Roman Holiday

Chapter Fifty-Five

They were scheduled to visit Hogsmeade, the third weekend in January. But to say that the weather proved inclement would be the equivalent, Hermione thought ruefully, of referring to the Giant Squid as a maki roll. That whole week prior, it had snowed - steadily on and on, one storm piled on another, until the drifts reached to the middle of Hagrid's thighs, meaning everyone else's shoulders, and the swirling of white-on-white outside the windows seemed to Hermione like an extension of the aggrieved static in her brain: vaguely foreboding, searching in vain for a signal that made sense.

Herbology had been cancelled until further notice, as had Care of Magical Creatures. By the time they could have fought their way through the drifts to the greenhouses, or down to the gamekeeper's cottage, they would have frostbite and the class would be over. Homework in their remaining classes, meanwhile, was minimal; the faculty were preoccupied and irritable and, Hermione suspected, not much in the mood for grading assignments or reading papers.

They could have done with a touch more homework right now, in her opinion - the student body, in unconscious reaction to their teachers' lack of academic focus, seemed restive and jittery, unsure of how to handle their half-holiday. The Gryffindor common room in particular, historic haven of sophomoric hijinks as it was, seethed with latent energy looking for a likely outlet.

Filch, as a result, was working overtime. And complaining every step of the way.

Harry and Ginny, for their part, had progressed in their relationship from Mutual Avoidance to a peculiar form of mating ritual that involved thinly-veiled insults and sarcastic, snarky asides just loud enough to be overheard by their intended target. Because they both appeared to be enjoying this so much, Hermione decided to take it as a hopeful sign - and invited both of them, this particular Saturday evening, for conversation and Bunsen-burner cocoa in Elysium.

After a bit of soul-searching, she decided to invite Ron, too.

**

She had expected Ron to be outraged upon discovering the identity of her current paramour, but the vibe she was getting wasn't so much anger as it was extreme discomfort. The other Gryffindors might send her worried, assessing glances from the corners of their eyes when they thought she wasn't looking - the Slytherins might hiss and whisper among themselves when they passed her in the halls. But Ron's regard lay on her heavily and openly, his handsome face an open book of troubled concern overlaid with ... with ... well, with she-didn't-know-what. And though he made no efforts to hide this, he went out of his way to avoid situations where the two of them might find themselves alone.

It had gone on for nearly three weeks, and that was long enough. Hermione decided to take the matter in hand, and went in search of him.

In the end, she found him in the Owlery, absently stroking Pigwidgeon's feathery little belly and staring moodily out toward the Quidditch stands - if they couldn't walk outside in this weather, it was a sure bet that no one was going to let them fly, and Hermione had often thought that Ron, despite his more ordinary, less-astounding talent, loved Quidditch far more than Harry. He turned around when he heard footsteps, then, seeing that it was her, turned back toward the window. Hermione came up beside him and busied herself for a few minutes with scratching an ecstatic Pig under his nonexistent chin.

"It's bound to let up sooner or later," she offered finally, as an ice-breaker. "You'll be back on broomstick in no time."

He nodded, but his glum look deepened. "Trelawney's predicting hail for the rest of next week."

"Trelawney," said Hermione with a touch of asperity, "couldn't predict jam on toast." Ron snickered reluctantly.

"That class got a whole lot less interesting when you left it," he said. "Harry and I used to sit there and wish you were still there to hear some of the crap she pulled. It's never as good when you repeat it second-hand."

Hermione snorted in mock outrage. "So I'm a source of amusement now, eh? Glad to know that my misery at the hands of that old bat went to some use, at least." She peered at his profile intently - was that the start of a smile she saw? "Ron," she said. "We have to talk. You haven't said three words in a row to me for almost a month now." She took a deep breath. " I miss you."

Ron's face went from cautious amusement to careful, noncommittal blankness. "Seems to me," he said slowly, "that you've had plenty of distractions. My presence surely shouldn't make that much of a difference."

"You know that's not true." Hermione shouldered in closer, dislodging a disgruntled Pigwidgeon from the windowsill so she could sit on it and face Ron full-on. "We've been friends," she said urgently, "for six years. Since we were babies. When you're angry with me, I feel it. Believe me."

His lips compressed, and he dropped his eyes. "I'm not angry with you, Hermione."

"Then what is it, if it's not anger?" she asked quietly. "Something's wrong between us, I can tell. And I don't want this to be like third-year, when we went months without speaking over something silly."

That, she realized immediately, was the wrong thing to say.

