Author's Note: Hi everyone! Happy Holidays, and happy winter as well. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere where I suppose it is now summer. It took me all December to write this, because NaNoWriMo is apparently very distressing to the writing parts of myself and it takes a while to fully recover. But I made it through NaNo(and not that anyone cares, but I made it to 50,000 words). This chapter has almost no plot, because I was so sick of writing plot I wanted to write fluff without plot. So this is just that, fluff and no plot. Thanks to NiftyGirl for her sounding board services and thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, favorite or alerted the previous chapters of this story. Thanks to fanofhermione, LillyMay77, koryandrs, F Maurice and an anonymous reviewer. I appreciate everyone of your words. I don't know what else to say here, so enjoy and leave me a review if you feel like it. I always appreciate them.

Chapter 19: Cuddling

He had been asleep, or at the very least something so close to sleep that the difference didn't matter much. The distinction between asleep and not quite asleep mattered even less when one considered that he was awake now either way.

Groggily, he opened his eyes. It was light outside, but it had been light outside when he'd dozed so that did not give him any indication of how much time had elapsed. The fact that he could only prove he had ever lost consciousness by the fact that he had been aware of returning to it would imply that he had not been asleep long.

But he knew better than to trust his sensations on the matter. There had been times, far too many times, in which assuming because he only couldn't recount for a few moments or he hadn't dreamt anything that he had only slept ten minutes or so had made him hours late to things. Hours late.

Ron Weasley wasn't going to take any chances now, no he was going to find out exactly how long he had been asleep.

Of course simply rolling his wrist over so that he could read the face of the golden watch his parents had given him when he came of age would have been easy, if not for the still sleeping woman who was tucked tightly against his side.

The heel of her hand was pushed into the scarred flesh of his abdomen, hovering somewhere between the top of his hip and the bottom of his ribs while the other was draped carelessly atop the shoulder of his watch arm.

If he just moved his arm so that he could read the time, then her hand would slip off its perch on his bicep and fall into the space between his body and his arm. And that might wake her.

He would have to cleverer than that if he wanted to preserve her peaceful slumber. A spray of her curls rested across his bare chest, the rest completely filling the space between their bodies. They were all slightly tangled, free strands flying free from the group and catching the light that he could now see was fading from the room at strange angles. The tips of his fingers grazed across her thigh, where the hem of his maroon t shirt ended abruptly exposing her skin.

She slept on, beautifully oblivious to him and his quest for the time. Damn, he didn't want to wake her.

She was beautiful, not that she wasn't always, but the relaxation and relief of sleep always did something especially beautiful to her, as if all the years and horrors he knew she had seen, all the anguish that the world, including himself had caused her melted away from her. It left her looking perfect and innocent, and the sight of it made him incapable of anything but smiling like an idiot- particularly when the peaceful innocent sleep was done in a bed of tangled sheets and sweaty limbs.

She moved her head in her sleep, her nose pushing against his skin and the temptation to laugh was so strong he almost couldn't resist. But he must, the spasmodic contractions of his torso that would accompany laughing would wake her for sure.

If he squinted at the right angle, he could almost see the tiniest movement of the stars on his watch. Just the teeniest lift and turn of his arm would let him read the time.

Hermione mumbled something in her sleep. He couldn't make out what word it might have been, what with her face buried against their sheets, and her notorious sleep slurring.

Absentmindedly, the fingers that rested against her thigh began to move, slowly back and forth across her skin tracing nonsensical patterns. Hermione did not stir at his touch, and it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he didn't need to know what time it was. Maybe it didn't matter, and he could forget about his watch and how long he had slept and just focus on the flawlessly wonderful feel of the moment, his arms wrapped securely around his wife, clothed only in his t shirt in their bed that was probably going to take them the better part of a half hour to straighten out when they finally got round to waking up, and return to the peacefulness of sleep.

It was such a tempting idea that Ron was shocked he had not thought of it earlier and he closed his eyes preparing to do just that.

He was drifting so close to sleep that the bed seemed to be swaying when it occurred to him that he might already have slept through the whole night and now he was sleeping his morning away.

