"D'you think Hermione did snog Krum?" asked Ron tentatively.
"What?" stammered Harry, "Oh… er…"
That was all the validation the red head needed to stoop further into his ill temper. It seemed that he was the only one of his friends to never have had a real kiss. Abruptly an image of Hermione and Krum outside the Great Hall, kissing, entered his mind. It was more than a jealousy that over took him in that moment. Rather he felt that there had been a violation of what was rightfully his. He had never felt such a possessiveness having grown up with next to nothing that was his and his alone.
"Diligrout," he muttered.
Ron trudged towards the nearest armchair in front of the fire and lowered himself into it. He sighed deeply and watched the dancing flames. Up until that point of clarity he had simply passed off any feelings towards Hermione as merely brotherly. Small details he loved about her turned up in everything he turned his gaze to. The fire flickered in the same fashion as her hair when the wind blew. The mahogany wood coffee table was the exact same color he saw in her eyes. The rose, her favorite flower, in the center of the table matched her lips.
The common room was littered in memories of their time spent together. She had sat on this very floor correcting his Potions essay but a week prior. She had read the Prophet by that table after Ron had successfully made it on to the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The memories from all the years spent in the common room were too much to process right then so Ron pulled himself up the stairs to his dormitory.
His eyes closed, he could finally come up with a course of action. The only thing stopping him at that point was a vast uncertainty about how Hermione felt about him. After being best friends for more than a third of their lives, he found that he knew next to nothing about her. Would she reciprocate his feelings?
Over the next few days, he could not bring himself to talk to her. He went back and forth between plans of winning her affection and plans of pushing her away so he wouldn't get hurt.
Things came to a climax after his successful Quidditch match against Slytherin. Hermione was free to kiss whomever she pleased and so was he. Who he pleased to snog was the girl who had been hounding him since the beginning of the year, Lavender Brown. After the initial kiss which was agreeable albeit slightly wet, the new couple tried to find a bit of privacy. Ron's dormitory was out of the question and so was Lavender's so they sought an empty classroom.
Hand in hand, one of them giggling quite a bit more than the other, they strode down the corridor.