Chapter Two: Girls’ Day Gainsay
Hermione was rudely awakened by the disconcerting feeling of her bed bouncing beneath her and a warm weight suddenly falling down beside her. She frowned, groggily trying to figure out what was going on, when her bed bounced again and another weight dropped down on her other side. She buried her face in her pillow.
“Go away…” she moaned, still frowning.
“Wake up, Hermione!”
Hermione’s frown deepened. “No,” she replied, voice muffled by the pillow. “I don’t want to.”
“You may not want to, but you’re going to. You promised to see us off this morning.”
“I lied.”
“You? You wouldn’t dare. Get up, Hermione, before we take drastic measures.”
”Drastic measures,” another voice agreed, and sounded delighted at the possibility. “Like tickling you, or jumping on your bed…”
“Stealing all your covers and dragging you, pajama clad and sleep rumpled, down the stairs to the common room…”
“Ooo! I bet Ron would love to see that!”
“Yeah. And I happen to know for a fact that he’s down there right now, playing Wizard’s Chess with Harry.”
“All right! All right! I’m up!” she groaned, flinging one arm out of the covers but making no other move to get up aside from opening her eyes. “Though I don’t see why I should care whether or not Ron and Harry see me like this.” She glared in mock anger at Lavender Brown, who lay on one side in front of her, and then twisted her head to do the same to Parvati Patil, who had flopped down behind her. Though neither girl was very much like Hermione in any way, shape or form, the three of them had been roommates so long, and had been through so much together (what with Hermione being so closely involved in, and affected by, Harry and Ron’s rather dangerous adventures and all), that they had become close friends despite their differences. Even if the other two did often irritate her with their silly, irrational, girly behavior. So it was really no surprise to Hermione that they’d taken the liberty to wake her up so rudely.
“We didn’t say Ron and Harry,” said Parvati, rolling her eyes. “We said Ron. It’s only for Ron that you bother with how you look, not that I think it matters at all. You could wear bright red clown pants, a neon pink shirt, and spike your hair, and he’d still not be able to take his eyes off you.”
“Of course not, because I’d look like a freak. The whole school would be staring at me.” Hermione could practically feel Lavender roll her eyes behind her.
“That wasn’t what she meant. She meant that he likes you.”
“I know that. He is my best friend after all.”
Parvati stared at her, then violently sat up. “I give up,” she cried, throwing her hands into the air and leaping away from the bed. She whirled to face Hermione, pointing one finger at her angrily. “You are so dense! When are you going to realize that not only are you not the same girl you were in first year, not only are you not a buck-toothed, bushy-haired know-it-all freak, but you are now a beautiful, intelligent, kind-hearted girl, and that there are several guys, Ron included, who would love to date you! What do we have to do to get that through to you, tattoo it on your forehead?!” She glared at the girl in the bed. “You have fifteen minutes to get up, shower, and get dressed, and then we’re going down stairs, all of us, whether you’re ready or not. So get up!”
Hermione looked, wide eyed, over at Lavender, who sighed and shook her head.
“She’s right you know. You’re not a goofy looking eleven year- old anymore. You’ve noticed that Harry has grown up, and you’ve most definitely noticed the changes in Ron,” she paused long enough to grin at the blush on her friend’s face, but began again before Hermione could protest, “but you haven’t seemed to grasp the changes in yourself.” She gave Hermione a moment to let that sink in before smiling gently at her. “For someone who’s so smart, you’re awfully dumb sometimes.”
Hermione stared at her, then smiled.
“Thank you, Lavender.”
Lavender slung an arm around her friend in a gentle hug. “No problem. That’s what friends are for. Now, you’d better get up. Parvati wasn’t kidding when she gave you fifteen minutes. We can’t afford to leave any later than that if we want breakfast first.”
“Okay.”
Exactly thirteen minutes later, Hermione, dripping hair pulled back in a messy bun on the back of her head and a loose sweatshirt hanging comfortably over worn jeans under her open school robes, was walking out the door with her two friends and heading down to breakfast.
“Dressed to impress today, are we?” a familiar voice called out from behind them as they reached the stairs down to the common room. The three girls turned to see Ginny, beautiful as always, coming down the stairs to meet them. She was looking at Hermione and fingering her own old and faded sweatshirt. “Me too!” she exclaimed with a grin, her eyes gazing pointedly at a hole in the knees of her jeans. Hermione grinned back up at her. The two had made plans when they decorated the common room two days before to spend the first day of the hols together, so they could actually have some (hopefully) uninterrupted girl time. Hermione, having realized that they would probably see very little of the male population of Hogwarts today, and hopefully Ron and Harry not at all, had decided that she wanted to be at her most comfortable. Clearly, Ginny had come to the same decision. Hermione eyed her critically.
