A/N: You guys all have a lot of opinions on what that letter Ron received might entail! I love it. Thank you for your ideas and your reviews and your support... but it'll be a couple chapters before you find out. In the meantime, have some smut and fluff (in that order). And 30 points to the Hogwarts house of your choice if you can point out the reference to a certain Chicago sports team...

"Okay, so we have…" Hermione placed a teetering stack of books on the table in front of Ron. "Potions, Herbology, and Transfiguration. So where do you want to start?"

He looked across the common room at the crackling fireplace, in front of which Ginny and Harry sat on the floor, drawing diagrams of Quidditch strategies, and then back into Hermione's hopeful brown eyes.

"You know what, you choose," he said as though he were doing her a grand favor. "It's all just so thrilling, I don't know where to begin."

Hermione could not honestly say she was appreciating his sarcasm, but opted to remain calm.

"We have three exams this week, so which do you feel like you need to study the most?"

As September had bled into October, coursework had seemed almost to triple. The professors of Hogwarts had embraced the spirit of NEWTs and felt it necessary to issue exams and essays with almost alarming frequency; equally alarming was the nonchalance with which Ron and Harry seemed to approach each deadline or exam date, as though they were mere suggestions. Hermione, who wanted nothing less than to see them fail, had taken it upon herself, like she had in years past, to ensure that they put in the appropriate effort.

"Tell you what," Ron replied, leaning over the table with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "My dorm room's empty at the moment, what do you say we go up there for a little bit? Then I'll do all the studying you want."

"Really? Where's Dean?"

"Er, he snuck into Hogsmeade to see Seamus," Ron grinned. "So I know he's going to be a while."

"What do you mean, he went to Hogsmeade? How did he sneak in?"

"Same way we did."

Hermione was aghast, her jaw hanging slack as Ron bit back a laugh. "You told him?!"

"I mean, yeah, he asked, so… he's in a shittier situation than we are, because Seamus isn't even here, so I thought I'd help him out. And they're going to Apparate back to Myrtle's bathroom, not to the middle of the common room so I don't reckon they'll get caught. But that's completely off the point," he told her, covering her hands with his. "The point is that we'd have the place to ourselves, and… and it's been since your birthday…"

"And whose fault is that?" Hermione countered. Between classes, Head Girl responsibilities, and Quidditch, it was admittedly difficult to find significant blocks of time to spend together, but Hermione had suggested more than once that they take a trip to the Room of Requirement only to find that her idea was met with an excuse. She would have begun to take it personally had he not constantly been suggesting that they meet up in the prefect's bathroom, but she still felt the risk of Moaning Myrtle encountering them was far too great.

"Ginny's," Ron decided with a split-second glare in his sister's direction. "She's like Angelina Johnson and Oliver Wood combined, it's mental."

"So let me make sure I understand," said Hermione. "Are you trying to get me to bribe you with-" she lowered her voice- "with sex - so that you'll study?"

"Is it working?"

Hermione let out a frustrated sigh. "Let's start with Potions."

"Okay, but this is a waste of a perfectly good empty dorm room."

"Here's an idea," said Hermione, leaning in so Ron could hear her near-whisper. "We study for the next few hours and then we can spend the entire night in the Room of Requirement."

"Well…" Ron looked torn. "I don't know if we can do that. What if there's some kind of emergency and McGonagall can't find you?"

"Fair point," Hermione begrudgingly agreed. "Though I suppose there's always the risk of that happening."

"S'alright." Ron closed the gap between them to place a warm kiss on her lips. "I probably should study anyway."

"Right." Hermione nodded, accepting one more kiss from Ron before he picked up Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7 and cracked it open.

Perhaps he was right, and she really couldn't spend an entire night away from her dorm, but lately all she wanted was to fall asleep with him and wake up with him the way she'd done so many times over the summer. Everything back then had seemed so easy, so natural. True, there had been a fair bit of sneaking around due to Hermione still living with her parents, but once they were together it all seemed to fall away. They used to lie in his bed and talk and kiss and joke with each other and it was like they were the only two people in the whole world. Hermione missed that feeling; she didn't think she could wait until Christmas to have it again.

Halfway through their reluctant study of Concealment Charms ("didn't we just spend a whole year practicing these?" was Ron's constant refrain), Dean stomped into the common room looking rather ill-tempered and proceeded up to the boys' dormitory without a word to anyone.

