Hermione sat bolt upright in her heavy-curtained four poster bed. Within a second her wand was out from under her pillow and in her hand, spreading its cautious light upon her command. When Professor McGonogall had written to offer her the post, Hermione had forgotten that by tradition the head girl and boy at Hogwarts had their own very stately bedrooms. Hers was at the very top of the Griffindor tower with a vertiginous view of the Quidditch pitch ("Brilliant!" Ron had written in response to her description of it in her first letter. "You"ll be able to watch all the practices without even getting out of bed!") and the forbidden forest beyond.
"Quite a change from sharing a tent with two smelly boys", she'd said to herself somewhat uncertainly when she'd unpacked a month ago. She'd felt lost and lonely for a few minutes until Ginny and Luna came bounding in. Ginny had whistled under her breath and made a comment endearingly similar to Ron's about the quidditch pitch, and Luna had produced some floaty colourful scarves out of a bag and dreamily draped them around the room. It wasn't at all the sort of aesthetic Hermione had had in mind, but she'd surprised herself by leaving the scarves up for a few days so as not to hurt Luna's feelings and before she knew it, she'd got used to them. She'd got used to the whole set up in fact, and found on the whole that she liked having her own space to retreat to each evening.
But solitude is much less attractive when you hear a forceful tapping at your window at midnight on a stormy autumn night. It was loud enough to have woken her, though Hermione hasn't actually been asleep. She'd been studying until late, naturally - they had been given a choice of two essay topics for their first charms essay of the term, and to Hermione it was obviously only sensible to write full essays for both, and then submit the best one. And then she'd been lying in bed thinking about Ron. This was pleasurable at first, but eventually morphed into anxiety. She would have expected a reply to her last letter by now. He couldn't be offended that she'd spent her first weekend home from Hogwarts with her parents, could he? He knew more than anyone how hard she was working to make everything all right with them and he'd been fantastic about it. And after all, he'd been away on auror training! But it wasn't like him not to reply by return owl, even if it were a couple of scrawled lines and a little doodle of him and Harry messing around, or an update on the Canons' most recent match. She couldn't understand this four day delay.
Ron's feelings were the least of her worries now, anyway. What was that noise? It was sort of scuffling, with the odd sharp bang. She drew back the curtains around the bed and padded silently to the window, wand raised. The window was closed and locked, of course, and she'd set up several different wards around the room before she went to bed that first evening, which she'd maintained conscientiously. All the same, something was making that noise and past years had taught her that strange noises at night -or in the day, for that matter - usually had a sinister and terrifying explanation. Her heart pounded in her chest and she was about to pull back the heavy curtain at the window when she heard a distinctly unterrifying noise. "Bloody" - tap - "hell".
Her hand was still trembling and her wand only slightly lowered as she pulled back the curtain. It certainly sounded like the voice she knew best in the world, and it was a distinctly Ron-like utterance, but caution dies hard. She unlocked and opened the window. The pale light of her wand barely illuminated the figure there enough to discern that it was a figure: a long, lanky one, balancing awkwardly with one arm behind steadying the broom it was balancing on, and the other wrestling with the window.
"Hello there," Ron's voice said, with a decent attempt at suaveness. Hermione could hear the slightly crooked grin in his voice, and her heart leapt inside her chest. "Ron!" she squealed, and hastily started undoing all of the wards she had set up to let him in. Before she undid the last one, she stopped. "Where did we have our fourth kiss?" she asked him.
"Fourth? In my Dad's shed. You were wearing that blue flowery shirt - or at least you were at the beginning..."
Hermione didn't need to see his face to know he was raising one eyebrow at her, and she laughed with delight as she undid the last ward.
Ron clambered through, swearing mildly as he banged his head on the window frame, and hauling his broom and old orange rucksack in after him. And then there he was in her room, and she was in his arms, sobbing and laughing and burrowing her face in his chest to inhale that almost imperceptible, warm, healthy, gloriously familiar smell, the smell of open fields, of the healthy sweat of exuberant youth, and ever so faintly of desire.
