This was all his fault.

If Ron Weasley had just done his Herbology reading when he was supposed to, instead of squandering away all those precious hours staying up late into the night last night with Harry, churning out ridiculous predictions (which no one in their right mind would ever believe, anyway) for Professor Trelawney's joke of a Divination class, none of this would have ever happened.

He would have known better than to forget to spray the Wallawindle flower roots with black tea before repotting them--that was only the most important step of all, for heaven's sake. And she would have never had to panic after she discovered his glaring mistake, nor scrambled to fix it (though Ron had been too oblivious, not to mention too busy chatting with Harry about broom formation in Quidditch, to notice his error and ask for her help), doing such an uncharacteristically sloppy job of it that she inadvertently drew attention to herself, and in the process, earned both Ron and herself detention from Professor Sprout, in addition to a whopping twenty-five point deficit for Gryffindor ("I will not tolerate cheating in my classroom!").

So all things considered, she felt perfectly justified in her decision not to speak to him for the rest of the day.

"Hermione!! Hey Hermione, wait up!!"

She didn't even bother to turn around. Eyes fixed straight ahead, she simply marched on, one foot after the other sinking deep in the mist-soaked grass, causing mud to seep into her shoes with each step. But she was not going to turn around.

"C'mon... Slow down, would you?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Harry."

But he came up beside her anyway. She heard him panting beside her, having chased her all the way from the greenhouse after she bolted out of there the instant the bell rang. She was already well past the courtyard by the time he must have noticed she didn't wait for him and Ron.

"Going to ignore me now too, are you?" he said.

From the corner of her eye she saw him smirk, in that maddening way he did sometimes, when he knew he was right and wanted to make sure she knew it too. Try as she might, she couldn't fight a smile--which had probably been his intention all along--and at last she sighed and stopped to look at him.

"Good," he said, "that's much better."

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said. "You know I don't mean to take it out on you, it's just... I mean..."

"Yeah," he said, "I know."

She laughed softly. "You do, don't you?"

He gave her a knowing smile, but said nothing. They never really talked about it, not ever, though there wasn't ever any need to. Hermione didn't know how it began--perhaps it had been after the Yule Ball last year, when Harry had told her that he had found what looked like a broken arm from Viktor Krum's figurine--but there seemed to be an understanding between them, even if the words had never been spoken out loud.

That was a good thing, of course. Hermione had always felt she could confide in Harry, about everything, and if it were anything else--anything else in the world but the subject of Ron Weasley--she would, too. But this was different. Much different. There were times when she herself didn't know how to sort out all of these new and utterly bewildering emotions, ones that seemed to come out of nowhere, and yet made complete sense all the same. At times she felt she was entering dangerous and uncharted territory, and there was no denying it--she was scared to death.

She had noticed for some time now that a certain someone was conspicuously missing. Inside, a debate raged: should she ask, or pretend not to care? Not that Harry would ever believe for a single second that she wasn't dying to know.

Still, the last thing she wanted was to appear too... anxious.

Casually--or as casually as she could manage, anyway--she said, "So... where is Ron, anyway?" She didn't even give Harry a chance to answer. "If he's off trying to negotiate something with Professor Sprout, then he's just wasting his time. He heard what she said--there's no way she'll let us out of this one!"

"Er, no... that's not what he's doing."

"Oh."

She had tried hard not to reveal too much interest in the word, but she was sure it had been rather obvious nevertheless.

"Well... where is he, then?"

"He's, er..." Harry seemed to be thinking hard of how to answer that question. A little too hard. Now Hermione was beginning to get suspicious. "He said that he... well, he... needed to cool off a bit..."

"What?"

Harry grimaced; he must have known at once that he had just said something he shouldn't have.

"Cool off?" she said. "Why would he... Wait a minute, are you telling me he's mad?"

Harry looked as if he wanted to be swallowed whole by the earth at that moment. Hermione had other things to worry about, however.

"He's mad at me, after what just happened in there??"

