AN: So quiet. Please let me know it you're reading. heart, heart

Once the Protean charmed galleons were perfected and given out to members of the DA, Harry Potter's secret extracurricular defense classes were in full swing. The classes gave Harry hope, vigour, a new focus for his time and energy. It was a good thing, and it kept him from missing quidditch nearly so much.

And in the same way, it should have invigorated Hermione and Ronald, keeping them from missing their usual activities. Ronald shouldn't have been missing his meetings with Pansy Parkinson in the vanished room, and Hermione shouldn't have been missing sharing the restricted section of the library with Draco Malfoy as he searched for a paternity potion for Ronald.

Only, that was not how things went at all.

Ronald had tried to set things right with Pansy. He strutted and posed around her in classes and corridors, waiting for her to flash him that look he'd grown to crave - that shameless look of being delighted to be in his presence. It was gone. When he found her eyes on him now, she looked vexed, maybe even angry.

One night, he'd check the prefects' schedule and waited in a niche behind the statue of a one-eyed witch for Pansy to come patrolling along the corridor. He'd whistled and grabbed at her hand, pulling her into the shadows with him.

"Don't be mad anymore, Parkinson. I still need your help," he'd said as she withdrew her hand from his, folding her arms over her chest. "Please. I was just starting to hope, just starting to feel like I was getting close to a connection."

"Close?" she'd said. "Close to a connection with who?"

He'd sputtered. "With - with girls."

She'd pursed her lips, nodding. "With girls. Girls in general. All of us. Interchangeably."

"Well, that was kind of..." he'd said, trailing off, confused, blinking quickly. "That was kind of the point of all this - wasn't it?"

Pansy's arms were still folded across her chest as she stepped into him, nudging Ronald ever so gently against the wall behind him. He'd yielded, stepping back, pinned. In the small space, there was nothing to correct for their height difference. Pansy had tilted her neck, her chin lifted, a pretty angle from which he'd regarded her with wide, dark eyes in the low light.

"So you'd like us to complete the lessons," she went on. "Meeting alone in the enchanted room where I'd let you have more and more of me. Let you run your hands up and down my arms and shoulders, touch my back and sides, maybe my neck. Our fingers in each other's hair..."

He was fighting not to twitch, caught between the cold stone wall and her warm, soft forearms pressed against his stomach.

"Until finally, I'd close my eyes, wet my lips," she said, rising on her tiptoes, leaning into him to keep her balance, "and open up to kiss you properly. Is that it, Ronald?"

He was bending lower, as if caught in a gravitational field centred in the small girl before him. He rasped out the words, "That's what - isn't that what - we agreed?"

She'd hummed as he came closer, his mouth slightly open. She said, "And at the end of the lessons, we would connect, like you want to, proving there's been no prenatal love potion accident curse for you. Then you'd be free to shake my hand, send me on my way, and roll it out for real for Hermione Granger."

He stopped, his heavy eyelids lifting.

"Hermione Granger," she said again, each syllable drawn out long.

He said nothing, snapping his jaws together.

"That's what I thought," she said, backing away even as he stepped forward without thinking, driven to keep from losing the heat and pressure of her arms against his stomach.

But she'd turned her back to him, walking away, down the corridor, alone.

"Pansy," he called after her.

She waved a hand. "I'm on duty, Ronald. Pull yourself together and get back to the tower before you miss curfew. Goodnight."

For her part, Hermione was every bit as surly and frustrated as Ronald. It was clear that Draco was actively helping Umbridge enforce her ridiculous rule disbanding all student groups. She'd even tried to cancel the quidditch teams. What ending quidditch had to do with keeping giants out of Britain Hermione could not tell. The teams were soon reinstated, but watching Draco and the Slytherins trotting around the school enabling Umbridge was chilling.

Pansy had started working with Umbridge on the crackdown on student groups as well. And Hermione noticed that she'd stopped visiting the vanished room, leading Hermine to ask Ronald if Pansy and Zdravko had finally given up on their Bulgaria-to-Britain long distance relationship. Ronald was quite grave as he cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and admitted they had moved on, and Zdravko had taken it surprisingly hard.

