A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! Sorry this one's delayed, but I got sidetracked by a short little story that wouldn't get out of my head. It's called "Inside the Heads." Check it out if you can! (Shameless plug).

Disclaimer: Alas, they still do not belong to me... How sad.

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Hermione was fairly aware of her heart slowing down as Ron carefully set her down and said, "Because there's something I need to ask you."

What exactly did he need to ask her? A million and one thoughts flooded her mind all at once, but she told herself that Ron would never logically ask any of those questions. A flicker of hopefulness wouldn't die, though, and she clung to it as she carefully said, "What do you need to ask?"

Ron swallowed in what Hermione knew all too well as nervousness. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, and Hermione grew even more hopeful. Maybe this was it; maybe they were finally going to stop playing this silly little game they'd been at for two years. She unconsciously bit down on her lower lip, her eyes looking up to meet his own with just a hint of hope.

"Um..." Ron glanced away and then back to her. "Well, do you remember last year?"

Last year? Viktor Krum? Was this what all this was about?

She squinted her eyes in slight confusion. "Of course I remember last year. Why?"

Ron looked quite uncomfortable, and Hermione wondered just what exactly this whole thing was about. "You remember when Harry's name got put into the Goblet, and I didn't believe him when he said he didn't put it in?"

Hermione nodded, now far beyond slight confusion.

Ron nodded, too, and then went on. "Well, I... I just was so mad at him." He stopped talking and glanced down at the ground. He sighed a bit inwardly and shook his head. "And I think maybe I was a little jealous, too."

Hermione had known as much; in fact, she'd been the very one to point this valuable piece of information out to Harry. Ron had never admitted it in so many words, but she'd known from the minute they'd returned to the Common Room after the feast that he was being bitten very sharply by the jealousy bug.

"That stupid prat!" he'd exclaimed to no one in particular, though Hermione was the only one around. "He always has to be the center of everything, doesn't he? He can't let one single damn thing go without shoving his short little nose into it, can he? Even when he's too bloody young!"

But even though she already knew this, she still didn't know what this had to do with whatever Ron wanted to ask her. She didn't comment, though; she simply waited for Ron to continue, which he did shortly after pausing.

"I didn't mean to," he added quietly. "Honestly, I didn't. But I just couldn't help it."

Hermione raised a single eyebrow. "Didn't mean to what, Ron?"

It definitely looked like Ron was having a fair amount of difficulty with admitting all of this, but he went on nonetheless. "I didn't mean to be jealous. I mean, I didn't mean for it to go on like it did." He swallowed again. "I didn't know that he would take things so seriously."

"How did you think he was going to take it, Ron?" she asked calmly. "You accused him of being a liar."

Ron blushed slightly in the dim lighting. He looked guilty even through the darkness, but Hermione didn't feel too much sympathy for him. "I know," he admitted quietly. "But... Never mind, you don't understand."

"Don't understand what, Ron?" She looked up at him with slightly narrowed eyes. "Tell me what I don't understand because you wouldn't even give me a chance to understand last year."

"Because you were always running off with Harry!" Ron exclaimed.

Hermione started slightly at his sudden raising of voice. He was really being ludicrous if he expected her to apologize for refusing to join in on their little fight and turn her back against Harry. "Ron, no one else would even speak to him! You had your brothers, and you had Ginny. You even had Dean and Seamus! Who did Harry have?"

Ron grimaced. Bitterly, he said, "Oh, yeah, like Fred and George have ever included me in anything that they've ever done. And why would I even want to hang out with Ginny? And I'm nothing but a third wheel around Dean and Seamus." He rolled his eyes. "And then you were always somewhere off with Harry, so it's not like I even had you."

"I wasn't going to just turn my back on Harry, especially when I knew he didn't do anything wrong. And you want to know why, Ron? Because I know what it's like to have everyone against you, and it's not fun."

Ron was silent for a long moment before regarding her and cautiously saying, "What are you talking about?"

And then it all started coming out. All of the loneliness she'd felt and they way it had crushed her heart when she didn't have a single person to turn to. "Third Year! Don't you realize that you and Harry both completely stopped speaking to me for weeks? You don't understand what it's like to have no one who will even speak to you unless it's to make some sort of snide comment! You don't understand what it's like to be completely alone!" Ron just stared at her silently. In a quieter tone, she said, "It's horrible; trust me. I wouldn't do that to you, and I wasn't going to do it to Harry."

