'I know,' she interrupted, her own voice sounding a little desperate in her ears. She kept her eyes fixed on his desk: 'You want to talk to me about Harry.'
There was a short silence. Hermione kept her eyes fixed on Dumbledore's desk: Finally, he spoke, still gently, 'No, Miss Granger. I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Weasley.'
She raised her eyes slowly, and the compassionate kindness she saw in his expression almost undid her. 'About Ron?' she whispered.
He nodded. 'Mr. Weasley has left us,' he said.
For a brief and bizarre moment, Hermione thought that he meant that Ron was dead. The room seemed to tilt crazily around her, and she grabbed tightly at the arms of her chair. 'He's what?'
'He has resigned as Head Boy,' said Dumbledore. He glanced down, and she followed his gaze. Only then did she realize that the shiny square she had noted earlier was a badge…Ron's Head Boy badge, to be precise. It was upside-down, and she could see the inscribed lettering where his name was printed, backwards. 'He has left Hogwarts.'
'Left school? But how could he…'
'Classes are over for this term,' Dumbledore said. 'I could compel him to stay, if I wished. But I saw no point in it. I hope he will want to return, once the holidays are over…'
'No,' Hermione whispered, staring at the silver badge on the desk. 'He can't have left, he can't — '
'Miss Granger, I had hoped that we could discuss the fact that, since there is no longer an acting Head Boy at Hogwarts — '
'No,' Hermione said again, and stood up so fast that her chair crashed to the ground. 'Headmaster, I — is there any chance he's still here, do you know, has he left yet?'
Dumbledore regarded her with cautious alarm, rising from his seat. 'He went to clean out his room and to collect his belongings,' he began, and might have added something else, but Hermione did not wait to hear it.
She turned on her heel, and ran out of the room, leaving Dumbledore staring after her.
The door to Ron's room was closed, but not locked. Hermione flung it open, and stepped inside. Her heart sank.
The room was bare. The Chudley Cannons posters had been stripped down from the walls, the trunk was gone from the foot of the bed, and the school books from the shelf by the door. The patchwork duvet cover Mrs.
Weasley had made for Ron fifth year was also gone, and the bed looked as bare and impersonal as a hospital cot. The only sign that Ron Weasley had once lived here was a small object tucked into the frame of the mirror that hung on the wall by the window. Moving slowly, Hermione crossed the room and gently pried the object out of the frame.
It was a photograph. Not a wizarding one, but one that had been taken with her own very ordinary Muggle camera, on a delayed timer. It showed herself, in her school robes, standing between Ron and Harry, a hand on each of their shoulders. They all looked well and happy and smiling.
Staring at the photo, she felt a fist clench at her heart. Slowly, she set the photograph down on the window sill, and turned away.
The door behind her opened. She spun around. She saw a slender white hand on the doorknob, then a bright red head. It was Ginny, and she was talking to someone behind her. 'If you want to look one more time to make sure you haven't forgotten anything,' she was saying, 'then we could…'
Ron, Hermione thought numbly. She stood frozen in place, the rest of Ginny's words lost on her, as Ron came into the room after his sister.
Unlike Ginny, he saw her instantly — his eyes went straight to hers across the room, and for a long moment they stared at each other in silence.
'…or you could wait downstairs with the coach driver, and I could look — '
'Ginny,' said Ron, very quietly.
Ginny broke off, and turned to follow his gaze. When she saw Hermione, she paled, but held her ground. 'Hi,' she whispered.
Hermione nodded. She felt unable to force a sound past her tight throat.
'I was….Ron and I were just going downstairs,' Ginny said. She glanced around quickly, and then back at her brother. 'It doesn't look like you left anything behind, we should probably just — '
The hitch in Hermione's throat loosened. 'You left this,' she said, and plucked the photograph from the windowsill. She held it out to Ron, who looked at it, and whitened. 'Don't you want it any more?'
It was Ginny who moved to take the photo, but Hermione retracted her hand. Ginny looked at her brother, her eyes alight with concern. 'Let's -
it's better if we just go.'
Hermione bit her lip. 'Please,' she said imploringly to Ron. 'Just talk to me for six minutes, and you can go, I won't ask you again. I promise.' Her voice shook. 'You owe me six minutes, at least.'
Ginny looked faintly bewildered. 'Six minutes?'
But Ron understood, as Hermione had expected he would. 'Six years,' he said in a remote voice. 'One minute for each year we've been friends.'
Ginny looked even more miserable. 'Ron…'
But Ron was looking past his sister. 'Fine,' he said. 'Fine. I'll talk to you.'
Ginny's face fell, and she glanced at her brother, but his mouth was set in a stubborn line. With a resigned shrug, she went to the door. 'I'll meet you on the steps,' she said to Ron, and went out.
The door shut behind her, and Ron and Hermione were alone together in the empty, silent room. Ron crossed his arms over his chest, hugging his elbows as if he were cold. He was staring at a point just past Hermione's left ear, as if he couldn't quite bring himself to look directly at her.
'You can't leave,' she said to him. It wasn't what she'd meant to say at all, but there it was. 'You can't.'
He still wouldn't look at her. 'I'm leaving,' he said. 'It's done. And don't tell me I didn't have to resign — '
'I'm glad you resigned,' she interrupted coldly. 'That's not what I mean.
You can't leave without talking to Harry.'
Now he looked at her, his blue eyes gone wide with amazement. 'Talk to Harry?'
'You owe him an apology at least — '
'An apology?' Ron's voice was a slap. 'You think this is like that little disagreement we had back in fourth year; you think this is something that can be solved with an apology? Hermione, he hates me now, after what I did.'
'But you didn't really do it — '
'Yes, I did.' He was hugging himself again, his knuckles white. 'In every way that matters, I did.'
'Why?' The question she had promised herself she would not ask, burst out of her. 'Why did you do it?'
He was silent. After a minutes had gone by, he dropped his hands from his elbows, and straightened up. And his eyes met hers. 'I thought you loved me,' he said. 'I thought…'
His voice trailed off into silence. She looked at him, seeing as if for the first time how white and drawn he was. His red hair fell in dank tangles over his forehead, his eyes were shadowed with a violet as dark as any of Pansy's horrible eyeshadows. His clothes were crumpled, as if he had slept in them. He looked like someone who had been ill for days. She wanted to hate him and reached for the anger she knew was there, the rage that ticked away just below the numbness that had claimed her thoughts.
Instead, she saw a series of images cast like shadows against the walls of her mind.
Ron, on the train to school, eleven years old in threadbare robes. Sitting in class, chewing a quill, a look of intense concentration on his face. De-gnoming the Burrow garden with determined glee. Facing down Snape, facing down Sirius Black, teetering on his broken leg, wincing in pain.
Soaking wet when Harry dragged him out of the lake. The first time he had kissed her. The way he had