"Hermione-"

"Oh this is amusing... This is really amusing..." She knew she was babbling now, but this is what Ron Weasley did to her. Why did he have to affect her this way? Why? "I'm the one who makes a complete idiot of herself trying to help him, and he's mad at me-"

"Well blimey, who asked you to help me in the first place??"

Hermione could feel every muscle in her body tense as soon as she heard his voice. She could feel him behind her, could feel the heat of his breath as he stood there. She knew he was probably staring hard at her, waiting for her to turn around. Well, she was not going to give him the satisfaction.

"Some people just don't know the meaning of the word gratitude, do they Harry?"

Harry just sighed. She almost felt sorry for him, perpetually caught in their crossfire, but this was all Ron's fault anyway. Why should she be the one to feel guilty?

"Oh, grateful... I'm supposed to be grateful?"

Ron moved around to stand in front of her. She felt a strange twinge of triumph at that, but resisted a smile--lest Ron completely misinterpret it and use it for ammunition against her.

"I'm sitting there, minding my own business, having a perfectly good conversation with Harry, and next thing I know, I've got detention, and Gryffindor has just lost twenty-five points in one shot!! Twenty-five points! That was the margin we won by in that last match against Hufflepuff!! Have you any idea how much more crucial next week's game against Slytherin is going to be because of that??"

Hermione was fighting hard to keep her breath steady, though the rest of her felt as if she would explode at any moment now.

Quidditch?? He had the nerve to talk about Quidditch now? After she had just attempted to save his neck because he was too busy talking about the bloody sport to pay attention to his work?

Ooh, he was just so infuriating!

"No, Ron," she said, "but I'm sure you're oh-so-anxious to tell me."

"Oh, but that isn't even the best part," he said, clearly just getting warmed up "No, not only do we have the Gryffindors just thrilled with us for costing our house twenty-five points, but we've also got detention at the worst possible time!"

"What're you talking about?"

Hermione noticed that Harry had somehow managed to make a getaway sometime during all of this, not that she could have blamed him. Ron was stark-raving mad at the moment, after all.

"Professor Sprout asked me to inform you that we're to report to her tomorrow for our detention," he said. "Tomorrow. As in the day we were all supposed to go to Hogsmeade."

Hermione bit her lip. No wonder he was so upset. She knew he had been dying to go to Honeydukes for some time now, for a fresh supply of chocolate frogs, ever since they'd heard the rumor that a new wizard card had been released.

But wait, this wasn't her fault!!!

"Well, we would have never gotten detention if you had just done what you were supposed to, Ron Weasley!!"

His mouth sprang open.

"We would have never gotten detention," he said, after finding his voice again, "if you hadn't tried to unearth my bloody Wallawindle flowers yourself in the first place!!"

He had come right up to her now, towering over her so that she had to look up. Hermione couldn't help but be affected by their close proximity, and, it seemed, so was Ron, for she noticed that his breath had grown rather ragged in the last few seconds.

As if snapping back to reality, Hermione took a step backwards.

"This is stupid," she said.

"Giving up so already, are we?" he said. She wanted to smack that grin right off his face. "I knew you wouldn't be able to come up with a decent comeback to that one!"

She narrowed her eyes, and let out a slow, deliberate breath.

"You can be such a spiteful prick sometimes, you know that?"

She hadn't meant to for her voice to crack; the last thing she wanted was for Ron to know just how effective he was sometimes at hurting her. But then again, perhaps he needed to know. Ron went pale and became quiet--very quiet--and he searched her eyes, though she averted her gaze.

"Hermione, I-"

"I don't even want to hear it, Ron."

He stepped closer and reached for her arm, but she wrenched it away immediately. She walked away before he could utter another word.

Hermione had never noticed it before now, but there was absolutely nowhere within Gryffindor tower to get any kind of privacy. She did manage to find some for a few blessed hours, at least while the fifth year girls' dormitories were still empty, but the halcyon did not last for long, however.

"I told you she'd be in here..."

She heard the door creak open, and the familiar girly whispers that followed alerted Hermione to the presence of her roommates. Without looking up, she heard Parvati and Lavender slam the door shut behind them and make a beeline for her bed, where Hermione had been laying on her stomach, reading her book.

