Hungry Eyes Chapter 4, a harry potter fanfic

Chapter 4

Sulking in her dormitory for the remainder of the previous night, Hermione had decided that it wasn't worth her trouble to think about how selfish Ron was being. If he was going to completely disregard the fact that he was constantly mean to her and that they always fought, wasn't worth the trouble trying to make him see.

Brushing away the tears that so often came to her eyes lately, she started on her homework and fell asleep with the quill pen in her hand and her head on her Arithmancy book. She'd woken up the next morning, so frazzled and confused that she had looked at the clock, thinking it was a school day. She bustled around, dressing and gathering her books only to find that when she zoomed down the passage and through the common room, Harry and Ron were sitting comfortably in front of the fire.

"What are you doing?" Harry called as she went to step out the portrait hole.

She turned around and stared at the two of them. Harry was frowning and looking at her as if trying to figure out what she was up to. Ron stared at Hermione, a guilty expression on his face. There could have only been one reason she was so disoriented.

"O-Oh," she said, her shoulders slumping. "It's Saturday isn't it?"

"Yes, Hermione, everyone's gone," he told her calmly, as if talking to a small child.

Hermione gathered her books and walked silently out of the common room to her dorm to put her things away and found that once she got up there, she couldn't. She collapsed onto her bed in a fit of rage. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. It was as if she was becoming more and more emotionally unstable each day. Maybe it was the pressures of being prefect and top of her class in Gryffindor. Maybe it was being a sixteen-year-old female. Maybe it was stress.

Even though most of those made sense, Hermione knew she was skirting the real issue. She knew exactly what was going on.

New emotions had been swirling inside of her since the end of her fifth year at Hogwarts. It had all happened when she thought she was in love with Harry… What a mistake in judgment that had been.

Of course, there had been the element of physical attraction. It hadn't gone unnoticed to her that Harry was becoming a rather handsome boy. What with the sparkling green eyes, shaggy jet hair, and the wide toothed grin he carried around so often, what girl wouldn't have swooned? It had surprised Hermione that she found herself staring at his profile during class sometimes and listening intently whenever he had a word to say.

Luckily enough, she hadn't mustered the courage to tell him her feelings about him. It seemed quite odd however, that even though she found him physically appealing in every way, his idiosyncrasies were still as plainly evident to her as they ever were before.

She contained any sign of feeling toward Harry, and was glad to have done so. She barely even noticed that during her brief crush on Harry, she had begun to talk to Ron more and more, getting to know him better than she had ever really known him before.

There were instances in which she stayed in the common room, in front of the fire, thinking hard about her new feelings. Then when Ron would sit next to her and ask her what was wrong; she didn't notice he was really peering into her true soul. She had sat once with Ron for three hours just talking. Her mind was preoccupied, but her heart said something different.

And it clicked suddenly after she left Hogwarts. Not seeing Harry and Ron day after day, she started to make the connection. She had never truly harbored feelings for Harry because if she had, it wouldn't have been so easy to forget the thrill she got every time he smiled at her. What was a lot harder to forget was the way Ron made her feel after sitting with her for three hours on the couch, talking to her so softly and sweetly.

Seeing Harry at Diagon Alley that first week back was nothing. He had grown some and was now more attractive; that much she could say was true. What she hadn't noticed however, was how unbelievably charismatic Ron had become. A few inches taller than before, tanner with more freckles, shaggier red hair, and even more sparkly crystal blue eyes was all that clouded Hermione's vision that fateful day at Diagon Alley. She tried her hardest to keep it hidden, but all her mind crept to was Ron. The feelings inside of her stirred as they never had before, and he too was as equally attentive to her as she was to him as they shopped that day.

These new feelings for Ron didn't go away as she had hoped. She was sure it was another simple Harry crush, physical attraction and nothing more. However, every time she had a meaningful conversation with Ron, her heart pounded heavily like nothing she had ever known.

Yet admitting to those feelings would just upset her further.

So instead of going downstairs and joining the boys in the common room, she stayed on her bed, staring at the ceiling in a deep trance of thought. She didn't realize how long she had been staring up until she heard a rap on the door. It was Harry.

"Uh, Hermione? Are you all right in there?"

Hermione jerked up with a start. "Uh… yeah…" she croaked, wiping her watering eyes and clambering out of her bed.

"Are you going to come down? We saved you some food for breakfast."

Walking toward the door, she managed to fix her appearance and salvage whatever dignity she could. She opened the door and met Harry face to face. Yep, those feelings are gone.

He gave her a small smile and asked, "Are you coming?"

She nodded and walked down quietly in front of him, and as they emerged from the stairwell, Ron looked up quickly. He said nothing.

Hermione sat down in the chair next to the couch, farthest from the side Ron was sitting on. He stared at her expectantly as if he wanted to say something. She noticed this, but said nothing. Harry took a seat on the couch and clapped his hands together loudly.

"WELL!" he yelled, causing the silent pair to jump from surprise. "I'm not going to sit here in silence for the next few hours! Who wants a game of chess?"

Normally Ron found that he would have jumped at the chance to slaughter Harry in a game of chess but he only shook his head. "I don't much feel like it." Hermione shook her head as well.

Harry looked dejectedly at the fire. He stood up and opened his mouth, but before he could say much more, the portrait hole burst open and Ginny entered. Harry's head snapped up and a smile finally lit his face.

"Ginny!" he jumped from his seat on the couch and ran at her so fast that she backed up so as he wouldn't fall into her. He took her arm and briskly whisked her aside. "You have to get me out of here! There's so much tension in here I feel like I'm going to suffocate."

