It was Hogsmeade day.

Ron felt strange.

Yes, strange was the word to describe this total onslaught of emotions. Really, really strange. Of course, what transpired with Hermione the other time was nothing short of awkward. As far as awkwardness went, of course, Ron was very well versed with it. But this transcended every weird thing he'd said, every time he got over-exited, every time he got jealous about Krum and Harry would ask him slyly why he cared so much. Ron had told Harry about this, of course. The conversation went somewhat like this:

Harry: hey mate, why are we ignoring Hermione again?

Ron: Oh, just something.

Harry: You know, I'm tired of having to ignore my other best friend like half the time. It's getting annoying.

Ron: Merlin, what is with you two trying to force the truth out of me? Respect a bloke's privacy for fuck's sake!

Harry: What do you mean, "forcing the truth out"?, I'm trying to find the reason why we're ignoring Hermione again.

Ron: Okay fine, if you must know, I was trying to apologize to her and become the bigger man and shit and then we talk and I just happen to somehow say that I was mad about the whole her having snogged Krum thing. Before you know it, she is interrogating me as if she were an Auror or some shit and then I happen to reveal indirectly that I fancied her by saying I wanted to be her first kiss.

Harry: Whoa.

Ron: Yes, whoa will cut it.

Harry: She does get bloody interrogative.

Ron: I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, Harry. She probably thinks I'm stupid and doesn't want to see me again.

Harry: How daft are ya, mate?

Ron: 'Daft?' How am I daft?

Harry: why'd you think she attacked you with canaries when you won that Quidditch game?

Ron: I guess, because, she didn't like the fact that I was under the Felix Felicis Potion.

Harry: Ron, I know you're just as smart as I am. Look, you play chess so brilliantly and everything but as far as Hermione goes I just want to say that you're fucking stupid.

Ron: How? How am I stupid?

Harry: Doesn't it occur to you that she threw canaries at you because she was jealous Lavender snogged you? Why did she invite you to the Slug Club dance?

Ron: Oh please, Hermione's a ten and I'm like a fiv-

Harry: Oh please, shut up with that shit. Sometimes I just wish you'd just snog and get it over it!

Ron: Wha-

Harry: No, seriously! I don't give a shit anymore. Let the war start and stuff, you need to sort your stuff out. It's getting very annoying. At least she can help you not to drown in your weird self-loathing ceremonies.

Ron: What "self-loathing" ceremonies?

Harry: I don't know man, maybe just stop hating yourself and doubting if you're good enough every two seconds? You need to understand you can do literally anything. You're just as good as Hermione or I and heck, if you had the confidence, you could become like Quidditch Captain and Head Boy and get a buggering PhS in whatever. But no, no, no. You will just spend 20 hours every single day just being all "should I do this? Should I do that?" like just stop, take a leap of faith and do it.

Ron: Mate…What the fuck was that?

Harry: I've been having mood swings, lately. The whole following Draco around thing has been getting to me

Ron: Yeah I figured.

As he remembered his roller coaster of the conversation he had with Harry, Ron sipped on his butterbeer. Harry went to ogle the Quidditch store, leaving him there, wallowing in his misery. Introspecting. Ron disliked introspection the most out of all things. He hated having time to himself. He hated staring at the ceiling at night when he'd wonder what he'd do when he'd grow up. He wants to become an auror but he won't be nearly as good as Harry, he thinks. Then he realizes what Harry told him in the exact conversation he was just recalling. That he needed to stop doubting himself and just fucking do it. And now he was scolding himself over never being able to learn a listen. Misery was at its peak when it came to Ron. He missed being happy. He missed life being easy. Hogsmeade with his two best friends. Hot cocoa in winter times. Eating the most amazing candy and chocolate on Hallowe'en. But with this air of utter gratitude. This momentary state of bliss that now felt like one of the biggest novelties. No, he wouldn't think about his future. He wouldn't think about his messed up head. He would dream and hope for the best that the dreams would soon become a reality.

But then he fell.

In love.

Falling in love is a different kind of falling. It's hitting your head directly on a pile of feelings. Ranging from utter euphoria to dismal dungeons of darkness. None of which are particularly good. Euphoric feelings filled Ron with bliss and bliss, without interference, until, of course, he'd realize it was all a dream. He realized that Hermione would never fall for him, whatever he did. Sometimes it looked like she could like him back but he just shrugged it off to be wishful thinking. Yes, wishful thinking it was. Nowhere close to the truth.

Ron dug and dug deeper into his feelings, mining for more, as he forlornly sipped on his Butterbeer.

"Thinking something?", a voice spoke from a distance. He looked up and saw Hermione.

He winced.

"Uh, why, yes, I am." Ron replied, half-heartedly, still looking at his mug of butterbeer in consternation.

"So how's it going?"

"Eh", Ron expressed, showing a hand gesture that replicated in perfection what 'eh' generally meant to people.

"I get it, it's been weird. Anyway, I just wanted to say…"

"hm?"

"…sorry."

"Hm." Ron choked out in surprise, his mouth expelling the butterbeer it stored.

"Now I understand why you would be surprised, seeing as I don't really apologise much. I just hate doing it for some reason, I don't know why. I'm just always so used to winning that whenever I get proven wrong, I just can't imagine having to admit it. It clearly means you admit that they were right and you were wrong."

"I'm not anything, Hermione, I'm just an average wizard in Hogwarts and even I know it's important to apologise. I don't have a valuable skill-set and moral compass. I eat food like a raven, for Merlin's sake. It's hard to admit you're wrong but it's important. It keeps you in check and makes sure you're at one with the real world, where you really don't have a way with telling what you'll do and how people will treat you, until you're in that position."