"You weren't at dinner," Lavender said.

"I wasn't hungry."

"Oh," Parvati said. "Well, Harry was wondering where you were. He wanted to know if you were all right, so he sent us to check up on you. So... are you?"

Hermione sighed. "Yes," she said. "You can report to Mr. Potter that I am alive and well, yes."

Lavender seemed offended by her tone, and at any other time, Hermione would have felt guilty--but not tonight. She just couldn't deal with this tonight. Lavender managed to get in her revenge, though.

"He wasn't the only one who was worried, was he, Parvati?"

She laughed shamelessly, sending Parvati into a fit of giggles as well. Hermione, for her part, tried her best to ignore them, though she realized, much to her dismay, that she had read the same sentence about fifteen now since Lavender and Parvati had walked in the room.

"Oh yes," Parvati said, "Ron did look quite put out, didn't he?"

"He looked as if his pet had just died! I swear, I thought he was going to come right up here to the dormitory himself!"

Parvati grinned, something Hermione couldn't help but see from the top of her book. "I'm sure Hermione wouldn't have minded though," she said to Lavender.

"No, I'm sure she wouldn't have, would you, Hermione?"

"Why should I care either way?"

Lavender rolled her eyes. "Oh, right," she said, "Of course you wouldn't care if Ron Weasley wanted to come up here to talk to you..."

Parvati apparently found the statement as amusing as Lavender did; Hermione failed to see the humor in it.

"What's the matter, anyway--did you two get in a fight again?"

Again? Why would Lavender... Did she and Ron get into rows that often that Lavender would say that?

"Don't you remember?" Parvati was saying. "In the greenhouse this afternoon... Professor Sprout gave them both detention and she looked as if she were ready to strangle him!" She looked at Hermione. "Imagine that, Hermione Granger, in detention... tsk, tsk, getting a little too wild, aren't you?"

Hermione sighed and flipped over, coming to sitting and leaning against the headboard, then drawing up her knees to balance her book. The best thing she could do at the moment, she reminded herself, was to just pretend they weren't there.

Unfortunately, Lavender and Parvati did not seem to be cooperating with her plan. Lavender, in particular, was quite oblivious. She leaned over to look at what Hermione was reading.

"101 Ways To Negotiate With Goblins..." She rolled her eyes. "That's not even required reading! Honestly, I just don't know about you sometimes, Hermione..."

"Sorry to be such a source of puzzlement to you, Lavender," Hermione said, "but you'll forgive me if I'm not in the chattiest of moods tonight."

"Ooh... Not very friendly tonight, is she, Lavender?"

"Hmph... Guess we'll just have to leave her alone, then," Lavender huffed. "Then again, that isn't any different than usual. Come on, Parvati..."

Hermione didn't even bother to look up as they hopped off her bed and headed for the door. She kept her eyes on her book, though at this point, it was completely useless; she had not progressed beyond this paragraph in the last ten minutes.

"Oh, look who's here..."

She flicked her eyes upward. Lavender was just standing there, giving her a Cheshire Cat grin, which Hermione found especially annoying. She had just decided to go back to reading when Lavender made sure to add, "There's someone here for you, Hermione..."

"And he looks mighty anxious to see you," Parvati said.

Something told Hermione it probably wasn't Harry.

The girls scampered out of the room, giggling one last time as they did. Hermione could still hear their laughter in the stairwell as she came to the door. Ron was standing right outside, his hair standing somewhat on end, as if he'd been running his hand through it, and he was watching her very carefully. Perhaps he was afraid she'd erupt like a volcano at any second.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

She felt a bit silly just holding the door open like this; she would have invited him in (after all, everyone else had left), but she knew he would have refused anyway, out of principle ("This is the girls' dormitory!"), and besides, she was a prefect--Professor McGonagall would have her head if she found out Hermione had let a boy into their room.

And so they stood there awkwardly, mere inches away from each other, but separated by this artificial divide. He looked as if he wanted to tell her something, but was working up the courage to say it. Hermione wondered if she should help him along.

"So..."