“Is that Ron’s old sweatshirt?” she asked curiously, noting the way the faded black sweatshirt hung half way down the other girl’s thighs, and was gathered in a thick roll at each wrist to free her hands. Ginny grinned broadly and nodded, and Hermione shook her head.
“You don’t have enough clothes of your own that you have to go stealing Ron’s?” Lavender questioned, amused. Ginny’s grin widened, if that were possible.
“I just love to see his reaction when he realizes that I’ve been through his wardrobe again. Besides,” she added, hugging herself, “his clothes are so big and warm. They’re the most comfortable things I own.” This drew laughter from the whole group, and Ginny waved one hand in the air as she took a step down. “So,” she chirped, a little too brightly for Hermione’s comfort, “let’s go down to breakfast.” The four started down the stairs, and Hermione eyed the back of Ginny’s head suspiciously.
“You just want to see if Harry’s in the Great Hall so you can spend some time with him before we go away for Girls’ Day,” she accused.
Ginny looked with wide-eyed innocence up at her friend. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Traitor.” Another grin, and they were out the portrait hole.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hermione groaned softly for the third time and dropped her fork to her plate, cradling her head in her hands. Lavender, sitting to her right, snickered quietly, and Hermione shot her a nasty glare.
“Don’t you have a train to catch?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
Hermione growled at her, and went back to pushing her food around on her plate. Not two minutes later, Ron reached for his pumpkin juice and his elbow brushed her arm. Again. She wanted to scream.
Instead, she gritted her teeth and bore it.
How irritating. Not only did we end up seeing Ron and Harry, we end up sitting right next to them. Grrr… this is all Ginny and Parvati’s fault.
“Hermione? Are you okay?” Ron’s low voice cut through her thoughts, making her jump, startled.
“Whoa,” he said with a laugh. “Not a little tense, are we?”
“Shut up, Ron,” she ground out, glaring at him. He arched an eyebrow.
“What’d I do?”
You only had to go and sit next to me, looking amazing, and smelling wonderful, and being all around distracting, that’s what!
“Nothing,” she managed to say. He stared at her a moment longer, and she kept her head down until he finally looked away again.
Why, oh why didn’t I wear my normal clothing today? I should have known I couldn’t go a day without seeing him! Oh well, at least I’m comfortable and embarrassed, instead of just embarrassed.
She sat very still, afraid to move for fear of touching him at all, because all she really wanted to do was throw her arms around him and tell him how absolutely idiotic she thought him for not noticing that she was right here and that she loved him.
I’ve lost my mind!
Ginny caught her eye from across the table and smirked. Hermione, glowering down at her hands to avoid the look, happened, at this point, to realize what time it was, and her eyes flew wide.
“Girls, sorry to rush you, but we’ve got approximately five minutes to get your stuff out to the carriages,” she told her two roommates.
“What?!” Parvati leapt up, Lavender on her heels, and went flying out the door. Hermione, concentrating as she was on hurrying them along, threw her mumbled goodbye swiftly over one shoulder, giving her no opportunity to see the way Ron’s eyes never left her figure as she raced out the door, nor the knowing looks exchanged between Ginny and Harry.
Moments later, Ron, still blinking at Hermione’s hurried exit, voiced the question that had been on his mind since the day they decorated the common room.
“Does anyone else get the feeling that she’s avoiding me?”
Harry and Ginny laughed.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Murmuring a spell under her breath, a soaking wet Hermione quietly charmed all the snowballs in her pile to ambush Ginny, whom she knew was hunting her down with a pile of her own in her arms. A moment’s wait and a surprised shout was all it took for Hermione to know her trick had been successful. She shifted her weight and rose from her hiding place at the base of a tree (where she had spent the last ten minutes avoiding Ginny and tweaking several of the spells they’d learned in charms until she found one that would work on the snowballs) and peered around the trunk to see whether it was safe to come out or not.
It was.
She stood ten feet away from her fallen friend and chuckled wickedly as she observed Ginny flailing about, struggling to rise from the snowdrift in which she was trapped and failing several times. The redhead spotted the older girl and waved her over.
