Today a Death
Title: Today a Death
Word Count: 3,266
Summary: Missing moment: Hermione's feelings as she waits outside the hospital wing when Ron is poisoned.
Warnings: Not slept on, not betaed.
Hermione could see her feet pounding against the stone slabs of the corridor, but she did not feel the impact of the ground against them as she ran. She’d been running since hearing the garbled news that had reached the common room. Ron Weasley had been taken to the hospital wing. He was dying. Some said he was dead. She’d fled then, and had heard nothing since, not the questions of the students she passed, not the thuds of her shoes or even the rasping of her own breath. She hadn’t even felt the floor slamming into her body when she’d fallen, having stumbled over the trick step on the seventh floor staircase. Now, on the third floor, she didn’t even think about being hurt or breathless, even though she was running faster and harder than she ever had. Her mind was speeding too. It whirled in dizzying circles and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop running, couldn’t stop to collect and organise her thoughts. She’d lost her greatest ally. Without her brain, she had only instinct. And instinct told her to find Ron and Harry, to keep on running.
She didn’t know if she’d have been able to stop running, had she not almost fallen over Harry when, with a bit of a shock, she skidded to a halt outside the double doors of the hospital wing. Harry had been sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He stood up quickly, but didn’t say anything. Maybe it was too awful to say. She felt woozy and pressed her hand into the smooth coolness of the wall. She tried to take a deep breath, tried to gather her disjointed thoughts. Harry was there. It would be all right. The tightness in her chest and muscles became evident. She felt as though she were suffocating inside her own body, as flames of pain licked her calves, and iron bands clenched about her chest.
She looked at Harry. His face was pale, his breath was shallow and his expression terrified her. Panic pumped into her lungs, it made the air thin. She felt light-headed, as she had done at Rebecca Grey’s seventh birthday party when the others had dared her to breathe in the gas from a helium balloon.
What a strange and inappropriate memory. Hermione’s thoughts flitted, even as her heart and body reverberated with fear. She forced herself to meet Harry’s eyes and her mind locked back into place.
“What happened?” she asked, and her voice sounded loud and high and wild.
Harry raked a hand through his hair and took a few steps towards the hospital doors, before turning back to her. “The poison was in the bottle,” he said, and his eyes glowed darkly against the sickly-pallor of his skin. “It had to have been the bottle, and Ron drank first.”
Hermione wanted to cry. Even Harry couldn’t help her today. Both of them were disorientated and lost. She didn’t know what to say, so she clasped her hands tightly together, trying to stop them shaking. She clenched her jaw. She would be strong.
“What poison? What bottle? Harry, where’s Ron?” She couldn’t prevent her voice from shaking, no matter how much she dug her fingernails into the flesh of her hands.
Harry looked at her blankly. “Ron’s in there,” he said, jerking his head back towards the double doors.
The pressure was rising in Hermione’s chest and it didn’t feel bearable.
“Is he all right?” Her voice caught on a choke. She’d never felt so conscious of her mouth and of the shape of her words and their sound.
“They’re not sure,” Harry said, and Hermione felt the vibrations of a moan in the back of her throat. She felt it pass between her lips on her breath.
Harry must have heard her, because he looked down at her. For a moment she thought he was going to reach out a hand to her shoulder, but then his hand ran through his hair again, instead.
“He should be okay,” he said quickly. “But Madam Pomfrey can’t tell for definite yet. If he got the bezoar in time. We can’t go in.”
Fear and relief washed sickeningly through her stomach, and Hermione sagged against the wall. Harry slid down to resume his former position on the floor and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Hermione stayed standing, feeling very tall and exposed and alone in this shaky world of almost-grief.
Ron was going to be all right. He wasn’t going to die. Hermione tried to shut out the parts of her brain which reminded her that he might yet.
“How did it happen? What bezoar?” she asked, trying to drown out her own thoughts. Harry, with his eyes still covered, answered her slowly as though he were testing and considering each piece of information.
He was hypnotising to listen to, and Hermione felt her breathing slow and her mind clear, even as the awful words get coming out of Harry’s mouth.
“So then he drank the mead and I knew that something was wrong. He sort of crumpled onto the table and kept twitching, and then I remembered that bezoar and found it in Slughorn’s supplies and stuffed it in his mouth and then he went really really still. Slughorn went for help and Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey brought him here. Dumbledore’s been in, but we’re not allowed.”
