Hermione rattled the door knob.
"Of all the childish- I can't believe she just did that."
It had taken her by surprise.
Probably Harry, still downstairs fetching drinks, didn't know what Ginny had done yet.
And she'd have inventive and convincing ways of distracting him, so there was little hope that he'd come to their rescue tonight.
Besides, Hermione darkly suspected he wouldn't consider they'd need rescuing from Ron's bedroom in Grimmauld Place. Harry kept conspicuously leaving the two of them alone.
Of course, he'd never locked them in.
Or pinched their wands.
It was all very contrived and awkward.
They'd been cooped up between the Burrow and Grimmauld Place for months now. It was certainly better than being on the run… but only just.
"Is she gone?" Ron was lounging on the bed looking very patient. Like… an annoyed older brother. Which he was.
It was strange, because on an ordinary day, Hermione didn't think of Ginny as Ron's little sister, not any more.
"I think so. Unless she was just pretending to race down the hall cackling like a loon,"
"Right," Ron got up, fished about in his pockets, and produced a hair pin. He strode over to the door and knelt down, examining the lock. Then he inserted the end of the bent hair pin into the lock, fiddled about a bit, pulled a strange face as though listening acutely to something far away, removed the hair pin, and opened the door.
"Impressive,"
"Not really. Fred taught me. And it's not a difficult lock."
"No, I meant that you carry a bent hair pin on you at all times,"
He flushed, still kneeling, and ducked his head down to look at his hands.
Drat. She hadn't meant to make him that uncomfortable. It was probably his way of feeling connected to Fred. Or perhaps it was a souvenir from his time with Lavender. Either way, not something she wanted to go into.
He had incredibly long thighs. It was somehow more noticeable when he was kneeling.
She swallowed the thought and shut the door again.
"Ginny is getting out of control."
He sighed and got up, clearly grateful for the topic change.
"She's just bored," he said grudgingly, flopping back onto his bed. He scooped a handful of exploding snap cards out from underneath his back and onto the floor.
"Yes, but that was- does she know you can pick locks?" She picked a few more cards up off the bed, stacked them on the bedside table, and lay down next to him, propped up on her elbows so she could see his face.
"Dunno," he shrugged, "Not really about that though is it?"
"What do you mean?"
He gave her a look. A look that said don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
In fairness, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
The fact that he was able to give her that look, and only his ears were flaming red… that was impressive too.
But then… they had spent quite a lot of time alone together lately. It felt like they were edging closer to… well, to doing exactly what Ginny wanted them to do.
Which, depending on the day, was snog themselves senseless, confess their undying love for each other, or have wild, passionate sex and break all the furniture.
She couldn't help smirking at the thought.
"What?" He was half-grinning back at her, looking very much as though he knew what she was thinking.
She bit her lip.
"Well… I mean… we could just… break the furniture…"
"Huh?"
She saw a look of panic dart across his face.
"No, I don't mean actually- I mean just stage it. Make it look like that's what happened. Break the furniture and… I don't know. Make a lot of noise."
He snorted.
"I take it Ginny's not the only one who's bored,"
She sighed and rolled onto her back.
"I'm so bored I indexed the Dark Arts section of the library this morning."
"Anything good?"
"I put all the volumes with active curses in the corner. Do you think Bill would be interested?"
"Delighted. He's going stir crazy. At least Fleur can work from home." He sighed again, "I wish we could do something. Can't even test Wheezies stuff anymore; George hasn't had anything new in yonks."
"We could see if anyone wants to swap a babysitting shift?"
"Ha."
There was a schedule for babysitting Teddy and Victoire. There had to be. They were a source of endless entertainment.
"Have you actually run out of books?" He sounded curious.
"No," she sighed, "Not really. But I can't spend all day reading,"
"Never stopped you before,"
"That's different. It's not the same when there's nothing to work on,"
Their Animagus research had been halted indefinitely due to lack of ingredients. It was all very tedious.
They lay there for a minute, gazing up at the patterned ceiling rose. They had neatly restored every single plastered ceiling in the whole building, on the grounds that even in the rooms no-one used, it was worth having a ceiling that stayed up.
"She's won anyway," Hermione said eventually, for something to say. And because it was true.
"Hmm?"
"We actually had a conversation about it,"
"About what?"
She gave him back the don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about look and was treated to that lopsided grin.
He rubbed his face with his hands- he was blushing again, of course- and sat up.
"C'm on," he stood up and held out a hand.
"Sorry?"
