TRACK CHANGE

TRACK A

CHAPTER 4

He felt his breath catch as he walked towards her across the common room. His heart was beating so hard in his chest; he feared that she would hear it as he approached. He tried to swallow a lump that seemed to have permanently lodged itself in the back of his throat and found that he couldn't. He hoped that she wouldn't see him sweating.

Five years had passed, and he had never forgotten her. True, she hadn't lived in the forefront of his mind but, instead, had been exiled to the furthest reaches of his consciousness, to the inner depths of his heart. He felt that the fact that he had never been able to excise her had to mean something.

Now she was back, and he didn't quite know what to do. He had offered his hand in friendship immediately, almost as though his inner self was wishing to make up for lost time. They had bonded and had fast become friends, far better friends than they had been before she had left, in fact. She was slowly becoming everything to him.

"Hermione?" The brunette girl looked up from her conversation with Parvati Patil and smiled at him, careful to keep her lips closed and hide the metal objects she had told him were called "braces".

"Hi, Ron. Want to join us?" She scooted over a little and patted an empty spot on the sofa.

Ron blushed, shuffling his feet slightly and looking into the carpet. "Um, no, thanks. When you get a minute could you, ah, help me with my essay?" He felt the blood rising in his face and cursed himself. Why must he always blush?

She didn't seem to notice. "Sure," she said brightly. "I'll be there in a minute." She turned back to Parvati, and the two continued chatting about, of all things, Professor Snape.

Ron tuned them out and headed for a more secluded corner of the common room where he could watch Hermione unnoticed by his fellow Gryffindors. He couldn't help but be impressed by the change in her that six weeks at Hogwarts had wrought. Just two weeks ago, she had finished sitting the equivalent of her first year exams and had been promoted to second year work. She had explained that the first year was mostly variations on the basics, according to the Professors, and therefore was going to be the easiest for her to quickly work her way through. She had also confided in him that she had, as a first year, read through all of the required books and practiced much of the practical work. She had supposed that, having been hidden away for the past five years, those memories had never really become dull with age. She had told him that she felt as though it were only yesterday that she set her schoolbooks down.

He knew, though, that she was worried about the second year work. She had never seen the materials before, and was eager to get started. According to her, McGonagall estimated that the second year work would require a minimum of ten weeks of intensive study. He was surprised that she wasn't nose deep in a book right now, or off in a private tutoring session. He shuddered when he thought about taking private lessons with Snape. She swore to him again and again that she truly didn't mind, but he was incredulous. He supposed it was brain damage from the memory charm.

She was making friends too. At first he had been a little jealous when she had blown him off one night to chat with Lavender and Parvati, but then he had remembered how shy and terrified she had been after coming back and was actually happy for her. He shook his head, wondering when he had stopped being totally shallow.

"Hey." She sat down next to him and grinned.

He felt himself blush again. "Hey."

"Where's Harry?"

He looked away from her and stared at his hands instead. "I don't know. In his room, I guess."

She sighed, pushing a wayward chunk of bangs out of her eyes. "Does he have a problem with me?"

"No," Ron said quietly.

"How come he's always with you except when I come around?" she asked shrewdly.

"Dunno," Ron said loyally, examining his shoes and wishing she would just look over his essay and that they could chat about something more pleasant.

"If I did something wrong," she plowed on, "I just want to know so I can apologize." She gazed at him expectantly.

"It's not you, okay? He just…I don't know. He's been weird ever since the end of our third year." He looked down at his shoes again, noticing how they were cracking near the soles.

"What happened?" Her face was inscrutable, her voice warm with concern but at the same time welling with a ripe curiosity.

"It's sort of a long story," he evaded feebly.

"Well, give me your essay to check over and you can tell me about it."

He mumbled something that even he didn't understand about talking too much as he reached into his bag and pulled out a roll of parchment concerning flesh eating plants that he passed into her eager hands.

He wondered why he couldn't seem to help himself telling her everything. He wanted to impress her, true, but there was more to it than that. Something about their talks was like therapy to him. It was nice to be able to tell someone without having them constantly remind you how much harder their part in the whole ordeal had been. He felt like mentally slapping himself for the disloyalty of the last thought, but shrugged the feeling away. He had been there, always, after all.

He had told her all about the Sorcerer's Stone in their first year: the way they had, luckily, had to drag Neville along with him to keep him from telling on them. If they hadn't brought him their journey would have ended in the Devil's Snare. Ron wondered if Neville would ever forgive Harry for the potions puzzle, however. Neville had told Ron about some sort of puzzle they had to figure out with bottles of potions. Harry had known which to drink right away because the bottle had already been drunk from and was thus nearly empty. Neville said that Harry had stared at the bottles for a while murmuring to himself before handing over another one and assuring him that it was safe. Luckily the poison within had been slow acting and Dumbledore had been able to save Neville.

Then there had been the Basilisk in their second year. They had been looking for clues near where Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris, had been found and had come upon an out-of-order toilet inhabited by a morose ghost named Moaning Myrtle. Eventually with Myrtle's help they had worked out that the creature from within the Chamber of Secrets had caused her death, and that it must have entered the bathroom from a sink tap that had never worked. Ron remembered blindly going down into the Chamber, not knowing what was waiting for them. He still had nightmares about the giant snake skin and the time he had spent trapped in a cave-in with Gilderoy Lockhart, whose memory he had accidentally obliviated.

Tonight, he told Hermione all about Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and his capture during their third year. He told her how Snape had come upon them in the Shrieking Shack and how Lupin had forgotten to take his potion. Pettigrew had escaped, and Sirius had been kissed by the Dementors, despite Harry's best efforts to save him. Harry, too, had nearly been kissed, but Snape had saved him and been given an Order of Merlin, First Class. Harry visited Sirius in St. Mungo's occasionally, but Ron wished he wouldn't. There was no one there for his friend to see, and he always came back in such low spirits that Ron feared his friend would try to do himself harm, again.

"That's horrible," Hermione had whispered at the end of his tale, which had taken nearly three hours to tell. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the common room now, and the fire had burned away to embers. "There was nothing you could do for him, then? Even Dumbledore couldn't save him?"

"No one can reverse a Dementor's Kiss. Unless we could have turned back time…" his voice trailed away, and he wished, not for the first time, that they could have. He wondered how different Harry would be today if he hadn't lost Sirius that night; if he had been able to be a hero yet again.

They sat in silence as she handed him his essay to look over. "Thanks," he smiled at last. "Your version is much better."

"I just corrected your grammar," she said modestly. "I don't know anything about flesh eating plants." Her voice sounded almost wistful.

"Neither do I," he admitted. She laughed.

"Well," she said, stretching as she rose from the table. "Goodnight, Ron."

He felt as though the world was swirling oddly, and he leaned forward as he rose with her, his face only inches from hers. He didn't know where he had plucked up the courage, but he leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips.

He waited for her to jerk backwards or slap him. Instead, she smiled and touched his cheek. "Goodnight," she repeated before disappearing through the door that led to her dormitory.

Ron sat back down again, his knees feeling very weak, his hand barely touching his lips. The fire had burned away to nothing by the time he headed for his own bed.