“Help!” she cried pathetically, which only made Hermione laugh harder.
“No way. If I tried to help you out of there, you’d only pull me in after you. I’ve played this game with Ron before; how stupid do you Weasleys think I am?”
“With Ron, huh?” Ginny repeated slyly, ceasing her struggling long enough to lift her eyebrows meaningfully. “You fancy him!” she sang. Hermione rolled her eyes and sent a few more snowballs at her helpless friend.
“No fair, Hermione,” she pouted. “We agreed not to use spells, and now you’ve done it twice!”
“Oh, so I suppose you thought I would just let that whole snow falling from the tree thing go then? I know you used a spell for that, Gin; I heard you say it.”
“Forgive and forget, I always say,” the girl said with an impish grin.
“I was buried for two full minutes!”
The grin widened. “What’s a couple of minutes between friends?”
“I’m soaked, and I still have ice melting down my back.”
Ginny’s grin broke out into loud self-satisfied laughter. “Oops!” she laughed around her insincere apology, “S-sorry H-Hermione!” And she collapsed back into the snowdrift she had almost worked her way out of, clutching her stomach. Hermione’s eyes narrowed, and she thoughtfully twirled her wand between long slender fingers.
“Oh, that’s all right, Ginny,” she said sweetly, “I expect we’re nearly even,” she muttered something under her breath, and let herself smile, “now.” Ginny’s laughter stopped abruptly as she found herself sitting in a snowdrift that was quickly growing warmer. A snowdrift that was quickly growing warmer and melting. Melting right through her clothes, that’s what it was doing. She struggled to her feet and glared at the evil, snickering Hermione, flapping her arms slightly to shake the freezing water from the sleeves of her sweatshirt and the edges of her sopping cloak. This only turned Hermione’s evil snicker into maniacal laughter. Ginny unclasped her now useless cloak and draped it calmly over one arm, glaring menacingly at her friend.
“Laugh while you can, wicked fiend. You forget I’ve grown up playing this game with six ruthless boys.” She waved her wand with a flourish and a murmur, and several snowballs were suddenly hovering over her left shoulder. Hermione frowned at them. They were awfully big, and had a rather funny blue tinge…
Ginny smiled. “You’re in trouble.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Harry and Ron looked up from their game of Wizard’s chess as the portrait hole slammed open suddenly, and shot to their feet as one excessively wet and clearly distraught Hermione came flying through, pulling the portrait roughly shut behind her.
“Hermione!” exclaimed Ron, staring at her. “What happened?” She was literally soaked; everything from her hair”falling as it was from the tie that supposedly held it”to her boots, which literally splashed when she walked, was positively dripping.
“Little cheater,” she muttered, shivering and glancing desperately around the room without seeming to see them at all, “”snowballs with water-melting”got what she deserved.”
“Hermione?” Harry looked genuinely concerned.
“Can’t be mad over -tle revenge. -’s not fair at all.” Hermione was examining the space behind every piece of furniture that was not visible from the doorway with a critical eye, muttering to herself all the while. Ron and Harry shared a worried glance and made as if to approach their friend when…
The portrait slammed open yet again.
Hermione dove to the floor in front of the couch.
And…
Ginny flew through the portrait hole with a glare of anger and determination.
Ron and Harry stared back and forth between them.
Hermione, their best friend and comrade in adventure, miss studiousness, miss perfect prefect, miss decorum herself, was dripping wet, sloshing even, and cowering on the floor before the couch.
Ginny, beloved sister and girlfriend, adventurous, fun, and easygoing, was glaring around the room, eyes nearly red with rage, and dripping clothes making a good-sized puddle on the floor.
The only difference between their appearances, really, the boys noticed, aside from the fact that Ginny’s puddle before the portrait hole could not even begin to compare to Hermione’s puddle before the couch, and that one looked furious and one looked as though she feared for her life, and that one was short and standing and the other taller and laying down, or that one was a redhead and the other a brunette-
Okay so the dripping was really their only similarity.
The most noticeable difference between the two, then, the boys noticed, was the fact that all the water in Ginny’s hair seemed to have frozen in long reddish-pink frosted icicles sticking straight out from the back of her head, as if she were running. And at the end of each of these long icicle streamers, a bit of thawed red hair protruded where the warmth of the castle had begun to melt the ice, and water dripped down from these to add to Ginny’s ever growing puddle, which still couldn’t compare to Hermione’s puddle, which was nearly bigger than the couch now and didn’t seem to need the aid of melting hair, which was good because Hermione’s hair wasn’t frozen at all, hence the difference in appearance.