Harry stopped speaking and Hermione felt the urge to cry welling up in her throat. She couldn’t speak; there didn’t seem to be anything to say. Harry had saved Ron’s life, if he lives came the nasty voice in her mind. She felt sick. She clamped her mouth shut tight and stood very still, clinging onto the wall as though it was the only thing that was solid and certain in her life.
Ginny arrived fifteen minutes later, pelting up the corridor as Hermione had done, her hair fanned out behind her, her eyes fearful. Harry sprang up again, and Ginny kept on running straight into him, so that he caught her and had to take a step back to steady himself. She seemed to collapse against his chest. Hermione looked on, at Ginny’s back, rising and falling in hitching sobs and at Harry, who wrapped his arms round Ginny, looking as though he needed the comfort almost as much as she did.
A small part of Hermione’s heart was jealous. All of her felt bereft. She needed the feel of another body close against hers.
She rested the side of her head against the wall.
She watched as Ginny drew back from Harry, swiping her eyes with angry fists. She saw Harry’s mouth moving, forming the words which she had already heard.
She listened to Ron saying, “You were going to ask me?” that day in the greenhouses, when they agreed to go to Slughorn’s party together. His voice had been awed and Hermione was sure she had not imagined the touch of hope it had contained. She had still been angry then, and his words and voice and the turmoil they had caused had made her determined to stay angry.
“But obviously if you’d rather I got off with McLaggen,” she’d snapped, meaning it to hurt, willing it to work, pleading with him to giver her proof that it had not just been her feelings that had been dictating her forming picture of his.
She had got her answer. “No, I wouldn’t.”
It had been a tantalisingly awkward and delicious moment, a rush of expectation. She had been sure then that something would happen, that sometime soon the conversation would take place.
That, of course, had changed. He’d become so angry and so bitter at her, and she hadn’t known why. All she’d known was that she’d been at her most vulnerable - open to him, ready to confess her … whatever it was, when he’d turned on her, shunned her and, finally, chosen Lavender over her.
It had been a crumbling of all her hope. She had been building secret layers within herself for years now. She was ripped apart. Her feelings, she was sure, were spilled open and she had no way of stopping them.
The pressure in her chest lurched again, and she thought that she must double up and choke with the bubbling pain of it. The thoughts that came into her head were unwelcome, now. She tried to push them back, to stifle them. Ron was hurt; this was no time to be thinking about her own feelings. Especially when so many of them were of betrayal and resentment.
Seeing him kiss Lavender. Her stomach felt like it was sinking away; she had hoped that they would be friends again soon, and seeing him kissing her, knowing him as she did, was as though he were deliberately spiting her. But then, he probably wasn’t thinking about her at all, and that was even more sickening. He was quite entitled to prefer a prettier girl, who giggled and smiled, and who thought Ron was wonderful, and who never nagged him or bossed him or rowed with him.
She hadn’t been able to stay in the room with them. And then Harry had followed and then Ron and Lavender when all she’d wanted to do was to sob and sob and sob until all her feeling had run down her face in teardrops and she could be empty and brave around them. She’d tried so hard to keep her dignity, when each step had been an unravelling, a welling up of bitterness and hate, until she’d whirled and attacked with all the venom that had been crawling up her throat.
“So it could have been Slughorn?”
Ginny’s voice, shaken but insistent. She was pacing in front of the closed doors of the hospital wing. Harry stood against the wall, and Hermione saw that his eyes never left her.
“What do you think, Hermione?”
Ginny’s question was a shot, with the same desperate urgency that Hermione could understand but not muster in herself. She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Hermione hated not knowing things. It rankled not only as a personal failure, but as a feeling of helplessness. If she didn’t know and could not immediately find out, then how could she act? How could she do anything? She was powerless, and she hated it. She couldn’t go round in the circles that Harry and Ginny discussed, as Ginny paced up and down, up and down as the seconds and minutes and hours washed by in a tide of corroding uncertainty. Sometimes Harry joined Ginny in her pacing, sometimes he stood, his hair getting ever-messier as he ran his hands through it in a gesture Hermione knew he wasn’t aware of. Sometimes he slid and sat on the floor. He never stayed in a position for more than a few minutes, and always he was questioning. How? Who? Why?
