"You don't have a problem with Hermione and Neville joining us, do you?"
Though it appeared he might well have been uncomfortable with that, Ron replied, "No."
"Then I shall speak with you then, Mister Weasley," he firmly stated.
Knowing he'd just been dismissed, Ron quietly backed away again, by slowing down.
When he was clear, Neville moved back up.
"I'll be having the meeting with Ron as soon as we get back to the castle," explained Harry, before he could be asked. "I'd like it if you two would join me."
"We can do that," said Neville.
Hermione asked, "I take it you don't want to be alone with him in case he tries something?"
"Yes," he replied. "I don't think he intends to try something, but two witnesses would save possible problems later."
_‗_
―==(oIo)==―
ˇ
Once they entered the entrance hall of the castle, the trio went directly to the antechamber. Ron was less than a minute behind them.
After throwing a Colloportus at the door and throwing up a privacy charm, Harry turned to Ron and said, "Alright, Mister Weasley; you wanted this meeting and I've been accommodating. Now, what is it you wanted of me?"
Ron, though he seemed a little irritated, seemed to give himself a bit of a nod, closed his eyes for a moment and muttered something to himself, before he then looked at Harry with a firm expression.
"Har- Lord Potter," he began. "I should offer my apologies for my behaviour over the past three and a half years, without expectation of your acknowledgement either way. It was wrong of me to accept payment from the... from Dumbledore to be friends with you. I accepted it because I intended to be your friend, in the first place.
"Once I worked it out I said to the... to Dumbledore I didn't need his galleons; but, he said I had earned them, so―" He shrugged.
"It has been made clear to me that... it is now obvious to even me that doing that was so wrong it wasn't even funny. I am now no longer surprised you want nothing to do with me. If it was done to me I would see it as a major act of betrayal, too.
"However, I was told that offering you my apology was the right thing to do so―"
When it looked like he'd wound down and turned a hopeful look on Harry, Harry said, "Well, you've said you want to offer your apology, Ron. However, I've not yet heard you actually apologise. Don't you think you should get to that, then?"
Ron looked back in a shock and confusion before he demanded, "What do you mean?"
Harry sighed and said, "I'll step you through it. First, you said, 'I should offer my apologies'. That does not mean you apologise, that just means you should offer such an apology.
"You then said how you were wrong to accept Dumbledore's blood money. You're right, you were. But, that is still not an apology.
"And then added how it was wrong to betray me like you did. Still no apology yet.
"And, finally, you said, 'I was told that offering you my apology was the right thing to do so...' That's only a recognition someone told you you should apologise. But you still haven't done it!
"Stop explaining your actions, stop explaining how you were wrong, stop explaining what someone else told you to do... and actually do it!"
"I..." he started, his anger morphing to confusion. "I thought I had."
Harry threw up his arms in frustration, turned his back on the boy and walked over to the other side of the room.
Neville said to the confused boy. "No, Ron. Harry's right. You haven't apologised. You said you were offering it, then didn't. And finished with how someone told you you should, and still didn't. In all that you didn't once start a sentence with 'I apologise for...' or 'I'm sorry I...' or anything like that.
"As Harry said; if you're going to apologise, apologise."
It appeared Ron had finally understood when he slumped in on himself. "Merlin, I―" Finally, he braced himself up and again stared directly at Harry. "I apologise for pretending to be your friend. I apologise for taking the Head- for taking Dumbledore's money to spy on you. I apologise for being a prat. I apologise for not being there for you, when I should have been there for you if I was a real friend."
"Bravo!" said Harry, turning back. "That's how you apologise."
Walking back over he said, "I accept your apology, Mister Weasley. However, understand you'll never have my forgiveness. Your actions have told me I cannot trust you.
"One day... maybe... decades from now... I might be able to at least trust you enough not to be wary of you; after you first prove, on multiple occasions, you can be trusted. However, we will never be friends.
"You had that opportunity that very first day. You had to have known, even back then, it was wrong for Dumbledore to pay you to spy on me. All you had to do was tell the old man, in your own way, to 'Piss off!' If you had told me you'd done that, you and me would have been very firm friends. You would have shown, right from that first day, my friendship meant more to you than a measly few galleons. And, as a result, I would have happily shared with you all I had.
"Even if you had, at any time over the past few years, approached me and said, 'Harry, mate, I need to come clean with you about something,' and honestly explained what was going on? You had a chance to redeem yourself with me. But, you didn't! It wasn't until I 'outed' you and Dumbledore during the first task that you realised you'd been well and truly caught.
"You allowed your rampant greed and jealousy to corrupt you, Mister Weasley. You went for the quick gold. A pitiful amount of it at that. And now it's cost you dearly.
"Do you understand and accept that?"
The boy had turned his eyes down in shame before Harry finished the first few sentences. Finally, he sadly replied, "Yeah. Sorry, Harry."
"And that, I believe, is the first, real, freely offered, apology you've ever given me, Ron. Again, apology accepted."
He let that sink in for a moment before he, in a much lighter voice, said, "Now, I know what a trial it is for you to even think of skipping a meal. So, I think it behooves the four of us to go to lunch, yeah?"
Ron gave a wan smile back, blushed a little and softly said, "Yeah."
With a firm expressionless nod back, Harry removed the privacy charm and the Colloportus on the door before he said to Ron, "Go join your friends for lunch, Mister Weasley. I'll be joining mine."
The very obvious inference he wasn't to join them was clear.
As he held the door open for the other three, Harry waited until they were all out before pulling the door shut behind him.
_‗_
―==(oIo)==―
ˇ
After quickly eating and finishing his lunch, during which Harry thought about what to do next, he gave a mental sigh and pulled his satchel around onto his lap and pulled out an off-cut of parchment, quill and ink. Then began to write.
Hermione, though curious, did not try to read over his shoulder. And Neville never would.
Once it was written, he showed it to Hermione. And, once she'd read it, she understood what he was about to do. Meanwhile, he'd been putting his writing paraphernalia back in his satchel.
"Want me and Neville to come with?" she quietly asked.
"If you'd like," he replied. "However, I do not distrust Angie, like I do Ron. She won't try anything."
She gave a nod and said, "If you're not back in time, I'll ask Neville to escort me when he escorts Susan and Hannah to Transfiguration."
"Good idea," he said. Just before he rose he gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
With his satchel firmly on his hip, he made his way down the table.
He paused opposite where the three Lions' chasers were sitting and quietly handed Johnson the note, which she silently accepted.
Not even waiting for her to say anything he continued to walk out the door.
Puzzled, Johnson opened the note and read:
~ # ~
Miss Johnson,
If your need to talk to me is as urgent as your rude behaviour indicated by interrupting on multiple occasions an important conversation I was having, without so much as a by-your-leave, I will be in the antechamber in which the Firsties gather before their Sorting for the next ten minutes. I will speak with you then.
Otherwise, send a damned note if you need my attention and I'm already otherwise engaged, in future!
Lord Harrison Potter
~ # ~
Johnson didn't even need to hand it to her friends to read as they'd crowed in to read it over her shoulder.
"The nerve of that boy!" said Bell.
"No, he's right," sighed Johnson. "That's exactly what I should have done. It's exactly what you're supposed to do, when dealing with the nobles or someone who's otherwise a Head of House. I'd forgotten that."
Spinnet pulled away and groaned, before she bounced her forehead off the table before her three times in slow beat.
Watching her, Bell asked, "That's what his problem is?"
"Yyeeesss," moaned Spinnet.
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