Both boys would have laughed if they weren’t so confused.
“All right, Hermione,” Ginny hissed, narrowed eyes glaring around. “I know you’re in here; I can hear your teeth chattering.” This was a miracle, as her own teeth were chattering so hard it could be heard across the room.
Ginny’s eyes settled on the couch. Actually, they settled on the puddle pooling out from under and around the couch.
“Hiding behind the couch are we?” And she launched herself around one side of said piece of furniture. To Harry and Ron’s growing confusion and amusement, Hermione shot out the other side.
“Absolutely not,” the older girl replied, “I was just taking a bit of a nap.” Ginny chased her around the couch, almost slipping in Hermione’s puddle (and vice versa, as there was now a veritable lake surrounding that unhappy item from all their dripping), but Hermione managed to always keep Ginny on the opposite side of the one she occupied.
“Stop running and face me like a man!”
“But I’m not a man. I’m very much a girl, remember? We established this a few days ago.”
“Coward!”
“I act purely in self-preservation!”
“And you need it too!”
“Forgive and forget, I always say!”
“You froze my hair!”
“You enchanted seven snowballs the size of my head and filled with freezing cold water to attack me. And then they melted!”
“You ambushed me into a snowdrift and melted it!”
“You dumped a tree’s worth of snow on my head and left me to dig myself out!”
Ginny leapt over the back of the couch. “You are dead!” She leapt at Hermione, who had skidded and slipped to a precarious halt when the other girl jumped in front of her, and found herself nearly falling when Hermione was no longer where she had been a moment before.
For she was a smart girl.
Self-defense came first and foremost in situations like this, yep.
So she did the one thing she could think of that might possibly save her from Ginny’s wrath.
She hid behind Ron.
Who better to defend her after all? Of her two best friends, he was the least likely to be crushed after standing against Ginny. There was Harry’s heart to consider after all. Besides, Harry might side with Ginny, the traitor. Ron wouldn’t dare.
Then again, Ginny did look pretty scary. Still…
“Did you see that?” she hissed, grabbing hold of Ron’s shirt in one half-frozen hand and pointing shakily under his arm with the other. Her shivering made both her hands and words unsteady. “She jumped the couch. She cheated again!”
“You cheated too!” Ginny had steadied herself on the arm of the couch and was now glaring at Hermione, whose slender form was all but invisible behind Ron’s. “Come out from behind there, coward!”
“No! And you cheated first!”
Ginny’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Well that’s true, but the fact remains that you froze my hair and now must pay! Come here!” Poor Ron wasn’t wearing anything heavier than slacks and a thin jumper when Hermione wrapped her arms around him from behind and turned to keep him in front of her as she hid from his sister, so he was instantly soaked and freezing when her sopping clothing made contact with his.
“H-Harry,” he shivered helplessly, “you wanna lend a hand here?” Harry just laughed and fell back into an armchair. He stopped laughing when a sudden movement from Hermione sent Ron stumbling into Ginny, who fell into her boyfriend’s lap and soaked him as well. Ron smirked.
“Sh-shut up,” chattered Harry.
Meanwhile, Ginny had finally tackled Hermione to the floor, and pinned her down.
“Ah! Help!” screeched Hermione flailing about in an attempt to get free. She was making strange spluttering choking noises, interspersed with the sound of chattering teeth and more cries for help. Both boys leapt to their feet and moved to separate the two when they suddenly realized the sound they were hearing was comfortingly familiar. The choking sound of lost breath was a bit unusual, and the shivering and chattering entirely unprecedented, but otherwise it was a sound they knew well.
Hermione was laughing.
“Say it,” Ginny demanded.
“Never!” Hermione declared between laughs.
“Say it!” Ginny tickled harder.
“It would be a lie!”
“Say it!”
“Death first!”
Merciless tickling ensued.
“All right, all right, I’m sorry!” Ginny let her up immediately. Hermione glared. “I still say you’re evil.”
“I wasn’t the one doing the diabolical laughter thing outside twenty minutes ago.”
“No, you were the one running down the hall, screaming like a banshee about murder and tearing of limbs from bodies.”
“Not ‘bodies,’ Hermione, ‘body,’ singular. As in yours.”
“See, evil.”
“Does someone want to explain to me what is going on here?” The two girls looked up at Ron.
“What?” asked Ginny.
