Polyjuice Party

Chapter 8: The Sickening Truth

Everything was a blur.

"Miss Granger? Miss Granger can you tell me again what happened?" Unfocused faces whirred in and out of Hermione's view, asking her pressing questions that she'd already answered before.

"How are you feeling?" Another voice asked.

"Sick." Hermione said, her eyes rolling back into her head.

"Do you know the whereabouts of Mr Weasley now?" Again, a question Hermione had answered what seemed like hundreds of times before, the answer being a confident 'no'.

"Is his sister also a deatheater? Did they work together?" Hermione felt vomit rising in her throat. She kept slipping in and out of consciousness, still not grasping the fact that Ronald Weasley could possibly be a deatheater.

"Ginny isn't a deatheater" Hermione said as coolly as she could. She could also hear Harry being interrogated by reporters on the seat next to her, being asked the same questions.

"Hello, Hermione. Reporter from the Wizard Weekly here. Could you give us a statement on how you-"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" she yelled weakly, squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm going to-" her head lolled forward. "I'm going to- to be sick!" A wave of vomit released itself from Hermione's mouth, spraying all over the hassling reporters.

Then everything went black.

***

"Hermione. Hermione wake up."' A soft, calming voice aroused Hermione into consciousness. It was Kinglsey Shacklebolt. "Ah good, you're awake. Now, I'm here on behalf of the aurors, so when your ready can you possibly tell me what happened earlier with Mr Weasley?"

Hermione sat up abruptly, looking nervously around her.

"Don't worry, Miss Granger. The reporters are gone. I can tell that you are very shocked and stressed by this event, but we need to know what happened so we can keep you and your friends safe." Shacklebolt's voice was so soothing, Hermione wanted to fall asleep. "Start from how you came to discover that Mr Weasley was acting strange."

"I had just gotten out of the hospital wing, and I-" Kingsley held his hand up.

"Slow down. Why were you in the hospital wing?"

"Lavender Brown attacked me after I went near Ron. They started secretly dating after the Polyjuice party we had and since she's such an unstable monster she snapped, jinxed me and threw my wand away." Hermione ran a hand through her hair.

"Continue." Shacklebolt leant forward.

"Ron was in the hospital wing, saying that he was checking up on me. Once I'd left the hospital wing I went to the common room and found Ginny and asked her to help me find my wand, so we went to the Great Hall to look for it."

"And did you find it?" Shacklebolt asked intensely.

"Yes, then I went back to the common room to find Harry and R-" a terrified look of realisation passed onto Hermione's face. "Oh my god, you have to arrest Vincent Crabbe, Lavender Brown and Gregory Goyle now!"

***

"Did you hear what happened?" Blaise sat opposite Draco in the dorm room.

"How could I have not? Everyone's talking about it" Draco traced a pattern with his delicate finger across his satin bedsheets. "I can't believe it."

Blaise sighed. "I know, right. I mean, Weasley out of everyone. No one saw this coming."

"Uh huh" Draco rubbed his temples. "I'm standing by for the aurors to come and question me about this, I mean, with my past and all. I can't wait" he tightened his jaw and stood up, beginning to pace around the room. "I swear I had nothing to do with this, but will they believe me?"

Blaise thought for a moment, before saying, "Yes. They will. If you had nothing to do with this, then you had nothing to do with this."

Draco's lips curled into a smile. "Thanks, Blaise."

***

"And why do I need to arrest Lavender Brown, Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe?" Shacklebolt stood up after Hermione had made the announcement and Hermione did also.

"I'll explain while we walk down to the courtyard. I'll reckon that Crabbe and Goyle are there." Kingsley nodded quickly as the duo walked out of the common room and down the corridor at a quick pace.

"Isn't it obvious, Hermione! Why didn't I think of this before!" The brunette scalded herself quietly, before turning to Shacklebolt and explaining it all.

"Ron would've known Lavender had a crush on him, I think just about everyone in Hogwarts did. That would mean she was an easy target to help him with his plan." Hermione was actually smiling, she'd worked this out perfectly. "So at the Polyjuice Party, Ron must've somehow known who Lavender was, maybe because he watched her transform or he gave her the vial of Polyjuice Potion, I don't know. Anyway, he would've swooned over her at the party, making her fall in love with him and then when the time was right, maybe after midnight, he told that he was working for the deatheaters and that she could help him. Since Lavender is so dumb, she abided to his commands. She would jump off a cliff if Ron told her to, honestly."

"Go on, Miss Granger." Shacklebolt stroked his chin as they both started walking down a staircase.

"Right. So that was the plan all along, for Lavender to attack me and for me to land in the hospital wing. She even threw away my wand to make me even more helpless. That was why Ron was there in the Hospital Wing with me when I woke up! He wanted to act like a caring and loving boyfriend, to throw the bad scent off him completely. But when I broke up with him, his plans were foiled and he knew that I wasn't going to be trusting him any time soon. Also, Ron had realised that maybe Lavender hadn't hit me hard enough, hadn't caused enough damage meaning that I would be out of the hospital wing immediately." Hermione stopped to take a breath, before continuing. "After knowing that I would go straight to the Great Hall to look for my wand, he called in two other dim-witted big-heads that would do almost anything if they got a reward, to stop me from foiling his plans again."

Kingsley nodded gravely. "Crabbe and Goyle."

"Yes, Crabbe and Goyle. They reached my wand first and weren't going to let me have it anytime soon. Thankfully, Draco Malfoy came and forced Crabbe and Goyle to give me my wand back. After that, I went back to the Gryffindor Common Room where Harry and..." Hermione's voice faltered, "...Ron... Where having a full-on-fight."

'Yes" Kingsley looked at Hermione as they waited for the moving staircase to shift into position. "Harry did tell me about the fight."

"Well, I hid behind a bookcase so both of them didn't see me, but then the fighting got so bad I had to step in and cast a shield around Harry. Then,....." Hermione's eyes widened. "My merlin, that was Ron's plan all along. To make sure I wasn't in the common room while they were fighting, because....." she gasped. "Ron was trying to kill Harry!"

"My holy hippogriffs..." Kingsley whispered. "You're right, Miss Granger. You and your brilliant brain.... You're...... Right. Oh this is worse than I could imagine."

"Yes, sir. Now do you understand why we need to arrest those three?"

"Yes. Yes I do. Accomplices of attempted murder and aiding dark forces."