She'd never even met this Zdravko boy, but Hermione felt sorry for him all the same. It was sad, fancying someone and having them like you too only to realize the affair was doomed.

Doomed.

Maybe, Hermione thought, everything Draco had done to get closer to her this year had nothing to do with him liking her and everything to do with him using her to find out about the DA and stop it. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to manipulate and betray his brother, but snogging secrets out of her was something Draco was only too prepared to do.

As winter grew colder over the next two weeks, Hermione stayed away from him - not so far away that she couldn't see Draco, but too far for touching. That is, except for the time he stood too close behind her in the tussle in the potions supply cupboard and breathed, "Still your turn, Granger," into her ear.

Her face had flushed and she'd sloshed essence of eglantine thorn all over her hand, but she'd managed not to spin around and to throw herself into his arms right there in the potions lab. His voice against her ear had been ragged, eager almost to the point of suffering. Why would it matter that he had an ulterior motive?

Stop - of course it mattered. The DA was too important and fragile to risk.

This was the frayed state Ronald and Hermione were in the day Harry came back late from the final DA meeting before Christmas holidays, beaming foolishly after kissing Cho Chang. It lifted their spirits to be congratulating him, laughing as he tried to express how his first kiss felt, how it made him feel. Ronald was interested in a clinical report, factual with body parts labeled, textures and timing tabulated. Hermione helped decode the emotional aspects of it.

Ronald listened, amazed as she explained the complicated love triangle Harry was caught up in with Cho and with Cedric Diggory unwittingly still interfering from the great beyond. Pansy Parkinson had inadvertently convinced Ronald that her ability to understand feelings and connections was special. Maybe it was something all girls could do, or at least the smart ones.

As they talked, the common room emptied, the fire burnt low. Ronald was glaring at Harry, jerking his head toward the stairwell to the boys' dormitory. Harry coughed and rose to excuse himself, leaving Ronald and Hermione alone.

Hermione's posture stiffened as she watched Harry leave.

Ronald extended his arm along the back of the sofa behind her, but her spine was locked so rigidly straight she didn't seem to notice. "Nice to see him happy for a change, isn't it?" he said, nodding at Harry's feet disappearing up the spiral stairs.

She swayed over her knitting. "I suppose so, though Cho Chang? She's a bit of a handful. All that crying isn't normal. She should really be seeing a grief counselor or something. But maybe this infatuation will distract them both."

"Grief counselor?" Ronald repeated.

"Yes, Ronald," she said in that motherly tone. "It's a Muggle occupation. They're better at confronting their trauma than wizards are, which isn't saying much. But at least they actually talk about things - good and bad."

He hummed, nodding behind her. "Hey, Hermione, can we talk about something?"

"Of course we can," she said, a little too flatly.

"Harry, he's like a brother to you, isn't he?"

"Well, I can't know for sure, since I have no literal brothers," she said. "But I imagine he must be."

"Right," Ronald said, falling quiet again. "What about me? I mean, you don't feel like Ginny does to me. So, for you - it's not brotherly with me, is it?"

She clenched her knitting, pivoting to read his face in the dimness. How was she supposed to answer? He was Draco's brother, and Draco was not at all brotherly to her. What did that make Ronald then? Brother-in-law-ly? She certainly couldn't tell him that. She lobbed the question back at him. "What are you trying to say, Ronald?"

He set his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, his eyes on the embers in the fireplace. "Way back in second year, you were petrified and it completely gutted me. And didn't we row in front of everyone, at the Yule Ball, when you were mad at me for not inviting you, and I was annoyed that you went with Krum?"

She scoffed. "Annoyed? Jealous, more like."

"Exactly," he said, admitting it out loud for the first time. "And then this year, at the opening of quidditch season, you kissed me for luck."

