ยค*~ (A/N: Wow, this is actually turning into a story. I didn't mean for it to get this long, but I'm kind of into it now. Maybe I'll make it a REAL story, like with over ten chapters! Ooh, sounds interesting.)

Harry quietly chewed a bite of his toast, carefully avoiding Hermione's penetrating gaze.

"You all right there, Harry?" asked Fred, motioning towards Harry with his fork.

"Something you didn't like in Mum's jam?" questioned George. Harry was now painfully the center of attention. The stares of nine Weasleys bored into him.

"Maybe he needs more pancakes," said Mrs. Weasley, offering a generously full plate of pancakes to Harry.

"No, thank you, I'm fine," he refused politely.

"That's what you said earlier," snapped Hermione. Harry shot her a glare that could kill a small animal.

"O-oh, I see what's going on, Fred," said George with a grin.

"As do I, my dear brother," responded Fred, "Trouble in paradise."

"Excuse me?" asked Percy, swallowing a forkful of scrambled eggs.

"The perfect little group of friends is experiencing a bit of.eh, turmoil," answered George.

"So to speak," quipped Fred. George agreed.

"So what happened?" asked Bill.

Harry was silent. Hermione pretended to be chewing so big of a portion that she couldn't speak.

"You can't keep a secret from this family," warned George.

"Ron knows that far too well, doesn't he?" joked Fred with a grin, "Remember what happened that one winter?"

"Shut up, Fred," growled Ron.

"Watch your mouth, Ronald!" sternly commanded Mr. Weasley from the living room.

Ron grumbled and drowned his sorrows in orange juice.

"May I be excused?" asked Harry. When permission was granted, he left the table and walked outside.

As soon as the front screen door had clicked to a full close, everybody's attentions whirled to Hermione.

"What happened?" "Did you get in a fight?" "Did he hit you?" "Harry'd never hit a girl! I bet she hit HIM!" "Did you hit him, Hermione?" "What did he do that made you hit him?" "I can't believe you hit him!" "Did you hit him hard?" "I bet she slapped him so hard he had a mark on his face!" "Was there any cursing?" "I remember somebody cursing in my dream!" "I bet you heard Harry and it got implanted into your mind!" "Wow, I never thought Harry would curse." "Cursing and hitting? In my household?" "Never thought the girl had it in her!"

Finally Hermione had taken all she could, and stood up. "BE QUIET!" Several utensils clanged onto the tile floor, and a collective gasp was passed around the room. "I did not hit him! Admittedly I tried, but he stopped me. There was a bit of foul language-" Fred scowled and handed a smug Percy two sickles "- but nothing too dramatic. Now could you PLEASE drop the subject?" When nobody protested, Hermione released a huff of air, sat back down, and resumed eating.

"Mum.may I be excused as well?" asked Ron. His mother nodded, and Ron quickly sprinted out of the kitchen and through the front door.

Ron squinted in the golden sunlight of the late morning. He brushed away a small flying insect, and noticed Harry sitting on the curb in front of his house.

"Oy, Harry!" Harry turned around and acknowledged Ron, who walked down the sidewalk and squatted next to him.

"Hermione's real worked up back at the table."

"I can imagine," responded Harry glumly. The muscles in Ron's legs were screaming in protest against his low squat, so he relaxed next to his friend on the curb.

"If you don't mind me asking.what happened? 'Mione said that there was cursing, and that she tried to hit you."

Harry snorted. "She's such a bitch. I can't stand her."

Ron goggled. Harry and Hermione had always been fairly closer than Ron had ever been with her. "What did she DO?"

Harry seemed to be over his extremely brief bout of sadness, and had now begun to grow angry. "She said that she's glad my parents were slaughtered. And that I was a prick and an arse." Harry snapped a fallen branch in two, and threw one of the halves across the street.

Ron had a reaction very similar to his sister's. "She didn't!"

"She did," affirmed Harry, powerfully smashing the second half against the black gravel of the street. Ron made a mental note to never get on Harry's bad side.

"What caused her to say that?"

