Sort of a AU-Pre-Hogwarts-Child-Encounter thing. Whatever. I don't know.

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One with Pictures in it.

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"Dad, where are we going?" asked a bemused young freckled boy, holding his fathers hand down a crowded London walk.

"I told you, Ron, we're going to a Muggle bookstore!" Replied the father happily, he was obviously overjoyed to have an excuse to visit a Muggle shop. "Perkins says there've been reports of a cursed book, it bites your fingers off when you try to close it." He shook his head. "Shame, shame…"

"Yes, but why do I have to go?" Asked Ron. He was much more comfortable being at home, taking his teddy bear on walks to the park.

"Because, I don't think it's wise to be around your brothers at the moment," said his father seriously. "Fred's positively furious you broke his toy broom, and I think it best for him to have some time to cool off." Ron gulped. Fred's anger would have increased tenfold by the time he returned, he suddenly wished he'd found a better hiding place for Rupert the Bear.

"Ah, there it is, there it is, Ron, look!" Shouted his father gleefully. Many Muggle onlookers spared him a reproachful look as they passed. He was pointing at a small, yet cozy-looking shop on the corner of a busy street, sporting a large glass front with a varied display of large books. Mr. Weasley led him closer to the shop, towards a small family of Muggles, contemplating what books they should purchase. "Look, Ron, look, they've probably got Muggle money, too!" Ron rolled his eyes, his fathers' unbridled enthusiasm making his own ears go red. He looked closer at the Muggle family, to see if they really did have Muggle money. The parents both looked quite young, the father tall and thick with an ever-so-slightly receding line of short black fuzz atop his head, the mother, rather small and thin with a crop of wavy brown hair reaching down her shoulders, watching their small daughter, no older than Ron himself, observing the display of books with the exact excitement with which his father observed her family. His eyes stopped dead on the girl, a miniature of her mother, large chocolate-brown eyes, alight with excitement, curly brown hair that hung low down her waist, and small little hands, pressed up against the glass of the shop.

"You wait out here, Ron, while I have a word with the shopkeeper, alright?" Asked his father, who seemed not to realize his sons' abrupt lack of speech.

Ron nodded, and let go of his fathers hand as he ventured into the shop. He immediately turned back around to get a closer look at the brown-haired girl, who, he thought thankfully, had not moved from her spot against the glass.

"Sweetie, do you want to wait out here while Mommy gets her book?" Asked the woman kindly. She had a singsong voice that warmed Ron's insides and made the girl look up.

"Really, Mommy, can I?" She asked excitedly. Her father nodded and she pressed her nose against the glass as her parents went inside.

Ron battled inwardly with himself for a minute, go over to the side of the girl, or stay there and watch while people continued pushing him aside in their hurry to buy their books?

He approached cautiously, as if the girl was a time bomb that would explode at any second, keeping his wits about him in case he needed to pull back unexpectedly.

He stopped inches beside her and turned to the glass storefront with which she was obviously transfixed. He was able to keep her reflection in the window in his line of vision, he thought happily. Closer up, she was very pretty. She soon realized she was not alone, and, gathering his reflection as he had done hers, she turned towards him with a bright smile on her face.

"Do you like books too?" She asked cheerfully. Her smile was warming as her mothers' voice, and it was obvious that she was an avid reader, though she couldn't have been older than seven.

"Oh, er--" he stammered, but her smile was infinitely distracting to him, and before his mind could correct him he found himself saying "Yeah. Yeah, they're great," breathlessly.

The girl smiled. "I think so too. It's like a tiny little world you can carry with you anywhere, don't you think?" Ron nodded, still to consumed with her features to take in what she was saying. She, however, was too happy to notice and continued, "I'm ahead of all the girls in my class, I can read chapter books now!" She exclaimed gleefully. "My favorite kinds are the ones about magic. I'm on page one-fifty of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, have you read that? No? You really should, it's an amazing book, of course it's the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so I suppose you'll have to read that too…"

The girl didn't seem to notice that Ron was staring at her, She was too busy praising somebody named 'Road Doll' who apparently was very famous in the Muggle world and he was given an opportunity to examine her features.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but her face seemed to light up when she talked about books. She was obviously very smart, using a lot of big words Ron didn't understand, nor particularly cared about, and talking about books with over three hundred pages that she had read in less than a week, while Ron had yet to finish a book with fewer than fifty pages that didn't have a bunny on the front.

"…and so it really is a shame that they finished the series with that, but really, any more volumes would have been beating a dead horse, pardon the expression, but enough about that, what's your favorite kind of book?"

It took Ron a few moments to register that she had finally stopped talking and was politely expecting an answer. He tried to replay the last of her words so he could put together a coherent answer.

"Well, erm… I like the kind with pictures in them," he said earnestly. She blinked and stared at him, giving him the immediate impression that he had said the wrong thing. He stammered for a minute or two to cover up his blunder. "I mean, well, I like the pictures because, er, they give you a clearer vision of the story!" He said quickly, trying to sound as smart as she had sounded (Or rather, he thought she had sounded, because he had only taken in a few odd words). "I mean, without them, you know, you have to reread it a couple times, you know, to get the idea of the story, and then, you know, with the pictures, you get to , er, grasp the outlines of the story and the, uh, important aspects of the, erm, plot." He finished lamely.

She blinked a few more times and then smiled; he had obviously covered up his mistake with big words he had heard Percy use.

"I never thought of it that way!" She said brightly, and Ron broke into a sheepish grin. "That's a really interesting point! What's your name?" She asked.

Ron smoldered for a second, his father had always warned him not to give out his true name to Muggles, something about the International Statute of Whatzit, and the Muggle Something Ban…

"It's, er, Rupert," he replied, thinking of his (hopefully unharmed) teddy bear.

"Oh, I'm sorry, that was terribly rude of me, my name is Hermione, I live in the suburb down the lane there, see?"

She pointed to a collection of small Muggle houses right outside the square, which, Ron noticed, had only one floor and no garden gnomes.

She turned back to him and grinned broadly, as she did when mentioning books. "Where do you live?"

Ron racked his brains, he remembered his father mentioning the name of the neighboring Muggle village at some point…

"Erm, Ottery St. Catchpole." He finished tentatively. He took her unconfused expression as a sign that that was indeed the name of a Muggle village and she knew where it was.

"Oh I've been fishing with Daddy nearby there, it's very nice! Do you have any bookstores?"

Ron grinned, obviously this little girl (Hermione? Helga? Something with an 'H'…) was happier talking about books than about anything else.

"Er, yeah, one." He replied, grinning. Her mind always seemed to be wrapped around a book.

"Hermione! Sweetie?" Came her mother's voice from inside the shop. Her face appeared around the corner and her wavy brown hair swung as she smiled.

"You can come in if you want dear; your father and I have decided you can pick out one book. One." She held up her index finger so as to enhance her point. The girl smiled broadly and hurried in after her mother. She stopped suddenly at the door and turned to Ron.

"I'm going to get a book," She smiled brightly. "One with pictures in it."

Ron blushed heavily as she rushed through the door.

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I tried to keep it as true as I could so it would fit in with the rest of the story, Hermione wouldn't recognize Ron because he hadn't given her his name and he wasn't so effing TALL, and Ron wouldn't recognize Hermione because he couldn't REMEMBER her name and she cut her hair. Whee!!

My first HP oneshot, should I do more?