A/n: Thanks, guys, I got great feedback for the last chapter! I'm glad you guys liked it. I hope you'll like this chapter as much. Sorry that it took so long to update but school has been taking up a lot of my time.
Dedication: This chapter is dedicated to Figgy, who has put up with my obsessions and tears through the years and she still has her hairnet on. And to Padfoot, who has never given me a prankfest for being so damn "loony." I love you guys.
Disclaimer: Still don't own this...but if I get my grubby hands on it, I'll letcha know! Not that my hands are grubby.
Chapter 8: Chickens and Conflicts"So...what d'you wanna do?" Ron said, staring pointlessly out the window with his cheek plastered against the rough wood of the kitchen table. Ginny had just left for Privet Drive, which didn't please him one bit. He kept imagining his little sister and Harry...together. It was enough to make anyone shudder. He had hoped that by slamming his head continuously on the kitchen table he would rid himself of the horrid images. It didn't work. It just gave him a headache and a sensational way to look like an ass in front of Hermione.
Which made him think that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea that Ginny was away.
Not that he wanted to make an ass of himself in front of Hermione, but, given the circumstances, they were spending the day alone. And, as he had come to discover the previous year, being alone with Hermione wasn't quite as mortifying and downright unnerving as he pictured it would be. It was actually sort of...nice. He could even say some rational things without stuttering and looking very similar to a baboon's bum with his incessant blushing. No, he was really quite normal. Well, as normal as he could be around a girl like Hermione.
"....don't you think?" He heard Hermione's voice as a distant whisper in his reverie. He realized he hadn't listened to anything she had said before "don't you think?" He cursed himself mentally and said, "Er...sure...?" Even though he couldn't see her, he could tell she was giving him one of her pointed, annoyed looks. He held up a finger in front of what he hoped was her face. "Hey! Don't blow up on me, okay? I'm the one who's being traumatized by images of my sister and my best friend snogging." He shuddered.
Hermione slapped his finger down. "Sit up, or next time you'll put that finger up my nose."
Ron raised his head to look at her. "Ew," he said, making a face. "Who knows what could be lurking in there!"
The sides of Hermione's lips twitched as she kicked him under the table. "Very funny, genius." She rolled her eyes in a would-be irritated way and said, "Well, like I was saying while you weren't listening, I think we should sit outside. It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, we're alive!"
Ron raised an eyebrow. "So?" He sniggered. "I'm just kidding," he said, grinning even more at the exasperated look on her face. "Okay, fine, we'll sit outside and breathe in the fresh scent of nature and be at one with all its beauty."
"Now you're mocking me. I can already tell you're mocking me."
"You're getting so good at that!" He grinned. "Aww, come on, why are you in such a pissy mood? Honestly, you're such a girl."
She narrowed her eyes. "All right. Have a good time spending your day alone because I'm not joining you." She stood up and stomped across the room to the kitchen door. Having lived at the Burrow for so long, Ron saw that it was locked, but he decided not to tell Hermione this when she didn't notice. She grabbed the doorknob and turned. When the door didn't open, she glared at it and tugged, making the door rattle. It did not, however, open. She kicked the door and sighed. Then she unlocked it and went out, slamming it behind her. Ron laughed and followed.
He hated to admit she was right. It was a gorgeous day out. He had just ruined it, unfortunately, by pissing her off. He ran to catch up with her and when he did, he grabbed both of her arms from behind and tugged her back. Again, without having to face her, he knew what she was doing; rolling her eyes.
"Ron, you push my buttons and then you expect me to be all happy and perky and friendly. You piss me off sometimes."
"Fine, okay, I'm sorry." He twisted her around to face him, her arms tangled around his. "See?" He gave her the saddest blue eyes he could muster and saw how it worked almost instantly. She nodded and said, "All right, you win. But I swear, if you piss me off one more time today—"
"You'll force me to take Millicent Bullstrode to the next ball or something horrible like that. Yes, I get it." He grinned and let go of her arms so they could walk. "Wanna go sit under that tree?" He pointed to the largest tree in his back yard, a shady oak tree. Hermione seemed satisfied and so they walked over and sat against its trunk.
