A/N: Wow, the last chapter drew in a lot of responses! More than I expected. I'm getting mixed reactions about Gia, though- it seems like there are just as many people who hate her as there are those who like her. Guess we'll just wait and see, right? And now... for more Ron and Hermione...

Disclaimer: None of them are mine, unfortunately...

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Hermione woke up with a start. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself staring at the drapery covering her bed. She didn't have a clue as to what had woken her up so abruptly, and a search of her recent memory didn't reveal any nightmare that she'd just been having. As she set her mind to thinking again, she was provided with the answer.

A quiet yell echoed into her room, and she knew immediately that it had come from the room next to hers.

"Harry!" she gasped quietly as she sat straight up, now fully-awake. Without thinking, she quickly pushed the coverings around her bed aside and crawled into the cool air of her bedroom. She didn't bother to find a robe or anything, though, and she barely noticed the way the cold hardwood floor chilled her feet as she headed for her door.

When she got to Harry's room, she heard another small yell, and she could hear mumbling through the door. She couldn't make out what he was saying, but she didn't concern herself with this. Glancing down the hallway, she carefully raised a fist to the wood of the door and knocked quietly. She was given no answer, nor was she when she tried knocking a second time.

Without trying a third time, she simply reached for the knob and let herself in. The room was dark, but the light from the hallway shone in and revealed Harry's sleeping form. He was tossing from side to side of the bed, mumbling something incomprehensible to her. His face was twisted in agony, and Hermione instantly raced to his side.

"Harry!" she called, reaching down and attempting to shake him. "Harry, wake up!"

He didn't, of course; he simply shrugged her away and started muttering something about everything always being his fault.

She looked at him, fear and dread filling her heart. For the first time in a long time, she felt completely helpless. She wanted to wake him up, but she didn't know how.

But she knew someone who would.

Not hesitating another moment, Hermione turned away from Harry and ran out of the room and to the next door. She raised her hand and knocked on it, not really caring if she woke her parents up.

"Ron!"

Her only answer was complete silence.

Shaking her head, Hermione didn't think twice about letting herself into Ron's room and hurrying over to the bed where he was fast asleep. He had kicked all of the covers off of him, and as Hermione looked down at him asleep in nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of boxers, she suddenly became quite apprehensive about waking him up.

But Harry...

Hermione glanced nervously behind her at the door, which had closed behind her when she entered the room. Confident that no one was going to walk in and think the worst, she carefully sat down beside him, taking full notice of the way the moonlight was coming in through the window across the room and falling across his face, making him look even paler than normal.

Taking in a shaking breath, she slowly lifted a hand to brush some of his hair away from his forehead. She let her hand linger in his hair for a moment, noticing for the first time how thick it had gotten. It was nice.

She gasped quietly when Ron reached up to swat at whatever had landed on his forehead. In his unconscious state, though, he somehow managed to cover her hand with his own and curl his long fingers under hers. Then, as the smallest hint of a smile crossed his lips, he mumbled something that made her heart speed up in an instant.

"Hermione..."

Hermione stared down at him intensely. He was very much asleep, and it wasn't as if she'd made her presence known to him verbally- it was, instead, almost as if he'd recognized her presence through his slumber.

It was incredible.

But as much as Hermione would have enjoyed continuing the little experiment (she couldn't help but get intrigued- curiosity was just her nature), she'd come to Ron's room for a specific reason.

And that took first precedent over everything else.

Rather reluctantly, she pulled her hand away from Ron's grasp and placed it against his shoulder. Shaking him as gently as possible, for she didn't want to startle him, she quietly called his name.

"Ron..."

He mumbled something incomprehensible, and Hermione bit down on her lower lip. Bending her body so that she could speak directly into his ear, she tried again. "Ron, come on. Wake up..."

"Hmm..." Ron frowned slightly but reluctantly let his eyes flutter open. After a second, he seemed to register half of what was going on. "Hermione?" his voice was gruff and sleepy, and he twisted up his forehead in confusion. Then all that once, he sat straight up and stared at her, fully awake. "What are you doing?"

