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It was the second Hogsmeade weekend of their seventh — well, eighth, sort of — year of Hogwarts and, like almost always, they were at the Three Broomsticks with their friends. Last Hogsmeade weekend had been an exception — it had been their first time in the village as a couple — and while neither one necessarily felt the need to go to Madam Puddifoot's or something equally ridiculous, they had thought it would be best to do something different, to do something they hadn't done back when they were just friends.
They'd explored the village in a way they never had before — they'd toured the old battlefield from the Goblin Rebellion of 1612, they'd visited the jobberknoll sanctuary (and even witnessed one of their death screams, considered a rare enough occurrence by wizards and witches), and found a little café with intimate booths, delicious pasties, and an entire wall of wizarding board games to play. At the end of the day, they'd hiked up to Ingrid's cove, a quiet little spot with a waterfall that poured water of every color of the rainbow into the lagoon below. Legend has it that if you kissed under the waterfall at sunset, your relationship would be filled with a dozen happy decades. Hermione didn't believe in superstitions, but Harry figured with his history with prophecies, he could use all the luck he could get.
But now it was February and they'd been dating for months, had figured out who they were as Harry and Hermione, the couple, and not Harry and Hermione, the best friends, and they both felt they'd rather spend their remaining Hogsmeade weekends with everyone else at the Three Broomsticks. Hogwarts would be ending soon, and then they'd have plenty of time after that for dates.
Which is how they found themselves crammed into a table with Neville and Hannah (who had fell in love during their terrible year of torture at Hogwarts), Luna and Dean (who had grown close at Bill and Fleur's with only each other for company), George and Lee (who were no longer Hogwarts students, but had come round for a visit), Ron (who had bounced back quickly after his disastrous try with Hermione) and Ginny (who was happily playing the field ever since she and Harry realized they didn't suit).
Harry and Ginny had sort of tried again last summer when Ron and Hermione went to Australia to find her parents. And it was only then that Harry realized they had nothing in common. Before Harry and Ginny started dating in Harry's sixth year, Ron and Hermione were always around, acting as buffers of sorts. And during the few brief weeks Harry and Ginny dated, they spent most of their alone time snogging — talking wasn't high on their list of activities.
But this summer at the Burrow, they didn't have Ron and Hermione, but they did have Molly, who did everything she could to keep them from snogging (she wanted grandbabies, but she did not want them from Ginny just yet). So Harry and Ginny were left with talking to each other and discovered they didn't really have anything to say.
Then Ron and Hermione returned from Australia (Hermione's parents in tow). Harry expected them to be a couple, but they weren't, each vaguely alluding to "how they were better off as friends."
Privately, Ron told Harry that kissing Hermione was like kissing a dead fish — he tried everything, but she just stood there. For her part, Hermione told Harry that when Ron kissed her, she thought he was trying to stab her with his tongue.
Harry was confused — they'd kissed before — but both put that first kiss down to the adrenaline of being in a life-or-death situation.
"Think of all the years I wasted, mate, hung up on a girl I didn't even like kissing," Ron lamented to him. "Listen to me, Harry: If you like a girl, just kiss her. This way you can save yourself years of aggravation."
And Harry thought Ron did have a bit of a point there, because now that Ron and Hermione had that kissing business out of the way, they actually did seem nicer to each other. They still argued, of course, (Harry doubted anything could stop them from fighting) but it ended in tears a whole lot less.
And then one day in early October, Harry and Hermione had been walking around the lake, and he realized that here was a woman he did like talking to, that he always had something to converse about with. And the sunlight was glinting off her hair, which was twirling about her in the wind, and he couldn't keep his eyes off her mouth.
And then he realized Ron was absolutely right about one thing — when you liked a girl, you should just kiss her. But Ron was very much wrong about her kissing like a dead fish.
And now, here they were, five months later, squeezed in amongst their friends, his hand holding hers under the table (neither was a fan of public displays of affection, preferring to snog in the privacy of any number of hidden alcoves in the castle), watching as Ron downed an entire firewhiskey.
"That's it," George prodded, encouraging him. "You just need a bit of liquid courage."
