Disclaimer: Harry Potter and the associated milieu belongs to J. K. Rowling and various publishers. I'm just borrowing the characters and the world for my own fun.
Ron Weasley might not have been the brightest wizard in Hogwarts, but even he had noticed that something had been amiss with his friends lately. His best friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had been somewhat distant lately and had spent a lot of time away from him. At first he thought that Hermione was spending her time in the library revising for NEWTs and dragging poor Harry with her. But when they disappeared he seldom found them from the library. He had asked Hermione where they went to and he thought she had actually blushed a bit before quickly answering that they were working on a project for DADA. Harry had agreed with her and they had hurried off to somewhere.
Harry and Hermione weren't the only ones acting strangely. As Ron hadn't spent that much time with them he had had more time for other people and he had realized that also Neville and his sister Ginny had been disappearing and acting strange like Harry and Hermione.
He decided to keep a closer eye on his friends from now on.
Scene Break
Next morning at breakfast Ron – even though he was concentrating on eating – noticed that something odd was going on; Harry, Hermione and Neville glanced at each other, blushed and turned to their food. Before he had much time to think about it Harry had practically inhaled his food and left the Great Hall with a quick "See you in Transfiguration". A moment later also Hermione left with a quick, mumbled "See you".
Ron looked at Neville questioningly only to notice that he was concentrating on his food – or rather thinking of something while playing with his food. Ron just shrugged his shoulders and continued eating for a good while, before it was time to head to Transfiguration class room. Unnoticed by him, also Neville had disappeared.
When he got to the Transfiguration class the first thing he noticed was that Harry and Hermione were not there yet. The class was just about to begin when Harry and Hermione finally appeared, both looking a bit flushed and Hermione's hair seemed to be bushier than usual (Harry's hair also might have been messier, except for the fact that it was always about as messy as possible).
Surely, they couldn't have been snogging, could they? He thought suddenly. That would explain their disappearances and the blush when I asked were they were, but why would they keep it secret from me? They would have told their best friend, wouldn't they?
He didn't have time for more pondering as Professor McGonagall started her lecture and he definitely didn't want to be caught not paying attention in her class.
Scene Break
Later that day they, Ron, Hermione and Harry, were going to library to work on their Charms essay (Hermione had already finished it of course, so she'd be studying ahead). When they entered the library, Harry and Hermione stopped as they saw something. As Ron turned to look at the direction they were looking he saw Ginny – who had also noticed them – and she blushed. Quickly he turned to look at Harry and Hermione and saw them looking at each other. Hermione cocked an eyebrow as if asking something and Harry nodded. What the heck? Ron thought.
Hermione walked up to Ginny and whispered something to her and Ginny seemed to relax and her blush started fading. After that Hermione walked to an empty table and Harry followed her, while Ron just stood there perplexed.
"What was that about?" Ron asked after a while, as he got to the table and sat down next to them.
"Just some girl stuff," Hermione said and hid behind a huge book.
Ron looked at Harry questioningly but he just shrugged and started working on his essay. Ron also took out his Charms book, some parchment and a quill, but he couldn't really concentrate. He looked around the library and saw that Ginny had found herself a table and was sitting alone, concentrating on some homework.
The thoughts he had had on Transfiguration came back to his mind and now it seemed that Ginny also had something to do with it all. Surely all three of them weren't doing something together? He thought suddenly. No, they couldn't, could they? Ginny had had a crush on Harry for years and for all he knew, might still have. But surely Harry wouldn't mess with two girls at the same time? Especially as both of the girls were his friends. Unless Hermione and Ginny knew about each other and had decided to share Harry, but that was really far-fetched and he couldn't imagine Hermione nor Ginny accepting something like that.
But, wait! What if all three of them were together, as a threesome? The Trio never really talked about their love lives, or anything like that, so it was possible that Hermione, erm, swung both ways, and Ginny had always done things her way. So it was possible that Hermione and Ginny... No, no, no! A bad mental image!
Ron's thoughts were interrupted when two people stopped at the entrance of the library. They were Padma Patil and Susan Bones, and they were looking between their table and Ginny with a deer caught in the headlights look. No matter how Ron tried to, he couldn't watch all five people's reactions at the same time, but he was quite sure some kind of wordless communication passed between the five. After a few looks and different expressions, Padma and Susan waved at Harry and Hermione and went to sit with Ginny.
Harry and Hermione went back to work but Ron was flabbergasted. What in the name of Merlin was going on? The thought that all five were somehow involved was just too much. Besides it included four girls and only one boy. Even Harry couldn't be that lucky.