Hermione hardly spoke or moved. She felt that if she did she would come apart completely. If she left the cold smooth solidity of the wall, if she did not clasp her hands, if she did not clench her jaw, then she was melt or fall, she would no longer be able to stand. She could not cry, for if she did then she would have to wail, and she was afraid that the harsh sobs would completely overwhelm her.
As Harry and Ginny talked, Hermione had thoughts, unwanted and unbidden. She thought of Ron offering to help in Buckbeak’s defence, she thought of his face when they played the giant chess game and he decided to sacrifice himself. She thought of the Yule Ball, and of his jealousy and his pounding voice as they’d shouted at each other and all the nice feelings of the evening had seeped away, and yet she’d kept in the back of her mind the glimmering shred that at least he’d cared.
She remembered him trying to curse Malfoy with his broken wand, and the afternoon spent belching up slugs.
She remembered him kissing Lavender Brown.
She remembered that today was his birthday, and that if he died, he would die believing that she hated him.
She hadn’t given him a present, but it was under her bed. She hadn’t given him a Christmas present, either, even though she’d worked hard on her plans for his gift. She’d made him a hat, scarf and pair of gloves, in a garish orange which she knew would clash with his hair, but which she knew he would love because of the Chudley Cannons. She had felt rather foolish knitting for him; it was what his mother did. But she had wanted to show him that she’d improved, after his disparaging remarks last year. She’d enjoyed spending time on his gift.
One evening, when she’d come into the common room to see him and Lavender in full view again, and not felt able to sit and put a strong face on it, and had gone to her dormitory early, she had pulled out the knitting and silently and savagely ripped it until she was left, panting, with her arms full of broken orange yarn.
Out of guilt she had bought him a birthday present and out of pride she hadn’t give it to him.
She supposed, she thought dully, hours later, that she should be hungry. She hadn’t eaten all day. She supposed she should suggest their going to get something to eat from the kitchens. She didn’t say anything. None of them would want to leave. Ginny had stopped pacing now, and she and Harry hadn’t spoken for a little while. Hermione missed the movement and noise. The sounds of students coming out of dinner and back up through the corridors seemed very far away.
The doors opened, and Harry sprang up. Ginny span to see who was leaving the hospital wing, but it was only the same first-year who had gone in an hour earlier. Hermione had only raised her head. Her body felt stiff and heavy, even when every movement of the hospital doors caused her heart to leap and sink in disappointment.
At some point in the evening, Mr and Mrs Weasley arrived, and were ushered into the hospital wing with Dumbledore. They were grey-faced and silent and stopped only to hug Ginny as they hurried inside. Harry, Ginny and Hermione tried to peer through the door as it was shut behind them. Hermione looked at Ginny, who was biting her lip, and at Harry, who had rested the back of his head against the wall, and knew that the two of them shared her feeling of being shut out. Although none of them were speaking or touching, she felt that they were all bonded by this vigil on behalf of one they all loved.
They came out again a few minutes later. Ginny ran up to her parents.
“Mum, is he all right?”
Mrs Weasley only dabbed at her eyes and squeezed Ginny tightly. It was Mr Weasley who said that Ron was asleep but that he should be fine in a little while. Then they left for Dumbledore’s office, promising to be back soon.
After that, the waiting seemed worse. They’d been outside the hospital wing all day, yet now every minute felt longer than before. Finally, Madam Pomfrey poked her head round the door and beckoned them in.
“Not for long,” Madam Pomfrey warned, “and he’s asleep so you’d better be quiet.”
They tumbled inside, and the hospital wing felt warmer than the icy corridor outside it. The air was full with the sharp smell of potions and herbs, and Hermione felt herself thawing a little. Ron was safe.
Ginny let out a soft, “Oh,” when Madam Pomfrey led them to Ron’s bed. Harry looked at his feet and then back at the bed, while Hermione felt a tremble make its way through every reach of her body. He was so pale beneath the freckles, which were sharp against the green-tinge of his skin.
“But he’ll be all right?” Ginny said, and her voice was small.
“Yes, he’ll be here for a week or so,” Madam Pomfrey said, “and he’ll have to take Essence of Rue, but he’ll be fine.”
It was like a sigh of relief that settled over the three of them. They were still sombre and subdued, but now that Hermione knew he was going to recover, now that she had seen him and heard the words, she felt the tension in her hands and jaw relax. She sank into a seat by Ron’s side.
