Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, the characters of the Harry Potter books, or the ideas that are represented in any of the books of the Harry Potter series. I make absolutely no profit from this writing, or any other writing in this story. I am poor. Please don't sue me.

Hidden Feelings

The trip to Hogsmeade came a whole lot faster than anyone had been expecting. A thin layer of snow had fallen and now covered the landscape giving everything an unearthly look to it, like it was from a black and white film. It was unearthly...not that Hogsmeade needed any help looking unearthly when you stopped to look a little closer than you had been.

It wasn't anything new to Ron. He had spent his entire life thinking that things from the world that Hermione came from were strange and unusual. Hogsmeade was about as close to normal as things got for him, with the exception of Hogwarts, which was just like a normal school to him. It was just like walking down any other street where they happened to be selling things.

In that sense, Hermione had to agree with him partially. This place wasn't all that different from Diagon Alley. Of course Diagon Alley was about as different as you could get from everywhere else that Hermione had ever been. It was like some sort of dream that a toddler might have one day. It was completely out of the ordinary to everything that Hermione once knew. It was normal now, but there was still that part of her that said it wasn't.

It didn't really matter all that much. It just made the whole atmosphere that much more special for when she'd finally reveal her true feelings to Harry. He was finally going to know that she loved him and had loved him since…well for as long as she could remember. She was going to tell him, and everything was going to be fine and dandy, just like it was supposed to be in all of those trashy stories that she read where the couple fell madly in love with each other…and then other things happened.

Hermione blushed at the thought of those 'other things' happening with her and Harry. That was something that she wasn't going to be able to get out of her head for a nice long time now. She silently cursed herself for destroying her studies like that, but now that the image was there, it wasn't like there was anything she could do about it. It was also going to do terrible things to her sleep time…not that she minded that all that much.

She shook her head to clear her mind. That wasn't the sort of thing that she should have been thinking when she was supposed to be talking to the boy of her dreams, no matter what kind of dreams they were, as soon as she found him again. He had run off when they had arrived in Hogsmeade saying something about needing to check something out and that they shouldn't wait up for him. Ron hadn't said much about it and had just wandered around looking in store windows with his hands stuffed into the pockets of the heavy school robes that he wore.

He was always sticking close to her. She had thought it was nice at first, but it had started getting a bit agitating a while ago, when she realize that she wasn't going to have any alone time with Harry…not that Ron would be a problem if she didn't find Harry. He could have been anywhere by now, and finding him was going to take far too much time, since they would probably end up just following him if they were looking for him. That was the way things always turned out when anyone was looking for anyone else. They ended up tracing the footprints of the person they were looking for and never quite catching up.

In truth that was probably irritating Hermione far more than the fact that Ron was following her. Draco always managed to find who he was looking for when he was looking for them, and yet every time that she needed to find someone to tell them something important, like reveal her most secret feelings to them, she couldn't find them to save her life. It was the most irritating thing in the world to know that Harry was out there and that she couldn't find him and probably wasn't going to no matter how hard it was the she tried. It was a wonder that she was still sane.

"So, Hermione. Do you think we should go check up on Fred and George? See their new joke shop?" Ron had started wandering over to Hermione's side.

It was killing him inside to know that he was never going to be able to kiss those lips of Hermione's or know the feeling of her love. It was killing him every second that he was with her to know that she was beyond his reach and would never come into his circle. It hurt even more to know that Harry hadn't even done anything and he had won her affections. It wasn't fair! Harry hadn't done anything, yet Hermione would bend over backwards for his attention, and yet here was poor little Ron, who would do anything for some of Hermione's attention and she wouldn't ever even notice. He could stand in front of her and scream into her face that he loved her and she would just smile and say 'that's nice' in her little happy voice and then go back to thinking about how she was going to win Harry.

What was it that attracted Hermione's attention to Harry and away from him? What was it that Harry had that he didn't? Well, there were a lot of things that Harry had which he didn't, but which one of them was the one that Hermione wanted? Surely it couldn't be that hard for him to get. He would even stand in front of stupid Voldemort and stick his tongue out when he cast his stupid curse, then get a stupid scar if it would win Hermione. Even if it killed him, he would do it. He just wanted her to turn to him and smile and say that she knew how he felt and felt the same way. Just once to know that the girl that he had fallen in love with felt even a spark of emotion towards him that went beyond friend.

At the moment he would even settle for friend since it seemed that Hermione was ignoring him again. She had been doing a lot of that recently. Everyone had been ignoring him a whole lot more than they had been before. He wondered if anyone noticed or not. Blake was seeming to be the only person who actually listened to him every time he was talking…he even listened to the hidden meanings in the way he said what he was saying. He was sure that he had to have left more hints for Hermione to find than there were stars in the sky, and the only people who never showed any signs of picking them up where Harry and Hermione. Blake hadn't even spent that much time with him and he had picked up on the stupid hints. It was sad that the people he thought were his best friends couldn't pick up on something so obvious, but a complete stranger could.

