From the instant Hermione dragged herself from bed on Saturday morning, to that when she closed her eyes in bed on Sunday night, she berated herself for allowing Ron to kiss her.

Not just allowing. Being an active participant.

Sometimes she would catch herself off guard and revel in the memory of the deliciousness of the act itself. Not the before or after- just the part when they were joined together. She could feel Ron's hand tugging at the ribbon in her hair and the weight of his other hand on her hip bone. The sense of her body desperate to be closer to his.

Then, Ron's words- specifically, his use of the word employee- would ring out in her ears and dissipate any burgeoning happy feelings. She wasn't sure what she felt more awful about; the fact that she had been so stupid as to kiss her boss or that Ron had been astute enough to call her on it. Clearly it had been at the forefront of his mind.

Their kiss had completely befuddled Hermione but it was evident now that this had not been the case for Ron and this single fact was perhaps the most humiliating. He simply hadn't been as affected by what had happened as she had. Not only that, but he had seemed rather amused he had kissed her, a member of Ottery staff. Like it was nothing but a good story he would be able to tell.

Which was why she was so relieved to see Harry at her door as her computer dinged with a reminder for the grant meeting that Ron had accepted an invitation to weeks ago.

As Harry sat down and uncapped his pen, Hermione felt a sense of vindication. Clearly Ron was avoiding her, which only underscored her belief that he considered their kiss a massive error of judgement. As she pulled up the budget spreadsheet, any concern that she might have been over-exaggerating or reading the situation wrongly melted away.

OOO

Ron tossed a stack of dog-eared pages held together by a giant paperclip under the desk by his feet and took a swallow of cold coffee. Normally Harry took care of the tax return but on Monday, Ron decided to tackle it.

"You sure?" Harry raised his eyebrows warily when Ron suggested it. "You normally run a mile when I mention the word tax."

Ron nodded confidently. "Absolutely. Definitely my turn. I'm going to stay up here, avoid distractions. Will you keep an eye on things down below? There's a few groups this week… and a grant meeting I think."

Harry could tell something was amiss. He hadn't attended a grant meeting in ages; every time he scheduled himself for it, Ron volunteered. Ron was no friend of numbers so Hermione had to be the draw.

As they returned home on Friday evening, Ginny had remarked sleepily, "There's something going on there, I know it. You get it out of Ron. I want details."

At his wife's behest, Harry had been primed to raise the very subject this morning but something felt off-kilter. Ron looked more than a little despondent and when questioned, was quick to brush Harry off.

"Everything's great. Just need a change of scenery, that's all mate."

Harry left the tax files in Ron's bedroom with a sense of foreboding; not least because Ginny was going to throttle him when she realised he hadn't uncovered anything juicy.

Ron felt he had started strongly. He decided to break himself in gently, logging into the website and entering the relevant details to generate the electronic forms he would need to complete. Then, he had started on the spreadsheets but that had felt a little too much early on. He decided to move to a stack of invoices that needed processing but, again, he had quickly become overwhelmed.

He lifted an orange booklet they had been sent about the tax implications of the grant money, opened the first page and then closed it again with a slap. Reading about the grant only made him think about Hermione and she was the one topic he was trying to avoid.

Frustrated, he threw himself back in his chair and twiddled his pen between finger and thumb. This business with Hermione was throwing him off. For a start, he was baffled by what had happened after the cider pressing.

Not the kiss, that had felt completely natural. He hadn't realised until they were so close that he wanted to kiss her. That he was going to kiss her. And that she wanted him to. Still, he had done just that and it had felt right. A little too right. And much too exciting for a semi-public place.

It was whatever happened next that had thrown him for a loop. As if some internal switch had been flicked, Hermione had suddenly gone cold and offhand. Then she morphed a second time, acting dumb and tipsy, making jokes as though her life depended on it and categorically making it clear how much of a mistake she felt their kiss had been.

It hadn't felt like a mistake to Ron. He had considered telling her that, despite her antics. Even that morning as he got dressed he was erring on the side of just being straight with her and saying 'Hey, I know things were a bit weird on Friday but…" And that's where he stopped.

But what? What would he say after that?

'But I like you'?

'But your tongue doesn't lie'?

'But that was possibly the best kiss I have had in recent memory'?

Ron did like Hermione and her tongue certainly wasn't lying and yes, their kiss could well feature higher than he would care to admit in the top five kisses he had shared with women lately.

Discounting all that, Hermione had broken the kiss for a reason, even if he didn't feel she had been entirely honest with him about that reason.

Ron was guilty of not really knowing a lot about Hermione's life outside the castle. When she first started he had asked all kinds of personal questions of varying depth and she had answered most of them to one degree or another. But she always seemed more comfortable talking about work and that's what they had developed a pattern of doing.

