A Capacity for Love

Chapter 23

The Breakthrough

Lavender was now officially not talking to Hermione. She was convinced that Hermione had purposely withheld the information about Ron's poisoning from her, so that she, Hermione, could spend the entire day alone with him in the hospital wing. Hermione tried to point out that she hadn't even been allowed in until the evening, and even then, she hadn't spoken to Ron at all; no one had, in fact, he had been unconscious during their entire visit. This did not appease Lavender, however. She had to hear about Ron from Romilda Vane, who was pulled out of class for questioning regarding the Chocolate Cauldrons (she knew nothing about them being spiked with any love potion, of course). Even Parvati looked at Hermione askance when Lavender confronted her the next morning.

Hermione's case wasn't helped much when Lavender demanded that Hermione keep away from Ron, and Hermione responded that, as a friend, she couldn't do that. Ron had nearly died. This was hardly the time for jealous spats. Hermione decided it would be best if she avoided the subject of Ron with Lavender altogether.

It had a way of coming round through the back door, though, as Harry caught up to her after Charms a couple of days later and, seeming more than a bit uncomfortable, asked what was going on with Lavender.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, fearing she knew all too well what was about to come.

"It's just that..." Harry rubbed the back of his neck and got a sheepish look on his face. "She keeps asking me stuff. About Ron."

"What sort of 'stuff'?"

"Just stuff. Like whether he still likes her and how much longer he'll be in the infirmary, and what kind of sweets she should buy for him." Harry kicked at the flagstones with his trainers.

"Why doesn't she ask him herself?"

"I think..." He shrugged. "I think he keeps pretending to be asleep whenever she visits him."

Hermione laughed. "What? That's silly. Why would he do that?"

Harry caught Hermione's eye. "I don't know."

She got a squiggly feeling in her stomach, but faced Harry down. "I'm sure I don't know what you're implying, Harry," she insisted firmly.

"It was you he called for that night, not Lavender."

"You don't know that for sure. No one heard him clearly. And anyway, that could have meant anything. Maybe he was having a nightmare."

Harry pulled a face. "If you say so. Anyway, I just thought you might ... you know, want to visit him. Find out what's going on with him and Lavender. She's your room-mate, after all."

"That doesn't make it any of my business," Hermione reminded him.

Harry exhaled hard and dropped all pretense. "Look... Just go and visit him. He asks about you every time I see him. I can't keep making excuses for you."

"I never asked you to!"

"I'm not doing it for your sake, but for Ron's. It hurts him that you won't visit."

"I will. I've been busy."

"That's what I told him."

"I mean, I am still his friend."

"Of course."

"But I'm not trying to be his girlfriend."

"I didn't think you were."

"Just so it's clear. He's better off with Lavender."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing. I mean, just what I said. He and Lavender are good together. I'm not interested in him like that."

"All right then. So you'll visit him tonight?"

"Sure," Hermione agreed, feeling that Harry had maneuvered her into that very nicely. "If there's still time after I finish my homework," she added.

"Great," Harry said with a big smile.

Hermione watched him head off down the corridor with the distinct feeling that she'd been had. She just hoped that Ron wasn't in on this set-up. She really wasn't interested in Ron as a boyfriend, and she really did want him and Lavender to get along. But it was also true that they had been the best of friends for five years, and, as a friend, she really should pay him a personal visit in the hospital wing. And besides, if he knew what had happened to Hermione on Halloween, he would run back to Lavender faster than you could say Amortentia.

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Hermione put all thoughts Ron out of her head for the rest of the day. She might have conveniently forgotten about her promised visit altogether if Lavender and Parvati hadn't come flouncing into their room that evening, Lavender complaining that Ron had been asleep yet again when she'd tried to visit him just now, before promptly falling silent when she saw Hermione.

Hermione sighed to herself. This was silly. Ron needed to be set straight. And she needed to clear her conscience. There was only about an hour left before Madam Pomfrey would shoo all visitors out for the night anyway. She wouldn't have to stay for long.

Hermione cast a quick Impervius Charm on her homework - not that she didn't trust her roommates, but there had been that unfortunate incident with the perfume in fourth year - and slipped out of the room, leaving the two other girls to their discussion.

