Liar. Harry Potter's sister ~ Book 2

chapter sixteen

"Did you kiss?" I ask, briskly, leaning my elbows on my knees. Harry sits with his back to the fire, his face flushed pink, slightly, but his face also stretched into a smug expression. The book on Hermione's lap toppled to the floor and Ron sat up quicker than I ever have seen him do with an expression of mingled curiosity. Harry runs his fingers through his hair, and I couldn't tell if it was a distraction or out of frustration. He sighs and nods.

"HA!" Ron exclaims, flinging himself back onto the sofa next to me. He gave a triumphant gesture with his hands and burst out into a raucous fit of laughter that made several timid-looking first years in the corner jump. Harry's face spread into a reluctant grin. Hermione looks at Ron with a face that could only be described as disgust at his immature behaviour, but she turned to Harry.

"Well, how was it?" She says, leaning down and picking up her book from the floor, and smoothening out the pages. His face twisted into deep thought.

"Wet."

Ron's face morphed into confusion and he made a strange sound, mixed between jubilance and disgust. My eyebrows furrow. I blink at him.

"Because she was sort of crying." He adds, hurriedly

"Oh," Ron said in a quizzical tone, his smile fading, "Are you that bad at kissing?" Harry shrugged, a faint tinge of panic behind his eyes.

"Of course he isn't." Hermione says, flicking through the he pages of her book, presumably trying to find the one she lost. I muffle my giggle in my sleeve.

"How do you know?" I say teasingly, raising a confused eyebrow at her.

"Yes." Ron says, very sharply "How do you know?"

Hermione rolls her eyes, "Because Cho spends half her time crying these days," she says vaguely, giving Ron a rather displeasing look. "She does it during mealtimes, in the loos, all over the place, really."

"You'd thing a bit of snogging would cheer her up, surely?" Ron says, grinning broadly. Harry smirks, but Hermione and I glare at him.

"Don't you understand how she must be feeling right now?" Hermione says, lifting up her boom to make room for Crookshanks, who pounced onto her lap and curled up there, purring away. She looked at the two boys with pitiful looks.

"No." Harry and Ron said in unison. Hermione sighed heavily, clearly done with these boys and buried her nose in her book once again. Harry and Ron's eyes avert to me, pleadingly. I sigh.

"Well obviously she's feeling sad about Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings towards Harry are anyway, because he was also one to witness Cedric die, so that's all very mixed up and painful." I say, glancing over at Hermione occasionally, and feeling slightly uplifted when I see her nodding along at my advice. "Oh and she's also probably afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because he hasn't been flying that great recently." I add hurriedly at the end.

There was a slightly stunned silence that followed the end of my little speech. Harry and Ron sat there looking slightly intimidated but also dumbfounded. I lean back in the sofa, waiting for them to process the information I had just given to them. I blink. Merlin they're slow aren't they?

"If one person could feel all that, they'd explode!"

Hermione looks up from her book and said rather nastily, "Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have." Usually, I would have laughed, but the burden at the back of my brain held me back. The thought of being in another detention with Umbridge in less than an hour, now, was making me feel physically sick. The pit of my stomach was tingling with anxiety and a prolonged feeling of dread. The amount of regret I have felt this term is unbelievable. I hate myself for talking back to her like that. Maybe if I had just kept my mouth shut I would actually be at ease.