The alarm screamed to an empty room, a shrill wail that filled every crevice, followed by an impressive stream of swearwords from a bodiless voice. The person the ghost words belonged to barreled into the kitchen, a filthy rag clutched so tightly in one fist it appeared to be a lifeline between this world and the next. A stack of stack of stained plates and fur-growing mugs that had been stashed behind the sofa balanced on the other hand.

Ron flapped the rag at the alarm, resisting the temptation to reach up and rip it from the ceiling. His dad would kill him. He'd spent hours installing the 'amazing muggle fire warning thingy' with Hermione's help, and although it made him scowl in embarrassment to even think it, he could not bring himself to destroy anything she'd had a part in. Unfortunately, he forgot he held the stack of plates in his other hand until they crashed to the floor in a shower of shattering china.

Bloody hell.

"Silenceo," Ron snapped, pointing his wand at the blaring plastic before turning it towards the sea of broken shards. "Reparo."

He pulled open the oven door and clumsily levitated out the blackened lasagne. It wobbled in the air, tendrils of smoke drifting towards the silenced alarm. With his wand, he lowered it onto the chopping board and wondered if Hermione would mind take away pizza. It was her who had introduced him to take-away food, something she said she knew would be a mistake. She'd been wrong. As soon as he had taken the first bite of Chinese he'd known it was the best thing he'd had in his life.

But then he saw the top of her bushy head, marching towards the front door and the chaos of the kitchen. He didn't even have the time to prepare a babbling stream of excuses in his head before she was standing in the midst of it all and gaping open mouthed from one thing to another. The sauce stained pots and pans that littered every available surface, the row of crisp, black dinners, one failure after another. Then her gaze flickered to the flashing light on the alarm that screamed without whimpering and finally on Ron himself, red, coated in ingredients and dripping with sweat.

"What happened?" As soon as the shrill tone hit his ears he knew the night was not going to end as he'd planned. Just like everything else he ever tried and he scowled. Why couldn't he do just one good thing for her? Instead he'd just left a mess to clean and a growling stomach.

"Well-well I-you see there was a bird and then I remembered the other room was a state and then that weird thing that you and Dad shoved in the ceiling…"

"It's called a fire alarm. And a bird? Ronald, what exactly were you trying to do?"

"The bird wasn't part of the plan. It just sort of flew in through the window and then it knocked over a plate so I had to go and chase it out. Only I forgot my wand. And by the time I got rid of it and got back in here, the first lasagne was toast. Then the second one-" His voice faltered, falling apart mid-sentence. His mother and his girlfriend having anything in common was disturbing enough, but when it was that look.

But then there was a smile fighting behind it, the glimmer of a spark in her eyes that eased the anxiety that had coiled itself around his heart like barbed wire.

"And why exactly were you trying to cook anything?" The words were still stern, but (thankfully) nothing like his mother would have spoken them. They were tainted with the amusement that was creeping past her guard and into her expression.

At that, Ron burned an even darker crimson. He couldn't tell her now. It was all wrong. There was no waiting dinner steaming on the table, there were no candles that reminded them both of the relaxed and happy evenings spent at Hogwarts, he didn't even have the special edition book of fairy tales he'd bought her. It was still upstairs in the plastic bag it had came in, the gift wrap useless by its side. He couldn't even be sure she want to hear it anymore. Well, he'd never been sure of that, but now there was even less chance.

"I-well I was gonna tell you sooner. Like last night when we were watching that weird box with the moving pictures, but your parents were there and I thought it'd be sort of awkward. Then I wanted to tell you this morning when you came in here but that wasn't right either because I had a mouth full of toothpaste and you would have got sprayed which would've been kinda disgusting…"

He smiled, sheepishly, like a schoolboy asking a girl to a party. "So then I thought I'd…well, I thought it might be nice if I made an effort for a change." He made a mid-air gesture to himself. "I changed my shirt and everything."

"What was it you wanted to tell me, Ronald?" Hermione's eyebrows were arched, all hints of a smile gone. Anything he couldn't say in front of her parents, anything that needed a candlelit meal and a best shirt of reveal could not be good news.

Ron swallowed. "I wanted to say-well, to say that-" he stammered, wishing more than anything that he'd passed his apparition test the second time around so he could get out of there without having to run right past her first. He could feel the heat scorching on his own face, worse than the previous month when he and Hermione had gone to Australia to get her parents back and he'd forgotten to wear sun lotion.

He flicked a daring gaze to her face, seeing the red spots on each cheek and the narrowed slits of her eyes; the way one palm was slapped onto the one patch of kitchen that was not dripping with sauce. His face split into a grin. "I wanted to tell you that I love you."

All at once her hand slipped from the counter and the stern anger seemed to float away, slowly at first, but then suddenly, as if a hesitant bird had decided to take flight. She opened and closed her mouth, looking alarmingly like he did whenever he was called on in a lesson he hadn't been listening in. Then she blushed. A deep sea of scarlet that started on her neck, dipping below the collar of her shirt and spilling all the way beneath her hairline. She dropped her head, her bushy hair tumbling around her face as if she'd pulled the curtain on a stage play.

Ron's heart plummeted into his shoes. He knew he should have taken her out. He looked away too, burying his hands as deep into his pockets as they would go, wishing he could join them. "I suppose we'd better clean up then," he muttered, kicking at the scraps of cheese on the floor with the tip of his shoe.

"I love you too, Ron," she breathed, so suddenly, so fast that he was sure he must have imagined it. But when his head snapped up he was no longer looking at the top of her head, but at her still red face now split with a sparkling smile that she wasn't trying to hold back.

"Oh," he said, feeling the same grin beginning to crack the corners of his lips. "That's that then. Um…"

"We really should clean up," Hermione finished, her shining eyes darting around the chaos.

"Yeah."

Hermione pulled her wand from her pocket and with a few quick flicks, the cloths jumped to clean the stains, the plates stacked themselves and the lasagnes vanished, turning up moments later in the heaped bin.

"Oh," Ron said again, before his words were trapped by her lips crushing against his.

Yesterday I was hit by a huge urge to write some Romione. This was the result. Now this is the part where people charmingly request reviews, but I have the charm of a dead possum. So if you could that'd be great, but if it was so terrible you're lost for words that's fine too.