A/N: What is that, you say? I finished one of the many one-shots in progress I have? Good girl! This is rated T only for inuendo and swearing. And yes, Australia is code word for their first time having sex, which if I'm completely honest is my headcanon.
Thanks a lot to jenahid for beta-reading this!

PS: Sometimes I post drabbles on my Tumblr that I don't post here because I think are too short (yet I posted "Back", I know). So... feel free to check them out over there, or let me know if you'd prefer that I posted them here as well. Also there's a small poll in my profile regarding guest reviews; if you usually leave reviews as a Guest you might want to check that out :)

'Ron, dear, what's that on the back of your neck?' Molly Weasley asked as she came up behind her youngest son.

'What?' Ron said absent-mindedly, removing a hand from under the back of his T-shirt to send his rook against one of Harry's bishops.

'That, on your neck,' Mrs. Weasley repeated clearly, pushing a cup of tea into her husband's hands and kissing the top of his head before turning to look at Ron again, hands on her hips. 'It's all red, as if you had been scratching it raw!'

At the mention of the word 'scratching', Ron snapped his head up, blue eyes round; then, avoiding his mother's gaze, he fixed his eyes on the chess board again and said casually, 'Oh, that… that's nothing, really. Allergy.'

'Allergy?' Mrs. Weasley asked, frowning and walking to him. 'To what? Let me see—'

'No—Mum, it's fine!' Ron protested, but Mrs. Weasley had already pulled down his collar as far as it would go and was peering down Ron's back. Despite Ron's continued protests and squirming, she grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, revealing many thin, red lines contrasting against Ron's very pale back like the map of a poorly planned city. Mr. Weasley had lifted his eyes from his newspaper, and Ginny from her broomstick, which she had been polishing, and they were all staring curiously at Ron now.

'Goodness, it must be really itchy for you to be scratching yourself like that!'

'Mum,' Ron said, tearing himself away from Mrs. Weasley's grasp and glaring at her. 'It's only this T-shirt I've got… bought it in Australia. The fabric is itchy. That's all. Will you leave me alone, now?' he finished under his breath, his ears so red they could have exploded from the pressure. Harry couldn't help but notice Hermione had conspicuously left the room.

'You watch your manners,' Mrs. Weasley said sternly, pointing a finger at him, but she let Ron go. 'Bring me that T-shirt later, I'll see if I can do anything to it. And rub some murtlap essence on your back before you hurt yourself further.'

As Ron mumbled a response to his mum, Harry turned around to exchange a look with Ginny. She was red in the face, but unlike Ron, it was from the effort of trying not to burst into laughter. Mr. Weasley cleared his throat lightly and returned to his Daily Prophet without a word as his wife disappeared up the stairs, but he, too, had a case of glowing ears.

Harry raised his eyebrows and looked at Ron, but his best friend's head was bent low once again, seemingly focused on their game.

'So you've—'

'Check mate.'

'I'm so sorry, Ron, really!' Hermione said anxiously again. Ron couldn't see her face as she fussed behind him, but he was perfectly capable of imagining her expression, recalling the time she was so nervous she'd slashed his bloody knee open with her wand.

'Hermione,' Ron tried again, 'will you stop saying that? This is the third time, there's nothing to be sorry about!'

'But there is!' she insisted, her voice on the edge of becoming shrill even as she tried to keep it down. 'I thought your mum was going to make the connection and banish me from her house forever! Thank goodness you came up with that story at once, but still, I felt my face going so red, I had to leave the room before anyone noticed.'

Ron didn't think it wise to mention that Harry and Ginny looked like they had. Instead, he said calmly, 'Well, since she didn't notice and nobody banished you, it goes back to my point: there's nothing to be sorry about.'

'I didn't mean only for that,' Hermione said, placing a careful hand on top of the red marks on his back. His mum had urged him to apply some murtlap essence at once, suggesting that he asked Hermione for help if he couldn't reach so far back, and though he promised that he would, he'd had no intention of doing so. Hermione had heard from the kitchen, where she'd sought refuge. She'd knocked on his room once everyone had retired to bed, after Apparating from her parents' house, with a bowl of pickled murtlap tentacles on her hands.

'I know, but don't worry about that, either.'

'You were rubbing it, it must hurt!'

'No, it doesn't,' Ron said, exasperated.

Hermione huffed.

'Really? So it won't hurt if I do this?' And she pressed a finger down one of the scratches on the back of his neck, making Ron hiss.

