Hermione
She checked the schedule again.
There was no way around it. Correspondence. She had it marked in very clearly. If she wanted to take tomorrow off, she had to get all these replies written.
Why hadn't she realised there were so many? Even after anything dangerous had been weeded out by George's latest unnamed gadget (it had a sneakoscope in the top of it, and apparently there were some intellectual property issues so he wasn't pursuing a patent), and if you eliminated all the death threats and hate mail, and all the fan mail and marriage proposals from random members of the public, it was still a hefty pile of letters to reply to.
She really shouldn't let it build up.
Probably she should have done it earlier, instead of wading through all those location spells, none of which had worked.
It was extremely frustrating. She felt inefficient. As though somehow her study skills were failing her. She just couldn't seem to get her priorities straight.
At the very least she needed a better way of sorting out real mail from unsolicited garbage...
She'd been wasting time fretting about what was going on with Ron. He really was scrambling her brain.
At least at this time of night she had the kitchen table to herself. And her thousand letters. The worst of it was she had Harry's and Ron's too- they'd started just chucking the death threats in the fire, which was so irresponsible she'd taken to sorting all their collective mail... or... at least... she said she'd sort it...
They did snaffle anything that came in from someone they knew though, so hopefully they hadn't missed anything important...
She poured herself another enormous mug of tea and yawned.
How was it that even though they'd defeated Voldemort and been technically out of school now for a year and a half, she still felt like she had more homework than ever before?
Start with Neville's letter. At least it was short. Luna's was twelve pages with illustrations...
Ron
He stood in the doorway, just... watching, for a minute.
She was so... Hermione. From the way her hair ballooned out around her head, despite the fact she'd tried to restrain it by twisting her wand- and a spell- into it, to the fact that she was up near midnight surrounded by textbooks and leathery tomes and coloured envelopes and sheaves of parchment... tired shadows under her eyes...
Her fingers were ink stained, and she seemed to be in a cross-referencing tangle, flipping from one book to the next, using colour coded fan mail to mark her place as she paused to add another couple of sentences to whatever it was she was writing.
He felt that glow of emotion, that familiar swell of affection and adoration and attraction, and that little touch of annoyance... normally he'd catch himself, stop looking, go do something else... but she'd said she loved him...
Crazy in love with him.
She was headstrong and stubborn, bossy, demanding, quick to cry, unflinchingly kind, and arrogant in her own way... she took on so much, and never quite understood why no-one could keep up...
Imperfectly perfect.
So... strong.
He just wanted to scoop her up and cuddle her. Just that. Just... hold her, and stroke her hair, until she fell asleep.
It was still throwing him wildly off balance, the idea that they could be more than friends. He felt almost paralysed by it. He'd thought a few times about maybe just taking the plunge and bringing it up- or even seizing a moment, like when he'd gone upstairs to find her, and she'd been heading down for lunch, and they'd been miraculously face-to-face thanks to the sheer brilliance that was stairs... he could've kissed her then. Just... done it. But...
It felt too easy to take a misstep.
They always had such blazing rows, and he had a suspicion that if they started this off wrong, their friendship could be blown into smithereens and they might never fully recover. He really didn't think he'd handle it well, losing a chance at a relationship with her... and then losing the friendship through not coping...
That idea terrified him. It was as much as he could do just to try to let his guard down a little bit; not to immediately over-correct if he sat down next to her and his leg brushed hers... he hadn't expected her to reciprocate. He'd thought, honestly, once he'd said it, he'd go back to shutting down every outward clue of how he felt...
And then there was dinner the other day. She'd reached for his fingers. Tentatively, but like she meant it. And he'd held her hand all through dinner, and that had been...
His chest hurt, thinking about it.
She'd realised he was there now. She was gazing up at him, an inky quill tangled in her hair behind her ear and another in her hand, hovering over the parchment. He hadn't seen her this madly muddled since third year, with the time turner.
"Hey,"
"Can't sleep? Do you need a potion?"
He shook his head. So typical. Trying to solve problems that weren't there.
"Nah, I'm fine. Harry and Ginny have commandeered my bed. Thought I'd grab a snack, and kip on the sofa,"
"Oh."
He took a piece of shortbread and held it in his mouth as he passed her the tin. He pinched her mug of cold tea, emptied it into the sink, put the kettle on, and sat down, taking a bite.
"What're you working on?"
She sighed and selected a little broken piece of shortbread. A big frizzy loop of hair slowly untwisted itself from the wand, drifting to rest by her cheek.
He was staring again.
"Just... trying to reply to this week's mail? Neville's asking about some really rare plants, and I don't have the right books... I miss the library..."
He surveyed the mountain of papers and books on the table. The further away from her they were, the more orderly the papers and books seemed to be.
"What're those ones?"
She let out a little puff of tragic laughter.
"Our fan mail, I think. I haven't sorted it... I normally go through and send the really threatening stuff on to Proudfoot to process..."
He crammed the rest of the piece of shortbread into his mouth, and got back up.
"Right," he said, chewing, "More tea, and I'll sort that lot."
Tears sparked in her eyes.
Exasperating.
"Don't- you've got to stop getting all teary whenever I offer to help with something I should've been doing in the first place," he said, and it came out grumpy sounding. She laughed and blinked, and took her wand out of her hair to redo the twist.
"Hang on, you've got a..."
She looked bewildered. Big brown eyes...
He leaned down and tried to gently extract the quill out of her wild tangle of hair.
"Here," He took her hand and put it on the quill, "I don't want to pull your hair,"
He turned quickly back to the bench to finish making the tea.
She was blushing and biting her bottom lip, and oh god, he'd touched her again, and that was maybe why she was blushing...
Just make the damn tea.