"I thought you were on a training mission this week!" she said at last, when she raised her head to look up at him. "And how did you get into the school grounds? And when -"
"One thing at a time," Ron said, with gentle firmness. "Incendio", he remarked to the fireplace, producing his wand from behind his ear and flicking it towards the large fireplace opposite Hermione's bed. The fireplace roared into life, and crackled merrily. "That's better", he grinned down at her. In the firelight his hair looked redder than ever, almost as though it were aflame itself.
Ron said "Blimey, how are you always even more beautiful than I remember?" Hermione hadn't been feeling particularly beautiful, in her warm and sensible pyjamas and her hair an unruly frizz around her head. But Ron's appreciation was so heartfelt and so obvious that she wouldn't have had the heart to disagree, even if he hadn't put an end to further conversation for several minutes by kissing her. "Sorry - don't want you to think - only interested in one thing - just missed you so much - wanted you so long," Ron managed to mumble in between kisses, and Hermione said no more than "Oh, Ron" several times in response as she wound her arms around his neck and reciprocated every kiss for all she was worth.
Eventually they broke apart, breathless and grinning. "Sorry, what was it you were saying?" Ron asked sheepishly. Hermione perched on the end of her bed, pulling Ron down to sit next to her and running her hand lightly up and down his arm. He had taken off his dripping-wet jacket and had only a t-shirt beneath it, and she could feel the effects of the rigorous physical auror training on his body. She had always loved his tall, thin frame as it was, but still, she wasn't going to complain about all the additional muscle definition.
"The training mission - isn't it supposed to be going on for another three days?"
"Oh, yeah, it is. But - well, the first two days were just drill and training, but after that it was like a mock-mission, y'know? Like with clues and suspects and stuff. It was pretty cool, actually. They had actors playing the suspects, but we didn't get to them until we'd solved the clues and tracked them down. But the problem was, it didn't take very long. I mean, it was pretty obvious when you thought about it where their base was. And when we got there - well, obviously we weren't supposed to actually hurt them so we just put one of those stasis spells onto them until Swallowhill - the head of recruits training geezer I told you about - arrived. It was a bit of an anti-climax, that bit. But we're going to do some really hardcore "confrontation technique training" next week. Just sounds like duelling to me, so that'll be fun," Ron finished, brightly.
"So the training exercise is finished?"
"It is for Harry and me, yeah. The other pairs are all still going. But the bad news is that Swallowhill says we can't work together anymore, we're both too quick." Ron tried and failed to keep a note of pride out of his voice as he imparted this piece of information. "Anyway, he pretended for a bit that we were going to have sit in the office learning how to file paperwork for the next three days. But then he said we could have em as holiday, and report back on Monday morning. So I nipped home to have tea at mum and dad's, apparated to Hogsmead and flew the rest. And now here I am."
"Here you are," Hermione agreed, seriously. Her hand had reached the top of his arm so she twisted around to fully face Ron on the bed and extended her hand across his broad and bony shoulder and up to tenderly stroke his face, rough with sunset-coloured stubble. She was the one to kiss him this time, and his response was swift and definitive. The simple joy of being in love and unexpectedly together was stronger than any magic Hermione could think of, and they laughed with delight between kisses. When they next paused for breath, Hermione regained some control over her body and resumed the conversation as though it had never been interrupted.
"Yes, but how are you here? I mean, how on earth did you get into the grounds? There are supposed to be layers upon layers of charms and wards - at the very least if anyone had broken them they ought to have sounded all kinds of alarms the minute you flew over the boundary!" Hermione's voice got quicker and higher as she spoke. They'd been lying on the bed, arms and legs interlaced, but she sat bolt upright again. What could have gone wrong? She had the highest opinion of Ron's magical abilities - she always had done, even before he and the rest of the world started to catch up to how brilliant he was. But nobody should have been able to penetrate those defences, not even Kingsley himself. "Ron, we have to go and tell Professor McGonogall that the protections aren't working! The whole castle is in danger!"
