A/N: Thanks again for your wonderful reviews, and sorry I haven't updated in a while. My internet was down for a couple of days for reasons unknown, so I'm sorry about that. Anyway, to answer your question Marauder-Magick33, yes, the girl on the train was a witch ... I'm not entirely sure why I put that in there. I suppose it was more of a "help the scene be more of a transition between memories" type of thing. Or it was just one of those random ideas that you get and decide to put into your story. Sorry for the confusion!

To anyone who is confused about who owns Harry Potter:Go to your local bookstore and select any of the five Harry Potter books. Unless I'm much mistaken, last time I checked it was JKR's name on the cover and not mine! Enjoy the fic...

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The subway halted and Hermione stood, gathering her things to leave. She heaved her trunk out from under the seat where it had slid, gathered up Crookshanks in his basket, and headed out the sliding doors. Her memory of the last time she had made her way to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place carried her feet in the right direction, leaving her mind free to think of other things. Not to even her slightest surprise, her thoughts were of Ron. What was strange, however, was the fact that she was thinking of exactly the same thing that Ron had just been thinking about—the time she really had kissed him on the cheek.

The three rose from the table, and Hermione took Harry's arm and drew him to one side.

"Don't let Ron see what's on those Slytherins' badges," she whispered urgently.

Harry looked questioningly at her, but she shook her head warningly; Ron had just ambled over to them, looking lost and desperate, and Hermione knew that now was not the time for her to explain to Harry what she had just said. When he had joined them, Ron looked down at her as though crying out for help, and Hermione couldn't help but pity him. She wanted to hug him as tightly as she could for a long while, caressing his pale, frightened face, and telling him that everything would be okay, but knew that that would not be appropriate. Instead she merely said, "Good luck, Ron," and was about to turn and say the same to Harry, when an unusual daring seized her and she found herself standing on tiptoe, preparing to kiss Ron on the cheek. However, her hands were trembling with fear and excitement, and he would surely see them. She couldn't let him see that—not if she was going to kiss him! But she couldn't stop now. She was already standing on her toes and Ron was looking (it could have been her imagination) expectant. So she did it—she kissed him on the cheek, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck in the hope that this would cover up their trembling.

Then she turned to Harry and, feeling slightly giddy, said, "And you, Harry," and gave him a quick pat on the back. Harry smiled, took Ron's arm and began walking him down the hall. As they went, Hermione saw Ron touch the spot on his cheek where she had kissed him, and she couldn't help but feel her spirits soar.

Now, as she made her way through street after street, she began to wonder. Why exactly had she been so nervous? She had kissed Harry the previous year, and she hadn't been tense at all about that. It had seemed like the only thing to do. I also didn't feel anything by it, she reminded herself, remembering the giddy feeling that had filled her upon kissing Ron and not recalling anything of that sort overcoming her when she had given the same gesture to Harry. But it was only a kiss on the cheek, she remembered as she began to recall that Christmas when Harry, not her or Ron but Harry, had gotten his first real kiss.

Ron was lying, the lazy slug, on the hearthrug in Gryffindor tower, trying to finish his Transfiguration homework that night after their last D.A. meeting before the Christmas holidays. Hermione was sitting in one of the best seats by the fire, writing a letter to Viktor and trying not to glance too often at Ron. The letter was getting quite long; she was trying both to be kind and firm at the same time, while telling Viktor that as much as she had enjoyed being with him last year at school, she liked him only as a friend and would love to visit him in Bulgaria that summer as long as he knew that they were only friends. To word all of this carefully and sensitively was tedious, and required many long words and sentences. Why she wanted to give up a perfectly good relationship with an international Quidditch player she could not fathom, but she had an idea it had something to do with Ron.

After a moment the portrait hole opened and Harry came in, looking dazed and confused.

"What kept you?" Ron asked, as Harry sank into the armchair next to Hermione's.

Harry did not answer. He looked as though he was in a state of shock, and something told Hermione it had something to do with Cho, whom, she had noticed, appeared to have purposely held back while everyone else was leaving.

"Are you all right, Harry?" she asked, peering at him over the tip of her quill.

Harry gave a halfhearted shrug.

"What's up?" said Ron, hoisting himself up on his elbow to get a clearer view of Harry. "What's happened?"

Hermione saw him struggling for words and took pity on him.

"Is it Cho?" she asked. "Did she corner you after the meeting?"

Harry nodded, looking surprised. Ron sniggered, breaking off when Hermione caught his eye, who was wishing he wasn't so immature. She also found herself guiltily and rather shyly wishing that he might, one day, let her corner him. She found the thought of cornering Ron startling, and oddly intriguing.

"So—er—what did she want?" Ron asked in a mock casual voice.

