"God, what is it Harry?" Surprised at the volume of her own voice, Hermione sat still and listened quietly to the breathing of the other sleeping girls. She glanced over at the clock on the wall, lit dimly by a small candle. "Three forty five," she muttered quietly to herself. What a stupid thing to do, knocking on the door trying to wake just one girl in a room of five others. After she was sure everyone else was still asleep, she got up quietly, stepping over the loose creaking floorboard. She pulled the door of the dormitory open quietly and saw Harry, still in his school robes, looking worried.

"What?" she whispered after closing the door behind her. Before Harry could answer her, she was on again. "I can't believe you would knock on the girl's dorm door! Do you have any idea what would happen if my bed wasn't the closest to the door? What if someone else had heard you? I can't believe this. What is it, having trouble with homework?"

After he was sure Hermione was done, Harry explained his problem. "Hermione, I'm sorry it's so late but I just can't get this spell right and we have a Charms exam tomorrow. Please help me, I've been up all night and I just can't get it right."

Hermione sighed, took the spellbook out of his hands, skimmed over the page and realized this was a very difficult spell.

"Let me get my wand, I'll be down to the common room in a minute."

The next morning at breakfast, Ron was finding it very irritating that Hermione and Harry weren't saying a word. In fact, they were almost falling asleep in their eggs.

"Guys, what's going on? You look like you've been up all night."

"We were," Hermione said. "Harry was having trouble with a spell and asked me to help him. It took a while to get it, but we finally did."

"Yes, I just hope I don't fall asleep trying to do it in class today," mumbled Harry, who seemed to be having a very hard time lifting his fork up to his mouth.

Ron tried to ignore the ping of jealousy he felt when hearing Harry had spent the night with Hermione.

"So you two haven't slept all night?"

"Well actually, I did for about two hours," Hermione said. "Harry had to come upstairs and get me from the dormitory."

"What?" Ron started, but caught himself before he showed he was angry. He couldn't believe Harry had practically gone into Hermione's bedroom in the middle of the night. He had been experiencing a lot of jealousy towards Harry lately, and couldn't really explain it. He was trying to hide his feelings for Hermione, but every time she was with Harry he suspected the worst. Harry already had the fame, the money, and all the girls in school adored him because of the heroic things he had done, but Ron never thought that Hermione would turn into one of those girls. He wished that just once he could have what he had wanted, and he was already beginning to think that Harry was going to take Hermione away from him.

"Well, I've got to go, actually, so I'll see you two at lunch ok?" Harry and Hermione said goodbye to him, wondering why he was acting so strange.

"Why do you think he's been acting like this?" Harry asked, a bit more awake now due to his friend's strange behavior.

"I don't know..." said Hermione. She wondered if Ron felt strange around her because of the way she felt about him. She thought she had been hiding it well enough, but now she wondered if Ron saw that she liked him and was avoiding her because he didn't feel the same way. "Harry," she started. "Maybe Ron's upset that we're not spending enough time with him, and spending a lot of time together."

Harry didn't know how to respond to this without giving away everything he knew. He knew that Ron liked Hermione, because Ron had told him, and he knew Hermione liked Ron because of the way she talked about him when they were alone. He had tried to tell Ron that Hermione felt the same way as he did, but Ron had seemed strangely upset with him lately. He guessed Ron thought there was something going on between him and Hermione, but Harry was only trying to get those two together, not steal Hermione away from Ron. Harry had some love interests of his own, and they did not involve his best friend.