Ron glanced up from his parchment in time to watch Hermione plunk down on the common room sofa beside him, the simultaneously spicy yet floral scent of her filling his senses as she did it. She looked energized and excited, which he'd catalogued as her fresh from Arithmancy face. While he was entirely used to her joy for learning, there were times when he was still absolutely baffled by it.
Like, now, for instance - as he was knee deep in about a foot of parchment explaining not only how nonverbal spells were to be properly executed but also what fundamental differences took place in the brain when casting nonverbal versus verbal spells. As it turned out, there was a whole lot of mumbo jumbo about the four lobes and how they have to work in harmony, blah blah blah. Trust Snape to set the most complicated homework on earth the first day he got his greasy hands on his dream job.
He watched her as she leaned forward to take a look at the start of his essay, her intelligent eyes dancing over his words. The afternoon sun poured brightly through the windows, glinting playfully off of the chocolate and honey tones in her hair as she read, her elegant brows lowered in concentration. He'd catalogued this as her reading face. Well, that wasn't completely accurate, as he'd filed away a totally different face for when she read for pleasure. Her face would go soft and relaxed and her eyes would sort of twinkle. Sometimes her lips would part ever so slightly -
"Ron? Are you listening to me?"
"Whazzit?" He could feel the blush practically erupting in his ears at being caught staring. Thankfully, she seemed oblivious as she directed her attention steadfastly back to his essay and jabbed her quill toward his second paragraph. He looked at what she was pointing at, fighting the inexplicable feeling of annoyance back down that had risen unpleasantly in his stomach.
He'd just been staring like a wanker at his best friend's lips. Why the hell should he be annoyed that she didn't notice?
"You've written there that the cerebral cortex is responsible for allowing the casting of non verbal spells, but that's too general. Snape won't accept that."
Ron looked back down at his parchment, scowling. "He's gonna want us to go into all that tripe about suppressing the amygdala response and the way each spell impacts the four lobes uniquely. Isn't he?"
He glanced back up in time to see a look he didn't quite recognize dancing in her wide eyes. "Yes..yes, he will."
She held his gaze for a moment and his heart kicked up in his chest. He wanted to chalk her expression up to surprise that he'd not only read the chapter, but had also understood it, but he knew her surprised face and this wasn't it. Her face was almost...but, it couldn't be. She was sort of looking at him like she used to look at Lockhart.
Something was passing between them. Something unnamable. Something loaded.
And then, just as quickly as it started, it was over. Hermione turned to her bag to retrieve her things and Ron was left wondering, not for the first time, if it was all in his head. He knew he found her attractive, he could at least admit that to himself. He wouldn't admit it out loud to anyone, even under the Imperius curse, but she'd sorta turned up in some of his more private dreams over the last few years. Dreams he had at night and, um, the day ones too.
But, she was his best friend. It was probably normal when you spent that much time with someone to find them making casual appearances in your subconscious. Nipping into your four poster. Running their hands up and down your chest before they dipped their small, ink stained hands beneath your vest -
"Here - I'll draw up an outline for each point we need to make and the key information that should be included in each point. Then we'll each write our essays ourselves in our own words."
Ron sighed, half in relief that this plan was going to considerably speed up what was turning out to be a complicated assignment and half in frustration. He could see Hermione's quill flying across her parchment in his peripheral vision. There was no way in hell that she was feeling any of the weird shit toward him that he was feeling about her. Now that he thought about it, the look on her face had looked a lot like her surprised look. He was reading way more into everything she did lately. He needed to get his shit together.
Bending his head to his essay, he forced it out of his mind and worked in silence beside her until the bell sounded, signaling that they needed to make their way to their first class with the new potions master.
The minute Ron stepped inside the familiar dungeon he felt a calm, comforting warmth wrap firmly around him. Like the DADA classroom, the change in professor had brought an entirely different tone to this room too. A languid, easy, pleasant feeling was stealing through his very muscles as he made his way to his seat until he felt almost drunk by the time he got there.
He almost felt like he did in Trelawney's room, except it was still the same cool, dark dungeon it had always been. He supposed that the main difference was that instead of heavy incense, perfumed candles and stale tea- it actually smelled incredible in here.
Glancing to the table beside his, he saw that several cauldrons were already bubbling away, emitting vapors in various shapes and colors. The sweet richness of melted chocolate seemed to hang in the air, suspended in space all around his head. It was strong enough that he could almost taste it, but it wasn't overpowering.
