I walked into the common room, and my eyes found Ron and Lavender together, kissing in our favourite chair, their bodies entwined, their hands running through each other’s hair. I stopped in shock. I thought he had agreed to go to Slughorn's party with me...an official date. How could he do this to me? The longer I stood there watching, the more shocked and upset I felt. I couldn't stand the sight of the guy I loved the most kissing a girl whom I considered to be a close friend. I ran out of the portrait in tears and darted into the nearest classroom. I cried until I didn’t have any more tears to cry. In my anger, I started practising a new spell that we had learned in Transfiguration. I heard a knock on the door and turned around to see Harry come into the classroom. Obviously, he had seen me run from the common room and came to see if I was okay.
'Hermione?'
'Oh, hello, Harry... I was just practising.'
'Yeah… they're – er – really good….'**
I decided to get right to the point, not hiding that I was upset.
'Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations.'
'Er... does he?'
‘Don't pretend you didn't see him. He wasn't exactly hiding it, was –?'**
I saw the door open, and Ron and Lavender entered the room. How badly I wanted to jinx them just for laughing in my face. Lavender obviously realised I was upset as she backed out of the room. I couldn’t handle being in the same room as him. Everything had changed.
'You shouldn't leave Lavender waiting outside. She'll wonder where you've gone.'**
I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to leave the room. I went to go out of the room and heard Ron take a breath of relief. How dare he?! How dare he think he'd gotten off lightly! I decided to teach him a lesson.
'Oppugno!' **I cried, setting the birds that I had created from thin air on him, pecking his hands.... He deserves it, I thought.
As I left the room, I burst into tears. I couldn't believe that it had come to this. Yes, we had had our arguments in the past. We had gotten through them like when he had accused Crookshanks of eating Scabbers, and also when I became friendly with Viktor Krum. But this was something bigger... much bigger than ever before. There was no way back from here; I could never forgive him for this.
I went back to the dormitory, got myself ready for bed, and started crying again. Any moment now, that tart would be coming in and having a deep sleep, probably dreaming of Ron and how she had won his heart. In the morning, she would probably start flaunting her new relationship and make me look pathetic compared to her.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. Lavender seemed more keen on Ron than ever. Ron on the other hand, seemed like he was drawing away from her and kept trying to avoid her. I thought that it was just a phase that all relationships went through, but deep down I knew that it was finally on its way down from the top.
Then came his fateful birthday when he got poisoned, and I thought I was going to lose him forever. I remember Ginny running toward me in the Great Hall, telling me that Ron was in the hospital wing . I thought my heart was going to stop. I knew that I didn’t want to lose him anymore than I already had. I ran to the hospital wing and saw that Harry was waiting outside. He told me and Ginny that Ron must have drunk a spiked drink that was meant for Dumbledore. First Katie Bell was in St Mungo’s after having touched a cursed necklace and now this. When we were finally allowed in the hospital wing, I looked at Ron, and I just wanted to hug him, just to let him know I was there and that I wanted us to be back to normal.
For the first time in hours, I spoke when the conversation came to who was meant to be poisoned. As the bottle that Ron had been drinking from was meant for Dumbledore, they speculated that it was for him.
'Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well. Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d keep something that tasty for himself.'***
I heard Ron mumble, 'Er-my-nee'*** when he heard my voice.
I felt a relief inside me. It was my name he said and not Lavender's. It was me he longed to be there and not her. That’s when I knew that there was more to the reason behind his relationship with Lavender than he was letting on. Everyday, I went to visit him in the hospital wing, and we talked like nothing had happened. It was wonderful to be back to the way we were, before he started going out with Lavender. Sparks started to fly. There were moments when we nearly kissed, but we managed to hold off. We both agreed that it was wrong for us to even consider going that far. I knew that this was the light at the end of the dark tunnel that been running for months. Whilst things were happening between me and Ron, Lavender was getting more aware of the fact that he wanted out of the relationship. So she kept clinging on.
There was one night when he was struggling with an essay on boggarts set by Snape, because he was using one of those silly quills from his brothers' joke shop, so I offered to tidy it up. Then he said the three words that I longed to hear. Even if we weren’t dating at the time, even if he didn’t mean it in that way, it still meant a lot to me.
'Hermione, I love you.'
‘Don’t let Lavender hear you saying that.' ****I felt my cheeks burning red. Oh my god, I'm being so obvious!
'I won’t. Or maybe I will… then she'll ditch me.' ****
Coward, I thought, but the point was that he said he loved me. Not his girlfriend, but me. I knew then that he was getting fed up with the relationship with Lavender, and I was sure that it was me he wanted to be with.
A couple of weeks later, Ron, Harry, and I were in the boys dormitory helping Harry prepare to get a memory from Slughorn for his lessons with Dumbledore. He went under the invisibility cloak after taking some lucky potion. Looking back now, I think and truly believe that it helped with the break up of Lavender and Ron.
As Ron and I walked from the dorm into the common room, she saw us come down.
'What were you doing up there with her?'*****
'Uh, uh nothing... we were just talking.'
'Oh don’t lie, Ron! It’s been obvious that you have been trying to break up with me for weeks! When all this time you've been seeing her!'
'Lavender, it wasn't like that. We are just friends!'
'I don’t care, Ronald! I have had enough... we're over! Now you two don’t have to sneak around anymore!'
As she stormed out of the common room up to the dorm, Ron looked at me and said, 'Well, that could have been a lot worse!'
I smiled at him. Even though it was now okay for us to be normal again and try to make progress, I still felt guilty. Even though she was a cow when they first went out, she was my friend, and I wanted her to know the truth. Later on that evening, I went upstairs to the dorm to find Lavender crying into her pillow.
'Are you happy now, Hermione? I knew you were jealous of us from the start, but to do that to me! I thought we were friends! Friends don’t do stuff like that to each other!'
'Lavender - we were generally talking, but I can understand how you are feeling. And I just want you to know that I do feel bad. I feel even worse that he told me he loved me when you were still together.'
'What? But why would he say that if you weren’t doing anything together, and if he was with me?'
'Maybe because he realised how much he wanted me. Lavender, you're a bright girl; I thought you knew how he felt about me.'
'I did, but I guess I just fooled myself into thinking that he was over you. I fooled myself into thinking that it was just a crush that went away.'
'I know that it will take sometime to get over, but please don’t let this upset our friendship, will you?'
'I'll try.'
And even now, I still feel bad, but I know that Lavender knew deep down that she was no match compared to me.
Authors notes:
** taken from the UK version Half Blood Prince page 282/283, Felix Felicis
***taken from the UK version of Half Blood Prince, page 376, Elf Tails
**** taken from the UK version of Half Blood Prince, page 421, The Unknowable Room
***** taken from the UK version of Half Blood Price page 447, After the burial
Light at the end of a tunnel by megan_grace1405
Chapter Notes: I'd like to thank my wonderful Beta Chelsea for helping me get this just right
Disclaimer: I don't any of the characters in this fan fiction, I'm just playing around with them a little bit
oh and the title is inspired from the fantastic song 'smile' by Lily Allen