1 Fic for #95 - Black Out, 2 Fics for #96 - Out of Time
Title: Blackout Blues
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, references to nudity, nothing big
Characters/Pairing: Harry Potter, Moaning Myrtle
Summary: During a blackout, Harry and Myrtle bond.
Word Count: 1,123
Author's Notes: Challenge #95: Black Out
Registered purchases?: None.
“Ooooh, Harry, are you supposed to be in here?” With a splash of water and a giggle, Moaning Myrtle flew from the second stall of the Prefects’ bathroom and floated above Harry’s head.
Harry grabbed at the scant bubble around him and sighed. “No, Myrtle.” He’d been relaxing against the tiles, taking a moment to think about the events that had befallen him, trying to clear his mind so he’d no longer be wondering…what next?
“Have you another clue for us to decipher? Or have you come just to see me?” She bats her eyelashes, magnified behind her bottle-cap glasses. Her hands run through one of her ponytails and beams at him.
“Neither. I just wanted a bubble bath is all,” he replies somewhat shortly. He had been too immersed in his thoughts to bother with the ghost.
“So you haven’t come to see me.” The ghostly girl settles on the side of the tile bath, dipping her legs into the tub. She sniffs loudly. “You haven’t come to see me in a while. I keep moving from bathroom to bathroom, hoping to see you…I don’t go in the boy’s room, so I guess you spend much of your time in there.” A squeaky sob escapes her.
Knowing a relaxing bath would quickly turn sour if he didn’t make things right, Harry clears his throat. “I didn’t come to see you, but seeing you just makes this visit all the better. I can’t just go into girls’ rooms to see you, Myrtle.”
The girl’s face crumbles. “BUT THERE ARE NO GIRLS WHO COME IN MY BATHROOM. NO ONE COMES IN MY BATHROOM.” Her sobs turn into wails and Harry tries to shush her, but to no avail. The wailing continues, high pitched and ghastly. As Myrtle stops to catch her breath, the room plunges into darkness. She gives one last squeak and then falls into silence.
“M-Myrtle?” Harry turns to grab his towel, but he can’t find it in the dark. He runs his hands along the sides of the tub, but the towel must be somewhere out of his grasp.
“Right here,” Myrtle says to his immediate right, directly in his ear. “I’m so scared. What happened? Does someone hate me so much they that would turn out the lights on us? Or are they mad at you, Harry?”
“I think the electricity just went out,” he says, shying away from the sound of her voice. “Can you get me my towel?”
“Yes, sure, let me just-NO I CAN’T GET YOU YOUR TOWEL. I CAN’T GET YOU ANYTHING.” The wailing begins again, and Harry mentally slaps himself for saying something so stupid. He turns and leans against the tile, once again scrambling for his towel.
“I’m sorry, Myrtle.” He reaches all around, too afraid to climb from the tub and be left naked in front of Myrtle when the electricity kicked back in. “I didn’t think.”
She sniffs, and he realizes she’s now on his left side. “Ow!”
“What?”
“You just-you just reached through me!” She begins to sob.
“I’m sorry, Myrtle, but I can’t see you!” He thinks about it for a moment. “Wait-you can feel when I reach through you?”
She lets out a cry. “No!”
“Then how did you know I did?”
“I didn’t.” She draws a shaky breath. “I just guessed.”
Harry sighs.
“What are we going to do, Harry? I could go down to the second floor and yell for help…but no one will come and help me, no one ever doooooooooes,” she wails.
Harry tries to calm her. “It’s alright, Myrtle. No one will come even if I call. They’re all going to be too busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with the lights. Don’t worry about it. If I can just find my towel-”
“Then what? You’ll find your towel and then you’ll get your clothes and you’re just going to leave me here in the daaaaaaaaaaarkkkk…all-all aloooooooooooone!”
“No, no, I’m not going to leave you. I’ll just stay here then. And we’ll talk…what would you like to talk about?” Harry worries that the bubbles in his bath water will be gone before the lights come back on, but perhaps he can make a quick jump for his towel.
“Let’s talk about why you never come back to visit meeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
“Myrtle, CALM DOWN.”
She sobs, now on his right. “Hold me, Harry!”
Unsure of what to do, Harry brings his hands from the water and makes an awkward hugging motion to a ghost he cannot touch or see. “It’s okay, Myrtle, it’s alright.”
“All I ever wanted was friends. That’s all I wanted, and I never had any when I was in school. And I don’t even have any now. I’m going to be here at Hogwarts forever and I’m never going to have any frieeeeeeeeeeeeends.” The closeness of her voice told him that he was at least doing a decent job of “holding her.”
“That’s not true. I’m your friend, Myrtle.”
“But you don’t come to visit meeeeeeeeeeeeee,” she cries.
“I’m visiting you now. There’s no one I’d rather be in a blackout with, believe me,” Harry lies.
“Not even that girl? Not even Hermione?”
“No, not even Hermione. Well, especially not Hermione…she’d be giving me the entire history of electricity about now.”
To his surprise, Myrtle begins to giggle. “She does seem to know it all.”
