Harry was not aware that he had picked up the wrong mug from the table until he took a long pull and suddenly found himself choking on a mouthful of bitters. This came as quite a shock to his tongue, which had been expecting the smooth caress of butterbeer. Having no recourse in the crowded pub, he swallowed, shuddering violently.
"Sorry, mate," Ron said, quickly sliding his mug back to the wet ring which marked its original resting place and restoring Harry's mug to its proper place. The plate of sausage and mash which the barman had set before him was so large that it took up nearly half of the small table, prompting Ron to move his pint to Harry's side of the table to prevent it from being upset.
Catching up his own mug, Harry washed the stout from his palate with a large gulp of butterbeer. He allowed his eyes to take in Ron's morning repast, and he shuddered again.
"You call that breakfast?" he said.
"Big day today," Ron said through a mouthful of sausage. "Three interviews, all on different continents, mind. Deadline, you know. Might not have time for lunch, so I'm combining the two, you might say." Taking a great pull from his mug, he stifled a burp and tapped his cheek thoughtfully with his fork. "Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I was never so glad in my life as when Ginny and Neville made it official on Christmas last. I wrote you about that, didn't I?" Harry nodded. "Blimey, with both of us traveling so much, it's all I can do to remember the last time we sat down like this. Anyway, there's a bit more to it than I put in the letter. The upshoot is, Ginny finally slammed the door on Dean and turned the key in the lock. 'Bout ruddy time is all I can say."
"That bad, was it?" Harry said innocently, though he already knew the story far better than Ron could have imagined.
"Worse," Ron said in a low, confidential undertone. "He'd been tryin' to get her to pose for him."
"Well?" Harry said indifferently. "He is an artist."
"He wanted her to pose nude!" Ron hissed.
"He probably just wanted to see the real Ginny, to paint the 'woman underneath,'" Harry offered.
"He wanted to see her bristols is what he wanted," Ron said. "He knows Ginny isn't that sort, you know, so he figured he'd do a fly-around the goalposts, as it were. All for flippin' art's sake, he said. And Ginny was buyin' his goods straight off the back of the cart! But he didn't fool me, and I went straight to Neville and told him he'd ruddy well better jump on the hippogriff and kick it in the arse, or sure as there's an M in Merlin, Ginny's knickers would be hanging from the doorknob in Dean's studio!"
Harry suppressed a grin with a Herculean effort. He knew, as Ron did not (and, Merlin willing, never would), the real story behind Dean's "proposition." Luna had been urging Neville to propose for months, but Neville's courage, which had proved rock solid in the final skirmish against Voldemort, was the consistency of watery porridge when it came to affairs of the heart. Dean had therefore acted at Luna's direction, both of them knowing that Ron would do exactly as he had done, thus spurring Neville to take immediate action or (so he was led to believe) risk losing Ginny forever. Luna was forced in short order to take Harry into her confidence, knowing as she did that his own protectiveness of Ginny was the equal of Ron's, made all the more dangerous by Harry's Auror training. Better to confide in Harry before he turned Dean into a salamander and threatened to feed him to Hedwig. The scheme had worked like one of Flitwick's Charms, and the three conspirators vowed to take the secret to their graves.
"Funny you should take such an interest in Ginny's virtue," Harry said idly as he scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs and inhaled them with gusto. "I don't recall you showing as much concern for Luna's."
"Completely different," Ron said evasively. "Comparing centaurs and unicorns, that is." Lowering his voice, he said with a devilish glint in his eye, "You'd never know it to look at her, but blimey, you turn the lights down and she transforms faster than a werewolf under a full moon. All in the nature of the beast, innit?" A wicked grin flashed briefly before retreating just as quickly. "But all witches aren't Luna, are they? Take Hermione, now."
Harry froze as if hit by a Stunning Spell.
"She's been living in France for three years," Ron went on. "And you know those French blokes -- saw 'em in action during the Yule Ball, didn't we? But can you really see Hermione's knickers hanging on a bedpost in a castle up in the French Alps? I mean, come on!"
A momentary chill traversed Harry's spine. It was a scene he had conjured in his mind, far too often for his liking.
"But," Ron concluded, "now that she's back, I reckon that's one owl that won't get the chance to roost, eh?"
Harry's fork slipped from his hand and rang softly on his plate. "How did you find out? I only learned myself an hour ago."
"Dad," Ron said simply as he washed down a helping of mashed potatoes with a swig from his mug.
Harry should have known better than to ask. Ron's dad was the Minister of Magic, after all; it was probably at Arthur's recommendation that Hermione had been engaged in her new position in the MLE division. When Harry picked up his fork and resumed his breakfast in silence, Ron raised a fiery eyebrow.
"Still carryin' the torch, eh?"
Harry's eyes shot up briefly before falling once more onto his plate.
"What is it with you two?" Ron said off-handedly as he poked the tail end of a sausage into his mouth and chewed. "The way you got on all through Seventh Year, I thought sure you'd be picking out a flat together before the ink was dry on our graduation certificates. Instead, she moves back with her parents, then bam, off she goes to France without so much as a goodbye snog."
