Standard disclaimers apply!

I do not own Harry Potter. I have nothing to do with Scholastic, Warner Bros or Bloomsbury. I'm not JKR and I am certainly not making any profit out of this.

22nd December, 1998.

A Quiet Moment

It was so good to be back at The Burrow, stretched out on the settee in the front room beside the crackling fire. After a full day of hard work, too. No wonder she was so tired. Her usual "hard work" involved the library and lugging about heavy books, not painting long expanses of wall and then drying them magically with her wand.

How easy it would have been to fall asleep right then and there; especially with Ron occasionally looking up from a muggle magazine to grace her with a lazy smile and rub her feet (just how did they end up in his lap anyway?), but she had her own books to read and NEWT exams to take in just a few short months.

Harry and Ginny had went back to Grimmauld Place after dinner, allegedly to finish the window frames in the parlour (good for them), and she wondered just where they found the energy for it all.

She mentally shook herself back into the present and picked her book up from where it had fallen on her chest. Potions waited for no witch, and she wanted the best possible results in her exams.

"You could let it go for one night, you know." Ron's voice was soft, low and somewhat amused.

"So could you," she grinned slightly, "another one of your dad's?"

Ron shook his head. "This one's new; I bought it from the shop in the village." He laughed suddenly. "I was thinking of taking out an annual subscription, but can you imagine the post coming here?"

"Not really," she half snorted, putting down the book again. "How do you do it, Ron?"

"Do what?" He looked confused.

"You're working at the shop full time and running Grimmauld Place," she clarified. "I know you've helped out a lot with the actual building too; not just overseeing it all, Eamon was telling me today that he'd give you a job if you wanted one."

Ron shrugged. "George is gives me longer lunches when we can get away with it, and its fun." He waved the magazine around. "There's an article about roof-top gardening – I'll have to show Harry, apparently there's a really big one in Kensington we can go and look at – it looks pretty good."

Hermione had to stifle a grimace. Gardening didn't particularly interest her, and it hadn't occurred to her that it would interest Ron either. "That sounds nice," she muttered vaguely.

"Doesn't it?" Ron folded back the page his was reading – studiously ignoring Hermione's tutt! at the action - and threw it carelessly on a small table beside the settee. "Enough of that," he yawned. "Are we waiting up for Harry and Ginny?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Hermione yawned too, "I'm just too comfortable to make any sort of move at the moment."

"You'd probably be even more comfortable in bed," Ron pointed out with a definite air of innocence.

"More than likely," she agreed, suppressing a grin, "but the stairs ... so many stairs ... "

"Oh! I can help you with that!" Ron pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. "Wingard-"

"No! No, that's fine." She jumped up quickly. "I'll get up there on my own steam, thanks."

"Are you sure?" Ron prodded, the corners of his mouth twitching.

"Quite sure," she laughed and held out her hand. "Are you coming?"

"That depends," he teased as he took her hand, grunting slightly at the effort to stand after so long in the deep squashy cushions. "Just how many stairs are we going up tonight?"

"All the way up to the top," she told him.

"Brilliant."

Thanks, as usual, for the reviews (aka: people are still reading this?).

Sorry it's taken even longer than usual to get updates out, but I've got a wicked case of writers block going on (very frustrating!); I know exactly what's about to happen and when, but I'm having boggles with the how at the moment ... cross your fingers that the little trickle I've had in the last couple of weeks means that a flow is about to start.