Ron leapt a clear foot in the air, and slapped a guilty hand over the dark blotch on the side of his neck. His face went as maroon as his pajamas. 

"I don't know what you're on about!" he said.

"It is, isn't it?" Harry was up off his bed in amazement. 

"It certainly isn't!"

"You've got a hickey! From … from Luna Lovegood!"

"No, I haven't!"

"Well, what is it, then?"

"A … bruise."

"A bruise?" Harry hoisted one askance eyebrow. 

"I …" Ron gave the impression of grasping wildly at straws. His eyes lit up. "Quidditch! It's from Quidditch! I was hit by a Bludger!"

"Ron, d'you reckon I'm stupid? We haven't even had practice all week, and if a Bludger had hit you on the neck hard enough to bruise that dark, it'd have torn your head clean off."

"A burn, then! Burned myself, that's what happened."

"On the neck?"

"When we were doing those ironing spells in Charms. I was trying to iron my collar, and I burned my neck."

"The ironing spells were days ago," Harry said. "I'd swear you didn't have that mark this morning."

"I was ironing my collar this morning," Ron said. "Before Hogsmeade."

Harry only stood and gazed at him, evenly, with the tiniest hint of reproachfulness, until Ron caved in. He slumped on the edge of his bed, sitting on the curtain and ripping it loose of several of the rings, and buried his head in his hands. 

"All right," he groaned. "It's a hickey! There! I admit it! Now, can we talk about something else?"

"No," Harry said frankly. "I want to hear."

"There's nothing to tell!"

"I kissed Jane."

Ron's head came up fast. "Thought you might," he said. "The way you were holding onto her, there by the brook. How was it?"

"Wet," Harry said. 

"That's what you said last Christmas about Cho."

"Well, we had just pulled her out of the water. And it was raining. Cho was crying. Different situation."

"So … wet? Is that all?"

Harry thought about it. "Intense."

"Nice," Ron said admiringly. "So you do fancy her."

"If your mother finds out, she'll disown me," Harry said. 

"My mum can't disown you, and even if she could, it's not like you'd be missing out on some ruddy big inheritance anyway," Ron pointed out. "Besides, when you had a ruddy big inheritance, you gave it away to Arcturus."

"Still, you know how she is about Jane. Tonks and Moody, too. Everyone else thinks it's the worst idea in the world."

"Yeah, it probably is," Ron said. "You could have your pick of about any girl in school, and you fancy a Slytherin?"

"Any girl in school? Are you mad? I could not."

"Sure you could. The famous Harry Potter? You're the good-looking one, mate, let's be honest here."

"That's rubbish."

"I've heard the way the girls talk about you when they think no one's listening," Ron said. "Not just Ginny and Moaning Myrtle, either. All of them!"

An uncomfortable sensation prickled over Harry. "You're putting me on."

"Maybe not all of them," Ron amended. "But enough of them. Last year, after you and Fred and George got banned off the Quidditch team, I heard Angelina and Alicia and Katie going on about you, how cute you are."

"Cute?" Harry echoed, offended.

"Even Parvati says so, though she always adds how it didn't stop you from being a boring prat at the Yule Ball two years ago."

"Cute?" he repeated, his nose wrinkling. 

"And so brave, and so smart, and so noble," Ron said, rolling his eyes, holding up one hand and opening and closing the fingers against the thumb to mimic endless girl-chatter. 

"Bloody hell," Harry muttered.

"Heroic, too."

"Okay, Ron! Enough already!"

"Not that I'm jealous or anything," Ron said. "I'm just stating the facts. You're the good-looking one, mate. Face it."

Now it was Harry's turn to bury his head in his hands. His cheeks felt hot with embarrassment. Girls talking about him? Saying things like that behind his back? 

And it wasn't even true. Sirius had been handsome. Maybe not all of the time … maybe not even most of the time Harry had known him … but when Sirius had been a teenager, when Sirius had danced and laughed in the photographs taken at Harry's parents' wedding … that was the standard by which Harry measured male good looks, and knew full well that he was nowhere close to stacking up to Sirius.

"You could've warned me about this before," he said. 

"Thought you knew," Ron said with a shrug. "Pretty obvious, if you ask me."

"I don't understand girls at all."

"Reckon we never will. They like it that way. Keeps us confused. My dad still doesn't understand Mum, and they've been married twenty-five years."