With a jerk, Ron wrenched his eyes open and tried without lifting his arm to read the time. Useless.

The sigh of defeat that escaped his lips was far more audible than he would have liked it to be, and he instantly cursed himself for the very real possibility that his outburst had woken his wife.

"What are you trying to do, Ron?"

She almost giggled suddenly beside him as he experimented with how much muscle contraction would disturb her hand. Obviously he had neglected to look after something else with the power to wake her.

"Shit, Hermione," he apologized; shocked by how sleepy his voice still sounded given how long he had been awake. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't," she insisted, spreading her fingers out along his abdomen. He struggled not to shudder at the slight touch. "I woke up a few minutes ago."

Which by no means meant that he hadn't been the cause of her waking, but when she picked her head up and repositioned her weight so that a good half of her body was hovering over top of his, the ends of her brilliantly untamed bushy hair flitting across his chest, the impulse to argue with her faded somewhat.

"Well,'morning then." He said instead, the corner of his mouth turning upward in what he pretended was a charming smile, but in reality was probably more of an idiotic grin. "Sleep alright?"

She nodded, and as she did so her hair tickled his skin. "But I don't think it's quite morning yet."

With a slight start he remembered what he had been attempting to do when she had woken. "Reminds me," he yawned, rolling his wrist over and looking at the glass surface of his golden watch. "That's what I wanted when you woke up." Before he could hardly read the time however, Hermione's hand had wrapped around his wrist and with a motion that was careful not to hurt him, turned the back of his hand to face her instead of him.

"Oi, I think that's my watch." He insisted when she let his wrist fall back onto the sheets and turned to look up at him again.

"It's 6:30." She told him, her face straight, but her eyes offering the tiniest hint of mischief. He was well accustomed to that look of mischief. He has seen it in her eyes too many times over the years. When she had concocted the original plans for practicing defensive spells behind Umbridge's back fifth year, or when she'd hidden hats intended to free house elves around the common room, or when she'd reached for his hand under the table at Sunday lunch at his mum's.

It was that particular mischievous look that landed them directly in this spot.

"And we went to sleep at about 6, so we've only missed a half hour." She smiled down at him, teasingly demure. "Isn't that all you wanted to know?"

"We'll yes," he admittedly grumpily, twisting his fingers in the hem of his shirt where it ended on her thigh. "But it's my wrist."

"Well," she picked it up once again and clasped his hand between both of hers. "I'm sorry to have manhandled it." As if to make her apology sincere she placed a kiss gently onto the back of his hand. It was the type of cheesy gesture, like making Christmas cards with photos of yourselves kissing under mistletoe, or eating off each other's silverware or calling each other by stupid nicknames that was just pointless. The only possible functional purpose of doing something like that would be to make everyone around you uncomfortable, and Ron had made it a sort of unofficial mission to never condone such ridiculous behavior.

Sensible Ron would have rolled his eyes and made a joke, but whether because he had only woken a few minutes ago or maybe the sheer fact that he was lying indecently clothed and well twisted in the blankets with Hermione half supporting herself, half resting atop him, the only possible thing he could think to do was move in to kiss her.

When they broke apart a few minutes later and rested their heads carefully back down onto their respective pillows, or in Hermione's case resting somewhere between her pillow and his chest, Ron sighed.

"We've got to get up again, haven't we?"

"Probably." Hermione agreed, her voice mumbling against his shoulder, the warmth of her breath tingled his skin. "We can't expect to go to sleep at 6:30."

"Well we could," Ron mused. "But we'd be ready to be up by 4 in the morning."

"And then we'd be tired all day." Her logic was infallible and he knew it. No matter how warm and comfortable he might be right now, he was going to have to leave this bed again.

"But we don't have to get up yet." She said her voice suddenly firm. "We can lie here a bit longer."

He smiled, and rolled to plant a kiss on her forehead. "That sounds like a brilliant idea." He closed his eyes and nestled deeper into the covers, feeling himself drifting back towards sleep. Really, it seemed impossible to Ron to think of a better place to be.