Author's Note: Thank you so much to all who reviewed! I appreciate all the opinions I got on whether to go on or not. I decided to try for a little bit more, just to see what came next. After all, exploration is part of the journey of writing, is it not?

By the way, the story and/or chapter titles in this little saga all come from musicals. 10 points to your House if you can figure them out!

Three bloody hours, Ron thought. Three bloody hours he'd been lying awake.

He rolled over in his wide bed. Again.Settled one arm under his head. Again.Closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep.

Again.

His eyes popped open, and in a move born of sheer frustration, he threw off the blankets covering him. He strode out of his bedroom and into his tiny kitchen, cursing the whole way. He'd fix himself a nice pot of tea, he decided, and then he'd be able to sleep.

And if not, he thought, he'd just bash himself over the head with the teapot and be done with it.

It was all her fault. Enviously, he imagined her tucked snugly into her neat little bed, sleeping soundly with nary a care in the world. Then, because the thought of Hermione in a bed at all flushed his skin uncomfortably warm, he squinched up his face and tried to knuckle the gritty feeling out of his eyes.

Yes, all her fault, he thought as he set the kettle on to boil. Clearly. When he'd invited her onto the dance floor, he'd been expecting the same Hermione that he'd always danced with, the reserved one who had actually tried to learn dance moves from books. He hadn't been expecting—nor, he admitted, had he been prepared for—the girl who'd turned lithe and agile in his arms, the one who'd looked wild and wanton with her hair tossed about and her cheeks flushed, her eyes catching the few lights in the club. He hadn't been expecting her to fit herself so well into his arms, against his body. He hadn't been expecting at all.

And that was the problem, Ron thought now. He hadn't realized Hermione was so much a—well, a girl.

That was stupid, he thought crossly. Of course he'd known Hermione was a girl. She'd always taken great pains to point out the differences between them. He'd just never thought that she'd be a girl that could be his.

He'd had other girlfriends before, since they'd left Hogwarts. He enjoyed women, loved the look, the smell, the taste of them. None of them had lasted long, he remembered ruefully, and most had left nothing behind but a vague memory of a face and name and, perhaps, a lingering sense of sadness. That hadn't lasted long either. Now, thinking of Hermione's arms around his neck, her body against his, her face so close…he thought he understood why.

"For the love of all things magical…" Ron breathed as the kettle began to sing. He quickly removed it from the stove, blistering his thumb in the process. As he ran it under cold water, his mind switched back to the club, to Hermione's face in that moment when she'd thrown her hair back and her eyes had met his. In his mind, her face changed subtly, shifted into a softer, younger face…the face he'd seen on the Hogwarts Express that first year. Drying his hands, Ron saw that face keep morphing, growing older...saw her cowering before a troll, smiling as she looked at him over a book in the library, laughing in the Great Hall. He saw her frozen features, white as the pillow her head rested on, then saw that damned face again as she ran down the stairs toward him, whole once more. He saw her terrified face in the Shrieking Shack, then the serene look she gave him when it was all over. He remembered her face contorted in fury after the Yule Ball, then remembered the look on it as she gripped his arm, waiting for Harry to come out of the maze. He remembered her at Grimmauld Place, in St. Mungo's, at the Burrow, at King's Cross Station. In class, at dinner, in the Common Room, in the library. Studying, laughing, lecturing. He remembered so much of that face…a dozen glares, a hundred smiles, a thousand unreadable glances.

Forgetting the tea, Ron sat down, right on the floor of his kitchen. Good God, that face. The one on the train, the one in the club. One and the same. Hermione.

"Of all things magical…" he whispered again, his voice wheezing a bit. Of all things magical, she was the most miraculous. And he was in love with her. Really, really in love, not just the crush he thought he'd been harboring all this time. The realization hit his stomach like a fist, but left something warm and indefinable in its place.

"Well, you've gone and done it now, mate," Ron said aloud to the empty air.