The next morning Harry woke up uncharacteristically early, but then again, he did have a lot on his mind. With all the things that were happening around here lately, he had almost forgotten that he did in fact have classes that day. He quickly got up, unsure of exactly what time it was, and then realized that although he really didn't want to go into the boy's dormitories, he would have to - his books were there. So, reluctantly, he went up the staircase to the boys' dormitories, and went up to where his room was to gather his books. When he got there though, he was surprised enough to see that Ron had already left. Maybe Harry's insomnia was spreading, but he doubted that. He wondered where Ron could've gone, especially since they had classes today, so you really couldn't go out wandering corridors if you had a class to get to.

It didn't matter; he knew Ron would show up to their Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures lessons anyway. He'd talk to him then. In the meantime, Harry had decided that he might as well get started off to his Herbology class. Although he was still 30 minutes early, he really had nothing else to do.

On the way there, Harry had happened to pass the Owlery and notice that Hermione was sending off a letter to someone. He paused for a moment, wondering whom she could be sending a letter to. Hermione didn't send letters to people very often, and when she did, it usually had some importance.

"Hey," Harry called out, "Hermione!"

"Oh, what?" Hermione seemed to be caught off guard, apparently she didn't expect anyone else to be using the Owlery at this time in the morning. "Oh, it's you. Hey, Harry."

Harry looked at Hermione and noticed that her hair was messier than normal, and in general, it didn't look like she had gotten much sleep.

"Are you okay?" he asked, concerned, "You look tired."

"Oh, no, I'm - I'm fine," Hermione responded unenthusiastically, and yawned. "I - I just had some more work to catch up on last night."

Harry didn't believe one word of it, but decided to drop the subject because she obviously didn't want to talk to him about it. "So who were you sending the letter to?"

"Oh, that? I was just sending that to - to my mum and dad. You know how they are, they like to be updated on these things."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, although he didn't really know how parents were.

There was an awkward pause between the two, for neither knew how to approach the situation that had finally surfaced after years of hiding.

"So... How's Ron?" Hermione asked with a sense of concern.

"I wouldn't know," Harry stated indifferently, he knew there was really nothing to worry about. Hermione always had to talk things through, and Ron always avoided directly addressing the problem, well, unless he had to. He figured that they'd eventually had to talk, nobody could run forever - especially when you see the person you are running away from everyday.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked urgently.

"Well, see, after you both left, I kinda decided to just sleep in the Common Room instead of going upstairs and talking to Ron because...."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DECIDED NOT TO TALK TO RON?!?! WHAT KIND OF A FRIEND ARE YOU?" Hermione cut him off, angrily. She slapped him upside the head.

"Ow!" Harry exclaimed. He had to admit he didn't see that one coming. He hoped this would end soon, he didn't want to even imagine the possibility of how many more times Hermione could smack him until then.

"Boys!" she muttered angrily, walking away in a huff.

Harry watched Hermione walk away angry, rubbing the back of his head. This was going to be long and annoying if they didn't patch things up soon.

Luckily enough, by the time Harry got to the greenhouse for Herbology, it was time for their class to start.

"Today," began a cheerful Professor Sprout, "we will be learning about Devil's Snare and how to protect ourselves from it. Now, who can tell me the properties of Devil's Snare?"

Harry began to faze her out, he had learned about Devil's Snare in his first year when he fought the infamous Voldemort. It's funny how the rest of the students were learning about Devil's Snare now, when he had learned about it five years ago. Sure, he was under different circumstances than the rest of them at that time, but even then Devil's Snare didn't seem that difficult. Well, once Hermione told them that is, and Hermione was always advanced. So, he supposed that he really never would've learned about it till now like the rest of them.

"All right now, I have brought in a bit of Devil's Snare to work with so you could practice preparing yourselves. Please set yourself up in groups of three, and I will bring over some Devil's Snare to each of you."

As usual, Harry, Ron, and Hermione became a group of three. Although Ron was quite reluctant to at first, Hermione got him to eventually.

"Ron!" Hermione called out, "Come on!"