Hermione was thankful for the darkness of his room because she was sure that it made her blush at least somewhat less noticeable. Not wanting him to get any ideas- especially the wrong ones- she swallowed and answered him. "It's Harry."

Ron's brow settled into concern, and he quickly asked for clarification. "What's wrong?"

"He's having a nightmare. And I can't get him to wake up." She twisted her hands in her lap nervously.

Ron raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed it, sighing softly. He shook his head before swinging his feet over the side of the bed and walking out of his bedroom. Hermione followed him into Harry's room, but she stopped in the doorway as Ron crossed the room to their other best friend's bed.

Harry was still tossing and turning rapidly from one side of the bed to the other. His covers were all tangled around him, and he was speaking quickly in a panicked voice.

"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to! Just stop! Please... Oh, God. I'm so sorry..."

Ron stood over him for a long moment, regarding him carefully before leaning down and gripping Harry's shoulders, holding him in place and preventing him from rolling out of the grasp.

Hermione listened as Ron spoke in a sharp, straightforward tone. "It's a dream, Harry. It's not real. Wake up."

Harry couldn't thrash about anymore, and at the sound of Ron's voice, his own voice turned from panicked to more of a whimpering, desperate tone.

It broke Hermione's heart.

"I'm sorry... I really... I didn't mean to... Mum..."

"It's not real, Harry." Ron continued to speak in the same firm tone.

Without a word, Hermione backed out of the doorway and into the hallway.

Moments later, when Ron exited the room and shut the door behind him, Hermione was leaned against the wall chewing on her thumbnail nervously.

"You shouldn't bite your nails," Ron admonished. "It's a horrid habit to break."

Hermione looked up at him strangely but lowered her finger from her mouth nonetheless. "Did you wake him up?"

Ron shook his head and glanced away. "He never wakes up."

"Is he okay?" Hermione was speaking quietly.

Nodding his head a little, Ron looked at Harry's shut door. "Yeah. He calmed down now. He'll be fine for the rest of the night- it only happens once."

"Does it happen every night?" The eeriness of the situation was making the question and answering process extremely awkward.

"Not every night." Ron didn't sound like he wanted to go into too much detail about the topic; Hermione supposed that he felt like he was betraying Harry's confidence or something. It was the same as it had been in Hogsmeade when he'd first told her about Harry's nightmares.

Hermione sighed and nodded, knowing that she shouldn't push the subject. But it still irked her that he thought he had to keep secrets from her; of course, it was also extremely admirable in a way.

"Want to get a cup of tea?" he asked nonchalantly.

Hermione nodded and followed him down the dark stairwell into the kitchen. She reached for the switch, light invaded the room on instant. She glanced for the first time since she'd first seen him sleeping at Ron's attire. He was still basically in his underwear, and she was dressed in nothing but a tank top and a cropped pair of pajama bottoms. The house seemed to be boiling, though, despite the December air outside. If anyone had walked in and seen them, she was sure that their assumptions would be the worst, and she blushed simply thinking about explaining this one away to her father.

"Why are you so red?" he questioned as he turned his back to her and started rummaging through the cabinets for the tea bags.

Hermione turned an even darker scarlet at his question, but she quickly shrugged and answered in what she hoped was a logically sounding answer. "I'm just hot."

"It is rather warm in here, isn't he?" He started the water boiling on the stove in the same way Hermione had taught him a few days before. "Can't you do anything about that?"

"We could turn down the heat, but my parents would probably wake up freezing. They're very cold-natured people."

Ron nodded, yawning. "Picked the wrong country to live in then, didn't they?"

"It could be worse," she admitted honestly. There was a long bout of silence as Ron waited for the tea to finish and Hermione sat at the table watching him. When it was finally ready, he poured it into two cups and set one in front of her before seating himself across the table from her.

They sipped at their tea, both avoiding the topic that had awaken them. It wasn't until Ron started speaking with a rather odd expression etched across his face that the silence was spoken.

"Did you know that Ginny used to have nightmares, too?"