"Silly?" Ron queried sharply. "You sleep with him, with the son of my father's worst enemy, and you don't even have the decency to pretend that it's serious?"

"That's not what I meant," Hermione protested. "Of course it's serious!" She glared at him. "You know me better than that, Ron. I wouldn't sleep with him if I didn't care about him - if he didn't care about me, too."

At that, Ron seemed to deflate. "No," he admitted. "You wouldn't, would you?"

He studied her for a moment, opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

"What?" Hermione prodded gently, and he laughed - a short, sharp sound utterly without humour.

"I was just thinking that this is exactly like Quidditch," he said. "My instincts are good, but my timing sucks."

Hermione frowned. "Sorry?"

He gave her a look so full of bittersweet candour that she almost recoiled from it. "I thought you were still pining over Krum, last year," he said. "You don't know how many times I wanted to ask you out and then didn't at the last minute. I was psyching myself up for it, all summer ... and then you started getting those damned secret-admirer notes, our very first morning back." He shook his head. "Those were Malfoy's, too?"

Hermione nodded. Ron's mouth twisted in a grim smile.

"Figures. And then - over the last few weeks - I've been thinking, and it's the worst thought of all." He hesitated. Hermione laid an encouraging hand on his arm.

"Yes?"

"Well, it's just ..." He closed his eyes against a suspicious glitter of moisture. "Even if there was no Malfoy, Hermione - it was never going to be me, was it? And I had always thought it would be, you see."

Hermione felt her heart crack, felt tears shimmer behind her lashes. Oh, Ron, she thought, and would have reached out for him if she'd thought he'd let her. "I can't answer that," she said quietly. "I really don't know."

"I wish I could hate him," Ron said, staring past her out the window. "I wish he hadn't beaten up Avery. I'd feel a whole lot more self-righteous if he was really the rat bastard I used to think he was."

"He's not."

"I know."

They stood in silence for another couple of minutes, staring out at the swirling snow, Pigwidgeon cheeping happily from his perch on Ron's shoulder. "Ron?" Hermione ventured finally.

"Yeah."

She swallowed hard. "As long as we're talking again ..."

He stiffened. "Yeah?"

"Well, there are some other things I need to fill you in on," she said. "Maybe we'd better go somewhere where we can sit down."

**

So there they all were, the next night, sprawled on conjured pillows next to Elysium's merrily crackling hearth and - for the moment, at least - putting aside their differences in the interest of biscuits and hot chocolate, though Draco looked wary, Ron still seemed a bit uncomfortable, and Harry and Ginny were sending each other smoldering glances over their cocoa cups. Hermione made a mental note to lend Ginny Like Water for Chocolate - in the absence of a boyfriend with a clue, it was the witch's perfect romance novel - and adroitly steered the conversation into neutral waters.

Check that. Not neutral, exactly. But there was nothing like a good mystery for breeding solidarity among the disparate.

Dumbledore and his staff, they all agreed, had begun acting oddly ever since Lucius Malfoy's second visit. Therefore, it was a pretty sure bet that the impending threat had to do with him.

The only other thing they knew for certain was that they were all possible targets.

"Let's count the clichÈs," Ginny said, swallowing the last of her biscuit and holding up one finger. "Harry's the Boy who Lived. Draco's the Fils du Couteau and also the Prodigal Son. You and I, Ron, are Symbols of His Political Opposition. And Hermione ..."

Ron snorted. "Hermione," he said, "you're no clichÈ. Not from the story I've heard." He took a sip of hot chocolate. "You're just the biggest pain in the arse he's ever had to deal with, that's all. Everything he's set in place, you've knocked to smithereens. He must loathe you."

They all stared at each other, acknowledging the truth of this.

"Right," Harry said quietly. "If he goes after anyone, it's going to be you. So you're the one we'll watch."

Hermione made a face. "If it were just me," she said tartly, "we wouldn't all be locked in the castle, now, would we? My guess is that the Hogwarts castle is warded against hostile enchantments, to a greater extent than the grounds. We may be Voldemort's most annoying enemies, but we aren't his greatest ones. I'm going to have to put Dumbledore at the top of that list." She paused. "And Snape."

"Snape?" Ron asked, startled (Hermione, not tempting fate, had decided to tactfully leave her Illuminata Encounter out of his version of the story, and had kept Snape securely in his role as Faculty Advisor). "What does he have to do with anything?"