He shifted his weight and brought a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it nervously. "I, er... I came here to tell you that... I came here to tell you that Professor Sprout wants us to meet her at the lake tomorrow. At one o'clock."

"Oh."

For a moment there, she had had a fleeting hope that he had come up here to say something else to her. Well, that was a stupid thought anyway.

"Well, all right then. Thanks for telling me."

"Yeah," he said. "Sure."

She drummed her fingers at the door. She sensed he didn't want to leave, and she didn't want him to leave either, but what else was there to say?

"Harry was asking about you at dinner," he said at last. "He... wanted to know if you were okay..."

And what about you, Ron? she thought. Don't you care?

"Are you? All right, I mean?"

"Fine. I just wasn't very hungry, that's all."

"Oh. Well, I'm... I'm glad you're okay." After a while, he added, "I'll be sure to let Harry know."

She nodded, and could feel the first prick of tears coming on. She fought to keep them from welling up in her eyes.

"I, er... I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Right," she said. "One o'clock."

"One o'clock."

He gave her a weak smile, then turned and walked away. Hermione watched him for a while as he descended down the staircase, until he disappeared into the common room. When he was out of sight, she closed the door, alone in the dormitory once again, and crawled back into her bed. There, she let her tears fall at last.

Gryffindor tower was eerily silent by noontime the next day. Everyone had shuffled off to the courtyard to board the coaches to Hogsmeade by eleven o'clock, and the first and second years who were left behind had scattered all across the grounds that day: some in the library, some in the Great Hall, some just wandering outside, enjoying the first day of sunshine they had had in a while.

Harry had offered to stay back, of course, out of some sense of solidarity. Hermione appreciated the gesture, but told him that under no circumstances should he miss out on all the fun just because she and Ron had to serve out their detention.

And besides, she reminded him, someone had to get Ron his chocolate frogs from Honeydukes.

Ron was standing at the shore of the lake already by the time she got there. Professor Sprout was there beside him, looking grim and sullen, not at all like her usual jovial self, and at her feet were some strange-looking contraptions that Hermione could only guess they would be needing for whatever this was that they were about to do today.

"Good afternoon, Miss Granger."

"Good afternoon, Professor Sprout," she said.

She caught Ron's eye, and saw him smile at her in sympathy. In that moment, everything felt right between them again, and suddenly, detention didn't seem quite so bad anymore.

"Well, now that you're both here, we can get started," Professor Sprout said. She bent down and picked up one of the objects she had brought. Upon closer inspection, Hermione saw that it was some sort of rake--but not one she had ever seen before. It had a large net attached at the front of it, just under the head of the rake, and a long, metal pole with a grip at the end. "This," explained Professor Sprout, "is a Gillyweed rake. There's one for each of you. You two will be harvesting Gillyweed for me."

Hermione threw Ron a look of desperation, but he simply shrugged.

"What you have to do is stick the rake as far in the water as you can, and then bring it back up like this," Professor Sprout was saying, as she dipped the rake and pulled it out. "See? You'll notice there's some in the net already..." She dumped the Gillyweed into a large pail next to her. Hermione couldn't help but notice how deep the pail was; this was going to take a while.

Professor Sprout handed one of the rakes to Hermione, then the other to Ron.

"Now I expect you two to be very productive today," she said. "After all, you have the entire afternoon."

Hermione could have sworn she just saw Ron twitch slightly at those words. A whole afternoon. This was going to be interesting.

"Right then, let's get you two started... I'll be back later to check up on you."

She led them to the shore and watched them plunge their rakes, then, apparently satisfied with what she saw, she left them to finish the task by themselves.

"Blimey," Ron said, when Professor Sprout was out of earshot, "no wonder Filch is always in a bad mood. Reckon I couldn't blame him if he had to do this for hours at a time..."

Hermione began to laugh, and so did Ron, and for the first time in a long while, it seemed as if they were back to normal again--before last year's Yule Ball, before Viktor Krum, before all the stolen looks and double meanings. Before either of them ever felt self-conscious around the other.

When they were just Ron and Hermione, best friends.