She bowed her head into the little woolen hat in her hands. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed - "

"No, you didn't. Of course you didn't. It was sweet. And the fact is, everyone's been saying it since second year, Hermione. Just ask Harry, or anyone. They'll say that you and me," he took a deep breath before blurting the rest, "we're going to end up like Harry and Cho. Together."

She'd turned away again. He couldn't see her face but he did watch her shoulders heave.

"We're not like them yet," Ronald went on. "I know we're not together - not in that way, snogging and crying. But if it's just a matter of time, maybe we should start - I dunno - working up to it, so we get it right."

She twisted her yarn around her needles. "Working up to it. What a beautiful speech, Ronald."

"Well, how should I say it?"

"Say what? What are you asking of me?" she said. "You're not asking me to date you - "

"No, not right away," he rushed. "I mean, that's the intention, the ultimate goal of all this. But arriving at that kind of connection - it's important to me. Fateful, even. So much that I'd like to go about it deliberately. Properly. You know."

She answered with a gentle snort. "You're playing me like a game of chess, planning and plotting four or five moves in advance."

He laughed softly. "If this was chess, I'd keep my plans to myself. In chess, you don't go off and tell the other players what you're up to."

"You mean the other player, singular," she said. "There's never more than one other player in a chess game, unless I'm much mistaken."

It was too dark for her to see the rush of redness in his face. Pansy. Was Hermione hinting that she knew about what he was getting up to with Pansy up until a few weeks before? Or was she warning him she fancied someone else too?

Too? What was he thinking? No, this was a two-player game. No more. And those players were himself and Hermione. She was still talking. He had to set the image of Pansy's little upturned face out of his mind and listen to Hermione.

"And that other chess player," she said, "is the one called your opponent."

Thank the stars for the chess metaphor. It focused his attention like nothing else. He took a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm, and to trust Pansy's training. He shifted along the sofa, drawing closer to Hermione without touching her, only looking at her, his eyes on hers, letting moments pass in silence as he just looked. And with complete sincerity, he said, "Hermione, in spite of all the bickering between us, you might be the last person I'd ever consider my opponent."

Quite unexpectedly, her pulse gave a little surge, and she looked back at him, their faces close and wide open to each other.

"All I'm asking," he was saying, "is that you leave your mind open to the possibility of the two of us together. Start feeling around your life for it. And understand that my mind is open to it as well. Not just my mind, actually, but my heart too."

She broke the line of sight between their eyes, laughing but not derisively.

He laughed as well. "What? Was that too sappy?"

"A little," she said, still smiling.

"Sorry," he smirked. "Just - try thinking about you and me as us. Alright? Don't change anything in the way we act or how you treat me. But give the idea some space in your mind. Yeah?"

She let out another noisy breath. He wasn't asking for much. She needed to forget Draco anyway. And it's not like the same thought hadn't occurred to her many times since she'd looked up in the girls' bathroom and seen him fighting a troll for her in first year. "Yes, alright, Ronald. I'll think about it. But don't expect a kiss before every quidditch match. That was impulsive, and possibly a mistake."

"Bloody right it was a mistake," he said. "You missed my mouth by a mile."

Ronald went to sleep forcing himself to think about Hermione, congratulating himself on pushing that relationship forward, however minutely. He knew he was moving it toward something that would annoy his father, but Lucius would tolerate a lot as long as Ronald stayed here, watching from the bed next to the Boy Who Lived.

According to a very put out Draco, he would be spending all of the holidays with Harry at the Weasleys' house. Ronald tossed in his bed at the thought of his real parents leaving the manor for Christmas and not bringing him and Draco along with them. To make it worse, Draco had already declared he'd rather stay at school than go to the Burrow. The boys hadn't spent Christmas apart since they were infants, and the thought was sickening.

When their parents owled about it, they wrote of Christmas away from home in easy, casual terms, but it was unprecedented, alarming. Lucius had been scheming away at something most of Ronald's life and this missed Christmas had the same feel as those moments - like the time Ronald and Draco were sent separately to the quidditch World Cup, the night all hell broke loose. Ronald wasn't sure his father had anything to do with the fires and the upside-down Muggles and the Dark Mark in the sky, but he was almost sure he'd seen Draco's white head, watching it all through a fence as Ronald fled with the Weasley children through the trees.