They had barely been in the hospital wing for ten minutes when Fred and George puffed in and hurried up to them.
Out came the story again, and Hermione listened to it properly, and she was struck by the closeness of it all. It was such a chance - just chance and Harry - that Ron was here at all.
“Luck there was one in the room,” Harry said, and Hermione sucked in the whimper that was rising in her throat. So lucky that Harry had the bezoar to hand. So close to Ron being killed. The warmth that the hospital wing had lent her all but seeped away, and she was filled by cold dread. Now that there was no fear, she was faced with the consideration of a killer.
Back came the circled discussion that Ginny and Harry had had all day, but this time Hermione followed what they were saying. This time her mind was working and she recaptured some hold of her thoughts.
“But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,” Ginny was saying to Harry. “So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore.”
That struck Hermione; she hadn’t considered it before. She felt better, now that she could think clearly. “Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,” she said, and she was surprised by her own voice. Surprised that it worked, but also shocked by the stuffiness of it. She sounded as though she had been crying the tears she hadn’t shed. “Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d keep something that tasty for himself.”
“Er-my-nee.”
The croak which could only have been her name sent her heart whipping up into her throat. She stared at the bed, willing him to speak again. He muttered, but she couldn’t make out any words. He began to snore.
Had Hagrid not come striding into the hospital wing at that moment, Hermione thought she might have laughed.
The conversation continued, with Hagrid suggesting a Quidditch connection to the attacks. While the twins considered the point, Hermione had a nasty thought. The attacks had reached the wrong people, and they had both nearly been fatal. Someone was out to kill somebody, and they didn’t care who was murdered in the process.
No sooner had she voiced this, than the Weasleys returned, and Mrs Weasley seized upon Harry, having heard how the bezoar had saved Ron’s life. Hermione stayed still and quiet at Ron’s side, feeling like an intruder amongst the Weasleys. When Madam Pomfrey reminded them sharply that no more than six visitors were permitted, she rose with Harry automatically, leaving Ron with his family.
As they left the hospital wing with Hagrid, she wondered if Harry felt as she did; no matter how many Weasleys Ron was surrounded by, they were leaving one of the biggest parts of their family behind.
Word Count: 3,266
Summary: Missing moment: Hermione's feelings as she waits outside the hospital wing when Ron is poisoned.
Warnings: Not slept on, not betaed.
Hermione could see her feet pounding against the stone slabs of the corridor, but she did not feel the impact of the ground against them as she ran. She’d been running since hearing the garbled news that had reached the common room. Ron Weasley had been taken to the hospital wing. He was dying. Some said he was dead. She’d fled then, and had heard nothing since, not the questions of the students she passed, not the thuds of her shoes or even the rasping of her own breath. She hadn’t even felt the floor slamming into her body when she’d fallen, having stumbled over the trick step on the seventh floor staircase. Now, on the third floor, she didn’t even think about being hurt or breathless, even though she was running faster and harder than she ever had. Her mind was speeding too. It whirled in dizzying circles and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop running, couldn’t stop to collect and organise her thoughts. She’d lost her greatest ally. Without her brain, she had only instinct. And instinct told her to find Ron and Harry, to keep on running.
She didn’t know if she’d have been able to stop running, had she not almost fallen over Harry when, with a bit of a shock, she skidded to a halt outside the double doors of the hospital wing. Harry had been sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He stood up quickly, but didn’t say anything. Maybe it was too awful to say. She felt woozy and pressed her hand into the smooth coolness of the wall. She tried to take a deep breath, tried to gather her disjointed thoughts. Harry was there. It would be all right. The tightness in her chest and muscles became evident. She felt as though she were suffocating inside her own body, as flames of pain licked her calves, and iron bands clenched about her chest.
She looked at Harry. His face was pale, his breath was shallow and his expression terrified her. Panic pumped into her lungs, it made the air thin. She felt light-headed, as she had done at Rebecca Grey’s seventh birthday party when the others had dared her to breathe in the gas from a helium balloon.
What a strange and inappropriate memory. Hermione’s thoughts flitted, even as her heart and body reverberated with fear. She forced herself to meet Harry’s eyes and her mind locked back into place.
“What happened?” she asked, and her voice sounded loud and high and wild.