Ginny peered over Harry's shoulder and saw Hermione squirming uneasily in her chair as Ron cast curious glances at her. Ginny smirked and then looked at Harry.

"Yeah, well, those Quidditch plans aren't necessarily all drawn up right yet. If we're going to beat Ravenclaw in January we've got to get this all worked out," she said loudly, taking Harry by the arm and leading him back out of the portrait hole.

Ron and Hermione sat in silence for a while longer after the two had left.

Not saying anything, Ron allowed his fingers to slowly venture into his pocket, where the golden heart he had received in Herbology two days ago still lingered. Why had Professor Sprout given him this? Why had she allowed him to keep a plant that was, by all means, illegal to own?

She had said that her intuition 'knew' and that he should give it to that 'one special person' for Christmas. Did she mean who he thought she meant? It really couldn't be. It astounded him in every way to feel that tiny golden heart. It somehow gave him the strength and courage to sit in the same room with Hermione. Almost like a warm butterbeer, it filled him with a strange pouring of bravery that he didn't think he could muster before.

He still had trouble deciding what it meant.

"Hermione."

The sound was a shock to them both. Hermione had been staring into the fire, lost in her own thoughts. She then absentmindedly said out loud, "I have so much work."

Not saying anything else, her gaze turned back to the fire.

Ron lost his nerve somehow, but after sticking his hand into his pocket and fingering the golden heart, he opened his mouth again. "Hermione."

She again turned away from the fire and said, as if a thought had decided to escape her lips, "Two paged essay for Potions."

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened the other night…" he began, keeping his fingers firmly locked around the heart.

"Four rolls of parchment for History of Magic," she recited as if she was an emotionless tape recorder.

"I don't know what's come over me lately…"

"Forty equations for Arithmancy…"

"It seems like whenever we fight, I just can't help but say what I say…"

"So much work…"

"And, Hermione, I want to stop it so badly, I don't want to fight with you anymore…"

Hermione had quieted now, allowing her eyes to travel back to the fire.

"Please listen to me," he whispered, a sort of desperation suddenly coming to his voice. She looked up. It broke his heart to see her that way. She looked almost as if she was lost and didn't know where she was anymore. He knew it was his fault.

"I don't want to fight with you anymore, and I don't mean to egg you on when it comes to everything," he said quietly, rubbing the heart. "I just get so provoked sometimes… and it just kind of happens… I don't know what comes over me. I don't want to fight with you and I don't want to be on bad terms with you anymore. I want us to be friends." Oh geez, the biggest lie I ever did tell…

Hermione said nothing. She rubbed her elbows and leaned over to put her face close to the fire. Ron waited on the edge of his seat for an answer, a reply, any kind of remark out of Hermione at all.

"I don't want to fight with you," she whispered hoarsely, but with a definite tone of certainty. She sounded as if she had gone it over many times in her head and was now sure she wanted to say it. "No," she said again with finality. "I don't want to fight with you. I try to stay away from situations where I know it will come up but like you, sometimes I just can't help myself when it happens." And surprising both herself and Ron, Hermione stood up and walked over to the couch, sitting down next to Ron… so close he could hear her heart thud against her chest.

"I want us to be on good terms as well," she said softly.

The intense look he could feel in her eyes at that moment was tremendous, like nothing he had ever felt before.

"I didn't mean to snap at you about not telling us you were staying," he said, his whole body trembling from the heat of her body so close to his. "I-I was just kind of angry… I guess."

"Why?" she asked, her tone gentle.

The gentle tone that was supposed to soothe him did the exact opposite. "I-I wasn't angry with you… well completely you… I mean, I've been angry with myself for days now, and you see, I was really kind of hoping that you'd decide to stay here, but I wasn't going to say anything. I was kind of hurt that you didn't tell us until then, because Harry and I made these fun plans and everything for each other and then you were staying, so I was frustrated."

Hermione was listening intently, not saying anything. This was quite a restriction for her; normally Hermione blew up over comments like that.

"And… all I can really say is… is that I'm…" he grabbed the heart again and felt a calm sweep over him. He closed his eyes and centered himself.

Hermione's breath caught in her throat when his eyelids fluttered open. She was close enough to his body now that she could see right into the pure depths of his eyes. They were the most crystalline of all blue. They sparkled with what appeared to be a white light, and he had all the assurance he would ever need in the world right there. He seemed to be so confident at that point that Hermione's heart flip-flopped and it was almost right then that she knew… she knew for sure.

"I'm glad you stayed."

Hermione didn't know what came over her. She stared Ron in the face, surveyed every single portion of it, and made mental note of every bit. Up to his fiery red hair, down to his adorable nose, to his succulent pink lips that almost always curved up into the cutest crooked smile, and all around to the brown freckles that dotted his face like paint droplets. So many, so tiny, it gave his face so much character. And, without warning, she leapt, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Ron was taken back for a second, but then managed to regain composure. Since his third year, he had figured out how to deal with a hug from Hermione. She buried her face in his shoulder and clung to him tightly.

He then closed his eyes blissfully, allowed his head to relax onto Hermione's shoulder, and wrapped his long arms around her petite frame, closing her in protectively against him.

They were so close they could each feel the other breathing. Inhale and exhale. In and out. They were in perfect rhythm for a few minutes, and barely had recognized that they drifted off into a deeper form of relaxation.

Harry walked into the common room to find a surprising sight… Hermione and Ron… asleep… in each other's arms.

Widening his eyes, he dashed out of the common room, screaming, "GINNY!"