"Hermione, I said I was sorry about all that," he said quietly.

"No, you didn't!" Hermione said disbelievingly. "I apologized for it, but you never did."

"Well, I'm sorry!" Ron said loudly, obviously hoping to cut her off before she went off in full tirade. "But it was a stupid fight."

"I know it was stupid," she said indignantly. "That's why it was so horrible. If it had been about something important then maybe I could have dealt with it better. But all I could think of was the fact that the fight shouldn't have even been between us; it should have been between the animals. And I know that's dumb!" she went right on. "But we're both too stubborn to see silly things like that, and you know it."

Ron looked down at the ground. "Well, I'm sorry, okay?" It was a much softer apology than the one he'd attempted moments earlier.

Hermione wasn't exactly sure why she'd even brought up Third Year; she supposed that it had a lot to do with the fact that she'd just been thinking about it in the Common Room before Ron found her and convinced her to come down here. She'd never heard Ron sound so... She couldn't even think of the word she wanted to use to describe his tone. He sounded so sincere and so truly sorry that she felt a tad bad about it. She felt even worse when she was suddenly struck with the thought that he was probably sorry because he was blaming himself for the whole Scabbers/Harry/Sirius/Lupin thing that had happened that year. Not wanting to even get into all of that since she wasn't sure she could handle Ron blaming himself for keeping Scabbers, she changed the subject. "Why are we down here anyway?"

Ron looked thankful for the switch of topic and finally looked up from the ground. "Oh! Right." He blushed a little more as if he was embarrassed about what he was about to say next. "Well, last year when Harry and I were fighting, I used to come down here whenever I knew I'd have no choice but to be around him." He looked embarrassed, as though he didn't really want to say what he said next. "And every time I'd see him, it would just make me even angrier, so whenever I came down here, I would..." He sighed and looked away.

"You would what?"

"I would write nasty things about him on the walls." Ron said all of this very quickly, and Hermione was almost positive that she must have heard him wrong.

She raised an eyebrow at him and repeated his claim. "You wrote nasty things about him on the walls?" Surely, surely she had heard him incorrectly.

Ron was turning red, and, to her surprise, he nodded sheepishly. "Yeah... And before you even tell me it was dumb, trust me, I already know."

Hermione bit down very hard on her lower lip; it was all she could do to keep from laughing outright. Ron saw this and looked incredulously at her, so she had to reply. "Ron, what on earth could you have possibly written that was so nasty?"

Ron glared shortly at her and then sent the light of his wand to the nearest wall where there was, in fact, writings scattered about. Hermione walked closer to them and peered at the words. Gasping, she turned back to Ron.

"Ronald Weasley! How could you even be so incredibly crude?!"

Ron moved the light back to the center of the room, so that she couldn't see the rather obscene language and statements any longer. His face was still very red, and he looked thoroughly embarrassed. She turned to look at him, still not quite believing that she'd actually read what she just had.

He struggled around for an explanation. "I was angry, okay?"

"You don't say?" The sarcasm was noted but not acknowledged.

"Look, I didn't really mean any of that stuff. You know that, right?"

Hermione studied the redhead in the semi-darkness of the underground room. She'd known Ron for five years, and she was fairly certain that he was telling the truth; the only people she could imagine him writing things like that about and actually meaning were one Draco Malfoy and one Professor Severus Snape. Still, though, she pursed her lips and looked sternly at him. "Why did you feel the need to bring me down here and show me such horrible things written on a wall?"

Ron sighed. Then he looked up at her with what she knew to be the look he always got whenever he was trying to convince her to see her latest essay the morning it was due. She waited with narrowed eyes as he spoke. "Well, because I feel really bad about it. And then... You know, after today..." He seemed to be having difficulty coming up with the right way to phrase whatever it was that he wanted to say. He finally sighed once again and apparently gave up trying to come up with some proper way of saying it. "Harry is my best friend."