Ron, wearing a very pale face, shook his head 'no' like a little child would, and began to inch away from Harry who was in-between the two.

"Ron," Hermione said exasperatedly, "stop being so ridiculous! Come on!"

He shook his head 'no' again, and began to walk around the table, away from Hermione. Except this time, Hermione began to go after him. He then started to go into a sprint around the table, and just as before, Hermione ran after him. He noticed this and paused, as did she. He would begin to run one way, and she would begin to run the exact same way. Harry had to admit, it was quite amusing to see the spectacle they were putting on. More and more of the class began to notice what was happening, and stopped to watch out of sheer interest and amusement as well.

It really didn't matter how much time they had wasted, they had already practiced with Devil's Snare before. Well, at least the trio had.

Eventually, Ron thinking he threw off Hermione, began to run around the table in one direction. Unfortunately for him though, Hermione wasn't thrown off, and wasn't that slow of a runner. She caught up to him in a matter of minutes, and clutched his arm so he couldn't run away any further.

Ron cursed underneath his breath.

"Hah," Hermione said triumphantly, "now you have to talk to me."

"That's what I was afraid of," Ron mumbled, still not daring to face Hermione.

Hermione then began to drag Ron away to a corner of the Greenhouse so they could talk in private. Shame, Harry would've liked to see how that conversation went. All the same, he had a feeling he knew how it would end.

As Ron was being pulled away, he turned around to look at Harry with a face of utmost horror. That facial expression looked oddly familiar to the one Ron had put on with their encounter of the Acromantula they had in their second year. The fact though that Ron was as afraid of Hermione as he was a herd of giant spiders was amusing. Harry admitted that although sometimes Hermione could be a bit scary, he didn't think that she was a bad as a wild herd of human-eating spiders.

Harry watched Ron and Hermione return moments later, both extremely quiet, both seemingly distracted by the ground. This couldn't be good.

"So...?" Harry asked when Ron returned back to his seat next to him.

"Friends," Ron mumbled, "I- I mean, not like I expected any more." He blushed deeply as he continued to stare at the table.

Harry, slightly shocked, and extremely puzzled, stared at Hermione, who was blushing just as deeply, and had let her hair fall down over her face. She seemed to be writing something on a scroll of parchment; what exactly, Harry didn't know.

He couldn't believe they would continue on like this after so many years of doing so, surely one of them must've -. Well, if they chose to ignore it, he would too. He had other things occupying his mind anyway. Although it was not his first concern, he did have to get the Devil's Snare back to Professor Sprout because it seemed as if no one else out of the trio would. Hermione was too busy writing whatever she was writing, and Ron was fixedly staring at the ground. These seemed to be the top priorities of the two at the moment. Eventually though, they would have to move, and perhaps even talk to each other. Harry knew this, and most likely so did the other two; all of them, though, were trying to avoid this, thus intensifying the awkward moment. So, Harry was grateful to find an excuse to get out of the circumstance.

"I'm going to go bring the Devil's Snare back to Professor Sprout," Harry declared as he got up and started to walk towards Professor Sprout's direction.

Hermione nodded her head furiously in response, and Ron - well, he still managed to find something interesting out of staring at the ground.

He then dropped off the Devil's Snare into the capable hands of Professor Sprout, as he said he would, and began to prepare himself for the next class, as did the slow moving Ron and Hermione, considering Herbology had finally ended for the day.

Luckily for Ron and Hermione, all they had to do was to walk across the Hogwarts grounds to go to Care of Magical Creatures. Harry was sure that Ron and Hermione would appreciate the fact that they would have less time in awkwardness from one class to the next.

Normally, one could see all three of these Gryffindors traveling together from class to class: that is, normally. Today though, each one arrived to the next class at a different time, and got there at a different rate. First to Care of Magical Creatures was Harry, then Hermione, and lastly, Ron.

Harry felt bad for Ron; he had a feeling Ron was most likely last to class because of the fact he was the one put down out of the two, and was most likely still embarrassed about the whole situation.