Harry thought that when it came right down to it, Mr. Weasley – for all that he was a cheerful and generous person – didn't really understand much of anything. He sort of rolled through life in an amiable fog, and was perfectly happy. But Harry wasn't going to say so to Ron. 

"So, I told you my secret," Harry said instead. "Your turn. I want to hear about you and Luna."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

"There isn't much to tell." Ron was turning red again. 

"You've got a hickey shaped like a crescent moon on your neck, and you're saying that there isn't much to tell? You made out with Luna."

"I didn't mean to." He exhaled heavily. "Dunno how it happened, really. I didn't even want to go out with her! You were there this morning. I was tricked! Shanghaied! It was … it was an ambush-date!"

"Why'd you go through with it, then?"

"Tried to get out of it, didn't I?"

"Did you?" asked Harry. "Like you said, I was there. I don't remember you saying no."

"I couldn't say no, not … not right out in front of everyone. There was no good way to get out of it. I was trapped! Half the Great Hall was watching. What was I going to do? Tell her that I didn't like her and I wished she'd leave me alone?"

"That would've been a little mean," Harry said. "And she's not so bad, Luna. She can be … daffy … but she can be sharp, too. The way she was earlier tonight, using her belt like an anchor so you could reach me? That was good."

"I never said she wasn't nice," Ron said. "She's even … kind of … pretty … once you get used to her. I guess. Her eyes are weird, sure … sticking out like that … but they're a … a pretty color."

"So you do like her."

Ron flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "I don't know!"

"You didn't want to hurt her feelings. That's a start. And you think she's pretty."

"Kind of pretty, I said."

"Fine. Kind of pretty. Now explain the hickey."

Again, he clapped a hand to the side of his neck.

"People are going to notice," Harry said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. 

"I'll wear turtleneck jumpers. Scarves."

"That'll just look like you're hiding something. If Fred and George were here –"

He shuddered. "I'd never bloody live it down if they found out!"

"Even if you can keep it hidden," Harry said, "you know how Luna is. She'll say something, or come up to you at breakfast tomorrow morning and –"

"Aaaagh!" Ron rolled over, shoved his face into the mattress, seized his pillow, and crammed it over his head. His voice was muffled. "That's not funny, Harry."

"Does she have any hickeys?"

Ron's shoulders bunched and he crammed the pillow even harder down on the back of his head. 

Harry had mostly been teasing, but this reaction … "Does she, Ron?"

"How should I know?" Ron's muffled scream came from under the pillow.

It was not very nice of him to be taking such delight in tormenting his best friend this way. Not nice to be laughing the very same night that another student had died, when all of Hogwarts should have been in shock and mourning. But so much had happened … his own emotions had been veering crazily in all directions … that Ron's problem somehow helped bring all of his own back into some kind of perspective. 

"Ron?"

With the air of a man ascending the steps to the guillotine, Ron removed the pillow from his head and rolled onto his back again. "She might."

Harry made encouraging noises. 

"We got to Hogsmeade," Ron said, "and of course it was raining like hell. The Three Broomsticks was packed – I saw you, but you must not have seen me in the crowd."

"Guess not," Harry said. 

"I saw Hermione, too, but she must still be mad about something. I tried to say hello, and, Harry, she cut me dead."

"Really?"

"I swear I don't know what's the matter with her," Ron grumbled. "Anyway, I had a butterbeer … Luna had cocoa; she said she normally gets gillywater but today was too cold for it. Then we went around to some of the shops, you know, the usual stuff. Did you get to Honeydukes? I bought a bunch of their new Fire and Ice Gumdrops. You should try them. They make you breathe fire or blow frost clouds, and if you pop one of each in your mouth, you spout steam."

"Cool."

"The storm was getting bad by then," Ron said. "The whole street was four inches deep in mudpuddles. Somehow, we ended up over by Four Founders Park – ever been there?"

Harry shook his head. 

"It's just a little park with a sundial in the middle and statues of the four Hogwarts founders," Ron explained. "You know – Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. There are paths all around it, through the woods. Not woods like the Forbidden Forest but more like what's around the Burrow."

"Heck of a day to go to the park," Harry said. 

"It was Luna's idea," Ron said. "She says there've been reported sightings of Thimblenurks around there, but that they only come out in the rain."

"What's a … no, never mind."

"So we looked for Thimblenurks. Didn't find any, and that was when the hail started coming down."

"That was some serious hail," Harry agreed. 