"You're a war here, mate," Lee added, nodding at Ron, who was grimacing from the bitter taste. "No way she turns you down."
"So what?" Ron retorted. "Half the people at this table are a war hero."
"Just get it over with," Dean advised. "She'll either say yes or no, and the sooner you know, the better."
"Save yourself years of aggravation, right?" Harry asked, echoing Ron's advice to him.
Ron looked at him, eyes full of resolve, then grabbed a swig of George's butterbeer. Before his brother could protest, Ron had swept away from the table and toward Eloise Midgen.
"I can't believe he's going to do it," Neville murmured, as they all leaned in closer, as if they could somehow hear what was being said across the crowded pub.
They watched as Ron smiled at her — his most disarming smile — and said something he must've thought clever. She stared up at him, stone-faced, and then with seeker-quick reflexes, stood, dumping her butterbeer on him.
Ron's ears turned red, rivulets of her wasted drink dripping down his face as she stalked off.
"Ha!" Hannah crowed in satisfaction. "I told you she'd never go for it!"
"Yes, but I told you all that he would," Ginny remarked, turning to George. "I do believe that's four galleons, brother."
George narrowed his eyes at her, but he reached into his pocket to pull out gold and a piece of parchment. "I still don't think it's right," he muttered. "You're the one who made her pretty."
"It's got to be some sort of cheating," Lee agreed, but he was turning out his pockets too. So, it seems, was everyone at the table but Harry and Hermione.
"No one made her pretty. All I did was offer her an acne serum and something to make her hair a bit glossier," Ginny said, rolling her eyes. "She did all the rest — and Ron's the one who decided he fancied her just because she's got nice skin now."
"He should've known it would never work," Hannah commented, not without derision. As a Hufflepuff, she had the most loyalty to her housemate and remembered all of the insults Ron had thrown Eloise's way in years past. "You can't call a girl a troll for years and then just expect her to forget all of that just because she's attractive now."
Ron, looking like he didn't quite know what to do with himself, headed toward the bathroom, presumably to clean himself up.
"Should someone go talk to him?" Luna asked, watching Ron sympathetically.
Harry remembered back to Ron's most vulnerable moment — when he'd cried after destroying the locket — and how uncomfortable he'd been with Harry's attempts at comfort.
"Probably best to give him a minute to himself," Harry advised, "but we should order him another drink."
After a moment of consideration, he added, "And some chips."
Everything felt better with butterbeer and chips.
He signaled to Madame Rosmerta, who always seemed to keep an eye on Harry, no matter how busy she was. Harry didn't love his fame, but at least it got them butterbeers a little bit quicker.
"Right," George said, consulting his parchment, "it looks like Ginny gets four galleons, Hannah gets three, and Dean gets one because Eloise's rejection came in the form of a projectile drink."
Harry glanced at Hermione, who looked just as confused as him.
"What's going on?" she asked, but most everyone ignored her as money changed hands.
"It's the stupid betting pool that George runs," Neville explained. He was the only one not exchanging money. "I've never bet anything, but they've all been mad about it for years."
"You never bet anything because you're usually being bet on," Lee retorted. "I made six galleons off that time Fred and George suckered you into eating their Canary Creams."
"And I made five off the time they turned your hair purple," Ginny shot back at Lee.
"Yeah, but you've made most of your money off Ron," George added, ticking times they'd apparently bet on Ron off on his fingers. "Asking Fleur to the Yule Ball, Padma telling all the Ravenclaw girls that he was the worst git she'd ever laid eyes on, how long it would take him to break free of Lavender…"
Ginny shrugged. "What can I say? I know my brother."
"Hang on," Harry interrupted, "George, you weren't even still at school when Ron was with Lavender. You were still taking bets?"
"Of course," George replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Everyone loves the betting pool — even the teachers."
"Especially the teachers," Luna added, and Harry was discomfited to know that even Luna — the girl half the school avoided most of the time — knew about this betting pool but he and Hermione hadn't.
"McGonagall's got a habit, that's for sure," George muttered, shaking his head. "Never bets on students though. Says it's creepy."
"It is creepy," Hannah stressed. "Can you imagine a bunch of grown adults betting on which 13-year-olds are going to snog next?"
