Finding Ron without arousing suspicion was proving much harder than Hermione had expected.
To begin with, there was the fact that members of the family were forbidden from venturing into the servants' quarters, considering it undignified. Besides, Hermione hated to breach the privacy of a house staff that likely had little else but contempt for her and her relatives. But there was also the fact that Ron was not part of the house staff, so he would not be living in the attic with everyone else— where he could be, however, Hermione had no idea. And, lastly, there was the fact that she wasn't precisely inconspicuous: in a high-necked white lace blouse and a floor-length blush-pink skirt, she stood out among the dreary gray uniforms of the scullery maids and the sharp black of the footmen, and every step she made was restricted by the skirt's stiffness. Plus, she was carrying a book under her arm, which would doubtlessly attract unwelcome questions.
She had a strategy: she steered well clear of Norma and the other valets and lady's maids, and instead just asked the lesser staff, like the scullery maids and the hall boys. Their low position on the staff hierarchy, which was an advantage to stealth, was nonetheless a disadvantage to actual information, as none of them had any idea or any way of knowing where Ron might be. After the tenth staff member who was just able to give her a shrug and an "I'm dreadfully sorry, m'lady," she knew she had to switch plans.
She descended the secondary staircase to avoid any confrontation with her mother, who would no doubt inquire about her whereabouts. Once on the ground floor, she stuck her head out of the door a bit to peer at the main lobby and quietly slipped out the front door, convinced she wasn't being watched.
Once outside, on the grounds, she walked briskly on the grass and away from the gravel path toward the gardeners' quarters. She had never been here before, but she'd often seen Pierrot make his way in, and the other groundskeeping assistants also slipped in and out regularly. She didn't presume Ron would be here, but thanks to its status as an outdoors 'headquarters' of sorts, it would safely be a good place to start.
She got to the quarters, housed in a brick structure right by the stables, and knocked carefully on the door.
"A moment, please!" came a gruff voice from inside. Pierrot's timbre, reedy and lithe, was a far cry from this voice. Whosever it was, however, Hermione hoped its owner might be able to provide her with the answer she needed.
She tried to come up with a lie on the spot to justify why she needed to see Ron— the truth (that she was going to lend him a book) would not fly well with most of the estate staff, and would be sure to reach her mother, especially if Pierrot was pulled into it. Maybe part of her bedframe had come loose. Maybe the draperies by the window had slipped free of their rungs. Maybe —that was it!— her sink had broken.
Satisfied with this last lie, she felt prepared as the door began to creak open, and began speaking before it was fully so: "Good morning, I wondered if you knew—"
The words were knocked out of her lungs along with the wind, for below the doorframe, so tall his forehead nearly bumped into it, was Ron himself, looking amused and seemingly delighted at her appearance. He leaned against the doorframe casually, and parried her silence with a quip of his own: "Would I be arrogant to presume it's me you're looking for?"
Stupefied, Hermione began to stammer something, but Pierrot's wheeze came from inside: "Who is it, Ronald?"
"A moment," Ron whispered, then craned his neck to look backwards. "The young Lady Granger, sir!"
"Lady Granger?" Pierrot cried. His hearing wasn't all that sharp, and Hermione was sure he thought she was her mother. "Well, what does she want, boy?"
Hermione regained her power of speech. "Fixing my sink," she mumbled.
"Her sink needs fixing, sir!" Ron called out without questioning it.
"Best get on with it, then," Pierrot began a reprimand, but before he had a chance to continue, Ron had called out a farewell and had shut the door behind him. Now he was on the stone doorstep, Hermione on the grass in front of it. She was suddenly aware that, again, they were alone. The thought, somehow, both soothed and unnerved her.
"Tell me: is it really the sink?" Ron broke the silence, descending the two steps down to be at her level. Even on the grass, he was considerably taller: Hermione was already short, but Ron must be above six feet, and his grin loomed over her.
"It's not the sink," Hermione admitted.