"There goes that idea," said Ron as he shuffled Hermione's notes.

"My other offer still stands."

"I know, but…" Ron stood halfway out of his chair and kissed her cheek. "It's okay. We'll find a way."

Hermione nearly retorted that they already had a way - the castle had literally given them a way - but instead she simply turned to her Herbology notes.

The study of magical plants and fungi, however, very quickly lost its appeal.

"Do you want to play chess?" asked Ron, using a scrap of parchment to mark his place in his book as he closed it.

"No," Hermione replied, scowling at him. "You haven't even started that essay, have you?"

"I just have a hard time seeing how knowing how to open a Snargaluff pod will be useful as an Auror."

"Because the Ministry requires a NEWT in Herbology to enter the program, perhaps?"

"I know, but I need a break. Oi, Harry!" he called across the room to his friend, who had also been coerced into studying by his own girlfriend. "Play chess with me."

"Yeah, alright," Harry readily agreed. As Hermione's mouth slowly set itself into a very small, thin, straight line, Ron rushed off to the staircase. The depths to which the pair of them would sink in order to procrastinate were truly beyond her comprehension.

"You know, I think I'll just go to bed," Hermione decided, gathering up her books and notes as Ron descended the stairs. He stopped and turned, making a detour on his approach to Harry.

"Really?" asked Ron as Hermione stood up. "But it's still early." Setting his battered old chess set on the table, he draped an arm over her shoulders.

"It's clear nothing else is getting done tonight."

"Aww, c'mon, don't be mad at me," said Ron, wrapping another arm across her chest and planting a kiss on her forehead.

"I just actually want to get things done tonight," she told him, "and I'm not going to be able to do that down here."

"All right, well…" He kissed her temple, letting his mouth linger against her skin. "I love you."

Hermione turned her face so their lips could meet. "I love you too. And tomorrow we're finishing Herbology."

"You got it."

•••

The following morning brought Potions class, during which Hermione was paired with Harry to brew a Wound-Sanitizing Potion. Amid the sound of bubbling cauldrons and knives slicing through leeches, Hermione subtly adjusted her stance so that her back was to Ron, who had been partnered with his sister.

"So," Hermione began under her breath as she bisected a leech, "have you and Ginny gone to the Room of Requirement this year at all?"

"Er…" Harry gave a nervous little laugh. "Who's really asking, you or Ron?"

"I am," said Hermione with a weary roll of her eyes. "But Ron's not naive, you know."

"Well, I mean…" Harry looked over at Ginny, who was currently scraping pulverized dirigible plums into her and Ron's cauldron. "Yeah. We have - I mean, we've got to make the best of being here, right, so - I mean, why do you ask?"

"And how did it go?"

Harry crinkled his nose, looking deeply disturbed. "Again, why are you asking?"

"The room worked, didn't it? Even after the Fiendfyre and everything?"

"Oh." Harry's face relaxed into relief. "Yeah, it works. I reckon the the stuff from the Room of Hidden Things is all destroyed for good, but it can still… do what you need it to do."

"That's good."

"Did it not work for you and Ron?" Harry asked casually as he picked up a pestle.

"Oh - well - we haven't tried it yet." Hermione concentrated very closely on the incision she was making in her leech. "Harry, check that the water's still boiling, will you?"

Seeming to detect (accurately) that Hermione was ready to drop the subject, Harry peered into the cauldron and nodded. "Yeah, good to go."

Following Potions came Herbology, during which Ron turned in the feeble attempt at an essay that he had scratched out over breakfast. The lesson that day was focused on repotting Devil's Snare, which meant that most of their time went into ensuring that the plants didn't strangle them alive. Hermione watched, riveted, as Ron forced the twisting green roots back into pots of soil, unable to help noticing the way his muscles flexed under his robes, the small bead of sweat that developed on his temple, his teeth digging into his lower lip…

"Hi," Hermione greeted him brightly as they walked back to the castle, slipping her hand into his and kissing him behind the ear.

"Hi," he grinned back.

"Let's skip lunch today," she suggested, a shy smile forcing its way onto her lips.

His brows shot up. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Ron waited just long enough to give a quick warning to Harry and Dean and then, while the rest of their classmates filed into the Great Hall, he took Hermione's hand and led her eagerly up to the seventh floor.

