Why can't I be happy like that?

Ron Weasley's shoulders sagged as he stood by the tent for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. He ignored Ritchie Coote and Demelza Robbins as they threw back the flap and walked by him. His focus was on two other people.

Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood.

Ron loosened the grip on his broom, letting the bristles touch the ground. He watched Harry clutching Luna's hands in his, smiling and talking excitedly. She stared back at him with those large dreamy eyes. Sometimes he found Luna's expressions hard to read. But Ron had no difficulty seeing what filled the odd girl's eyes.

Love. Absolute, true love. And he knew those feelings were returned to her in full by Harry.

While Harry smiled, Ron frowned. A black mass bubbled within him. He tried to fight it down, but as usual he didn't try that hard.

It didn't take long for jealousy to consume him. Jealousy toward his best mate, the boy who'd become another brother to him. Ron thought he'd gotten past this crap after what happened during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He should be happy for Harry, especially after things fell apart between him and Cho Chang. Sure, Luna was weirder than anyone he'd ever met. But she'd proven herself a brave and loyal friend to Harry, to all of them. Besides, why should he be jealous? Harry had a girl, and so did he.

But therein laid the problem.

His girl was Lavender Brown.

Ron dropped his gaze to the grass around his feet. He expected it wouldn't be long before he heard irritating sing-song call of "Won Won." Then Lavender would drag him off somewhere and snog the daylights out of him to celebrate Gryffindor's win over Hufflepuff. Not that she needed a Quidditch victory as an excuse to snog. Passing her the salt at lunch was enough to have her start a game of dueling tongues with him.

He never thought he'd say this, but he was getting bored with just snogging. What else did they do but snog?

Groaning, Ron lifted his eyes to observe Harry and Luna again. They continued holding hands, looking at one another, smiling and talking. They actually talked. What a concept. For all her oddities, he knew Luna was a very clever person, blessed with insight he couldn't begin to fathom. How many times had she put things in perspective for Harry? How many times had her words comforted him?

Could he have that sort of relationship with Lavender? Was she the type of girl he could go to and talk about . . . emotional stuff? Had she ever offered him comforting words when he felt down? I mean more than just, 'Aw, my poor Won Won. Let's go snog. That'll cheer you up.'"

And would Lavender have been by his side the night of the battle at the Ministry of Magic?

Ron snorted when he saw Harry and Luna kiss. A nice, slow loving kiss. Not rushed like what he and Lavender usually did.

The couple embraced. Harry smiled as he rested his head in the mass of dirty blond hair. Luna closed her massive eyes, content with being wrapped in Harry's arms. They looked like they could stay that way forever without complaint.

There was only one girl Ron could think of whom he could feel that way with. Who would be there . . . had been there during the difficult times. Who would . . . who had talked to him about meaningful things. Who had given him words of encouragement, of support, of comfort.

And I certainly ruined any chance of being with her.

Ron put his head down and turned away from Harry and Luna, still locked in a tender embrace.

"Won Won! Won Won!"

He pretended not to hear Lavender and trudged back to the castle.

XXXXX

The library. Ron couldn't believe he was sitting by himself in the library. But he figured this would be the one place Lavender would never think of looking for him.

He sighed, resting his cheek in his right hand as he stared at the book in front of him, pretending to read. He knew he couldn't just sit in the library and brood. Madam Pince would chuck him right out. So he just grabbed a book – he didn't even know what it was about – opened it, and just stared blankly at it.

How did I get into this mess?

Ron knew perfectly well the answer to that. It went back to jealousy. Jealousy over the fact that Hermione had kissed Mister Quidditch Superstar Victor Krum.

I'll show her I can find someone to snog. And Lavender Brown seemed perfectly willing to throw herself at him.

His stomach collapsed. He rubbed both hands over his face. Merlin, how he missed being around Hermione. The girl drove him mental, had done so since First Year, but he knew despite all their arguing, she had become one of his best friends. More than a best friend.

But you messed that up, didn't you, Weasley. Like you mess up everything else in your life.

"Oh. Good evening, Ron."

Ron removed his face from his hands. Luna stood across from him, holding a large black book. She aimed a quirky smile his way.

"Hi, Luna."

"What are you doing here? I almost never see you in the library. What are you reading?" She leaned over to see. "I never realized you were interested in spells developed by Aztec wizards."

"Huh?" He looked down at the open book. So that's what I picked up. "Oh. Um, well . . . it's a hobby. A new hobby."

Ron couldn't tell if Luna looked convinced or not. Instead she sat across from him and opened her book. "I had to come here and get this copy of A Study of Dragons and Their Intelligence. There's a lot of misinformation in here that needs to be brought to Madam Pince's attention. Did you know that there is a group of Chinese Fireballs that have achieved human-level intelligence and seek to take over Tibet?"

