Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me. Deathly Hallows Compliant, as well as Nineteen Years Later compliant. Takes place in the weeks before the Horcrux hunt, when Hermione was staying with the Weasleys before the wedding. Check out my companion piece, Knotty, now up on my profile! Enjoy.
Weasley is Our King
One thing that Hermione Granger loved about staying at the Burrow during her summer holiday, excluding the wholly wonderful fact that she was able to stay in the wizarding world for a bit longer each year, as well as Molly Weasley's amazing cooking, was the many opportunities a holiday at the Weasley's afforded her to see Ronald Weasley without a shave. She really couldn't explain it if she had tried--no words could describe the foreign thrill it gave her to see her best friend's face covered in stubble. And because he was a very lazy boy at times--primarily when she or his mum didn't force him to fight this natural disposition--Ron would often go days without a shave, leaving his face deliciously scruffy. Now--Hermione Granger had never considered herself a sucker for scruff before Ron Weasley. She would've thought that she'd more attracted to clean-cut charming boys like Cormac McLaggen--but for some reason, she would find herself waking up early in the mornings, dawdling in the loo and at the breakfast table, hoping to run into him before he took a shaving spell to his face.
One such morning, Hermione Granger woke up, rolled out of her creaky four-poster bed, stepped into her slippers and pulled on her rose-coloured robe, and walked, dreamily, out of her room. Pushing open the door to the loo at the end of the hall, she heard a small shout of surprise come from within, and backed up quickly. Inside the room stood none other than Ronald Weasley, "king of the scruff" himself, half his face lathered up with foam, his wand poised to begin shaving. Recovering her faculties, or most of them, Hermione walked into the bathroom, opened the cabinet and pulled out her tooth brush and a tube of mint toothpaste. Smiling shyly at Ron in the cabinet mirror, wholly aware of how strange it was for her to be in here with him, but unable to do anything about it now that she was here, Hermione began brushing her teeth in the methodical way her dentist parents had always taught her. But though brushing her back teeth did take up a measure of her concentration, she found it difficult to ignore his face in the mirror before her, or his body standing beside her. Her eyes kept drifting to his reflection, the way that his eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, and how his tongue poked out of his mouth a bit in his effort not to accidentally cut his face with the unruly spell. Hermione's face flushed as his blue eyes connected with hers, and she knew that he had seen her staring. Spitting out the toothpaste in her mouth, quickly wiping the her face on the towel that hung on the wall, she rushed out the door as fast as possible, feeling his confused gaze follow her retreating back. And for the rest of that day, Hermione couldn't get a new and rather interesting thought out of her head--that the only thing better than Ronald Weasley without a shave, was Ronald Weasley actually shaving.
How very illuminating.
Fin.