Hermione just regarded him for several long moments. It was a rare occasion that Ron got even semi-sentimental, and if he did, she'd found that it was usually with her and never really about Harry. She knew they were best friends, but she knew that they didn't sit around talking about their friendship due to the stupidity and emotional block that all young men between the ages of twelve and twenty go through. She thought back briefly on the afternoon after the First Task. It had been the moment that had cleared up the silly little fight that Ron was now referring to, and it had been in that moment that Hermione had fully recognized that Ron and Harry were simply destined to be best friends for life. They hadn't even had to apologize to each other She was fairly certain that Ron had been about to stumble over something close to an apology, but Harry had simply shook his head and grinned, saying a meaningful, "Forget it."

And things were fine.

It was one of the single most infuriating moments of her life.

Yes, she'd been overly grateful that the whole stupid thing was over, but she was also angry with disbelief that a simple shake of the head and a smile had done what she hadn't been successful in doing for six very long weeks. During the time that Harry and Ron had been fighting, she'd tried her best to remain neutral. Yes, she had spent a considerable bit more time with Harry than she had with Ron, but she'd had her reasons, as she'd just explained to Ron. However, that hadn't stopped her from going from one to the other and trying to convince them to talk things out and make up. She'd spent hours trying to think of a way to make the two of them reconcile, and in the end all it had taken was a stupid head shaking.

Boys.

She hadn't meant to burst into tears, but, you know... Girls and emotions and... She really hated being a girl sometimes, but that was beside the point. Instead of getting lost in yet another memory, she turned back to the here and now and saw Ron still looking rather embarrassed about admitting something that she'd known since the moment she met him.

"Ron, I know he is." She said this slowly, so as not to shock him or anything...

"Right." Ron swallowed. "And I didn't mean for today to happen, either, but... I don't know. It did." He shrugged. "Anyway, what I wanted to ask you was if you knew any way to make all this shit," he gestured to the writing and deftly ignored Hermione's disapproving look at his language, "disappear. I don't want Harry to find out that I wrote it, and if it's still here, there's always the chance that he might. I'd do it myself, but I don't know how. And I figured that since you knew just about everything else that you might..."

He was cut off as Hermione flicked her wand in the direction of the wall and said, "Aboriri!" in a clear voice. When Ron sent the light back to the wall, he found that the words had vanished completely without a trace.

"Wow, Hermione," he said, not bothering to hide his admiration of the fact that she had indeed known a way to make all those horrible things just disappear. "You really know your shit, don't you?"

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "You're welcome," she said evenly. She couldn't help but notice the tightness her insides felt at the fact that Ron's big question had simply been about a charm he probably hadn't even bothered to research. But, then again, what else was she good for?

"Thank you," he said promptly. He caught her eye, and she was surprised to see true sincerity. "Thank you a lot."

Hermione couldn't help it; she gave him a small smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Just don't ever show me if you write things like that about me behind my back, or I might seriously injure you." It was only half a joke.

Ron managed to laugh, though. "I've never written anything bad about you," he said honestly. "And I swear that anything bad I've ever said about you has been straight to your face."

Hermione knew that it wasn't a compliment or anything particularly encouraging, but it was something. And, coming from Ron and being so incredibly just... Ron... she couldn't help the small giggle that escaped her lips. "Thanks," she said briskly. "Nice to know you care."

Ron laughed, too, looking quite relieved that she wasn't angry with him. Not that he expected her to be. If there was one thing he knew, it was Hermione Granger. He knew exactly how to make her yell out angrily at him, and he knew exactly how to make her smile.

What could he say? It was a gift.

"So," he said, changing the subject. "Do you want to go down to the lake for a bit, or do you need to go back and finish studying?"

"Of course I need to go study," she said without hesitation. "This is one of the most important years of our lives, and I'm not going to waste any time that I could spend studying for the O.W.L.s. You haven't forgotten them have you?"

"How could I forget?" Ron asked, groaning. "You remind me every ten bloody seconds!"

"You know I don't like that word," she said quickly. "And anyway, if I didn't remind you, you'd never get around to studying, now would you?"

Ron looked her square in the eye. "Well, in case you haven't noticed, I haven't yet gotten around to studying even with you hovering over me. And, for your information, I don't plan to anytime soon. This is just the first day of November, and you're worrying about something that won't even take place until the end of June!"