He was certain she wasn't married but Ron hadn't given a single, solitary thought to there being a significant other in Hermione's life when he'd kissed her. She had responded so passionately that he'd assumed there wasn't one but now he wasn't so sure. She'd snapped away so abruptly and made such a show of insisting that he forgot about it. Perhaps, caught up in the happiness of the day and the strength of the cider, she had slipped. It didn't seem likely- Hermione didn't strike him as the sort of person who made mistakes like that- but what did he know?

Whatever her reasons, he decided to stay out of her way for a few days. The tax return was a convenient excuse, not to mention an effective one and it swallowed most of his daylight hours for a week. By Thursday he was really starting to get pissed off. How did Harry have the patience for this? The boredom was all-consuming.

Pushing back from the desk, Ron stood up and stretched, walking to the window. Down below, Hermione and Haroon were manhandling something that had been shrink-wrapped on a pallet onto the ancient steel dolly. Hermione, as usual, was plainly giving the orders while Haroon huffed and expended all his energy preventing the thing from toppling.

Ron had mooted the idea of buying a new dolly- the current one was at least a generation older than he was- but Hermione wouldn't hear of it. Lately, she seemed to be on a one-woman mission to cut costs.

Such a contrast to when she first arrived. Back then, everything was deemed 'top priority' and 'absolutely crucial'; she made no attempt to hide her scorn and disappointment that the antiquities had been allowed to reach such disrepair.

Nowadays, she was marching around the castle striking things off the list unless they posed an immediate threat to life. It was sweet really, if a little scary.

Even from up here, Ron could see the dolly bend and twist as they manoeuvred the pallet and he feared for their fingers and toes. Sod it, he would just buy the dolly and quietly replace it when she wasn't looking. Anything was cheaper than a compensation claim.

Finally, the pallet was positioned to Hermione's satisfaction and Haroon swooned to the ground dramatically, lying flat on his back from exhaustion. Hermione threw her head back laughing and playfully kicked him.

Ron felt himself smile. Despite being quite a serious, studious sort of person, Hermione had the most infectious, wriggling laugh he'd ever heard. It was fiendishly attractive.

She was wearing a navy boiler suit, rolled to the knees and elbows, and this one seemed even bigger than the khaki selection in the kitchen. It ballooned around her legs and chest, winched tightly in the middle with the belt. Her hair sat at the crown of her head, tied with a red scarf in a curly topknot.

She had developed a habit of wearing boiler suits when engaging in the grubbier aspects of the job. Harry had given her an Ottery Castle uniform, which she did wear sometimes, and if she was meeting with anyone in an official capacity as Head Curator then she usually dressed in a tailored white shirt and slim black trousers.

She undoubtedly looked smarter at those times and yet, now that he really looked, the boiler suit was clearly a better version of her. Every time he saw her all cleaned up in her Miss Curator garb there was something a tad stiff and awkward about her. This Hermione, the one in the cotton one-piece with her hair scraped back, getting stuck into something she was passionate about, this was the right fit.

Haroon was now stooping and clutching at his back exaggeratedly as Hermione pointed to somewhere further up the path, which elicited more laughter and for a brief second, Ron felt a flash of jealousy.

It was difficult to get to know Hermione, she was shy and careful, maybe even a little closed off. She obviously felt ill at ease with strangers and it took time to make her comfortable. Ron felt he had done a fairly good job at that. In fact, he prided himself on being the person she seemed to be most comfortable with, aside from Haroon and maybe Harry. It sort of made him feel special, her bestowed friendship. And now he'd royally fucked things up by kissing her.

Ron shook his head, irritated. So he'd kissed her, so what? It had been a happy day; they'd had a bit too much to drink… Things happened. They were adults, they would deal with it.

A niggle buzzed at the back of his mind though, a small, questioning voice that wondered what would have happened had Hermione not broken the kiss. Could things have progressed? Had he wanted them to?

He tossed his head again. The Weasley world was complicated; Hermione was part of it but truly, she didn't know the half of it. It took a lot of consideration on Ron's part to bring anyone inside the circle, he didn't do it lightly and he didn't do it often. To decide something like that… well it rested on a lot more than a boozy snog in the grass.

And anyway, she did break the kiss, it was her decision and he couldn't have done anything about that.

He observed them as they positioned themselves side by side and began pushing the dolly up the path, Hermione chattering animatedly.

Of course, he rationalized as he backed away from the window, he should be thankful really, from a business perspective. There was a reason workplace romances were a clichéd disaster; that first flush of lust addling brains, right through to a break up that was accentuated and made worse by the fact that two people who had vowed never to speak again were forced to see each other Every. Single. Day. No good could come of it.

Ron cast another long look out of the window before turning and walking out of the room, slamming the bedroom door behind him and causing the pictures that lined the hall to judder with the force.