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No Getting Out Of It Now

"Ronald Weasley!" Hermione's outraged shriek split through the clearing and she brushed fiercely at the snow clinging to her coat. It was brand new and she had specifically asked him not to do anything stupid to it. Stupid like, for example, throw balls of dirty old snow at it! But no, he couldn't help himself could he? And naturally he found it so very funny. Even while she yelled at him he just stood there a couple of metres away and laughed himself senseless. Typical.

"Ron!" she screeched a second time and then, when he continued to laugh and ignore her so - so - so rudely,she yanked her wand out of her pocket and waved it at him threateningly. "If you don't stop that right now I swear I'll transfigure you into a jam jar and lose you in the bottom of my handbag!"

The young man choked back his laugh, wiped his eyes with a woollen-gloved hand, and protested good-naturedly, "It was just a bit of snow, 'Mione."

"Just a bit of snow?" she repeated crossly, "Ron, just look at me!"

The corners of his mouth twitched with a poorly repressed smile and he let his eyes rake insolently up and down her body before saying, "So? You look alright to me."

Hermione continued to brush at the dirty mark the snow had left, then gave up and pointed her wand at it instead. She murmured tergeo and then looked at her coat critically for a few more seconds, before muttering contrarily, "I don't want to look just 'alright', Ron."

The smile he'd been fighting broke loose and unfurled itself across his face. He strode over to where she stood, cupped her chin in his hands so that she had to look at him and asked in smug voice, "Okay then, so if I tell you that you look gobsmackingly beautiful will you stop carrying on like a nutter?"

She brushed his hand away impatiently and shoved her wand back into the depths of her pocket. "Only if you mean it," she snapped, but Ron had caught sight of the glimmer of a twinkle at the back of her eyes, and his grin broadened.

"Course I mean it. Why else would a handsome, witty specimen of a man such as myself restrict himself to just one girl unless he thought she was the prettiest little witch in the country?"

Hermione smiled despite herself, and rolled her eyes. "Now you're over-doing it. Speaking of pretty witches though, did Bill mention if he and Fleur will be coming down for Christmas?"

Ron shrugged, "Not to me, but I reckon Mum'll know. You can ask her at dinner if you remember."

He reached out to play with her hair where it hung against her shoulder, but she batted his hand away and said in a warning tone, "Don't even think about it. I spent more time on this hairdo than you spent on your entire outfit."

He shook his head in exasperation, and took her hand in his instead, and the pair of them continued walking down the path to the Burrow. "Seriously, Hermione, you're making an awful fuss about a boring old dinner with my family. I mean, it's just my parents. And maybe Ginny, if she's not off gallivanting around London with Harry." He looked a little grim at the thought, then shrugged and continued, "Why the hell would dinner with my parents make you try on that many sets of clothes? I didn't even know you owned that many bloody clothes!"

"Well," she said dryly, "It just goes to show you don't know everything about me after all."

Hermione Granger was spending her Christmas holidays - admittedly, not quite as long as break as she'd had over the Festive Season back in her Hogwart's days, but still not bad considering she was only just starting her career at the Ministry of Magic - at the Lovegoods' home. In essence, she was helping them rebuild. Any other family would have already finished the renovations uncountable months back, but, well... this was the Lovegoods. They called it re-creation rather than re-building. Either way, it made Hermione happy to think that she was putting her holiday to some productive use, not to mention that she enjoyed Luna's company. Besides, she would have felt awkward staying at the Weasley house because of the whole issue of sleeping arrangements. She honestly didn't know where Mrs Weasley stood on matters of - erm - you know - and regardless, Hermione had no desire to get caught in flagrante delictoin the laundry just because Ron couldn't keep his wandering hands to himself.

Ron had come over early to the Lovegoods' to pick her up for dinner, thinking that that would give them the chance to spend some extra time together - but watching her try on umpteen items of clothing hadn't really been what he'd had in mind. Not that it hadn't had its own certain appeal, but... Now he glanced at her sideways as they walked and said, "Seriously, though. You've been to the Burrow for dinner more times than I can remember and you've never made a fuss about it in the past."

Their eyes met and she smiled in an embarrassed kind of way. "I know I'm being silly, but somehow, it's different tonight. I just feel I should make a good impression, given the circumstances."

He looked astonished, "Hermione. My parents adore you, you know that. Mum in particular. She's even crazier about you than she is about Fleur - I think it's the brains that ring her bell. Sometimes I think she'd rather marry you herself she's so bonkers about you."

Hermione thumped him one, and protested, "But that's just it! I still don't know why you had to go and send them that damned owl the other day. We should have told them face-to-face."