Harry laughs as well. “That’s an understatement.”
“And what about that red-headed friend of yours? The one with the big eyes? You wouldn’t want to be stuck in a blackout with him either?”
“Ron?” Harry laughs again. “He’d have already been in the fetal position in a corner somewhere. Most likely crying. He’d be no help and no good to talk to either!”
Myrtle laughs loudly, a high-pitched giggle that goes on so long she has to catch her breath. As she trails off, the lights flash once and then come back on. Harry is laughing too, so much so that he hardly notices the lights are back on until Myrtle makes a sort of growl in the back of her throat.
“Ooooh, Harry, your bubbles are gone!”
He lunges for his towel while she giggles and drifts toward the second stall where she’d come from. She turns her back to him while he stands and wraps the towel around his waist.
“Will you come back and visit me, Harry?”
He smiles. “Yes, Myrtle, I guess I will.”
She grins back at him and giggles. “Maybe next time I won’t even have to turn off the lights.” She dives into the toilet with a screeching laugh, kicked up water in her wake, leaving Harry standing, staring up at the light bulbs.
Title: The Tribulations of High Heels
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters/Pairing: Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, Hermione/Ron
Summary: Set prior to the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball, Hermione thinks about Ron as she prepares for the ball.
Word Count: 1392
Author's Notes: Challenge #96: Out of Time; companion piece to The Tribulations of the Apologetic (posted directly below this one)
Registered purchases?: None.
20 minutes until the ball.
20 minutes until she meets Victor Krum at the end of stairs. 20 minutes until Harry and Ron and the rest of school finally know who she’s going to the ball with, 20 minutes until she gets to see the looks on their faces. The look on Ron’s face mostly, though she’s really not sure why she cares so much.
Hermione checks her appearance in the mirror. Freckles clouded by makeup, eyes darkened with shadow, cheeks pinked with blush. It’s not her face she’s looking at, she knows that. This is some other girl, a girl who Victor Krum would ask to the ball. Not the girl that spends endless hours scouring the library bookshelves.
He’s been there too, Victor has. She spotted him once or twice, always standing at the end of the aisle she’d chosen as her study spot, always when Harry and Ron were otherwise occupied. She’d seen him once pass by when she’d been with the other two boys, and he’d hardly glanced in her direction. Typical.
But he wasn’t ashamed of her. He’d asked her to the ball, of course, even when he had so many other, prettier, and older options. She wasn’t his last resort. He didn’t pity her. And when he’d asked, he’d even prefaced it with, “I’m sure you’ve had many other offers…” Ron didn’t even think she’d be able to get a date. Victor seemed to think that she was something special around Hogwarts, something more than a brain. And she liked that. She liked knowing that she was valued by someone for something other than how much help she could be in the next round of the Triwizard Tournament. Of course, Ron would probably think that’s exactly why he’d ask her. He’d probably think she was helping out Harry’s competition. Because she’d never been good enough for him, so how could she possibly be good enough for any famous Quidditch player with a perpetual line of under aged females following after him? Not unless he was using her to defeat her best friend at the tournament. Like she’d help Victor over Harry!
“Hermione?”
She turns toward the sound of Ginny’s voice. The younger girl stands in the doorway of Hermione’s chamber, wearing a dress that her mother had made and sent to her. Thankfully she’d not received the package when Ron was around, or otherwise he’d have been jealous at Ginny’s ball attire in comparison to his own outdated robes. Ginny’s dress could have been bought; it was so lovely, though it had a classic Molly Weasley flair about it.
“Does it look awful?” she asks and spins. The dress, mint collar, pink bodice, and pale green skirt with pink undertones, fans out around her. Molly had certainly outdone herself on her youngest child and only daughter. Especially in comparison to Ron’s dress robes, though Hermione had the idea that the dress robes could have easily been Fred and George’s doing, but she would not open her mouth to say such a thing.
“Of course it doesn’t. You look beautiful.” It’s true, though Hermione would have lied if need be. Ginny is thin and pale, and the light fabric made her look like a snow flake. The burst of pink around the middle made her hair and blushed cheeks pop. Around her neck was a mint green ribbon, and her hair was pulled away from her thin face, and she was now smiling broadly.
“Oh, thank you!” Ginny gives an excited little hop, then calms herself and smoothes down her dress. “Say, do you think…do you think Neville can dance?”
“Harry and Ron said he’s been practicing.” Hermione clasps back her curled hair, pulling some of the curls down and tugging them around her shoulder. “How’s my hair?”
“Lovely!” Ginny picks up a piece of her own straight hair and lets it fall again. “Oh, I wish I’d have curled my hair!”
“Yours looks lovely. Neville will love it.”
Ginny sighs. “It’s not Neville I’m worried about,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.
“Harry will love it then.”
Ginny yelps. “Not so loud!” Ginny’s crush on Harry is well-known around Gyffindor house. In fact, it’s well known around Hogwarts in general, but she simply refuses believe that anyone knows. Hermione just smiles at her.