Silence. Awkward silence. Ron hated when it snuck up on them like this. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was uncomfortable and stupid. He fiddled with a piece of grass and slipped into thought mode.
He couldn't help but wonder when he was going to tell her. He should just come out with it one of these days. After all that was happening, he might not be around much longer. How could he be sure that tomorrow he'd be able to march up to her and tell her that she had been the object of his affection for the last three years, possibly four? He couldn't, that was the problem. He had to be a man and just say it.
But what if she was repulsed by the very prospect of it? What if she found him revolting and undesirable? What if she preferred Krum? What if she didn't even like him back??
That was possibly the worst aspect of it. That he would be rejected. He should have told her sooner, long before it got so out of hand. Now, all he could think about sometimes was Hermione, everything about her, from the way her eyes flashed when she was angry to the genuine laugh she gave when he said something amusing. He hated her for making him think about her so damn much. If only she—
"You know, I don't understand why you don't do excellent in school." Her voice again snapped him out of his deep thinking. He looked at her in mild surprise and said, "Huh?"
She chuckled. "You don't even realize it, do you? Heh...you think so much, Ron. I swear, you never stop thinking. That's why you drown me out so much. If you only used that brainpower on your schoolwork, you'd do so much better than you do now."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No! I—um, I was really proud of your O.W.L. scores. You and Harry were slacking off so much that I thought you would do awful on the test." Ron glared playfully at her. She smiled and added, "No offense." He grinned to let her know he understood and she continued. "Well, you proved me wrong. And I realized that I had forgotten one thing I said along time ago, back in first year. In magic, logic matters. And, being such a master chess player—"she allowed him a moment to puff out his chest in pride "—I guess you do have enough logic to come through when the time is necessary."
"Damn right." He ran a hand through his hair, making it sort of stick out in the back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bite back a smile. Smirking, he decided to be bold—to some extent, anyway. "Doesn't my hair look great like this?" He gave her a smug smile and she burst out laughing.
"Er, yeah, absolutely ravishing."
They shared a brief moment of laughter, but it was soon replaced by the deafening silence once more. He tried not to let his head turn in her direction (because then it would have been obvious that he was staring). He pretended to find a blade of grass to his left (where she was sitting) and used it as an excuse to tilt his head in a manner that left her in full view.
She was gazing through the leaves on the tree, looking through the gaps at the wimpy white clouds floating across the sky. A few rays of sunshine came through the spaces between the leaves. With the light hitting her face, he noticed something he hadn't noticed before. She had freckles. They were tiny brown points dotting the bridge of her nose. She blinked and her eyes moved slightly to the left, in direct contact with a ray of sun. He couldn't help the smile that played on his lips. Her eyes looked different. They were a lighter brown color, more of a shocking hazel that made her black pupils stand out. He was mesmerized.
"Your eyes look really cool in the sun."
He had said it without thinking. His eyes widened as she turned, taken by surprise. She moved her lips soundlessly for a moment and looked away. He saw her blink rapidly, as if she were trying to decide if he had been joking, but she managed to say, "Um...thank you."
How could he get out of this? "Well 'cause--'cause...um, they look light brown and um...I..."
She smiled. "I get it, Ron. Thanks for noticing. I always thought my eyes were kind of plain but I hadn't noticed how they look in the sun. I'll take your word for it."
He nodded. Unfortunately, he found himself at the end of the conversation yet again, and the silence screamed at him. How come it was so weird right now? Last year they had spent plenty of time alone together. Maybe it was that they knew they would be spending the entire day alone.
"Tell me something interesting or I'm going inside to do extra homework." Hermione was staring expectantly at him, waiting for him to interest her. He raised an eyebrow. "Why do I have to amuse you? Let's do this: you tell me something about you I don't know and I'll tell you something about me that you don't know."
