Chapter Two - First Kiss

Now

With a start I realize that three students - around second year or so - have just entered the compartment and are looking at me nervously. I smile at them, remembering a similar incident with my friends and I.

"It's all right, you can sit down. I don't bite," I promise them, and they smile tentatively.

The girl chooses the seat nearest me. "So you're the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, sir?"

It feels very odd to hear someone call me 'sir'. But I nod. "Do you like that class? And be honest, it's okay if you don't."

The boys laugh, and one comments, "She loves all of her classes."

She shrugs. "What's wrong with that?"

The smile on my face fades a bit as they remind me a bit too much of my friends and I. The boy who hasn't yet spoken notices- he's a sharp one, and I file that away for future usage. "What's wrong?"

I shake my head at them, knowing they can't imagine. "Nothing. I'm Professor Weasley, who are you?"

The looks on their faces are the kind once reserved for him. Awe, almost worship, fills their eyes and I realize that they've heard stories about me the way I had heard about him before we met. Funny that I once dreamed of having those sort of adoring looks turned on me. Now...now I'd give my soul to be nobody again.

"Weasley as in Ron Weasley, sir?" she asks.

"Yes."

They stare, and then abruptly look away, as though realizing what they're doing. "So, your names are..." I ask, to break the awkward silence.

"Er, I'm Caroline Davies."

"Roger Davies' daughter?"

She nods, looking surprised. "Do you know my father?"

"We were at school together, but he was a year above me, and in another House, so we didn't talk much. I was a big fan of his Quidditch, though." I look over at the boys.

They notice my gaze and quickly introduce themselves. Cedric Chang is the quieter of the two, the one who'd noticed my look earlier. The other is Robert Thomas.

I identify the parentage of each and wonder why I seem to be the only one of old schoolmates who didn't settle down and have a family or at least move in with the one they loved. Cedric smiles at me and says, "Before you ask, yes, my mother is Cho Chang, and yes, I've heard all about you from her. More about...Harry, though."

I feel something shiver in my chest at the name, and wonder what the boy's heard, exactly. Cho, back in the day, had some rather serious blackmail on me, involving an empty Quidditch stand, a Chocolate Frog, and a silly lover's quarrel.

Cedric and his friends settle down after a bit and begin to argue good-naturedly with each other. Cedric keeps glancing between the other two, and I remember a similar train ride years ago...

Then

"Hermione, will you take your nose out of your book for five seconds and talk to us?" I asked in a hurt voice, deftly reaching across the space between seats and pulling the book away from her. She glanced up, annoyed, but finally joined our conversation.

Harry smiled at me, clearly glad I had gotten her attention from whatever she was studying at the moment. She could be a pain, but Harry and I both cared about her and wanted her involved with us. It just took a good jolt to get her into the real world from wherever she went when she read.

We chatted as the plump witch with the snacks came by, then as we ate the sweets Harry bought. It had almost become a tradition by now, him buying candy for us all, and us eating it as if it were ours. I had given up arguing with him over it. This was our last train ride to Hogwarts, anyway, so why not enjoy it?

The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, and Hermione informed us that we would be at Hogwarts in about an hour.

"What, 'Mione, did you memorize the schedule for that too?" I teased her. It wasn't serious, it never was.

She rolled her eyes, then glanced between Harry and I. She had done it several times since we had arrived, and I was starting to worry. What if she had caught on to me? I mentally begged her to stay quiet about the whole thing. I had spent most of the last two years trying to deny my feelings, but last summer, things had changed.

Harry had come to my house, same as usual, but there was one difference. He didn't sleep any more. He had always been plagued by nightmares, and I had always been there, a shoulder to lean or cry on, whatever he needed. But they had become really bad over the summer, to the point where he screamed in his sleep. Before, he'd been restless, occasionally sobbing during a particularly horrible one, but it had changed.

And one night when I held his shaking body close, unsure how to give him the comfort he needed, he had spilled the truth out to me. At the end of last year, our sixth, he had faced Voldemort yet again. He had escaped, but before he had, Voldemort had placed a curse on him, a Nightmare Curse. The Nightmare Curse was a little-known bit of Dark Magic that had no reversal spell. The only way to remove it was to kill the caster, or to destroy their wand.

Harry hadn't known until too late.

While we had been at Hogwarts, Dumbledore had gotten Madam Pomfrey to give him a dreamless sleep potion, so the nightmares were tolerable. But dreamless sleep was addictive, and when he'd left Hogwarts, he'd stopped taking the potion. The curse took it's toll on him. He hadn't slept in almost a month when he arrived at the Burrow.

For the rest of the summer, I slept in the same bed with him, holding him through the terrors of whatever his dreams conjured to torture him.

And during one sleepless night, I accepted the fact that I was in love with Harry Potter.

I wasn't the only one who was, of course. Harry had been leaving a steady stream of broken hearts all around Hogwarts, though he didn't know it. He never intentionally hurt any of them; he just never saw.

I could never tell Harry, that I was sure of. If I did, our friendship would be ruined. He didn't share my feelings, there was no hope in that.

So as we sat in the train compartment, laughing and joking, there was an undercurrent of tension. He knew I was keeping something from him. He also knew that we couldn't sleep together at Hogwarts. He didn't want to talk about it, but we both knew we needed to. Hermione knew about the curse, of course - keeping things from her was a pointless exercise, we'd discovered.

Harry didn't want anyone to know. So we were avoiding the subject like the plague.

Hermione finally threw up her hands in frustration and cried, "You two are so stupid! I'm leaving to find some sanity. Talk about it. You need to." And she left.

We stared after her. I wanted to scream frantically in her ear, "No! Mione, I can't do this!" - but I couldn't. Instead I turned my eyes on Harry.

Any weight he had once gained from eating regular meals at Hogwarts and at my house was gone, and there were dark circles under his eyes. I knew my own were similar, but his also held a haunted look I wanted nothing more than to kiss away.

He was looking at me too, and cleared his throat. "There's something I have to tell you. I'm not sure how to say this, so please let me stumble along. I- Ron, I've never had friends before. And you're my best friend- no insult to Hermione. You mean everything to me. When I wake up during one of those nightmares and you hold me, you're all that keeps me from just giving in. I guess what I'm trying to say is- I think I'm in love with you. Please don't hate me."

He looked at me with those lovely eyes and I wondered what the hell he was thinking.

My throat was so tight I could barely breathe, certainly couldn't manage to get a word out. So I did the next best thing. I kissed him.

All the passion I had hidden for so long, all the love I had stuck in a corner of my mind and ignored, all of it poured out into that kiss. Soon Harry and I were practically trying to suck each other's tonsils out. Finally we broke apart, gasping, and grinned.

"I love you too." The words weren't adequate to describe the feelings racing through the pit of my stomach at that moment. He seemed to share my opinion on the subject, and kissed me again.

Hermione chose that moment to reenter the compartment.

Harry and I pulled away from each other regretfully. But she smiled, so obviously happy for us that I hugged her, just on impulse. Harry joined the hug a minute later, and the grin on her face widened.

"So, I see you worked it out? It took you long enough."