"We've got nothing left but feeble practical jokes. If I lock the door from the outside, and we go up to your room, Gin will have mildly scary moment when she unlocks the door tomorrow morning and finds us gone."
She considered him.
"And what are we going to do upstairs?"
"Carry on skirting the issue, I'd imagine," he shot back, ears burning, "And while we're doing that we can plan a solid month of pranks to keep Gin busy. If she's bored enough to pinch our wands, she's probably not far from barking mad. Gotta give her something to take her mind off being stuck here."
"A month?"
He shrugged.
"I mean, to start with. She'll retaliate; we need to be prepared."
"Oh dear." She got up to join him. "I'm not sure I can put up with much more of her match-making attempts. Can't we just… encourage her to invent stuff for Wheezies?"
Ron snapped his fingers.
"Prank competition. With rules, so she'll stop hassling us. Genius." He flashed a grin at her, "We'll win, obviously. Harry's a bit of a deadweight,"
"I don't think that's fair," she objected, stepping out into the hallway, and waiting while he relocked the bedroom door, "He can be quite creative,"
"Yeah, but he's not mischievous," said Ron dismissively, letting his arm brush close to hers as they headed up the short flight of stairs to her room. She slipped her hand into his and kept the nicely distracting conversation going.
"Well, I'm not sure I could be described as 'mischievous' either, but I have a few ideas,"
He chuckled.
"What?"
"You're always getting into mischief,"
"I am not!"
"Ok, for starters, you set a teacher on fire-"
"That was ages ago!"
"Oh, and you've been the epitome of virtue ever since, have you?"
"Well, no, but Harry's hardly a saint,"
"Harry gets into trouble, it's not the same,"
She led him into her room and shut and locked the door behind them.
He stared at her.
"What?"
"Did you just… did you just lock the door?"
"Yes." She walked over to the large desk by the window, collected a sheaf of blank parchment and a self-inking quill, and went to sit on the bed. She extracted her spare wand from the bedside table and cast a muffliato. "I was working on the assumption that we don't want to be interrupted,"
His eyebrows shot up and he went very red.
"See, that's what I'm mean," he said, "Now you're going to pretend that wasn't about that thing we don't talk about,"
"Well, it's possible Ginny's conscience will get the better of her this evening, and this is really the logical first place for her to look," she said, trying to keep the smile off her face.
"Oh right, yes, of course," he said sarcastically, crawling up the bed to sit beside her. "And the thing we don't want her to interrupt is our devious scheme to stop her driving us up the wall,"
"Exactly. And seeing as we're all restricted to Grimmauld Place and the Burrow at the moment, I thought we might start with a map."
"Why would we- oh. I see how this goes. These 'pranks' wouldn't happen to be just a list of all the dangerous spells you haven't had a decent excuse to experiment with, would they?" He was teasing her now, amusement colouring his voice.
"Well. We have to start somewhere…"
That lopsided grin, blue eyes alight with… with mischief. He was fun. That's what it was, he just, urgh he was fun. Just. All the time. Being around him made her feel… alive. Vibrant. Mischievous. Wild.
She was caught for a moment in his laughing gaze, heart in her throat, and she was about to follow up with more examples, things they could try, she'd even opened her mouth to point out the prank possibilities of Veritaserum…
And out of nowhere, she knew this was the moment.
She bit her bottom lip, and felt her eyebrows rise to ask the question- and his quirked up in an amused I dare you response, and she let out a laugh and then somehow… somehow she was kissing him, without thinking about it, somehow she'd just leaned up, and as she'd leaned, he'd ducked his head, fingertips flying to the side of her face, and it was strange, strange that it was so certain and simultaneously tentative…
And the doorknob rattled, and Ginny's voice cut through the moment.
"Urgh Harry, they're fine, look, they've locked themselves in Hermione's room-"
They only had seconds, and the only liquid to hand was a bottle of purple ink on the desk.
"Alohamora!"
The door burst open, Harry and Ginny burst in, and Hermione upended the floating bottle of ink over their heads.
They blinked in shock.
Purple ink ran down their faces, soaking into the collars and shoulders of their clothes, and dripping off their noses.
Ron let out a clap of delighted laughter.
"Classic! Excellent way to start a prank war,"
"What?" Harry was wiping his face and trying to get the ink out of his eyes.
"It's not a prank war," Hermione corrected, "More of a competition. We thought it would be a good way to alleviate boredom, and help George develop new products,"
Ginny stared at her.
Then she turned to Ron.
"You've recruited Hermione for a prank war?"
Ron grinned.
"She's on my team, Gin. Get ready for crushing defeat."