(homo)Sexual Overtures

As Ron and Hermione were leaving the Common Room, Harry rushed up. He gave a glare at Hermione which was half angry at her and half disgusted with himself. How the hell was that possible?

He turned his attention to Ron and began speaking amiably about what a remarkable woman Pomfrey was. Ron looked at Hermione and pleaded with his eyes. She simply smiled, put her head down and let her shoulders shake silently.

As the three of them walked into Potions, after Harry scrambled ahead for the door, they were greeted by a very strange sight: Professor Snape in a good mood. He nodded at each student as they took their places. However, his gaze lingered for much longer upon Ron.

"Not him as well," he muttered quietly. "Anything but that!"

They took their seats. Ron did not even bother to protest when Harry took a seat next to him and too close for comfort. Harry was touching Ron's hair and face, speaking quickly and quietly. Ron wore a face of silent suffering and kept his eyes on the ceiling.

Snape looked at the pair and frowned. Why was Potter fawning over Weasley like that? Then he grinned. His potion must have worked perfectly. Granger kept throwing looks over her shoulder at the pair and shaking her head in disbelief. Harry must be insanely jealous of Weasley and Granger that he is trying anything to get Ron back. He let out an exultant bark of laughter.

There was complete silence in the classroom. Snape realized his mistake.

"Erk," he said, flustered. "Stop staring and get out your books!"

Snape was doubly strict throughout the rest of the lesson in order to compensate for his lapse. In fact, he felt so awful that he had allowed the students to see his good mood that he nearly made Longbottom faint by shooting him one of his trademark withering stares.

Snape was rather proud of today's stare because he could feel the power flowing behind it. After shouting at people, glaring was his second favourite pastime.

Snape watched Granger leave the room. She had seemed oddly preoccupied today. Usually her hand was waving about and she was grunting...trying to get him to call on her. But today...today she just read her Potions book and kept staring back at Potter and Weasley.

Snape paused for a moment to contemplate. Then a truly hideous grin cracked his face in half and he crowed in exultation.

"Yes, it is all going to plan..."

Snape left the room with a wicked grin on his face and a slight skip in his step.

"Sir?" Malfoy called out to the professor.

Snape stopped dead in his tracks. His shoulders tensed involuntarily as he waited for his student to catch up with him. He loathed and detested Malfoy, but certain 'incidents' in his youth, captured forever by Malfoy senior, precluded him ever telling Draco what he truly thought of him.

"Sir," Malfoy said again, "are you ok?"

Severus thought that the small and whiny boy's voice resembled nails running down a blackboard in surround sound with added screech. "Fine, Mr. Malfoy," he said in the least withering voice that he could muster. He swirled his cloak behind him in a move that he truly believed made him look mysterious and scary, but really left him looking like he was inflated by a bicycle pump.

"Where's Ron?" Harry asked a passing Gryffindor.

Dean thumbed to his left and walked off. Harry stared down the passage to his left. It led toward the library. Hermione was probably on her way there. Ron must have followed. 'No! He's mine!'

Harry stopped dead in his tracks. What the hell was wrong with him?! Why this sudden obsession that he could not seem to control? Harry's feet moved involuntarily down the corridor.

He could feel a detached sense of rage sweeping through him. He wasn't entirely sure why he was angry, but a little voice in the back of his head mumbled incessantly.

"He's cheating on you," it hissed insistently. "He prefers that bitch to you. See what loyalty gets you. If you flashed your cleavage like that hussy did he would be all over you."

Harry could hear a reasonable voice trying desperately to reason with the other voice. However, the voice of reason was being drowned out constantly and replaced by another and another voice that whispered insanities to him.

Harry practically flew to the library. What he saw both made him think 'awww' while another part of him was enraged beyond belief. Hermione was poring over a book and saying something to Ron. Ron was standing behind Hermione with both hands on her shoulders and looking seriously at the book she was reading. He was touching her! How dare he?! Harry felt he would burst into tears at any moment. But mostly he felt like slapping that girl silly.