"She—" Harry began, rather hoarsely; he cleared his throat and tried again. "She—er—"

"Did you kiss?" asked Hermione briskly, feeling strangely thankful that she was cutting ties with Viktor.

Ron sat up so fast that he sent his ink bottle flying all over the rug and making Hermione jump. Disregarding this completely he stared avidly at Harry.

"Well?" he demanded.

Harry looked from Ron's expression of mingled curiosity and hilarity to Hermione's slight frown, and nodded.

"HA!"

Ron made a triumphant gesture with his fist, which caused Hermione to scowl impatiently, and went into a raucous peal of laughter that made several timid-looking second years over beside the window jump. A reluctant grin spread over Harry's face as he watched Ron rolling around on the hearthrug. Hermione gave Ron a look of deep disgust and returned to her letter, half considering erasing all that she had written about wanting to be just friends and telling him simply that she would love to visit him, due to Ron's immaturity. But she held back out of loyalty to Ron.

"Well?" Ron said finally, looking up at Harry. "How was it?"

Harry appeared to be considering.

"Wet," he replied after a moment.

Ron made a noise that might have indicated jubilation or disgust, it was hard to tell.

"Because she was crying," Harry continued heavily.

"Oh," said Ron, his smile fading slightly. "Are you that bad at kissing?"

"Dunno," said Harry rather worriedly. "Maybe I am."

"Of course you're not," said Hermione absently, still scribbling away at her letter.

"How do you know?" said Ron in a sharp voice, and the half of Hermione's mind that wasn't absorbed in her writing knew that he was worried that Hermione and Harry had been kissing now. She had half a mind to promote this new thought of his, but then decided against it.

"Because Cho spends half her time crying these days," she said, purposely sounding vague so she would not become too overly emotional. "She does it at mealtimes, in the loos, all over the place."

"You'd think a bit of kissing would cheer her up," said Ron, grinning.

"Ron," said Hermione in a dignified voice, dipping the point of her quill into her ink pot, "you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet." And I love you for it she was astonished to find herself thinking.

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Ron indignantly. "What sort of person cries while someone's kissing them?"

"Yeah," said Harry, sounding slightly desperate, "who does?"

Hermione looked at the pair of them pityingly, wishing that Ron would be a little more sensitive, and Harry too, for his own sake.

"Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" she asked.

"No," said Harry and Ron together.

Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.

"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's and insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly."

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."

"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill and reconsidering her letter again, thinking of Viktor's thoughtfulness. She had half a mind to tell Ron that she was breaking up with Viktor just for him, but the other half thought it would be much more evil to let him still think that she favored the Bulgarian.

"She was the one who started it," said Harry. "I wouldn't've—she just sort of came at me—and next thing she's crying all over me—I didn't know what to do—"

"Don't blame you, mate," said Ron, looking alarmed at the very thought.

"You just had to be nice to her," said Hermione, looking up anxiously. "You were, weren't you?"

"Well," said Harry, "I sort of—patted her on the back a bit."

Hermione restrained herself from rolling her eyes with extreme difficulty.

"Well, I suppose it could have been worse," she said. "Are you going to see her again?"

"I'll have to, won't I?" said Harry. "We've got D.A. meetings, haven't we?"

"You know what I mean," said Hermione impatiently.

Harry didn't reply, but seemed to space out as though imagining what horrors awaited him should he go out with Cho.

"Oh well," said Hermione after a time, pretending to be buried in her letter once more, "you'll have plenty of opportunities to ask her…."

"What if he doesn't want to ask her?" said Ron, who had been watching Harry with an unusually shrewd expression on his face.

"Don't be silly," said Hermione vaguely, "Harry's liked her for ages, haven't you, Harry?"

But she half agreed with Ron. She had a bad feeling about Cho; maybe she wasn't right for Harry.

"Who're you writing the novel to anyway?" Ron asked Hermione, trying to read the bit of parchment now trailing on the floor. Hermione hitched it up out of sight, though she still half-wanted Ron to know what she was telling Viktor.

"Viktor."

"Krum?"

"How many other Viktors do we know?"

Ron said nothing, but looked disgruntled. Hermione felt slightly triumphant at the thought of Ron's disgruntlement, but did not say anything else. They sat in silence for another twenty minutes or so, Ron finishing his Transfiguration essay with many snorts of impatience and crossings-out, Harry sitting staring into the fire, presumably lost in thoughts about Cho, and Hermione writing steadily to the end of her parchment. When finally she had signed it "With love from Hermione" she rolled it up carefully and sealed it. Well, that was that, and as soon as Viktor read it she would be free to think about her feelings towards Ron. Right now she felt pretty angry, that was true, since Ron was being so stubbornly tactless, but there was still something about him that made her want to send this letter off as soon as possible. Not tonight, of course, as she was completely exhausted.

"Well, 'night," she said at last, yawning widely, and setting off up the girls' staircase.