Awakening || Harry & Hermione

Chapter 12.4

After Flitwick left, Harry was silent and moody for the rest of the evening. He couldn't bring himself to smile or talk or do anything, really. He just felt... empty. The letter containing the will sat unopened on his bedside table, taunting him. He was scared of opening it only to find more lies, more secrets, more hurtful truths.

Hermione did her best to offer support, but even she couldn't erase his past.

When the Weasley twins dropped by, dragging Ron along with them, Harry was jolted out of his brooding. They came armed with a basket of their strange inventions and treats that Harry didn't have the heart to tell them Hermione had already smuggled for him from the kitchens.

Once the twins had finished tussling Harry's hair jokingly and making over dramatic exclamations about his rumoured comatose state, Ron spoke up from the side.

"Hey there, Harry," he said.

"Hi Ron," Harry replied, feeling strange.

Before this year he had never felt uncomfortable in Ron's presence, but now a heavy blanket of silence and awkwardness lay between them.

"How—" Ron shuffled his feet. "How are you?"

Terrible, Harry wanted to say. I've just fought Voldemort and his merry band of Death Eaters. I've found out that a man I had once respected sent me to my childhood prison. My head is bloody aching. And this is the first time you've spoken to me in almost six months after I told you to choose between apologizing and remaining my friend.

"Fine," Harry said instead. "You?"

"Oh. That's good to hear." Ron looked relieved at his response. "Nothing much going on with me, really. Just the usual."

Taking Harry's silence as an indication to continue, Ron started to talk about how the past few weeks had been, the grueling year end exams, something Seamus and Dean had been up to, his excitement at Quidditch returning to Hogwarts next year... the words seemed to meld together as Harry began to zone out.

Ron was an ordinary boy, talking about ordinary school things, and at one point in his life Harry would have soaked in the normalcy his presence offered. But the Harry of the moment could not bring himself to care about what was being said. He felt like he and Ron were standing on opposite sides, with an ocean of differences separating them.

Ron, too, seemed to run out of things to say and began to fidget before muttering that he had forgotten about meeting someone and made a hasty exit.

Fred and George raised their eyebrows at each other and shrugged, taking over Ron's role as conversation starter. Harry truly was not in the mood for talking, but the twins had the ability to inject laughter into any room they stepped into. After entertaining Harry and Hermione with silly anecdotes and lighthearted gossip, the twins grew serious.

"You really gave us a scare there, Harry," Fred said. "When you fainted, we didn't know what to think. Thought you were a goner."

"Take care of yourself, yeah?" George frowned. "I can't imagine fighting You-Know-Who was easy."

"It wasn't a walk in the park, that's for sure." He shrugged, not ready to go into the details of that night. "But most of my injuries have already healed."

"What about you two?" He changed the subject, noticing the heavy bags under their eyes. "Rough night?"

"It wasn't like we could sleep after everything that happened!" Fred said.

"But Bagman running away with our money definitely didn't help either," George muttered.

"He did what?" Hermione exclaimed.

After a little urging, she managed to wrangle the story out of them. With every word they spoke, their shoulders seemed to droop and their voices lost their previous energy.

"I know what you're going to say," George sighed. "It was stupid of us to bet all of our savings. Foolish."

"But when you're desperate, you don't really think clearly." Fred shrugged. "Next year will be our last year at Hogwarts. It was either settle for one of those Ministry jobs Mum's been nagging us about or bet on our last hope for setting up our own joke shop. And now that plan's dead in a ditch."

Harry looked thoughtfully at the bag of winnings at his bedside table. "It doesn't have to be."

Fred's gaze followed Harry's line of sight and he stiffened. "Harry, you can't—"

"Can't what?" Harry grabbed the bag and turned to Hermione, asking if she could take out a quill and some parchment to write on.

"Can't just give us your winnings!" George had caught on too.

"I'm not giving anything," Harry snorted. "I'm investing."

An idea had slowly been growing at the back of his head while he casually played with the silly inventions the twins had brought and listened to their story. Silly was the key word. Everybody seemed to perceive them as a couple of jokesters, but now that Harry had learned the value of twisting a simple spell, he could easily see their pranking through a mean spirited lens instead. Perhaps, people would always consider what they did as harmless fun or look down on the pranks.

But being looked down on wasn't necessarily bad, Harry considered carefully. Being underestimated was what had saved his life at the graveyard after all.

He started writing down terms on the parchment. Money wasn't really important to him, but having the right to point the directions of their inventions and use them exclusively was.

"If you decide to take the winnings, you decide to enter into a partnership with me. I would be a shareholder, I suppose. You would still be running the whole business, but I'd be entitled to chime in here and there for things I'd like to see you try."

Hermione was looking at him with a contemplative expression, as if surprised by this turn of events.

Identical, slow smiles spread across the twins' faces. "What do you have in mind, Harry?"

Harry smiled back. "If you're allowed to go crazy with your inventions, just how nasty can you make them?