"Here and there along the paths are these little wooden gazebos," Ron said. "Not much more than a peaked roof and latticed side rails around benches, but good enough to keep the hail from cracking our heads open. We sat on a bench, and … and … somehow … I don't know how … she said something, and I couldn't hear her with the thunder, so I yelled 'what?' and turned, and she was right there close to me … and it was like we just … bumped into each other with our lips."

Harry found that he could envision this quite clearly. A whimsical gazebo like ones he'd sometimes seen around Little Whinging, an isolated little island in the middle of the storm. Hailstones bouncing off the roof and piling up in gritty white heaps. Ron, with his red hair soaked and streaming rivulets of water, Luna in her brilliant yellow raincoat, accidentally blundering into a kiss. 

"And then it was like she went mad," Ron said. He had a faraway look in his eyes, remembering. "She bloody well tackled me off that bench and was all over me! I mean, Harry, we were on the floor of that gazebo and she was smacking kisses all over my face … it was like she was … possessed by some … kissing-demon."

"Luna?"

"Luna!"

"What'd you do?"

"What could I do?"

"Did you ask her to stop?"

"Couldn't very well talk with my mouth full, could I?"

Harry choked. 

Ron squeezed his eyes shut. "Ooh. Didn't mean to say that."

"A bit more than I wanted to know, yeah."

He found, also, that not only could he envision this quite clearly, too … he couldn't not envision it. Ron and Luna, tangled up on the floor beside a bench … carrying on like people in the soap operas Aunt Petunia liked to watch in the afternoons before Uncle Vernon came home … slobbering all over each other. 

"Sorry," Ron said. "Maybe there was something in the butterbeer. Do you think there could have been? Like … a potion?"

"You mean like a love potion?"

Ron flinched at the L word. "Some kind of a potion, anyway! Maybe Malfoy –"

"I think the only thing in your butterbeer was butterbeer."

"I wasn't drunk!" Ron protested. "Butterbeer hardly has any alcohol at all. It's not like I was drinking firewhiskey."

"It gets Winky sloshed."

"And she drinks twice her body weight of it. I wasn't drunk!"

"So … you were sober and kissing Luna."

"There's got to be some other explanation."

"Is it easier to think that Malfoy drugged your butterbeer?"

"Not easier," Ron said. "Preferable, maybe. Harry, what was I doing? I was kissing her! Hugging her! She was chewing on my neck like a vampire! I touched her –"

"Ron!" Harry raised both hands fast, like a traffic cop. "I get the picture."

"And it is a vivid one, isn't it?" Hermione asked acidly. 

He and Ron shot off their beds like they'd been fired from catapults. 

Hermione stood in the doorway of their dormitory room, wearing a fluffy bathrobe over a long flannel nightie, her hair brushed and shining, her eyes as scary as those of a gorgon. She had her fists clenched at her sides, the knuckles white, and Harry thought that he had never seen her looking so furious. 

"Hermione!" Ron grabbed up his own bathrobe and tried to struggle into it. "Don't you bloody knock?"

"How long have you been standing there?" Harry asked. 

"Long enough," she said. "More than long enough. Ron Weasley, you unbelievable bastard!"

"What?" Ron was brick red, sputtering, trying for righteous indignation. "Me? And what are you doing here anyway? It's unfair you can walk into our room anytime you like, but let one of us try to set foot in your dormitory and –"

Her gaze was fixed on his neck. This dawned on Ron, and Harry had time to think that for once, Ron was experiencing an inkling of what he, Harry, lived through with his scar almost every day of his life. Welcome to the wonderful world of being a marked man, Ron, he thought. How do you like it?

"Burned," Ron said. "Ironing. Collar."

"Bullshit," Hermione said.

Ron and Harry gaped. 

She crossed the room, such crackling angry energy around her that it was like being out in the thunderstorm all over again.

"Um, Hermione?" Harry ventured. 

But he might as well have suddenly had his Invisibility Cloak drop over him and a Silencing Charm manifest around him for all the notice that she paid. She stalked toward Ron, who backed up until he was cornered against the window. 

"I guess you had a nice time in Hogsmeade, Ron," she said with poisonous sweetness. "Didn't you?"

Ron was considerably taller and heavier, but he might have been confronting an enraged giantess. He glanced to Harry. Harry gestured helplessly. 

"Hermione –" Ron said.

"You're such an idiot!" Molten fury glimmered in her eyes. "How can you be such an idiot, Ron Weasley?"

"Dunno!"

"Luna? Of all people, Luna?!"

"What's wrong with Luna?"