When she got to the hospital wing, she was unsurprised to see Ron sitting up in bed, scanning through a Quidditch Illustrated and munching on an apple. He must have figured that Lavender wouldn't be back so quickly, and dropped the pretense of being asleep. When he saw who his visitor was, he flipped the magazine shut and stuffed the core onto the already overfull nightstand.

"Hermione!" he said, clearly fighting not to smile too broadly.

"Hello, Ron." Hermione tried to project a friendly yet aloof air.

"Uh... Here, you can sit here." He leaned over to push a stack of magazines off the chair beside his bed.

"Thank you." She sat and smiled at him nervously. All of a sudden, she realized she had no idea what to say. She hadn't planned this at all. Ron smiled back, apparently equally ill at ease.

"So," Hermione said finally.

"Hi," he said, looking at her expectantly.

"It's ... good to see you doing better," Hermione said politely.

"Oh yeah, I'm loads better," Ron agreed. "Felt pretty grotty the first couple of days. Puked more than you'd believe," he informed her cheerfully.

"That's... great," Hermione said. "I mean about you being better. Not about the ... puking."

"Cheers. Too bad about me having to miss the game, though."

"The game? Oh... you mean Quidditch." Although she didn't particularly want to talk about Quidditch, it seemed a nice, safe subject. Better than Lavender, at any rate. "Yes, it's really too bad," she commiserated. "Did you know that Harry is going to put that oaf McLaggen in as Keeper?"

"I heard," Ron said glumly.

"Not that he'll hold a candle to you, of course," Hermione assured him.

"Really? He was awfully good at tryouts."

"Maybe, but you were better." She thought it high time they got on to something else; she didn't want him to re-live the Keeper tryouts too closely. "Well," she said briskly, "I just wanted you to know that everyone's looking forward to you coming back. Especially..." Her face grew hot and she looked away, feeling like the biggest busybody in Hogwarts, but it had to be done. "Lavender." She checked quickly to see Ron's reaction. Her stomach gave a little squeeze when she saw his smile freeze in place.

"Lavender?" he asked in a strange sort of voice.

"Yes, you know. Your girlfriend?"

Ron swallowed visibly and his smile faltered.

"I'm not really..." He looked down and started playing with the blanket. "I mean, yeah, I like Lav a lot. She's a great girl. But it's just not--" He looked at Hermione. "You know what I'm saying?"

Hermione panicked. She knew. She just knew what Ron was going to tell her. She had to stop him before he made a big mistake.

And so, before she even had a chance to consider the consequences of what she was saying, she blurted out, "Ron, I was raped."

Her eyes got big. She wanted to take it back, but the words hung there in the air between them, forever defining their relationship from that moment forward. Her heart felt like it had skipped a beat before re-starting with a huge thud. The empty seconds dragged on like a lifetime.

Ron stared at her, his mouth still open with the rest of his previous sentence hanging there. He had his fists balled up in the blanket, twisting it around.

Finally, he managed to scrape out, "What?" in a very small voice.

Hermione looked down at her hands. This was it. This was the end. He would never want to have anything to do with her after this.

"I was raped," she repeated, very quietly. Saying it the second time was easier. Somehow, it made it more manageable to put it into those small words and have it spoken here, in this familiar place.

"What? When?! What--" He hardly seemed to be able to put a coherent thought together. Very probably, he couldn't.

"It happened a while ago. Last year."

"Bloody-- Where was I? Why didn't you say anything? What happened?"

Hermione gathered her reserves. She was going to have to tell him. At least an edited version. She couldn't tell him about Snape. She still felt a sense of obligation to Dumbledore, or at least to whatever plans were brewing, not to jeopardize the outcome.

"It was Death Eaters. Voldemort made them kidnap us. Me and three other Muggleborns. No one knew. No one can know now, either. They did it to shut down Hogwarts. We kept it secret so that the school could stay open."

"I don't understand."

Hermione was irritated. Why did she have to explain everything to everyone, and especially to Ron? But, it was a role she was familiar with, and one that she couldn't turn down. Trust Ron to turn such a highly emotional conversation into something familiar and non-threatening. And so she explained how their silence thwarted Lord Voldemort's plot, just as if it were a lecture from class that he had failed to understand the first time round. She also told him why Sandy and Lisa weren't at school anymore, and made him swear not to tell anyone else. As she talked, Ron sat silently listening. Hermione at first wondered whether he even tuly realized what she was saying. What 'rape' meant.