Harry raked a hand through his hair and took a few steps towards the hospital doors, before turning back to her. “The poison was in the bottle,” he said, and his eyes glowed darkly against the sickly-pallor of his skin. “It had to have been the bottle, and Ron drank first.”
Hermione wanted to cry. Even Harry couldn’t help her today. Both of them were disorientated and lost. She didn’t know what to say, so she clasped her hands tightly together, trying to stop them shaking. She clenched her jaw. She would be strong.
“What poison? What bottle? Harry, where’s Ron?” She couldn’t prevent her voice from shaking, no matter how much she dug her fingernails into the flesh of her hands.
Harry looked at her blankly. “Ron’s in there,” he said, jerking his head back towards the double doors.
The pressure was rising in Hermione’s chest and it didn’t feel bearable.
“Is he all right?” Her voice caught on a choke. She’d never felt so conscious of her mouth and of the shape of her words and their sound.
“They’re not sure,” Harry said, and Hermione felt the vibrations of a moan in the back of her throat. She felt it pass between her lips on her breath.
Harry must have heard her, because he looked down at her. For a moment she thought he was going to reach out a hand to her shoulder, but then his hand ran through his hair again, instead.
“He should be okay,” he said quickly. “But Madam Pomfrey can’t tell for definite yet. If he got the bezoar in time. We can’t go in.”
Fear and relief washed sickeningly through her stomach, and Hermione sagged against the wall. Harry slid down to resume his former position on the floor and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Hermione stayed standing, feeling very tall and exposed and alone in this shaky world of almost-grief.
Ron was going to be all right. He wasn’t going to die. Hermione tried to shut out the parts of her brain which reminded her that he might yet.
“How did it happen? What bezoar?” she asked, trying to drown out her own thoughts. Harry, with his eyes still covered, answered her slowly as though he were testing and considering each piece of information.
He was hypnotising to listen to, and Hermione felt her breathing slow and her mind clear, even as the awful words get coming out of Harry’s mouth.
“So then he drank the mead and I knew that something was wrong. He sort of crumpled onto the table and kept twitching, and then I remembered that bezoar and found it in Slughorn’s supplies and stuffed it in his mouth and then he went really really still. Slughorn went for help and Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey brought him here. Dumbledore’s been in, but we’re not allowed.”
Harry stopped speaking and Hermione felt the urge to cry welling up in her throat. She couldn’t speak; there didn’t seem to be anything to say. Harry had saved Ron’s life, if he lives came the nasty voice in her mind. She felt sick. She clamped her mouth shut tight and stood very still, clinging onto the wall as though it was the only thing that was solid and certain in her life.
Ginny arrived fifteen minutes later, pelting up the corridor as Hermione had done, her hair fanned out behind her, her eyes fearful. Harry sprang up again, and Ginny kept on running straight into him, so that he caught her and had to take a step back to steady himself. She seemed to collapse against his chest. Hermione looked on, at Ginny’s back, rising and falling in hitching sobs and at Harry, who wrapped his arms round Ginny, looking as though he needed the comfort almost as much as she did.
A small part of Hermione’s heart was jealous. All of her felt bereft. She needed the feel of another body close against hers.
She rested the side of her head against the wall.
She watched as Ginny drew back from Harry, swiping her eyes with angry fists. She saw Harry’s mouth moving, forming the words which she had already heard.
She listened to Ron saying, “You were going to ask me?” that day in the greenhouses, when they agreed to go to Slughorn’s party together. His voice had been awed and Hermione was sure she had not imagined the touch of hope it had contained. She had still been angry then, and his words and voice and the turmoil they had caused had made her determined to stay angry.
“But obviously if you’d rather I got off with McLaggen,” she’d snapped, meaning it to hurt, willing it to work, pleading with him to giver her proof that it had not just been her feelings that had been dictating her forming picture of his.
She had got her answer. “No, I wouldn’t.”
It had been a tantalisingly awkward and delicious moment, a rush of expectation. She had been sure then that something would happen, that sometime soon the conversation would take place.
That, of course, had changed. He’d become so angry and so bitter at her, and she hadn’t known why. All she’d known was that she’d been at her most vulnerable - open to him, ready to confess her … whatever it was, when he’d turned on her, shunned her and, finally, chosen Lavender over her.
It had been a crumbling of all her hope. She had been building secret layers within herself for years now. She was ripped apart. Her feelings, she was sure, were spilled open and she had no way of stopping them.
