Time for contemplation

(Hermione)

"Ron, I really don't know how to do this any more", she sighed, turning around on the creaking wooden chair and looking towards him. He lay on his bed, relaxedly eyeing her over the brim of a comic with moving cartoon characters on the cover, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Huh?"

"I mean, seriously. Don't you sometimes feel weird about what we're doing?"

Ron's eyebrows almost vanished underneath flaming red hair, at this point. "Huh?", he repeated, quietly, and Hermione sighed again.

"Aren't you wondering what Harry might think of us? It will be so weird for him, if we're continuing to behave this way, won't it be?..."

Ron didn't say anything, he just kept staring at her, and she met his gaze.

"What?", she asked, confusedly, meeting his eyes.

She noticed him gulping, then, his face looking oddly pale, below the freckles...

"So,... you think there's something going on... here..., too?", he asked, wearing an awkwardly unreadable expression. What was up with him?

"Huh?", Hermione murmured, realising just then that she was dumbly echoing Ron's previous words. A quick grin appeared on his features, before vanishing again to leave the oddly pale awkwardness there, again.

"Of course there is something happening here, Ron!", Hermione exclaimed, laughing.

"You-... you feel that way?"

Hermione shook her head, irritatedly.

"Ron, what are you talking about?"

"What are YOU talking about?!"

"Well, I'm talking about the fact that the constant secretiveness in our letters might give Harry the feeling of being excluded, don't you think?" She looked at the piece of paper on the table once again, frustrated by its subtle little riddles. Then she turned around again, to watch him curiously. "Anyway, what did you think I was talking about?"

"Oh, nothing. Just,... like you said, the letters must make Harry feel really confused.."

It was Hermione's time to raise her eyebrows, but Ron was already disappearing behind the pages of his comic, once again. The tips of his ears had adopted a glowing red, nonetheless, as Hermione briefly noticed...

Huh.

Well, anyway, she thought, focusing her attention back on her letter to Harry, once more. She'd already tried really hard to make her spelling style more interesting, leaving as little as possible out and concentrating mainly on topics where she didn't need to censor all that much, in order to make the whole thing sound more normal, in a way,- she wasn't sure, whether she was succeeding or not, though.

She really wanted to make the letter sound especially nice, this time, since it was the one for his birthday, but somehow, Hermione still found the results of her efforts rather miserable.

So far, she'd spent about seven inches of the paper to describe Crookshanks' new tendency to nibble at table cloths he liked, and how adorable, - if a little unhygienic,- that looked.

Then, Hermione had talked about her decision to reread her old favourite childhood books, once again, and had mentioned that a few of her former heroes and heroines weren't quite as perfect as she'd thought them to be, as a child,- which was, why she didn't regret her later-adopted tendency to focus on school books, primarily. This section of her letter took another three or four inches of the paper.

Lastly, she had told Harry about how Ron, and Ginny, and the twins, and everyone else was doing, and how everyone of them wanted to have him with them soon, and how they all were fond of him and wanted him to have a nice birthday, despite the circumstances. She told him that he really didn't need to feel excluded, and that he really wasn't missing out on all that much. And she told him, that she was sorry for his uncomfortable situation.

Hermione looked down on the piece of parchment again, eyeing the tidily applied ink and the meaning it contained. Then, she sighed, once again.

"It's probably way too obvious, now, isn't it?", she murmured. "Harry will probably feel even more excluded by reading all that everyday-stuff. He'll notice that I'm just trying to keep his attention away from all the important things he isn't allowed to know!"

Hermione shook her head, pushing the parchment aside and dipping her quill into the ink bottle again, to start a new letter. She didn't look up to see Ron's reaction to her words. He was behaving a little odd, lately, as it was.

Dear Harry,

Hi, it's Hermione, once again! So, as you already know, I can't really tell you anything new or important, but Ron and I are really sorry for that. Harry, I promise that you'll be up-to-date with everything pretty soon (well, at least as up-to-date as we are, which isn't really that up-to-date, actually). Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful birthday! Don't let the Dursleys ruin it, once again!

We'll see each other soon.

Love,

Hermione

She put the tiny cork on the ink bottle's head when she was done, not quite happy with her second attempt to write Harry a birthday letter, either. Well, she contemplated, at least, this one didn't contain any unnecessary information.

