A/N: Okay, sorry this took me so long to get together. I had a bit of trouble writing it and I still think it has some weak spots. I didn't fully explain everything, but not to worry, all will be good and wonderful. It should only be a few more chapters and then the action and adventure will start up. I PROMISE! *grins* Anyway, ENJOY!
Dedicated to my very best friends because reminiscing is what we do best.
Chapter 8
~Ron~
"This is a bit drastic Hermione." I whispered as she shook Harry out of an unrestful sleep.
"I *told* you I would have some fun, but I needed time to think of something. And since I don't have fun too often according to SOME people," she gave me a withering look as Harry began to stir, "I thought I'd better make this one good. So, we are going to sneak down to the kitchen and snag ourselves a midnight snack. And it will be something very tasty and *very* bad for us. How does that sound?" she looked mischievous and proud. Just the way I liked her.
"We are going to sneak down?" I asked, trying to flirt with her just a bit. It was late and I was in a good mood. So sue me.
"Yes, sneak." she said, standing up straight and stepping closer to me as Harry rubbed his eyes and reached for his glasses.
"And we will be retrieving food?" I folded my arms and leaned in so that we were an intimate distance apart.
"We will be." she said, crossing her arms in a return gesture. My heart beat a little faster, realizing that she was flirting back.
"Just because we can?" I grinned.
"Just. Because." her mouth played with each word and I couldn't tear my eyes from her face.
"And then maybe we can send Harry to bed and stay up for a little while...like we did the other night?" I asked, in a much quieter, less abrasive tone. There was a note of yearning in my voice.
She smirked, an expression that was reserved solely for these moments between us, "I think something like that could probably be arranged."
"You know, as much as I like to wake up to this verbal sparring," our heads whipped around and Harry was wide awake and stretching. "I can't avoid the need to ask, WHAT THE BLOODY *HELL* ARE YOU DONG HERE!?"
Harry's harsh whisper resonated through both of our heads, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood up beside us.
"We have come here with a proposition. What say, we hop under the invisibility cloak and sneak down to the kitchen for a midnight snack?" she smiled and crossed her arms defiantly.
"Is the HEAD GIRL asking me to partake in blatant rule breaking? Just for fun?" Harry asked her, feigning astonishment.
She shook her head up and down, Harry smiled, and a silent agreement was made.
"Yes! I'll get the cloak." I said, tip-toeing to the end of Harry's bed, I started rummaging around in his trunk for the invisibility cloak.
"So, how are we all going to get under that thing? You know, we aren't twelve anymore." Harry said.
"Well, we are going to get under it as best as we can and if we get can't avoid getting caught, I'm going to jump out of the cloak and pretend that 'the head girl' just caught you two sneaking down to the library to return a VERY overdue book, which you have forgotten in your haste. It's the perfect plan. The only person who we can NOT let catch us, is Snape. I can't get us out of that even if I tried. Now...what are you two grinning at?" she caught our amused snickers.
"It's just..." my grin widened as I tried to explain, "...you can't even break the rules without a well-thought-out schedule."
She put her hands on her hips and gave me her most withering look. *Ohh man, I can see the storm clouds in her eyes.*
I tried in vain to dig my way out of trouble, "I didn't mean that as a bad thing. It's just...kind of..." I stuttered and searched for an explanation.
"I think he's trying to say that he thinks it's cute. I know I'm quite partial to your organized ways. It makes things interesting."Harry clapped me on the shoulder, "Isn't that right mate?"
I nodded sheepishly and blushed. I would probably have used a stronger word than just *cute*, but I still wasn't quite ready to touch that yet, "Yeah, things wouldn't be the same without you, you know."
I smiled and I could feel the heat crawling up my face. She smiled back, bashfully and gave me that *look*.
"Come on you two great saps. We need to get good and tired so we can all have a brilliant, lazy weekend." Harry took the cloak from me and we all tried to quietly get under it. First, we tried standing straight up and as close as possible, Harry and I in front and behind Hermione, but my legs stuck out. Then we tried stooping down, but that made it impossible to move. Finally, lying in a heap of silent giggles, we tried one last attempt. On hands and knees, side by side with the cloak draped over us. This worked all the way down the boy's staircase and into the middle of the common room floor before we were all laughing so hard we couldn't move any further without a limb popping out or one of us poking another. Finally we abandoned the idea and collapsed, lying face up on the floor, next to each other.
"You know, I have some chocolate frogs in my trunk from the train ride." Harry said.
