Ch 6 "Boy Talk" Part 2

"You were gone for an awfully long time," commented Hermione as she saw him come back from the bathroom.

Ginny only had a broken ankle so Madam Pomfrey had been able to fix her in jiffy, and Neville similarly was only physically injured so he too was immediately healed and released from the hospital wing.

And while Luna had a case of bad concussion, Madam Pomfrey had given her some potions and as long as she took them for two, she should be fully healed, so she too had been freed which meant that only he and Hermione had been left behind to be at the healer's mercy.

"What can I say, the longer I take a dump, the emptier my body... and the emptier my body, the more I can eat..." Ron replied with a snicker while lying back on his bed, "It's all very logical, you know,"

"Ew! Ron! That is so disgusting," Hermione said her nose curled in distaste, "How can you be so gross? I swear, you're becoming worse as you grow up and I can only pray that—"

Thankfully, before she could get into a full rant she was interrupted by the door to the Hospital wing opening. And both of them turned to see the last missing piece of the Golden trio entering the wing.

"Harry!" Hermione screamed in happiness, and for a moment it looked as if she would run straight towards him to hug him, but then she looked at him and noticed his condition, "Why are—" she had a frown on her face as she asked, "Why do you look like that, Harry? Did you not get any sleep last night?"

Hermione was right in that, Harry looked very messed up at the moment. He looked as if he had come here straight after the fight in DOM. But that wouldn't make any sense as the fight should have concluded somewhere around midnight, and it was around Seven O'Clock in the morning right now, which should have been enough time for him to... 'Maybe his talk with Dumbledore took longer than intended...'

"Harry, what happened? Ron told me that you were alright—" Hermione tried again when she got no reply from him, but Harry still didn't answer or even look at her, as he only had eyes for a single person in that room.

"Umm... What's up, Harry?" Ron asked with a nervous expression on his face as the Boy-Who-Lived, stared at him with such an intense expression that he thought for a moment that he had found out about him, "Why are you looking at me like that, Harry? Haha, Don't tell me you want to kiss me, because you know that I don't—"

Ron's nervous attempt at humour was rudely interrupted as Harry launched himself at him and hugged him with all his might. "T-Thank you," he said earnestly, "Thank you!" and he kept repeating himself with a tremor in his voice.

"Hey! Hey! Come on, get yourself together, Mate," Ron said with an internal sigh of relief while patting Harry on his shoulder, "Come, on now, Hermione's going to get the wrong idea if we keep at it any longer... Look she's already looking at us kind of funny..."

"No, I am not!" Hermione denied hotly with a flushed face but Ron's tactic had worked as Harry chuckled and disengaged from the hug while wiping his eyes, "Wait! Why are you like this, Harry? What happened after I was unconscious? Did someone get hurt? Will one of you please just tell me what this is about?"

"It's nothing too big," Ron replied waving his hand casually, "I just helped Padfoot a little bit during the battle and Harry here is being overly dramatic about it,"

"He's being humble," Harry quietly contradicted with a small smile on his face, "He brought Sirius back from the jaws of death and saved his life... I-We both are very indebted to him and I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay him..."

"What? Ron saved Sirius?" Hermione asked with a shocked expression on her face as if the very notion of it was absurd, "How did he—I mean, How could he—Wait! Does that mean that you know healing magic?" she asked Ron in a half-accusatory tone as if blaming him for learning something as interesting as Healing alone without including her.

"No, of course, I don't know healing. It was just a simple mundane something that I knew about and it helped him," Ron replied without mentioning CPR as he didn't want to go into that whole rabbit hole of, 'How do you know about it? Who told you about it?' at the moment. So he immediately turned to Harry and tried to change the subject, "And Harry, what debt are you talking about? Because I didn't know we were keeping count and if we were... then shouldn't I first thank you for saving my Father. But I didn't at that time, did I?"

"You did, in fact," Harry said as he nodded his head with an amused expression on his face, "And your father even told me that saving a life without expecting anything in return creates a very strong magical bond called Life-debt and that—"

"Then how about when you saved my sister from Basilisk in the second year, Huh? If we count all the times you've saved me or my family, I think I come ahead by a lot..." Ron countered quickly as both Ron and Sam were quite uncomfortable with all this talk of Debts and favour between friends, "So why don't we cancel it all—"

"But then don't you remember saving me from prison and starvation during the summer before the second year—"

"Oh Yeah! Then what about that time—"

Hermione's head jerked from left to right and back as she watched both of her best friends bicker and go back and forth, trying to one-up each other on who was more heavily in debt.

They left the serious life-saving graces after a while and went into the smaller nitty-gritty favours, things such as who gave whom an extra quill on that Sunday or who helped with that particularly hard potion homework that one time.

"Then what about that one time you held the door open for—"

"Um... Harry," Ron interrupted softly while leaning forward, "If we're going to be doing this for a while, then I think we should get some food because all this talk has made me quite hungry," his stomach had been silently growling and begging for food all this while due to the small stat increase and now his body was entering the territory of being dangerously starved.

