The First Prophet Article

The weapon was discovered in an elegant French garden on a warm August night. While I think of the night as incredibly special to me now, I was quite miserable at the time.

I had wandered off from a wedding that I was attending at the time. It was the wedding of Bill and Fleur Weasley, of whose story I am sure you have read (or perhaps you saw the tragically hilarious film, "She Bit Me!" by MagicMax Studios.)

Regardless, I was quite morose because I had recently broken up with my girlfriend, Ginny, from the previous Spring. I was even more morose because that same girlfriend had been plagued all evening by a never-ending string of French suitors belonging to the Delacour family. In my self-doubt and morbid curiosity, I had painfully, if surreptitiously, watched each twist and turn of that beautiful gem of a woman upon the dance floor.

Now the histories usually mention the fact that I was blessed with an invisibility cloak left to me by my father. What the histories generally fail to mention is that I was rather prone to sneak off by myself in that cloak.

Usually when I snuck off, I was getting into some mischief or other, but sometimes I used it just to get away from the press of a crowd, or to find some quiet time alone. That is the amazing thing about invisibility: you can be all alone while standing in a crowd of people.

At the time of discovering the weapon, however, I was not among people. I was sitting on a bench set in a garden on the expansive estate where the wedding and reception were held. I had found a tall hedge that had been trimmed and shaped into what looked and felt like a little three-walled room, with a narrow entrance where the fourth side was open. In this little hedge was a sturdy stone bench tucked back in the shadows. It was a very private nook, and I took the opportunity to sit and think. The weapon appeared while I was sitting on the bench, awash in self-pity over my failed romance, and comfortably tucked into my invisibility cloak within the shadows of the nook.

It was at that moment that all hell broke loose in the garden.

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger appeared suddenly. At that moment they were engaged in a classic, all-time, most riotous row. I heard them approaching through the garden, my eyes rolling in annoyance at yet another dispute between them, when they decided to finish their argument right in the entrance to my three-sided hedge nook.

So you may wonder, as did I, why Hermione and Ron were having such an incandescent fight. I guess, at this point, it would be a good idea to give some small amount of background to that situation.

As you probably know, these two were my dearest school time friends. We had been inseparable for nearly six years at this point. There were never more dear, true and loyal compatriots for a young boy or man. In truth, I was so far over my head at that time in my life, that were it not for those two, I should never have survived it.

The tale of Ron and Hermione's friendship and romance has been told and retold over the intervening years, and I will not detail it too much further in this forum. For a true perspective, you may take a leisurely afternoon to read, "Bloody Hell! The Autobiography of Ronald Weasley." While this book mainly focuses on Ron's Quidditch career, he does dedicate two of the five chapters to our time at Hogwarts and the War - and most of that to discussing how Hermione drove him mad. For an equally true, yet completely opposite perspective, you should read, "A Witch's Tale of Friendship, Love, Life, Death, War, Teaching and Learning, With Perspectives on History, Politics, Civil Rights, International Magical Relations, Marriage and Children: The Memoirs of Professor Hermione Granger-Weasley, Esq." I will admit that in the last fifteen years I have only managed to get through volumes one, two and three of Hermione's thirteen volume work, but the parts that I did read were really good. In truth, she keeps adding volumes before I can finish reading the previous hefty tomes, and I hear volume fourteen is due out next spring.

But to return to our narrative, and to put it simply, at this point in their relationship Ron and Hermione were very confused. Under the façade of their always uneasy friendship there had been brewing a ... change. They were developing more and more romantic feelings for each other, which had been complicated by adolescence, as well as all of their own quirks and insecurities. This problem had been obvious to me for quite some time.

I had been very conflicted over the idea of Ron and Hermione changing their relationship from friendship to romance. This had mostly been for selfish reasons on my part as I did not wish them to damage their always delicate friendship, and thereby cause a unbridgeable rift amongst our Trio.

But that previous school year and that summer, I became less opposed to the idea. This was based primarily on the same reasoning of preserving our Trio. During the previous term, Ron had taken up with some girl whose name I have difficulty remembering now, but she was a very pretty blonde. Hermione had been heartbroken in a measure completely inappropriate to friendship, though she will still not admit it to this day. Their friendship quickly dissolved at that point, and I found myself with the broken Trio I had been dreading.

Ron eventually chucked the other girl, and our Trio was restored after Ron nearly died from poisoning. Hermione has never said anything about it, but I know that Ron's near-death experience restored her desire to have him a part of her life again. I believe Ron felt the same way at that point.