“Hermione! You aren’t even dressed yet!” Ginny glances at the clock above Hermione’s head. “And you’ve just got 10 minutes! What are you waiting for? Let’s get your dress on!”
“I was fixing my hair, you saw me,” Hermione replies, though before Ginny had come in, she’d been…well, she’d been thinking about her feelings for Victor (and perhaps even Ron, if she let herself think it, and for a moment, she did). She tries to keep calm, but she can feel her heart beat in her chest and hear the blood pounding in her ears. She’s nervous, about Victor and Ron and the tournament and what people will say when they see Harry Potter’s best friend with Victor Krum at the ball. She shouldn’t care what people think, but she does. She cares too much about what Ron will think, most of all. “Help me out,” she says. She pulls the dress from her closet, pink-violet and in tiered ruffles, plops it on the floor and steps into it. She shrugs off her robe and pulls the dress up around her, slipping her arms through the shear sleeves. “Ginny? Can you zip me?”
The other girl stands stark still, mouth opened in a small ‘o’.
“What’s wrong?”
“That…that dress, it’s gorgeous,” Ginny says, her voice soft.
“Thank you, my mother picked it out for me.” Hermione often thought her mother regretted the fact that neither she nor Hermione’s father were wizards, and attempted to make up for it in gifts and in making Hermione’s “magic” experience all the more, well, magic. Hermione doesn’t blame them, of course, for the mud-blood taunts and the like, but they never seem to quite understand.
Ginny doesn’t move.
“Ginny! Five minutes, come on!”
Ginny jumps into action and zips up the dress. Hermione adjusts her hair once more and turns away from the mirror. “How do I look?”
“You look wonderful,” Ginny says with a smile. “But I told Neville I’d meet him down there early. I better run!” She gives Hermione a quick hug and skips out of the room.
Hermione glances at the clock. Three minutes now. Until the great reveal. She wonders what Ron will say to her, what he’ll think when she sees her take the customary first dance with Victor. Of course, with his love for Victor, he could rightly be more jealous of her than Victor.
Two minutes. She brushes off her dress and leaves her room. The few younger girls in the common room ohh and aww over her as she leaves. “Hermione, you look beautiful!” one younger girl shouts, running after her to brush away an invisible piece of lint from Hermione’s dress. “You should wear this dress all the time!” Her group of friends giggle, and they follow Hermione all the way to the entrance of the common room.
One minute. The chatter of the younger girls begins to fade away behind her. She sees Harry with Parvati at the bottom of the stairs, but Ron’s not there. She knew he was attending with Padma Patil. Maybe the other girl had thought better of this arrangement and had left Ron dateless. Poor thing. Probably off crying in his room. She looks past Harry and there’s Victor approaching her with a smile. She takes the stairs carefully, not used to these silly shoes. Victor offers her his arm and they’re called to line up. She’s more nervous now than she’d been at the stairs.
She walks into the room on Victor’s arm and catches a glance of shaggy red hair and silly dress robs and of Ron’s face when she enters. Red cheeks and gaping mouth and wide eyes. She averts her eyes from him and smiles to herself. She catches snippets of conversation from the students around her, “Hermione Granger?” “With Victor Krum?” “Well, she’s beautiful!” But none of that mattered, so long as she could picture Ron’s stunned face in her mind. Surely all the time it took to get ready was well worth it.
Title: The Tribulations of the Apologetic
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ron Weasley, Ron/Hermione
Summary: Set the day after to the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball, Ron thinks about his feelings for Hermione and how he can apologize to her.
Word Count: 1349
Author's Notes: Challenge #96: Out of Time; companion piece to The Tribulations of High Heels (posted directly above this one)
Registered purchases?: None.
20 minutes.
20 minutes until potions class, when he’ll see Hermione again.
He hadn’t seen her since after the ball, when he’d passed her, crying, on the stairs. He should have stopped then, instead of leaving her there with her shoes and her tears (and Harry), but he couldn’t. She’d infuriated him, mainly because she’d called him out exactly on his faults. He should have asked her to the ball himself, and he would have, too, but…he couldn’t get enough nerve. Hermione was his best friend, second to Harry of course, and you can’t just have a crush on your best friend. It’s just forbidden. And on top of that, Hermione was…well, she was Hermione. She made him angry just about 80% of the time, and the other times she was grabbing his hand or giving him a hug or making him blush in some other way.
He rolls his eyes at himself and nervously crosses the hallway to lean against the other side. A group of noisy Ravenclaw girls pass him, and one of them, the one he remembers from Hermione’s study group, throws him a glare that could easily slice through him. Word travels quickly around Hogwarts, especially when the news involved a crying girl and any immature boy. Ron had been called “immature” more times than once.
He didn’t believe he was immature. Fred and George were immature, with their silly jokes and their desire to go against every rule set for them. Ron is different. He’s not immature, he’s…scared. He’s always been a bit of a coward until Hogwarts. He still is, but he tries more desperately to hide it. With all the things he’s encountered so far at Hogwarts, it would do him no good to be scared. But honestly? Killer trees and soul-sucking black hoods and dark lords are of a completely different league than girls. And even all girls were in a completely different league than Hermione.
