Wise Ron

"You're not seriously going to that duel or whatever it is, are you?" Hermione kept pestering them, following the two boys all the way to the edge of the Quidditch Training Ground.

"Of course not. We're not idiots." Ron finally lost patience and lowered his voice. He glanced around afterward to make sure there were no other Slytherin students nearby.

Hermione gave Ron a suspicious look, her expression practically saying, Aren't you, though?

The girl's face was far too expressive, especially those big eyes of hers, which could practically talk. Even though neither Ron nor Harry could read minds through facial expressions, they understood exactly what Hermione meant.

Ron caught on instantly and glared. "Obviously, we were lying to Malfoy. Who would actually go out in the middle of the night to... where was it again?"

He asked Harry beside him.

"Outside the Trophy Room." Harry had a good memory.

"Right, the Trophy Room. Who would go all the way there in the middle of the night to duel him? It's against school rules!" Ron said as though this were perfectly obvious.

"But..." For a moment, Hermione couldn't quite accept how shamelessly Ron justified lying, even though she completely agreed with him this time.

Harry and Ron rolled their eyes in unison.

Lying certainly wasn't a particularly good thing, but there were plenty of bad things in the world. Compared to those, what the hell did a little lying matter?

Ron had two older brothers, George and Fred, who had mischief woven into their blood and souls and treated it as their life's calling. For him, lying was as natural as drinking water or breathing, an instinctive skill that didn't even require thought.

Harry had grown up matching wits-or lack thereof-with Dudley (no typo there), and lies came just as readily to him. He was no less practiced than Ron.

Neither of these two was going to feel guilty over a lie. Besides...

"Draco was obviously lying to us!" Ron said with absolute certainty.

"W-why?" Hermione still hadn't recovered from the minor collapse of her worldview. Her upbringing had taught her to lie very rarely, so she didn't share Harry and Ron's attitude at all.

"Think about what he said. Whoever doesn't show up is a coward, right?" Ron said.

Hermione nodded. "What's wrong with that?"

Clearly, sweet little Hermione hadn't spotted the problem.

Ron had to go on. "Slytherin isn't like our Gryffindor. They don't take pride in courage. And Draco's a coward anyway. The moment anything happens, he runs faster than anyone. You've seen it yourself."

Hermione thought about how Draco scurried away whenever he came to provoke them and Harry rolled up his sleeves and stood up. She nodded in agreement.

"So when he said that, he'd already decided not to go." Ron delivered his verdict with complete confidence.

Suddenly, Hermione felt that Ron made a great deal of sense.

Yet the Ron before her completely overturned her established impression of him. Could Ron really think things through so carefully?

Harry, however, saw nothing strange about it.

Unlike Hermione, who spent all day buried in her own studies, Harry spent practically every day hanging around with Ron. He knew perfectly well that beneath Ron's usual joking, easygoing manner, he had a very good brain.

His favorite pastime made that clear enough-wizard's chess.

Harry and Hermione had played chess against Ron as early as the train journey, and both had been utterly defeated. Hermione had taken it fairly well, but Harry had been rather reluctant to accept it. Afterward, he secretly worked out a few strategies and even bought a set of chessmen-new pieces were a bit more obedient. Yet when he challenged Ron again, he was still thoroughly trounced.

In fact, an informal wizard's chess tournament had already been held in the Gryffindor Common Room. Ron's current record stood at sixty-seven wins and one loss, putting him head and shoulders above everyone else.

His only loss had been to a fifth-year girl. Before Ron arrived, she had been Gryffindor's best chess player.

She had played two games against Ron, scraping a win in one and losing the other in short order. Even in the game she narrowly won, however, Harry felt she hadn't won fair and square-she had been wearing a very cute pair of pajamas that day, and Ron simply couldn't stop his eyes from wandering.

After that, she refused to play chess with Ron again.

Could someone as skilled at chess as Ron possibly have a poor brain? Not a chance!

Ron simply didn't show off his brains much, and his persistent trouble casting spells gave people the mistaken impression that he wasn't particularly bright.

Still, the fact that someone so clever genuinely struggled so much with magic left Harry thoroughly puzzled.

The first years had no classes on Friday afternoon, but the third and fifth years did. That meant there was no practice.

Once they had settled in a little, the first-year coursework was relatively easy.

A top student like Hermione would usually finish all her weekend homework in the library on Friday afternoon, then assign herself extra lessons on Saturday and Sunday.

Harry and Ron, on the other hand, usually coasted through Friday afternoon, finishing the easier half of their homework. On Saturday morning, they would seek help from the Patils, mainly Padma Patil, and finish the remaining, more complicated assignments in the library.

That left Saturday afternoon and Sunday for resting and having fun, though if Wood managed to book the Quidditch Grounds, they would also have extra Quidditch practice.

But as the new Quidditch season approached, the other three houses also began booking the Quidditch Pitch frequently for practice. Wood had a hard time securing a slot, something he had already complained about many times.