Lucius kept the two streams of his life separated - the one flowing from his Death Eater past and the one flowing from the ginger boy sent by the courts to soften his heart and reform him. Ronald was glad for it.

There were a few other moments in the past that brought the separation into particularly sharp focus. There was the time in the bookstore, when Lucius first met Harry. Draco had been needling Harry when the Weasleys kids got involved in Harry's defense. Then their father, who'd already had a few drinks with Hermione's parents, waded into it.

Arthur Weasley was an odd figure in Ronald's life, benevolent but ill-fitting. At heart, Arthur was a good person. Ronald knew that. Frankly, it might have been easier for Ronald if he wasn't. It was beautiful, really, that he had stepped in to watch over poor fatherless Harry when Draco picked on him in the bookshop. Harry deserved a champion - not that Ronald wasn't about to punch Draco in the stomach and shut him up himself when Arthur stuck his oar in.

He could still see it all in his head, Arthur leaving Tim and Ann Granger standing in a corner as he came forward, red-faced and loose jawed from his visit to the pub, intent on nipping a row developing between the children. If only Dad hadn't been there...

"Well, well, well - Lucius Malfoy," Arthur had said when he spotted him coming to Draco's side.

Arthur dropped his hand on Harry's shoulder. Ronald had been relieved Arthur hadn't chosen his shoulder to take hold of, but also a little sad. Whenever his fathers met, they were forced to choose between two options. They could fall into the cold civility they favoured in matters that involved cooperating for Ronald's sake. But at times like this, when they disagreed, they could only confront one another if they acted as if Ronald did not exist. And as he watched them in the bookshop, Ronald felt himself fading away.

"Arthur," said Lucius, nodding coldly.

"Busy time at the manor, I hear," said Arthur. "All those goods to dispose of. I hope Borgin is giving you a fair price. What's the use of redeeming yourself from being a disgrace to the name of wizard if you can't recoup some of your losses?"

Lucius held his expression unflinching, but his cheeks flushed pink. "We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Weasley," he said.

"Clearly," said Arthur. He glanced protectively at the Muggle Grangers, both of whom had pulled a book off the nearest shelf to them and were humming questions into the pages.

Lucius nodded toward them, lifting an eyebrow. "Nervous about the company you keep, Weasley? Afraid of your family's messy status might sink ever lower?"

Arthur's voice was low itself, racing, almost too gruff to be understood. But Ronald heard him say, "It can never sink any lower than it did the day you - "

He didn't finish, his voice lost in the sound of a thud of metal. Ginny's cauldron went flying as Arthur threw himself at Lucius, knocking him backwards into a bookshelf. Dozens of heavy spellbooks came thundering down on their heads.

There was a yell of, "Get him, Dad!" from Fred and George.

Molly had spotted them and was now shrieking, a hand on each of them as they scuffled. "No, Arthur - Lucius, stop!"

But the sound of her voice inflamed them, Arthur grunting louder as he took Lucius by the collar and thrust the back of his head against the bookshelf a second time, Lucius baring his fine white teeth as he threw a hand heavy with rings.

The crowd surged backwards, knocking more shelves over as the shop clerks called for calm. It was Hagrid who pulled Ronald's fathers apart. Arthur had a cut lip and Lucius had been hit in the eye by an encyclopedia of toadstools.

Spinning away with a swirl of his cloak, Lucius left the shop, not looking back, Draco following. Arthur was apologizing to Molly, who was near tears, while being congratulated by the twins and Ginny, Harry looking on, not exactly grinning but extremely satisfied all the same. Arthur's adoring crowd bore him outside, back toward the pub and the dirty floos that would take them home.

Ronald stayed where he was, standing in the shop as the clerks shook their heads and sighed, straightening shelving and re-sorting stacks of books, tutting at creases in the new covers. Ronald walked to the window and watched through the glass as Draco and Lucius disappeared in one direction, and Harry, the Grangers, and the Weasleys vanished in another. In his way, he belonged to all of them, but for the moment, no one was missing him.

