Chapter 4: The flavor of Luuuuuuuuuuuurve

More dating disasters of our favorite wizard and witch. Will Ron and Hermione have a good time on their date? Provided, of course, that she lives through it!

The restaurant was in and of itself a marvel. Ron had never seen anything so funny. There were muggles everywhere of course. Some speaking on the fellytone, some actually carrying trays to tables, and others washing plates with funny colored squares that Hermione informed him were "sponges".

They had only just been seated by a waitress, who was very pretty and who Ron had ignored, to Hermione's great delight, when Ron remembered the corsage that he had brought for Hermione.

He handed her the package,

"Hermione, I forgot to give you this."

Hermione opened the package to find a beautiful corsage comprised of pink and white flowers lying inside.

"It's a corsage. My mum made it; she said that muggles brought these on dates."

Ron said corsage so that it rhymed with "age"

"Oh, Ron, it's so beautiful! It's actually pronounced 'cors-ah-ge', though; it's from the Old French,"

Hermione said unblushingly, as she allowed Ron to tie it around her wrist.

He took his time, feeling the warmth of her pale wrist beneath his fingers.

"Cors-ahh-ge," Ron said, raising his eyebrow.

"You're a nightmare, honestly."

Both were strongly reminded of the time in their first year when Hermione had taught Ron how to say 'Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa' correctly, to his great annoyance.

"Oh. Ron!" Hermione said, in a sudden rush of emotion as she stood up and kissed him on the cheek.

Ron was stunned, and extremely red. He smiled stupidly and vaguely touched the spot on his cheek where Hermione's lips had touched, thinking that, while he would never bring Hermione a bouquet again, he certainly would insult her some more as that seemed to yield good results.

The next few minutes passed silently between them, as they scanned their menus and Ron dropped his fork loudly on the ground, banged his head as he leaned over to pick it up, and dropped it once more as he reached to rub the sore spot on his head, all in rapid succession.

Once the waitress, cracking her gum loudly and throwing interested glances at Ron, took their orders and their menus, Ron sighed inwardly. So far this dating thing had sounded harder than it actually was. I mean, he and Hermione had known each other so long, and he liked her so much. It was easy to talk to her; he'd been doing it for almost seven years now.

That's when he noticed a tendril creeping up Hermione's arm and into her sleeve. Hermione, who had just been giving Ron a detailed account of her trip to Spain didn't notice any such thing.

Ron watched, horrorstruck, as he saw the tendrils, which were rapidly sprouting from the 'cors-ah-ge' on Hermione's wrist crept up to the collar of her shirt from the inside.

Without thinking Ron, god bless him, did the first thing that came to mind and reached over the table and grabbed the hem of Hermione's shirt collar.

She screamed and swatted his hand away.

"Ron Weasley! What on earth do you think you are doing!"

Ron was thunderstruck. It only just registered to him what his rescue attempt might be misconstrued as.

"Hermione, no…you don't understand," Ron stammered, the older couple sitting next to them were glaring at Ron and muttering darkly to each other, and two boys ordering food from the counter whistled and laughed.

So this dating thing was hard.

"Hermione, quick, look down…" Ron said, sad that he couldn't be more articulate.

Hermione looked down to find her corsage slowly wrapping itself around her from underneath her shirt.

"Ahhh…" she said, making a beeline for the bathroom.

Ron ran to the door and was about to enter before he realized that that probably wouldn't help the situation. He spent his time outside the ladies room of the muggle restaurant silently berating himself and mentally beating Fred and George, who he was sure were behind the whole near-fatal flower arrangement thing, up.

A few minutes later, although it felt much longer to Ron, who was pacing back and forth in front of the door worrying about whether or not Hermione had managed to get rid of the strangling sprays, Hermione exited the bathroom. She looked slightly pale and was still unconsciously holding onto her neck, but otherwise looked as though she had managed to survive yet another one of Fred and George's jokes.

"Hermione, I am so, so sorry. Fred. George. Will. Kill. Them. I mean, I will literally throttle, and punch, and kick…" at this point at an utter loss for words Ron started punching the air violently in a display that would, if anything, hurt himself or any poor person who came within range.

"Ron, Ron, Ron!" Hermione, finally screamed, grabbing hold of one of his arms, the other which was in the middle of an impressive uppercut dropped to his side. Ron looked absolutely miserable.

"It's okay. It's not your fault, really," she said soothingly, taking Ron's arm and leading him back to their table where their food was now sitting. A few minutes later the whole incident had been forgotten, by them, but not the older muggle couple, who was still throwing dirty looks in Ron's direction. Ron suddenly fell silent and looked at Hermione curiously.

"So, uh-how did you get rid of it?"

"The hornet?" Hermione asked. She had just been telling a story about a garden party.

"No. The cors-ahhhh-ge," enunciating it to its fullest extent.

"Oh, that," Hermione said, dabbing her lips with her napkin and suddenly looking slightly guilty.

"Well, once I managed to get it off…I …er…flushed it down one of the toilettes."

"I certainly hope it can't swim or it'll be a nasty shock for the next person who goes in there," Ron said.

By dessert time, Ron was thoroughly enjoying himself. His bread pudding had just arrived when the older woman sitting near them got up suddenly and hit Ron (rather hard) with her large (and very heavy) purse as she swung it onto her shoulder.

Ron wasn't quite sure that it was an accident. Actually, he was almost sure that it wasn't as the woman said, "Shame on you, young man! Taking advantage of such a lovely young lady," before shuffling off mumbling about young whippersnappers and young men not being the same now-a-days.

Once Ron had gotten over the shock of finding half of his face covered in bread pudding, the blow from the purse had submerged him in his dessert, he became irritated.

"You'd have to be pretty thick to confuse an attempt to save someone's life with…well...with…er…anything else!" he said rather loudly to the only person who would listen, and was interested: Hermione.

He looked at her to see if she would agree but found her staring dreamily at him. It was at this point that he remembered that he was covered with pudding and made an attempt to right the situation with his napkin.

She reached across the table and wiped some of the bread pudding off of his face, right near his upper lip and licked her finger, bright spots appearing on her cheeks.

"Mmmm…" she said, "Ron flavored bread pudding, delicious."

"Oh, really?" he said slyly, "Well, I bet Ron Weasley Bread Pudding doesn't taste half as good as Hermione Granger Key Lime Pie,"

Ron said slyly as he took his finger and swiped it across the whipped cream on Hermione's cake and made for her nose. She saw what he was going to do but wasn't nearly fast enough.

Soon Hermione was sitting contentedly with Ron Weasley, eating her Key Lime Pie with a dollop of whipped cream perched precariously on the tip of her adorable nose.

Finally, everything looked like it was going to work out. Ron couldn't help priding himself. Had he, Ron Weasley, not just been called "delicious" by Hermione Granger! He had managed to avoid several major catastrophes. He had met a few hurdles, admittedly so, but he was, in essence, a lady's man.

The ol' Weasley charm indeed!

Oh, if only it could last.

Alright! There you have it, ladies and gents; the cutest couple ever! Tell me you thought so too. Oh please, do!

(By the way, for any lads interested, Bexie1217Sherbert is quite good!)

xxx-Bexie1217