It was one of their old arguments, and Hermione couldn't help but feel comforted by the comfortableness of it. "It's never too early to start studying. And you're going to wish you'd taken my advice when it comes June, and you don't know anything at all that you're supposed to. Because, trust me, there will be no questions about how many points Puddlemere scored in the 1942 Quidditch League Cup."

Ron rolled his eyes but couldn't resist coming back with, "Shows how much you know. Puddlemere wasn't even in the League Cup in 1942. It was the Holyhead Harpies and the Ballycastle Bats. And the Bats won 190-40. The game lasted for nineteen hours, and it was one of the longest matches ever recorded for the English/Ireland Cup."

Hermione just stared at him for a long, long, long moment. She didn't know how to respond until she surprised herself and laughed. She laughed out loud for another very long moment. Ron looked at her as if she'd lost her mind, and when she saw this, she hurried to clarify the reason behind her humor.

"I don't know how in the world you manage to remember petty details like that but you can't remember the ingredients to a simple sleeping potion!"

Ron looked scandalized. "Petty?! Hermione, there is nothing petty about Quidditch! And if you're so concerned about a sleeping potion, perhaps you'd better brew one up for yourself. You're starting to get dark bags right around the eyes." He was being quite serious in his attempt to insult her, but she, to his great chagrin, did nothing but laugh.

"Oh, am I?" she asked between giggles.

"Yes," he said adamantly. "And, just so you know, it's not very becoming of you."

Hermione bit down on her lower lip and tried not to laugh, but she couldn't help it. The fact that he was so desperate to be rude to her simply because she'd called a stupid Quidditch match petty was hilarious all in its own. The fact that he was doing a very poor job of it was even funnier.

"Ron, I will never understand you."

He looked triumphant. "Good. At least that's mutual because, trust me, I have never, do not now, nor will I ever understand you, Hermione."

Hermione nodded, satisfied. "Good. Now that we've got that out of the way, shall we head for the lake?"

Ron looked genuinely surprised. "What? I thought you wanted to study."

She sighed. "Yes, but your ignorance has persuaded me otherwise."

Ron smiled. "Well, good. You need a..." He trailed off as he realized what she said, and his smirk turned to a rather cool and stern look.

Hermione laughed and rolled her eyes. "Come on, you. Help me get back up."

"And if I don't?" Ron questioned seriously. "What if my ignorance is not capable?"

Hermione snorted. "Oh, shut up and help me."

Ron rolled his own eyes and quite begrudgingly clasped his hands in a position for her to place a foot. Hermione looked up at the door, which was quite a bit above her head, and placed her hands on Ron's shoulder to steady herself as she placed one foot into the cradle of his hands and stood up. She reached up and managed to get a grasp on the side of the trapdoor. With a great huff and using all the upper-body strength she could muster, she pulled herself upwards and crawled through the door. The light of the outside was now gone, too, as night had fallen. She pulled out her wand and said, "Lumos!" The world around her lit dimly, and she glanced down at herself. The jeans she was wearing were now quite dirty around the knees, and she cursed quietly to herself. Moments later she saw Ron easily pulling himself through the hole and standing up beside her.

"Wow," he said quietly. "It got cold quick, didn't it?"

"It's November, Ron," she said simply as she pulled her coat tighter around her. It was a Muggle coat that her mum had sent her the year before; it was quite a bit warmer than the Hogwarts cloak she was used to. Ron, too, had on a Muggle coat, though his was thinner and probably a lot less warm than hers.

Ron shrugged at her response. "Oh, well. Race you to the lake?"

Hermione just looked at him. "Race you to the lake?" she repeated carefully. "Oh, yes. That's fair..."

Ron laughed. "Hey, if you're scared then just say no."

Before he could continue with his taunting, Hermione shot off as quickly as she could in the direction of the lake. Her wand and the moon lit her path. She heard Ron take off behind her shouting, "You can't cheat!" loudly through the night air. Hermione laughed, but her momentary finding of humor ended when Ron passed her, easily gaining a very considerable lead. Hermione didn't slow down, though, and shortly afterwards, she met up with him at the edge of the lake.

He was smirking at her as she struggled desperately to catch her breath. "Cheaters never win," he said scoldingly.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah. Like it's fair that your legs are practically twice the length of mine."

Ron shrugged. "Blame nature for that one, 'Mione."

Hermione glared at him.

"Anyway," he continued, "you run faster than most girls."