The pressure in her chest lurched again, and she thought that she must double up and choke with the bubbling pain of it. The thoughts that came into her head were unwelcome, now. She tried to push them back, to stifle them. Ron was hurt; this was no time to be thinking about her own feelings. Especially when so many of them were of betrayal and resentment.
Seeing him kiss Lavender. Her stomach felt like it was sinking away; she had hoped that they would be friends again soon, and seeing him kissing her, knowing him as she did, was as though he were deliberately spiting her. But then, he probably wasn’t thinking about her at all, and that was even more sickening. He was quite entitled to prefer a prettier girl, who giggled and smiled, and who thought Ron was wonderful, and who never nagged him or bossed him or rowed with him.
She hadn’t been able to stay in the room with them. And then Harry had followed and then Ron and Lavender when all she’d wanted to do was to sob and sob and sob until all her feeling had run down her face in teardrops and she could be empty and brave around them. She’d tried so hard to keep her dignity, when each step had been an unravelling, a welling up of bitterness and hate, until she’d whirled and attacked with all the venom that had been crawling up her throat.
“So it could have been Slughorn?”
Ginny’s voice, shaken but insistent. She was pacing in front of the closed doors of the hospital wing. Harry stood against the wall, and Hermione saw that his eyes never left her.
“What do you think, Hermione?”
Ginny’s question was a shot, with the same desperate urgency that Hermione could understand but not muster in herself. She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Hermione hated not knowing things. It rankled not only as a personal failure, but as a feeling of helplessness. If she didn’t know and could not immediately find out, then how could she act? How could she do anything? She was powerless, and she hated it. She couldn’t go round in the circles that Harry and Ginny discussed, as Ginny paced up and down, up and down as the seconds and minutes and hours washed by in a tide of corroding uncertainty. Sometimes Harry joined Ginny in her pacing, sometimes he stood, his hair getting ever-messier as he ran his hands through it in a gesture Hermione knew he wasn’t aware of. Sometimes he slid and sat on the floor. He never stayed in a position for more than a few minutes, and always he was questioning. How? Who? Why?
Hermione hardly spoke or moved. She felt that if she did she would come apart completely. If she left the cold smooth solidity of the wall, if she did not clasp her hands, if she did not clench her jaw, then she was melt or fall, she would no longer be able to stand. She could not cry, for if she did then she would have to wail, and she was afraid that the harsh sobs would completely overwhelm her.
As Harry and Ginny talked, Hermione had thoughts, unwanted and unbidden. She thought of Ron offering to help in Buckbeak’s defence, she thought of his face when they played the giant chess game and he decided to sacrifice himself. She thought of the Yule Ball, and of his jealousy and his pounding voice as they’d shouted at each other and all the nice feelings of the evening had seeped away, and yet she’d kept in the back of her mind the glimmering shred that at least he’d cared.
She remembered him trying to curse Malfoy with his broken wand, and the afternoon spent belching up slugs.
She remembered him kissing Lavender Brown.
She remembered that today was his birthday, and that if he died, he would die believing that she hated him.
She hadn’t given him a present, but it was under her bed. She hadn’t given him a Christmas present, either, even though she’d worked hard on her plans for his gift. She’d made him a hat, scarf and pair of gloves, in a garish orange which she knew would clash with his hair, but which she knew he would love because of the Chudley Cannons. She had felt rather foolish knitting for him; it was what his mother did. But she had wanted to show him that she’d improved, after his disparaging remarks last year. She’d enjoyed spending time on his gift.
One evening, when she’d come into the common room to see him and Lavender in full view again, and not felt able to sit and put a strong face on it, and had gone to her dormitory early, she had pulled out the knitting and silently and savagely ripped it until she was left, panting, with her arms full of broken orange yarn.
Out of guilt she had bought him a birthday present and out of pride she hadn’t give it to him.
She supposed, she thought dully, hours later, that she should be hungry. She hadn’t eaten all day. She supposed she should suggest their going to get something to eat from the kitchens. She didn’t say anything. None of them would want to leave. Ginny had stopped pacing now, and she and Harry hadn’t spoken for a little while. Hermione missed the movement and noise. The sounds of students coming out of dinner and back up through the corridors seemed very far away.