"Don't worry, Hermione, it's okay!" Ron was smiling as he gently pulled her back down beside him. "McGonogall modified them for me so I can come in and out whenever I want to. As long as I'm on my own, they'll never go off for me."
"What? But - why?" The news that Ron and Professor McGonogall were in some sort of secret cahoots together was astonishing enough to Hermione, let alone that he'd managed to wangle this incredible arrangement.
"Well, I wrote to her after I got your second letter. You didn't say much about it but the stuff about not sleeping and all that - I was a bit worried. You don't spend a summer sleeping with someone and not realise they have nightmares, Hermione. I really just wanted to ask her how you were doing, y'know, maybe suggest opening up the floo channels more often. She's done loads to make it less scary for everyone, what with all the weekends home now and stuff, but I just thought - I dunno - in your case, what with everything you've gone through and all... Anyway, next thing I knew she turned up at Grimmauld place. It was about midnight and Harry and I were watching telly in our pyjamas - you know how your dad gave us that old set when your folks redecorated their house - when we answered the door and it was her. I thought I'd fallen asleep and was having a weird dream for a minute. Anyway, she said she'd been very touched by my letter and she was a bit worried about you, too, and did we want to talk about ways we could make sure you were ok."
"Oh my," Hermione commented.
"Yeah. Harry buggered off to make some tea, the coward. But once we got down to it we had quite a nice chat. That reminds me, she wants me to stop by and play chess with her while I'm here. Anyway, she suggested that she could arrange with Kingsley for me to pop over every so often - whenever they can find a slot in training breaks, as well as free weekends - and do some tests on the protections in the castle. Not just the wards around the grounds but the floo connections, the owlery - anywhere there could be a security breach. Just apply what I'm learning with the aurors to test stuff out, for extra protection. So it's basically not only fine for me to be here, I'm actually supposed to! Pretty good, eh?"
"I knew there was a reason Professor McGonogall was my favourite teacher! Besides her excellent grasp of her subject and formidable administrative skills, of course," Hermione added, fairly. "But does she know you're here here - as in, in my room?" A lot had changed since they had left Hogwarts at the end of their sixth year, but in no universe could Hermione imagine Professor McGonogall being okay with the head girl and her boyfriend using the Head Girl's Bedroom as a love nest.
"Oh yeah, Ron said ruefully, "she knows that, all right. She gave me a very long chat about how it was an unprecedented privilege. I mean, that's fair enough but there was all this stuff about how she would be held accountable should any untoward consequences arise as a result, and could I assure her we'd live up to her trust and so on and so on. At one point I thought she was going to give me the full talk on the birds and the bees. Harry was back in by that point and I reckoned he was going to explode from trying not to laugh."
Hermione was laughing, too, as she pictured the scene. Ron's ears were a bit red as he recalled it. When she'd finished laughing, Hermione clarified: "So, you're being actively encouraged to come and visit whenever you have the time, and it's completely fine for us to be - you know - here, together?"
Ron nodded proudly. "Would you mind if it wasn't?" he asked, interested. "I mean, if I was breaking all the rules by coming here like this?"
Hermione laughed again, more softly this time. "You know I've always had a healthy respect for the breaking of rules in appropriate circumstances, and as a very wise man once told me - all's fair in love and war. It's all such a surprise, that's all."
"Yeah. Is it okay? I mean, maybe I should've checked with you first, I know it's your space and everything..." Ron's old diffidence suddenly reasserted itself and he looked at her hesitantly.
"It's wonderful!" Hermione grinned. "It's like a dream. Just - don't scare me like that again. Send me an owl, at least, if you can m. When I'm going to see you, I want all the deliciousness of looking forward to it."
"Yeah. I'm really sorry I scared you. Your heart is still pounding like mad", Ron murmured, placing his hand gently upon her heart over her flannel pyjamas, one long finger brushing tantalisingly the gap between the buttons.
"It certainly is", Hermione agreed, swallowing hard. She met his eyes with a smile which despite all the years of friendship, and all the long hot nights together over the summer, still held traces of shyness. "But you and I both know that it isn't because I'm scared."
And there was no more conversation between them that night.
