A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Panaru Fuhen, who read and reviewed chapter 3 within, literally, 15 minutes of me having posted it, and who really likes fast updates. That was pretty cool. (Seriously, how did you do that??) Oh, and thanks to everyone else who's reviewed so far!! Happiness!

4. Mixing Messages with an Eggbeater

Ginny woke up with a crick in her neck. She sat up gingerly, and kneaded at the back of her neck with one hand, blinking groggily. She pushed open her bed curtains and reached for her wand which was lying where she had left it, on her bedside table. It had to be pretty early still, from the fact that the curtains on all four other beds in the room were shut tight – even on Artemis's bed, and she was always an early riser…

Ginny yawned and padded off for the showers. Well, she was up now, and she might as well stay up.

By the time she got out from the bathroom, she was feeling a little bit more awake, and only two of her roommates were still asleep. She checked the time and found it to be just after six, and usually she wasn't even awake before seven...It wasn't often that she had free time before breakfast, and she wondered idly what she could do with herself until then.

Then her eyes lit on Hermione's textbook, her prize from last night. She put her wet hair up in a magically warmed towel and flopped down on her bed with Hermione's book open in front of her. She flipped through it at random, hoping to find enlightening, or at least amusing, markings, but Hermione was apparently a firm believer in the sanctity of the blank margin.

The only places that Ginny could find writing were the title page, where she had written Hermione Jane Granger in her crisp, efficient cursive, and on page 142, where there was a crudely drawn Chudley Cannons logo, followed by Are the best team EVER, in her brother's handwriting. Under this, in Hermione's hand, was written, No, they clearly are not, Ron, and please stop writing in other people's books; and under that was Ron's hand again: Sorry, thought this was Harry's, followed by Hermione's You just said that, you don't need to write it too! Which was where the conversation had apparently ended.

Ginny couldn't find anything else interesting in the book, so she grabbed a scrap of parchment off her table, wrote a quick note, and slipped it between the pages. She debated on where to put it for a moment, not wanting to put it in some part of the book that Hermione had already read. She settled for a place near the end of the book, reasoning that if everyone else in the class was in the middle of the book (it was the middle of the academic year, after all,) then Hermione would be significantly ahead of them. And if she never found it – well, it wasn't anything urgent or time sensitive, really.

Ginny was standing in front of the mirror, braiding her speedily dried hair, when there was a knock on the door of her room. The curtains were still tightly drawn two of the beds in the room, and sounds of water and muffled singing from across the hall indicated that the others were still in the shower, so Ginny answered.

"Come in!"

The door inched open and Hermione stuck her head in. "Oh, hi, Ginny, I didn't know if you would be awake." She was whispering, probably in a misguided attempt to not wake anyone up.

Ginny freed a hand from her hair and waved Hermione in. "Don't worry about them, they won't wake up until ten minutes before class, no matter what happens. Natural disaster, troll, gong – no effect." Ginny smiled wryly and returned to braiding.

Hermione chuckled, and gave up whispering. "Where's everybody else?" she asked, sitting down gingerly on the edge of Ginny's bed.

"In the shower."

"Together?" Hermione squeaked.

"You wish," joked Ginny. She saw Hermione turn slightly pink through the mirror, but the other girl recovered fast.

"Mmmm, indeed….what better way to start the day than with a nice, hot, lesbian shower?"

Ginny choked and giggled. She had to find a way to draw out this new, snarky side of Hermione more often.

"So, the reason I came here was to ask you if you'd seen my Transfigurations book anywhere," continued Hermione, without missing a beat. Ginny giggled again, tied off the end of her hair, and joined Hermione on the bed.

"What makes you think I'd know?" she said, making her eyes wide and innocent.

"Oh, just thought I'd check, is all," Hermione replied nonchalantly, grinning.

"Well, as it turns out, I do happen to have a certain Transfigurations text right here…" Ginny reached under her pillow and pulled out the book.

"Why you…!" Hermione's eyes flashed and she launched herself toward the hitherto missing book. "Give that back!"

Ginny backed up against the headboard of the bed and hugged the book to herself. "What'll you give me for it, then?"

Hermione subsided back to where she had been sitting and crossed her arms. "That's not fair, it's my book in the first place. I don't have to give you anything!"

Ginny cocked her head to the side in an exaggerated gesture of consideration. "Oh, I think you do…I captured this book fair and square, and that means I get to hold it ransom."

"Oh, fine, what do you want for it?" Hermione asked. Apparently she was not prepared to have an argument over whether one could fairly demand ransom for a textbook.

Ginny pretended to consider the question. She knew what she wanted to say, but the questsion was, did she dare? There might be such a thing as pushing one's luck a little too far. But then again, hadn't Hermione been flirting with her just now? Very possibly, yes...unless she doesn't even know what she's doing.

"In return for this book, I demand the price of…one kiss," she found herself saying, before she had entirely decided. She couldn't help grinning triumphantly, though, when she saw the look on Hermione's face, was one of pink shock.

Sighing a bit, as though resigned to her fate, she said, "Very well, that seems a fair enough price. Now?" She looked around.

"When you're ready," said Ginny. She wouldn't appreciate being pushed too fast if she were Hermione, and having won the far better side of the bargain, in her opinion, she was feeling generous.

Hermione cast one more glance at the curtained beds across the room, and then scooted up the bed to where Ginny was sitting. Ginny felt an eruption of butterflies in her stomach, and wondered, fleetingly, what was the proper way to receive a ransom kiss. She settled for leaning forward slightly to meet Hermione, who was leaning in as well, somewhere in the middle. Hermione raised one hand to Ginny's shoulder, and their faces were mere inches apart – Ginny felt herself holding her breath – and then the door banged open and Artemis and Lori walked in, wearing towels and talking loudly among themselves.