Harry wanted to creep out the door, but didn't dare move. He could only hope that Dean, Seamus and Neville weren't on their way up the stairs. Ron didn't need any more witnesses to this debacle. 

"What's wrong with her?" cried Hermione. "Don't even get me started! But you go with her to Hogsmeade?"

"I had to!" Ron shouted back. "You were all right there having a go at me, making fun, all because I'd said I would ask a girl and then I didn't, so what was I supposed to do? I even asked you!"

"You did not!"

"I did! Right there at breakfast, and you yelled at me!"

"That wasn't a real asking!"

"What in the bloody hell does that mean?"

"If you had asked me, asked me properly, I would have gone! But you never do! It was the same with the Yule Ball. Did it occur to you, ever, even once, that you could have? No!"

"You were going with Krum!" Ron waved his arms wildly in the air. "You had a date!"

"And you've been bitter about it ever since," Hermione said. "Is that what you're doing? Is that what this is all about? You're using Luna to try and get back at me because you're still upset about Viktor?"

"You're mental!"

"And you're an insensitive clod!"

"What do you care who I go out with, anyway?" Ron demanded. "Who do you think you are, my mother? You pick on me when I don't ask anyone out, and then when I do, you have a fit! So what if I kissed Luna? I kissed her! I enjoyed it! There, are you happy now?"

Suddenly, shockingly, Hermione burst into tears. "No!" she screamed. "No, I'm not!"

"Why not?" Ron screamed back at her, arms flailing, completely out of control. 

"Because I'm in love with you, stupid!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. 

She seized Ron by the ears, yanked his head down, and kissed him so hard that Harry heard their teeth clack together. 

Klaxons shattered the air, whooping and wailing. Lights flashed. Hermione leapt back from Ron, horrified. 

"Oh, no, I forgot!" she squealed, and turned in a whirl of flannel and terrycloth. She bolted out the door. 

The commotion cut off as soon as she was over the threshold and out of their room. Harry could hear the sound of her running feet on the spiral stairs. And then, presumably as she reached the bottom, she was greeted by hoots, wolf-whistles, cheers, catcalls and applause from everyone in the common room. 

"Looks like there are rules about what girls can do in the boys' dorm after all," Harry said, mostly to himself. 

Then, feeling more than a little bit awkward for what he'd just witnessed, but at the same time trying manfully not to go off in gales of uproarious laughter, he looked over at Ron.

Ron was frozen in place. His eyes were open so wide they looked ready to pop out of his head, and his mouth hung open in pure stupefaction.

"You all right, Ron?"

"Hermione kissed me!" Ron said incredulously.

"I know. I saw."

"Hermione kissed me!"

"Yeah."

"Hermione kissed me!"

Harry turned a snicker into a cough. "How was it?"

"Wet," Ron said. "She was crying."

"See? It isn't just me that happens to."

"Harry … Hermione kissed me!"

"Yes, Ron."

"Why'd she do that?"

"Think she fancies you."

"But … but she … but I …"

"So, tell me again," Harry said teasingly, tapping his forefinger against his chin in an attitude of thoughtfulness. "How come, if you say I'm so good-looking and noble and brave and all that, you're the one with two girls fighting over you?"

Ron blustered, but before he could come up with a reply, more feet clattered on the steps and then Dean, Seamus and Neville piled into the room, all talking at once. 

"—alarm went off –"

"Hermione –"

"—doing up here?"

To their infinite disappointment, Harry and Ron refused to tell them what had happened. Or, rather, Harry refused and Ron seemed unable to speak, and no amount of cajoling could get them to confess. 

Twenty minutes later, Colin Creevey stuck his head in and apologetically asked Ron and Harry to come down to the common room. "It's Professor McGonagall," he said. "She wants to talk to you."

Ron received this news the way one might receive news of a terminal disease. Looking sick, he descended the steps on stilted wooden legs. Harry followed. 

The fire was still burning merrily in the hearth, a welcome sight while the rain kept battering against the windows and lightning flickered irregularly over the mountains. The common room was deserted, everyone having either gone to bed, or, more likely, been sent there by Professor McGonagall. 

She waited for them near the portrait hole, severe in her square spectacles, hair up in a tight bun and lips pursed into a white line. 

"Mr. Potter," she said. "Mr. Weasley."

"Professor," Harry said, nodding. 

He elbowed Ron. Ron made a gurgling noise. 

"Is there anything either of you wish to tell me?" she asked. 

