Disclaimer; yeah. You know the drill.
Only a bit of RHr here, more like a simple drabble about what went on in the fourth book with the egg and all.
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Hermione stretched her arms as she climbed out of bed and looked out of the window. Boxing Day, she thought to herself mildly. Crookshanks looked up at me from the foot of her bed and gave a soft purr.
"Here, Crookshanks," she gestured towards her cat and he hopped up onto her lap, purring happily. "Let's go downstairs."
The Gryffindor common room was strangely quiet, and everyone in it was either yawning or mumbling with their friends about how "bloody wonderful" the previous day had been. With a small giggle, she noticed Neville smiling nervously as he watched Ginny talking to some of her Third Year friends about the ball.
"Hey, Hermione," A hand, which she recognized as Harry's, clasped her shoulder from behind. She turned around to greet him and saw Ron standing by his side, his face painfully blank.
Fleur, right? She's all you'll ever want.
Ron refused to make eye contact with her and quickly walked away, joining Dean and Seamus in their recounts of the ball.
Harry watched their reactions to each other in slight amusement. "Well, anyway, hey," he laughed, "what did you do to your hair last night?" He tugged a strand of it playfully. "It's all curly again."
Hermione smiled, and blushed slightly. She'd been hoping that no one would ask her this, but it was not to be. "Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. But I ended up using like three bottles in the end, and it doesn't exactly come too cheap. The results are prettu good, I guess, but it's way too much bother to do it every day." She shrugged offhandedly as she pet Crookshanks who was trying to squirm out from between her arms, apparently determined to reach at a quill lying on the floor.
Harry smiled back.
At least this guy has some common sense planted in him. Unlike certain others I could mention.
Then why didn't she like him, instead of that red-headed prat? It wasn't as though Ron was especially good looking or anything. Actually, she'd always thought he was a bit on the ugly side.
Oh, don't even kid yourself. Don't even try. You think he's so dashingly handsome with his curly red hair and—
Somehow, Hermione managed to cut off her own thoughts. She would never admit it. Never. She'd been utterly smitten by him ever since first year, and watching him get all riled up all the time about one thing or another was so cute. His face would become a flaming shade of red, just like his hair, and she'd loved that, but there would be no stopping him then. He'd shout and shout and shout, and it would nearly always end with her running up the stairs in tears. That she hadn't quite liked.
"Hermione, let's just go down to breakfast, will we?" Hermione responded in affirmative, and Harry's gaze quickly swept the room in search of a mop of red hair. "Oi, Ron! Breakfast! Let's go, mate!"
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"Oh, Harry, 'ell 'er out 'agrid," Ron muttered to Harry out of the corner of his moth, sending sausage flying out of his mouth and onto his plate.
"Why don't you tell her?" Harry glanced at Ron, only to find him blushing wildly and simply shaking his head.
"Tell me what?" She looked up at them with a questioning look. "Tell me what, Harry?"
Putting his fork down on his plate, he began his story on what they'd heard the previous night. He'd expected Hermione's face to change to one of shock, but quite on the contrary, she simply seemed slightly amused and shrugged.
"Well, I thought she must be. I knew he couldn't be pure giant because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants, they can't all be horrible….It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves…It's just bigotry, isn't it?" Hermione looked from Ron to Harry, and thankfully for Harry and his eardrums, didn't catch the way Ron shook his head.
Ron had desperately wanted to lash out at her, to tell her about how amazingly stupid she was when it came to this, but had restrained himself. Acting indifferent to what she had done to him yesterday would probably be more effective.
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The few weeks after that leading up to the second task passed by rather normally, or at least as normally as possible, judging by their standards. The only slightly-out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened was seeing Krum dive into the lake, in nothing except swimming trunks. In the middle of the winter. In sub-zero weather.
"It's a lot colder where he comes from. I suppose it feels quite warm to him." Hermione said, rather matter-of-factly.
Ron looked at the ground. "Yeah, but there's still the giant squid."
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"Hermione, Ron, listen," mumbled Harry. One of the cushions that the class was supposed to be practicing the Banishing charm, the opposite of a summoning charm, on went flying past them, requiring Ron to duck and bang his head on the table.
"Yeah?" He rubbed his head painfully and looked up at Harry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione roll her eyes and snigger. Ron shot her a death glare, which Hermione returned with a smirk.
"Last night, I was coming back from the prefect's bathroom—"
"Harry, why were you in the prefect's bathroom?"
"Cedric told me it would help with the egg, and—"
"You said you'd already worked out that egg clue!" exclaimed Hermione, whipping her gaze away from Ron to Harry and looking utterly mortified.
Harry looked slightly miffed. "Keep your voice down! I just need to—" he paused for a moment, as though deliberating on what to say "—sort of fine-tune it, all right?"
Ron gazed blankly off into the distance as Professor Flitwick whizzed by, tailed by a Neville Longbottom, who was nearly in hysteria and was apologizing over and over again for "not pointing my wand in the right direction".
"Just forget the egg for a minute, all right? I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody." He went on to recount the events of the previous night, telling them about how Snape had said that his potions cupboard had been broken into.
"Snape said Moody's searched his office as well?" Ron whispered with a wave of his wand as his cushion flew in entirely the wrong direction and whacked Parvati Patil across the cheek, earning him a glare. He shuddered, but chose to pretend that he hadn't noticed. "What…d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?"
