A/N: Wow, over 60 reviews, I genuinely can't believe it! Thanks everyone for being so awesome. This chapter is a bit shorter and more of a transition to some later things, so, I'll be posting Chapter 6 in just a couple of days! Anyway, I hope you guys like this.

I'm sorry, Ron mouthed to Hermione as they walked, footsteps echoing through the vast corridor. Professor McGonagall strode briskly ahead of them, never bothering to glance back; Hermione fired a burning glare in Ron's direction.

How could she possibly have thought that this wouldn't backfire on them? She was Head Girl. She should have known better than to think she could use her friend's house elf to sneak out of the castle with her boyfriend. McGonagall would think her irresponsible, would think she had her priorities all wrong, might even strip her of her title, all because she and Ron were so desperate to escape the castle.

They followed McGonagall past the stone gargoyle and up the rotating staircase into her office. From above her desk, the portrait of Albus Dumbledore winked fondly at them.

"Sit down, please," said McGonagall, gesturing to two chairs in front of her desk. Wordlessly, Ron and Hermione perched upon them, backs ramrod straight as though that might convey a sense of latent propriety and respectability.

"Professor-" Ron began, only to find himself silenced when she held up a hand.

"Miss Granger." McGonagall regarded Hermione through her square glasses. "Earlier today, I attempted to invite you to a meeting to discuss the upcoming trip to Hogsmeade - the one for all the students, you understand, not the special one you made today." Hermione swallowed. "Naturally, when you didn't come to the meeting, I became very worried and went to look for you. It was then, of course, that I came upon Mr. Potter receiving a message from a terrier Patronus. Mr. Weasley, I believe your Patronus is a terrier?"

"Yes, but Professor, it's all my fault," said Ron urgently. "It was my idea, I asked Harry to have Kreacher help us, Hermione didn't have any clue. If you're going to punish someone, it should be me, not her."

McGonagall simply raised her eyebrows at his words, and Ron fell silent.

"I understand that after the events of the past year, coming back to Hogwarts must be a bit of an adjustment for all of you, but that does not give you the right to leave the castle anytime you please just because you've found the means to do so." She narrowed her eyes at the couple. "You must realize the security problem this creates for me if other students catch on to this."

"I'm so sorry, Professor," said Hermione, her voice full of remorse. "We never should have left, I completely understand if you want to demote me-"

"No," Ron interrupted. "No, do whatever you want to me, expel me if you have to, but Hermione doesn't deserve-"

"Fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor," declared McGonagall. "But you are not to share the details of how you lost them. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Professor," they replied in unison.

"That is all. You may go."

They were halfway down the corridor, Hermione's legs carrying her as quickly as they could go, before Ron spoke.

"Okay, that wasn't so bad, was it? I really couldn't care less about house points-"

"It has nothing to do with house points," Hermione snapped back. "Didn't you see how disappointed she was? The only reason she didn't do more to us is because she didn't want to call attention to it. She thinks we're completely irresponsible."

"All we did was go to the village for a few hours."

"She tried to have a meeting with me and I wasn't here! I'm Head Girl! She's supposed to be able to count on me!" Stopping in her tracks, she whirled around to face him. "You've never cared about these things, have you? It actually means something to me, being back here and being Head Girl."

"I only wanted to spend time with you - you even said yourself, it's not the same being back here." He raked a hand through his messy hair. "Would you even be getting mad at me if we hadn't gotten caught?"

She didn't want to admit it, but the answer was no. If things had gone to plan, she would probably still be caught up in a giddy afterglow of her morning with him.

"It was just a bit of a wake up call," Hermione explained, starting to walk a bit more slowly now. "I have to take this seriously."

"And you do," said Ron as he fell into step beside her. "We all know that, and so does McGonagall."

"I just need to sort out my priorities. And of course you are one," Hermione was quick to say, "but I've got to be a better role model."

"Stop apologizing," Hermione said to Harry for the tenth time over breakfast the next day. "It was just bad timing on when we sent the Patronus, it's not your fault."

"I should have at least thought up an excuse," said Harry, narrowly dodging a cut to the face as Ginny turned the pages of the Daily Prophet.