Hermione snorted as she dropped to the ground and looked out at the dark lake. "Most girls don't spend half their lives running away from three- headed dogs and mountain trolls."

Ron laughed slightly as he sat beside her. "You don't run faster than Ginny, though."

"Well," Hermione continued without hesitation, "most girls don't spend their entire lives running away from six older brothers."

Now it was Ron's turn to snort. "Oh, right," he said sarcastically. "Like Ginny ever had to run away from us."

Hermione turned to him and wrinkled her forehead. "Don't tell me that none of you ever picked on Ginny."

Ron grimaced. "Oh, we tried, but it never worked. If Bill or Charlie or Percy ever got really mad or annoyed at her, all she had to do was just barely get her lower lip to tremble or her eyes to just get a single tear in them, and they'd all be fawning over her faster than they could say their own names." He rolled his eyes. "She's always been very good at making herself cry."

Hermione couldn't help but laugh at the easily pictured image. She'd always suspected that Ginny had her oldest brothers wrapped around her little finger. She knew different, though, of the others. "Well, what about you and the twins?"

"We knew better," he said simply. "We could see right through her fake tears, and she knew it. She didn't even try it on us."

"So, what did she do?"

Ron sighed and shook his head, obviously from the memory of a younger Ginny. "All she had to do was say the first syllable of the word 'Momma' and we'd be getting beat upside the head with a frying pan."

Hermione tried very hard not to laugh, but the picture was so easily imagined that it was impossible. "But I thought you and Ginny were close when you were younger."

Ron shrugged. "We were, I guess. I mean, what other choice did we have? Bill and Charlie were always too old to be bothered with us, and Percy was always too old, too- even before he really wasn't." Hermione understood what he meant. "And Fred and George... Ha!"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

Ron sighed again. "Fred and George never let me tagalong with them unless they needed a scapegoat or a diversion. And, of course, I was the obvious choice. And then, of course, I'd be the one to get caught."

"And you did it anyway?"

"Of course I did!" Ron said without hesitation.

"Why?" Hermione furrowed her brow. "Because they were your older brothers?"

"Yeah," Ron said fleetingly. "And because they were bigger."

"Huh?"

"Well, it was always either do what they told me to do or get beat up."

"But didn't you get in trouble?"

Ron nodded. "Yeah, but Fred and George hit me a lot harder than Mum ever did." Hermione struggled hopelessly not to snicker. "And there were two of them."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Trust me," he said seriously. "Two sets of fists hurt way worse than a broom handle."

Hermione put her hands to her mouth and convulsed with silent giggles. She simply couldn't help it.

Ron looked offended. "Oh, laugh it up at my childhood abuse, Hermione," he said briskly. "I'm sure that you never did anything at all to get in trouble when you were younger, did you?"

"Of course I did," Hermione said, battling down the last of the giggles.

"What?" Ron asked mockingly. "Go to bed without brushing your teeth?"

Hermione narrowed her eyes and glared at him. Sarcastically, she said, "Oh, how hilarious. Remind me to laugh in ten minutes."

Ron started right then, though. He laughed loudly at the expression on her face, and she couldn't help it. She did, too.

These were the moments that she revered in her mind. The moments when she felt completely safe and completely worriless and completely content. And, strangely enough, every time she could remember feeling like this had been in Ron's company.

"Your eyes look really cool." His statement brought her brows together in confusion.

"Huh?" she asked, genuinely confused.

Ron looked a little uncomfortable but not as much as he would have a month ago if he'd said something like that to her. "I don't know. They just look really cool right now. Maybe it's the water and the moon... I don't know. They just do."

Hermione was surprised to find that she didn't feel embarrassed at all by his comment. Instead, she felt strangely flattered. "Thanks."

Ron shrugged. He obviously felt the need to change the subject before he started dropping any other sappy compliments. "So, I missed dinner. Was it good?"

Hermione couldn't hide the smile covering her lips.

Ron and food... A duo you couldn't go wrong with.

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I know it's a bit of a strange ending point, but it will have to do. No, the next part won't pick up directly from here. It will be a different day with new and exciting ventures...

And PS- Sorry to everyone who thought they were finally going to get a confession or a kiss... Haha, I'm evil, aren't I?

Please review!!!!!