She had thought she loved him. It had been her secret. Her guilty, dark delicious secret---wouldn't Parvati and Lavender just love to know?  Wouldn't he just love to know? She had written poems on napkins, I Love Yous wreathed in fat, pink hearts. She had giggled and cried and blushed and bickered and the words had become a prayer and a plea. She lived her life by those words. And when she cried into her pillow, a twelve-year old in the giddy throes of puppy love, begging him to notice her, to love her back, she realized that she didn't really care if he ever said those words to her or anyone. They were her secret. Her lovely, dark, delicious, ever-so-feminine secret. And she guarded them like gold and diamonds.

And sooner or later, when the novelty of being in love wore off, she ignored it, left her love in the back off her heart and went on with her studies, her classes, her life. Always a dangerous thing to do, she knew now. 

But time curdles the sweetest love, rejection hardens the tenderest passion. And her love had been neither sweet nor tender, she told herself resolutely.

And when he told her those words, those blessed words, those words that had been her heart, her soul, her very life for the last five years, she realized she didn't care less. She didn't love him anymore. She had never loved him. She had never loved anyone.

She left him angry and confused. Years of friendship, adventure and strange perfume. Years of a love that had been nothing more than a whisper, a giggle, a blush, a sigh.

She didn't see his humor or his loyalty now. She saw simplicity. Just simplicity. Had he found her a few years before, she would have loved him for it. She had always liked simple things. Things she could control and shape with a single pound of her small hand. He was freckles and ice cream and jelly sandwiches that stuck to your mouth after you ate them. He was wet grass and fireflies and stargazing on a cool summer night. And she couldn't love him.

She looked over his shoulder and she saw the green eyes, the unruly black hair, the thick glasses. And more than that, she saw pain, she saw fury and hatred and snakes with crimson eyes. She saw something—everything she couldn't understand. And she loved it. She loved him. She looked at Ron one last time: his eyes inquiring But why? And she asked herself the same question: Why? Why? Because she had grown up, she answered herself. Grown up to love a boy with hard green eyes.

A/N: Please read and review….or just review, I don't really care J. It's kind of an odd style but I think it's okay and I hope you do too. Yes, this is H/Hr but I'm frankly a rabid R/Hr shipper and have no idea why I wrote this. Maybe just to see if I could.