“You know, with the hiding and the chasing, and the dripping and the screaming?” Ron replied.
“We’re having Girls’ Day,” said Ginny.
“Yeah,” echoed Hermione. “Girls’ Day.” She paused, examined both Harry and Ron very carefully, and came to a conclusion. “You’re not girls.”
“Now she notices,” said Harry, rolling his eyes.
“They’re not girls,” Ginny whispered, scandalized and staring wide-eyed at Hermione.
“Which is good, considering you’re dating him,” Ron told her, jerking his thumb in Harry’s direction.
“Silence, male!” Ginny ordered, pointing imperiously and glaring up at her brother. “It’s Girls’ Day, you may not speak to me.” Ron and Harry exchanged rather exasperated looks.
“Can I talk to you?” Harry questioned.
“Well-” Ginny considered.
“No!” cried Hermione. “It’s Girl’s Day! No boys! Come on, Ginny, let’s go defrost your hair before you go ruining Girls’ Day with stupid boyfriends.” That said, she grabbed her friend’s arm and dragged her up the girls’ dormitory stairs, but not without giving her two best friends a parting glare on her way. She completely missed the half amused, half apologetic smile Ginny directed at her boyfriend just before they were swallowed by the staircase.
Ron and Harry stared after them, then surveyed the mess that was the common room. Most of the furniture was wet and/or disarrayed, there was water puddled on the floor and dripping down the walls, and the fat lady could be heard violently complaining to her friend Violet about the abuse she was forced to endure even through the closed doorway.
“Girl’s Day?” Ron asked, staring straight ahead.
“No idea.”
“This never happened?”
“Nope.”
Ron nodded once. “I’ll take the common room, you handle the fat lady.”
The two boys went their separate ways. It was several minutes before Ron looked up from his chore, frowning thoughtfully, and, to no one in particular, said-
“That was my sweatshirt.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hermione sat in a plush armchair before the fire, book in her lap and blanket wrapped warmly about slim shoulders, a slight smile playing across her delicate features as she read. With the firelight flickering over her face and her hair falling gently over one shoulder, she looked altogether peaceful.
Looks can be deceiving.
“Ha!” she exclaimed, and violently shoved her book under the nose of the redheaded girl sitting across from her. “I told you you had it wrong! Erised is spelled E-R-I-S-E-D not E-R-I-S-A-I-D!”
“Let me see that!” Ginny snatched the book (Gornelby’s New Wizard Dictionary, ninth edition: The greatest dictionary of the wizarding world) from her friend’s hand and stared at the entry for the mirror in question. “Oh, all right!” she huffed irritably, “you were right; no need to rub it in.”
Hermione waved her hand over the board sitting on a table between them. “Take them away so I can have my turn.”
“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Ginny rebelliously, removing six tiny square tiles from the board and putting them back on her rack. “Just go already.”
Ron, watching them from across the exceptionally clean common room, arched an eyebrow and shot a look at his best friend. His best friend who happened to have spent ten years of his life with Muggles. His best friend who happened to have spent ten years of his life with Muggles, and so would understand Muggle games.
“Okay, so what are they playing again?” he asked in utter confusion. Harry sighed.
“Scrabble. It’s a Muggle word game in which-"
“Right, right, I know. I was just making sure they hadn’t suddenly changed games while my back was turned. Maybe they’d started playing some odd Muggle form of poker over there.” Harry rolled his eyes.
“Muggles play poker with cards same as we do, Ron.”
“Well, you never can tell, really, can you? I mean, Muggles do some pretty strange things sometimes, and they’re getting awfully violent and competitive over there. I expect we’ll see blood any moment now. As poker’s the only game I can think of, aside from Quidditch, of course, over which players get so worked up they try to kill one another; what else was I supposed to think?”
“It’s Scrabble, Ron,” Harry said decisively.
“But a word game? Really, I can understand Hermione, she loves words, there’d be no books without them after all, but what is my sister doing?”
“Trying to beat Hermione, I expect.”
“I love my sister, you know I do, but what was she thinking?”
“How do you mean?”
Ron shot him an incredulous look. “This is Hermione we’re talking about. Poor Ginny doesn’t stand a chance. Now if it were poker, at least she’d be winning, the little sneak.”
Harry just shook his head. “You ought to watch when and where you say these things, mate. One day they’re going to overhear you.”
“I can’t believe it!” a voice cried out. Then another: “I won! I won!” followed by a menacing growl and Hermione’s evil snicker.