Ron beamed, swinging their hands between them merrily as they walked. "Hey, come on, you can't blame a bloke for not wanting to keep it to himself! Blimey, 'Mione, I've been wracking my brain all day to see if there's anyone left that I know who hasn't heard. I even sent an owl to old Draco yesterday."

Hermione blinked at him, eyebrows raised in amusement. "Oh, yes? And did he send you an answer?" She was trying to visualise the look on Draco Malfoy's face when he'd opened a (probably semi-illegible, knowing Ron's lousy handwriting) letter proclaiming the news in no uncertain terms.

Ron snickered, "Actually, he did." He patted his pockets with his free hand, and then shrugged, "I must have left it at home, but I meant to bring it to show you. Either way, you know Malfoy. Basically it was something along the lines of our engagement being the least he could expect from us, but that he hoped you had enough intellect to limit yourself when it came to offspring and thus save the world from - um - increasing the over-proportionate demographics of the Weasley bloodline in comparison to the rest of the British wizarding community."

Hermione grinned, "Ooh, big words! I see he's learning to phrase his insults with that same special blend of polite rudeness his Daddy always does so well. The family business must be weighing on his shoulders. Ha, I hope you wrote back and told him I was planning on at least six children."

Ron gaped, "You're not, are you? I mean, not that I-"

She grinned a little more. "No, thanks; two sounds nice. But the fib would have been worth it if I could see the expression on Malfoy's face at the thought of a half-dozen more little Weasleys." Then, before Ron could delve further into the theme of children, she glanced at him teasingly and commented, "You know, you'd better watch that job of yours in George's shop, Ron. I keep telling you you should train as an Auror like Harry. I do believe you're getting a little tubby."

Ron stopped dead in the middle of the path and stared at her in shock. "Tubby? Alright, so occasionally I have to demonstrate the odd sweet for a customer, but - me?! Tubby?!" He let go of her hand and did a little turn on the spot to prove to her just how un-tubby he was. Hermione burst into laughter at the offended expression on his face; he looked so damn amusing when he got insulted about silly things.

"Come here, you little horror," he exclaimed as she laughed at him, "I know how to shut you up." He caught her around the hips and pulled her close to him with a smile, and kissed her on the lips. Hermione put her hands on either side of his face and returned the kiss - then wriggled unexpectedly from his arms, ran a little distance along the path, and scooped up a handful of snow in her gloved fingers. Her eyes gleamed mischievously as she pressed it tightly into a ball.

"Hermione..." he said warningly, "I thought you were against snowballs."

"Only when they're directed at me," she teased, and then sent it pelting in his direction with such force that it hit him fair on the side of the head, even though he'd moved to duck.

"Ow!" he yelled. He shook the snow from his ear and then ran at her before she could finish the second snowball she'd already begun. He caught her up in his arms, and then dropped himself backwards against a snow drift so that she fell too and landed, with a yelp of surprise, lying flat out on his chest. She'd had to drop the snow ball and cling onto him to stop ending up in the snow herself.

"Ron!" she protested again.

He just held her tightly in his arms and smiled serenely, "What, Hermione? You got snow in my ear - I deserve some kind of revenge! And besides, you're not in the snow, only I am. And personally I don't give a toss what I look like for dinner at home."

She gave him one of her looks, but her eyes were smiling. She wriggled a hand free and brushed a few specks of snow off his face. "You'll get cold, you know."

"I reckon I'll live. Here, do you promise to stay put if I let go of you? It's just, I think I mucked up your hair a bit." He was looking at her in that possessive, silly, loving way that she could never resist, so she nodded. Ron took his hands off her back, pulled his fingers free from his gloves, and then carefully move stray strands of hair, that had fallen across her face, back into their correct positions. "You know," he murmured with a concentrated look on his face, as he worked at fixing her hairdo back up carefully, "I still can't believe it."

"What?" she asked with a grin, "That I'm actually laying here like an idiot because you asked me to, or that I'm such a good shot with a snowball?"

"Neither," he answered, and gave her hair one last critical surveyal before nodding to himself in satisfaction. Then he looked her straight in the eyes and said softly, "I can't believe that you actually said yes."

"Ahh, that." Her playful grin softened into a warm smile and she leant her head forwards and kissed him gently. Then she pulled back and tapped him lightly on the nose. "Well, you'd better get used to the idea, Ronald Weasley, because thanks to your flurry of letter sending, three quarters of the wizards in England already know. Worse, your mother knows. And you know your mother. She'll already have the entire wedding and half the seating arrangements for the reception planned by now. You burnt your bridges when you involved your mother, Ron. There's no getting out of it now."

He grinned. "Get out of it? Are you kidding? That, Hermione, is the last thing I want..."