"We've all come up with a system, too," Ron explained as they walked to the eighth year dorm, "since I realized I really, really didn't want to risk walking in on Harry and Ginny, so…" He took out his wand and marked a small, glowing-red X on the wooden door, just above the handle. "Then when the coast is clear, we just undo the spell. Simple, but effective."

Hermione kissed him the second the door closed behind them, walking him to the bed as she pushed away the outer layer of his robes. She was half-expecting a playful remark about her sense of urgency, but it seemed he was feeling exactly the same way: he crawled onto the bed and pulled her into his lap, yanking the curtains closed so they were surrounded by crimson. Articles of clothing were stripped off one by one, shoved into corners of the bedclothes or dropped to the floor until they both found themselves completely bare and breathless.

"C'mere," Ron breathed, situating himself against the headboard of the bed and guiding Hermione by the hips to straddle him. She settled onto his thighs as his lips fell to the curve of her neck. "I love you," he mumbled into her skin, sliding his hand up her waist.

"I love you too."

Hermione rose up on her knees just enough to position herself over him. Their eyes connected, and an unspoken agreement passed between them in the instant before Hermione sank down onto his length, bringing him inside. As her body adjusted to him - it had been nearly a month, after all - she connected their lips, savoring the utter closeness of their bodies. With Ron gripping her hip tightly in one hand, she began to rock against him, eliciting low, ragged moans from the back of his throat. He was trying to kiss every possible inch of her, her shoulders and her cheeks and her lips; one hand crept to the point where their bodies joined and the other sought out her breast. By the end they were sticky and sweaty and trembling, satisfied and exhausted.

"Am I really expected to go to class after this?" asked Ron, pulling the duvet over them. There was still a bit of time before they absolutely needed to leave and Hermione wanted to soak up every second of it, even if the twin bed could barely contain the two of them.

"We can't skip class." Even as she spoke, Hermione made herself comfortable, curling into his side.

"But how am I supposed to go to class when I have naked Hermione?"

"Well," laughed Hermione, "I'm going to class regardless, so you'd really just be naked by yourself once I left."

"Oh. Yeah. That's not as fun."

"And we have an exam, we can't miss it."

"It's on things we already know how to do. I'm pretty sure we already took the real life practical exam on Concealment Charms when we were on the run for a year."

"It doesn't matter, we still have to take the exam."

Ron fell quiet, dropping a kiss on her forehead and trailing his fingertips up her back. Hermione closed her eyes and let herself listen to the sound of his breathing. With the room so quiet and still, she could almost pretend that they were elsewhere, that they had more than a few stolen moments to share together.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

"What if I hadn't come back? To Hogwarts, I mean." He almost sounded nervous voicing the question. "If Kingsley's bill had passed, or I'd… done something else… d'you think we'd be okay? You and me?"

"Of course we would." Hermione looked up at him, bemused. "Why wouldn't we be?"

"I would miss the hell out of you," he stated plainly. "It would be so hard not seeing you, or talking to you-"

"It would, but it would also take a lot more than that for you to get rid of me," Hermione told him, trying to infuse a bit of lightness in what was suddenly a very serious conversation.

"Believe me, I don't ever want to be rid of you." He tightened his embrace just as, from the nightstand, Hermione's wand let out a noise like a bell. "Do we really have to go?"

"Yes," said Hermione, a bit ruefully as she slid out of the bed and sought out her clothing. "We can't be late for an exam."

They dressed, Hermione unable to help noticing that Ron seemed to be taking his sweet time. She was just about to pick up her rucksack when he hugged her from behind, planting smacking, playful kisses on her neck and making goosebumps pop up on her skin.

"Let's never wait that long again," he said into her ear as more chills raced through her.

"Definitely." She turned and pushed her lips against his. "Now let's go before we really do make ourselves late."

"Yeah, all right," said Ron as he allowed himself to be led out of the room. "But it would be totally worth it."

•••

There were times - and they often arose at moments like this, when Hermione was a unique mixture of exhausted and contented - that the absolute truths and details of her life came into very sharp focus. It was an unremarkable moment, really: she was simply sitting on the common room sofa with Ron, his arm around her shoulders as she leaned against him, her Arithmancy charts propped up on her knees. She should have been studying, rather than listening to Ron and Harry squabble over some Chudley Cannons trivia that one of them was misremembering, but she felt as though she was seeing everything so clearly.