"Well, it's kind of a long story." Harry noted the rather annoyed expression on Ron's face, so he began to recount the events of the last twelve hours. "You know how I have that.cutting thing?" Ron slowly nodded. "Well Hermione found something, and I guess she didn't know about it so she freaked out at me. She was crying like a waterfall, I swear. And you know how Hermione cries over EVERYTHING? Well right then I was just sick of it so I didn't sympathize with her, and then she got even more upset so I just went to bed. Then the next morning I woke up to find her staring at me. Just sitting on my bed and STARING at me,"

"I hate it when people do that," said Ron, trapping a panicked caterpillar between his fingers.

"Me too. So I told her to get out, but she wouldn't. She wanted to "talk"."

Ron squished the poor caterpillar and slapped the sidewalk emphatically. "What's with girls and "talking about it"? God, there's nothing to talk about!"

Harry agreed wholeheartedly. "I know! They're so damn sensitive sometimes. I mean, it's perfectly okay to cry or tell somebody how you feel every once in a while. Like maybe once every two or three years. But girls- especially Hermione- cry almost weekly!"

"Yeah! I once saw Ginny crying over an advertisement for adopting needy children. "Ronnie, look how sad that poor little boy is!"

The two boys laughed for quite a while as Harry and Ron took turns impersonating sensitive girls. ("Hey Ron, who am I? "OH GOD, Prof. Trelawney you're SO tortured! No one believes you! WAAAAAA!" "Oh I know! I know! Is it Lavender Brown?")

"But anyway, you never finished your story," said Ron, after almost ten minutes of mocking the fairer sex. Harry, who was laying on the ground impersonating how Jennifer McClintock twitches when she gets worked up about something, sat up and took off his sweatshirt in the summer heat.

"Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Where was I?" He straightened his white t- shirt.

"You were talking about how you left the room because Hermione wouldn't leave."

"Oh. Well then I went into the bathroom to shave. And guess who shoves her head in to see what I was doing?"

"She was watching you in the bathroom? Eurrgh!" exclaimed Ron, looking repulsed.

"But it gets worse. Usually I take a shower BEFORE I shave, but I had forgotten because I was just in a bad mood and wasn't really thinking. So I'm in the shower, minding my own business- when I hear Hermione's voice in the room, asking where I was because she couldn't see through the steam."

Ron shrieked. "She walked in on you while you were showering? That's disgusting! Did she see anything?"

Harry shook his head. "Fortunately she didn't. I yelled at her, but all she did was ask to "talk", so finally I said yes. She started asking me about.that thing that I do, and then she said something about how she didn't like me. So I got mad and went downstairs into the kitchen. Of course, she follows me and then we start arguing."

"And that's when the cursing and hitting started, right?"

"There was no actual hitting. There was an attempt, but I caught her in time."

Ron paused. "Maybe you should try to straighten things out."

Harry raised an eyebrow. Ron, talking about apologizing? That was definitely unusual. "Not just yet. I want to blow off some steam first. I feel like if I talked to her right now I'd probably bite her head off."

"Harry?" called an uncertain female voice from somewhere behind the two boys.

Ron and Harry whirled around to regard Hermione standing awkwardly on the sidewalk in her pajama bottoms and a small tank-top.

"Talk about bad timing," mused Ron with a dry chuckle.

"Go away." commanded Harry icily. Hermione shifted her weight uneasily.

"I'm sorry for what I said earlier. I fully and sincerely apologize. That was totally out of line." She batted a fluttering butterfly away from her face.

"How could you say that? What could even bring you to say that to me? That was terrible!" demanded Harry. He stood up and towered over her. Ron quickly scampered to his feet so that he could have a better perspective.

"It was just kind of in the heat of the moment. I didn't think before I said that," offered Hermione.

"Obviously not. Do you know how hurtful that was? Do you realize the magnitude of what you said?" He advanced towards her menacingly.

"Look, if you don't want to accept my apology you don't have to," she stated defensively.

"Fine. Then I won't." Harry strode easily up the sidewalk and into the house.

Hermione stayed where she was, a bit shocked.

"You really did it this time, 'Mione," quipped Ron, who had been quietly observing their argument.

She opened her mouth to argue, but decided against it and slowly walked into the house.