Surprises Under the Mistletoe

Hermione Granger woke up from a deep sleep on Saturday morning, the day before Christmas. She was about to get out of bed, but couldn't seem to find the strength to move her legs. As a result, she lay in bed thinking of the presents she had gotten for everybody.

She had gotten Ginny a mood wristwatch from a muggle store, a watch Ginny was bound to love. It was silver, with a face that changed color according to your mood. The hands, numbers, band, and overall frame remained silver every time the colour changed, but the watch face adjusted to match your mood. Hermione had gotten it because Ginny had been complaining recently that her watch had stopped, and she didn't have the time to go to Hogsmeade to get a new one. She was positive that Ginny would absolutely adore it. Hermione knew, however, that muggle mood-changing items weren't very accurate, so she had charmed the watch herself to make it 100 percent fit to a person's mood.

Harry had been a bit harder to shop for, but eventually Hermione had found something for him. Harry would receive a book from her (naturally). This wasn't, however, any ordinary book. It was entitled A Complete Reference Guide to Quidditch, and it was, indeed, complete. It magically updated itself every time something in real-life Quidditch changed. For example, if a team got a new player because one got permanently injured, the book would continuously update itself on the condition of the hurt player. This self-update system would continue until the team acquired their new player. The book would then erase the name of the wounded player and put it in another section of the book dealing with, for instance, players who had left teams due to injuries. The blank space left in the book would then be filled with the name of the new player.

And then there was Ron. Ron. Hermione loved the sound of his name. She loved everything about him, and had since her second year, when he had hurled slugs on her behalf. True, the only reason he was the one vomiting slugs was because his wand had turned against him, but that wasn't the point. It was the principle of the thing. The hex had initially been intended for Malfoy, for calling Hermione a mudblood. Although his wand was taped together after being broken earlier that year and wasn't likely to have worked in the first place, Ron had attempted to curse Malfoy anyway. He had good intentions, but his spell had backfired, proven by the bucket full of slugs that Hagrid had acquired as food for one or another of his various pets and, later, his class projects. Despite the results, it had been an undeniably sweet gesture on Ron's part. In the years to follow, he seemed to be more offended when people called Hermione names than she had ever been, but she had always taken this as a display of brotherly affection and protectiveness.

Not to say, of course, that she hadn't tried to change the brotherly feelings to something more than that. She had – through subtle clues such as holding his hand for comfort rather than Harry's, kissing him on the cheek when she saw him again after every summer holiday, and other such gestures of affection – tried valiantly to make Ron see that Hermione was, in fact, a girl who did, in fact, like him as more than just a friend. When he hadn't seen this, however, her patience had begun to wear thin, resulting in their post-Yule Ball fight in the middle of the Gryffindor common room.

Hermione had been sure that, through her words in that particular row, she had clearly communicated how she felt about him and how she had wanted him to feel about her. Ron, however, had remained as thickheaded as ever and didn't seem to comprehend a word of what she had said, much less the meaning behind it. She had been thinking about telling him straight up how she felt, but was afraid he might laugh at her. Even with the best intentions at heart, you never did quite know what he was going to do to express his feelings.

For Christmas, she had gotten Ron a book much like Harry's, but Ron's copy contained everything you could ever, ever want to know about one particular team, which just happened to be Ron's favorite: the Chudley Cannons. Albeit Hermione knew he would like the book, it did nothing to calm her nerves.

Ron Weasley woke up extremely late that same Saturday morning, feeling tired and cranky. He tried to focus on remembering what he had gotten everyone and making sure he hadn't missed anybody, but his mind never left one person: Hermione Granger. The wonderful, beautiful, determined, out-spoken, tough-minded Hermione Granger. He loved her, always had. He got tingles when she touched him, and felt warm all over when he looked at her and she looked back. He had gotten her a locket made of white gold, her favorite precious metal, with a picture of him on one side and her on the other. He planned to give it to her the next day, after confessing his feelings for her. On the back of the locket, the words Always and Forever were engraved in tiny, elegant script.
The next day, Christmas, Ron awoke at a time he thought was early, early morning, eagerly awaiting his presents. However, it was much later than he thought: it was 10:30, and everyone was down in the common room already. When he got to the foot of the stairs leading down from the boy's dorms, out of breath and flushed from sprinting down at the realization of the time, he saw that Hermione had apparently also only just gotten up.

'Well,' he thought, 'at least I'm not the only one who decided to sleep in a bit.'

"Mornin' 'Mione," he said, as the two simultaneously reached the point where the two small flights of stairs from the dormitories merged into one large flight leading down to the common room. They met up in the middle and walked the rest of the way down the stairs together.

"Good morning, Ron," she replied cheerfully. "Happy Christmas!"

"Happy Christmas to you, too!" Ron said as he and Hermione made their way to one of the couches and sat down.

"So, whatcha get me for Christmas?" asked Ron innocently.

"Well, I forgot to bring all of my presents for people down with me, so you'll just have to wait."

"Aww, you're no fun," he answered, pouting.