During the summer, the two of them came to stay with me for my last summer with the Dursleys. That visit contained some of the more amusing moments that I have experienced in my long life. For personal reasons, I will not go into that tale at this time, but let me just say that Ron did not take well to my muggle cousin Dudley and the antics which ensued were priceless.

During that summer visit, the tension between Ron and Hermione was palpable. Their conversations were punctuated by moments of terrible awkwardness, or sudden tenderness, or heated arguments; all for no reason that would be appropriate between two people who are simply school chums. To be honest, it was so tense it made me want to jump out of my own skin.

There are two examples of this behavior that I remember clearly. The first involved a time when Hermione and I took Ron to a "grocery store," which is where muggles go to buy food. If you are a reader that is not familiar with muggles, then you will sympathize with Ron's mystification at such odd contraptions as "refrigerated shelves," and "fluorescent lights." Hermione found it all very amusing, and even whispered to me how "cute" Ron was acting in the store. As we were paying for our purchases, Ron became absolutely enamored with the "cash register," which is a muggle device that calculates how much money needs to be paid for the food that is purchased.

There was a young and pretty teenage muggle girl operating the cash register and she misunderstood Ron's interest. She thought he was flirting with her, and she must have enjoyed that, because she began to flirt back. When Ron realized that the girl fancied him, he began to lay it on pretty thick. Meanwhile a long queue of disgruntled customers developed behind us. The laughable thing about it was that Ron kept stealing glances at Hermione to see if she was paying attention.

Hermione for her part tried to ignore it at first, but she became more and more waspish with Ron and the checkout girl as the spectacle continued. I stood there rather helplessly watching the situation deteriorate, until I finally said some angry thing or other to Ron that got him to leave the girl alone so we could get out of there. As we took our purchases and left, Hermione dropped a rude comment to the checkout girl, which left the girl stammering. Ron and Hermione were then short tempered and rude with each other for the rest of the day. This quickly devolved into an argument that left Hermione in tears and Ron sitting in the Dursleys' back garden, hoping to find a gnome to toss.

The second example that comes to mind about the tension between my two best friends occurred when Hermione and I took Ron to a "video shop." This is a place where muggles rent or buy things called "movies," which are stories with moving pictures and sound that you can watch and enjoy.

We rented some old classic movies for Ron to see. Ron frightened Dudley into allowing us to use the device which displays the movies, and we sat in my room for the evening and watched.

Each movie is about two hours long, and we watched two movies that night. As the movies began, I sat on my bed and Ron and Hermione sat on the floor next to my bed. At first they simply sat next to each other. Then Ron asked for some pillows so they could get comfortable. Then Hermione said she was cold and asked for a blanket. By the end of the first movie, they were both sitting close to each other and sharing the blanket. I am not certain how things progressed from there, because I dozed off during the second movie. However, when I awoke in the morning, it was to a very cozy sight indeed.

I awoke and looked down to see my two friends still on the floor together. Ron lay on his back with Hermione. He was awake and she appeared to be sleeping with her head resting lightly on Ron's shoulder and her arm draped across the chest of his Chudley Canon's tee shirt. Ron was awake, and wore an extremely pensive look on his face. The look told me immediately that nothing had occurred between them that could not be easily explained as platonic behavior. I could also tell that Ron was not entirely happy about it being only platonic. He was, however, gently running his fingers through Hermione's thick hair and doing his best to be a comfortable pillow for her.

I will never forget the embarrassed look on Ron's face when he saw that I was awake. He whispered to me with a little laugh, "Uh...I guess this looks a bit odd, eh, Mate?"

I will also never forget the little smile that I noticed curling Hermione's lips. It quickly disappeared as she continued to feign sleep while Ron caressed her hair. Finally, I will never forget the excruciating awkwardness that ensued for the entire day as the two tried to figure out how to act after their first night "in each other's arms," as innocent as it was.

Thus did the summertime with the Dursleys pass, and by the end of it, I must say that I was fed up. I spent the entire time being a referee to their squabbles, a relief to their awkwardness, and an unwilling witness to their growing feelings for one another. By this time I was hoping they would get together just so that I would not be subjected to all of their emotional baggage. My apprehension about their friendship was a non-issue by this point, since it was apparent to me that those two could not continue long as friends. No friendship could withstand the strain of such intense feelings.

To put it more simply, if you will pardon this dirty old man's vulgarity for a moment, it was getting to the point where I was hoping they would just shag and get it over with.

So as you can see, by the time of Bill and Fleur's wedding the atmosphere between Hermione and Ron was thick with tension, hope, anticipation and apprehension.

Then Viktor Krum showed up at the wedding.