Hermione was still looking quite morose at breakfast on Monday. Harry sat down beside her, and gave her a nudge. "Cheer up, Hermione. I've been giving it some thought... there might be other reasons why we only went with three trips back."
She turned to look at Harry, her shoulders still slumped over as she picked at her food. "What could it be? I mean, I can't remember everything clearly, but one thing that stood out was..." she glanced around, lowering her voice to a whisper, "...horcruxes. We never found them all, did we?"
Harry shook his head. "No, we didn't... and there were several more to be found when we sent ourselves back."
"So we definitely don't have the information we need to defeat Voldemort this time around... and why wouldn't we go back and try again if we could gain even a small advantage each time around?"
"No, that's definitely something we would do... hm..."
"And even if we did manage to defeat Voldemort through an amazing amount of dumb luck, I doubt we'd come out of it without casualties, would we? I know you, Harry. If you could, you'd keep trying and trying again until you somehow managed to save everyone."
Harry let out an exasperated sigh. "You're right, Hermione. You know me really well, don't you? Well, maybe we can look into..."
At that point, Ron had apparently woken up, gotten changed hastily, and sat down beside Harry. He began scarfing down breakfast at his usual, inhumanly fast pace. After clearing his first plate, he only slowed down just enough to make a few noises as he was eating. "Wa wur oodoo doo eshuray?"
Hermione ignored him, which was really quite amazing given the mess he was making as he attempted to talk. Harry was the one who scolded him this time, "Ron! Swallow your bloody food before you talk, will you?"
Ron stopped eating momentarily in surprise. Swallowing the food in his mouth, he asked, "Isn't it Hermione who usually tells me to do that?"
Harry replied, "That's not the point, Ron. It really is disgusting when you talk with food in your mouth. I just said it faster today. What were you saying before?"
Ron was taken aback by Harry's blunt statement, but he repeated, "What were you two doing yesterday? I didn't see you guys at all after you left the common room. You have any idea what people are saying about you two?"
Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then back to Ron. Given the twins' antics yesterday, they were pretty sure people were talking about their supposed "relationship." They had flat-out denied it, right? But did that make things better, or worse? Silly rumours never let details like facts get in the way. How bad could it be, though? So they hung out together, but they've been doing that for the past three years. The only difference this time was that Ron wasn't there with them... was that all it took to make the difference between "hanging out" and "dating?"
Harry ventured the question first. "Er... we didn't spend much time inside the castle yesterday, Ron. What are they saying about us?"
"Well, I'm not going to believe the crazier rumours, of course. I heard that you got Hermione pregnant or something-"
"Pregnant?" Hermione managed to repeat that one word, but was otherwise speechless.
"I said I didn't believe them! Lavender said something about you looking sick this morning, but I don't know anything about that. Did you manage to catch a cold or something yesterday? You should see Madam Pomfrey about it, I mean, a potion will fix that right away, won't it?"
Hermione couldn't believe what Ron was saying. Then again, she could believe that Ron was saying it. Evidently, Molly had never given him The Talk, but then again, whoever Ron had heard the rumours from probably knew a little too much about all the wrong things. Morning sickness? The supposed "date" was only yesterday! What on earth were they thinking? In fact, the thought of teenage pregnancy scared Hermione. She knew that, at least in the muggle world, teen pregnancy often meant dropping out of school... the very thought of that made her want to throw up a little. No, wait, definitely don't want to do that this morning... deep breaths, calm down. Definitely act Not Pregnant... Oh dear Merlin, how's Harry taking this?
Harry, evidently, had never been given The Talk, either. He was looking back and forth between Ron and Hermione in confusion. Ron was still continuing to ramble. "So the twins told me that you two never showed up for breakfast or lunch at the castle, and that you were together the whole day. Why didn't you tell me you were dating?"
Harry held up his hand. "Ron, stop. We're not dating. We just spent the day talking about... stuff."
"Stuff? What kind of stuff?" Ron asked inquisitively. "C'mon, Harry. I'm your best mate. You can tell me."
Harry turned to Hermione with a pleading look in his eyes. He knew this was something they couldn't share with Ron... and evidently, their future selves didn't bother sharing it, either. He didn't want to lie to him outright. He simply couldn't do that to a friend. Hermione noticed his discomfort with the situation and came to his rescue with a single word. "Runes."
"What? Runes?"
Harry caught on quickly. "Ancient Runes, Ron. I, uh, was thinking about dropping Divination next year and taking Ancient Runes with Hermione instead. We were talking about Runes all day, and she was giving me her notes, so that maybe I wouldn't be too far behind next year." Technically that wasn't a lie, as he definitely needed to swap over to runes next year so that he might be able to lend a hand with Hermione's project.