Finally, though, when she had finished, Ron looked her steadily in the eye and announced, quite calmly, as if it were the only logical thing to say, "I'll kill him."

"Ron, you can't--I mean, they all had masks on. We couldn't see who they were." That much was true. She was not going to lie to him, if she could help it.

"It doesn't matter. I'll track him down, somehow, and kill him." Hermione knew that look. It was the same look he'd had when he'd made the decision to sacrifice himself in that crazy chess game their first year. A mixture of bravado, determination, and disbelief at his own audacity.

"That won't help, Ron," Hermione sighed, knowing full well that she wouldn't be able to dissuade him from doing what he thought was right.

"But I have to do something!" Looking at his distraught expression, Hermione realized this was his way of showing he cared about her. That he wanted, somehow, to make it all right again for her. Only he couldn't ever make it right, and he knew it.

"Then help Harry get Voldemort. He's to blame. The others... The ones who did it..." The thought of the chess game came back to her. "They were only pawns, like us. It wasn't about their power or their pleasure. If they had refused, Voldemort would probably have killed them, or at the very least punished them somehow, and found some more loyal follower to take their place."

"But what they did to you--- God, Hermione, how can you try to excuse it?"

"I'm not excusing it," she said quietly, looking at her hands. "I'm just saying, I think the ... perpetrators ... I think they suffered, too. Can you imagine what it would be like, to have to hurt someone like that? What if you had to cast the Cruciatus on another student? Or worse?"

"If it was Malfoy, I don't think I'd have a problem with it," Ron answered darkly.

"But it wasn't Malfoy." At least, he hadn't been the one who had attacked her. "And even if it had been, he wouldn't willingly do something so hateful--"

"How do you know?" Ron interrupted. "They hate all Muggleborns!"

"I know, but... I don't think even Malfoy would take pleasure in it. Oh, sure, he likes calling other people names or scaring them, but he wouldn't actually hurt anyone. It's not like he hasn't had opportunities, either, and what's the worst he's ever done? Hexed my teeth. Dressed up like a Dementor."

"He nearly killed Harry with that stunt!"

"But he didn't mean to!"

"There you go again, trying to defend the bad guys!" Ron seemed quite distraught.

"I'm not! What I mean is... What he did was wrong, but he didn't try to hurt Harry. He could have snuck up into the game on his broom - it was so stormy, no one would have seen him -- and cursed Harry--badly. But he didn't.

"When Umbridge was in charge, do you think she would have cared if Malfoy and his cronies on the Inquisitorial Squad had beaten up me, or Harry, or anyone they didn't like? Not a chance. He probably would have gotten an award for Special Services to the School. But he never did anything like that. He just called people names and deducted points."

"Alright, so Malfoy's a coward. But that's all kid stuff compared to what those bastards did to you! How can you sit there and be so calm about it?"

"I've had a lot of time to think about it, I guess. At first, I was just... numb, I think. I didn't know how I was supposed to react, so I just tried to forget it and go on. But inside I was angry. Really, really angry. I think I let some of it out on you. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? Don't be! I just wish you'd told me back then instead of waiting until now."

"Maybe I should have. I couldn't, though. I don't know, I think I thought that if I didn't tell anyone, it would make it not have happened." She smiled wanly. "Mad, I know."

"It's not mad. I don't know what I would have done if it'd been me. Probably offed meself or something..." He tried to make it a joke, but realized too late how terribly insensitive it was. And, quite possibly, accurate. "You didn't... I mean, obviously, you didn't, you're here, aren't you?"

"No, I didn't," she agreed, not wanting to tell him about that night on the Astronomy tower. Maybe another time.

"But... and now? How ..." Ron let his eye wander down over Hermione's body. She squirmed inside, but didn't flinch. Of course now he would be thinking of her naked, a Death Eater standing over her. He was quite possibly even imagining her being penetrated, wondering what position it had occurred in. She steeled herself for his next question, but was a bit nonplussed when it turned out to be nothing more threatening than: "How are you?"

A simple question. How could she possibly answer? An unwanted sob rose in her throat. She fought against it. She would not cry. She didn't want to pull Ron in any deeper emotionally.

"I'm okay, Ron," she struggled to say. "I'm going to be okay." She couldn't tell whether he believed her.

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