Come on Hermione, would you bloody run faster?"

"Oh honestly Ron, my legs aren't as long as yours!" she yelled back.

"Just MOVE FASTER!" he retaliated, "if I'm late for detention tonight, McGonagall won't let my play in the quidditch game this Saturday. If that happens, Colin will have to fill in!"

Ron said these last words in a tone of disgust. Colin had somehow, miraculously made the Keeper back-up position, although how he managed to meet Harry's high expectations (who was now the Gryffindor Quidditch captain), he had no idea. Ron knew that he wasn't the world's greatest Quidditch player, but Colin made Ron look like Oliver Wood.

"Please," she snapped back, "there is no way that she will punish us that severely for being late!"

"Well," he yelled back, "there is no way in bloody hell that she will punish you, Miss 'Oh please Professor McGonagall, I know the answer Professor McGonagall, can I please have some extra homework, Professor McGonagall?'… You are her favorite student Hermione! She's not about to punish you, but she'll be as happy to punish me as Snape would right now! You're just a bloody know-it-all Hermione, and no one cares if you get away with being late!"

By this point in their little row that they had started, Hermione was seething. She was annoyed to no ends how she of all people had ended up in detention, with McGonagall, of all professors. After all, Ron was right about one thing- she was McGonagall's favorite student. And worst of all… she was going to be spending the next three hours alone with Ronald Weasley! Oh, the gods must be cursing her into oblivion!

"RON," she said through clenched teeth, "you really need to watch your language. Just because your older brothers don't care about the unwholesome words that come out of their mouths doesn't mean that you have to say them too," she said, still running to keep up with Ron's large strides.

"Hermione," he said in a very uneven, quiet tone, "you are not my mum, so quit acting like her.

"Well, if you weren't such an immature git, maybe I wouldn't have to-,

Hermione could tell that he was really angry now, (because he had never compared her t his mum before)…but so was she! She thought Ron was finished, but he didn't stop there.

"You know, it's your entire DAMN fault that we have to serve detention anyways. Sometimes Hermione, you REALLY are an insufferable little know-it-all, kissing all the professor's arses AND if you didn't act like such a bitch toda-"

But he never got the chance to finish his sentence. Hermione had caught up with him, stopped his running by stepping in front of him and blocked his path to detention. She slapped him as hard as she could in the face, so hard that her hand had temporarily gone numb. This slap to Ron made the one that she gave Draco Malfoy back in third year look like a love pat.

Ron regretted what he had said the moment the words came out, but regretted it even more when he saw the look that Hermione had on her face. The look of pain on her face was indescribable and her eyes were flooding freely with tears. She was looking at Ron like she didn't even know him; maybe she didn't any more. She was standing in front of one of her best friends in the whole world, a friend who she knew that she would die for and he might as well have called her a mudblood. That is how she felt- like Ron Weasley, the person who had stood up to her countless times against Malfoy when he had called her that foul name, had degraded her even worse that the word "mudblood".

Hermione continued to stare at him with a look of disbelief in her eyes, then turned on her heels and ran as fast as she could down the hall, towards the Transfiguration room. All she cared about was getting as far away from Ron as she could, at least until the detention started. She needed just a few minuets by herself to get away from the person who had just succeed in hurting her more than any other person had ever done.

Ron cursed under his breath for what he had just done. How could I have said that? True, Hermione was annoying the hell out of him with her bossy know-it-all attitude and it really irked him when she seemed to become the sixteen year-old version of his own mum. But still, Hermione was one of is best friends and he loved her…loved her like a friend, of course…yes… as a friend. He mentally kicked himself over and over again for what he had just said to her. Not really caring now if he showed up late for detention or not, he slowly dragged his feet all the way to McGonagall's classroom.

Ron finally reached the classroom and slowly pushed open the door. By some miracle that Ron knew that he didn't deserve, McGonagall was not there yet… but Hermione was. She was sitting in her usual seat in the class, front row center. Ron knew that it wasn't best to take his usual seat, which was right next to her at the table, so he decided to take Harry's usual seat, which at the table to the right of theirs, in the front row.

As Ron slowly made his way up to the front of the classroom, his thudding feet making the walls of the room echo, he saw Hermione jump and furiously start wiping her face with the back of her own hand. She stiffened up and brushed all the strands of bushy brown hair that had fallen into her face, back behind her ears. He was now about three feet behind her and even though he couldn't see her face, he knew that a look of a kind of uncomfortable anticipation was written all over it. He knew that she knew he was standing behind her and that she did not want to look him in the face. He didn't blame her one bit.

As he walked up to Harry's seat and pulled the chair back, preparing to slide into it, he decided, against his better judgment, to steal a peak at Hermione.

She was staring straight forward, with her mouth set in a firm line. Then, to Ron's horror, a new wave of tears started down her cheeks again and it absolutely broke his heart. He couldn't handle this; he didn't even remember who had started this row, only that he had ended it and had gone way too far with it.

"Hermione, I-, he started.

"Ron," Hermione answered, "don't".

Ron sighed and gave up-for the time being. She needed to be left alone and if he really wanted to patch things up with her, he would leave her alone for now. That was all he could do and if that was all he could do, then he was going to do it, even if it killed him not to take her in his arms and hug her sorry until Christmas.

Just leave her alone for now, he thought.