Hermione looked up, both shocked that he had spoken and shocked by his question. "What? You mean when you guys were little?"

He shook his head. "No. After her first year- you know, with the whole diary thing."

She knew, of course, but it was still hard for her to fully comprehend the situation. She'd been petrified for so much of the time that she couldn't really picture what it had all been like. They'd told her story after story, of course- mostly gloating about Lockhart being a phony- but she'd never really grasped all the details completely. "She's never had any while I've been there."

"She doesn't get them anymore. I think she stopped when she went back to Hogwarts for her second year and realized that no one hated her." He grimaced. "But that first summer... It was awful."

"Her room is two floors below yours. Surely you couldn't hear her."

Ron shook his head. "Not from my room. But I knew because I found out on the third night back for holiday. I was sneaking downstairs because I wanted to nick something from the kitchen, but I stopped when I heard Mum's voice. Of course, I hid so she wouldn't see me, but I could see her. She was in Ginny's room, and the door was cracked so I could peek right in."

"Was she awake?"

"No, Mum was shaking her and calling her name. And Ginny was just lying completely still mumbling things like, 'Yes, Tom... I'm sorry, Tom... I will, Tom... I know, Tom... I didn't tell, Tom... You're my best friend, Tom..' " Ron broke away and looked up at Hermione. "Every sentence ended in the word 'Tom,' and she was just speaking in this cold, toneless voice. Like she was hypnotized or something. It was so creepy."

Hermione tried to picture it. Ginny had been so different in those years from the way she was now. She hardly spoke to anyone at all, and she was incredibly, incredibly small. Now, she was much taller than Hermione, but that hadn't come until a growth spurt over the past two years. The eleven year old Ginny had been the smallest girl in Gryffindor; the only person smaller had been Colin Creevey.

"It went on like that for I don't even know how long," Ron went on. "And then all of a sudden, she just let out this horrible scream and bolted straight up, sobbing worse than she had when she was six and George nearly let her drown in the pond." He didn't laugh or anything at the swimming memory, something Hermione was positive he'd found quite humorous when it had happened. "And I stood there for probably half an hour waiting for her to quit crying, but she didn't. Mum had her on her lap and was rocking her and trying to calm her down, but it wasn't working." He shook his head. "Finally, I just went back upstairs. I don't know when she stopped."

Hermione was creeped out just by the story. "Was that the only time you saw her have one?"

Ron frowned and shook his head. "No. The next night, I waited until everyone went to bed and then I snuck back downstairs and into her bedroom. I just sat up waiting, just to make sure it didn't happen again. But it did. It was at half-past three, nearly the same time it'd been the night before, and she started talking in her sleep again. I remember just staring at her for a really long time; her body was so rigid and stiff, and her voice was so... toneless... I half-expected Mum to come rushing in, but I guess Ginny wasn't be loud enough to wake her or something because she never came. And I just stood beside Ginny's bed watching her until she started crying. She was shaking so badly, she was trembling. And she looked up at me and just grabbed me. I almost yelled because she just yanked me down onto her bed and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe." He frowned a little. "And she'd never really done that before, you know? And then she started talking so fast that I could barely understand her. She was like, 'Ron, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I swear I didn't! I'm so sorry! And I'm sorry to Harry, too! But I can't tell him, I just can't! And I'm sorry to Hermione, too! She probably hates me! And Harry probably hates me! And you probably hate me! And everyone probably hates me! I'm sorry! I'm so stupid! I'm sorry!"

Hermione sucked in a short breath. She had never blamed Ginny for anything that had happened during their second year at Hogwarts. It wasn't Ginny's fault, and she knew that. It had never even crossed her mind that Ginny harbored so much guilt about it. "What did you do?" she asked quietly.

Ron shrugged. "I just sat there. I didn't know what to do. I mean, I was barely thirteen years old- how was I supposed to handle that?"

"So, what happened?"

"She finally fell back asleep. And then it happened the next night and the night after that and the night after that..."

"And you always went back?"

Ron nodded. "I knew it would happen at half past three, so I always got up in time to go downstairs for her. I had to. I felt too guilty not to."

