four wizard photographs, showing the cursed Malfoy in various settings. Below them was a note that Colin was selling copies for two Sickles each, or six for the set.

'Well,' said Ron, laughing at the list and the photos, 'as a prefect, I suppose I'm going to have to do something about this.' Harry and Hermione both stared at him. Ron grinned and wrote, '7. He looks better this way,' and then told them, 'OK, I've done my duty now.'

'You wouldn't do anything to Ginny for this, would you?' Harry asked Hermione.

'Well, not this time, but if she does it again -- a few dozen times, anyway -- I suppose I'll have to at least talk to a fifth-year prefect about her.'

Harry grinned. Hermione really meant she'd do nothing; Ginny was one of Gryffindor's two fifth-year prefects, continuing the Weasley tradition by being the fifth prefect of seven children.

The next morning, he noticed that someone with small neat writing had added, '8. Perhaps this experience will lead him to consider the feelings of others,' at the end. Harry glanced at Hermione, who had already been waiting in the common room for him and Ron when they got down there. She looked back at him, wide-eyed and innocent. He grinned at her.

*

When they got to the classroom for their DADA lesson that day, they saw Malfoy crouched down talking to old Professor Camlann, the latest person to teach the subject. He was competent enough, though not up to Lupin's standard, but rather forgetful.

'This can't be good,' said Harry, taking his seat between Ron and Hermione as usual.

He was right. 'This lesson, we will study duelling,' announced Camlann. 'Now, young Malfoy here tells me that he and ah, Weasley ... Weasley? where ... aha, there. Now, apparently the two of you have some experience of duelling.'

'Huh?' said Ron, his jaw dropping open.

'Therefore,' the Professor continued, 'the two of you will demonstrate a duel for those members of the class who have no experience of duels.'

Hermione looked anxiously at Ron, and hissed, 'Tell him that's wrong! Harry's the only one with real duelling experience! The rest of us just had one lesson with Lockhart and Snape!'

'No!' Ron hissed back. 'This is my chance to do something without Harry getting all of the glory!' He leapt to his feet, gripping his wand tightly, and went up to the front of the class, where Malfoy was waiting.

'This can't be what I think it is,' said Hermione, watching Ron stride between the desks.

'What's that?' Harry asked, worried about his friend.

'Do you suppose Malfoy thinks he's fighting with Ron over you?'

Harry snorted in disbelief.

'I know Ron just wants to beat Malfoy, but that might be the way Malfoy's looking at this duel,' she clarified.

Harry thought of what Ron had said in his sleep, but pushed it from his mind. Ron just wasn't like that.

Ron and Malfoy bowed to each other, reminding Harry of his own duel with Malfoy in Lockhart's duelling club. Then they each cast a spell, the Jelly-Legs Jinx in Ron's case, and the Vertiginus Hex from Malfoy. Since Malfoy's etiolated form gave him a disadvantage anyway, the Jelly-Legs Jinx was very effective, and Anthony Goldstein suffered the Hex as it went astray.

'They should be more careful,' Hermione worried. 'Professor Camlann shouldn't let people sit so close to them.'

Ron replied with Ginny's favourite, the Bat-Bogey Hex, and Malfoy was covered with the bat-like creatures, while his own Tarantallegra made Ron dance on the spot.

'Oh good,' said Harry, staring at Malfoy. 'We missed that when Ginny did it to him. I'm glad I've seen it.'

'Yes, it's quite interesting,' agreed Hermione. Professor Camlann had halted the duel, and was ending the curses as they spoke. He sent both boys back to their seats while he began to discuss the curses they'd used and their duelling technique.

'Not bad, Ron,' said Harry.

'Thanks. You've even duelled You-Know-Who; I wish I could at least have beaten Malfoy properly. I showed him, though, didn't I?' He added with a snort, 'Wanting to be your ... friend!'

Harry glanced at Ron, and then at Hermione. Ron seemed to be taking the duel surprisingly seriously. Was Hermione right, about both of them? Had they been fighting for his affections? But why bother? They knew -- at least, Ron knew -- that he liked girls. He'd kissed Cho, after all. He'd gone to the Yule Ball with Parvati, hadn't he, just as Ron had gone with Padma.

Of course, he and Ron had sat together for most of the Ball, and had hardly danced with or even talked to the twins. That didn't mean anything, though. It didn't. It couldn't.

The walk they'd taken outside, through the rose bushes, had just been to get away from seeing Viktor Krum dancing with Hermione. Unlike the other couples ... no, pairs of students, theirs hadn't been a romantic walk. No way. It couldn't have been. It really wasn't.

Although, come to think of it, it was Ron's idea to go for that walk outside ... but it was just coincidence. No more meaningful than Snape's walk with Karkaroff.

