There was an almighty crash as three pots and a dazed gnome fell to the floor of the Burrow‘s kitchen, causing shards of china to fly over the floor.
“Ronald!” He cringed at the sound of his mother’s screech. “What was that?” Mrs. Weasley hurried to the source of the noise, where her son was scrabbling on the floor guiltily.
“Um…an earthquake?” he said, more as a question than an explanation. His mother shook her head despairingly.
“What are you doing around here anyway? Shouldn’t you be at work?” Molly Weasley asked, helping to put Ron’s fallen tower of crockery away. Ron shook his head. Ron, Harry and Hermione had all become Aurors after Voldemort’s ’defeat’, for if and when he returned. But as they were fairly new, they worked mainly in the office instead of the more alluring field. “Well, I thought you were thinking about finding your own place? Why don’t you go flat hunting?” she suggested, which was greeted with no enthusiasm by Ron. “Ok, what’s wrong? Something‘s bothering you, I can tell. Is it work?” Ron shook his head as he sat down on the kitchen chair. “Food? Harry and Ginny?” This time, Ron shrugged as he began to sort out the remainder of the cutlery. “Why?” Mrs. Weasley looked confused; Ron had been as excited as everyone else when Harry and Ginny had announced their engagement and even more so when it got to the wedding. “You know he’ll take good care of her, your brothers have seen to that!”
Ron smiled as he remembered the stern talking to Fred and George had sprung upon Harry the night before the wedding. Harry had left looking as though he’d just had an encounter with the mutant baby of the Basilik and Aragog. “I know. It’s just that I see them doing all this stuff, and I wonder if maybe I should be doing something with my life. Something more I mean,” Ron admitted above the clattering of the cutlery. “Only I’m not really sure what.”
“Well, why don’t you settle down with someone?” Mrs. Weasley encouraged enthusiastically. “There must be one girl you’ve liked, that you’ve thought might turn into something serious?” Again, Ron shook his head. “What about Janey? Mandy? Susan?” She paused as Ron rejected all of them with a shake of the head or a look. “Sophie? Hermione?”
“Mum, I never went out with Hermione,” Ron reminded her with a particularly violent sorting of spoons.
“Well, why not?”
“I can’t believe I just did that,” Ron groaned from beneath his hands where he hid his beet red ears. Harry smirked as he finished off his pumpkin juice, gazing around the Great Hall and noticing that Hermione was unsurprisingly absent. Only instead of hibernating in the library, he reckoned she was probably in her dormitory, gossiping with Ginny.
“About time too,” he commented as he avoided Ron’s haphazard punch.
“I asked Hermione out. Why? Why did I do it? What was wrong with just being friends? I mean, sure there were times - “
“Hey, she said yes, remember?” Harry reminded him with a grin as he shovelled in another mouthful of pie.
“What? Oh yeah, she did!” Ron suddenly looked up from beneath his hands, his ears having dimmed down a bit, with a beam. Harry shook his head in despair.
“You know, Hermione’s right when she says you don’t pay enough attention. Though she must have really had to pay attention to be able to decipher ’Er, do you, maybe, er, well, wanna, um, goouttonightwithme? Er, um, well, erm - ’” Harry mocked with a fairly accurate, in his opinion, impression of Ron, until he was suddenly thumped by Ron’s more accurate aim.
“Ron, hadn’t you better go? I mean, you wouldn’t want to be late for your date, would you?” Harry teased as he laid down his mug on Hagrid’s table, where the boys had gone to visit. Harry noticed that Ron had neglected to bring up the topic so had saved him the trouble.
“Yeh’ve got a date, Ron? Who with? Not tha’ Lavender again?” Hagrid asked with great interest. Ron, in the meanwhile, muttered something that sounded a bit like ‘hammer’, much to Hagrid’s bewilderment.
“Hermione,” translated Harry. Ron was looking decidedly at the ground, his ears growing consistently redder.
“Nice goin’, Ron!” Hagrid congratulated, thumping him heartily on the back so that Ron spluttered half his drink back into the mug.
“Yeah, well, I better go,” Ron mumbled once he’d got his breath back.
“Yeah, but it’s cold outside, don’t slip on the ice and fall into the lake or anything,” Harry warned with mock sincerity.
“Harry’s righ‘, the Giant Squid don’ get much food now the lake’s frozen over. I expec’ you’d be a righ’ treat for it, Ron!” agreed Hagrid with a nod. Ron scowled back at them as he opened the door.
“Nah, ‘cos if he does fall in, Hermione will do something way worse than the Giant Squid will, if he stands her up!” Harry continued, bending over with laughter as Ron slammed the door shut.
It might have been icy outside, but Ron couldn’t tell as it was growing gradually darker. Although it might have been hard for human eyes to see in the lack of light, Ron had the uncomfortable feeling that it wasn’t too dark to hinder the sight of whatever perilous creatures Hagrid had ’adopted’. Also, the crackling of the grass was growing louder, and Ron guessed that either he was getting heavier with each step, or someone was following him.
“Harry?” he called out uncertainly, turning around in the brisk night air to see if his friend had thought of more wisecracks that he felt complied to share.
“Close! But not quite,” a rather more feminine voice than Harry’s answered.
“Lavender?” he asked with a grimace, walking over the glazing of frost towards her voice. “This really isn’t a good time, I have to - what are you doing out here anyway?” He could see her shiver as he neared her, he could see her breath form in the cold evening air.
“I went down to Hagrid’s, but they told me you’d left. I, um, needed to talk to you,” she admitted, her voice quavering a little, though Ron thought that this time it probably wasn’t much to do with the cold.
“Ron. Ron!”
“Just one more minute,” Ron mumbled grouchily.
“No! Ron, get up! Now!” Ron blinked rapidly, trying to clear his bleary eyes to see Harry looking down on him. Ron looked around his surroundings to see that he was slumped down in a corner of the Great Hall.
“What - what am I doing here?” he asked. “What time is it?”
“It’s half two in the morning!” Harry informed him with a small laugh. “And I have no idea what you’re doing here. When you didn’t come back to the dorm, I checked on the Marauder’s Map for you. I take it that it went well with Hermione, as I wasn’t woken up to ear-splitting screams from the common room, and there weren’t any reports of someone spontaneously growing a tail or antlers - “
“Hermione!” Ron exclaimed, leaping up from his spot on the stone floor.
“Wha - don’t tell me you forgot? What were you doing all that time then?” Harry was in shock; he hadn’t been expecting that. But Ron wasn’t there to answer him, as when he looked back, he had already sprinted off in the direction of the common room.
“Hermione!”
“Nope. Wrong password. No entry.”
“Argh!” Ron growled in frustration. “Inanity!”
“Correct. What are you doing out this late anyway?” The Fat Lady asked him as she swung open, but Ron had already jumped through the portrait hole.
“Hermione?”
When Is Too Late? by Oppungo
Chapter Notes: Many thanks to my wonderful beta, songbook99!