She grinned. "Okay. Well...I don't know how to ride a bicycle." He could tell she had anticipated his hysterical laughter even before it had burst from his mouth. He couldn't contain it; it might be rude, but it was too funny to ignore.
Between gasps of laughter, he said, "Hermione, I knew you sucked at sports but...oh, this is precious." He didn't know if he was making her angry, but he frankly just wanted to laugh. He hadn't been able to laugh like this in such a long time.
She slapped him on the arm. He looked up, worried that maybe she was really pissed, but she was laughing too. "Yeah, I was just too scared to ever try it. I mean, it kind of...scared me." She allowed him to have some more laughing time before she continued. "All of the kids in my neighborhood would race down slopes without even holding on to the handles. And sometimes they wouldn't even be sitting on the bike! It just scared me, how careless they were."
Ron kept sniggering. He was loving this day so far. "All right, I'll keep my end of the compromise. Since you can't ride a bike—"he sniggered "—I'll tell you why I can ride one. When I was like 5 years old, my mum had lots of chicken. I mean lots of chickens. She had more chickens than there were gnomes, so you understand what I mean. The thing was, she loved those chickens. I'm not sure if you know this, but Mum has a problem; when she obsesses over something, she goes all out. That'll help you understand why we're having potatoes every night for dinner. Anyway, she was obsessed with those chickens. She let them sleep on blankets at night. It was kind of creepy. So one afternoon I was trying out Percy's bike. Dad had just un-bewitched it and brought it home for Percy, who was being a right little helper." He rolled his eyes. "I wanted to try it, so I ran around the backyard—and the chickens—trying to learn how to ride the thing. I was doing pretty well...until I ran over one of Mum's favorite chickens." Hermione grinned. She had a feeling this story was going to be much more amusing than hers. Ron nodded and continued. "I checked up on it. The damn thing was dead. I knew it was only a matter of minutes—maybe seconds—before my mother's instinct told her that one of her precious creatures had hit the dust. I got on the bike and tried my best to ride out of the backyard. Unfortunately for me—"
"You couldn't ride the bike and your mum found out before you could run away," Hermione said, biting back a grin.
"Exactly," Ron said in a would-be tragic voice. "She came out to make me wash up for dinner and saw me standing beside her dead chicken. I will never forget how much I feared for my life at that moment. If Mum had had a neon sign above her head, it would have been flashing 'DIE, RON, DIE.' So I jumped on that bike and pedaled like hell. I actually rode it, that's how scared I was. Mum followed me for a few minutes and she got tired so she quit. I pedaled for like 20 minutes, till I was far away from here." He gave her a triumphant grin.
Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. She raised a finger and said, "Wait a minute. What good did it do that you ran away? I mean, you would have to come back sometime and then—"
"Yeah, then I would get it. But I was only 5! I couldn't really think too clearly. So when I stopped to rest after riding for 20 minutes, I realized I had to go back home. And I did. The results have scarred me for life."
"What did your mum do? She's a forgiving person, I'm sure her punishment wasn't too horrible."
"No, Hermione, you don't understand, this was her chicken. I mean, it was an accident that I ran over it but...well, Mum saw red. She did the worst thing possible to punish me. She forbade me to eat any sort of candy for two months."
Hermione blinked as Ron held his head in his hands. Apparently, such a punishment was torture for him. "The worst part was, my brothers didn't even try to help. Fred and George would eat Chocolate Frogs right in front of me all the time." He shook his head. "It was the scariest two months of my childhood." He grinned. "Just laugh already."
She burst into giggles, laughing so hard that tears spurted out of her eyes. "You ran over her chicken!!" She kept on laughing for a while, clutching her stomach and wiping the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. After a while she said, "Oh, I really needed that...thanks, Ron." She leaned her head on his shoulder as she caught her breath.
Ron, however, had his breath knocked out the minute she did that.