Ron suddenly remembered the odd exchange at breakfast between Harry, Hermione and Neville. Perhaps Neville was in it too? No, that was going way too far. Perhaps it was something else? He thought about it for a while. Perhaps they weren't all together, but perhaps they had stumbled on each other in the act. After all, there was a limited number of good snogging places in Hogwarts. That still left more girls than boys, but now the number was at least even! So, if Harry and Neville each were with one of the girls, that still left a pair of girls. It still seemed like the most likely scenario of the several he could come up with, though.
Some time later, when Harry had finished his essay and Hermione had got enough reading done, Ron still hadn't written a word on his essay.
"Honestly Ron, there's only two days for you to finish that essay and you haven't even started," Hermione huffed at him as they gathered their things.
"I know, I've just been distracted lately," he explained lamely and tuned out her rant about him failing everything, unless he started putting more effort in to studying and stopped procrastinating.
Scene Break
That night Ron stayed in the Gryffindor Common room for longer than most of the Gryffindors. Only three people were left, him, Neville and Dean. Ron was sitting in the 'Thinking Corner' as it had been labelled (it was darker than rest of the room and it was usually the quietest place in the room). Neville was reading Greatest Discoveries in Herbology in the 20th Century (he had become obsessed with Herbology after getting an O in his Herbology OWL) and Dean was sitting in the front of the fire petting his little sister's cat. Dean's little sister was one of the new first years.
Ron observed Dean as he got up, walked to Neville and said something that caused Neville to blush, which in turn caused Dean to smirk. Dean said something more to Neville – who looked relieved – and continued to the boys dormitories.
So Dean was somehow involved too? He thought. Was everyone in on this secret except him? And that also made number odd again – seven students, three boys and four girls.
Before going to bed, Ron swore to himself that he was going to find out what was going on with all of them.
Scene Break
An opportunity to get to the bottom of things came sooner than Ron had expected. The next night, just around curfew, he noticed that Harry, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Dean were all nowhere to be found. He quickly rushed to the boys dormitory to see if Harry had left the Marauder's Map there, but of course he had taken it with him, not to get caught. Thus Ron decided that he would just have to rely on his stealth when looking for them, hoping not to get caught by Filch or even worse – by Snape.
As a prefect Ron knew the broom closets and empty class rooms that were most often used for snogging. And sometimes more than that, he thought, not really wanting to walk in on something indecent, as his two best friends and his little sister were involved. But surely they weren't doing anything like that!
After more than an hour of sneaking around he had found nothing, except for a pair of Ravenclaws snogging in a broom closet. They had been so entranced in each other that they hadn't even noticed him, as he carefully opened the door to peek inside. He decided to just leave them be and had carefully crept away.
He decided to check the Room of Requirements before going back to Gryffindor Tower – after all, everyone of the students he knew to be involved had been in the DA and were aware of the rooms existence. He didn't know if others besides the Trio knew how to use it, though.
Gotcha! He thought triumphantly as he noticed the door on the seventh floor corridor – it only appeared when someone was using the room. When he opened the door, he was immediately pulled in to the dark room and his mouth was covered with a hand.
"Quiet! Filch and Professor Snape are coming this way. The greasy git almost caught us," the voice of Harry whispered in Ron's ear. Ron relaxed and turned around.
Ha! At least one pair caught, he thought triumphantly as he saw the anxious faces of Harry and Hermione, staring at the Marauder's Map in the faint light of Harry's wand. Looking at the Map he saw the dots labelled 'Filch' and 'Snape' moving towards them in the map, but it seemed that neither knew about the room as they both turned to different corridors in search of students to punish.
Harry exhaled in relief. "It's ok they're gone," he said in a normal voice, and surprisingly several more wands were lit in the room.
As Ron's eyes got used to the brighter light he noticed several figures in the room. Soon he recognized that they were Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Dean, Padma and Susan, all looking flushed and their clothes more or less rumpled. He had had enough.
"Okay! What the hell is going on in here?" he asked loudly from no one in particular.
A/N: Yeah, that's it. No clues about who were together, use your imagination. (The fact that there's odd number of them should make it more interesting :-)
This short piece was originally written in about an hour, but I did a lot of editing and switched the point of view from third person to first person. Few days later when I read the edited version, I didn't like it and I did some more editing, changing back to third person view and changed some characters' reactions a bit (they weren't vague enough to not give clues about possible pairings). I've now spent several hours on this and I'm still not totally satisfied, but if I wanted to have everything perfect, I guess I wouldn't ever publish anything.
Hope you enjoyed reading this and thanks in advance for the reviews!