"That was surprisingly insightful."

"Always the tone of surprise." He grumbled.

"Merlin, why am I just so bad at talking to people? I mean it wasn't extremely surprising coming from you, I know you can come up with something insightful whenever you please, you know?" she finished lamely.

"Yeah, I guess. What did you want to talk about again?"

"Yeah, I wanted to apologise"

"For what, exactly?"

"I don't know, for backing you into a corner and forcing something out of you that you didn't want to say."

"Oka-"

"And for attacking you with canaries. That was way out of line. I can't imagine getting away with it if it weren't with you and you had just won a game and I ruined it. And I stopped talking to you, because you were with another girl and I acted like you weren't there and then you got poisoned and your last memory of me would have been all of that and not anything good and I can't imagine a world where that poison would have gotten to yo—"

"Is there a problem?" a waiter interjected, "We don't condone quarrels, fights and discourses here, however serious they are. Kindly go to the Quarrel Room for that."

"The Quarrel Room?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, The Quarrel Room. It's accessible to those who pull that lever to the right side, right there. Usually The Three Broomsticks harbours its fair share of business-related and friendly quarrels as a lot of wizards like to come here and talk officially. Sometimes people fight at a personal level. I would just like you to vacate, before people start departing and it becomes awkward." He said curtly.

"Oh well, then." Ron managed.

Hermione and Ron walked over to the area with the lever. Hermione felt examining eyes on her and probably realized that it surely would have been a better plan to take Ron somewhere private, though this wasn't a quarrel, in his opinion.

He couldn't believe that she was so affected by everything he went through. She did immediately start talking to him and became friends with him and kept talking about 'living in the moment' and whatnot. Surely, she couldn't think about him that much, so sincerely. He was almost hoping at this point. He couldn't wrap his head around the Brightest Witch of Her Age thinking about him and apologising for him when it took her the longest time to admit the thing about Crookshanks. Guess she had changed.

As they entered the room, they noticed it had a round table surrounded with 5 chairs in the centre and an emerald coloured sofa at the back of the room. They decided to stand close to the door. Ron with his back towards it and Hermione in front of him.

"Right," Hermione continued, "As I was saying, if I made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry. I just—"

"Yeah, I know, spare me the fucking trouble," Ron cut in irritably, "We're just friends and it would be weird to cross that line and whatever, isn't it?" he motioned in air quotes.

He wasn't a big fan of interrupting Hermione because she usually tended to get mad about such things. He didn't want to hear it come out her lips, though. He figured that was fair enough.

He waited in awkward silence as Hermione took in a deep breath. He awaited the confirmation. And in his hearts of hearts, hoped it wouldn't come for only he knew what spiral it would send him down.

"No, that isn't it."

"Yeah okay…wait what?"

Surely, she would be misleading him now. He frowned, then. Hermione was pretty direct. She wasn't likely to misdirect him.

"See, Ron, you've got it all wrong. I was scared you'd say the exact same 'we're just friends' garbage to me but honestly, are we just friends?"

She didn't mean.

She couldn't mean.

"Just say what you want in one go, why don't you? Without the rhetoric, that is. We're walking a thin line here and I don't want to say anything until I've heard you out, which is unlike me, but this is different."

"Right, well that's rather nice of you," she chuckled awkwardly, "I just want to say, well, I don't think we're just friends. We do and feel things friends don't do. I don't know Ron, it's just different around you. Very different. And I didn't enjoy the kiss with Krum at all. I guess I was just very mad at you. We were 14 and you'd been the exact opposite of chivalrous. You should've asked me out way earlier and I would've smacked Krum away for all I cared. The letters we exchange are just obligations. I'm sorry that you felt ba-"

"Of course I felt bad, you start out all repulsed by the bloke and the moment he asks you out, you're all over him. What was up with that?"

"He was nice, okay? He was sweet and seemed goo—"

"Yeah, okay then."

"And as much as I liked him, I never fancied him, Ron. Similar to how Harry didn't fancy Parvati. He asked me out like a gentleman. He was soft-spoken. It retrospect I didn't like kissing him. There wasn't anything intense about it. It was like a brush. It wasn't a snog, it lasted ten seconds and I didn't enjoy it. I actually forgot it happened before you asked me and I don't want to be sorry about it because you seemed to have retaliated quite well anyway, hadn't you?"

"It was simple, Hermione, it really fucking was. I never asked her to snog me. She just did. And I just let her. It wasn't centralised around getting back at you. It was simple, mindless and easy. It was a fling. And even though I am not someone who would like flings, it just seemed simple. I didn't have to think. And now I realise how fucking stupid that whole relationship was. And I was really sorry to how Lavender felt at the end of all of it, and how you felt, and maybe to some level it was retaliation but I hadn't planned for her to get with me."

"Let's just leave it," Hermione exhaled. "We're 1-1. Both of us kissed someone else, like most people do. Like Harry and Ginny did. I don't even understand why it's just such a big deal."

"I don't know, maybe because I'm a sappy romantic guy. Or maybe I've been in love with you since second year and Harry and Ginny discovered their thing much later."

"You're in love with me?"

"Great, here goes the inadvertent confession again." Ron said. "I-"

But Hermione didn't want to hear the rest of it. She crashed her lips upon his, holding him against the door.

He closed his eyes and reciprocated the kiss as best it could as his mind seemed to go devoid of all coherent thought.

It was like bliss. It was like winning chess for the first time.