Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by Jo Rowling, who is no me. Woe.
A/N: Haven't the slightest idea where this came from, but I like it. It does end a bit more serious than I intended but then again, what doesn't. Ron's PoV, during OotP, second person narration, Ron/Hermione implied. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.
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Fall
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The leaves catch at your feet, crimson and gold, like the scarves around your necks and the lion on your chest. The sky is a wash of grey half-hearted blue that looks almost white in the bleary sunlight.
The grass is deceptively vivid, spreading out beneath your feet as she chatters on besides you, insisting you'd take notes today in Care of Magical Creatures, because she most surely will not lend you hers at the end of the day.
You don't bother telling her that notes for Hagrid's class are useless and that your time could be better spent making sure you don't get stung or eaten by whatever new beast it is you're all studying today. But the day is too grey to argue with her just yet, maybe after History of Magic so that she will be talking to you again by lunch, when she'll sit next to you and across from Harry and pass you her notes reluctantly.
So you keep quiet for now, fiddling with the end of your scarf, which was Charlie's once, and is slowly working against your mum's best knotting charms, kicking at the leaves that catch at your feet.
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Winter
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There's no green any more, except for the evergreens in the Great Hall, but that's a given. The world is lost in white and ivory and the sugar-icing shingles on roofs of the gingerbread houses your mum sends for the holiday.
The leaves have gone now, and nothing crunches under your feet now but the snow but the sound is sharp and angular, like her mouth when she's mad at you, and you don't enjoy it nearly as much as you did the leaves.
The ends of your scarf have unraveled a quarter more and you think that come February there won't be anything but a mountain of yarn left.
"Oh really," she says in the common room as you ready yourself for another outing into the monosyllabic winter world. "Stop fiddling with it and hand it over."
She races up stairs—your brother's scarf clutched in her hand—to her books, because she cannot act without first consulting them, and comes back downstairs ten minute later.
"Ta da." She pushes the wool into your waiting hands, "all better." The loose ends are fixed and you find you miss them. They reminded you of your brother and your mum and home, and that wasn't always a bad thing, not really.
You don't say thank you.
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Spring
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The grass is slippery beneath your feet and she giggles when you fall though she tries to hide it.
The three of you settle down besides the lake, and the world smells damp, spring showers and all that tripe, and her hair—that enormous brown entity that resides on the top of her head—is pulled up and her stocking are pushed down and all the while she goes no about exams that are still months in coming.
Her legs are pale, bending at the bruised knee—she's still upset that you didn't warn her about the snag in the common room carpet—and you can't help but notice. The sky is blue above your heads, reflected on the lake surface, fat tuffs of cloud skimming grey-green water, broken by the occasional flickering tentacle.
The world is bright and it is only a matter of time before its warm too.
"Are you even listening to me?" her tone is too sharp at the edges for the scenery, and Harry closes his eyes and pretends to sleep, leaving the bulk of her attack for you. Good mate that one.
"'Course." You mutter sheepishly. Her mouth is set, a pale pink line that's waiting to go off, and her elbow is bony against your side.
"Oh," she says after you give her no reason to bicker—you've been rather good about that this year—and she heaves herself back besides you, hair coming out in bits and pieces. "You're such a boy Ronald." She doesn't smile but her mouth is no longer so thin and her voice is softer, better suiting the greens and blues around you.
You don't bother telling her you don't really know how to be anything else.
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Summer
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The air is hot against your face and the leaves are waxy between your fingers, ripping into easy shreds—a growing pile of green against the grey of your trousers.
Everything is too bright now—from the sun in the sky to the reflections that ripple off the lake to her eyes—and it unnerves you almost as much as the quiet that has settled over the three of you. Even she is quiet and that is perhaps the most unnerving thing of it all, because even in the direst of situations she always has something to say. Except now that is.
The school is not quiet however, and your head pounds in rhythm with the roaring footsteps of the students, young and old, who do not feel nearly half as tired as you do at the moment, of that you are sure. The grounds are bright, almost garishly so, and noisy and you don't mind the prospect of home if it means there'll be quiet. There probably won't be any of course, not when Mum will be having kittens over everything and you know nothing except what you know and that's never been much.
The sun glares off Harry's glasses and the bridge of her nose is pink. It'll burn soon if you stay out much longer—first brown like her hair than red like the scars that twine up your arms in serpentine patterns. Her hair is down and her stockings are up, tight over her knees, and there's a scab on her knuckle that she probably won't pick at, ever, no matter how itchy it is or how bored she gets over the summer.
"We'll have to go soon." She says (something at long last) and you didn't realize how depressing summer could be until now (you always were slow). Because the truth is that, for you and her and him, summers are an ending—to the school year, to your time together, to your childhoods and a million other trivial things you never appreciated till they were gone—and no one, not even you, ever truly bothers to acknowledge it.
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End
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