The door opened, and Draco went through it.
If Ron had been worrying about finding Harry, his worries were quickly dissipated as soon as he left the library. It turned out to be a simple matter of following the sounds of breakage and explosions.
Ron paced nervously down the winding corridors, stopped in front of a large metal-bound oak door, through which he could now hear what sounded like glass shattering, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
A bizarre sight met his eyes. For one bewildered moment, he thought that it was somehow, impossibly, snowing in the room. The air was full of drifting white shapes; he could see Harry standing in the center of the room, a slender dark shadow in the middle of a feathery-white tornado. And feathery was right, he realized, stepping further into the room, they were feathers — feathers from at least a dozen pillows, which Harry had somehow managed to shred into pieces. Remnants of pillow casing lay around the room and many tiny white feathers were caught in Harry's black hair.
'Harry,' said Ron, caught between sympathy and amazement.
'What've you done?'
'What does it look like?' said Harry, crossing his arms over his chest like a mutinous five-year-old.
Ron looked around with slowly dawning suspicion. They were obviously in a bedroom — there was a black four-poster bed and a huge wardrobe shoved against a far wall. 'What room are we in?' he asked.
'Malfoy's bedroom,' announced Harry, with grim satisfaction.
'I thought as much,' said Ron.
'I'm redecorating,' announced Harry, and Ron watched in amazement as a pair of glass candlesticks sailed across the room and smashed merrily into a far wall.
'Sirius is going to kill you,' he said, awed.
'Good,' said Harry. 'A quick, painless death sounds like just what the doctor ordered right about now.'
'Harry,' said Ron, taking advantage of the momentary break in the storm to sidle a little closer to Harry, just in case he needed to tackle him. Although that option was looking extremely unappealing, due in no large part to the enormous amount of broken glass on the floor. 'It's just a spell! She doesn't have any actual feelings for Malfoy!'
Harry just looked at him.
'Okay,' said Ron grudgingly. 'Maybe she has some, very slight, in fact extremely teensy, kind of feelings for him. But nothing significant.'
'You saw Lupin's face,' said Harry, brushing feathers out of his hair.
'He doesn't think there's any counterspell. I could tell.'
Ron was shocked. 'Of course there's a counterspell.'
'No, there isn't,' said Harry, sounding resigned. 'She's going to spend the rest of her life in love with Malfoy…and I can either try to keep her with me and watch her wish she was with him, or just let her go off with him and they'll get married and have curly-haired blond children and I'll be 'Uncle Harry' and maybe they'll even name one of their horrible offspring after me and — '
'HARRY!' Ron interrupted desperately. 'You're wittering.'
Bang! One of the fluffy pillows on the bed shot up into the air and exploded, showering everything with feathers.
'It's just a spell,' said Ron, again, sadly brushing feathers off his shoulder. 'It doesn't mean anything.'
'Then why didn't she tell me?' said Harry, glaring at Ron, at the feathers, and at everything else in the room. 'She could have just told me but she chose not to. Either she didn't tell me because she didn't want me to know so she could enjoy the whole being in love with Malfoy experience, or she doesn't trust me enough to think that I could handle it, which is ridiculous.'
'Right,' said Ron, unable to help himself, 'because you're handling it SO WELL right now.'
Harry's eyes narrowed.
At that moment, the door swung open.
It was Ginny. She was looking irritable, and her eyes lit immediately on Ron, and she frowned. 'I am not useless-' she began.
'Ginny!' interrupted Ron, in horror. 'I'm a little busy right now!'
'But-' Ginny looked from Ron, to Harry, to the multitude of drifting feathers and her eyes widened in shock. 'I thought — ' she began, uncertainly.
'Ginny, get out of here,' added Ron, nervously.
But Harry was now looking at her with narrow eyes. 'No,' he said.
'Stay, why don't you. You like me, don't you, Ginny?'
'Um,' said Ginny, looking alarmed. 'Sure I like you, Harry…'
'Do you want to go out with me?'
Ginny's mouth formed a small 'O' of surprise. 'What?'
'Do you want to go out with me?' yelled Harry, who was now so covered in feathers that it looked as if he'd been attacked by molting pigeons.
'All right, that's enough of that,' announced Ron and, in a classic move used by older brothers throughout history, stepped forward and firmly closed the bedroom door in his sister's face. Then he turned on Harry, and looked at him sternly.
'You're drunk,' he said.
