Chapter 4: Ronald Weasley & Lavender Brown

While everyone else was at the Quidditch match Hermione was enjoying a run in the forest with Cassandra. She loved spending time out here and forgetting her worries, and whenever anyone asked where she was she would just tell them she'd been in the library and no one ever checked. She was attempting to extract advice from Cassandra about Ron, but she was being just as useless and her advice over how to handle Snape!

"My sister, tonight your fate takes a turn towards what will be good for you. Allow the magic to have control and all will turn out well. " Cassandra said.

When she returned later to the common room everyone was excited about winning the match. It was hard to find anyone in the room as it was so crowded and everybody was jumping around with excitement.

She looked around for Harry and Ron, wanting to congratulate them on such an amazing win.

There, in full view of the whole room, stood Ron wrapped so closely around Lavender Brown it was hard to tell whose hands were whose.

Hermione felt a sinking feeling. She had been in love with Ron since first year when he and Harry had rescued her from the giant troll. She always thought that they would someday end up together and here he was with Lavender Brown, snogging the first girl who threw herself at him.

She felt tears forming and turned to leave the room, not noticing Harry enter.

She entered the first unlocked classroom she could find. She should have made her feelings known to Ron but instead she had waited and waited for him to make the first move, despite Ginny's advice that boys were stupid and needed to be told. Hadn't she given Ginny the same advice about Harry?

And now he had moved on.

She tried to distract herself with spellwork from their recent lessons, practicing some of the more difficult charms spells.

She heard someone enter and looked up to see Harry.

She sat there alone except for a small ring of twittering yellow birds circling her head, which she had clearly just conjured out of midair. Harry could not help admiring her spell-work at a time like this.

"Oh, hello, Harry," she said in a brittle voice. "I was just practicing."

"Yeah... they're, er, really good..." said Harry.

There was an awkward silence as Harry tried to think of something to say to her.

In an unnaturally high-pitched voice, she said "Ron seems to be enjoying the celebrations."

"Er... does he?" said Harry.

"Don't pretend you didn't see him," said Hermione. "He wasn't exactly hiding it, was-?"

The door behind them burst open. To Harry's horror, Ron came in, laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.

"Oh," he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.

"Oops!" said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling. The door swung shut behind her.

There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, "Hi, Harry! Wondered where you'd got to!"

Hermione slid off the desk. The little flock of golden birds continued to twitter in circles around her head so that she looked like a strange, feathery model of the solar system.

"You shouldn't leave Lavender waiting outside," she said quietly. "She'll wonder where you've gone."

She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.

"Oppugno!" came a shriek from the doorway.

Harry spun around to see Hermione pointing her wand at Ron, her expression wild: the little flock of birds was speeding like a hail of fat golden bullets toward Ron, who yelped and covered his face with his hands, but the birds attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could reach.

"Gerremoffme!" he yelled, but with one last look of vindictive fury, Hermione wrenched open the door and disappeared through it.

She left the room and ran down the corridor, trying to get away from the boys. At she headed away from the Gryffindor common room she ran into Snape in the hallway. For some reason she felt a sense of peace in his presence rather than the distraction she had been feeling recently. She had spent so long pinning over Ron but now, looking at Snape she could hardly remember those feelings.

"Miss Granger, not enjoying the celebrations?" He drawled.

"No, Sir." she said.

It was the first time they'd spoken since the awkwardness during detention, but instead of feeling awkward, like she had done recently, she felt strangely reassured by his presence.

"Not sharing in the festivities with Potter and Weasley, how must they be coping without the brains of the Golden Trio."

She felt a twinge of remorse hearing Ron's name but she felt calmer that she had done only moments earlier.

It was then that she realised he'd paid her a compliment.

She looked up at him properly for the first time, ignoring any embarrassment she might have felt and acted boldly. Cassandra had told her that tonight would change and that she should let things happen and she was determined to be brave. She'd had enough misery tonight already.

"Did you just give me a compliment, Sir?" she said, smiling.

Snape began to look a little flustered.

"When compared to those miscreants almost anyone would appear intelligent," he said, "but that is not to say you are not one of the most promising students Hogwarts has seen in many years.

Feeling happy from his compliment, and with the magic swirling inside of her Hermione Granger acted incredibly out of character.

Before he could react she reached out with her hands, placing them on his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him.

As their lips met she felt as rush of magic, like every fibre of her magic being was on fire.

She could feel all of his emotions, the shock, the desire of kissing her, .

Suddenly he broke away.

"We should not be doing this Miss Granger. It would be wise of you to return to your room."

She looked up into his eyes and could see the desire brewing there.

She could still feel his emotions radiating out of him and she wondered whether this was what Cassandra had been talking about. It was well known that some of the older unicorns could feel the emotions of others.

She stood there looking up at him, unmoving, wanting so desperately to kiss him again.

He watched her, as if waiting to see what she would do. When she made no attempt to leave he pulled his cloak tighter and turned away.

She felt a longing as he started to leave and realised it was coming from both of them.

She definitely needed to talk to Cassandra.