"Why did you feel guilty? Because you couldn't get to her in the Chamber?" Hermione shook her head. "Ron, you couldn't help that."

Ron shook his own head. "That's not why I felt guilty." Hermione raised her eyebrows, and he went on. "I felt guilty because on the third night I saw her having those nightmares, she was saying, 'My brothers are awful to me, Tom... They hate me, Tom... I hate them, Tom... They tease me all the time, Tom... They're so mean to me, Tom... Ron is the worst, Tom... He says I bother Harry too much, Tom... I don't mean to, Tom... I can't help it, Tom... He told Harry, Tom... I thought Ron was my best friend, Tom... He's not, you are, Tom..."

Hermione immediately looked away from Ron. His eyes had gotten incredibly cloudy all of a sudden, and she didn't want to look at him.

"I made her do it," Ron said airily. "The whole thing was my fault. I shouldn't have teased her. It was all my fault."

Hermione forced herself to look back across the table and was surprised to see Ron staring quite determinedly into his cup of tea, as if he was working very hard at Divination homework. She tried to draw his attention back. "Ron..."

"But she was right, you know?" Ron went right on. "I was supposed to be her best friend; I always had been before. But I completely ignored her from the time Harry got to our house in the middle of the summer all the way until we got back home after the year was finished. You know, unless it was to tell her not to bother Harry or to tell her to shut up or something."

"Ron, you were twelve," Hermione said seriously. "How were you expected to act?"

"Better than I did," Ron answered just as seriously. "Do you know that Mum even gave me a huge long lecture when I first got home from my first year? I think she was worried that I was going to get a big head over the whole Philosopher's Stone thing. And she told me that it was wonderful that I had made friends but to make sure that I didn't forget about everyone and everything else in the process. She even specifically said, 'Ginny is going to need you to watch out for her next year. Make sure you're there to take care of her. Don't let me down.' And what did I do? I was so not there to take care of her that I forced her into becoming possessed by a diary and nearly killing people." He looked up then and said, "Hermione, she could have killed you. And it would have all been my fault."

"She didn't," Hermione said immediately. "I'm fine, aren't I? And it wasn't your fault. And it wasn't hers, either. It was Tom Riddle's fault and Lucius Malfoy's fault. It wasn't anyone else's."

Ron scowled. "I'm going to get him for that one day." He was being so serious that Hermione grew quite apprehensive. "One day I'm going to make him pay for doing that."

"Ron..."

"I'm serious," he answered instantly. "I'm going to get him and his little prick of a son. One day."

Hermione was chilled by the tone of his voice. "Ron, don't talk like that."

"No," he answered just as seriously. "They deserve whatever they get. For that and for everything else that they've ever done. What goes around comes around."

Hermione felt her own good amount of hatred towards the Malfoys, but as far as she could tell, it was nothing compared to what Ron felt. To her, Malfoy was simply a brainless idiot who was horribly spoiled. True, he called her several unflattering names, but she didn't allow it to get to her because she knew that he was simply just stupid. But Malfoy had always had a way of getting to Ron in a way that he couldn't succeed with herself or Harry. Hermione knew that Ron had issues with his family's financial situation, and she knew that most of his anger at Malfoy carefully masked the embarrassment that he was feeling every time Malfoy called him poor or made some rude comment about the state of his clothes or supplies. And Ron was so flamboyant with his feelings that Hermione was sometimes scared of what he would do to Malfoy if no one was around to hold him back and stop him.

"Ron, you have to ignore them."

"There comes a point where I can't ignore it, Hermione," he said sharply. "When I think about everything that Malfoy has said and done over the years... And then I think about what his dad did to my little sister." He twisted his face in anger. "I just hate them."

Hermione took another sip of her tea and looked away.

One day things would be different. They just had to be.

************************************* Stay tuned for what's to come!

A Christmas Eve party with all of the Grangers work associates, friends, and family... Christmas day at the Burrow... A snowstorm... New Year's Eve... And much more!!!!

Please let me know what you think!