Draco, though, was nodding in agreement. "You're right," he said, then turned to Ron. "Snape isn't a Death Eater anymore," he said. "Not even an ex-Death Eater. He burned off the Dark Mark using undiluted Illuminata, and if I understand anything about the way it works, probably did some damage to Voldemort in the process. That Mark wasn't just a tattoo - it was an magical conduit for Dark enchantments. Lucius has long suspected that Voldemort can read his mind through it, and I know he can communicate that way. I've seen it happen."

They all stared at him, open-mouthed. He shrugged.

"What can I say? He welcomes it. He's a psychotic."

"But Snape," Ginny said, and Draco nodded again.

"Exactly. There aren't two men born who are more different than Lucius Malfoy and Snape. He probably hated that thing."

"You don't happen to know," Hermione said slowly, "how long he was a Death Eater, do you?"

Draco shook his head. "I don't know when he joined," he said. "But I know why he quit. Lucius was in rages about it for weeks."

He hesitated, took another sip of his hot chocolate, then gave Harry an unreadable look that might have contained an element of compassion in its grey depths. "Snape went to Dumbledore," he said, "the minute he found out that your parents were being considered for possible assassination by Voldemort and his cabal of freakshows. And he never went back again."

**

The next week proved sunny and almost mild - "just another nail in the coffin of Trelawney's credibility," Hermione exulted to Ron; "I told you!" In the wake of the sunshine, Lucius Malfoy reappeared, demanding a private audience with his son. Draco was duly summoned, and Hermione waited impatiently outside the door, underneath the Invisibility Cloak, for his return. He was out within fifteen minutes, carrying a parcel under his arm and looking bewildered.

"What did he want?" Hermione asked once they were safely in Elysium, and Draco shrugged.

"It was weird. He was all ... fatherly. Patted me on the shoulder and apologized for shouting at Christmas. Gave me some new robes that my mother sent ... not that I'll wear them, I think. Here. Take a look."

They ran every Dark Magic detector against those robes they could think of, and even took them down to Sal for suggestions, but they seemed perfectly innocuous. Draco took them to Dumbledore for disposal anyway - "just to be on the safe side," he murmured to Hermione.

She didn't blame him, not one little bit.

Paths were cleared to the greenhouses and Hagrid's cottage, whether by manual means or magical they didn't know, but in any event classes resumed - though the extra security measures remained. It would be a miracle, Draco murmured to Hermione, if the Hogsmeade visit was rescheduled ... surely under these circumstances, it would have been called off regardless of the weather.

But the sign-up list went up on the activities board the very next day; apparently Dumbledore was prepared to bend to threats only so far, when doing so meant the disruption of school routine. After a short, tense discussion, all five of them signed up to go.

That Saturday dawned clear and brisk; after a look outside, Hermione pulled on dungarees and a woolly jumper to wear under her robes, dug a pair of insulated boots out of the bottom of her closet in case the Hogsmeade roads weren't well-cleared, and tucked a pair of gloves into the interior pocket of her robes. Her charm bracelet jingled as she brushed her hair, and her lips curved affectionately; just two days previously, Draco had borrowed the bracelet back overnight and then returned it with two additional charms attached - the Keyhole, shrunk to miniature and silver-plated with her monogram ornately engraved on the cover, and the matching key.

"In case," he'd said, "we get cold and want to come back early."

He really was sweet.

She dabbed on sunscreen (her mother's advice: you keep your skin all your life, you know) and lip gloss (Gram's: you never know who you might meet on your way to lunch), stuffed a few Sickles into her dungarees pocket, and headed for the stairs. She found the rest of them waiting for her with tense, expectant looks on their faces; the minute her feet hit the floor of the Entrance Hall, they exploded with whispers.

"On the steps ..."

"Madam Pomfrey ..."

"You won't believe this ..."

Frowning, Hermione slipped through the goggling crowd and peered over a third-year's shoulder at the front steps. Just as usual, Professor McGonagall was standing there to check off names. Beside her, however, was Madam Pomfrey. And beside her was a huge box full of tiny glittering phials.

"Drink one now," she was directing Justin Finch-Fletchley. "And take one for later." Justin shot a questioning look at Professor McGonagall, who nodded crisply.

"These," she announced loudly to the line of waiting students, "are to be used only in case of emergency. If you are accosted by anyone unfamiliar - anyone at all - you are to break the top of the phial and drink it immediately!"

Hermione's mouth fell open.

Before they left the grounds, she realised with a jolt, they were all being provided with a double dose of Protection Potion.

Whatever it was that wasn't right with the world, it was worse than she'd thought.

**