"Yeah, and I've heard your excuses, mate," Ron laughed. "You once tried to tell Snape that Roonil Wazlib was your nickname."

"Hey, it could have been," Harry joked back. "I still feel bad, we should have figured out a more discreet way to communicate."

"Now we know for next time."

"There won't be a next time," Hermione reminded him just as Ginny choked on a sip of tea.

"You all right?" Harry asked, thumping her on the back. Still sputtering a bit, Ginny folded the newspaper in half and handed it to Hermione, pointing to a segment titled Spellbinding Sightings.

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were spotted Saturday at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, where they dined and made use of the rooms for rent upstairs. "They were gone for a good few hours," said a witness in the pub. Things seem to be heating up for Potter's pals, but will it last? Only time will tell.

There followed a few similar blurbs, including one about Celestina Warbeck shopping for new robes, but the words swam together before Hermione's eyes. How could they have thought nobody would notice them? Ron's height and hair color meant he was easily spotted in a crowd, and the pub hadn't been busy that morning.

"My parents get this paper delivered," Ron moaned, dropping his face onto his forearms.

"Then I reckon we can all look forward to a Howler tomorrow," Harry remarked, smirking from behind his goblet.

"Ugh, don't say that." Ron picked up his head and grimaced at Harry. "They're going to try to give me a sex talk via Howler, aren't they?"

"Probably," said Ginny. "Though you've already moved out, you'd think they'd realize that ship had sailed."

"They live in denial," Ron muttered. "And yeah, I have moved out, we're eighteen, we should be allowed to-" He paused and looked over at Hermione, who was still staring, white-faced, at the paper. "You okay?"

"I suppose I should take this to McGonagall," Hermione decided, "before she finds out from someone else."

But in the end, it didn't matter: word was already spreading throughout the student body and by lunchtime, it seemed that almost everyone had made the connection between the blurb in the paper and the sudden dearth of rubies in the Gryffindor hourglass. Everywhere Hermione went - the Great Hall, the library, to the Quidditch pitch to watch her friends practice - she felt judging stares and heard furtive whispers from her classmates. It was little comfort that most people still didn't know how they'd managed to leave the castle, because everyone was more concerned with what had happened while they were away.

The most frustrating part of all of it was that deep down, Hermione agreed with Ron. They were adults, and if they wanted a physical relationship, they should have been at liberty to carry one out in peace. She didn't think it was anything shameful, but she did like to keep this aspect of her life between herself and Ron, and suddenly it had been splashed into the news for the whole world to know.

"Do you want to go to dinner soon?" asked Ginny, toweling off her hair as she walked into their dorm. While she, Ron and Harry had gone to clean up after practice, Hermione had opted to hide out in the safety of her four-poster with a book. "I'm starving."

"So everyone can stare at me and call me a slag? No thanks," said Hermione flatly.

"If having sex with your boyfriend makes you a slag, then sign me up, I'm a slag too," Ginny replied casually as she sat on her own bed. "But even if you were putting it around all over town, who cares? It's your business."

"Yes, exactly. My business. Not anyone else's." Hermione tugged at a loose thread in the duvet. "Do you really think your Mum will send Ron a Howler?"

"Hopefully not. A lecture isn't going to change anything."

"I'm just glad my parents don't have access to the Prophet," Hermione admitted. "I don't think they know that Ron and I are… you know."

"Shagging?" Ginny supplied with a smirk. "I'm embarrassed by nothing, you must have realized this by now."

"I spent the whole summer sneaking out of the house," Hermione continued, trying and failing to quell the blush in her cheeks. "Ever since Australia, they've been really protective, I had to convince them that coming back to Hogwarts wasn't a mistake."

"I think your secret's safe from Muggles," said Ginny. "And if you want, I can start a rumor about myself to distract everyone."

"No, I'm sure it'll blow over in a few days but I feel like nobody's going to take me seriously now."

"Then they're idiots," Ginny stated definitively. "Now let's go eat, they're probably waiting for us."

"You go," said Hermione. "I'm really not hungry."

