"She'd be well up to making a Love Potion, she's quite brainy."
—Pansy Parkinson, quoted in Witch Weekly
A love potion. For one glorious moment, it all made sense.
Back last year, that day when she had stormed out on Trelawney, and before that had punched Draco Malfoy, and before that had hugged him so hard he was afraid his neck would break…she was probably testing that potion, she had probably managed to slip it to him, and probably she'd made it too strong, which….
"Don't be stupid," she snapped.
Curses. Well, then, why….
He started going a bit red around the ears, but neither Hermione nor Harry noticed, as Hermione was turning rather pink herself. What was that she was saying? That blather Rita Skitter wrote about Krum asking Hermione to visit him over the summer was true?
Ron's world collapsed into one single question: "What did you say?" Hermione persistently refused to answer him, in a way she hadn't since he had been asking her who she was going to the Yule Ball with. In a way, he felt as if he had been answered.
He waited for his world to expand again after class, but it didn't. It only seemed to get smaller, and darker, and hotter, as the only point of light was the blazing inside of him whenever Hermione walked away. To meet him, probably. And she'd gotten him without a love potion.
Bollocks.
Because a love potion would have explained so much.