The sight of him earlier that night had startled her, nearly rattled the impenetrable façade that she put on for the sake of her painfully oblivious companion for the evening. Ron Weasley had always been good at that—good at brushing past whatever was simmering under the surface, paying mind only to whatever he wanted to see, not daring to push past her careful walls to what she hid beneath. That was why she had agreed to accompany him into the Three Broomsticks in the first place: she had wanted just one night of harmless, surface-level interaction with someone who wouldn’t look at her like a wounded gazelle or notice just how precarious her mirage of contentment truly was. And yet, before they’d even stepped foot into the dimly-lit pub, she’d felt a tingling sensation down her spine and knew without turning that his stormy eyes were the ones boring holes into her back. Despite herself, she couldn’t hold back the satisfaction that she’d picked out one of his favorite outfits for the evening, hoping against hope that the sight of her in the glittering argent dress might spark him to approach her again. But of course, what could he say to fix them, anyway?