10 minutes.
He crosses to the other side of the hallway. A few students in his potions class have trickled into their seats, and they stare at him from the open doorway like they know what he’s about to do. He doesn’t want an audience. He stalks down the hallway a few more steps so he’s out of their sight. He knows he has to catch Hermione outside the classroom, because Snape would never allow them to talk in the classroom. He’d have his cold hand on the back of Ron’s head faster than he could say I’m sorry to Hermione, and then Ron’s face would be right in his potion’s book.
He’s not completely sure what he’s going to say to Hermione. He knows he should say he’s sorry, and that’s the first thing that comes to his mind, but he’s not exactly in his vocabulary. Plus, he can’t apologize to a girl. Especially not Hermione. That’s exactly what she’d want, and he’s never been one to let Hermione win. But he did feel bad…he shouldn’t have said the things he did. He should have known that Hermione would never do anything to compromise Harry’s participation in the Triwizard Tournament. She was always loyal to her friends; though, as her friend, he had to admit he didn’t feel exactly loyal to her. He hadn’t honestly thought she’d help Victor…he just…didn’t like the idea of Hermione and Victor…together.
Of course, he was the one to leave her crying on the stairs, though Harry stayed to help her back to the common room. That’s another reason he can’t think of Hermione that way. Because of Harry. He’d never discussed Hermione with Harry, because that would mean admitting that he had some sort of feelings for her. Did he? He still wasn’t sure. But he’d always had an idea that maybe it would be Harry and Hermione who eventually got together, who brought their bushy haired, lightning bolt scarred children to the Hogwarts reunion (yes, he knew lightning bolt scars were not genetic, but in his mind, Harry and Hermione’s children would have them). More and more, however, he felt himself growing jealous when he saw Harry and Hermione alone together, especially touching.
But who was he to break up true love, if that was the case? Ron didn’t really think of love that often. It was entirely too early in his life to think about love. He was still of half a mind to think that girls had cooties, but those thoughts were clearing, at least. He didn’t want to go to some silly dance with some silly girl, but he did want to go to a silly dance with…well, he’d wanted to go with Hermione. But why? She’d have probably said no, just to spite him.
Five minutes until class, which meant Hermione would be rounding the corner any moment, since she was always five minutes early. Though she’d probably cried herself to sleep or something and would be slow getting out of bed.
Four minutes. He hears Harry’s voice in the hallway. Hermione laughs. Of course they’d be together. If Ron had been brave enough to just stay in the common room to confront Hermione, he would have caught her before she even met up with Harry. But there were too many ears in the common room, and far too many Gryffindor girls who had already been whispering about him behind his back, just in the short walk from his room to breakfast to class. And if the Ravenclaw girls already knew, it would be far worse in his own common room. He’d chosen to shower, get dressed, and skip out of the common room early, before anyone could corner him and ask him why he’d treated Hermione that way. He had hoped and prayed he wouldn’t pass Victor Krum on the way to the Potions hallway (it was unlikely, but he always seemed to run into Victor in the strangest places…like the library, but that had been explained). He guesses he’s lucky it’s Harry with Hermione…it could have been Victor.
Three minutes. Harry and Hermione seem to have stopped somewhere up the hallway. He hears their voices, but they’re not moving any closer. He grows impatient and peeks around the corner. Hermione is shaking her head, and Harry pats her awkwardly on the shoulder. Once more, Ron has an odd, dropping feeling in his stomach at seeing Harry touch her. He ducks back around the corner. He can’t say anything to her, he knows he can’t. He can’t apologize, he can’t be jealous of Harry, he can’t like Hermione, of all the girls in this school.
Two minutes. He starts to make his way to the classroom, but Harry comes around the hallway corner and calls out to him. He turns and Hermione makes to walk around him, and he can’t just let her ignore him either and…girls! Harry makes wide-eyes at him and looks pointedly at Hermione, who is trying to blend into the wall as a group of bouncing Hufflepuffs file into the classroom.
“Hermione,” he starts, unsure of what he’ll say next.
She doesn’t look at him.
“Look, Hermione, I-”
He’s cut off with a cold hand on his scalp and he’s being pushed into the room beside Harry, arms flailing. Hermione is scampering to her seat in front of them without looking at him.
“Mr. Weasley, there will be no courting outside my classroom, if you please. To your seats.” Snape doesn’t have to command them because he’s already shoving them into their seats. Hermione throws them a glance over her shoulder, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. She turns away from him so her hair falls in front of half of her face. Ron clears his throat and tries once more to make eye contact with Hermione, but he feels his face being shoved into his potions voice, and he decides it’s better to just give up. He’d obviously set himself up for failure from the get-go.
The clock’s minute hand slides to place over the twelve, and Snape begins the lesson, and Ron loses all nerve.
Fic 1
Word Count points: 1123/30 = 37 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total points: 37
Fic 2
Word Count points: 1392/30 = 46 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total points: 46
Fic 3
Word Count points: 1349/30 = 45 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total Points: 45
Sara//Hufflepuff// 128 points total
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, references to nudity, nothing big
Characters/Pairing: Harry Potter, Moaning Myrtle
Summary: During a blackout, Harry and Myrtle bond.