The doors opened, and Harry sprang up. Ginny span to see who was leaving the hospital wing, but it was only the same first-year who had gone in an hour earlier. Hermione had only raised her head. Her body felt stiff and heavy, even when every movement of the hospital doors caused her heart to leap and sink in disappointment.
At some point in the evening, Mr and Mrs Weasley arrived, and were ushered into the hospital wing with Dumbledore. They were grey-faced and silent and stopped only to hug Ginny as they hurried inside. Harry, Ginny and Hermione tried to peer through the door as it was shut behind them. Hermione looked at Ginny, who was biting her lip, and at Harry, who had rested the back of his head against the wall, and knew that the two of them shared her feeling of being shut out. Although none of them were speaking or touching, she felt that they were all bonded by this vigil on behalf of one they all loved.
They came out again a few minutes later. Ginny ran up to her parents.
“Mum, is he all right?”
Mrs Weasley only dabbed at her eyes and squeezed Ginny tightly. It was Mr Weasley who said that Ron was asleep but that he should be fine in a little while. Then they left for Dumbledore’s office, promising to be back soon.
After that, the waiting seemed worse. They’d been outside the hospital wing all day, yet now every minute felt longer than before. Finally, Madam Pomfrey poked her head round the door and beckoned them in.
“Not for long,” Madam Pomfrey warned, “and he’s asleep so you’d better be quiet.”
They tumbled inside, and the hospital wing felt warmer than the icy corridor outside it. The air was full with the sharp smell of potions and herbs, and Hermione felt herself thawing a little. Ron was safe.
Ginny let out a soft, “Oh,” when Madam Pomfrey led them to Ron’s bed. Harry looked at his feet and then back at the bed, while Hermione felt a tremble make its way through every reach of her body. He was so pale beneath the freckles, which were sharp against the green-tinge of his skin.
“But he’ll be all right?” Ginny said, and her voice was small.
“Yes, he’ll be here for a week or so,” Madam Pomfrey said, “and he’ll have to take Essence of Rue, but he’ll be fine.”
It was like a sigh of relief that settled over the three of them. They were still sombre and subdued, but now that Hermione knew he was going to recover, now that she had seen him and heard the words, she felt the tension in her hands and jaw relax. She sank into a seat by Ron’s side.
They had barely been in the hospital wing for ten minutes when Fred and George puffed in and hurried up to them.
Out came the story again, and Hermione listened to it properly, and she was struck by the closeness of it all. It was such a chance - just chance and Harry - that Ron was here at all.
“Luck there was one in the room,” Harry said, and Hermione sucked in the whimper that was rising in her throat. So lucky that Harry had the bezoar to hand. So close to Ron being killed. The warmth that the hospital wing had lent her all but seeped away, and she was filled by cold dread. Now that there was no fear, she was faced with the consideration of a killer.
Back came the circled discussion that Ginny and Harry had had all day, but this time Hermione followed what they were saying. This time her mind was working and she recaptured some hold of her thoughts.
“But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas,” Ginny was saying to Harry. “So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore.”
That struck Hermione; she hadn’t considered it before. She felt better, now that she could think clearly. “Then the poisoner didn’t know Slughorn very well,” she said, and she was surprised by her own voice. Surprised that it worked, but also shocked by the stuffiness of it. She sounded as though she had been crying the tears she hadn’t shed. “Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he’d keep something that tasty for himself.”
“Er-my-nee.”
The croak which could only have been her name sent her heart whipping up into her throat. She stared at the bed, willing him to speak again. He muttered, but she couldn’t make out any words. He began to snore.
Had Hagrid not come striding into the hospital wing at that moment, Hermione thought she might have laughed.
The conversation continued, with Hagrid suggesting a Quidditch connection to the attacks. While the twins considered the point, Hermione had a nasty thought. The attacks had reached the wrong people, and they had both nearly been fatal. Someone was out to kill somebody, and they didn’t care who was murdered in the process.
No sooner had she voiced this, than the Weasleys returned, and Mrs Weasley seized upon Harry, having heard how the bezoar had saved Ron’s life. Hermione stayed still and quiet at Ron’s side, feeling like an intruder amongst the Weasleys. When Madam Pomfrey reminded them sharply that no more than six visitors were permitted, she rose with Harry automatically, leaving Ron with his family.
As they left the hospital wing with Hagrid, she wondered if Harry felt as she did; no matter how many Weasleys Ron was surrounded by, they were leaving one of the biggest parts of their family behind.