Harry's cushion gave a flop as Harry answered, "Well, I dunno if that's what Dumbledore asked him to do, but he's definitely doing it. Moody said Dumbledore only lets Snape stay here because he's giving him a second chance or something…"
Ron's jaw dropped and his eyes widened. His wand moved involuntarily and his cushion flung itself at the chandelier on the ceiling and then to Flitwick's desk. "What? Harry…maybe Moody thinks Snape put your name into the Goblet of Fire!" He looked simply delighted with himself, and was looking merrily back at his two friends, until Hermione answered skeptically.
"Oh, Ron, we thought Snape was trying to kill Harry before, and it turned out he was saving Harry's life, remember?" She shook her head in disbelief. Her cushion, quite on the contrary to Harry's and Ron's, flew daintily into the box which they were aiming for, earning her a momentary pat on the back from Professor Flitwick as he went zooming across the room again, although this time in the opposite direction ("No! Professor, wait, oh no…" cried out Neville.)
Despite Hermione's outburst, Harry seemed to ponder on the possibility of Snape's "evil-itivity" for a moment. Ron shot Hermione a smug look, to which she retorted through yet another eye-roll.
She began to list out the statistics once more. "I don't care what Moody says. Dumbledore's not stupid. He was right to trust Hagrid and Professor Lupin, even though loads of people wouldn't have given them jobs, so why whouldn't he be right about Snape, even if Snape is a bit – "
"—evil," concluded Ron. Well, Hermione did have a point, but who would he be to admit defeat? He cocked an eyebrow at her, but she ignored it, turning to face the other direction.
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There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. They'd looked everywhere, in books from the Restricted Section, and in the books that Lavender and Parvati had happened to have lying around in their trunks (courtesy of Hermione). Those had been slightly entertaining, to be sure, but not much of a help, causing Hermione and Ron to blush wildly under the gaze of a bemused Harry.
"Hermione, I was joking, I know I haven't got a chance of turning into a frog by tomorrow morning," Harry mumbled without raising his gaze from the book he was studying, when Hermione had scolded him for suggesting that he should simply become an Animagi. He looked nearly ready to drop dead out of fatigue.
Hermione ignored him anyway. "Oh, this is no use," Ron looked over her shoulder and stifled a laugh as she read aloud what the book had been giving her instructions on. Growing nose-hair into ringlets? No sane human being would ever even consider it.
Well, she might pay a bit more attention to you if you did.
On the other hand, perhaps it was a good idea.
"I wouldn't mind," he tried to say, but his brother's voice got there more quickly. "Be a talking point, wouldn't it?"
The twins had appeared from behind a shelf of books.
"What're you doing here?" asked Ron.
"Looking for you. McGonagall wants you, Ron. And you, Hermione."
Oh my god, no no no no, has she noticed how I've been uh…goggling at Ron for most of the lessons recently?
She'd forgiven him for the Herbology-homework incident ages ago. After all, he'd been dead asleep at the time. Instead of trying to plot revenge, she'd resorted to watching him throughout most of their lessons as he stuck the tip of his tongue out from his mouth every few minutes or so, running a hand through his hair. I'll really have to try doing that sometime, she daydreamed often. But while he's asleep, of course.
"Why?" Hermione asked, slightly apprehensive but feigning surprise.
"Dunno…she was looking a bit grim, though," answered Fred.
"We're supposed to take you two down to her office," said George.
Both Hermione's and Ron's gaze whipped toward Harry as he looked back at him, looking horrified.
"We'll meet you back in the common room," Hermione told him as she stood up, slightly unwillingly. "Bring as many of these books as you can, okay?"
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Fred and George lead them down along a corridor, right past the Gryffindor common room. Out of it popped a head.
"Fred! George! Where were you? The Skiving Snackboxes require your attention. I tried some stuff with it using that new potion Snape taught us, yesterday, but—oh. Hey, Hermione. Ron. I…err…that was umm…classified information, I would prefer it if you didn't mention the Snackboxes to anyone else yet. Ron? Hermione?" They nodded. Fred and George seemed to be battling an internal conflict between rushing over to Lee to help with the Snackboxes and leading Ron and Hermione where they were supposed to go, but they quickly made their decision.
"So, uhh…Hermione, Ron, here we will uhh…leave you. Just go to McGonagall's office. So—"
"Toodoloo," George flashed a smile at the two and with a flourish, stepped back into the portrait hole along with Fred.
Hermione froze. This was the first time that they'd been left alone together the night after the Yule Ball.
"Let's go." Ron said, his tone nonchalant, keeping his eyes to the floor.
"O…okay."
They walked along in silence for a few moments, until Ron finally spoke up, his tone scathing.
"So, you never really did bring that homework down, did you? Just wanted to humiliate me, right?" he spat.
"Ron, what?" she finally realized how it must have seemed to him, with no parchment and only a quill lying around. "I did bring it down, it's just that you…were asleep."
"And you just didn't feel like waking me up? Sure. I believe you." His sarcasm was deafning.
But that's exactly what happened.
Sure, she was going to tell him that he'd looked so sweet sleeping there that she hadn't had the heart to wake him up. Sure, she was going to just tell him that she'd simply sat there for a few minutes, enjoying having him breathing on the back of her neck.
Yeah, right.
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