The next night in the common room, there was a huge party. All of the Gryffindors were eating sweets, drinking butterbeer, and playing games. Ron and Hermione, who seemed to be getting along better than they had the past few nights, and were playing wizards' chess together.

"Checkmate!" Ron yelled as he won against Hermione yet again. "I'll be right back, I'm going to go get more butterbeer. He went over to the food table and grabbed another butterbeer. As he was walking back to Hermione, he heard something that he knew he shouldn't have heard.

Harry was talking to Ginny. "Hermione's had a crush on Ron since first year, but he hasn't realized it yet. Hagrid told me she went to his hut crying because Ron made her upset about Crookshanks."

Ron swallowed. Hermione couldn't feel that way about him, it just didn't make sense,...

He felt lightheaded. Hermione had cried because he had yelled at her? He didn't realize he had hurt her feelings that much. Ron remembered how he had also made her cry in first year, because he had called her a "nightmare". But he had also had a crush on Hermione even back then. Ron had always thought she was so smart and pretty and...

He sat back down across from Hermione, who seemed to know that something was wrong. She snapped her fingers to get his attention and asked, "Ron, are you okay?"

Ron jumped and looked around. He felt extremely dizzy like he was going to faint.

"What's wrong, Ron?" she asked again.

"Er- I don't feel well. I'm gonna go to bed now," he said quickly, and ran up to the boys' dormitory. He collapsed onto his bed without changing into his pajamas and closed the hangings around him. He could not stop thinking about first year Hermione's face covered with tears as she ran past him and cried in the bathroom for the rest of the afternoon. Then he thought about what Harry said to Ginny. "Hagrid told me she went to his hut crying..." Ron knew he had made her angry, but he didn't think he had made her so upset that she would cry. And so Ron drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with nightmares about Hermione.