Word Count: 1,123
Author's Notes: Challenge #95: Black Out
Registered purchases?: None.
“Ooooh, Harry, are you supposed to be in here?” With a splash of water and a giggle, Moaning Myrtle flew from the second stall of the Prefects’ bathroom and floated above Harry’s head.
Harry grabbed at the scant bubble around him and sighed. “No, Myrtle.” He’d been relaxing against the tiles, taking a moment to think about the events that had befallen him, trying to clear his mind so he’d no longer be wondering…what next?
“Have you another clue for us to decipher? Or have you come just to see me?” She bats her eyelashes, magnified behind her bottle-cap glasses. Her hands run through one of her ponytails and beams at him.
“Neither. I just wanted a bubble bath is all,” he replies somewhat shortly. He had been too immersed in his thoughts to bother with the ghost.
“So you haven’t come to see me.” The ghostly girl settles on the side of the tile bath, dipping her legs into the tub. She sniffs loudly. “You haven’t come to see me in a while. I keep moving from bathroom to bathroom, hoping to see you…I don’t go in the boy’s room, so I guess you spend much of your time in there.” A squeaky sob escapes her.
Knowing a relaxing bath would quickly turn sour if he didn’t make things right, Harry clears his throat. “I didn’t come to see you, but seeing you just makes this visit all the better. I can’t just go into girls’ rooms to see you, Myrtle.”
The girl’s face crumbles. “BUT THERE ARE NO GIRLS WHO COME IN MY BATHROOM. NO ONE COMES IN MY BATHROOM.” Her sobs turn into wails and Harry tries to shush her, but to no avail. The wailing continues, high pitched and ghastly. As Myrtle stops to catch her breath, the room plunges into darkness. She gives one last squeak and then falls into silence.
“M-Myrtle?” Harry turns to grab his towel, but he can’t find it in the dark. He runs his hands along the sides of the tub, but the towel must be somewhere out of his grasp.
“Right here,” Myrtle says to his immediate right, directly in his ear. “I’m so scared. What happened? Does someone hate me so much they that would turn out the lights on us? Or are they mad at you, Harry?”
“I think the electricity just went out,” he says, shying away from the sound of her voice. “Can you get me my towel?”
“Yes, sure, let me just-NO I CAN’T GET YOU YOUR TOWEL. I CAN’T GET YOU ANYTHING.” The wailing begins again, and Harry mentally slaps himself for saying something so stupid. He turns and leans against the tile, once again scrambling for his towel.
“I’m sorry, Myrtle.” He reaches all around, too afraid to climb from the tub and be left naked in front of Myrtle when the electricity kicked back in. “I didn’t think.”
She sniffs, and he realizes she’s now on his left side. “Ow!”
“What?”
“You just-you just reached through me!” She begins to sob.
“I’m sorry, Myrtle, but I can’t see you!” He thinks about it for a moment. “Wait-you can feel when I reach through you?”
She lets out a cry. “No!”
“Then how did you know I did?”
“I didn’t.” She draws a shaky breath. “I just guessed.”
Harry sighs.
“What are we going to do, Harry? I could go down to the second floor and yell for help…but no one will come and help me, no one ever doooooooooes,” she wails.
Harry tries to calm her. “It’s alright, Myrtle. No one will come even if I call. They’re all going to be too busy trying to figure out what’s wrong with the lights. Don’t worry about it. If I can just find my towel-”
“Then what? You’ll find your towel and then you’ll get your clothes and you’re just going to leave me here in the daaaaaaaaaaarkkkk…all-all aloooooooooooone!”
“No, no, I’m not going to leave you. I’ll just stay here then. And we’ll talk…what would you like to talk about?” Harry worries that the bubbles in his bath water will be gone before the lights come back on, but perhaps he can make a quick jump for his towel.
“Let’s talk about why you never come back to visit meeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
“Myrtle, CALM DOWN.”
She sobs, now on his right. “Hold me, Harry!”
Unsure of what to do, Harry brings his hands from the water and makes an awkward hugging motion to a ghost he cannot touch or see. “It’s okay, Myrtle, it’s alright.”
“All I ever wanted was friends. That’s all I wanted, and I never had any when I was in school. And I don’t even have any now. I’m going to be here at Hogwarts forever and I’m never going to have any frieeeeeeeeeeeeends.” The closeness of her voice told him that he was at least doing a decent job of “holding her.”
“That’s not true. I’m your friend, Myrtle.”
“But you don’t come to visit meeeeeeeeeeeeee,” she cries.
“I’m visiting you now. There’s no one I’d rather be in a blackout with, believe me,” Harry lies.
“Not even that girl? Not even Hermione?”
“No, not even Hermione. Well, especially not Hermione…she’d be giving me the entire history of electricity about now.”
To his surprise, Myrtle begins to giggle. “She does seem to know it all.”
Harry laughs as well. “That’s an understatement.”