It was such a simple act that made him feel like he was on fire. She kept her head on his shoulder even after she had stopped laughing. Her hair was falling over her face, preventing Ron from seeing her. Slowly, he pulled his hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear. He let his hand rest on her warm cheek for a second before bringing it back down.
When she did things like these, it felt like he had already told her. It felt like she felt the same way. It felt perfect. But he was sucked back into reality, knowing that she only did this because he was her best friend, and even though she might love him, she wasn't in love with him.
Not that he was saying he was in love with her. Only idiots fell in love. He remembered once when Charlie had come home heart-broken. He had been expecting to spend the rest of his life with his Hogwarts girlfriend, until, on his graduation day, she told him that she had never really loved him. So he had come home and locked himself in his room for a week, moping, until he finally came out and out of the blue decided he was going to work in Romania. Ron guessed Charlie had understood that love was for fools; look what it had done to him, Charlie Weasley, who had always been composed and smooth. It had destroyed him, even if it was for only a short while. When Ron saw that happen to his brother, he vowed he would not fall in love that easily, if he fell in love at all. Love was a deception of a person's imagination. And he wasn't going to let it happen to him.
But the way things were going with Hermione, he didn't know what to expect.
He looked at her hand, so small in her lap. He noticed something; she was wearing a ring. She hadn't been wearing that last year. He picked her hand up and brought it close to his eyes to look at the ring on her ring finger.
"Oh," he heard her say softly. She lifted her head from his shoulder and brought it closer, so they could both she the ring. She brought her hand up to where his held hers and touched the ring.
"You didn't wear a ring last year," he said. His tone wasn't accusatory or angry. He was just asking where she had gotten it. Although, inside, he was desperate to know if Krum had sent it to her before she'd come to the Burrow.
She smiled. "This summer, before I came over here, my mum gave me this ring. It used to be her. Her mum gave it to her when she was my age. It's not extravagant or expensive, but it's beautiful, and it has so much sentimental value. I love it." Ron noticed her smile was sad instead of joyful.
"What's wrong?" he asked softly, eyebrows furrowed.
She shrugged. "Whenever I look at this ring now, I think of my mum, and that makes me sort of melancholy. I mean, it makes me realize that I'm not around her and Daddy so much anymore. And with everything that's going on, I'm afraid I—or they—might not be around for much longer. I only spend a few weeks with them a year. They don't know what's going on in my life half the time. It's just hard." She sighed. "Trust me, Ron, you're lucky to have a family that is so close to you and loves you so much. I know my parents love me, but I'm just not around long enough to feel it as much as I'm sure you do." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at him. "Never take that for granted."
"I won't." He was quite for a moment, and then thought of something. "But you should know that my family loves you and Harry as much as they love me. You guys are already part of the family, even if we're not necessarily related." Not yet. He grimaced inwardly. Shut up, shut up, shut up!
She gave him a small smile. "Thanks."
"Hey, you know what makes me relax? If you can find a swing set anywhere, go on it. When you're swinging, close your eyes. Or you can just sit there with your eyes closed and let the wind sway you. You forget about everything. It's great."
Before he could say anything else, she had thrown her arms around him. He patted her back and sat there stiffly before he actually relaxed into the hug, letting her keep her arms around his neck and her head buried into his shoulder. When she pulled back, she bit her lip and said, "Ron, can I ask you something?"
"Yeah, anything."
"Okay, well, you know how we were telling each other something that we didn't know? I was just wondering...is there anything you wouldn't tell me?"
Ron was taken aback by her question. How could he answer that? He could tell he was holding her breath. He wasn't about to lie to her, so he answered. "Um..." He averted his eyes. "There's one thing I wouldn't tell you." He knew her face expressed disappointment even though he didn't dare to look at her. "It's not because I don't want to tell you, because I do...it's just that I can't tell you. Does that make any sense?"
He looked up to see her staring at her hands. She shrugged and said, "Sure."
"Hey!" he said, and she looked at him. He took a deep breath and said, "You'll know, okay? You will. I promise."