“Why, Ginny,” she said sweetly, “I never imagined you would be such a poor loser. Hmmm,” she paused thoughtfully. “A cheater and a poor loser, all in one day. I think I bring out the worst in you, Weasley.”
Ginny grinned mischievously. “I’ll show you poor loser. Get this wimpy Muggle game board off of my table and hand me that deck of cards. We’re playing poker.”
From across the room, Ron Weasley grinned. “That’s my girl.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Royal flush.”
“That’s it.” Cards hit the table. “We’re finding something else to do with the rest of Girls’ Day, something that doesn’t involve playing these stupid games.”
“What’s this I hear, Hermione? Is it? Could it possibly be…the sound of a poor loser?”
“I swear you were cheating again, Weasley.”
“Cheating? Now see that’s the thing about this game, Hermione. When it comes to poker, I don’t have to.”
“… I’m going to go filch some food from the kitchen…Wanna come?”
“…Will hot chocolate be involved?”
“Is this Girls’ Day or is this Girls’ Day?”
“I’m there.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was getting rather late when Hermione climbed sleepily through the portrait hole later that day. She and Ginny had been off celebrating Girl’s Day all afternoon and evening, and had quite literally refused to speak to Ron or Harry even during dinner, though Ginny didn’t seem opposed to sneaking glances at her boyfriend when Hermione wasn’t looking. Somewhat amused, if a little miffed, by their behavior, the two boys had retreated to the safety of their homework, which they had worked on for several hours, right up until twenty minutes ago when Harry had put down his quill and walked decisively out the door. Since then Ron had worked studiously on his potions essay and was about halfway through when Hermione dropped down on the couch beside him.
“Hey,” she said softly. He finished his sentence and looked up at her, rather surprised that she was speaking to him.
“Hey.” He glanced around. “Where’s your red-headed counterpart?”
Hermione yawned. “Right here,” she replied sleepily, patting his arm and seemingly unaware of what she was saying. He looked at her sharply as she tucked her feet up on the couch beside her and leaned against him.
Mmmm…warm. Of course, Ron and warm had always been synonymous in her mind. His eyes, his smile, his voice, his hugs…not that’d she’d had many of those, mind you. Unfortunately. So it didn’t surprise her at all that he was really actually warm in temperature as well as in character.
“I meant Ginny,” he told her pointedly, interrupting her rather pleasant train of thought. Her forehead creased drowsily as she struggled to pay attention to the conversation and not fall asleep against him.
“Hm? Oh, she’s off kissing Harry somewhere.”
“I see.” He frowned down at her. Her eyelids were drooping and she was very nearly nodding. He suppressed a smile. “Does this mean Girls’ Day is over?”
“Something to that effect, yes.”
“Oh. Because I was beginning to think this was going to go on right through Christmas.” Hermione snorted and yawned again.
“Shut up, Ron,” she told him and tiredly dropped her head to his shoulder. He started, and his whole body tensed, but after a moment’s pause and reflection, he relaxed back into the couch.
“Hermione,” he told her very softly, “you can’t sleep here for very long.” She smiled at the sound of his voice and nodded knowingly.
“I know,” she replied, eyes closed and words slurred slightly in near unconsciousness. “But it’s lonely up in my room without Ginny.” She yawned again, and repositioned her head. “I’ll stay until you finish your essay. Wake me then?”
“Uh-huh.” He paused, then, “just let me grab my stuff off the table first.” He lifted his shoulder gently, and she grumblingly moved her head long enough for him to lean forward and gather his book, parchment, quill and ink. When he was relatively settled with his homework in his lap, she replaced her head and wondered briefly what on earth had possessed her this evening.
Sleepiness, she reasoned. Sleepiness and loneliness, and this stupid desire to be as close to him as possible all the time. She smiled slightly and shifted her weight away from his arm, as she suspected he was having trouble writing with her leaning against it that way. I’ll hate myself in the morning for embarrassing myself this way, she continued, rather unreasonably, but he’s not outwardly protesting, and I’m not going to complain if he isn’t. Maybe this will help the aching go away for a little while, and I can stop thinking about him so much. She sighed softly, listening to him mumble information from the book as he wrote it down, enjoying the sound and appreciating the rarity of it all that day.
I missed him.
And she fell asleep, lulled by the gentle rise and fall of Ron’s deep voice and the warmth of the room, a peaceful smile quirking the corners of her mouth.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~