Ron

There was only one way he could get out of this one. It could turn out nasty… but no. It had to be done.

If he moved his rook then Bill would take it, but if he moved the queen then that pawn would take it and he couldn't sacrifice a queen to a pawn.

He looked up, the layout of the chessboard still imprinted in his brain. His mother was sitting by the window, shut tight against the weird mist drifting across their garden. The wireless on the table next to her was turned down low and Ginny, sitting cross-legged at her mother's feet was humming along to the tune it was playing out.

Next to his mother and his sister was Fleur, draped across the sofa, reading his mother's copy of Witch Weekly. Fleur, with her dazzling hair flowing round her shoulders and her slender legs stretched out in front of her, was not the person Ron wanted to be looking at tonight. And it was not because she was engaged to his brother, Bill.

The reason why his eyes weren't drawn to the part Veela this evening, was sitting on the other side of the room in a patched armchair.

Hermione. Her hair was pulled up messily away from her face and her dark eyes were strained from reading in the dim lights but for Ron there was nothing on earth he'd rather watch.

Everything about her fascinated him. The way curls came loose of her bun and caught the light, the long periods of time it seemed she could go without blinking, the way her nose twitched every so often. She was folded up in the armchair, her usual heavy book resting on her lap, one arm curved around it, the other resting across the page, a slender finger flicking the corner, itching to turn it.

He might have been imagining it, but her steady gaze seemed even more fixed than usual, as if she wasn't reading, but had her mind on something else.

She looked so deliciously soft and feminine, curled up in that old chair in the dim light, her thick hair in wisps about her face, that Ron had to take a steadying breath to stop himself from…he didn't know what. Whenever he saw her, he felt like grinning, laughing or jumping around the room like a lunatic for reasons he couldn't fathom.

However, Ron wasn't an idiot, contrary to the beliefs of Fred and George who often told him so. He knew why he'd been looking at Hermione to start with. A year ago, he'd have been utterly bewildered, but during his fifth year of knowing her, he'd had to face the facts.

He liked her. He liked everything about her.

Last summer, he emerged from a school year wrought with confusion. Harry had finished the Triwizard Tournament with a final task almost resulting in his death. But Harry would pull through and Dumbledore would deal with You-Know-Who. The thing Ron didn't know how to deal with was something that had been thrust at him at Christmas.

Seeing Hermione walk into the Yule Ball with him was like a slap in the face. The nerve of it.

Hermione, his Hermione was with that oaf. Okay, so she wasn't exactly his. But she was his friend. Harry's friend. And Harry was competing against Krum. It wasn't right.

But somehow he was unable to convey her wrong doings into words that didn't cause her to want to wring his neck. She told him later that he should have asked her to the ball if he didn't want her to go with anyone else.

He went to bed that night feeling confused and wrong-footed. But when he woke in the morning, he felt as though he'd been doused in cold water by the same hand that had slapped him in the face the night before.

He now understood what Hermione had meant. Or he thought he had. He figured she hadn't meant it the way he had initially taken it.

But either way, it caused him to realise exactly why he hadn't liked seeing her on the arm of that Bulgarian git. He had been jealous. And she was right; he should have asked her first.

These realisations came all too suddenly for Ron. He had barely thought of Hermione like that before. The month before, she had simply been his friend, albeit a friend who infuriated him more than anyone. Now, he had been forced to look at her differently; he was entirely confused by it all at first. The only real feeling he could define was the pronounced anger he felt when that thief of a Quidditch star went anywhere near her. Although he finally concluded that Krum had her affection, he always had a twisted triumphant feeling that he was the only one who could make her as angry as he did.

Ron had been shocked into admitting his feelings for Hermione but he put an end to all thoughts of confessing them to her when he realised she was still in contact with Krum. He had asked her to go to Bulgaria to visit him and although she told Ron she had turned him down, it had been very obvious to him that she would much rather be on Vicky's broomstick than holed up with him in Grimmauld Place.

However, there was no denying the past year had been good. They're fights had been few and far between. He had even received a kiss from her at one point, although he admitted it wasn't like the kisses he dreamt of as he slept in the fifth year boy's dorm.

As the thought of her soft cheek against his flew through his mind for the millionth time, her eyes flicked up from her book to immediately rest on his own.

The skin around her eyes was dark and tired, but her eyes themselves were bright and sparkling. He shot a smile at her before turning his attention back to the chess game. He wondered if she'd ever thought of him as more than a friend, ever wondered, as he himself had done, whether one of their huge arguments could turn into something more.

But he dismissed this thought as easily as his knight knocked the head off Bill's pawn.

He looked up at her again and caught her warm brown eyes watching him. Quickly, she returned her eyes to her book and turned a page.

Was that a faint blush rising in her cheeks? Or was it the warmth of the fire?

He certainly knew it wasn't the fire making his own ears burn as he resumed the game before him.

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A/N: second chapter .. oh yesh. what an achievement for me. hope you will review.. all are v appreciated. off for breakfast now my darlings. x