Before she could acknowledge what he had said, Mrs. Weasley called, "Ron, could you be a dear and help me with lunch?"
Ron looked at Hermione for a few seconds before saying, "I'll be right there, Mum!" He stood up, giving Hermione's hand a squeeze, and walked towards the house, feeling more confused than he had the day before.
END POV
Hermione sat in the back of Mr. Weasley's borrowed car, staring out the window. She couldn't figure out what Ron had meant. Maybe he had developed an interest in someone—maybe one of her roommates!—and he didn't want to tell her. Or what if...but could he...maybe...could it be possible that maybe he had an interest in her and was too shy to tell her? That was really wishful thinking.
He was sitting right beside her at the moment. Mr. Weasley had asked if they wanted to come with him to pick up Ginny from Privet Drive and she had accepted, hoping to keep her mind off the happening of that afternoon. She was trying to relax, but she felt even more awkward having Ron sitting next to her and being swept in complete silence. They hadn't said a word to each other since they had left the house. She wasn't angry, she was just confused.
"All right, you two, we're here," Mr. Weasley said, pulling into the Dursleys' driveway. "Could you two go get Ginny for me? I'd rather not speak to those people."
Without answering, Ron and Hermione stepped out of the car, not bothering to tell Mr. Weasley that the Dursleys probably weren't home. Avoiding eye contact, they both walked towards the front door and tried ringing the doorbell at the same time. When their hands collided with each other, Hermione pulled hers back and let Ron push the little button.
They stood waiting for someone to open the door. After a few minutes, Ginny pulled open the door, standing next to a grim looking Harry. Hermione exchanged a worried glance with Ron, forgetting all about their afternoon talk. Something was wrong with Harry, and they both knew it.
Ginny bit her lip. She took Harry's hand and said, "Thanks for today, Harry." She leaned up and gave him a quick kiss. Hermione managed to hear her whisper, "And I hope you feel better." Ginny stepped out of the house and stood next to Ron, looking at the floor. Hermione looked at Harry and then at her, then back at Harry. She wasn't about to let this go without asking about it first.
"Harry, what's wrong?"
She distinctly saw him roll his eyes. "Nothing."
Shaking her head, she said, "No, I can read you like an open book. Something's wrong and I want you to tell me what it is."
"Hermione—"This had come from Ron, and his tone was full of warning.
"Ron, this is the reason he was so temperamental last year! Because he kept everything bottled up! Do you want him to keep it up? Not only is it stressful to him, it's stressful to us! Half the time we don't know what to because he won't tell us! I'm tired of it." She turned around. "Harry, can you please—"
"You are so nosy!" Hermione was taken aback by Harry's sudden shouting. "Last year all you did was lecture me about what I should and shouldn't do! You can't stop trying to control everything I do! I'm tired of it. I was pissed off at you but I put up with it because I thought sooner or later you would cut it out and go back to being my friend instead of an organizer. But you obviously still want me to do everything your way, because you always think you're right. That's it, Hermione. I've dealt with you long enough but I'm tired. Good-bye." And with that he slammed the door in her face.
Had he really just said what she thought he said? What did this mean? Hermione felt her heart stop and her blood freeze. Unless she was very much mistaken (and she usually wasn't), Harry was actually breaking ties with her. Just because she was concerned with what was happening in his life. He didn't want her to worry about his life and, what was worse, he didn't want her to be a part of his life.
Ron and Ginny stared open mouthed as Hermione gazed at the spot where Harry had been a moment before. She looked like she was in a trance. She was completely idle and she wasn't even blinking. After a few minutes, she nodded slowly. When she turned around, Ron noticed that her lower lip was trembling. He could tell she was trying very hard not to burst into tears. She bit her lip and then said, in a shaky voice, "Come on, you guys." Slowly, she made her way back to the car. Ron and Ginny glanced at each other.
This day had been nothing like they expected.
A/n: Well, what do you think? Please review!