Ron almost fainted. He chanted, "Please go away" under his breath and felt Hermione's shoulders shaking beneath him. He moved his fingers a bit...she had nice shoulders. He stopped chanting in his distraction and squeezed Hermione's shoulders gently. A small smile crept onto his face.

A grunt of rage and jealously made his eyes snap open and look at Harry. He felt faint...

Harry felt an unconscionable impulse sweep through his body that compelled him towards his best friends with his hands outstretched. He could feel himself sinking within the wave of ire. He became so detached that he was almost watching from above.

He saw himself grab Ron by the wrists and look him tearfully in the eyes. "How could you?" Harry's voice said with a strangled sob. "I thought what we had was special. I thought it was beyond what you felt for her."

NOW Ron felt he could sink through the floor. He looked nervously at Hermione, hoping she hadn't caught that. Well, she didn't look enlightened.

Facing Harry again he said, "Look, mate. I love you; I really do, but not like that. And neither do you. I don't know what's happened to you but maybe you should lock yourself in your room until we figure this out."

"Maybe we should," Harry said. "If we locked ourselves together you could learn to love me the way I love you."

Ron rolled his eyes impatiently. "No," he said firmly. "You need to work out what is making you insane. To do that, you need some alone time."

"It's not insanity," Harry protested with the tiniest stamp of his foot. "My love is pure and deep." A look of abject horror flitted across Harry's features.

"Interesting," muttered Ron as he saw the fleeting look.

Tears filled Harry's eyes. "Fine, I see how it is. You don't want me around. Well, fine. But I know you'll miss me. I'll be in my room. You'll come to me, I know."

Harry left with a flounce. Ron sank into a chair across from Hermione. Hermione smirked at him.

"Don't!" Ron commanded pre-emptively. "Do not say a word."

Hermione laughed even harder, holding her stomach tightly with tears rolling down her cheeks. "But," she protested, "it's funnier than.."

"Not. A. Word."

"Come on, Ron," she cajoled. "See the funny side of it."

"It's not bloody funny!" Ron retorted in a far more whiny voice than he had intended. "It's sexual harassment, that's what it is. I should report him." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Maybe St. Mungos would save me the trouble and cart him off."

Hermione got a stern look on her face. "Don't even think about it, Ron."

Ron held his hands up and shook his head. "I was only joshing."

No he wasn't, not really.

"Hermione...please. Tell me, what can I do?"

Hermione looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well," she said carefully, "we need to know what it is that is doing this to him. Any clues?"

Ron ran his fingers through his hair carefully. He looked at the floor and chewed his lip, trying to piece everything together in his head. It felt as though the solution was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite bring it out.

Hermione got to her feet and walked behind Ron's chair. She massaged his shoulders gently, which sent a shiver snaking up his spine. "Come on, Ron," she said gently. "Think it through. I know you can do it."

Ron fought his every impulse to just relax and let Hermione touch him. He tried to think. Hermione's hands were making delicious circles on his shoulders and he could not concentrate. Without thinking, he reached up and caught her hands in his, stilling them.

"Well, whatever it is, it's involuntary. He always gets this look like...he's disgusted with himself. Like he can't understand why he's acting this way. So it must be a charm...or a potion. I would say a potion though. And he's infatuated...so an infatuation potion would do it. But...does that exist? And is it legal?"

At the end of his spiel he realized with a start that Hermione's very soft, warm hands were caught in his larger ones and he dropped them like hot potatoes.

"Sorry," he mumbled before he cleared his throat loudly.

Hermione's face flushed slightly and she edged away from his chair awkwardly. She sat down in her own chair and her brow creased in deep thought.

"I-infatuation potion," she muttered. She ran her hand across her face and gave a sigh and stared into space.

Suddenly, she leapt up from her seat and ran to the back of the library. Ron watched her go and put his head in his hands.

