Chapter Text
Harriet Potter has only ever promised to never break the set of rules, she and her best friend Ronald Weasley made. It's not like she ever wanted to break rules, at least not on purpose. She couldn't help that she was the Girl Who Lived and that Voldemort was always up to something. And whatever that something was, well as far as Harriet was concerned, if she could put a stop to it she would. But that aside and coming back to the best friend rules.
Harriet eyed her best friend critically, the Triwizard tournament had ended, their last day of Hogwarts before summer began and she was back at the Dursley's. Harriet did not want to return home nor did she want to talk about witnessing Cedric Diggory's death.
Instead, she was thinking about troublesome rule number eight: no hooking up between best friends. Now, this rule was applied in the very early stages of their friendship when it had just been the two of them, and then the troll incident happened their first year and Hermione joined them. Hermione who she knew had a thing for Ron and Ron a thing for Hermione. But rule eight was stopping them, or at least Ron from making a move. For Hermione never got why Ron and she had rules between themselves and therefore rolled her eyes whenever they would quote them.
"You OK Harriet?"
Harriet smiled at her male best friend. This year had been hard on their friendship and Harriet had wanted to punch his lights out for not believing her but rule number seven had stopped her: no matter how mad you were at your best friend, you always forgave them. And she had when Ron finally admitted to being wrong.
"I was thinking," Harriet said.
"Yeah?"
Harriet nodded, "About rule eight."
"What about rule eight?" Ron inquired
"I want to void it," Harriet said calmly getting to the point. She figured this was the best way.
"Do you have a crush on me or something?" Ron asked looking slightly awkward.
"No," Harriet said firmly.
"Then why?"
Harriet thought for a moment, she couldn't tell Ron about Hermione liking him, that was just girl code. And Rule number one: only best friends can know each other's secrets, stopped her from telling Hermione that Ron liked her.
"I just do. I think it's a pointless rule now," Harriet said, "I hardly think we are madly going to like one another that way, now that we've been best friends for so long. And nothing like that has happened between us so there's hardly any indication that something ever would."
Ron considered her statement for a moment, "yeah I suppose you're right, that rule is a bit outdated and hardly needed now right?"
Harriet though he had not voiced it could sense his hopefulness. "Yeah."
"So do we need to change all the numbers?" Ron said looking slightly confused.
"How about, rule numbers stay the same, we just cancel number eight out. It's still number eight just no longer exists." Harriet supplied.
"Yeah, that works."
Scurried sounds of feet made them both look up, Hermione had returned from putting all her borrowed books back in the library.
"What are you two talking about?"
"Nothing much." Harriet shrugged, feeling a little smug with herself now. Now rule eight didn't exist there was nothing to stop her best friends from dating one another. She did not feel the need to tell Hermione that she had in a way intentionally spoke to Ron about her and Ron about Hermione, without breaking rule number one and girl code.