Author's Notes: Hoorah, exams are finally over in exactly 2 days! SWEET, SWEET FREEDOM!!!

Air of Mystery, I laughed out loud at Ron's session with his psychiatrist. Excellent use of John Stamos! Speaking of Stamos, FanFictionFantom, I'm really still not quite clear as to why they took down the parodies. As far as I could discern, they violated some rule against using real people in a fic (ie. John Stamos and other random celebrity guest stars).

I rather enjoyed writing this chapter, and hopefully it will satiate everyone's R/H appetite for a little while.

Edited to add: Thanks to everyone who pointed out that it was third year that Crooshanks supposedly ate Scabbers. Duh, I watched PoA only a week ago…I think it was just a typo or a mental blip on my part or something. But I fixed it.

Sunday, 3 December

2:15 p.m.

I just haven't had any time at all to write in here what with decorating the castle, patrolling the halls with Filch (whom I accidentally called Mr. Grinch yesterday, probably because that's who I've been subconsciously comparing him to for the last few weeks…at least I could cover up "Grinch" though, it would've been worse had I said "Mr. Scrooge"), supervising the first-years on their break time, trying to get Hagrid to let me help him with lessons (with little to no success), tutoring Neville, knitting house elf clothes, the DA, and the truckload of homework the teachers have been piling on. I feel rather badly about not doing my Weekly Goals, but they haven't changed much in the past few weeks, and I have my homework planner for writing down my homework-related goals, so it's really not that bad.

I think the last time I wrote anything in here was when I was in that horribly foul mood that day Ron tried to read my journal, and I probably said some very nasty things about him. I'll admit that when I woke up the next morning I didn't feel half as angry as I had the night before, and I felt rather badly about my overall behaviour the previous day. I was just in a bad mood because of Malfoy, and then it was one thing after another…

Anyway, the next morning I woke up with every intention of forgiving Ron straightaway and not holding a grudge, because holding grudges is most certainly not conducive to achieving emotional satisfaction. So I dressed quickly and went down to the common room, which was mostly empty save for a handful of people playing Exploding Snap in the corner, and Ron sitting in front of the fire.

"Morning," I said, taking a deep breath and sitting down.

"Look, Hermione," Ron began hurriedly, before I could even launch into my carefully-planned forgiveness speech. "About last night…I really didn't mean to go looking through your diary…but it was lying there and I just sort of picked it up and it just sort of fell open…"

Like I said, I had every intention of forgiving Ron. I felt that our relationship had come a long way from the petty bickering and stubborn disputes of our childhoods.

But old habits die hard, I suppose. And he called it a diary.

"It is not a diary," I snapped.

"Oh," Ron said. "Well whatever - "

"What makes you think it's a diary?"

"I dunno, I just assumed…."

"And if it was a diary, which it's not," I said, standing up and feeling indignant again, "you would have absolutely no right to go and read it!"

"What's the big deal, all the pages were blank anyway!" Ron exclaimed, his voice rising.

The group playing Exploding Snap had stopped their game and were looking over with interest. A card exploded on the table, but they paid no heed to it.

"It's the principle of the thing!" I shouted.

"Well like I said, it was an accident! What more do you want from me?"

"You just accidentally happened to pick up my book and start leafing through it?"

"Well…not exactly…but if you weren't so bloody secretive about it - !"

"Well maybe you should learn to respect other people's privacy!" I yelled, and then stomped back upstairs.

I felt badly about the whole silly argument a few hours later, of course, but then Ron was being stubborn and wouldn't speak to me, so of course I had to be stubborn and not speak to him, either. I certainly wasn't going to be the one to make up; he was the one who had been trying to read my journal in the first place, and I didn't even get a proper apology from him. So to Harry's exasperation (thankfully he's not as moody as he was at the beginning of the year, or else I think he would have hexed the both of us by now), we didn't speak to each other for a week, except to say things like, "Pass the rolls," at meals, and usually even that ended in some sort of dispute, because then I would sarcastically tell Ron to try to refrain from snooping through all the rolls while he was passing them, and…well, it just got very ugly.