But of course, they were so much more than that. Hermione knew it, and even Harry did as well. The question was, did Ron know it too?

They spent the next half hour toiling away in silence. The clouds had burned away by midday, giving the sun free reign to beat down on them; it was unusually warm for an early October afternoon. Harvesting Gillyweed was apparently more difficult than it seemed--at least more difficult than Professor Sprout had made it look. After thirty minutes of combing for the stubborn plant, their pail had barely been filled an eighth of the way.

This was going to be a long afternoon.

She watched Ron as he worked, seeing him wipe his brow every once in a while and resting before he resumed once more. He must have been boiling inside his jumper (the one his mum had knitted for him last Christmas, that was already a size too small); she herself was about ready to throw her cardigan off, were it not for the fact that all she was wearing underneath was a thin camisole-type singlet--which happened to be drenched in sweat at the moment.

Not exactly the image she wanted to present of herself--especially to Ron, of all people.

She'd caught him looking her way several times now. Her stomach fluttered every time she'd look his direction and see his eyes dart away almost instantaneously. On the other hand, part of her wondered if she was only imagining all of this. Perhaps she was only seeing what she wanted to see.

Why did he have to perplex her like this? Things were so simple back in the beginning, back when he was just her friend and she didn't find herself constantly thinking about how beautiful his eyes were, or how his lop-sided grin opened up reservoirs of warmth within her. Things would be so much easier if she just thought of him the way she thought of Harry--like a brother. A sweet, harmless, goofy brother.

Whom was she fooling, anyway? She had never really thought of him like that, if she really had to be honest with herself. From the beginning he had challenged her, surprised her, and made her feel all sorts of things she had never experienced before, only at the time she had no name for them.

And now she did. Love.

She was in love with Ron Weasley. Completely, madly, hopelessly in love with him. She felt her cheeks get hot just thinking the words, but she knew it with every fiber of her being, and it was time she admitted the truth to herself.

The impossible task would be, of course, admitting it to Ron.

"It'll take us till Halloween to get this bloody pail filled," Ron said. He stared at her. "Hermione?"

"Hmm? What?" She knew she must have been blushing. God, he just caught her daydreaming about him.

He grinned, sending Hermione into a panic about just how much her face was reflecting what she was thinking inside.

"What're you thinking about over there, anyway?"

"Nothing," she said quickly. "Nothing, just... just thinking about my Arithmancy exam next week..."

"Oh," he said, "of course."

He went back to raking for Gillyweed. Hermione frowned at him. What had he meant by that? Was this all she was to him? A bookworm, whose idea of fun was to borrow a book from the library and curl up by the fire in the common room, and fall asleep reading?

Suddenly, she was annoyed with him.

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to start revising," she said curtly. "Don't you have an exam next week too?"

"In Divination," he informed her. "How bad could it be? All I'd have to do is name some constellations and uncharted planets, and then read a few tea leaves. If I throw in a tragic death or two, she'll give me top marks for sure."

Hermione rolled her eyes. Sometimes, she just couldn't understand him.

"So, er..."

She wondered whether she should look at him, or wait until he finished his sentence.

"About yesterday..."

"Yeah?"

"I'm... I'm sorry... you know, for saying what I did... You were only trying to help, after all."

There were times when he would just take her completely by surprise, and this was one of them. She stared at him for a few seconds, making him feel self-conscious apparently, because he cleared his throat and dipped his rake in the lake again.

"Oh Ron, I'm sorry too," she said. "You were right, you never asked for my help--it's not your fault I got caught and got you in trouble too."

He grinned, then looked up at her. "Did I just hear that right?" he said. "Did Hermione Granger just apologize to me?"

She laughed, reaching into the pail and flinging a handful of slimy Gillyweed at him. He cried out in protest, then started laughing himself, and at last he threw the rake onto the ground.

"I say we need a break, what do you think?"

"Well... I s'pose we could. If Professor Sprout comes along, we'll just get busy again." She felt her face grow hot when she saw his smile; what a horrible, horrible choice of words.

I'm making a complete fool of myself, she thought.