"And I have a few boxes of Bertie Bot's beans in my trunk. A Birthday gift." I said, crossing my arms and sighing.
"And my mum sent me some muggle sweets last week." she said, and tossed me a secret smile, for I was nudging her playfully.
There was a baited silence, "Meet you two by the fire in five minutes, then?" Harry asked, amusement in his voice.
"Yeah." we agreed together and without any time to think about it, we were all heading toward our respective stashes of sweets. Walking back down the steps with Harry, I saw that Hermione had beaten us back to the fire.
In the dark of the boy's dormitory, I hadn't really looked at her closely. But in the firelight, she...glowed. Her hair was massive and her face was pleasant.
"Lovely, isn't she?" Harry asked, breaking into my thoughts. I realized I'd stopped on one of the steps in a daze.
"Oh, yeah I guess," I tried to brush it off, but Harry knew me too well.
"You know Ron, she's not that same obsessive little girl anymore. She's grown up and she's waiting, patiently, I might add, for some poor, confused bloke to make his first move." Harry smirked.
I was blushing, "You are quite the subtle one Harry Potter."
"Well, somebody has to say something. You two have been dancing around this for years."
"How do you suggest, I go about this, Dr. Love?" I asked sarcastically.
"You've invited her to Christmas at the Burrow correct?" Harry asked, pushing me down the staircase.
"Yes, and she said she would."
"Well, Christmas can be a very happy, *cozy* time of year...if you get my drift."Harry said.
I smiled at him, "You know you could be right. Now all I need is the courage."
"Gryffindor, mate, Gryffindor." Harry said and went quickly down the stairs, me in toe.
"What took you two so long?" Hermione asked, her eyes shining, surrounded by her mother's homemade confections.
"Well, we don't catagorize our trunks like you do." I said, sitting on one side of her as Harry settled on the other.
She sighed, "Will you two *ever* stop teasing me?" she asked, looking at us.
"Do you really want us to?" Harry asked. She gave a far-away smile.
"No, I guess not." she said, "You know I hated you both so much in first year. You were so mean."
"We were pretty thick back then. For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Harry said.
"Yeah, me too. I was the worst one." I said, flushing.
"You know all of that bossiness...it was really just a front. I just wanted to...be someone's friend. More to the point, I wanted to be a friend to the two of you." she looked down and became very interested in the pattern on the rug.
"You did?" I asked. In my life, the only person who had ever *really* wanted to be my friend, just for the sake of it...was Harry. Or so I thought.
"You didn't have to do all that Hermione." Harry said, furrowing his brow.
"Well, I know that now. But back then I was pretty thick too." she smiled, "Do you two remember the first time we used the invisibility cloak?"
Harry and I looked at each other and snickered. An identical memory flashing in our minds.
"And that silly dragon of Hagrid's?" Harry smiled.
"Oh yes! He has provided quite the wide range of adventure for us hasn't he? With all of his creatures!" Hermione giggled. A deep, rich sound that I was very fond of.
"Yeah, then of course there's Fang. What a watchdog he is! He couldn't combat a fly even if he wanted to!" I shook my head.
We all continued to laugh about old times until we were nearly incapacitated.
"...and I thought I would *die* when I climbed onto that invisible thestrel!" Hermione was slapping her knee and tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"I know!" I agreed, gasping for breath, "I could feel the hair whipping me in the face, but I couldn't *see* the thing!"
We laughed over that for what seemed like ages until the humor simmered to a mirthful silence.
"We've had some great adventures, haven't we?" I asked, breaking the silence.
"We sure have." Harry said. We looked around at each other smiling.
"What say we make a little pact?" Hermione asked, that mischievous look in her eye.
"I'm for it if Ron is." Harry said.
"What kind of pact?" I asked.
She put her hand out and said, "A pact which states that, every few years, no matter if we live across oceans from each other or next door, we have to have some adventure. Something spur of the moment and unplanned, as much as disarray grieves me. " we snickered at that, "To keep going out into the world and experiencing it, until we're too old to go on anymore."
I stuck my hand out to cover hers, "A pact." I said.
Harry put his hand on top of the stack and nodded, "A pact."
"To adventures, past, present, and far into the future." she whispered, turning her hand over and closing her long, elegant fingers around our palms.
A silence prevailed. But it was a silence full of promise. In that pact we did more than vow to partake in a few adventures. We vowed, never to forget each other, *never* to forget all of the amazing things that we'd done together. But most importantly, we'd made a silent agreement, to survive through whatever waited for us in the future. We'd promised to protect each other above all, even to the point of death. If only we'd known how important that promise was and how soon we would be tested.
