A/N: This is written in a slightly different style than the last chap, so before anyone tells me the style is different, yes, I know, I meant it to be. I'm probably going to toy around with different styles in each chap.

Year Three: Peace Offerings Becoming Something More

Chess became a peace offering during their third year. After so many of their spats and rows, the ratty old board would be dragged out, and a game would commence. The first few minutes of the game were always stiff and tense, but soon they both fell into the natural rhythm and relaxed, sliding into effortless, playful banter.

One match, though—and just the one—was spurred by feelings other than an desperate eagerness to shake off the awkward post-row formality.

Ron peeled his eyes away from the dust-coated, mildew-spotted pages of the book on hippogriff trials and looked across the table at Hermione—rather, at Hermione's personal wall of books and scrolls that were her safeguard from interruptions and noise. Sighing and arching his back to loosen the wound-taut muscles, he clapped the book shut and, choking in the resulting dust cloud, rubbed at his dry eyes. Which, actually, turned out to not be the brightest of actions, as his fingers were so thick with dust he ended up making his eyes worse.

Standing, he shuffled over to Hermione's side of the table and peered over the stack of books that focused on deciphering complex runes—how could there be so many books on one bloody topic, wouldn't they all say the same thing?—to see her scratching away at some essay. Over the next couple of minutes, the precise movements of her quill slowed gradually; she pressed the final period onto the parchment and, capping her ink bottle, leaned back slowly in her chair.

After a beat, Ron pointed at the essay. "Finished?"

She looked up at him with such a dazed look on her face he wondered if she hadn't been writing in her sleep. Then she gave her head a tiny shake and sat up a bit. "Yes, I…I think so?" Her voice rose in pitch at the end, turning the statement into a question. She stared at the trailing roll of parchment, a furrow on concentration etched into her forehead. "Yes, I am," she said, much more definitively, slumping back in her chair again. She closed her eyes and let her head fall over the back of the chair. Ron found the posture very un-Hermione and, for some reason, it made him uncomfortable. He shifted.

"Anything else due?" he asked, avoiding looking at her. Maybe it was because she looked so vulnerable. "Anything at all?"

She didn't lift her head, only shook it a fraction from side to side. "No, thank God. Everything's done."

A sudden flush rose in Ron's neck. "Right, then, go to bed." The words came out gruff and abrupt rather than caring, but—but for Merlin's sake, he was a fourteen-year-old boy, he didn't do caring.

Still, Hermione shook her head. "I can't, not when I'm this worn down. My mind is too…well, fried, I suppose. I'll have horrible nightmares if I fall asleep now."

Ron frowned. "What d'you do, then, if you don't sleep?"

She shrugged, still not lifting her head. "I stay awake until I've calmed down, or until morning." In one stiff, weary lurch, she leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and massaging her temples, not looking at him.

Ron lingered, eyes darting around the room awkwardly, unsure of what to do. "Chess?" he asked at length, glancing at her.

She dragged a hand through her hair, finally looking up at him. "Yes, alright." And though her words had been half-sighed, she managed a small smile, letting him know she was just tired, not irritated by the suggestion.

So he fetched the ragged board and initiated the game. Given her rather frazzled state of mind, he should have won in roughly five minutes—but for once, he took it easy on her, because things were so hard for her then. Or maybe he was just abnormally unlucky in terms of chess that night. Maybe Hermione took more than half his pieces—including both of the precious knights that he always guarded so fiercely—by pure chance. Maybe she had a stroke of strategic brilliance that night.

Maybe.