He stood outside, in the street, until Narcissa came. At age twelve, he had already grown as tall as her, but he buried his face in her shoulder all the same, breathing in her scent and sighing out the tension he'd been holding in his spine since his fathers met.

"Ronald, darling," she laughed gently, handing him her packages. "Are you so tired already?"

He nodded mutely as she smoothed his hair.

"What's become of your father?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Got separated." Either she would read all about it in the Daily Prophet, or they'd already got away with it. Both possibilities meant there was no need for him to tell her what happened.

"My poor lost puppy," she said, patting his shoulder. "Let's get you an ice cream."

Ronald finally fell asleep just to be jarred awake by screams. Harry was twisting, writhing in his bed linens, eyes wide open but still caught in a nightmare, his face white in the moonlight, slick with sweat.

His voice was loud and uncanny, still Harry's voice, but without words, and with an edge to it that was not quite human anymore. It made Ronald's hair stand on end, and he shouted over it, unable to bear the sound.

"Harry! Harry!"

Neville was awake too, running for help while Ronald kept calling out to Harry, desperate to bring him back out of the worst nightmare he'd ever known him to have. Harry sat up just to be sick on the floor. When he was finally awake enough to speak coherently, he was ranting about Arthur Weasley being bitten by a snake, and bleeding, in the throes of dying.

Neville brought Professor McGonagall, who regarded Harry's claims about Arthur Weasley with a seriousness that was truly terrifying. She was whisking Harry away, hardly pausing to clean up the sick.

"Come along, Potter. And you too, Mr…" She had been speaking to Ronald, inviting him to come with her wherever she was taking Harry. Maybe it was to see Arthur Weasley, to save him and make sure he was alright, or maybe just to tell him goodbye. But as she spoke his surname - not Weasley, but Malfoy - she remembered, and stopped. Whatever may have happened to Arthur Weasley was beyond the limits of his trust for his sixth born son. "Mr. Malfoy, would you fetch Fred and George Weasley for me?" was what she said instead. "I'm off to get Ginny."

He nodded, vaulting up the stairs to the twins' room.

In a flurry of long legs and ginger hair, the Weasleys were gone, and Ronald was left standing alone next to the portrait hole in the empty common room. He stood blinking in the cold moonlight until the blue light of a Lumos lit wand slowly filtered down from the girls' staircase.

"Ronald?" It was Hermione, of course, wrapped in her dressing gown, her hair a sight, staring into the darkness after him.

"Yeah, right here," he said.

She came to stand close to him, looking up, whispering. "I heard McGonagall tell Ginny your father is hurt - Mr. Weasley, that is."

He shrugged. "Harry saw it in a dream but McGonagall's gone and taken it as a vision or something. Sure hope someone remembers to come back and let me know how it all turns out."

Hermione glanced around the room. "Shall I sit up with you a little while?" she asked. "In case there's news?"

Ronald felt it again - the same feeling he'd had when Narcissa came and found him in the street, standing outside Flourish and Blotts' bookshop, lost. He followed the feeling to the sofa, sitting himself beside Hermione and letting his face sink into her shoulder, against the fluffy rolled collar of her dressing gown.

"You're so tired, Ronald," she said. "Go on and sleep. I'll wake you if anyone comes."

He let out his breath. "I'd love some ice cream right now."

"Can't help you there," she smirked. "But we'll find you something nice at breakfast. It won't be long now. Rest in the meantime."

He nestled his head into her shoulder. She didn't smell like Narcissa but she was softness and care, rescue all the same. His panic and grief was ebbing away. Sleep was coming back to him. Hermione lulled him to it as her hands took up their knitting again. He focused on the poke and loop, poke and loop of her stitches. This wasn't like Narcissa either, but it was like Molly Weasley. There was a comfort to it as well, all of it enfolding Ronald as he drifted off to sleep.