A/N: Just a pointless little one shot, Ronione fluff and nonsense piece. Thanks, as always, to Becca, for all the awesome support! MOONY, LAY ME!
Disclaimer: I own nothing except a slightly unhealthy obsession with everything Harry Potter. Sue me.
I love him.
I look at him, sitting there, all red hair and freckled, Weasley to his very core, and I wonder how I fell in love with such imperfection. Because Ron Weasley is about as far as you can get from perfect. He chews with his mouth open and he curses; he doesn't read books unless they involve Qudditch. His grades are barely satisfactory and his manners are atrocious. I could take all day making a list of his faults. But in the end, none of it matters, because I love him.
I love him because he's him. I love him because he makes me laugh and cry all in one breath, because he's the only one who has the power to make or break my day. I love him because he burped slugs when he was 12 and he never blamed me for it, and he'd give his life for me in an instant. I love him because he brings me down to earth when I'm spiraling out of control and he calls me brilliant at all the right moments.
I love him because I can't believe he can sit across from me at the kitchen table at his house, looking so adorable while he reads that Chudley Cannon's book for the thousandth time, and he has absolutely no idea that I love him. And when he looks up and sees me staring, he asks me why I'm looking at him and I snap that I'm not. He just rolls his eyes and grabs a biscuit to put in his mouth, and there's a tiny spot of jam next to his lip and all I want to do is reach up there and wipe it off, and I realize that maybe in all of his imperfection, he's actually perfect.
!0!0!0!0!0!0!
She thinks she's perfect.
I know better. I know things about Hermione that nobody else knows, that she doesn't want them to know, because that would ruin her image of perfection. Hermione strives for perfect, always; her day isn't complete without an attempt at proving her excellence. Just today, in fact, she has informed me that she has already completed more than half of the assigned summer essays and I have yet to pick up a quill since exams ended in June. She says it with the air of someone who is so utterly flawless it's disgusting. She wants so badly to be liked and she tries so dismally hard to succeed that she just doesn't see that I'd love her no matter what.
But it's the little things, the things she doesn't think about, that make me love her. I love her because she doesn't try to fix her hair up perfectly but lets it run wild down her back and because when she's nervous, she bites her fingernails. I love her because she pesters me like no one else in the world can, and that she makes me so angry I want to kiss her.
I love her because when I say that she's brilliant, her face turns pink and she smiles so brightly I expect the whole room to be blinded. I love her because she slapped Malfoy when she was 13 years old and she nags me worse than my own mother, and because she'd die for me if I asked her to, but I never would, because what would life be without her?
I love her because she sits there at the table, so intent on reading her book and she doesn't know I'm looking at her, watching her eyes flash across the page. She looks up at me and I hurriedly look down, pretending to be exasperated when I ask her why she's looking at me and she tells me in that haughty voice that she isn't. I grab a jam-covered biscuit off the plate in front of me and take a large bite to suppress the grin on my face.
And suddenly she's reached across the table and her thumb is at the corner of my mouth and I grab her hand by instinct and I realize that, in spite of her perfection, it's Hermione's imperfection that I love.
!0!0!0!0!0!0!0
It's so obvious that they love each other.
I've know forever. How could you spend time with them and not know? I wonder if they know that everyone knows, that it's not nearly the secret each of them thinks it is. I wonder if they know that half of Gryffindor tower is betting on when they'll finally get together, a pool started by Fred and George back in second year. I wonder what they would do if I told them to stop tiptoeing around each other and just make out right here, right now, because it's just so damn obvious.
My God, is it obvious. You can see it in the way he looks at her, that mix of awe and respect and thinly-veiled lust, how he quickly looks away when she looks at him. You can see it in the way she talks to him, when she's exasperated and annoyed and gentle at the same time. You can tell when he says something to her and she gives that tiny giggle, a very un-Hermione-like giggle.
You can tell in the way they row, tension crackling between them, their shouts rocking the common room. The way Hermione cries when she doesn't think anyone's looking and Ron sulks until they make up. You can see it when they touch, that bizarre mix of bliss and awkwardness in something so simple as a brushing of elbows.