"Aren't we grown adults now?" Lee asked.
"Supposedly," George muttered.
"Yeah, but we're not betting on third years snogging," Ginny said. "Just Ron. It's totally different."
"It might be different, but it's not okay," Hermione retorted, scandalized. "How can you just bet on other people's love lives?"
"And why haven't you ever told me about it?" Harry added. He didn't much care who bet on whom, but he didn't understand why his supposed friends had kept him out of the loop. Honestly, with the amount of time he spent with George over the years, he didn't know how he'd been kept out of the loop.
Harry and Hermione glanced at each other, and he knew she had come to the same conclusion he had — there was only one real reason not to include them.
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Did you bet on us?" she asked accusingly, looking around at them all.
George sighed, eyeing them both with a bored look on his face. "As if either of you were that special," he said. "Besides, what would the bet be? When are they getting together? Half the school thought you already were!"
"It's true," Hannah nodded, turning to Hermione. "No one could believe it when you turned up at the Yule ball with Viktor Krum. And when Lavender told me about Harry and Ginny kissing after that quidditch match in sixth year, we were so confused. Susan was convinced you must have hexed Ginny for kissing your boyfriend — we all know what happened to Marietta Edgecombe."
"Thanks for that one, Hermione," Dean interjected. "I made 10 galleons off Marietta's face."
Hermione's jaw dropped. "You what?"
"Yeah," Dean shrugged, "I bet that you had something diabolical up your sleeve with that D.A. list. You never bet against Hermione Granger."
As weirded out as Harry was that he had no idea any of this was going on, he couldn't help but snicker at that — Dean had a point.
"The point is," George said, "we only bet on things that are interesting. And you two aren't interesting — well, unless you're being diabolical that is. Set someone on fire and then we'll talk."
"She's already set someone on fire," Harry supplied automatically, even as Hermione shot him an exasperated glance. All other heads whipped toward him.
"Who?" Lee asked eagerly.
"Snape," Harry beamed proudly.
"It wasn't like that!" Hermione protested, but she was drowned out by George ("Ha! I knew it!) and Hannah ("I believe I'm owed seven galleons!") and George again ("10 actually because she got a Death Eater!") and everyone else's general applause, gleeful musings, and Luna's very serious concern about what would have happened if the fire had reached his greasy hair.
"Honestly, Hermione, and you chastised Fred and I for a little harmless experimentation on students?" George said, his scandalized tone entirely insincere. "At least we never deliberately set someone on fire."
Hermione leaned back against her chair, sulking, and Harry squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, and it looked like she'd been mollified a bit.
"I still don't get why you never told us," Harry said.
"It's not like it was some secret," George responded. "You lot just weren't around. I doubt Ron knows about it either."
"He definitely doesn't," Ginny confirmed, "or he would've tried to hex me by now."
"Yeah, you three were always off doing other things," Dean commented, "fighting basilisks and three-headed dogs and all that. You missed out on a lot of the regular bits of going to school."
Harry and Hermione glanced at each other: Had they? He supposed they had. They'd had far more important things to worry about in past years, but he liked to think that they were making up for lost time now. (Certainly, their nighttime jaunts out of Gryffindor Tower were far more pleasurable these days.)
"George," Lee said, interrupting Harry's train of thought. Lee was staring down at the parchment, a befuddled expression on his face. "When did McGonagall bet that Hagrid would try to bring a nundu to Hogwarts?"
"That's what you get for missing last week's card game," George chastised his friend. "She bet Hagrid would try to keep a nundu as a pet next, Sprout reckons a chimaera, Flitwick said kelpie, and Trelawney thinks a yeti will be his next project. My money's on another dragon."
"Nah, it'll be some combination creature," Lee disagreed, stroking his chin in contemplation. "Some new monster he crossbreeds illegally."
Harry eyed Hermione and he knew what she was thinking: They'd had tea with Hagrid just the other day, and he'd been lamenting how lonely Grawp was in the Forbidden Forest.
And, well, it was about time he and Hermione just did regular things, right?
"Four galleons on a giant," they said in unison.