The sun was waking, and Hogwart's frosted grounds were warming themselves to a new day. On the surface, everything was tranquil. A number of owls were returning to the tower after a hard night's hunting, the surface of the vast lake was an eerie, iced grey, and the castle was silent, but for the frantic breathing of a certain 16 year old.
The young boy, with unkempt jet-black hair and piercing green eyes, had recently woken from another of his disturbing nightmares. The nightmares that have been haunting him of recent though, are not of Voldemort chasing after him with a sharpened wand, but of him falling in love. With Hermione.
The dreams were always the same. He'd be standing at the bottom of the great staircase, all trussed up in a tuxedo, and then Hermione would walk gracefully down the stairs, her elegant midnight-blue dress dancing lightly on each step as she made her way down to him. After reaching the same level, he would take her laced hand and lead her out into the gardens, where each bush was covered in glowing pixies. Then, without fail, Hermione would turn to Harry, flash one of her amazingly warm smiles at him, and then begin to say something.
But before Hermione could say anything, Harry woke up. Each and every time he had that dream; he would always wake up before she had said anything. And what worried Harry the most was that he would wake up, and find himself smiling. Smiling, at the way his stomach did this glorious flip every time she looked at him, smiling, at how beautiful she was.
He felt himself regain control of his breathing, his chest easing it's rapid rising and falling pattern, his heart return to it's normal pace.
"What's my subconscious trying to do to me? Me, Fall in love with Hermione! Yeah, like that's gonna happen any day soon." His thoughts rambled on in this tedious track as he quietly got up and dressed.
Once fully robed, Harry glanced with an edge of unease over at a ball of messy red hair peeping over the covers in the four-poster next to his own empty one. "How the hell does he breathe!" Harry absent-mindedly thought to himself as he exited the dormant room.
He padded down the stone steps into the - what he expected to be deserted - common room. His eyes wandered around the room as he made his way to the portrait. However, several meters short of the portrait, he stopped abruptly as his eyes fell on smooth brown curls and his ears picked up a gentle breathing. He turned to face the sleeping hair, and found that it wasn't a ball of wavy brown hair that had miraculously learned to breathe, but Hermione, asleep in the chair that he and Ron had left her studying fervently in late the night before.
He pondered to himself for a moment, and then went and sat down in the chair opposite her. He noticed that she had fallen asleep on one of the open books that surrounded her, which all seemed to be on transfiguration.
Harry punished himself with a mental kick as he was painfully reminded of the Transfiguration exam McGonnagall had set a few days before. The exam he had, yet again, done no work for. Well, surely McGonnagall would understand that he had other things on his mind. Who was he kidding? He was hardly going to explain the reason why he had been getting hardly any sleep of late, thus leaving no extra energy for revision.
In a moment of angry frustration at himself, he slammed his head down onto the desk, and Hermione's previously sleeping head looked up abruptly.
"But sir, Malfoy stole my diced newt's liver!" said a dishevelled ball of hair.
Harry couldn't help looking up and laughing uncontrollably at Hermione's waking words.
"Harry! What time is it?" Hermione started fumbling around getting her books in order. "You should've woken me! Why were you just sitting there opposite me! Oh gosh, have I missed the exam? Oh, I'll have to re-schedule it for some other time, but I really need the extra time to study more on the laws against pensions for House-Elves, and then there's the 3000 word essay Binn's gave us on the revolutions led by Ogres, which I've only managed 12 sides of parchment on so far, and, oh, is Ron still mad at me for saying he has a somewhat girlish yelp? I didn't mean it, I swear, it's just that it was such a tiny spider, and it only had six legs, so I thought he'd find it funny when I pointed it out to him. I really should stop trying this humour tactic; it simply doesn't work, does it? I suppose I'm just not very funny… why are you looking at me like that Harry? Is there something on my face…?"
Harry regained his senses at the sound of his name to find himself staring at Hermione as if she was the most beautiful creature on the planet. Which, of course, to Harry, she was, even if he wouldn't admit it yet. He paused a few seconds to process the confused garble that had just come spilling out of Hermione's mouth, and attempted a somewhat stuttered reply.
"It's 6:47 am, and I didn't want to wake you because you looked so beautiful whilst you were sleeping. I was sitting opposite you so I could gaze in wonderment at your magnificent beauty without anyone wondering why, or asking questions. Who cares if we both miss the exam? We should spend every waking minute and every sleeping hour of every day together. Stop talking about Ron, I'm sure he's gotten over it, besides, why do you care so much what he thinks? You must know how much I care for you. And you don't need to be funny, you're intelligent and pretty and talented and mesmerising. And I'm looking at you because I never noticed before how much the colour of your eyes resembles the depths of the ocean, complete with amber flecks of light."
At least, that what he found himself wanting to say. "Come on, idiot. She's still waiting for some sort of verbal reply! Talk!" he thought to himself as he searched his mind for something remotely intelligent to say.
"Uhm, uh… 6:50am." He mumbled as he glanced at his watch and suddenly became very interested in his shoes.
"Oh. Okay, thanks Harry." Hermione replied, understandably somewhat puzzled that it took Harry three minutes to say three words, two of which she wasn't even sure counted as actual words. "Do you want to go down to breakfast now?" Hermione continued, now in full control of her speech - and the pace of it.
"Yeah, okay." Harry mumbled, almost incoherently.
As the two were standing up to leave for Breakfast, they stopped in their tracks as they heard a muffled THWACK-KADOOF-BOOM-FLOOPLE-PLUNK-"ooof!"
They frowned simultaneously as they hesitantly made their way toward the bottom of the staircase that lead to the boys' dormitory.
"Ron? Are you alright?" Hermione called out tentatively.
"oooowwwwwwwwwwwww. Fleeping. Hursht. Elp." Replied Ron The Caveman.
Hermione turned to Harry for a translation.
"He said he must have been sleep walking because he only woke mid-fall. He says it really hurts, and he wants some help trying to get up." Said Harry, whilst Hermione stared at him in amazement that he managed to deduct all that information from a few incoherent grunts.
Harry and Hermione went to Ron and helped him off the ground. No mean feat, especially now Ron had taken on the stature of a rugby player and had grown to about 6 and half feet.
"Ron, what on earth happened to you?" Hermione inquired, with a concerned expression. Rather too concerned for Harry's liking.
"I …Uhm … nothing. Doesn't matter. Be back down in a minute." Ron replied, looking neither of them in the eye and proceeding to ascend the stone stairs to the dormitory.
Harry and Hermione watched as Ron's surly figure vanished from view, and shot each other amused glances.
They stood in a rather awkward silence whilst waiting for Ron to return, and Harry entertained himself by watching Crookshanks trying to climb the large stone mantelpiece at the far corner of the room.
"Crookshanks! NO!" Hermione called out, preceding a frantic run towards the large ginger ball of matted fur.
But it was too late. The large box of paper labels that read lines such as "make house-elf pensions fair" and "end this criminal injustice" came tumbling down onto a smiling Crookshanks. Apparently, being showered in S.P.E.W badges-in-progress was exactly what he had always dreamed of.