They sat, and she wrote, and he sorted. Equilibrium restored. Like hanging out in the library with her, sort of.
He rooted around in the cupboard and found an old milk crate to dump the excess letters in. Most of them were just drivel, but anything really nasty he put in a separate pile.
He knew she'd be more thorough, read them properly before deciding, but it was late. She needed to get to bed. A quick scan was all it really took. He plonked the overflowing milk crate on the floor, and nicked a bit of twine from the kitchen drawer to tie up the bundle of potentially hazardous letters. Merry Christmas, Proudfoot.
She was still writing furiously. Several different letters at once from the look of it... Hermes would be busy. They'd talked about buying new pets, but somehow it didn't feel right, replacing Pig and Crookshanks when there was no evidence they were dead. They'd vanished after the Burrow was attacked last year. Ron did not want to think about Pig's probable fate.
He frowned and picked up a handful of the letters she had beside her. Two official offers from foreign wizarding universities, a short request from Seamus for troubleshooting information on wolfsbane potion for a friend, what looked like the first draft of a graphic novel from Luna... here was Neville's... a short paragraph thanking her for her letter, and saying he was having an exciting time with his new whatever-it-was-fancy-latin-plant-name, and he was organising a get-together in Hogsmeade over New Year's.
That seemed... Wait, she'd written reams.
He glanced upside down at what she'd written. Dear Neville was sticking out from underneath two other pieces of parchment... he frowned and picked them up while she was busy adding something to one for Hagrid, struggling to turn her usual cramped scrawl into large, legible print...
"Wait, Ron, I haven't finished..."
"Hermione," he put the letter down and picked up another one, "Hermione, what are you doing?"
"What? What do you mean?" she looked startled. And a bit demented. She really needed to sleep.
"Well... Neville's not asking for advice about his weird plant, he's just excited. Look, see? No question mark. Probably he's telling you because you're the only person who would think it's interesting,"
"It's very rare," she said, as though that justified writing three cross-referenced pages on the subject.
"Yeah, but... look, this one from McGonagall? She just wants to know if you're set on doing NEWTS at the end of the year. Looks like she wants to offer you a teaching position instead... and this one from Hagrid? He's not asking for legal advice about Witherwings, he's saying he's got legal advice, Charlie hooked him up, remember? This one- actually this one is pretty cute, it's just the Hogwarts' Elves wishing you a merry Christmas and asking you to stop sending them socks and SPEW badges- can't believe you're sticking with that name... and here, look, Luna... I think she's just lonely,"
"What are you trying to say?"
"Here," He held out his hand for the self-inking quill, and sat down next to her, scooping the pile of correspondence over so he could see it all. "First, Neville..."
He started writing on the lower half of the third page, and she made a little anxious noise at him, then gave up.
Hi Nev
I'm taking over because it's nearly midnight and I'm pretty sure you don't want an essay.
Hermione thinks your plant is really cool.
"How do you feel about Hogsmeade for New Year's?"
She blinked at him.
"I think it's a lovely idea, it'd be really nice to see everyone again, but I have a lot of work to do-"
"Right."
We'll see you in Hogsmeade- I'll make sure she leaves her textbooks at home.
Merry Christmas
Ron
"Done."
"What?"
He passed it back to her.
"Oh..." she blinked a few times, "Well... I suppose..."
"Done," he said firmly, "What else have you got? Hagrid, that's easy,"
SEE YOU IN HOGSMEADE NEW YEAR'S EVE
RON & HERMIONE
"Oh but-"
"You can tell him all about it then,"
Her shoulders slumped.
"Yes, you're probably right..."
He was on a roll.
"Who's this one for?"
"Dean, he was asking about-"
"Was he really?" He found the original and scanned it, "Cheeky bugger. Tell him to look it up himself, you're not a walking library," he glanced back at her, "Well, you kind of are, but he's just taking advantage."
"Oh but-"
"What book does he need?"
"Incantations and Spirits Most Foul. But he really shouldn't be attempting to conjure anything-"
"That's his problem,"
This is the book you need, but Hermione's worried you're going to do something stupid. I'd reconsider if I were you.
"Ok?"
She gave a reluctant laugh.
"I guess... oh but, Professor McGonagall... I don't know what to say..."
He was starting to feel like a genius. He grabbed a blank piece of parchment and wrote.
Dear Professor McGonagall
Hermione isn't sure what her plans are yet. She'll get back to you in January.
Any ideas on how to stop her overworking?
Merry Christmas
Ron W.
She was biting her lip again, smothering a smile this time.
"Was the 'w' really necessary? I think she knows who you are,"
"She has hundreds of students. I'm just jogging her memory,"
She rolled her eyes.
"I really don't think there's any chance at all that she'd find it ambiguous,"
He folded it up, stuffed it in an envelope and addressed it.
"Ok, what's next?"
"Luna," she looked worried again, "I'm not sure... some of it seems to be in a made up language... the pictures are nice though..."
He had another flip through the pages.
Ah.
Not a graphic novel.
Luna had sent her a puzzle. Of her own mysterious devising.
Hermione is so swamped with work that she hasn't realised you sent her a puzzle. That was very clever Luna, I won't tell her 'til tomorrow though, or she'll never go to bed. We're going to Hogsmeade for New Year's Eve- do you want to come back to the Burrow for a visit after?
"It's a puzzle?!" She grabbed the swatch of pages, "Oh, drat!"
"You weren't supposed to see that," he said reproachfully, "That's why I was covering it with my hand."
She shook her head.
"I am really tired. I thought it was just more nonsense..."
"Something tells me Luna is one of those people who don't get appreciated in their own time. Probably she'll be more famous than Harry in about two hundred years,"
She was smiling again. That kind of compressed smile that suggested she didn't want him to know how amused she was.
Merlin, I've missed this.