'Fine, that one's a bit stingy, but that's only because it's fresh from… from last night,' he told her, his ears growing hot again. 'Your nails seemed… er, sharper than usual.'

'I'd cut them earlier!' Hermione lamented. 'I only made it worse!'

'I don't mind, really,' Ron tried weakly.

'Ron, I'm hurting you,' Hermione stated, facing him with one hand still inside the bowl. 'Do you want me to hurt you? I know, it's not like I do it on purpose… I—my—my fingers curl when—and I hardly notice—'

Ron swallowed.

'But still, I should be able to stop!' she went on, blinking hard, her cheeks turning pink. 'You know what we're going to do, next time I do it you tell me off.'

'What? I'm not going to do that, are you mental?' Ron said, leaning back to stare at her in disbelief.

'And why on earth not?' she asked, placing a hand on her hip and taking it away with a sound of disgust when she realized it had soaked her pyjama top with murtlap essence.

'Because—' Ron started, but he had to cut himself off as the blood rushed to his face. Fuck, he thought. There was no way he could say that aloud to Hermione without bursting into flames, was there?

'What?' Hermione said, her expression softening.

'Uh… well, for—for starters, it'd sort of ruin the mood, wouldn't it? You telling me off is sort of… uh…' Ron trailed off, making a vague gesture with his hand. There was too much light on the room to tell Hermione he thought it was fucking hot when she told him off. 'But I don't know if the reverse would work.'

'Okay,' Hermione said slowly, though she clearly didn't understand what Ron had meant to say. 'Is there another reason?'

'Yeah… It's just that when you—when you do that—'

Ron fixed his eyes on a Chocolate Frog card lying near the foot of his bed and scratched the back of his neck nervously, wincing as it stung.

'IknowImustbedoingsomethingright,' he blurted in one breath.

Hermione began to say 'What?', but her brain caught on mid-way, apparently managing to separate each word from the next to understand the meaning of Ron's sentence, and so instead she said, 'Oh.'

Having said it once, however, gave Ron the nerve to repeat it, slower this time.

'When you do that,' he said carefully, still not looking at her, 'I know I must be doing something right. There are—there are other things as well, obviously, but when I'm—well, you know—it's a more… it's what I notice the most.'

Ron chanced a glance in her direction. Hermione had been avoiding looking at him as well, but her face mirrored the colours he felt intensifying on his own.

'I see,' she said, in a very small but very composed voice. 'So—so you're saying you'd like me to carry on doing that?'

'Yes,' Ron said solemnly, 'I'd very much like you to please keep scratching my back raw.'

She gave a faint laugh and their eyes finally met, making them both laugh harder.

Ron stood up, took the bowl from her hands and left it on his desk.

'I think that's enough for today.'

'Yeah?' she asked softly, taking his hands in hers and running her fingers lightly over the freckle-covered skin, feeling her way up his knuckles, the pulse on his wrist, the scars on his forearms. Ron felt his insides turning to warm pudding as she stood on her tiptoes, her arms finally winding round his neck and her face teasingly close, but not close enough. 'Would you like me to scratch you some more instead?'

'Scratch me, bite me, tear me apart if you want to,' Ron said thickly. 'I'll wear a cloak with the bloody hood on from now on.'

'Molly, dear,' Arthur began as he slipped into his night shirt, 'am I mistaken to think you do know the actual cause of those marks on Ron's back?'

Molly smiled without looking up from her bedtime knitting, that little, slightly mischievous smile she'd often given him at Hogwarts whenever she backhandedly suggested something they oughtn't to do.

'You're not mistaken.'

Arthur inspected his wife carefully.

'And that… that doesn't bother you?'

Molly sighed and lowered her needles.

'I do think they are far too young to engage in the type of activities that leave scratch marks, yes. But what can I do about it? Do you honestly believe after everything they went through together they're going to pay any heed to whatever I've got to say about it?'

'I suppose you're right,' Arthur admitted. 'Besides, our son has been pining for Hermione since he was fourteen, hasn't he?'

'And she for him.'

'You reckon?'

'I know it.'

'So what you did earlier…' Arthur said, settling down next to her on the bed.

'Well,' Molly replied with a chuckle, 'they're going to do it with or without my approval, so I may as well mortify them a little.'

Her husband took off his glasses and gave her a genuine smile, something that had become a rare, precious thing for the two of them after the war.

'You're going to ask Ron whether he put on some of that ointment tomorrow?'

'Remind me that I do.'