If I Had Made A Different Choice (Completed)

Part 8

For a while, unbelievably, it had seemed that she would win out over Lavender for Ron's affections. He had agreed to go to Slughorn's Christmas party with her. And then it all came crashing down with that horrifying scene at the party after the first quidditch victory. Lavender had won after all.The next few months had been horrid. She had pushed one best friend away and now was refusing to speak to the other. But then Ron had tired of Lavender's clingyness and they had eventually broken up. He started being nice to her again. She was sure that this time ...
But no. He had just told her that he wasn't interested in her that way. What?! Why not? She had managed to refrain from these and the other, more bitter response, 'Well, just what exactly did it mean then when you always acted so jealous of other guys?' She had managed to keep the encounter amiable. She needed to keep his friendship, at least.
And she needed to salvage and repair what remained of her friendship with Harry. She took a deep breath, both to try to calm down and to forestall a new round of tears. That much, at least, should be doable. Harry had never really given up on her. No matter how beastly she had behaved toward him, he had kept coming back to her, his eyes silently pleading for her to believe him, to help him, to join him in his struggle as she had done so faithfully for five years. But which she had stubbornly refused to do this year.
She lost the battle to hold back the tears and they began flowing again at the miserable thoughts of how much she had let him down. Hopefully, she and Ron had begun the process to set that to rights again when they had confronted him out by the lake a half-hour ago. She would be with him, by his side again. But that only brought back the problem she had tried to solve at the beginning of the year when she had given up on him.