"Oh, Um, Sure, Do you want me to call, Madam Pomfrey?" Harry asked back in a whisper, "I am sure she can get us some food."

"Ugh! No, I don't want to eat any hospital food," Ron replied with a grunt of aversion, "But I've got a far better idea on where we can get our grub—"

"What—"

"What are you two whispering about?" Hermione suddenly interrupted with narrowed eyes, she had been enjoying the back and forth between her friends when they suddenly stopped, taking away her entertainment.

"No, Nothing," Ron replied as he hurriedly looked up, before taking a serious expression, "Er, Hermione, can you go away and give us privacy for a few seconds to have a talk between us,"

"What? Why?"

"What do you mean, why? Did Harry and I ever ask you why, when you wanted to have the "girl talk" with Ginny? No, right! Then you should give us the same privilege, shouldn't you?"

"B-But, That's different!" she stuttered with a flustered expression on her face.

"And how is this different? Unless... don't tell me, you're discriminating against us just because we're boys? he asked before shaking his head in disappointment, "Tch! Tch! I thought better of you, Hermione," 

"No, I didn't mean—"

"Oh, You didn't? That's good then. Thank you, for giving us the time to have some boy talk, Now shoo!!"

"Ugh! Fine!" she huffed as Ron immediately threw the curtains around his bed, shielding them from the view of a very irate Hermione.

"Un, Ron... What did you want to talk about, specifically?" Harry asked with an uncomfortable expression on his face. All this talk about "Girl Talk" and "Boy Talk" was making him scared that the red-haired boy wanted to talk to him about the bird and the bees.

"Call Dobby! Quickly!" Ron immediately urged in a whisper.

"What?! Dobby? Why do you want—"

Before Harry could even finish asking his question, a soft pop interrupted them as the elf in question appeared amidst them with a giddy look on his face, "The Great Harry Potter has called for Dobby—"

"Shh!! Dobby, not so loud," Ron said in a panicky tone while glancing towards the closed curtain, "Do you want us to get caught?"

Dobby immediately understood the assignment and nodded his head, "What does the great Harry Potter and his weasel friend want Dobby's help with?" he asked in a conspiratory whisper as if they just needed to ask and he would the job, no matter how illegal.

"We need food, Dobby, Food! Can you get it here?"

"Of course! Dobby can!" Dobby squeaked as he nodded his head with a pleased expression on his face, "Dobby will go and get it right away."

"Good! And try and make it as healthy and nutritious as you can, will you."

"Dobby will," the elf nodded and then disappeared with a click of his finger.

Ron immediately sighed in relief before he noticed a peculiar expression on Harry's face as if he was seeing Ron for the first time, "What?! What happened?" he asked while going over his words, checking if he had messed up somehow.

"Healthy? You asked for healthy food?" Harry asked with a strange almost concerned expression on his face, "Are you sure, you're alright, Ron?"

"Oh! Stuff it, Potter!"

...

Hermione impatiently paced in front of her bed while frequently glancing towards the curtain with an intensely curious expression on her face, 'What could they be talking about for so long?'

Finally, when more than five minutes had passed without a single squeak from inside, the girl lost her patience and went towards the curtain before loudly announcing, "I'm coming in!"

"No! Dob't cobe ib," came Ron's panicked voice but it sounded as if his mouth was stuffed with— Hermione's eyes widened and she immediately ripped open the curtain only to see both Harry and Ron sitting on the latter's bed with a large sumptuous spread in between them with both of their mouth's filled with food and both looking towards her with wide alarmed eyes.

It took the smartest witch in her class only a single glance to understand what all this cloak and dagger had been about all along, "You! You didn't call for Dobby, did you?" she immediately asked while looking at the boys with an accusatory glare.

Ron first swallowed the food in his mouth before answering Hermione with an indignant look on his face, "Hermione Granger, that is so insulting of you, how could you even think that we're capable of such a crime!" he knew that he couldn't be on a backfoot when in a conversation with the stubborn girl so he immediately went for the offence. 

"Then, how did you—"

"We obviously used magic to bring food in here, didn't we, Harry?"

"Umm..."

"See! Even Harry agrees with me,"

"But you can't use magic to create food." She immediately shot back with a triumphant look on her face, "Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration states that food cannot be created with magic—"

"I know that," he didn't "But don't you remember that I said 'bring' and not create, Tch, Tch, Tch! Don't professors always say that the devil's in the details? I expected better from you, Miss Granger," Ron said while shaking his head with a disappointed expression on his face that was eerily similar to one stern Head of House, "That'll be five points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger,"

"You!" Hermione let out with an absolutely scandalous look on her face, "How dare you, Ronald Weasley—" but her reprimand abruptly died in her throat as she looked behind Ron with a horrified expression on her face.

"Was that an impression of me, Mr Weasley?" quietly said a voice that immediately sent shivers down Ron and Harry's spines.

Both of them gulped and slowly turned their head to see their head of house, Minerva McGonagall, standing there with a very unimpressed expression on her face.

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