It was even worse that Hermione and Harry kept blanking out and ignoring him right out. Even Draco Malfoy didn't ignore him. Sure that wasn't the kind of attention that he ever wanted, but at least it was something. He could tell Draco to go stuff himself and Draco would come up with a response. He could tell Harry or Hermione that he was going to go jump off of a bridge and neither of them would even realize that he was talking. He sighed softly. Maybe if he said it and then went somewhere to go do it they would start listening to him again rather than playing this odd game of proverbial footsie with each other.

Well, it wasn't like it mattered if Hermione had listened to him or not. They were headed in the general direction of Fred and George's joke store anyway. They would get there eventually, and then Fred and George would call him 'ickle-Ronnikins' and poke fun at him, and everything would be back to normal.

He wondered if perhaps that was all he was really looking for. Everything had changed drastically since the end of the last year. He knew for a fact that people didn't like change, so perhaps this whole Hermione thing was just him trying to make things all go back to they way that they had been…then again, that didn't explain why he had felt this way about Hermione before everything had gone down with Sirius dying and all. It was a partial answer to a very complex question that he didn't quite understand yet.

He looked into another store window. There was nothing here that would buy him the love of Hermione either. Not that he would have been able to afford it if it was in there, it was just the fact that it wasn't. Nothing had what it was that he was looking for. He sighed softly as he continued to look at his reflection. Maybe he was just really ugly, and that was why Hermione didn't want him. He could believe that. He wasn't much to look at. Draco said so, and so did a whole lot of other people…he just hadn't quite accepted it as a possibility until now.

Maybe it was the money that he lacked and that Harry had that made Harry such a better choice for her. After all, Harry would have been able to wander through here and bought anything that Hermione ever stopped to look at. He had thought it was cool when he had first found out, but now that it played to his disadvantage, it wasn't such a good thing. It was like everything else about Harry that had made him such an amazing person and now made him that much better than Ron. He had started to want to hate Harry. He wanted to hate everything about Harry, but he couldn't.

He wanted to join up with Malfoy of all people and throw insults, and small hard objects at Harry, but that wouldn't have helped him, and joining with Malfoy was just stupid. He wanted to be like Harry sometimes, to be great, to be put on a pedestal and be allowed to say, 'I am so great!' and have everyone believe it. He wanted the affections of Hermione. He wanted to trade places with Harry for just one day, just to have everything that it was that he was lacking. Hermione's love, courage, power, money, everything.

He knew it wasn't really what he wanted, but it would have been so much better than what he had. What he really wanted was for Hermione to stop and talk to him. What he really wanted was for Hermione to love him for who he really was. He wanted someone to notice him for doing what it was that he did and then receive a kind word, or a pat on the back. He wanted to know what it was to be like Harry without actually being Harry. That was what he wanted, but he was always going to be overshadowed by the great boy who lived. There was no space in the papers for a Weasley boy who was a little bit shy and too nice for his own good except in the obituaries.

It wasn't fair, and he knew it wasn't. He was going to spend his entire life knowing how it wasn't fair, and how to get the one thing that you wanted more than anything else you had to give up something even better that you didn't realize you had. Harry had to lose his parents to become the great wizard that he was, and Ron…well, Ron didn't stand a chance at ever getting what it was that he really wanted. He was always going to be good ol' ickle-Ronnikins, younger brother to the Weasley twins...He was always just going to be a nameless boy that no one noticed because they were too busy shielding their eyes from the radiance that was Harry Potter.

Ron placed his hand against the cold glass of the window, staring at his reflection. He wasn't sure that he was even a real person anymore. Everything about him seemed so hallow and so boring. Maybe he was just here to provide some interesting conversation in the great adventure of Harry Potter. Maybe his great purpose in the universe was to get blown away by Voldemort in some final battle. That would just fit right in there. He could see the story. It wouldn't even be the front page. It would just be crammed in there right next to a new recipe for dumplings, 'Weasley boy killed by Voldemort'. He doubted anyone would even cry. It wasn't like there wasn't enough of the Weasley family out there. What would one less mean?

Ron sighed softly ad he pulled his hand away from the glass softly, "I suppose I really am just some random kid with no meaning in life…"

Hermione continued walking slowly, "Oh, I'm sorry, Ron. Did you say something?"

"Nothing worth repeating, Hermione…" He stuffed his hand back into his pocket and slowly took back to walking slightly behind her, "…nothing worth you listening too…"

((AN: Okay, next chapter I'm jumping forward by a bit. For the timeline purposes it is somewhere in October okay? I know we were all looking for some Fred and George, but I really, really like them, and because I really, really like them, I would never be completely satisfied with anything that I had them saying or doing, so I'm not going to put myself through that type of punishment.))