White Lies // Drarry

Chapter 15: Love Potions

Ron was a guy. He was as manly as they come, to be quite frank. If Seamus was gay, Dean bisexual, and Nev unsure, then Ron was straight. And Seamus really was gay, and Dean really was bisexual and Neville really was unsure... Okay, so the last bit wasn't totally true. Ron just hadn't asked him about those kind of stuff yet, but Ron really was straight.

He knew because he was in love with Hermione, who was a girl.

So, since Ron was a man and was in love with Hermione, he found out quite easily why Harry had been sighing into his History textbook for the past hour and looking more lost than how someone usually looked in Binns' class.

It wasn't hard, really.

Harry was his best mate after all and even though Hermione liked to claim that she understood Harry better than he did, she didn't have the same kind of brotherly thing that he and Harry shared as men.

During that fateful day in the Great Hall when the rumors of Harry and Draco's Illicit Love AffairTM had first popped up from someone's wicked, wicked mind, Ron wasn't as shocked as he had expected himself to be.

Really, if Ron stopped being mortified and utterly horrified, then he could say that he had expected it to happen.

He was Harry's best mate after all, and Ron be damned if he hadn't notice the little things that changed in Harry's face whenever Harry would watch Malfoy suspiciously during their younger years.

And Ron was in love with Hermione after all.

Had been for the past four years and probably would be for the rest of his life.

So Ron knew just what changed with Harry when his mate entered the Great Hall that morning for breakfast, looking fidgety and wide-eyed as if he'd just seen the world for the first time again.

It was exactly what Ron had looked like when he first realized that he was, possibly, in love with Hermione.

Now, Ron could accept this.

Sort of.

It was still a bit difficult for him, you understand. It was one thing to joke about it, quite another to have it really happen.

But Ron could take it.

He was a man after all.

And he knew how these sorts of feelings didn't leave room for discussion.

They were just there.

He knew how it feels to be in love, and how scary it was.

Ron grew up in a family tied together tightly with love. His parents married for love, stuck together for love, and grew old together with love. Theirs wasn't the kind that waned and dwindled with age, and that sort of thing normally stays with one's children.

Ron had his wise moments, sometimes, rare as they were.

Like now, for instance.

He stared at Harry's slumped form beside him, thinking that even though Harry knew love, had plenty of it, he probably didn't know what to do with this kind.

The day rolled by uneventfully, the classes going by one after the other until it was finally lunch. Harry had been subdued and lost in thought the whole morning that Hermione and Ron were starting to get really worried, but when lunch rolled around, Harry seemed to suddenly bounce back.

"I think they want something from me," he announced thoughtfully, although this was done in a whisper.

Ron and Hermione shared looks of confusion. "They?"