What I\'ve Always Known

Disclaimer: I do not own anything but the plot

Ron Speaks

Snow had begun to pepper the ground around Hogwarts castle as the Christmas holidays drew ever nearer. There was a certain air of anticipation around the halls as students found it harder and harder to pay attention to their studies. Something their professor’s found very irksome indeed.

“Potter! ” Snape’s roar echoed through the dungeons one Monday afternoon during double potions.

“Yes Professor Sir?!” Harry sat bolt upright and looked around frantically. He had been sleeping face down on his desk, using his open copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi as a pillow.

“Kindly see me after class and we will attempt once more to fill that painfully empty skull of yours.” Snape hissed in an icy tone.

Hermione threw Harry a sympathetic glance over her shoulder. Harry merely continued to blush. While Snape continued to banter on about what ingredient required for the Deceitful Draught they were about to brew, Hermione turned back to Ron, her partner who had been silently sitting beside her the entire class. He hadn’t even so much as glanced her way when he sat down beside her.

“If any of you manage to brew this correctly, which I am highly doubtful of, the drinker will not be able to make one honest statement for the approximate duration of sixty minutes. What Thomas?” Snape answered Dean Thomas’s waving hand.

“Sir, exactly what is this potion used for?” He asked timidly. Snape peered down his greasy nose at Dean, apparently surprised a Gryffindor had asked such a relevant question. Begrudgingly, he answered:

“This particular brew is most usually force fed to a person who is in classified in danger of divulging private information.” The class stared blankly. Snape sighed and started speaking in a slow, clear tone as though they were Flobberworms. “That is to say, the Deceitful Draught is fed to an individual, most often without their knowledge or consent, when that individual is likely to expose undisclosed information, or a secret.” Snape rolled his eyes and flicked his wand at the board behind him.

“Directions,” One more flick of his wand at a cabinet. “Ingredients. You have eighty minutes. Start.”

Snape settled himself behind his desk to mark third year’s essays while half of the students started towards the cabinet and the other half set up their cauldrons. Hermione turned to tell Ron she would get the ingredients, hoping to get him to talk to her, but ended up facing an empty stool. She started and whipped around the room, slightly alarmed. She spotted his telltale ginger at the ingredients cabinet. He had already joined the throng students all jostling each other for the same ingredients.

Sighing with disappointment at the missed opportunity for some kind of communication, she got off her stool and kneeled down by their cauldron. Poking her wand beneath, she started a small, purple fire as many of the students had already done. Resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, she gazed around the room at the other students. Silver eyes met hers from the backbench. Hermione’s stomach did an automatic back flip of its own accord. Draco smiled and winked as Goyle nearly broke his wand trying to start a fire beneath their cauldron. Hermione was on the verge of biting her lip at him when several objects were slammed down near her head on the desk. Hermione started and whirled around. Ron was staring down, two inches to the left of her eyes, jaw clenched, nostrils flared, breathing as though he had just run clear around the castle.

“Weasley, kindly do not break everything within reach of your ridiculously long limbs.” Snape said darkly without so much as glancing up from the essay he was scrutinizing. Slytherins laughed while Gryffindors glared at their potions master, but Ron didn’t even take notice of Snape’s cruel put-down.

Hermione held eye contact with Ron, while he held eye contact with a stool leg for what felt like an eternity. No one else in the
class mattered in the desperate seconds Hermione hoped he would look at her. Finally, Ron broke the spell by turning to get their first ingredients out of the disheveled assortment on the desktop. Hermione read the instructions aloud from the blackboard and Ron stiffly handed her the appropriate amount of the ingredients. Hermione tried to concentrate on the potion stir five times clockwise, add seven hairs of tortoise… but found herself glancing up at Ron constantly. He stared straight ahead, making no movement except measuring and handing her ingredients.

Hermione had finally had enough when she read a completely ridiculous ingredient on purpose and Ron still handed her the correct amount of the correct ingredient.

“Alright,” she huffed, shooting up into a standing position. “It’s not like the Ron Weasley I know to have such a strong opinion about something and remain quiet this long. This is getting absurd Ron, please just talk to me.”

Ron continued staring straight ahead; neither moving nor speaking for so long Hermione feared he wouldn’t even acknowledge she had spoken. But then…

“Not here.” He grunted. Hermione’s eyes widened with surprise he had finally spoken. Not understanding but not wanting to end their first ‘conversation’ in weeks, she quickly nodded.