I could tell Ron was getting tired of it though, and quite frankly, so was I. I think we were both showing signs of wearing down by Saturday. It's not like it was in third year, where we went for nearly a month without speaking to each other because he thought that Crookshanks had eaten his traitorous Animagus rat. After a week it was just taking far too much energy to stay angry, and I guess I sort of…well, I missed talking to him, too.

The two of us got stuck on decorating duty together yesterday, and Ron made a few half-hearted attempts at conversation in order to try to re-establish the peace. I wasn't quite ready to forgive him without getting a sincere apology though, and I managed to stay cool and aloof, even when Peeves tried to strangle Ron with the tinsel he was putting up. That was probably excessively mean on my part, though, especially since that's the second time in five months that he's been nearly strangled by an inanimate object.

Of course later I felt rather badly about the whole strangling incident and my lack of sympathy during it, so last night I decided to talk to Ron after dinner and stop this whole nonsense. But Ron didn't return to the common room after dinner, and he was nowhere to be found all night. I worked on my Arithmancy independent study assignment checkpoint for awhile instead, then headed up to bed before Parvati and Lavender, because when they come up to bed all they do is gossip, and I can't fall asleep with them loudly bad-mouthing Anthony Goldstein.

I was about to climb into bed when I heard something hit my window with a dull thud.

"Pig!" I exclaimed, running over to open the window. Pig looked dazed, but hooted happily. "Why aren't you in the Owlery?"

Pig hooted gleefully again and held out one leg, which was weighed down considerably by a package. I untied it, and then Pig gave one last cheerful hoot and flew out the open window. I watched him fly over to the north end of the castle, back to the Owlery.

"Why on earth would Ron send me something by owl?" I murmured as I opened the (rather shoddily-wrapped) package. I raised an eyebrow as a small box of Honeydukes' best chocolate fell out of the wrapping paper, along with a note:

Hermione,

Sorry I was snooping around in your stuff. Please don't be angry with me any more, it's annoying.

Ron

I burst out laughing so hard after reading this that a startled Crookshanks actually ran and hid under Lavender's bed. Only Ron could write a letter like that. Feeling inexplicably cheerful and pleased, I happily ate a chocolate.

Ginny popped her head into the room, wearing her nightgown. "Oh, did you get it?" she asked, grinning.

"Yes," I replied, and I couldn't help grinning back. "How did you know?"

"Because I know everything, of course," Ginny said grandly.

"But why did he send Pig?"

Ginny shrugged. "Guess he was too scared to give it to you personally. He had the twins sneak over to Honeydukes today especially for that, you know."

I tried to hide how pleased I was behind a disapproving frown. "The twins shouldn't be sneaking out of the castle, and Ron most certainly shouldn't be encouraging it."

Ginny laughed. "Well, I guess this means you two are going to be on speaking terms again, which is good. It was getting rather old. I'd rather have you two constantly bickering than not speaking at all," she said decidedly. With that, she turned around and went back to her own dormitory.

This morning Ron came down to the common room and blanched when he saw me. He coughed and then walked over to where I was sitting, reading Swelling Solutions, and 800 Other Oft Misused Potions (I'd picked it up from the library for some extra reading). He fiddled with a piece of Serpent String that was hanging over the arm of one of the armchairs, having somehow managed to escape the many Serpent String raids of the common room.

"Morning," Ron finally said in a strangled sort of voice.

"As I've said many times, you are a prefect, Ron, and you really shouldn't be encouraging the twins to break school rules," I said disapprovingly. But I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

Ron looked relieved. "Right," he said, grinning. "It won't happen again."

"Good," I said with a smile. "Thank you, though."

Ron shrugged and looked at the carpet, blushing. Harry chose that moment to come downstairs, yawning. He looked from me to Ron.

"You two speaking again, then?" he said briskly. "Good, you were driving us all mad."

So that's that. At lunch today Ron called me bossy and I called him thick and then Harry told us to give it a rest and two minutes later all three of us were laughing about how Umbridge spilled ink all over her front in Defense Against the Dark Arts on Friday.

I'm so glad everything's back to normal.