Ginny, for a moment, seemed to consider arguing, but instead gave a slight shrug, picking up her wand as she walked out the door. Hermione laid back on the bed, staring at the crimson curtains hanging around her. She had been hoping, at the beginning of the month, that this year at Hogwarts could be blissfully uneventful, that she could concentrate on NEWTs and her friends and her relationship with Ron, but now she felt naive for ever believing that. Nothing could ever be that easy.

"Erm, Hermione?" Ginny had returned to stand in the doorway. "Ron would like me to ask you to please come down to the common room, since he can't come up here himself."

With a gargantuan effort, Hermione hauled herself up off the bed. The past two days had been nothing but exhausting, and she mostly just wanted to see the weekend end as quickly as possible. Ginny abandoned her halfway down the stairs, which didn't totally surprise her, and the common room was empty of all inhabitants but Ron, who stood expectantly near an armchair.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "I'd understand if you were, this whole thing is basically my fault."

"No, I'm not." Hermione took the few steps needed to reach him and curved her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest. "And anyway, you didn't exactly twist my arm."

"It was a stupid idea, I should have known something like this would happen," he went on, "but I really just wanted to do something more than just, I don't know, nick you a cupcake from the kitchen or something."

"It wasn't stupid. Before it all went sideways, it was actually a really great day."

"Yeah," Ron agreed with a soft smile. "It was. And it'll be fine, everyone'll forget about it in a couple of days."

"We'll see about that."

"They will. And if they don't, Harry offered to do something stupid to distract everyone."

"Ginny said the same thing!" Hermione laughed, angling her face up to lightly kiss his lips.

"Now can we eat, please? Because I'm starving."

Smiling wide, she just kissed him again.

Pigwidgeon, through no fault of his own and by no means a result of any lack of enthusiasm, was almost always the last owl to deliver mail in the mornings. He typically fluttered in toward the end of breakfast, depositing tiny feathers onto everyone's plates and twittering eagerly around the heads of students until Ron snatched him out of the air and retrieved whatever letter or parcel he was bearing.

"I wonder if I'll get any hate mail this time," Hermione muttered to no one in particular as the owls swooped over the tables in the Great Hall.

"Why would you get hate mail?" asked Ron, biting into his toast.

"Don't you remember when Rita Skeeter wrote about how I was toying with Harry's emotions?"

"Yeah, but that's the difference, isn't it?" Ron replied, an air of sage wisdom in his voice. "That was Harry. I haven't really got a fan club like he has."

Not that Hermione thought Ron was wrong, necessarily, because even now Harry was the one who drew most of the attention whenever they all went out into the wizarding world. Her expectation had less to do with who she had been with at the Three Broomsticks and more that she had been there at all. After experiencing all of the taunting stares and whispers of her classmates over the weekend, it would hardly surprise her to be judged and vilified by complete strangers.

"Let them try," Ginny added from across the table. "I've been looking for an excuse to Bat-Bogey Hex someone, it's been a while."

But no anonymous letters arrived for Hermione, thankfully, and breakfast was dwindling to a close when Pigwidgeon tumbled through the air, his tiny wings fighting to keep him airborne. In his beak was clamped a roll of crumpled parchment as he landed with a thump on Ron's empty plate.

"Merlin, Pig, get it together," Ron chided him, picking up his owl and brushing bread crumbs from his feathers. As Hermione gathered up her things for Arithmancy, Ron tugged the parchment from the owl's beak, unfurled it, and began to read.

"What is that?" Hermione asked him, watching his eyes widen as he read, his brows quirking.

"It's from George." Ron did a double-take on the parchment.

"George?"

"Yeah, I reckon he thinks he's funny," Ron replied, cramming the letter into his rucksack. "He thinks it's his job to take the mickey just because we made the news."

"That's really why he wrote you?" It seemed a bit of a waste to send poor Pigwidgeon, who was really only reliable for local trips, without any real purpose to the letter.

"Yep." Ron stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. "Anyway, love, I've got to run back to my room real quick, I'll see you in class later, all right?" He stooped down just low enough to peck her on the lips and strode off, leaving Hermione to watch him go.

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