Harry would have preferred not to answer. If it were anyone else asking, he'd have shrugged the question off, or maybe told the questioner to shut his ruddy pie hole. But if anyone had a right to ask such a question, it was Ron; and more, he had a right to an answer.
"We had...issues," Harry said before stuffing a piece of bacon into his mouth.
Ron paused halfway through his second sausage and looked at Harry seriously. If Ron interrupted his meal, any meal, Harry knew, it was an action not to be taken lightly.
"It started after we...after..." Harry paused, and Ron's blue eyes widened, then narrowed.
"You mean...?"
Harry nodded. "After Hermione and I took down V -- " Harry caught himself, remembering that he was in a crowded public venue. In a whisper, he continued: "After Voldemort was destroyed, we grew...close -- closer than either of us could have imagined."
"Too right there," Ron affirmed reverently. "I don't reckon anyone ever shared as much as you two did that day. But," he added in a puzzled voice, "we all figured that that would have -- well -- sealed the bargain, you know? Dumbledore said something about the two of you being forged in the same fire, whatever that means. But however you look at it, everyone thought you two would be together forever."
"So did I," Harry said, so softly that Ron only just made out the words.
"Then what happened?" Ron repeated.
When Harry spoke, following a pause so long that a Time-Freezing Spell might have been cast over the Leaky Cauldron, it was in a voice that seemed to echo from a deep canyon at the bottom of his soul.
"You know I was taking N.E.W.T. classes in preparation for a career as an Auror. After Voldemort fell, I was even more determined to make it my life's work. To me, it wasn't enough that we'd stopped Voldemort. I wanted to work so that no one else would ever try to build on Voldemort's mad dreams. He wasn't the first to think the way he did, and he ruddy well won't be the last. It goes all the way back to his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. It maybe even goes back to the first bloke who discovered he had magical blood and decided it made him better than his mates. All I knew was, no matter when it started, I was going to do my best to see it end. And that meant taking down everyone who I thought had a chance of taking Voldemort's place and raising his crusade standard again. And I didn't have to look far."
Ron's eyes grew hard as sapphires. "Malfoy."
"When I told Hermione what I intended, I thought she'd be with me all the way. After all, she knows what Malfoy is as much as anyone. She knows what he's done, and what he's still capable of. After his father died at Voldemort's side, he publicly renounced the Dark Arts. Just as Lucius did when Voldemort fell the first time. And we all know how hollow that promise was, don't we?"
Ron saw the bitterness in Harry's eyes, a look he recognized all too well. It was the dead look Harry had worn for a long time following the Battle of the Ministry at the end of their fifth year at Hogwarts. Acting as Voldemort's lieutenant, Lucius had led the squad of Death Eaters who had lain in wait for Harry that night -- the night that Harry had lost Sirius.
In the weeks and months that followed, many had sought to salve Harry's soul-wound by asserting that Sirius was not dead, merely lost. But the knowledge that his godfather might be trapped in a realm somewhere on the razor's edge between life and death was, if possible, an even greater burden on his soul than had he seen Sirius struck down before his eyes with the Killing Curse. The latter event, while undeniably tragic, would nevertheless have permitted Harry the dignity of mourning his loss, of healing properly. Instead, Harry, much like Sirius himself, was left in a sort of twilight zone, a border country lying somewhere between hope and hopelessness. In an unguarded moment, Harry had confided to Ron that the feeling was like being locked away in his old cupboard at the Dursleys, the difference being that this time the key was in his hand, just waiting for him to turn it -- but try as he might, he could not fit the key into the lock.
"I even invited her to join me," Harry went on, snapping Ron out of his reverie. "Told her she'd make a smashing Auror. We could've been a team, like Frank and Alice Longbottom. Malfoy wouldn't stand a chance against the two of us. But when I held my hand out," he said in a voice thick with emotion, "she backed away -- she looked at me like -- like the way Mr. Crouch did when he thought I'd conjured the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup. She told me that I was letting the anger and hatred from all those years -- and even before Hogwarts, when the Dursleys were treating me like a sort of vile mold that'd turned up on a Christmas pudding -- I was letting it destroy me. She said that I was doing to myself what Voldemort and Malfoy never had. And she said that she couldn't stand by and watch me make a mockery out of all we had accomplished that day. She told me I had a choice. She said Dumbledore had arranged for her to go off to Beauxbatons to study Advanced Charms, and she wanted me to take a year off and go along. She said I needed time to think things through, to sort out my feelings.
"She'd found a rooming house in a little wizarding village near Beauxbatons -- I never could pronounce the name -- she said I could stay there with her, and we could talk things out, walk the countryside, forget about the war against the Dark Side. All she wanted was one year. After that, if I still wanted to enter the Auror training program, she'd support me all the way."
Ron's half-eaten sausage was lying, forgotten, on his plate. His hand gripped the handle of his mug, but he did not lift it from the table.