“Where then?” She asked.

“Library, lunch.” He said shortly, almost as though it wasn’t really him speaking those words.

“I’ll be there.” She said, and turned back to their cauldron with the next ingredient in hand. She had a thousand questions she was burning to ask, but she knew better than to push him. She would just have to be satisfied with what she had for now.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Hermione made her way slowly between the dusty rows of volumes to the back of the library. Ron was most likely sitting at one of the tables. Even though she was facing one of her best friends of six years, her stomach twisted itself into nervous knots as she cleared the last row.

“Ron?” She said quietly into the musty stillness. A rustle of movement to her right caught her eye. She turned to see Ron sitting on the window sill facing her. Still not making eye contact, he instead chose to study the pattern of the rug under her feet. Hermione made her way over to him and took a seat in one of the chairs near his feet. She sat down, anticipating having to coax him into talking. On the contrary, as soon as her bottom made contact with the chair, outraged words burst from his mouth.

“Hermione Jane Granger, I have a question to answer all questions: what’s wrong with you?! Draco Malfoy for Christ’s sake! Malfoy ! The enemy! What on earth motivated you to…go with someone who has treated you lower than Basilisk dung! In all the time I’ve known you; you have never done something as stupid and obviously reckless as this! If you’re trying to get to me or Harry, mission accomplished! Point taken! And now he’s almost gotten you pregnant, unless you want to make my day and tell me it wasn’t him. Let’s start at the beginning of this bloody facade shall we? At the beginning of term…”

And on and on he went. Hermione thought he would never shut up. So far he was at least acting human and being relatively fair
to her. He had not been too patronizing. So far anyway.

By the time Ron had finished ranting to his satisfaction he was sweating and very red in the face. Breathing like a rhinoceros, he
loosened the tie around his neck while Hermione leaned back in her chair with her eyes wide. The both of them simply sat awhile as Ron collected himself and Hermione took it all in.

“Well,” Hermione croaked after a while. “Ron I-“

“Don’t say anything. Just think about it.” Ron said quietly. He took up his bag and swiftly exited the library.

Hermione put her face in her hands as the bell rang, feeling nothing but shock left in Ron’s wake. Numbly she got up and made her way to Charms, unaware of the pangs of hunger in her stomach.

No one in her afternoon classes seemed to notice her unusual silence. Harry simply let her sit, having made an educated guess as to why she was so deep in thought. Ron sat on Harry’s other side, involved in his work. When it came time for dinner, they sat in the same arrangement, Hermione touching nothing on her plate, Harry and Ron being typical boys and devouring everything within reach.

Following their meal, the three of them tried to do homework until Hermione was ready to scream. Excusing herself curtly, she exited the portrait hole, gave a hasty hello to Nearly Headless Nick, and made her way to the Owlery.

When she reached the sanctity of the circular, stone room, Hermione took a deep, relaxing breath, grateful to be away from people for a while. A flutter from above made Hermione jump a little as Hedwig landed smoothly on her shoulder.

“Hey Hedwig,” Hermione whispered, stroking her snowy white neck. Hedwig hooted in reply. Hermione wandered casually over to a window, admiring the golden sunset. Streaks of gold shot through sapphire blue sky as the last sliver of the yellow sun dipped below the horizon. Hedwig’s large amber eyes surveyed the Hogwarts grounds, searching for her evening meal while Hermione mulled over everything Ron had said, or rather, ranted to her that lunch hour.

It all made horrible sense, yet at the same time, she couldn’t argue with that feeling in her heart and soul; that truly perplexing feeling that everything was as it should be. Draco had made some earth-shattering changes, changes she was sure were sincere. Even Harry believed Draco’s true character was shining through for the first time since they had all met him. Ron was one of her best friends, true. But she was in love with Draco, his so called “enemy”.

Spotting potential prey, Hedwig opened her wings and soared through the open window to the grounds below, breaking Hermione’s train of thought.

“Someone must be hungry,” Hermione smiled to herself. As if on cue, her stomach gave a rather large rumble, remind her that she had not eaten anything since breakfast. Hermione sighed. This was too complicated for one person. She needed to find Harry.

Her mind made up, she exited the tower, not sure if she felt better or not.