A/N: You've read all the way up to chapter seven? I'm both shocked and impressed...
Hermione crossed the common room and took a seat next to Ron on a squashy maroon couch.
"Ronald, do you remember the plan?" she asked him, putting her hand on his shoulder.
"Huh?"
Hermione shook her head. "The plan for this afternoon!"
"Oh right, that one, of course," he replied. "I know what I'm supposed to do!"
"Good," Hermione said with a devious grin. "Can you imagine the looks on their faces?"
Ron laughed. "I know! They're probably all happy with themselves, thinking their notes brought us together..."
"Well they did, didn't they?"
Harry woke up abruptly and, much to his horror, discovered that he had slept through about an hour of potions class. Or at least it felt like an hour, he thought to himself as he checked his watch (apparently he had only been asleep for five minutes.) Why did time always move slower when Snape was around? Harry pondered this while he moved his eyes back to the greasy potions teacher in the front of the room.
"Now," Snape was saying, "I will separate you into teams of two. If either partner does anything incorrectly, both partners will be penalized. You will not complain about the partner I choose for you.”
Harry sighed. Obviously Snape was going to pair him with someone he hated. Snape would never miss an opportunity to make Harry miserable. Gazing wistfully up at the ceiling he wished that somehow, time would speed up so he could get this over with. Naturally, time slowed down even more.
“Mister Longbottom,” he began. “You will work with Mister Goyle. Go.”
Grimacing, Neville looked over at Goyle who was presently folding his parchment into an origami flamingo. Goyle was rather good at it, actually, but Neville doubted he possessed any skill in potions.
“Mister Potter,” Snape went on, brushing some of his greasy hair out of his face. “You will be working with Mister Malfoy.”
“NO PROFESSOR!”
Immediately the entire class turned to face Malfoy, who had risen out of his seat.
“Mister Malfoy, is there something wrong?” Snape said.
“Yes Professor,” Malfoy began uneasily. “I…I can’t work with Potter.”
“Why not?”
“Because…things would be uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“Because Potter’s not…” Draco paused, searching for an appropriate word. “Potter’s not the straightest road on the map.”
Snape’s eyebrows went up, making his nose appear even more elongated. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“He…he swings both ways, if you know what I mean,” Draco stammered.
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake, THE BOY’S A PANSY!”
It was things like this that made Harry wish he could apparate.
Ginny smiled to herself as she walked with Harry, Lavender, and Neville into the Gryffindor common room. She had just done a very good thing, a noble thing if you will. Ron and Hermione would’ve never been able to get together on their own because of the stubbornness that characterized each of them. Without her, she thought to herself, both of them would be miserable.
At first everything seemed completely normal. A small fire was blazing in the fireplace as heavy rain fell outside the window. A group of first years were playing chess in the center of the room and at the far end, two seventh year boys were attempting to transfigure a particularly ugly photograph into a porcupine. And then Ginny’s eyes fell upon Ron and Hermione, talking quietly in the corner.
It did not take Ginny very long to realize that Ron and Hermione’s conversation was not a pleasant one. Ron seemed to be pleading to her while Hermione listened with her arms crossed. They were arguing, but Ginny wasn’t sure why.
She didn’t have to wonder for long. Soon, Ron and Hermione’s argument became loud.
“I can’t believe you’d lie to me!” Hermione bellowed. “I trusted you Ronald!”
“I never lied to you, you’re mad!” Ron snapped in response. “You’re just making up an excuse to get angry at me!”
“Oh sure, lie some more why don’t you?” Hermione laughed. “You are so insensitive!”
“ Insensitive? Me? Ha!” Ron retorted. “You’re just looking for a reason to fight!”
“Why would I want to fight with you?”
“I don’t know, you’re the mental one!”
Ginny’s heart sank. She was no genius, but it was clear to her that Ron and Hermione were not passionately in love.
“What happened?” she asked Hermione, after she stormed away from Ron.
“Ron’s trying to pull some sort of prank on me,” she replied. “First he sent me a love note, but when I asked him about it, he denied ever sending it! Then he accused me of sending a note to him!”
“Well that’s no reason to argue!” Ginny exclaimed.
“That’s just what started the argument!” Hermione explained. “After that we started arguing about plenty of other things!”
Ginny clasped her hand over her mouth. She was trying to get them together…but now had succeeded in tearing them apart. This was not what she had intended to do. She needed to fix this.
“C’mon Hermione,” she pleaded. “Ron’s an idiot, you know that!”
“Yes I do, and that is exactly the reason why I am not speaking to him!”
“But ““
“I don’t want to talk about it!”
And with that, Hermione stormed angrily out of the room, her arms crossed and her nose in the air. Immediately Ginny rushed over to her brother, hoping that she would have better luck with him.
“Ron, this whole thing is stupid,” Ginny said to him.
“I know,” he replied. “It’s incredibly stupid.”
“I mean, who cares who sent those notes?”
“Well, it’s not really the notes that we were fighting about,” he explained to her, running his hands through his hair. “The note thing just started it!”
“Well what was it that you were arguing about?”
“Bagels.”
Ginny blinked. Bagels? Certainly he couldn’t have said bagels. Not even her stupid brother would be stupid enough to jeopardize his friendship with Hermione over bagels.
“What was that again?” Ginny said.
“Bagels,” Ron repeated. “Obviously butter is the best thing to put on a bagel, but crazy old Hermione seems to think that cream cheese is better! Ha! That is so like her.”
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Exactly,” Ron agreed. “And THAT is why I am no longer speaking to Hermione.”
And with that he stormed out of the common room.
Ron met up with Hermione in the library right after their “argument” in the common room. Both were grinning widely.
“Do you think they bought it?” Hermione asked him hopefully.
“I think so,” Ron replied. “Ginny seemed a bit skeptical at first when I told her we were arguing over bagels, but in the end I think we convinced her that we hate each other.”
“When do you think we should tell them we were pretending?” Hermione inquired, putting her hand on Ron’s arm.
“Hmm…” Ron thought, taking Hermione’s other hand. “I say we let Ginny go crazy for about another hour or so, and then tell her that we made the whole thing up.”
“We’re so evil,” Hermione said as Ron pulled her in closer.
“ Very evil…”
A/N: And there you go, chapter…what is it again, I lost count…six? No it’s seven isn’t it. ANYHOO! Please review because I feed off of reviews and if I do not get my daily required amount of them, I begin to think I am Napoleon and talk incessantly to my peers about my plots for conquering Europe. And no one wants that. And remember: my author page “ banners “ stories “ there you go.