"I had no idea."

Luna hummed to herself, tore off a piece of parchment, wrote something on it and stuck it in her book. She then turned a few more pages. Ron groaned and put his head between his hands, trying to tune out Luna's nonsensical humming.

"I'm surprised you can concentrate on that book." Luna talked as she wrote another note. "You seem really depressed."

"Um, I just didn't have a very good match as Keeper today."

"You played well enough for Gryffindor to win."

Ron grumbled an unintelligible response. He wasn't about to tell Luna the real reason for his surliness.

"You're not jealous of me and Harry, are you?"

Ron choked on his own breath. His head snapped up, wide eyes staring at even bigger eyes.

"I . . . um, why . . . why would you think that?"

"I saw you staring at us today after the match. You didn't seem happy to see me and Harry hugging. Are you mad at us because you and Lavender are having problems?"

"Problems?" Ron chewed on his lip. "Why do you think we're having problems?"

"Well, whenever I see you two together, Lavender is always smiling and throwing her arms around you, but you don't react the same way. Actually, you seem like you'd rather be anywhere else in the world than with her."

Ron intertwined his fingers and squeezed them tight. His mind worked frantically trying to come up with a lie, anything to get her off the subject.

In the end he just sighed and slumped in his seat. What good would it do? Luna could see through any lie.

"It's just . . . well, you two, you and Harry I mean. You can, you know, talk about stuff."

"Yes, we talk all the time, about all sorts of things." Luna wrote another note and shoved it in her book. "I think I almost have Harry convinced that jobobbles do live in the stream near my house."

"See. That's the thing." Ron flung his hands to his sides. "You can talk about those kinds of funny things. You can even have meaningful conversations. With Lavender it's . . . I can't remember the last time we had a conversation about anything."

"Have you tried?"

"It's sort of hard to talk when she doesn't want to remove her lips from mine."

Luna slowly bobbed her head from side to side. "If you're not happy with Lavender, why don't you break up with her?"

"Like I haven't thought about that? It's just . . . well, I don't know. I guess I don't want to hurt her feelings." Or have her yell at me . . . especially in front of people.

"Eventually Lavender will catch on to the fact that you're not happy when you're around her. That will likely lead to a lot of arguing, then you'll probably break up anyway. Better to get it over with as soon as possible. Or try to talk out your problems."

"Luna, I told you. She never wants to talk. It's not like I'm dealing with Herm . . ."

Ron clamped his mouth shut. No. He couldn't give any sort of hint to anyone that he liked Hermione . . . like that.

"Oh, now I see your problem." Luna stuck another note in her book. "You're worried about having your heart broken if you break up with Lavender."

"Well, maybe I'd feel kind of bad. But heartbroken? I don't . . ."

"That's not what I meant," Luna interrupted. "You're worried about having your heart broken by Hermione."

Ron's lungs seized. He pressed his palms against the table. The blood rushed from his face. "Her-Hermione. Um, what . . .?"

"It's obvious to me that you like Hermione. I could see it last year during our D.A. meetings. But you feel that your relationship with Lavender Brown has ruined your friendship with Hermione, and if you break up with Lavender and try to get together with Hermione, she'll reject you, then you will feel heartbroken."

Ron moaned and looked down at his folded arms. "I'm pathetic, aren't I?"

"No. Just confused. Scared, too."

After a slow breath, Ron looked back up at Luna. "Why would Hermione even want me? I hurt her. And I'm not even talking about me being with Lavender. There've just been so many times since we started at Hogwarts when I've just been downright horrible to her."

"But she's always forgiven you."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So why should this time be any different?"

Ron opened his mouth, but could not come up with a satisfactory answer.

"You two have been through a lot together. More than most people at this school. If you can survive finding the Sorcerer's Stone and the battle at the Ministry of Magic, you can resolve any problem the two of you may have. You know, the reason Hermione yells at you all the time isn't because she's angry with you. It's because she cares about you. Perhaps it's time you showed how much you care about her."

Luna reached the final page of her book, gazed at it for a few thoughtful seconds, then closed it. "Well, I think I'm done here. Hopefully Madam Pince will make the necessary changes, instead of yelling at me like she usually does. Good-night, Ron."

Luna picked up her book and headed off.

Ron watched her go, mulling over Luna's words. He shook his head. It always amazed him that for someone so mental, Luna Lovegood came up with good advice.

Now it was a matter of summoning enough Gryffindor courage to end things with Lavender.

And hopefully, he'd have enough of the Gryffindor courage left to tell Hermione how he really felt about her.

- THE END -