No Last Names
Another month passed.
Rushing into charms class late, Harry took a seat next to Hermione, tossing a copy of Silence of The Lambs onto the table. “What did I miss? Did he see me?”
“No, Slughorn did not see you arrive thirty minutes late, and we have begun learning about a detection charm,” Hermione responded dryly, rolling her eyes.
“A detective charm?” Harry asked, looking at the paper she handed him. It seemed everyone in the class had received one as well.
“It allows its user to find any dark magic or harmful weapons in their surroundings. It’s supposed to alert with a red light of our wand when it finds something dangerous. It also can detect any sort of contraband, so I’d be careful about what you keep in your dorm,” She informed, taking a moment to add some notes to her page. When he didn’t do the same, she hissed. “Write this down, Slughorn said we’re sure to have a test on it.”
She thought as he began to dip his quill in ink, “Why were you so tardy anyway?”
“I slept in,” Harry lied, avoiding the thought of last night’s dream. The remembrance of it sent a chill down his back, his hands clammy.
He felt a pair of eyes upon him, and looked to his left. Draco was eyeing him, a concerned look upon his face. An ‘are you okay, where the hell were you’ sort of look.
Harry gave a limp smile and tried to understand what the hell his teacher was talking about.
Class has been dismissed, and Harry was gone in an instant. Ron and Hermione had looked for him, yet he had vanished.
On his way out of class, Draco was stopped by the couple. Hermione asked, “Did you see where he went?”
Draco shook his head, “I’m afraid not.” He paused. “Is he alright, he was missing when I woke up this morning so I assumed he went to class early but when he wasn’t here I got worried.”
“Ronald, you keep an eye out for him, I made plans to meet Mcgonagall during lunch today,” Hermione said, squeezing his arm. He nodded, laying a kiss on her forehead before watching her leave.
Draco admired their subtle moments together, when the two weren’t arguing without each other.
“Is he usually like this,” Draco asked, bringing the subject back towards Harry. He couldn’t get the Gryffindor out of his mind.
Ron sighed, “He’s been like this since the war. He may have been ‘The Chosen One’ but deep down, he was still just a kid. You can’t put a kid through that shit and have them be undamaged.”
Draco pondered on his words. He understood Harry’s state, the war had done terrible things to him as well. Especially his home life.
“Weasley, may I ask-“Look, just call me Ron. We don’t still hate each other, do we? Calling you by your last name feels dumb. Besides, Draco rolls off the tongue much better.” Ron was a strange character, Draco thought. But it was sweet to be able to put past their childish arguments.
“I worry about him, I feel that there’s something he may be hiding,” Draco admitted as he walked down the corridor with Ron.
“Like a secret?”
“Sort of, I don’t have any reason to suspect anything but I just have this gut feeling that there is something far worse than what we expect,” He pondered, entering the court yard.
Ron took a seat on a wooden bench, Draco leaning against the large oak tree. Rummaging in his back, Ron offered the Slytherin a chocolate frog. He hesitated before accepting it with a small ‘thank you.’
“Mione and I worry about him a lot, he’s never been the same since he lost Cedric, and when the war happened, man, it just made shit so much worse,” Ron grimaced, looking up.
Draco wondered what he was scanning for, maybe the fluffy clouds and bright sun above. Maybe he was looking for Fred.
“Ronald-“Ron.” “Ron, Ron, got it. Do you plan to propose to Hermione?”
“Of course.”
“But how can you be sure, that she’s the one, I mean.”
Ron tilted his head, confused. Draco hadn’t meant it in a harmful way, yet Ron furrowed his eyebrows protectively anyway.
Draco swallowed as he continued, “I-I just mean, how do you know she’s the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? I feel like I’d never be able to be so sure.”
Ron’s expression had changed from defensive to an ‘ohhhh’ sort of face. “Mione and I were at the black lake one evening, back in sixth year, around winter time. Harry was busy following you around and so she and I decided to find something distracting to do. We stopped by the lake and we were about to keeping going when she stopped to fix my scarf. Told me I’d catch a cold if it wasn’t tighter around my neck. That was when I.. just knew.”
Draco chuckled at his story, there was no way it could be that simple. And yet he hoped it was.