Just watching him was a dull affair, but it no doubt gave him plenty of time to think, as there certainly seemed to be plenty now for him to think about. His eyes remained opened and occasionally started at various noises. The time passed slowly, and from time to time his eyes would close altogether, until a fresh sound would jerk them open again.

He was there a long time before he had cause to be awake.

At first his alertness began to waver after several seconds of silence passed following what had presumably jerked him awake. But the sound of another stick cracking underfoot caused him to strain to locate the source with the limited range his eyes were afforded. The sounds came hesitantly, which probably wasn't comforting to whatever his imagination had running through his mind.

But eventually he ascertained the correct direction the sounds were coming from, and the vague outline of the girl stepped into his view. Or that was probably what he hoped the vague outline was, but a tiny sniffle eventually came as confirmation.

They were like that for a long time. Only the occasional small sound from the girl belied that they were there at all. Eventually the girl evidently finished whatever she was contemplating and muttered what must have been the counter curse, because the boy's body jerked sharply and then rolled over. In the time that it took him to take several deep gasps of air, and cough out whatever had been sitting at the back of his throat for the past several hours, the girl had quietly sat down on a nearby log and placed her hands in her lap. Her face was all but impossible to distinguish in the darkness, but her posture had an erect air to it.

"Turned you down," the boy eventually managed in a raspy voice before coughing again, "Did they?"

She may have nodded, but remained silent in any case. The boy was left to awkwardly peer at her through the darkness.

"Did you even talk to them?" he asked, as though he couldn't take the silence any longer. His voice was strained, but it was neither angry nor any other significant emotion.

"Yes," the girl said in a faint voice, unable to completely hide the brittleness, "I spoke with Harry."

The boy let out a sigh, as though the news dismayed him as well. Slowly, no doubt due to stiffness, he let himself sink back to his elbows. There was another pause, though different this time.

"I always knew that you were sorted into the wrong house," the boy said.

The reaction was immediate.

"Don't say that!" the girl wailed and threw her hands into her lap. Suddenly the hints grew to pained sobs, and even in the darkness her shoulders could be seen shuddering. Though it was impossible to see her expression, how her eyes were rimmed with red and how she rolled her wand around in her hands as though it would comfort her, she could be seen through her sobs. The sounds grew unnaturally high when she tried to fight it, and she gasped shakily when she could fight no longer.

The boy sat up, but it wasn't a confident movement. He stopped there, as though uncertain of what to do.

Her sobbing continued for several minutes as the wind moaned overhead. It was completely hopeless the way she cried. It was as if all the feelings she'd had all this time had finally broken through the careful façade she'd been wearing. There was a bitterness to it, but perhaps it was the utter abandon, the despair that made the boy shift uncomfortably.

But as the minutes passed it subsided and changed.

"I was so happy," she started in a shaky voice, with what might have been an effort, "When I first came to Hogwarts, everything was just so wonderful. It was just so … perfect. But—" her voice caught for a moment, "Some things were still the same. I—nobody—nobody liked me. It was just like before. No matter how hard I tried. Not Harry … or Ron. You wouldn't even talk to me." She tried to laugh. "But then they helped me … and everything was better after that. Even after all the horrible things that would happen each year, everything was always fine in the end. They were my friends. Do you understand what that's like? They were mine, my friends."

Her voice had risen, but the boy gave no response.

"But then—then I ruined it. I ruined everything. I thought—I knew what Harry wanted. Especially after that year … he was so angry about everything. He was just so worried about everything that he just had to see it. It would've made things better. It did make things better. But I was … wrong. I thought everyone would understand, that they would understand. But … everything …"

She broke off and the boy raised himself slowly to his feet. She didn't seem to notice.

"It's just so wrong … everything has gone so absolutely horrible."

He was beside her before she gave a slight jump. When he sat down next to her, they were close enough that their hips touched. For a long breath they were both still. He kept close to her, but his hands lay folded in his lap and from his faintly luminescent hair it could be ascertained that he was looking upwards. He didn't move as she continued to cry. Whether his presence comforted her couldn't be said, but her sobs had changed again to something quieter.

And perhaps the boy felt what was obvious. Perhaps it even bothered him.

Perhaps the girl wished that he would do something more.

--------------------------------

She was different the next morning. That was to be expected, of course. Her behavior always changed after one of their spats, as he had come to unconsciously call them in his mind.

He had spent a good majority of the time just being thankful that she hadn't apologized about it. Just thinking about apologizing back to her was enough to make him cringe. Once had been hard enough, but that didn't mean he wasn't sorry. He was, and so was she. It was enough that they both knew it.

She didn't say much the next morning, about anything really. He was still extremely stiff from the night's escapades. It was that and all the other little factors he couldn't keep track of in his mind, no matter how hard he tried, that had led to something he'd never even thought could possibly happen.

It was an innocent thing. Certainly it would no doubt seem that way to anyone else, but he couldn't suppress all the possibilities that even the barest thought of it made him imagine, all the possible explanations. He didn't know for certain, but it would probably be no big deal to other people. He'd definitely seen it happen among the three of them innocuously enough when he had watched—countless times, now that he thought about it. That had always managed to conjure an uneasy feeling in his stomach. But that was nothing compared to the empty feeling now reminding him that there'd been a time when the most pressing thing he had to worry about was watching what the Golden Trio did at school.

If he hadn't barely been able to get to his feet when he woke, if she hadn't been disinclined to say anything, if basically either of them had been in any other kind of mood, or if it had been at any other point during their rocky period of knowing each other, it would never have happened.

When she'd looked down to find him struggling just to sit up properly, he had meant to say something cheeky to cover up just how badly he was hurting, even though what he really felt like doing was asking her to help him up, abrasively if possible to ease the required swallowing of pride.

