A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews, Twisted Silver, Theatrechica, and Obsessed-with-random-theories-about-Harry-Potter. Here's the next part!
Ron
Ron had almost always liked Hermione. The only time he hadn't was the first few days they knew each other. Every year, he thought he had done a brilliant job of keeping his feelings for her private, but this year would be different.
If she's not going with Vikki anymore, he lamely thought.
As if she had read his mind she suddenly spoke up, "I've gotten a few owls from Victor over the summer. He says he's doing fine, but he's going to quit Quidditch."
"WHAT!" both Ron and Harry yelled.
"Yeah, he says it's just too much stress," she absent-mindedly told them.
"But he can't quit!" Ron exclaimed, "He's the best seeker I've ever seen!"
"Yeah," Hermione said, raising her eye-brows, "That's what you said before you met him, then you didn't like him so much."
"Well…" stuttered Ron, not wanting to reveal his feelings quite yet, "Just because he's a great flyer doesn't mean he's a good person."
"And why isn't he a good person? He hasn't done anything wrong," she said, glaring at him.
Oh no, not at all, he thought to himself, he just took you away from me, that's it,
"I didn't mean he's not a good person," Ron tried to explain himself, "He's just not very friendly."
"He's friendly to me…"
"But not to anybody else, Hermione," Harry spoke up.
Ron looked gratefully at Harry, "Yeah, he's right. Well," he said, thinking, "except for that Fleur girl," he corrected himself.
Ron was satisfied with the expression he now found on Hermione's face, "He's friendly to Fleur?" she asked.
"Oh yeah, real friendly. You should've seen them at the tournament…"
"I did Ron," Hermione told him.
"Obviously not very well," Harry quietly said.
"But, I thought she was going with Bill?" she asked.
Ron shook his head, "No, not anymore. She had to go back and live with her family."
Ron could have sworn he'd seen her stop breathing, "And now…" she said, letting her sentence trail off.
"Now what?" he asked.
"That's what I was asking you, you dolt," she said, rolling her eyes.
"If you're going to act that way I just won't tell you at all," said Ron, sounding disgusted.
"What way?" she asked.
"Rolling your eyes at me," he said, sitting back in his seat.
Hermione rolled her eyes yet again, "That's just telling you that what I think you're saying is dumb," she simply told him.
Ron's mind went blank.
She thinks I'm dumb, he weakly thought, Maybe I don't want to ask her out after all…
"Ron?" he heard Harry ask, "Ron are you alright?"
"Wha? Yeah, I'm fine," he said, coming back into the world.
"You looked spaced out is all," Harry said.
"Yeah I'm fine," he repeated, "I was just thinking about something."
"Look, Ron," Hermione said, clearly under the impression that he was still thinking about Victor, "I'm sure he's not that bad of a guy and I'm sure he and Fleur are just friends," she said.
"Just friends?" he asked, "I don't think so, Hermione," he said, looking at Harry.
"Well, I don't care who Victor's friends are. How did both of you do on your owls?"
Nice change of subject, Ron thought.
"I did alright on mine. Of course, I got an O.W.L. in the defense against the dark arts part," Harry spoke up.
"And what about potions?" she asked.
Ron looked at Harry again; he knew he himself hadn't gotten an O.W.L in potions, which meant he couldn't be an aurorer like he had wanted to be.
"Yeah, I did. He said the color of the steam was a little off, but otherwise I did really good."
"That's great, Harry," Hermione praised him.
"Yeah," he said, smiling.
"What about Astronomy? Did anybody get an O.W.L in that?" Ron asked.
Hermione looked darkly at him, "They did away with counting those O.W.L s for everyone because we had a distraction," she said.
"Oh," said Ron, remembering what had happened, "yeah, I didn't get mine finished."
"Nor did I," said Hermione, "but I suppose that's a good thing. I mean, that they didn't count it. I don't think any of us finished it."
"I don't think so, either," said Harry.
"What about charms?" she spiritedly asked.
"Yeah," Harry said at the same time Ron said, "No."
"You didn't get an O.W.L in charms?" she asked Ron.
Ron felt his face heating up, "No."
"I wonder how many O.W.L s Malfoy got," Harry asked.
Hermione let out a laugh, "If he got any at all it was because his father bought them for him. I'm sure there was some kind of money exchanging hands for his O.W.L. s," she said.
"Well, I know he didn't do very well in charms," Harry said, "Because he was too busy watching what I was doing rather than what he was," he said.
"That's a nice change," she happily said.
"What?" Ron asked, confused.
"Well, it's always Harry that gets his class work assignments thrown away or ruined because of either Malfoy or Snape. I was just saying that it's nice for once for Malfoy to get a taste of his own medicine."
"Oh, yeah," Ron said, spacing out. Suddenly he was very tired and he thought longingly of the nice warm beds in the Gryffindor tower awaiting him…