Ron's failure to dance with Padma, the walk, what he'd said in his sleep -- each and every one was coincidence. Strange that it seemed to add to a pattern, thought Harry, but that was just coincidence too. It really was. It had to be.

*

When classes ended for the day, the news of Ron's duel with Malfoy spread through Gryffindor house, mostly due to Seamus telling anyone who would listen, and Ron was soon re-enacting the duel for Gryffindors in other years. Harry didn't actually remember Ron casting the curse that made Malfoy too weak to move, nor the way that Pansy and Marie-Susanne had had to rush Malfoy to the hospital wing to save his life after he'd foolishly challenged Ron to so unequal a duel, but he had something else on his mind.

'Hermione,' he asked, while Ron was busy with his fans, 'can you tell me what your argument with Ron was about after the Yule Ball? I only heard the end of it.'

'That was ages ago. Why do you want to know now?'

'Well --' He couldn't see any other way out. He told her about the coincidental pattern of Ron's behaviour: all of it, including Ron talking in his sleep.

'I see,' she said when he'd finished. She frowned in concentration. 'Viktor invited me to the ball, of course, and then Ron caught me coming back into the common room -- he'd been waiting there for me -- and he started shouting at me about my going with another school's champion. I shouted back about how Viktor had been a perfect gentleman, very solicitous towards me, and I'd enjoyed going to the ball with him.' She glanced over at Ron, who was currently describing the perfect Shield Charm that had deflected Malfoy's Vertiginus Hex back on him, and continued, 'Finally -- this is probably when you got there -- I shouted at him that if he didn't want me to go to the ball with another boy, there was something obvious he could do about it, and when he asked what that was, I told him he knew: he just had to ask me before anyone else did, instead of waiting until he was desperate. I don't like being a last resort. I don't like friends thinking I'll be there waiting when everyone else has a date, because nobody would ever want to ask me to the ball.'

'I'm sorry. I did that as well.'

She said, in a calmer tone, 'You did it because you wanted to ask Cho, and not because you couldn't think of anyone to ask. That's a reasonable reason. I don't mind if you'd rather ask someone else, but Ron didn't seem to want to ask anyone; I was his last choice after nobody.'

Harry smiled. 'And you ran up the stairs, and he just said something about how you'd completely missed the point.'

'Really? That's odd. I didn't hear that.'

'You were probably too far up the stairs by then. I thought he was the one who missed the point, anyway.'

'I don't mean it's odd I didn't hear him, I mean what he said. I'd completely missed the point? If the point wasn't that I'd gone with a different boy, one who'd invited me before Ron did ... what was it? That Viktor had asked me? Ron was a big fan of Viktor's, up until then.'

'Yes, he was. The day after the ball, though, I found a piece of his Krum figure. I think he smashed it.'

She frowned again. 'I'd assumed he was angry with himself for not asking me earlier. I thought maybe he was attracted to me. I thought that explained why he didn't dance with Padma -- ooh, you should have heard Parvati on that subject for the next month or so. You two were not popular. I couldn't even mention Viktor in the dorm, because I knew it would just set her off again.'

'Because he'd been a much better date than either Ron or I was?' Harry asked. She nodded. Harry winced, remembering his behaviour. 'Yeah, fair enough. We weren't very nice to them.'

'I don't think going for a walk means anything romantic. Rita Skeeter thought that that was exactly what our walk round the lake meant, though, after you were chosen as one of the champions.'

'Oh, yes. I'd forgotten that. How about that? She actually had some sort of basis for her claim -- I didn't realise.'

Hermione bit her lip. 'That part about missing the point, taken with Ron's talking in his sleep ... he can't have been hoping Viktor would ask him, can he?'

'I don't think so!' As he said it, he realised that would explain Ron's final remark in the argument, and it explained the smashed figure, too. 'No, he can't. Oh, no. I asked you about this to reassure me.'

'I'm sorry.'

'What do I do? I can't ask him about what he said in his sleep.'

'You could ask; it would give him a chance to explain. From what you said, it might just be about friendship.'

'That's not what you were saying a moment ago.'

Hermione looked over at Ron, who was now demonstrating how he'd somersaulted backwards to escape from the Tarantallegra curse, while simultaneously putting the Bat-Bogey Hex on Malfoy.

Ginny came over to the two of them and sat in Ron's chair. 'He does go on, doesn't he? So far, I think the duel has taken up your whole lesson. Do you recognise any of it?'

'Some of it,' said Harry, grinning at her cynicism. He was tempted to ask if Ron had ever said anything to her about his feelings for anyone, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do that.

'It did involve Ron and Malfoy,' confirmed Hermione with a straight face.

'And their wands,' agreed Harry.

'I hope Ron got some good hexes in against Malfoy, even if he's exaggerating,' said Ginny, grinning as she imagined it.

Next chapter: Ron has something to tell Harry, Malfoy gets cursed (again), and Snape has something to say.

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