It really wasn't important to Harry, right now, how Crookshanks was doing, or what kind of books she read, was it?

Harry had ended his last school term by watching the murderer of his parents come to life again, and by clutching You-know-who's latest victim to his chest in front of hundreds of people. Harry wanted to participate in something useful, just like she had been eager to. But instead, he was sitting in a tiny room, inside the house of his horrible relatives, and was for some reason denied to join his best friends, at least. It really was unfair. Trying to abstract him from that by talking about her cat or her recent reading habits was bound so be useless.

She opened an envelope, carefully folding the new letter, and starting to put it inside.

"What about the other one?", Ron asked, from behind her, and as she turned around on her chair, again, Hermione met his curious, if not slightly concerned gaze. He sat with his head and back leaned against the bed's headboard, his comic laying forgottenly in his lap, and Hermione wondered how long he'd watched her already.

After a second, she shrugged.

"It was stupid."

He raised one of his eyebrows, again, amusedly this time. What was it with the damned eyebrows today?

"A letter written by Hermione Jean Granger herself can't be all that stupid, can it?", he grinned, talking in a funnily reasonable voice.

She laughed. "How do you even know my middle name, Ron?", she snickered.

"Don't try changing the subject, Hermione Jean, or else you only make yourself look more suspicious!", Ron scolded her in irony, and she only laughed harder. The corners of Ron's mouth twitched, happily.

"Suspicious of what?"

"Oh, I don't know. False modesty, perhaps?"

Ron moved towards the edge of his bed, at this, sitting up and reaching for her letter, wearing a slightly more serious expression now. "Come on, what's wrong with your first letter? It's much longer than the other one, that's good, right?"

Hermione shook her head. "I actually think Harry won't like it if it's longer, Ron. At least not, if it's filled with only unimportant information."

Ron said nothing, his eyes silently following the many lines she'd written down on the first piece of parchment. She watched him reading,- excited, whenever his mouth would twitch up in a smile, and nervous, whenever his face would adopt a more thoughtful expression again. When Ron was finished, he silently grabbed her second, much shorter letter, and read that one, too.

Afterwards, he looked up at her again, grinning.

"I don't know why you're worrying, Hermione. The first one's nice, what are you on about?"

"But it's filled with unimportant-..."

"- Who cares, whether it's "unimportant", Hermione? It's from you, and Harry will be grateful that you took the time to write him something personal! Well, or at least, he should be! We're his best friends, not his personal informants for You-Know-Who-stuff, right?"

Ron laughed again, and this time, Hermione joined in.

"So, you really think I should send him the first letter, not the second?"

"Definitely! Come on, Hermione, it's not like you are all uninteresting!"

At this, she looked down, feeling slightly flushed, and Ron was clearing his throat.

An instant later she was shyly smiling up at him, though.

"Alright, I think I'll send him that one, then. Thanks, Ron! Hey, would you perhaps lend me Pigwidgeon to send it to Harry, tomorrow?"

"Sure", Ron agreed. "Might take him more than one flight, actually, with both of our letters and the chocolate I bought for him from Honeydukes..."

"Wait, you bought Harry chocolate from Honeydukes?", Hermione asked, bewilderedly, "Ron, I bought him Honeydukes' chocolate, too! Did you also buy some on that last Hogsmeade trip, before the third task of the Triwizard, already?"

"What?!", Ron asked, bemusedly. "No, I didn't! I asked Fred and George to pass me some, yesterday, and gave them the money for that. They are always storing some stacks of sweets somewhere. You already bought chocolate for Harry's birthday months ago?"

"Well, it's good to be prepared for important occasions! Also, that stuff is way more durable then Muggle chocolate.", Hermione explained.

"How long does Muggle chocolate last?", Ron wondered.

Hermione beamed. "Actually, Muggle chocolate is really durable, too, Ron. Despite the widespread assumption that chocolate might turn brackish, over time, the slightly bitter taste and the paler colour the product adopts after a long storage is not making it indigestible, in fact...-"

"Wait", Ron interrupted her, grinning, "You are reciting a book right now, aren't you?"

She blushed slightly, at this.

"Let me put it this way: Not all of my book heroes and heroines from childhood turned out to be disappointing."

"Huh?", he commented, once again laughing.

Hermione chuckled. "Well, Ron Bilius: Some of the people who write encyclopaedias are actually pretty awesome. "