A/N: I make no claims on the Potterverse, I just play in JK's sandbox when the moods strikes me.
thom them - (v.) a slight craving for a delicious dish after you've already finished it; to be still hungry or thirsty because one hasn't had enough [vietnamese]
Many thought Ron Weasley to be a fool because he lived life in search of the simple desires. A warm bed, a filling meal, these were the things Ron craved, and when he found them he required little else for sustenance. It was a position that was not well understood by his Hogwarts classmates, and a position that throughly did not impress his teachers. Some might even have gone so far as to called him lazy, unmotivated, and just plain stupid. Those people missed the overarching point of it all, presuming the boy to be gifted at chess and nearly useless at anything else.
Did being able to transfigure a match into a needle help build a bed? Did being able to charm a feather to hover in midair make a meal any more delicious? Would being capable of brewing Felix Felicis ease him into a comfortable sleep at the end of the day? Certainly not, and that was where the teachers failed to understand just what made Ron tick. The tasks that failed to impact the things he craved in life, he couldn't muster up the ability to concern himself with. The more important things (transfiguring items into useful dishes and cooking utensils, charming his bed to hit just the right temperature and softness at just the right time, brewing additives to ensure that his food would always come out exactly as he desired it) Ron actually put time and effort into learning correctly. While he may never have said as much, Ron was well aware that he couldn't live at home forever, and would need to be able to do some of these things for himself in the future.
The last place anyone expected he would find a kindred spirit in his endeavors would be the house of the intelligent, and yet that's exactly what he found when he began to notice that Luna Lovegood was not at all the loony girl he had once known when they were much younger. Though the girl would often talk about creatures that no one had ever heard of, much less seen, Ron observed that most of these episodes would occur whenever Luna was particularly bothered by something. When she was perfectly at peace, she was much closer to the accepted definition of normal, albeit with a strong urge to consume copious amounts of puddings. The similarities were undeniable; when Ron felt well out of his comfort zone, he also resorted to actions he deemed to be out of character (often involving shouting and physicality), and when he was content, he was hungry (and vice versa).
Slowly, carefully, Ron absorbed more information about Luna, making sure that his initial impressions were correct or at least reasonably close. Only when he finally was sure that he had pegged her behavior did he make a move. Their first date into Hogsmeade turned many heads, but by their third date, the couple was hardly spared a glance. No one ever saw them making any grand gestures, and in fact most of their dates involved at least one stop in Honeydukes, but had very little else in common besides that.
The transition from friends to lovers passed so easily that most missed the signs that it had even happened at all. Only a sharp eyed Boy-Who-Lived realized that Ron was sending longing looks Luna's way, because they reminded him of how Ron looked after meals had been eaten and cleared away. As with those meals, when his simple pleasures were taken away from him, Ron tended to look quite a bit crestfallen. He had added another craving to his list: a warm bed, a filling meal, and a passionate embrace with a lover.