He shifted around as he contemplated his options, his feet scuffing the stone flooring.
The girl's crying abruptly stopped. "Who's there?" she demanded.
"Uhhhh," he began, but that was as far as he got before Pansy Parkinson popped out of her hidden location, face streaked with tears, cheeks reddened by embarrassment and anger, and dark eyes spitting mad. "Weasley!" she snarled in righteous fury, spitting his name out as if it were a blasphemous thing. "Spying, were you? I shouldn't be surprised. I'd expect no less from the boy," she emphasized the word, "who'd been caught sneaking peeks in the Prefect's bathroom every Sunday afternoon last year. What despicable manners you have!"
Taken aback at the unfounded attack, Ron could only stare at Slytherin's Bitch Queen with open-mouthed astonishment. Spying? Was she serious?
"I wasn't! I didn't!" he refuted, feeling indignation pitting a corrosive, acid hole in his stomach. He'd put up with Parkinson's bite for the last seven years, giving it back to her every time she challenged and sassed him, so he expected ridiculousness to spew from her mouth every time she opened it. But to have her unjustly accuse him of stalking her like some sick pervert was pushing it. He may have been caught in a few compromising positions with Lavender over the past year, but he'd never peeped the Prefect's bath, and he certainly wasn't spying on this witch! "You're in the middle of the hallway, Parkinson! How's a bloke supposed to get to class and not notice your weeping mug gushing all over the place? Bloody drama queen!"
Parkinson's eyebrows shot into her hairline and her fists clenched at her side. She stomped forward, bristles up like some sort of badger on the attack. "How dare you, you hideous, intellectually-challenged carrot top!" she screeched in ear-splitting volume, closing the distance between them. "I'll have you know, Weasley, that I'm considered quite beautiful by some people!" In one of her hands, she held a piece of wadded up paper that she shook at him now. "Some wizards find me so attractive, in fact, that they've sued my father to court me already!"
He scoffed and shook his head. "Well, obviously, they're blind, aren't they? And clearly deaf, too!" He stuck a finger in one ear and wiggled it around, as if to clear it of the ringing her high-pitched voice had caused. "Honestly, you screech like a lunatic Veela. I s'pect you might've deafened me." Pulling that same finger out of his ear, he pointed it directly in her face in a moment of brilliant clarity. "Hey, I've got an idea: you could put those big lungs of yours to use and make an honest living after graduation. I'm sure there are plenty of openings for a good tuba player or balloon blower out there somewhere, and it beats whoring yourself out to some pure-blood ponce just to make dad and mum happy, yeah?" As if he'd thrown a bucket of frozen water over her, Parkinson's cheeks sheeted white in an instant, and hot tears flooded her eyes again. Her lower chin quivered, her lips pursed into a thin, straight line, and her jaw clenched as she struggled not to fall apart in front of him.
For a second, staring into the raw, naked hurt so obviously etching her face, Ron felt real shame flood through him. Sure, he and this infuriating witch had traded some nasty barbs over the years, but he'd always assumed those were just empty words meant to rile and blow off steam, or occasionally to jab or prod to test each other's strength. They'd never been meant to seriously wound, however. Now, however, he realized something important: sometimes words weren't just meaningless, and sometimes, they could hurt. It was a lesson he'd never taken seriously when 'Mione had explained her feelings every time Malfoy had called her a 'Mudblood,' but now he was learning the moral in record-fast time as he stared directly into Parkinson's anguished face.
Looking down in mortification, he shuffled his feet again. "Look, Parkinson, about what I just said-"
He never saw the blow coming. It was the slap that reverberated around the world, as loud as the one 'Mione had given Malfoy in third year, he was sure. Stunned, he took a step back and his eyes flew to the witch's face…
…only to find those fat, welling tears had escaped and were streaming down her cheeks. A deep misery was etched into every line of her face. Somehow, she'd seemed to age a few years in a matter of seconds. "I hate you, Ronald Weasley!" she shrieked around a sob, then ran past him and didn't look back once.
He turned to follow her path, watching her shaking shoulders as she cried until she'd turned the corner and was out of sight. Only then did he let out the breath he'd been holding.
What the hell had just happened? What had he said specifically to set her off like that? Blinking away the after-effects of Parkinson's blow, he shook his head, rubbed his stinging cheek, and numbly continued on his way to class, feeling disoriented by the events of the last five minutes.
By the time he'd reached Transfiguration, though, he'd convinced himself that the incident in the hallway with the Slytherin Queen–her acting like a loon–was probably just a result of PMS. Heck, his sister and 'Mione were always a bit barmy that time of the month, too.
He felt sorry for the poor sod that drew her name on Saturday night, as a woman on her period certainly limited what you could and would want to do with her in private.
X~~~~~~~~~X
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, Scotland Seventh Year's Transfiguration Classroom Friday, June 12, 1998 (morning)
Tracey had received her Transfiguration final review with Professor McGonagall earlier that morning, and now sat, staring across the room at the boy she'd secretly had a crush on since first year. Harry Potter… Merlin, but he was gorgeous! His charming smile was currently turned on by something that Neville Longbottom had said, and she loved the way it lit up his face. She had to admit that she liked him much better without his glasses in the way now that he'd had his eyesight magically corrected this past year, although she would miss his rounded spectacles, as they'd been a mainstay of his appearance for as long as she'd known him. His dark, messy hair made her fingers itch to smooth it back, as usual. At least that would never change.
"Keep staring at Potter like that and he's going to find out," Hestia Carrow murmured to her.
Tracey blushed and elbowed her best girlfriend. "Shhh, not so loud," she admonished.
Hest looked about, pointing out the obvious – that they were the only ones sitting at the back of the class at the moment. Everyone else was situated closer to the front. "Who's going to hear?" Tracey sighed and swung her head back around to take in Harry's profile. He was now in a discussion with his best mate, Ron Weasley, who had slunk in late today, looking a little mystified. "Doesn't matter anyway, I suppose."
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