*****
The rest of the weekend was spent recovering from that night in the common room, and-mostly on Hermione's part-doing any last-minute weekend cramming before exams which started on Thursday of the week to come. My mind --and eyes-- often wandered over to Hermione, her face and body contorted into her 'studying' furrow. It was a very attractive little pose. Oh, who was I kidding? I thought everything she did was attractive.
The little time I spent *not* thinking about Hermione, was spent anticipating our next transference lesson. I had a very important question to ask before I could possibly dream of trying the spell, especially with Hermione.
Monday was a tiring day to get through. Enchantments was our last class of the day. When Potions was dismissed I rushed to the Enchantments classroom with Harry and Hermione in toe.
The other Gryffindor's filed in at their leisure and I had to suppress the need to hurry each student to their seats.
"Is everyone ready to begin today's lesson?" Professor Giddeon asked. A few hands were raised and some questions were asked. Finally Giddeon called on me, seeing that I was nearly bursting at my seams.
"Professor...I don't quite know if this is going to make sense but, I remember that you asked Lavender and Parvati if they were friends and when they said yes, you said that their friendship was the reason that the spell worked so well..." I stuttered, searching for a way to continue.
"Yes, go on." Professor Giddeon prompted me.
"Well, I was just wondering...why?" the class looked at her expectantly.
Giddeon was smiling at me strangely, "You know, it's funny that you ask that Ron. In all my years of teaching I've been asked that question nearly every year. And every year it has been a female student that has asked it. Every year, except four times."
"Well, that's just a coincidence of course." I said, flustered.
" If it is a coincidence, then it is a very strange coincidence indeed. For you see, the only four boys that have asked that question were Bill, Charlie, George, and you." she let the names hang in the air. The students who recognized the significance of that group of names began talking animatedly to the ones who seemed confused.
"You mean..."
"Yes, your brothers."
"What does that mean Professor?" I asked, willing her not embarrass me.
"Well, I don't know for sure. You see, I asked Lavender and Parvati about their friendship because of the nature of the spell. Does anyone know why the giver becomes unconscious when their magic leaves them?"
Everyone looked straight back at our table, where Hermione, as always, had her hand in the air.
"Why don't you just go ahead Hermione." Professor Giddeon smiled knowingly at her.
"Well, I looked up transference not too long ago and the reason that someone loses consciousness is because their soul leaves their body and is given to the receiver. It went on to say that the soul is like a book of information about you. Everything thought, and feeling, and trait which someone possesses is linked directly to the soul." I looked over at Hermione, proud of her never-ending knowledge.
"Correct Miss Granger, five points to Gryffindor! Hermione is quite right. You see, your soul and your magic are so tightly entwined, that you cannot give one without the other. People who share an emotional bond, such as friendship, family, or even true romantic love will always have a more successful transference than two strangers would. Understand?" I nodded.
"Well, if there are no more questions, I say we let another group have a go at it." at this, the class erupted into conversation as the desks were pushed aside and partners found each other.
"Quiet Gryffindors. Would you and your partners like to demonstrate for us today Mr. Weasley?" Professor Giddeon smiled at me. I had the sinking feeling, but I looked over at Harry and Hermione. They nodded.
"Sure Professor." I said and we stepped out into the middle of the room.
"Now, Ron, if you would give and Hermione, you receive. Harry, for now, come around and catch Ron if he falls. Just remember, open your mind Ron. Let go of everything. Just focus on Hermione."
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Memories flooded into my mind. A bossy little girl morphed slowly into a young woman. In my mind, she got older, little by little. Soon her ridged posture relaxed and her crossed arms dropped to her sides. Her furrow slowly turned into a smile and her eyes took on that, fire-light glow that I'd become so fond of. In my mind she turned around and grinned at me, showing her now-perfect teeth and I saw blue light radiate from behind her, growing stronger until it exploded. At that very moment I felt as if all the warmth and color was seeping out of me. I opened my eyes and my wand hand was glowing a blinding, glorious blue. Suddenly and without warning, the light shot out of my wand and it headed straight for Hermione. My eyes connected with hers and suddenly, I felt the last of the warmth leave me and my whole world went black.
Okay, another cliff-hanger, but we already know what happens. I just needed to end it there because we need to change points of view. I'm going right NOW to do just that. Now, please, if you have any pity for me and my little story......REVIEW! I'm begging you! (Do you really want to see me grovel?)