"What a day!" he whimpered.

Hermione returned in minutes and laid a book in front of Ron. Her finger pointed to a paragraph and he read dutifully.

A look of horror suffused his face and he stuttered, "How can I do t-th-that!!!? No way!"

Hermione gave him a sympathetic look and patted his shoulder. "You want this to be over don't you? It's just one little thing...it will last less than a second. You can do it."

Ron stood up with an anguished expression on his face. He could hardly think about what he had to do to end this infatuation, let alone actually bring himself to do it. He turned to face Hermione and screwed up every ounce of courage that he possessed.

Without really realising that he had done it, he scooped her hands up in his. He looked deeply into her eyes. "Wish me luck," he whispered huskily.

Hermione shivered and Ron was gone. She licked her lips and sat down at the table to think and relive.

Ron strode toward the Gryffindor Tower. Realising that he was walking quickly toward the one person he dreaded seeing at this moment he slowed to a crawl. How could he bring himself to do this? It was totally wrong. How would Harry feel? Would he hate him? Would Ron hate Harry? Harry was his best mate, after all. He didn't really want to lose that. But...things couldn't stay the way they were.

He could see the portrait of the fat lady in the distance. He wrung his hands nervously and swallowed several times to try to shift the lump that had risen in his throat. He felt dizzy and ill and slowed his pace even further.

"Come on, Ron," he told himself firmly. "You need to be a man about this. You need to do what has to be done."

He clenched his teeth and his fists tightly and rounded on the portrait hole. He barked the password and marched through the hole and towards his fate.

He walked stiffly up the winding stairs into his dormitory. Harry was sitting on his bed sniffling. At the sound of Ron clearing his throat, he turned around.

"You came to me! I knew you would. Oh, Ron, my darling. Tell me you love me."

Ron growled and stood at the edge of the bed. 'You can do it. It'll be over in a second.'

He reached down to Harry and pulled him up. He leaned down and swiftly touched his lips to his best friend's.

He pulled back as though he had been electrocuted and wiped his hand over his mouth. He shuddered slightly and looked at Harry's smiling face.

"You love me!" Harry crowed with delight.

"Bugger," Ron mumbled. It appeared that it hadn't worked. The article had said that he needed to make the subject realise that he was not himself. Apparently what Ron had done was not enough.

Ron took a deep breath with his eyes closed. He pushed every thought away and grabbed Harry by the shoulders. He leaned in and kissed him long and deep. 'Pretend it's Hermione,' he whispered mentally to himself over and over.

Harry's lips were slightly dry under his own. And thin, they were thin. 'I hope Hermione's lips are nicer than this...'

Then he felt hands shoving at him. He fell to the floor with a thump and Harry was shouting...was he ever!

"Holy heart failure! BLOODY HELL, RON!! What do you think you're doing snogging me like that?!"

A wave of relief washed through Ron. He heaved a heart-felt sigh of release and smiled his first genuine smile that day.

"Thank God you're back!" Ron exclaimed. "You went mental and that," he paused and swallowed at the bile rising in his throat, "was the only way to get you back."

Harry looked at him with disbelief and snorted derisively. "OK, Ron," Harry said sarcastically. "Sounds likely to me."

Ron felt outraged. "'You came to me! I knew you would. Oh, Ron, my darling. Tell me you love me.' Ring any bells?" Ron asked hotly.

Harry just arched an eyebrow at Ron in response. This time Ron snorted.

"Fine, think what you like. But I'm telling the truth. Why would I want to kiss YOU?"

"I'm hurt."

"Shut up, you."

Harry grinned. "I know I'm irresistible. Just admit it."

Ron grunted and stalked out of the room. Harry was confused and relieved. Something had been wrong with him and he had no idea what. But it was all over now. Except for a certain conversation with Madam Pomfrey that kept replaying in his mind and the strange voice in the back of his head that kept telling him he rather enjoyed that kiss...