You can see it in the familiar little exchange they have at the table in the kitchen at the Burrow. They don't know I'm watching them, but I am; he's looking at her, and then she looks at him and he looks away, only to demand of her why she's staring. I roll my eyes as she insists she wasn't and I resist the urge to smack both of them over the head. He grins wickedly and stuffs an overlarge biscuit in his mouth and she's watching him.
And suddenly she's reached across the table and gone to wipe a bit of jam off the corner of his lip and he grasps her hand in his. I know they've completely forgotten I'm here as she gives a little gasp.
"You had - you had a spot of jam," she whispers shakily, her hand still caught in his.
"Oh," Ron mutters back, and still they haven't broken away. Their eyes are locked and Hermione's lashes are fluttering and Ron's mouth is open slightly and I stare at them in bewilderment.
"Ron," Hermione croaks. They're both leaning across the table now, and my eyes widen. They're going to kiss - it's finally going to happen, after all these years...
"Oi, Ron, Harry, d'you want to - " I blink and Ron and Hermione jerk away from each other, both turning instantly red. Ron lets go of Hermione's hand and all three of us look up at Fred and George, who just entered, and grins spread slowly across their identical faces.
"What is this?" Fred crows.
"What's what?" Ron says innocently.
"You and Hermione just looked like you were about to - "
"About to what?" Hermione breaks in fiercely.
"Do mine eyes deceive me?" George asks, looking from Ron to Hermione. "Or were you not about to kiss?"
!0!0!0!0!0!0!0
I gulp in horror as the twins smirk at us. I know my face is burning hot and I want to curl up into a ball and shrink away. And Harry's here too, oh, it's so terrible, what were we just about to do? I can't even look at Ron for fear my face will catch fire.
"About - to - what?" I manage to stutter in a desperate attempt to save face. "Kiss? Have you both lost your minds?"
Fred and George glance at each other. "Whatever you say, Hermione," George says, that same smirk still on his face. "Whatever you say."
"Now - honestly - ridiculous," I mutter, looking at my steadily-blurring hands. I wish that I hadn't reached up to Ron; I wish this had never happened.
"Ridiculous, eh?" Fred says. "Ron, what do you have to say to that?"
"Honestly!" I burst out furiously, and before I know what's happening I've pushed myself back from the table and jumped up, running out of the kitchen, tears threatening behind my eyes. I begin to run up the stairs when I hear a choked voice call my name.
I stop, but I don't turn around. I can't look at him, I can't see that face that I love, those lips that nearly touched mine, can't let him see him as I choke down tears.
"What?" I say shakily.
"Listen," he says, and I hear him walk up onto the first step. "They're - they're gits. Don't listen to them."
I sniff, louder than I mean to, and brush a hand across my face briefly.
"Look, Ron - "
But I stop, because he's taken my hand. Shaking with fear and anticipation, I turn around and face him. We're at eye level, with him three steps below me, and I remember why I love him. He looks anguished as I feel, humiliated, horrified.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly.
"You had jam on your mouth," I whisper, and I know nothing's going to be the same.
!0!0!0!0!0!0!0
I look straight into her eyes as a single tear falls down her face and before I know what I'm doing I've reached out and caught it. I want to kill my stupid brothers, anything to make her stop crying even though I don't know why she's crying. I wonder if it's for the same reasons I feel like crying - the embarrassment and the realization of what the moment could have been. What the moment missed by mere seconds.
I marvel at how she can look positively radiant even as stares at me with red-rimmed eyes, those dark eyes brightened by pools of tears that I just want to kiss away. My hand is still at her cheek and she reaches up and touches it with quivering fingertips.
None of it matters now, not my stupid brothers, not the thwarted kiss in the kitchen, not her tears - it's just me and Hermione in the staircase and our lips drawn together and her eyes are so big, so very big, and then we kiss.
Her wet eyelashes flutter against my cheeks as our lips meet for the first time and it's like magic, it's like anything you can imagine. It lasts for a brief moment and then we pull away, shocked at our own brazenness, and thrilled at what's just happened, and it's like we've just met for the first time as I grin at her, and she grins back and I know nothing's going to be the same.
!0!0!0!0!0!0!0
I stand at the bottom of the staircase and smile. Their kiss lasted for seconds but I know a wall has been broken down.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi," she whispers back.
And I know nothing's going to be the same.