Silence fell. Hermione hastily tried to pretend that she had been going to brush something off Ginny's shirt the whole time, and Ginny tried to play along, for her sake. The cheeky, bold Hermione clearly only came out when she thought no one else was looking. Ginny handed her the book. "Here, you can have this now. You don't have to pay me back this instant; I know you won't forget." Ginny smiled a bit regretfully, and Hermione mouthed Thank you, and took the book.

"I'll see you at lunch, then, Ginny," she said in a louder voice, getting up from the bed.

She pushed past Ginny's dorm mates, who were still standing by the door, staring, and went down the stairs to her own dorm in a clatter.

"What was that, Ginny?" Artemis asked, turning to face Ginny with arched eyebrows. "It looked like you two were going to kiss, for a minute there."

"And so what if we were?" Ginny retorted crossly. She hated to be interrupted, and she hated how thoroughly the other girls had killed the mood, without even trying.

They muttered apologies as they went off to change, but Ginny only glowered darkly. Then she cheered up slightly at the thought that Hermione still owed her a kiss, at some point, so things couldn't be so bad.

Ginny sat with Harry, Ron, and Neville at lunch. She would have sat with Hermione, but the other girl had yet to make an appearance. Hermione finally showed up in the last ten minutes of lunch time, and hastily grabbed some sandwiches without sitting down.

Ginny said a quick goodbye to her friends, and jumped up to follow Hermione out of the hall. "Hi, Hermione," she said, cheerily, as she finally pulled abreast of her friend in the entrance hall.

"Oh, hi Ginny." Hermione sounded harried, and she didn't slow her brisk walk toward the Charms hallway.

Ginny jogged a step to keep up. "Is anything the matter?" she asked, peering into her face.

Hermione managed to pull a tense smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I'm just tired, that's all." They hurtled on without talking for a little while. "Sorry I wasn't at lunch," Hermione offered.

Ginny frowned. "That's ok; you're obviously in a hurry…"

Hermione accepted this in silence, and didn't say anything else until they reached the door of what Ginny supposed was her next class. "Well, I guess I'll see you later, ok?" Her smile almost managed to reach her eyes this time, but it looked no less forced.

"Ok," said Ginny, a bit uncertainly. Why was Hermione acting like this all of a sudden? Ginny would have thought it was something she did, but Hermione had been laughing along with her jokes just this morning, perfectly at ease…Had one of Ginny's roommates said something to upset her? She didn't think they would, but it was worth checking, just in case…

She made her way to her own classroom, and resolved not to take it personally. Maybe Hermione was just tired and in a hurry, like she had said.

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Hermione had walled herself in with books over dinner, and she was doing the same thing now at her usual table in the common room. Undaunted, Ginny picked up her things and went over to join her, sharing knowing looks with Parvati as she crossed the common room. She set down her books and the star chart she was working on for Divination, and greeted Hermione cheerily.

Hermione glanced up from her work, flashed her teeth in something that was not a smile, and looked back down again, never stopping her furious scribbling on the parchment in front of her.

Ginny told herself it was ridiculous to feel hurt over this; maybe she was just having a really bad day…

"So, how was your day?" she asked in a conversational tone, opening Unfogging the Future to the section on astrology.

"Ok," said Hermione noncommittally, erasing something on her parchment.

"Did you learn anything interesting?" That question was usually a guaranteed conversation-starter with Hermione, even on weekends when there weren't classes.

"Not really," said Hermione, her tone becoming frosty.

Ginny opted for sympathy. Misery loves company, right? "Oh, really? That sucks; I hate it when all my classes are boring…"

"Well, they can't all very well be blindingly interesting all the time, can they? This is school, not the fun park."

Ouch. Maybe misery didn't love company, either. Ginny settled for silence for the time being, and turned to her star chart. Now, if Cassiopeia was in the house of Mars, on April the twelfth…she consulted her book, and found that this usually portended ill for those embarking on business endeavors, but it was considered an ideal time to conceive a child if left-handedness was valued by the parents…

A few minutes later, Hermione looked visibly more relaxed – at least, she wasn't jamming her quill quite so hard into the parchment as she punctuated sentences, and her shoulders looked infinitesimally less tense.

Ginny tried to start up conversation again. "Did you know that Firenze said we'd have good weather for the next Hogsmeade weekend?"

"No," Hermione grunted, without looking up from her essay.

"Well, he's been showing us the Centaurs' weather divination for the past few weeks, and it's really reliable. I mean, it can't get really specific or anything, like how much rain will fall or what temperature it will be, you know, but it nearly always right with the general trends…"

Grunt.

Ginny continued, becoming absorbed in the story. "Yeah, so he's had us figure out a few days ourselves; it's not really that hard – of course, it gets harder the farther into the future you want to predict, until not even the Centaurs can know –"

Punctuate.

"So anyway, he predicted for Hogsmeade next weekend, since Colin asked him to, and it's supposed to be clear, and warmer than this week." Which Ginny was personally rather excited about; it had been quite cold and rather windy this week.

Heavy sigh.

"Isn't that exciting? It means we might actually be able to survive the walk down to the village this time…" Ginny had painful memories of the last walk, in which the wind had nearly succeeded in freezing off her face.

Hermione clenched her quill and looked up, for the first time since Ginny had sat down. "Ginny, could you just leave me alone?"

Ginny's happy chatter was cut off in mid-flow, and she just stared at Hermione. The older girl closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. "Look, it's not you – I'm just really stressed out right now, and I don't feel like talking." This last word came out through gritted teeth. "With anyone," she added, as an afterthought, and bent tightly over her essay again, effectively blocking out all further communication.

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Angst! Angst! Angst!

(next chapter will be up in a few days; don't kill me!!)