"So what makes me fortunate enough that the Lady Granger has paid me a visit?"
"I'm not the Lady Granger, Ron, that's my mother," scoffed Hermione.
"I know," he smiled, a lopsided smile that set his face off asymmetrically, tipping the balance of freckles on either side of his nose. "I'm teasing."
In the world of stiff sarcasm, backhanded compliments, and double-edged remarks that characterized aristocratic circles, Hermione was not used to something being said in good fun, but Ron radiated a genuine good-naturedness. She relaxed, feeling her shoulders loosen but her corset tighten as she let the air out along with the tension.
"Well, I'm here to pay off a debt." She grabbed the book tucked under her armpit, a thin, burgundy-leather-bound tome with yellowed pages and a ribbon peeking out the bottom. "To recommend a book."
Ron took the book and turned it over in his hands, examining the delicate binding and expert cut of the leather. "What is it?" Ron asked, despite the title being engraved in gold leaf on the spine, and it occurred to Hermione that he was giving her the chance to introduce what she'd brought.
"Still Shakespeare, but a comedy now," she explained. His eyebrows raised approvingly, and she felt satisfied in her pick. "Much Ado About Nothing."
"What's it about?" said Ron, now lifting the cover to look at the inbound page and run a callused finger across the delicate paper.
"I don't know how to explain it," Hermione said. Shakespeare wasn't something you read for the plot, you read it because it was Shakespeare. That the plots were phenomenal was a side benefit, but that they were so convoluted was a genuine pain when it came to explaining, and name-dropping Shakespeare usually did the trick. She should've known that it wasn't likely to suffice with Ron. "But it's basically a marriage comedy, even though the delight in it isn't really the story, it's the two main characters: Benedick and Beatrice."
"Could pull a few jokes from that chap's name," Ron snorted.
"It's what Shakespeare would've wanted," she smirked.
"Why are they such a delight?"
"They're really rather irritating to one another, but it's the banter between them. They tease each other wittily and incessantly, because they find their intellectual equal in one another. Both swear they'll never marry, and are especially revolted by the other, sort of a playful rivalry thing. And then—"
"They fall for each other," Ron finished.
"You've spoiled it."
"It's Shakespeare. They all sort of end like that. There was nothing to spoil," Ron snorted again, letting the book slip from his grasp. It landed on the grass with a soft thud.
Hermione was astounded at how derisive he was of Shakespeare, to the point he'd dare let a play of his fall to the ground. Bunching up her skirts in one hand, she leaned over (a tremendously difficult feat with the crinoline and corset) and grabbed it, dusting it off once she was back upright. "Uncultured," she muttered as she squinted, trying to discern whether that spot on the corner of the cover was new.
"I'm not uncultured, I'm just critical," Ron said, prying her fingertips off the cover to grab the book again. This time, he let it hang in his hand at the side of his body. "I'm just saying, the man's pretty predictable. Not an action story, really."
"You can't really expect a thriller from Shakespeare."
"Macbeth was pretty close," Ron smirked. He sighed, overdramatically. "Fine, Lady Granger. I will read your dastardly play, but I have to say, if the banter does not measure up to what you have made it out to be, I will be pretty disappointed."
"It will be," Hermione sprang fiercely to the defense of her favorite comedy. "I can't believe you've read A Winter's Tale but not Much Ado."
"Well, I'll read it tonight," Ron said, waving the book in his hand to call her attention to it. "From what I hear, the Earls of Rosebury are hosting a dinner party tonight, so I'll do what all the dirty, dirty grounds staff are expected to do in these occasions: remain in my quarters and remain unseen. Should give me plenty of time to read."
"Why are you so insolent?" Hermione blurted out. "Don't you know if my mother, or any of her lackeys for that matter, were to hear you saying something like that you'd lose your job on the spot?"