"Shut up, Ron," said Hermione, grinning. "I didn't, and still don't, see any packages in your hands, so you shouldn't be one to talk." After a slight pause, she continued. "Hey, I wonder where Harry is? Have you seen him this morning?"

"No, I haven't, actually," replied Ron. "I wanted to wish him Happy Christmas, but he doesn't seem to be here. Why? Have you seen him yet?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen him either. Is he in your dormitory?" asked Hermione.

"No, I was the only one there when I woke up."

"That's odd," said Hermione. "Oh, well. I'm sure we'll see him later."

"Yeah," said Ron, "then we can ask him where he's been all morning."

During this exchange between Ron and Hermione, Harry had come down the stairs after having…relieved himself. On his way down, when he was almost at the bottom, Harry had "tripped" noiselessly, without so much as a thud. After executing this extremely graceful fall, which had gone completely unnoticed by Ron or Hermione, Harry rolled with the poise and grace of a gymnast and landed, conveniently, right behind the couch on which the two lovebirds just happened to be sitting (A/N: Hmmm…what an interesting coincidence!).

"Wingardium leviosa," whispered Harry under his breath, pointing to some mistletoe he had bought the previous winter in a muggle shop. Ron and Hermione had been beating around the bush for long enough, and Harry had decided that it was up to him to bring all this to an end. He slowly levitated the mistletoe to a height of about two feet above where Ron and Hermione were sitting, and subsequently jumped out from his hiding place, heedless of the very possible and very high scare-factor of his sudden appearance.

"Look, you guys!" he exclaimed with extremely fake surprise. "You're sitting under some mistletoe! I wonder how that could have gotten there?" he continued, making it painfully clear to Ron, Hermione, and all the other occupants of the room that he had been the one to put it there.

"I'm sitting under a what-now?" asked Ron, the confused look on his face providing everybody in the common room with some obvious entertainment, if the snickers and giggles coming from all corners of the room were anything to go by.

"Mistletoe," explained Hermione. "It's a muggle tradition. If two people of the opposite sex get caught under it, they have to kiss each other."

"I see," said Ron simply.

Hermione blushed and looked down. "You don't have to, though," she mumbled. "It's just for fun," she said, earning her a number of extremely loud 'boos' coming from each and every one of the many mouths in the crowded common room.

"Come on, Hermione! Don't be such a spoil sport!" shouted Seamus Finnigan in his distinct Irish brogue.

"Yeah, Hermione!" shouted Dean Thomas, Seamus' best friend. "Ron wants some action!"

"Yeah, Hermione, come on!" shouted everyone else in the common room. Hermione blushed again and looked back at Ron, who was smirking at her.

"What?" she asked, confused.

He answered by leaning down and placing his lips on hers. If Hermione thought love was the warm feelings and tingles she had around Ron before, then she couldn't even begin to describe what this was. As soon as his surprisingly soft lips had touched hers, the tingles had increased tenfold. Now, as his tongue was skating across her lips and asking for permission to enter, she felt even more tingles, which turned into a sort of electric shock when she parted them, allowing him to explore.

After some minutes of kissing her crush of four years, she realized that despite having previously been oblivious to everything except Ron, there were, in fact, other people in the room. Hermione was made painfully aware of that fact at hearing wolf whistles and hoots from the occupants – mostly the boys – of the common room. She broke the kiss and looked up at Ron, who looked slightly embarrassed, though at the same time flushed and happy. Hermione thought he looked sweet like that, in a humorous way, and would have told him so, had she not been positive her face was a mirror of his.

"Ron, we really should stop," she said, trying to step away, but realizing that she couldn't. During their little snogging session, Hermione had unconsciously brought her hands up around Ron's neck and had woven her fingers into the flames of his hair. He, she just realized, had one hand behind her head with his fingers entwined in her hair, while the other hand was tightly wrapped around her waist in a protective and possessive manner, preventing her from going anywhere. When she tried to step away, Ron just pulled her closer to him, so that the fraction of an inch of space previously between them was now gone.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because the entire common room is watching us," was Hermione's reply.

"So?"

"So the whole school will be talking about it by dinner," she said half-heartedly.

"Well then," Ron said, head bent so close that she could feel his lips brushing her own as he spoke, "let's give them more than five minutes of conversation."

With that reply, Ron bent his head the last few millimeters and captured her lips in a long, slow, deep kiss, all thoughts of presents forgotten.

Thank you guys I so I much for your awesome reviews! If you liked this story this much, I'm sure you'll also enjoy the sequel, Wake Up, a one-shot fic about how Harry and Ginny get together.

Also, if you're going to flame, that's fine by me. If you don't like my story, feel free to tell me so. But please, if you do decide to tell me that you didn't enjoy my story, tell me why you don't like it so that I can improve my writing. Don't just say, "I didn't like it, sorry." If you could please put some reasoning behind your criticism, and possibly some pointers on how you think I would be able to improve my writing in the future, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you again for your support, reviews, and inspiration.

-Lia