“And what about that red-headed friend of yours? The one with the big eyes? You wouldn’t want to be stuck in a blackout with him either?”
“Ron?” Harry laughs again. “He’d have already been in the fetal position in a corner somewhere. Most likely crying. He’d be no help and no good to talk to either!”
Myrtle laughs loudly, a high-pitched giggle that goes on so long she has to catch her breath. As she trails off, the lights flash once and then come back on. Harry is laughing too, so much so that he hardly notices the lights are back on until Myrtle makes a sort of growl in the back of her throat.
“Ooooh, Harry, your bubbles are gone!”
He lunges for his towel while she giggles and drifts toward the second stall where she’d come from. She turns her back to him while he stands and wraps the towel around his waist.
“Will you come back and visit me, Harry?”
He smiles. “Yes, Myrtle, I guess I will.”
She grins back at him and giggles. “Maybe next time I won’t even have to turn off the lights.” She dives into the toilet with a screeching laugh, kicked up water in her wake, leaving Harry standing, staring up at the light bulbs.
Title: The Tribulations of High Heels
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters/Pairing: Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, Hermione/Ron
Summary: Set prior to the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball, Hermione thinks about Ron as she prepares for the ball.
Word Count: 1392
Author's Notes: Challenge #96: Out of Time; companion piece to The Tribulations of the Apologetic (posted directly below this one)
Registered purchases?: None.
20 minutes until the ball.
20 minutes until she meets Victor Krum at the end of stairs. 20 minutes until Harry and Ron and the rest of school finally know who she’s going to the ball with, 20 minutes until she gets to see the looks on their faces. The look on Ron’s face mostly, though she’s really not sure why she cares so much.
Hermione checks her appearance in the mirror. Freckles clouded by makeup, eyes darkened with shadow, cheeks pinked with blush. It’s not her face she’s looking at, she knows that. This is some other girl, a girl who Victor Krum would ask to the ball. Not the girl that spends endless hours scouring the library bookshelves.
He’s been there too, Victor has. She spotted him once or twice, always standing at the end of the aisle she’d chosen as her study spot, always when Harry and Ron were otherwise occupied. She’d seen him once pass by when she’d been with the other two boys, and he’d hardly glanced in her direction. Typical.
But he wasn’t ashamed of her. He’d asked her to the ball, of course, even when he had so many other, prettier, and older options. She wasn’t his last resort. He didn’t pity her. And when he’d asked, he’d even prefaced it with, “I’m sure you’ve had many other offers…” Ron didn’t even think she’d be able to get a date. Victor seemed to think that she was something special around Hogwarts, something more than a brain. And she liked that. She liked knowing that she was valued by someone for something other than how much help she could be in the next round of the Triwizard Tournament. Of course, Ron would probably think that’s exactly why he’d ask her. He’d probably think she was helping out Harry’s competition. Because she’d never been good enough for him, so how could she possibly be good enough for any famous Quidditch player with a perpetual line of under aged females following after him? Not unless he was using her to defeat her best friend at the tournament. Like she’d help Victor over Harry!
“Hermione?”
She turns toward the sound of Ginny’s voice. The younger girl stands in the doorway of Hermione’s chamber, wearing a dress that her mother had made and sent to her. Thankfully she’d not received the package when Ron was around, or otherwise he’d have been jealous at Ginny’s ball attire in comparison to his own outdated robes. Ginny’s dress could have been bought; it was so lovely, though it had a classic Molly Weasley flair about it.
“Does it look awful?” she asks and spins. The dress, mint collar, pink bodice, and pale green skirt with pink undertones, fans out around her. Molly had certainly outdone herself on her youngest child and only daughter. Especially in comparison to Ron’s dress robes, though Hermione had the idea that the dress robes could have easily been Fred and George’s doing, but she would not open her mouth to say such a thing.
“Of course it doesn’t. You look beautiful.” It’s true, though Hermione would have lied if need be. Ginny is thin and pale, and the light fabric made her look like a snow flake. The burst of pink around the middle made her hair and blushed cheeks pop. Around her neck was a mint green ribbon, and her hair was pulled away from her thin face, and she was now smiling broadly.
“Oh, thank you!” Ginny gives an excited little hop, then calms herself and smoothes down her dress. “Say, do you think…do you think Neville can dance?”
“Harry and Ron said he’s been practicing.” Hermione clasps back her curled hair, pulling some of the curls down and tugging them around her shoulder. “How’s my hair?”
“Lovely!” Ginny picks up a piece of her own straight hair and lets it fall again. “Oh, I wish I’d have curled my hair!”
“Yours looks lovely. Neville will love it.”
Ginny sighs. “It’s not Neville I’m worried about,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.
“Harry will love it then.”
Ginny yelps. “Not so loud!” Ginny’s crush on Harry is well-known around Gyffindor house. In fact, it’s well known around Hogwarts in general, but she simply refuses believe that anyone knows. Hermione just smiles at her.
“Hermione! You aren’t even dressed yet!” Ginny glances at the clock above Hermione’s head. “And you’ve just got 10 minutes! What are you waiting for? Let’s get your dress on!”
