WILDFLOWER, hermione granger.

oxii. know thy enemy

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OXII. KNOW THY ENEMY
twelve

IT WAS EVENING, THE HOSPITAL WING WAS QUIET, THE WINDOWS CURTAINED AND LAMPS LIT. Ron's was the only occupied bed. Harry, Hermione, Ivy, and Ginny were sitting around him.

They had spent all day waiting outside the double doors, trying to see inside whenever somebody went in or out. Madam Pomfrey had only let them enter at eight o'clock. Fred and George had arrived at ten past.

"This isn't how we imagined handing over our present," George says grimly, putting down a large wrapped gift on Ron's bedside cabinet and sitting beside Ginny.

"Yeah, when we pictured the scene, he was conscious," Fred added.

"There we were in Hogsmeade, waiting to surprise him—" George begins.

"You were in Hogsmeade?" Ginny interjected, looking up.

"We were thinking of buying Zonko's," Fred informed gloomily. "A Hogsmeade branch, you know, but a fat lot of good it'll do us if you lot aren't allowed out at weekends to buy our stuff anymore... But never mind that now." He drew up a chair beside Harry and looked at Ron's pale face. "How exactly did it happen, Harry?"

Harry retold the story he had already recounted, it felt like a hundred times to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to Madam Pomfrey, to Hermione and Ivy, and to Ginny.

George blinked, and says in a low voice, "Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar."

"Lucky there was one in the room," Harry and Ivy say simultaneously, though Harry was still shuddering at the thought of what would've happened if there wasn't.

Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened. Ivy, however, was inscrutable. There was this cold glare in her eyes, her arms crossed.

"This is all Romilda Vane's fault," She grits out stonily in a quiet voice, not bothering to hide the anger behind that. "If she hadn't sent that box of chocolates to Potter, he wouldn't have it till now still, and they wouldn't have to go to Slughorn, and Ronald wouldn't have been poisoned."

"It's already done, Ivy," Ginny told the frightening blonde, who looked murderous.

"Do Mum and Dad know?" Fred asked Ginny.

"They've already seen him, they arrived an hour ago—they're in Dumbledore's office now, but they'll be back soon..."

There was a pause while they all watched Ron mumble a little in his sleep.

"So the poison was in the drink?" Fred inquired quietly.

"Or it could be the other way around," Ivy shrugged, trying to distract herself from a half-planned murder on Romilda Vane. "The poison might be in the glass—christ, I've watched too many crime films..."

"Yes, Slughorn poured it out—"

"Would he have been able to slip something into Ron's glass without you seeing?"