What had come out of his mouth had turned out to be neither cheeky nor abrasive. In fact it'd turned out to be nothing. He may have gaped slightly, but he liked to think that he'd merely looked up at her. Truth be known, he had no idea what he'd looked like at that moment. He had been too busy being held by the sight.

Her hair had been crazy. Big surprise there. But it had been crazy in a way that he couldn't easily categorize. He'd developed what he had believed to be a foolproof system of categorization in third year, back when potions had been so utterly easy and almost boring. She'd been harried that year.

But her hair had been different this morning. It had somehow flowed into her expression, so calm and collected, but only in a way that belied what had happened only a few short hours ago.

Maybe it was really something mundane to her. But she'd evidently seen his plight and hadn't needed him to ask.

When he had taken her offered hand at the time, he'd put no immediate thought into it. But as he'd found footing on his mutinous legs, he'd also found himself marveling at what he held. He wasn't given much time, for she pulled it away as soon as she saw him on his feet.

His thoughts on Hermione Granger had always had plenty of other outlets to dwell on and her hands had never come up. Certainly her wand had, not the least of when she had it pointed at his face. But he had never really thought about her hands.

Even though his thoughts more or less had come after she had released his hand, the lingering sensation of how small they were had surprised him in stages. They were small and round, not necessarily delicate, but still slight in size.

She'd turned away from him, leaving his memory alone to scramble after what he had felt.

Though the contact had been brief and business-like, it hadn't been difficult to also note how soft they were. Certainly books had never done injury to them, but he marveled at how tender they felt, even to his own fairly soft hands.

And they were warm. So warm in fact, he was surprised she didn't recoil at how cold his were. It hadn't even occurred to him before, but now he realized that his hands were ice cold. Hers was a gentle presence that caused him dismay at just how cold he was.

Fortunately for the both of them, her business-like attitude had also extended to her turn, so she'd missed the late blooming embarrassment evident on his cheeks at these revelations.

He had no idea how long all of that had lasted. Each time he tried to remember, the sense of time seemed to change, but he knew it couldn't possibly have been much longer than a few seconds.

It wasn't healthy, he just knew it wasn't. Forcing himself to think of the same thing, over and over again from every possible angle, through every singular possibility, was not what someone should do for a pastime. And yet the more this worried him, the harder it was to attempt to put his mind somewhere else. Their present situation certainly didn't provide many noteworthy distractions.

She'd been slowly but surely driving him crazy since they'd formed their happy little band. And not just with what she said. It wasn't so much that at all. It was what she didn't have to say, what she communicated naturally, and no doubt unconsciously, through other means. Granted, being subjected to prolonged exposure to any girl of pleasant physical attributes would probably be enough to drive him crazy at this point.

He had to physically shake his head at that.

Hermione Granger wasn't like that at all. She was no shimmering beauty, she wasn't even that good looking. Rather plain, if you asked him. Plain, but different. That was admittedly true. Everything about her had to be different and annoyingly fascinating. Her face was pretty and her other qualities decent, but that didn't change the facts. So theoretically it should've been a simple thing just to think about something else. Theoretically, he should've had no business heatedly debating over whether plain was too harsh a word—for hours on end.

But in the end, pretty or plain, he didn't want to stop thinking about the incident from this morning, which he was going to refer to it as until he could think of a better name. No matter what he had promised himself before, no matter what he still probably believed, the last thing he wanted to do was stop. It may have been pathetic. He was perfectly willing to admit that, but the truth was it made him feel something.

He would've liked to picture himself as unfeeling, numb to everything that was going on, but he couldn't lie about that. He felt everything, and there was so much to feel. It wasn't hard to push the feelings away, to keep them under the surface of his awareness, like he'd always done, though the dull aches that festered were almost worse. But what else could he do?

It wasn't his fault, it was hers. Before, he'd been doing such a good job of distancing himself, even with her around, but his resistance had been slowly wearing away.

Lately, in his mind, he'd been idly mapping out the major points undermining said resistance, chronologically of course. No matter how much time that diverted, however, he knew it had really been her smile that had undone it all.

The previous morning, after he'd admitted to not remembering what had happened the night before, she had smiled. And Hermione Granger didn't just smile, Hermione Granger had to beam. It was that relentless smile of hers. On a historical note, it had once been the bane of her social existence, of which he could proudly claim some credit for. That was before the rest of her face had caught up with her front teeth. That still puzzled him, how they seemed to have fixed themselves overnight. Maybe she had something done to them, but that didn't seem to fit. She was the kind of girl that didn't go to grueling measures just for her appearance. She wasn't like the others.

But no, Hermione Granger made him feel something. She made him believe, if only in momentary spurts, that everything he felt didn't have to hurt. That would've been enough reason alone.

She was so naïve in a lot of ways. Sometimes he knew it would have been easy to just forget her if she wasn't like that. But she was.

What she had done last night had surprised him a little, though frankly he should have seen it coming. But it didn't make him angry, not in the least bit. That surprised him, but only just a little. Others might have been furious had they been in his position, probably including her two blokes, but that would be their fault. They didn't know her, but he did.

Pathetic? He drew his brows together and sneaked a glance back at her. It was a safe risk as her eyes were still trained on the ground. Maybe plain was too harsh a word.

And yes, maybe he was a little pathetic. But his present conditions nearly demanded that of him. Sometimes it was so hard to remember that no one was watching him anymore. His audience had dwindled substantially, from practically the whole school to one solitary, bushy-haired Mudblood. That was if she even cared at all how pathetic he was. There may have been something ironic in all that.

Holding her hand for a few seconds hardly measured up to some of the other things he'd done, but this was different. To other people it might've been pathetic to obsess over something so mundane, but that was okay. He didn't care what they thought anymore. It was too late in any case. It may not have been special to them, but it was special to him.