'Yeah,' the Harry part of him agreed. 'If you hide it now they'll make fun of you for the idea and then make fun of you some more when the truth comes out .' He would just have to grit his teeth and do it.
"Actually, Ron," he said embarrassed. "I kinda have."
"What? Who?"
"You know who, Ron," Harry said, remembering what Hermione had told him in her first letter. "It's Hermione."
"Oh, her. That's nothing then," Ron said with a wave. "You've never looked at her twice."
"I asked her to go out with me," he countered.
"And why didn't you tell me?" Ron asked, the stubborn look returning to his face.
"Why didn't you tell me she liked me?" Harry shot back and it looked to him like it scored a direct hit to the gut.
"Oh," a somber-looking Ron said, the pink coloring coming back into his cheeks. "She told you about that."
"Well, yeah, it kind of came up," he said. "That's why I didn't tell you I was writing to her in the first place. I knew you didn't really like her that much."
"Who said I didn't like her?" Ron demanded.
"You did. You kept calling her mental and said she was nosy."
"Well, she was being nosy," Ron defended himself. "She thought I had you hidden under my bed or something."
"Oh, right." Harry had forgotten that part.
"Is she the real reason you're doing all this?" Ron asked, gesturing to the books on Harry's desk. "I'm starting to think she's a bad influence on you."
"I happen to think she's a good influence on me," Harry said defensively. "But I'd be studying either way, Ron. Everything I said before was true. Hermione and I both have a lot to learn if we're going to make it in the wizarding world."
Ron still didn't look too happy. Harry didn't get it. Why was he being so resistant to the idea he and Hermione might get along on some deeper level? It wasn't as if-
Suddenly everything clicked into place. He had never asked Hermione about the awkward conversation with Ron she had mentioned in her first letter. With everything else going on there was simply so much to talk about he'd forgotten about it. But now - It was a possibility he hadn't thought about before, and not one he'd thought even remotely possible in a thousand years.
"You don't, er - like Hermione, do you?" Harry asked.
"I just said I don't dislike her," Ron said.
"No, I mean, you don't like her like her, do you?" he clarified.
Ron's ears suddenly became so red they threatened to burst into flame.
"Y- N- It's-," his best mate stammered. "Well, I don't know!" Ron looked like he deeply regretted ever coming through the door.
"How do you not know?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.
"It's jus-," Ron floundered, looking for something to say. "I dunno . I mean, she's a girl, and she's there -," he said before petering out, as if realizing he didn't have anything else to go on.
'That's it?' Harry marveled at the situation. 'The hundreds of reasons to like Hermione boiled down to: She's a girl and she was there?' What about how she runs off to the Library when she just has to know something? Or the way she goes 'OH MY GOD!' in her letters? And the little -smile- she includes when she's being a little flirty and how it makes him want to see what it looks like in person? There was so much more to Hermione than just being there .
"It's not like any other girl talks to us. And, I don't know," Ron said, finally grasping at straws. "She screams like mad when it comes to Quidditch."
Harry thought he knew why Hermione hadn't brought this up either, this really was getting awkward.
"You didn't - you know - tell her you liked her, did you?" he asked Ron.
If Harry had thought it was awkward before, the look on Ron's face made it ten times worse.
"Well what was I supposed to do?" Ron asked. "I mean, there she was going on about her friend and how much she liked him. You'd been up in the hospital wing for days and I was right there . What was I supposed to think?"
And with that the lights came on in Harry's head and the whole thing turned around.
"So you thought Hermione was trying to ask you out," Harry clarified.
"Well, yeah. Wouldn't you?" Ron asked. "I mean, growing up, we all knew muggles did things backwards, so why not this?"
"So you said you liked her because you thought she was saying she liked you," Harry summed up.
"Exactly!" Ron agreed.
"And then she said it wasn't about you at all," Harry burst his bubble by taking the next logical step.
A shadow passed across Ron's face.
"Yeah," Ron said sourly. "It was a lousy thing to do."
"So you didn't tell me because?" Harry prompted, trying to keep his irritation at his best mate under control.
"Because I wanted to get back at her!" Ron explained. "It was a dirty rotten trick. She deserved to pay for what she did."
"She didn't mean to trick you, Ron," Harry said, his insides warring between being angry on Hermione's behalf and actually seeing it from Ron's point of view. "She probably didn't even know you'd take it that way."
"How could she not know?" Ron asked in absurd mockery of his own earlier question.
"Because she's a muggleborn," Harry said, finally seeing a way out and hoping the muggleborn thing could finally be a good thing for once. "You said yourself that muggles do everything backwards, so how could she be expected to know what a wizard would think about something like that?"
Harry waited with bated breath as his best mate seemed to give it his full attention and he swore on his potentially-Slytherin grandparents if everything somehow worked out with his two best friends he'd never say anything bad about Slytherins again. 'Except for Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle,' he added to himself. 'And all those other idiots like them. And Snape; definitely Snape .' The potions master had earned his spot as pride of place on his list of detestable Slytherins.
"I didn't think of it like that," Ron said finally. "You two are just so good at everything that it's hard to think of you as muggleborns. Or, I don't really know what to call you," Ron said scratching his head, "not a wizard-born, that's a Squib."
"Muggle-raised?" Harry offered.
"That works," his friend nodded. "You two could probably write a book about all this stuff. 'Harry Potter's Muggle-Raised Guide to All Things Muggle. ' Nuts like my dad would buy out the whole printing."
"Don't say that to Hermione," Harry chuckled, "or she might actually do it."
"Yeah," Ron smiled. "That's one mad girlfriend you got there, Harry."
Harry smiled. Even once her answer arrived he had never thought of her as that. The fact it was a smiling Ron who dubbed her his girlfriend seemed to make it official in some way.
"Oh, and um-," a rather chagrined Ron said. "Sorry for not telling you. It really didn't have anything to do with you. Well, that did, but not - you know."
"I know, Ron," Harry smiled, feeling a huge weight lift off his shoulders. Maybe things would turn out alright after all. "I'm sure Hermione will apologize when it's explained to her."
"Yeah," Ron scoffed. "And then Snape will ask for your autograph."
A pair of quick knocks had his door open again and see a smiling Fred and George enter.
'Oh great,' Harry thought miserably. 'Why did it have to start now? '
"What are you two grinning at?" Ron asked.
"It's Percy-," George said, smiling like they'd found a cache of Christmas presents.
"-He's got himself a girlfriend ." Fred said, reveling in the reveal.
"He can join the club then," Ron said. "Harry's got one too!"
.....
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