"Come on..." He was holding out his hand to her. Hermione looked at it for a few awkward moments, then tentatively placed her hand in his. He pulled her down to the ground, and they sat side-by-side, watching the play of sunlight on the surface of the lake.

"Ron..."

"Mmm hmm?"

"There's... there's something I wanted to ask you..." She turned beside her to look at him, wondering where in the world all this courage came from all of the sudden, but knowing that if she didn't take full advantage of it now, it'd be lost forever. "But you have to promise to tell me the truth. The absolute truth."

He seemed nervous, but then, so was she.

"All right... What is it?"

"The truth... How do you... How do you see us?"

She saw him gulp.

"Us?"

"Yes, us. You and me."

He smiled. "I know what the word means."

"Ron, come on, don't be flip... I... need to know..."

"What... exactly do you need to know?"

Blimey, why did he have to make this so hard?

She got to her feet once more, brushing off the dirt from her skirt, and folded her arms across her chest. Ron followed suit a few moments later, and she tilted her head to look up at him.

"You know what I'm asking," she said softly. "It's... it's been like this for a while now... ever since..."

"Ever since Yule Ball," he said.

She nodded.

"I just... Ron, if things are changing, I need to know how."

Suddenly, he became fascinated with a loose thread on the cuff of his jumper. She watched him wind and unwind it around his index finger, and he was quiet for such a long time that Hermione felt her hope being drained away.

"I... I don't know what you want me to tell you."

She let out a breath she'd been holding in all this time. That was not what she had hoped to hear. Not at all.

"Well, I guess there's my answer," she said, trying hard not to let her voice break. By God, she was not going to cry in front of him--not about this.

She started to pick up her rake again, when he stopped her, putting a hand on her arm. Part of her wanted to shrug him off, but the other was just so glad to feel his touch.

"Hermione, wait, you don't understand-"

"No, Ron, I think I do. I understand perfectly. But you'll just have to forgive me if I have a little bit of trouble digesting this-"

"Hermione-"

"You see, Ron... the fact is, I love you."

His eyes widened in shock. Hermione took a deep breath to steady herself. She could never bear it when he looked at her like this.

"There, I said it," she said. "I love you. I love the way you look at me like I'm mad when I start talking about the N.E.W.T.s, and the way you make silly jokes when I'm feeling sad, and the way you want to murder Malfoy every time he calls me a Mudblood... And the way you hold my hand when I'm scared, and make me feel safe and secure like no one else can..."

She couldn't keep talking. Any minute now, the tears were going to spill.

"Why me?"

"What?"

"Why me," he said again. "You are... God, Hermione, do you have any idea how amazing you are? You could have any other bloke--any other... You could... you could have Viktor, or Dean, or Seamus, or Neville... or even Harry, for heaven's sake!"

Harry? Had he really gone mad?

"Why would you ever want to waste these feelings on me? What if... what if I can't make you happy? What if you just end up hating me because I'm just an ordinary bloke? Because I'm just Ron. Just Ron."

She stared back at him, trying to assimilate everything he had just said.

"Why me, Hermione?" he said softly. "Why not them?"

And she said the only thing she could say.

"Because... they're not you, Ron."

She came up to him and took his hand; it amazed her how perfectly her hand fit in his. He looked at their intertwined fingers for a long time, then met her gaze. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached up on her tiptoes and leaned into him. When their lips finally touched, it was as if electricity had just coursed through her, and she felt more alive than she had ever felt in her life. She felt him place her hands on her waist, then draw her even closer, and she hooked one arm around his neck, pulling him into her.

She didn't know how much time had gone by before they finally parted. But when they did, Ron looked at her, as if not quite believing what had just happened. Tenderly, he brushed her cheek with his hand, his eyes sweeping her entire face.

"Hermione, I..."

"What?"

"I lied."

"What do you mean?"

"I did know exactly what you wanted me to say... I was just too damn scared to say it..." He laughed softly. "I... love you. I have for a while now, but I just... I guess I just couldn't bring myself to tell you."

She smiled, looking up at him as he cupped her face.

"Just remember who said it first," she said.

He grinned and kissed her once more.