"I never knew that," he said hoarsely.
"Her mum told me later that she waited in the parlor for five hours before she finally said goodbye and left," Harry said. "It was only when her dad went out to check the post that he spotted the letter I'd left on the door with a Sticking Charm.
"Afterwards, I started sending Hedwig off across the Channel, just...hoping, you know? One day she came back with a letter in a Beauxbatons envelope. It was a bit on the formal side, but it was a start, and after a while we began to write fairly regularly. But something was missing. Even when it seemed that things were back the way they were, I knew they weren't. She never said it, never even hinted. But I knew that she never forgave me for not seeing her off personally that day. I mean, leaving her a bleedin' note, for Merlin's sake -- hardly an example of courage one would expect from a future Auror, was it?
"Then, starting last year, the letters started coming less frequently. I wasn't sure if it was because Hermione's work load was intensifying -- or if she got tired of pretending that the wall between us wasn't really there, when we both knew it was. I almost didn't bother reading the last few letters. They'd all been pretty much the same for a long time. It was like we were writing simply out of routine now. I'm sure my letters seemed just as tedious in her eyes. I was nearing the end of my own training, and it was all I could think about then, how I'd finally be doing my part to keep the world safe from Dark wizards. Then I started at the Ministry, and I kept going on about ferreting out Voldemort's old mates and all that. Maybe that's what put her off from writing as often these last few months. I never mentioned Malfoy by name, but Hermione's not stupid. I should have had more sense than to go rabbiting on like that. All I was doing was opening old wounds, reminding her of the wedge that drove us apart in the first place. Wouldn't surprise me if she'd chucked my letters in the dustbin, too. They weren't exactly worth pressing in a scrapbook.
"Still, I wonder...what if I'd opened that last letter, the one Hedwig delivered just this morning? Would I have gone in to work as usual, knowing that Hermione might be there waiting for me? Or would I have pulled the covers over my head and..."
"Done a Ron Weasley?" Ron suggested, his familiar grin creeping over his face.
Harry made a sound that was half cough, half chuckle. "Something like that."
Ron's grin broadened. "So, now she's back. Where do you go from here?"
Harry merely shook his head before picking up the last piece of bacon (now cold) from his plate and biting the end off. "Any ideas?"
"Well," Ron said thoughtfully, "as it happens, Luna invited Ginny and Neville over tomorrow night. Wedding plans and all that. She's sure to want to welcome Hermione back properly -- and it goes without saying that Ginny is dying to see her 'big sister' again after so long. If she and Luna aren't sending Hermione an owl right now, inviting her over, then I don't know either one of them. I know you won't be able to make the game tomorrow, what with your new assignment and all -- I know, you can't talk about it, so I won't ask -- but you get off at six, right? And you have to eat dinner somewhere. I mean, if Luna can invite Hermione over, I can invite my best mate, too, can't I?" Ron declined his head toward Harry, arching an eyebrow meaningfully.
"And if your invitation just happens to be for the same night as Luna's?" Harry smirked. "Mate, Hermione will see right through us like one of Trelawney's ruddy crystals."
"Exactly," Ron said triumphantly. "If I don't invite you, she'll be off center all night expecting you to pop in. Plus, since she obviously will expect us to set her up like a bowling pin, so to speak, she'll feel right content when she's proven right, won't she? I mean, that's Hermione all over, innit? And that being the case, we're obliged to set her up, aren't we? It would be an insult to her intelligence and logic if we didn't!"
"You've been hanging around Luna too flippin' long," Harry grinned. "Next thing you'll be telling me that the Queen has a herd of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks grazing on the back lawn at Buckingham Palace, waiting to be trained as polo ponies." But when Ron continued to fix Harry with his imploring stare, there was nothing else for it. Harry nodded.
"Smashing!" Ron crowed, stuffing cold sausage into his mouth until his cheeks bulged.
Note From Fae: First, a big high-five to all those who reviewed and expressed their enthusiastic interest in the story. It's highly appreciated, believe me.
To a certain danielerin, I can't wait for you all to learn exactly what I requested, either. It's been two months since my birthday, which means I've pretty much forgotten the story. So every time I post, I'm sort of "re-discovering" it along with you guys and recalling all the awesome things I loved about it. I can honestly say I've never read a story like this one, but then again, that doesn't mean a similar one doesn't exist somewhere out there in the fandom.
As for cheering charm's request for daily updates, that's not *entirely* do-able, but Stoneheart DID leave it up to me to decide how often we update, since it's MY birthday present. **big , cheesy grin** Anyway, let me know what you guys want and I'll see what I can do. Don't forget, Stoneheart has a work schedule, too, so we have to be a little lenient.
And also, to Hermiones Pheonix, the only thing I can recommend is for you to keep reading. I sort of see why you might think Hermione's a *bit* pompous, but she really isn't in this story. But that's also a matter of interpretation, so I guess we'll have to see what you think later on. :)
OK, guys, let Stoneheart (and me!) know what you thought! Toodles!