She was a witch. She was here, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, after having helped her friend defeat the darkest wizard in existence. The fact that any of it had happened at all - her magic, the fact that she actually had friends, which had been a near-impossibility in Muggle primary school - was enough in itself to marvel at, but the true wonder was right next to her, all red hair and long limbs and oversized smiles.

Ten years ago, she'd never have expected any of this, from the existence of this magical community to the fact that she had fallen so deeply, irreversibly in love with her best friend, and that he actually reciprocated it. Sometimes when she kissed him, or was affectionate with him, she couldn't believe that it was all real, that what she had craved for years had finally come to fruition. It was terribly illogical, she knew: he told her he loved her all the time, he'd seen her naked, they'd had sex countless times, but she still couldn't believe that she was now allowed to act on the desires she had harbored for years.

"No, that was the year Gorgovitch was traded to Wimbourne," Ron was saying, "not that it made a difference to the Cannons, anyway. I swear someone must have cursed the team."

"Who would curse a sports team?" Harry asked skeptically. "Maybe they're just rubbish, have you considered that?"

"I know they're rubbish, but it could be because of a curse, it might not be their fault."

"Yeah," Harry scoffed. "Maybe."

Hermione set her hand on Ron's leg and squeezed just enough so that he turned to look at her, and then lifted her face expectantly toward him. He met her halfway, landing a short, sweet kiss on her lips. Those little things, the fact that she didn't even need words to communicate what she wanted, and that kissing him was a normal, everyday event and would be for years to come, were what she marveled at the most. Sometimes this life of hers was entirely unfathomable in the best way.

"One more," she murmured, and he kissed her again before she rested her head back on his shoulder.

Ginny came bounding into the common room then, freshly showered after having led a grueling practice, and joined Harry in an overstuffed armchair.

"I had an idea when we were taking that Charms exam," Ron said quietly. "So I reckon some good came from it."

"You mean aside from you not failing your classes?"

"Okay, that, but also… I had the thought that if I put an Imperturbable Charm on my bed, you could potentially stay the night and nobody would know."

"Ron."

"What?"

"I am not… doing anything with Harry and Dean in the same room!"

"Look whose mind is in the gutter," Ron teased her. "I just meant to sleep."

"If it's really just to sleep, then why would you need a charm?"

"Because, like I've said, you snore like a troll."

Hermione sat up straight, appalled, Ron's arm falling from her shoulders. "I do not!"

"Yes, you do - oi, Ginny," Ron called to his sister. "You'd know. Doesn't Hermione snore?"

"Oh, I'm not getting in the middle of this argument," said Ginny, which only made Ron burst out laughing.

"That's a polite way of saying yes, isn't it?"

"Hermione," Harry chimed in, "I hate to tell you this, but I shared a tent with you for months. You do snore."

Ron raised a fist in triumph as Hermione scowled and pointedly scooted away from him. "Hey, come back here," he chuckled, trying to hug her back into his arms. "I like it, it's rhythmic, it lulls me to sleep."

"So glad I can be of service, then," snapped Hermione, relocating to the other end of the sofa and hiding her face behind her notes.

"Hermione…" Ron crawled across the sofa toward her. "Come on, I bet I do annoying things in my sleep."

The thing was, he didn't. He didn't hog the covers or take up the entire mattress, he just held her close and kept her warm and made her feel like it was the safest place in the world, his bed at Grimmauld Place.

"Oh, it's annoying now, is it?" Hermione challenged, using all of her strength to suppress a smirk. She was no longer mad at him; truthfully, she never really had been, but watching him grow flustered over something so trivial had her rather entertained.

"What? No!" Ron's eyes widened into saucers. "No, I was only saying that, just, y'know, I - I love you," he changed tacks, hugging her around the shoulders.

"Even though I snore like a troll?"

"Thank you for never comparing me to a troll," Ginny commented as an aside to Harry, who laughed and kissed the side of her head.

"I was only joking, Hermione," Ron insisted, "I really only meant-"

She cut him off with a kiss, stunning him into silence. "I love you too," she told him, going back to leaning against him. "But," she added, quietly enough that Harry and Ginny couldn't hear, "I can't stay over with you, it's the same thing you said before. If there's an emergency or something happens, McGonagall has to be able to find me."

"Really regretting pointing that out to you," Ron muttered with a sigh. "But that's okay. Only two months until the Christmas holidays, right?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right."

At least, Hermione thought, she could still kiss him whenever she wanted. For the time being, she would have to be content with that.

Up next... Quidditch!

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