It also wasn't alone. As he sat back in his chair, his very bones feeling content and relaxed, he could pick out the smell of rain. He shook his head almost unconsciously. No, it wasn't as simple as that. It was the air directly after a hard rain, the way it smelled musty and clean all at the same time. The way the grass smelled stronger and the flowers smelled sweeter, as if they were grateful for the drink. It was the smell of springtime flying in the Burrow's makeshift quidditch pitch and an open window in his attic bedroom to let the cool, post rain air inside.
But, that wasn't all there was to it either. Threaded throughout was a scent he couldn't seem to pick apart from the rest of it, as if it was embedded firmly in the other aromas. As if it had always been there, but yet it still stood out to him as a scent all its own. Something familiar and important, yet undefinable. This smell hit him on an almost physical level, curling in his stomach and making his heart beat just a little faster as if his body had a memory and couldn't help but respond. It was on the tip of his tongue, right in front of his nose, but for some reason he couldn't reach out and grasp what it was. It was spicy and strong, with a hint of something sweeter...roses? Orchids?
It smelled so good it was affecting him body and mind. His stomach felt tight, but not in an unpleasant way. It was almost like how he felt when he wanted something, very, very much. The scent was filling his head so completely that there wasn't much room left to concentrate on anything else. He didn't need food or sleep or, well, anything else. If he could just have this, he'd have everything he'd ever needed. Everything he'd ever wanted. On some primal level, he knew this was the smell of his deepest desires.
Glancing around, he saw that everyone else seemed to feel the same way. Harry had an almost goofy grin on his face, which Ron realized with faint amusement he was definitely mirroring. Ernie looked lost in some pleasant thought and Hermione…
His heart stuttered in his chest as his gaze landed on Hermione and his eyes widened, realization tearing through him without a shred of mercy.
Hermione. Was. Sodding... beautiful.
Her bushy curls cascaded around her head in riotous bursts of gold, copper and chocolate - Sweet Merlin, had they always looked that soft? She seemed to be glowing, actually fucking glowing, in the torchlight as she gazed at the golden cauldron sitting closest to their table with a look of - was it longing on her face? Her beautiful face, with her rosy cheeks and smooth skin and lush lips. Fuck, did he just use the word lush to describe Hermione Granger's lips? Hermione's lips that were full and pink and -
It happened in an instant, yet it felt like slow motion as a piece of some puzzle he hadn't realized was sitting incomplete in his head clicked irrevocably into place.
It was her. The smell filling him with this heady mixture of contentment and longing. Filling him with desire. It was the smell of her sitting next to him on the squashy common room sofa as they worked out their essays, the smell of her skin as they lounged by the pond over the summer at the burrow. It was the smell that clung to her clothes as his mother sorted their washing in Grimmauld place, the smell that surrounded him the few times she'd wrapped her arms around him in a friendly embrace that left him wanting and confused.
Suddenly, so many things spun through his head that he was dizzy. Hermione in her flowing blue dress robes, on the arm of another bloke. Hermione sitting cross legged on the floor in tiny shorts, smiling up at him as he glanced her way during a summer chess match with Harry. Hermione using the shower directly before him so that her scent - this scent (was it her shampoo? Her soap?) - filled his senses to the point that he was painfully aware of the physical effect she could have on him.
So many of his own recent, and some not so recent, actions sprang to his mind so quickly that he couldn't squash them down and pretend they didn't mean anything anymore. He constantly acted to protect her without ever analyzing why. He always sought her out, with the exception of Harry, above everyone else. It was her face he conjured before falling to sleep at night. It was her body that he allowed himself in the safety of his dreams to touch.
It was like a giant light was shining down on him from the heavens and suddenly he couldn't really catch a solid breath.
He was fucking in love.
This wasn't teenage hormone shite. He was in total, all encompassing, soul-deep love... with Hermione Granger. He stared in shock at her as the realization struck him with all the subtlety of a stunning spell and there she was, talking to ruddy Slughorn about the potions in the cauldrons as if the entire sodding world hadn't just shifted on its axis right there beside her. It was fucking surreal.