“I was fixing my hair, you saw me,” Hermione replies, though before Ginny had come in, she’d been…well, she’d been thinking about her feelings for Victor (and perhaps even Ron, if she let herself think it, and for a moment, she did). She tries to keep calm, but she can feel her heart beat in her chest and hear the blood pounding in her ears. She’s nervous, about Victor and Ron and the tournament and what people will say when they see Harry Potter’s best friend with Victor Krum at the ball. She shouldn’t care what people think, but she does. She cares too much about what Ron will think, most of all. “Help me out,” she says. She pulls the dress from her closet, pink-violet and in tiered ruffles, plops it on the floor and steps into it. She shrugs off her robe and pulls the dress up around her, slipping her arms through the shear sleeves. “Ginny? Can you zip me?”
The other girl stands stark still, mouth opened in a small ‘o’.
“What’s wrong?”
“That…that dress, it’s gorgeous,” Ginny says, her voice soft.
“Thank you, my mother picked it out for me.” Hermione often thought her mother regretted the fact that neither she nor Hermione’s father were wizards, and attempted to make up for it in gifts and in making Hermione’s “magic” experience all the more, well, magic. Hermione doesn’t blame them, of course, for the mud-blood taunts and the like, but they never seem to quite understand.
Ginny doesn’t move.
“Ginny! Five minutes, come on!”
Ginny jumps into action and zips up the dress. Hermione adjusts her hair once more and turns away from the mirror. “How do I look?”
“You look wonderful,” Ginny says with a smile. “But I told Neville I’d meet him down there early. I better run!” She gives Hermione a quick hug and skips out of the room.
Hermione glances at the clock. Three minutes now. Until the great reveal. She wonders what Ron will say to her, what he’ll think when she sees her take the customary first dance with Victor. Of course, with his love for Victor, he could rightly be more jealous of her than Victor.
Two minutes. She brushes off her dress and leaves her room. The few younger girls in the common room ohh and aww over her as she leaves. “Hermione, you look beautiful!” one younger girl shouts, running after her to brush away an invisible piece of lint from Hermione’s dress. “You should wear this dress all the time!” Her group of friends giggle, and they follow Hermione all the way to the entrance of the common room.
One minute. The chatter of the younger girls begins to fade away behind her. She sees Harry with Parvati at the bottom of the stairs, but Ron’s not there. She knew he was attending with Padma Patil. Maybe the other girl had thought better of this arrangement and had left Ron dateless. Poor thing. Probably off crying in his room. She looks past Harry and there’s Victor approaching her with a smile. She takes the stairs carefully, not used to these silly shoes. Victor offers her his arm and they’re called to line up. She’s more nervous now than she’d been at the stairs.
She walks into the room on Victor’s arm and catches a glance of shaggy red hair and silly dress robs and of Ron’s face when she enters. Red cheeks and gaping mouth and wide eyes. She averts her eyes from him and smiles to herself. She catches snippets of conversation from the students around her, “Hermione Granger?” “With Victor Krum?” “Well, she’s beautiful!” But none of that mattered, so long as she could picture Ron’s stunned face in her mind. Surely all the time it took to get ready was well worth it.
Title: The Tribulations of the Apologetic
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ron Weasley, Ron/Hermione
Summary: Set the day after to the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball, Ron thinks about his feelings for Hermione and how he can apologize to her.
Word Count: 1349
Author's Notes: Challenge #96: Out of Time; companion piece to The Tribulations of High Heels (posted directly above this one)
Registered purchases?: None.
20 minutes.
20 minutes until potions class, when he’ll see Hermione again.
He hadn’t seen her since after the ball, when he’d passed her, crying, on the stairs. He should have stopped then, instead of leaving her there with her shoes and her tears (and Harry), but he couldn’t. She’d infuriated him, mainly because she’d called him out exactly on his faults. He should have asked her to the ball himself, and he would have, too, but…he couldn’t get enough nerve. Hermione was his best friend, second to Harry of course, and you can’t just have a crush on your best friend. It’s just forbidden. And on top of that, Hermione was…well, she was Hermione. She made him angry just about 80% of the time, and the other times she was grabbing his hand or giving him a hug or making him blush in some other way.
He rolls his eyes at himself and nervously crosses the hallway to lean against the other side. A group of noisy Ravenclaw girls pass him, and one of them, the one he remembers from Hermione’s study group, throws him a glare that could easily slice through him. Word travels quickly around Hogwarts, especially when the news involved a crying girl and any immature boy. Ron had been called “immature” more times than once.
He didn’t believe he was immature. Fred and George were immature, with their silly jokes and their desire to go against every rule set for them. Ron is different. He’s not immature, he’s…scared. He’s always been a bit of a coward until Hogwarts. He still is, but he tries more desperately to hide it. With all the things he’s encountered so far at Hogwarts, it would do him no good to be scared. But honestly? Killer trees and soul-sucking black hoods and dark lords are of a completely different league than girls. And even all girls were in a completely different league than Hermione.