"See, Lady Granger," Ron said, cocking an eyebrow upward and letting the book rest on his hip, "what you don't seem to understand is that I don't much care about my job. That's where I differ from all those starchy-collar, bowtie-wearing types indoors: I don't worship the ground the nobility walks on, as if by being a kiss-arse I was somehow part of the sphere whose scraps I'm supposed to be thankful for."
"Those are decent, venerable jobs," Hermione argued, thinking of Gramsley, the butler, and his small army of footmen. "They have a mission, a purpose, and they enjoy it, and I don't see why—"
"Of course you don't, because they work for you."
"You work for me too," Hermione snapped.
"Sounding a lot like your mother," Ron pointed out, but before she could retaliate, he continued. "Anyway, I too have a purpose, but not as a handyman until my inevitable arthritis gets me fired without a pension by the dragoness of the castle. The world is changing, and I intend to make myself a place elsewhere, but not here." He put his palm to his forehead and gave her a mocking salute. "See you around, milady."
Without another word, he walked past her, toward the woodshed, whistling a light tune and swinging the book back and forth carelessly. Hermione swiveled to eye him, but he was paying her no mind, and all he could do was glare daggers at his back.
I definitely do not like him, she thought, still seething at how lowly Ron had spoken of the traditions that made up the fabric of her daily doings. Who does he think he is, anyway, to bite the hand that feeds him?
Those thoughts still plagued her mind as she made her way, silent and sullen (which her mother interpreted as ladylike composure), to the farewell dinner for the Diggorys. Draped in a squealing-pink, lace-layered and tasseled gown that her mother had chosen and that resembled the draperies in the salon more than a fashion-forward dress, she was of little conversation to Mrs. Patil and Lady Malfoy, who had now been her dinner companions. Harry, across the table from her, was seemingly so immersed in a back-and-forth with young Ernie Macmillan that he didn't notice her silence, but even if he had, she wouldn't have known how to explain it.
It, in question, was an overcrowded thoughtfulness that pitted everything she knew and valued against everything she felt she should believe in. Of course the world was changing, that much was true. But did that give Ron the right to behave like this? Did she have a right to complain that he spoke to her as he would to any other person? Did she secretly harbor her mother's superiority and believe her title somehow entitled her to special treatment, despite her recoiling at the duties of her position?
Her pensiveness jumped from outrage to stupor to disappointment to anger to disbelief, but as her mind flicked through images of their argument, it kept coming back to Ron, unkempt and undaunted. She tried to picture what he was doing now: was he reading the book, as he said he would? Or had he tossed it to the side, laughing at her, the stupid, silly rich girl who had thought she'd measure up to him? Was he out fixing something on the estate, doing the job he said he hated?
A few dozen feet away, in a dim stone cottage room, Ron was asking himself similar questions. He'd cracked open the play and let the dying candlelight flicker across its pages, making the inky letters waver in its wake, but he'd had to put the book down after getting halfway through. As he read, his subconscious had gone over his earlier exchange with Hermione, gradually moving to the forefront of his mind and gaining in volume in a way that Ron could no longer ignore it. So he didn't, but he didn't tackle it either: instead, he dove into the reticent curiosity he felt budding.
What color gown was she wearing? What might be for dinner? Was she dreadfully bored, as he imagined she was at these events, or had the dull cream of the crop of English society finally yielded someone interesting enough to keep her engaged?
He scoffed at himself. Look at you. She lends you one book and suddenly you can label everyone in her life as interesting or uninteresting. He was reminded —suddenly, painfully— of his own position: he was a lowly, poor handyman who'd only taken this job to make his mother proud, and she was a princess in all but title who had stooped low enough to condescend a bit of her life and rub elbows with the help. He was having delusions of grandeur.
He let out a frustrated huff, turned over in bed, and blew out the candle on his nightstand. The book abandoned on his blankets, he stared out at the stony darkness and tried to sink into a sleep that only turned into a background against which all his thoughts were amplified.
And so the evening went for the both of them, both ruing their encounter, neither knowing how strongly the other was thinking of them.