What was even more insane was that, in his shock, he wasn't even that shocked. He couldn't properly think of what he really felt. Relief? Understanding? It shook him to his core, but it also explained a whole helluva lot too. How he looked up every time the portrait hole opened to see if it was her coming back to the common room from the library. How he knew every expression on her face. How his heart raced if she brushed against him the barest little bit when they sat together at breakfast. How he worried if he knew she'd skipped dinner to study.
He loved her. He'd loved her very much for a very long time and now he knew it and there was no unknowing that.
"It's the most powerful love potion in the world!"
Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts in an instant, her words causing his heart to hammer in his chest. Love potion? There was a love potion? Where? Wait - did this mean that maybe all of this was the result of some chemical trick in the perfumed air down here? Was this not real?
He fought the feeling of gut wrenching disappointment that ripped through him at that thought, refusing to analyze why he'd feel anything other than relief at the chance that he might not be facing a life altering complication like being head over heels for your best mate, in order to keep listening to her conversation with Slughorn.
"Quite right! You recognized it, I suppose, by its distinctive mother-of-pearl sheen?"
"And the steam rising in characteristic spirals," She had her excited, learning face on again. Her eyes glittered with intelligence. She was so goddamn cute when she was explaining something.
"And it's supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and -"
And? And what?! Her face was flushed and she was decidedly not looking at him (or anyone else, if he was being honest) and he couldn't remember a time in recent memory that he wanted more for her to look at him. If he could see her eyes, just see them for a second, he could tell what she was holding back. He could read her, he knew it. If she'd just look at him.
But, to his staggering disappointment, they were moving on in their conversation and her attention was back on Slughorn again. Ron glanced at the golden cauldron.
It's supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us.
So, it wasn't the type of love potion that made you fall in love with someone at random - or, at least, not completely. It was a love potion that somehow conjured the deepest adoration in your heart, the strongest and most rooted desires, and put them in a bottle? Ron supposed that if you slipped it to someone, it worked by making them somehow believe the person who did the slipping had all the qualities that they truly loved.
Merlin, that was pretty fucked up when you thought about it.
But it also meant, since they'd only been smelling the thing, that this was all real. The love potion wasn't creating these feelings he'd just discovered, they were already there. There was no hope for it, he was in and in deep.
Why the fuck couldn't he feel upset about it? Unnerved? Yes. Scared shitless? Check. Totally boggled? Sorta. But, upset? If he was being completely honest, it felt kind of good to actually acknowledge what he now realized he'd been shoving out of his mind for bloody years. Years! Like, since his 13-year-old self woke up after dreaming that he'd caught her kissing Lockhart and he'd punched his pillow, years. Like belching slugs, years.
He watched as Hermione turned toward Harry after scoring her usual points for Gryffindor and a familiar tightness in his chest began to knit as she gazed softly at their other best friend.
"Did you really tell him I'm the best in the year? Oh, Harry!"
Something inside him snapped. "Well, what's so impressive about that?" He could hear himself, feel his lips moving and hear the words coming out, but he couldn't stop them anymore. There were cracks absolutely everywhere in the dam that had been holding exactly how he felt about her back and there was no way he was going to be able to keep everything in like he had been. Not anymore. " You are the best in the year - Id've told him so if he'd asked me!"
She looked up at him then, the smile twinkling in her eyes making his heart flutter and the mysterious look that had come into her eyes back in the common room flitted back through them again for the briefest second. But then, she gave him a gentle "shh" and turned back to Slughorn as he moved to begin the lesson for the day and his heart sank.
Whatever she'd smelled in that potion, the part that she'd stopped short of saying in front of everyone, he doubted it had fuck all to do with him. She was Hermione effing Granger, wasn't she? Brilliant. Beautiful. Bossy. She was completely bloody perfect, and what was he? Some poor wanker with bright red hair, 900 siblings and just as many freckles. Harry Potter was at this very table for fucks sake - she could probably smell Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish or whatever stupid shampoo he used.
He shook his head and opened the book that he only just realized had been set before him beside some old, tarnished scales. The dam was cracked, but he'd have to do his damndest to keep the thing together. Hermione was his friend and there was no way in hell that she loved him the way he knew without a shadow of a doubt now that he loved her. If he didn't want to lose her forever, he was gonna keep his gob shut and go about his life exactly the way he had been. Friends was better than nothing. It would have to be.
He'd just keep it entirely to himself that love had a smell and it was still filling the air around him at their table, even though old Sluggy had long since covered the golden cauldron tightly up.