10 minutes.
He crosses to the other side of the hallway. A few students in his potions class have trickled into their seats, and they stare at him from the open doorway like they know what he’s about to do. He doesn’t want an audience. He stalks down the hallway a few more steps so he’s out of their sight. He knows he has to catch Hermione outside the classroom, because Snape would never allow them to talk in the classroom. He’d have his cold hand on the back of Ron’s head faster than he could say I’m sorry to Hermione, and then Ron’s face would be right in his potion’s book.
He’s not completely sure what he’s going to say to Hermione. He knows he should say he’s sorry, and that’s the first thing that comes to his mind, but he’s not exactly in his vocabulary. Plus, he can’t apologize to a girl. Especially not Hermione. That’s exactly what she’d want, and he’s never been one to let Hermione win. But he did feel bad…he shouldn’t have said the things he did. He should have known that Hermione would never do anything to compromise Harry’s participation in the Triwizard Tournament. She was always loyal to her friends; though, as her friend, he had to admit he didn’t feel exactly loyal to her. He hadn’t honestly thought she’d help Victor…he just…didn’t like the idea of Hermione and Victor…together.
Of course, he was the one to leave her crying on the stairs, though Harry stayed to help her back to the common room. That’s another reason he can’t think of Hermione that way. Because of Harry. He’d never discussed Hermione with Harry, because that would mean admitting that he had some sort of feelings for her. Did he? He still wasn’t sure. But he’d always had an idea that maybe it would be Harry and Hermione who eventually got together, who brought their bushy haired, lightning bolt scarred children to the Hogwarts reunion (yes, he knew lightning bolt scars were not genetic, but in his mind, Harry and Hermione’s children would have them). More and more, however, he felt himself growing jealous when he saw Harry and Hermione alone together, especially touching.
But who was he to break up true love, if that was the case? Ron didn’t really think of love that often. It was entirely too early in his life to think about love. He was still of half a mind to think that girls had cooties, but those thoughts were clearing, at least. He didn’t want to go to some silly dance with some silly girl, but he did want to go to a silly dance with…well, he’d wanted to go with Hermione. But why? She’d have probably said no, just to spite him.
Five minutes until class, which meant Hermione would be rounding the corner any moment, since she was always five minutes early. Though she’d probably cried herself to sleep or something and would be slow getting out of bed.
Four minutes. He hears Harry’s voice in the hallway. Hermione laughs. Of course they’d be together. If Ron had been brave enough to just stay in the common room to confront Hermione, he would have caught her before she even met up with Harry. But there were too many ears in the common room, and far too many Gryffindor girls who had already been whispering about him behind his back, just in the short walk from his room to breakfast to class. And if the Ravenclaw girls already knew, it would be far worse in his own common room. He’d chosen to shower, get dressed, and skip out of the common room early, before anyone could corner him and ask him why he’d treated Hermione that way. He had hoped and prayed he wouldn’t pass Victor Krum on the way to the Potions hallway (it was unlikely, but he always seemed to run into Victor in the strangest places…like the library, but that had been explained). He guesses he’s lucky it’s Harry with Hermione…it could have been Victor.
Three minutes. Harry and Hermione seem to have stopped somewhere up the hallway. He hears their voices, but they’re not moving any closer. He grows impatient and peeks around the corner. Hermione is shaking her head, and Harry pats her awkwardly on the shoulder. Once more, Ron has an odd, dropping feeling in his stomach at seeing Harry touch her. He ducks back around the corner. He can’t say anything to her, he knows he can’t. He can’t apologize, he can’t be jealous of Harry, he can’t like Hermione, of all the girls in this school.
Two minutes. He starts to make his way to the classroom, but Harry comes around the hallway corner and calls out to him. He turns and Hermione makes to walk around him, and he can’t just let her ignore him either and…girls! Harry makes wide-eyes at him and looks pointedly at Hermione, who is trying to blend into the wall as a group of bouncing Hufflepuffs file into the classroom.
“Hermione,” he starts, unsure of what he’ll say next.
She doesn’t look at him.
“Look, Hermione, I-”
He’s cut off with a cold hand on his scalp and he’s being pushed into the room beside Harry, arms flailing. Hermione is scampering to her seat in front of them without looking at him.
“Mr. Weasley, there will be no courting outside my classroom, if you please. To your seats.” Snape doesn’t have to command them because he’s already shoving them into their seats. Hermione throws them a glance over her shoulder, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. She turns away from him so her hair falls in front of half of her face. Ron clears his throat and tries once more to make eye contact with Hermione, but he feels his face being shoved into his potions voice, and he decides it’s better to just give up. He’d obviously set himself up for failure from the get-go.
The clock’s minute hand slides to place over the twelve, and Snape begins the lesson, and Ron loses all nerve.
Fic 1
Word Count points: 1123/30 = 37 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total points: 37
Fic 2
Word Count points: 1392/30 = 46 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total points: 46
Fic 3
Word Count points: 1349/30 = 45 points
Bonus Points: 0
Total Points: 45
Sara//Hufflepuff// 128 points total