Ron looked like his life was flashing before his eyes. He was probably imagining what his mother would say if he was expelled, if he went from being a prefect to being a rules-breaker like Fred and George after all. Fred and George would salute him for getting kicked out of school for this kind of reason, but Harry doubted that had yet crossed Ron's mind. 

"It's discrimination, you know, Professor," Harry said. "If the boys aren't allowed to set foot in the girls' dorms at all, it should be the other way 'round as well. Having a different set of rules pertaining to us is unfair. Blatant discrimination."

"Are you trying to help, Mr. Potter, or are you trying to make matters worse?"

"Only making a point."

"Consider it taken." The hint of a smile twitched, then was gone. "Mr. Weasley?"

"Honestly, Professor," Ron said in a thin, wavering voice, "I didn't know she was going to kiss me. I swear I had no idea."

"I see. And I trust you'll be on your best behavior, and abide by the rules of dormitory conduct?"

Ron bobbed his head. 

"Very well. You both may go."

"No … no detention? No docked points for Gryffindor?" Ron asked. 

"Do you think you deserve them?"

"No, ma'am," Harry said. "It won't happen again. Will it, Ron?"

"Right," Ron said. "Won't happen again."

"In that case, good night. Oh, and Potter?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"In light of today's grievous events, tomorrow's Quidditch game has been called off. Slytherin House requested some time to mourn this latest loss of a student."

Harry felt guilty all over again for having all but forgotten Devona Stormdark. "Oh. Of course. Sure."

"Please inform your team. Also, Monday's classes are canceled, possibly Tuesday's as well. We'll be having a special assembly tomorrow instead, and Professor Dumbledore will be returning to speak to the students. I've already instructed Mr. Creevey to announce it in the morning, before breakfast."

With a final glance, both stern and bemusedly scandalized, at Ron, McGonagall opened the portrait hole and swept out of Gryffindor tower. 

Ron sank into one of the overstuffed chairs. "So now everyone knows."

"Pretty much," Harry said, sitting near him. 

"What the hell am I going to do, Harry?"

"About which part?"

"About any part!"

"I guess you'd better talk to Hermione," Harry said. 

Ron had an expression suggesting he'd sooner return to Aragog's lair in the heart of the forest. "And say what, exactly?"

"That, I have no bloody idea." Harry shook his head, half-admiringly. "Here I thought I had girl problems."

"Did … did you hear what she said up there? Right before she … she kissed me?"

"Yeah."

"She's joking, isn't she?"

"I don't think so."

"But what about Viktor Krum?"

"Maybe they're just friends."

"She's been writing to him every week!"

"Ron, I don't have the answers. You'll have to ask Hermione."

"Ask her? She'll probably never speak to me again. How'm I going to ask her anything? She hates me!"

"Didn't look that way upstairs."

"And what am I going to say to Luna?"

Harry blew through his teeth, clicked his tongue, shook his head. 

"A lot of help you are," Ron said. 

"On the bright side," Harry said, "maybe people will think that hickey came from Hermione."

Someone had left a heavy Transfiguration textbook on an end table, and Ron chucked it at Harry's head. "That's not funny!"

"Sorry, Ron."

"No, you aren't. You're not sorry at all."

"I am, really. You and Hermione are both my friends. My best friends. This is … this is a mess, Ron, is what this is."

"Thank you very much, Harry. Like I hadn't figured that out for myself."

They sat up a while longer, Harry hoping that either Ginny would come downstairs to translate and explain everything for them, or that Hermione herself would put in an appearance. Neither did, and eventually the fire started to burn low. 

"Come on," Harry said. "Let's get some sleep. We'll figure out what to do in the morning."

He and Ron went up to their room. Though the others must have tried to wait up, still in hopes of hearing some details, both Dean and Seamus were sound asleep. Neville was awake, but all he did was offer Ron a beaming conspiratorial grin. Harry recalled that Neville had done his share of kissing that day at Hogsmeade, too, and was startled to feel a brief pang of annoyance. After all, so had he, but nobody was making a big deal about it. 

Then, feeling like a heel, he got into bed and drew the draperies shut. He quietly slid open his night table drawer, reached in, and found the mirror. Jane was probably spending the night in the hospital wing and wouldn't have her mirror with her. 

He touched the smooth dark glass and thought about her, in the long row of white beds he knew so well from his own many nights under Madame Pomfrey's care. 

Finally, he slept. 

**

Continued in Chapter Twenty-One -- Dumbledore's New Army.