Emerald Eyes - HP one-shots

Misunderstood Racism

A/N: The story takes place in Chamber Of Secrets.

It had all started after a quite lovely nap Harry had taken during a History of Magic lecture. He and Ron were walking out of the classroom, Harry feeling refreshed, and Ron complaining about how boring Binns was.

Harry was only half paying attention when he heard Ron say, “Like we needed a whole hour to learn that the Blacks are just a bunch of criminals and always will be.”

Unfortunately for Harry, Ron’s sentence didn’t fully register in his head until later that day. He mulled it over in his head for a while trying to decide if Ron really said what he thought he did. After some considerable thought he decided that he must have misheard him and let it be. Especially since it had been the first time he had ever heard him say something slightly racist, and while they weren’t the closest with Dean, Ron had never seemed to have a problem with him.

However, all throughout the next few weeks and leading up to the end of term, Ron kept randomly saying disparaging terms about Black families. Unfortunately for Harry, he couldn’t hear that capital letter in the word.

Again after yet another lovely nap during History of Magic, Ron left the classroom talking about how the Blacks were vile and deserved to all be put in jail.

Harry had definitely heard him that time. He was sure about it. Especially since he instantly became uncomfortable. It matched the same feeling he would get whenever Uncle Vernon would start mumbling in stores or restaurants.

Harry was compelled to say something to Ron. He decided it wasn’t the right time at the moment, especially since Binns apparently held them back an extra 10 minutes and they had to hurry to their next class.

Harry lost his nerve to confront Ron throughout the day though. First, he had never had to confront a friend about something of this nature before. His only experience with it being his Aunt Petunia shaking her head or apologizing to any people nearby when Vernon would get too loud during his muttering. Second, he again convinced himself that Ron had in fact not said anything racist. No one else had even reacted to anything he said and Ron surely wasn’t whispering when he said it. Hell, he hadn’t even done the classic environment check with his head before he said what he said.

Rationalizing that Harry had once again misheard, he shrugged and let the matter lie again. But promised to watch for any further signs that Ron might indeed be racist. Harry’s detective mode had been activated.

Harry would watch Ron’s facial expressions in the common room whenever Dean or Angelina would walk through the portrait hole, or listen for changes to his tone of voice when he talked to them. Hell, he had even woken up early for a week straight just to gauge Ron’s reaction in the morning when he first saw Dean, for he was sure that if Ron was tempering himself for his sake that he would be less likely to be on his toes after just waking up.

Nothing seemed amiss though. The only time he had thought he was on to something was once while they were waiting in the hall for potions. Dean had turned the corner of the corridor and Harry, turning to gauge Ron’s reaction, noticed a narrowing of his eyes. Harry had glumly thought that he was right, Ron really was a racist. That thought had blessedly been discarded though when Ron had informed him that Malfoy was back in class after a two day stint in the hospital wing.

After a month of meticulous investigating, Harry had concluded that he was thankfully wrong and Ron truly wasn’t racist. It was honestly a load off of his mind. In fact, Harry had mostly forgotten about it until there were only two weeks left in the term.

He and Ron were serving a detention for sleeping through class in the common room after lunch.

They had been told to clean a random wall of plaques in the east corridor. “Scrubbing off the grime covering the names of these students ought to fix your attitude!” Filch had told them while handing over two sponges and a bucket of water.