Imperfection

Ron threw himself down in front of a tree, and accidentally banged his head rather hard against a branch. He let out a deep sigh. It was just his damn luck these days.
-
First he'd been replaced by Neville Longbottom as the Prefect from the Gryffindor sixth years. Not that he'd done much during his year as Prefect, but come on! Neville? The guy was so clumsy, he couldn't have caught a Quaffle to save his bloody life.
Ron's mother had looked so disappointed when she heard. She wasn't ecstatic about his six OWLs either. The look on her face almost made him regret copying Hermione instead of working himself and actually learning stuff. It worked well in class, but he totaly blew it on the exams.

He'd only gotten one Outstanding OWL, Care of Magical Creatures, while she pretty much got it perfect. He figured he'd do something a long the lines of his brother Charlie's job.
He had desided to continue studying Charms, DADA and Potions too, he'd scraped OWLs in Divination and Herbiology also, but he didn't find those subjects particullary useful.
He was glad that Snape didn't teach Potions anymore, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten in to NEWT level Potions anymore than Voldemort would have gotten in to heaven. Hermione didn't take Care of Magical Creatures so he was on his own there, and she was way too advanced in Charms to bother helping him all the time.
Stupid know-it-all, he hated being forced to work, so the first two months of sixth year had been the toughest yet.

Then, yesterday, on Halloween when everyone was supposed to be enjoying the after-feast party in the common-room he had walked up to his dorm, not feeling particullary joyous at the time. There he found Harry openly snogging Parvati on his bed. The lucky bastard, everything great seemed to happen to him, first Cho, the prettiest seventh year, kissed him, then Parvati, the prettiest sixth year. Never had a girl even tried to kiss him, not even an ugly one. Ron shock his head to get rid of the jealous thoughts. It didn't help one bit that Harry was made Quidditch captain over him too.
-
He'd been sitting there consumed by his own thoughts for at least ten minutes when he realised that it had rained during the night, his ass was getting pretty wet.

"Crap!" He got up and walked around the tree. There he came face to face with... Eloise Midgen.

"Oh… hello", she said looking mildly startled. Her eyes went down to his wet pants, and she had to make an effort not to giggle. "So... what are you doing out here all alone?"

"I was just ... doing nothing I guess..." Ron responded vaguely, and started to move towards the castle. Eloise turned and followed him.

"I didn't have chance to talk to you after the Quidditch final last year. Those were some brilliant saves you made there." Inside Ron's head this compliment whiped away all the depressing thoughts temporarly.

Ron started describing some of the highlights enthusiastically. After a while he realised who he was talking to. Eloise Midgen, the girl who cursed of her own nose while trying to remove her acne. He looked over at her, she was smiling and talking about Quidditch. He smiled too.
Her acne looked a lot better than he'd remembered. Of course her nose looked a little weird still, but other than that she was almost cute. Her hair looked very soft, and suddenly out of the blue Ron felt a strange urge to touch it. The robes didn't give away much about her body, but it looked alright.

When they reached the steps leading up to the entrance of the castle Ron placed his hand on her shoulder gently. His fingers swept over her hair during the movement, and it really was very soft. Not that he would know much about what girl's hair feel like he reminded himself bitterly.

Two days later Ron for mysterious reasons woke up very early. When he talked in to the Great Hall he saw only about half as many people as usual since not many had bothered to get up yet. He spotted her at once, sitting bent over the Hufflepuff table with her back against the Gryffindors.