Dinner, Dinner

Hermione was up in her dormitory. The moon gave just enough light for her to read by, and read she did. She was always reading. People said so; why not accept the image? They had created her, and she'd played along. And Hermione, the studious girl with overlarge front teeth and poofy hair, Hermione the girl who knew it all, Hermione who had books and cleverness for lifelong companions - Hermione was, she liked to tell herself, happy.

But then she wasn't.

She put down her book - Muggle Media: Motion Madness - and leaned against the windowpane. The book dated back to 1956; she'd picked it up because there was the chance, small, she admitted to herself, but the chance all the same, that someone, someday, somewhere and somehow, might ask her, "Oh, yes, Hermione - do tell about the sort of mindsets people had about film in the Muggle world back when it was taking flight," and she might not be able to begin her tradition of enthusiastic verbal diarrhea.

Hermione was, in her own little way, very old-fashioned. She liked to think of herself as conservative, but somewhere inside her she knew the word she was looking for had slightly less neutral connotations - something along the lines of, perhaps, unimaginative - or even stodgy - wouldn't be entirely unfair.

You see, Hermione cared a lot about things fitting into proper places, and about categorisation. She needed organisation, and not just in her schoolwork or research, but also in the way she led her life. And in this way, she lived for stereotypes. She lived her life in the role of steely perfectionist, studious know-it-all - and this had, for many years now, made her comfortable. It meant that she had a place, and that she needn't worry about being out of line, or noticed. Because being noticed brought with it too much pressure, and eventual heartache.

And now, she thought to herself as she absently smoothed down the cover of her book, Now that was all going to hell. Because somebody - somebody she'd never known she could have had any feelings for other than happily platonic ones - had finally noticed her. Ronald Weasley had noticed her; he'd picked her out of a thousand girls - he'd singled her out, and now she was special. Now she was individual, because he thought she had something more than what the usual person did - that had never been true before, she thought, but it was now. Now she had him.

He had met her at the foot of the staircase, just before she went into the Great Hall for dinner. He was looking a bit shifty.

"Er...hi," he said, concentrating very hard on the banister. She'd been in a hurry to get to dinner, her stomach was complaining, almost embarrassingly loudly. She hadn't really been paying attention. If she had, she might just have seen the signs.

"H'lo. You alright? You look a bit off."

"Oh, fine, fine. Spiffing."

"Right. Well. Shall we go in, then? Have you seen Harry?"

"Well, no. But, the thing is...yes, er, thing is..." He took a deep breath. "Yewwannahafdinnehwimmemeeny?"

There was a slight pause.

"What?"

He blushed, then forced the sentence out a second time.

"You want to have dinner with me, 'Mione?"

She raised her eyebrows and tried to decide how to best phrase her reply. Her stomach was doing valiant battle with the odd chemical. She tried not to sound impatient.

"I am having dinner with you, Ron."

"No, I mean, really have dinner with me. Like a dinner, dinner."

Realisation. Easy. Too easy.

"Oh I see. As opposed to a mere dinner, dinner."

"Exactly!"

Hermione tilted her head.

"As in, a date."

"Well...yes."

"In the Great Hall."

"Er...yes."

Hermione stared at him. He looked back at her, chin raised defensively. Then he bit his lip and walked away. She watched him disappear into the unlit corridor, and then, unexpectedly, she watched him walk back. She trembled. He looked more intense than she'd ever seen him. He came very close to her.

"What's wrong with the Great Hall?"

"I - what?"

Then everything he was holding back seemed to explode in Hermione's face.

"Well, ok, so it's not the most romantic of places, but what am I supposed to do? Knock you out and propose halfway to Romania? I mean, I've practically just jumped you in the bloody corridor like some watery Don Juan wannabe and you're really not helping; it isn't like I'm asking you to surrender your virtue or something. You could really be more...cooperative."

She blinked, trying to gather her wits. He wasn't finished.

"And you can stop looking at me like I've go Skrewts sprouting out my ears. I'm only human, you know. There's only so much I can take for so long. For the love of -you're...pretty!"

The last was said almost accusingly.

"And you're...special. And I don't think, Miss-I-Know-Everything-And-You're-An-Ignorant-Wart, that you're half as smart as you think you are, if you don't even know that. And I don't think you do. I think you think you're normal, and I think you think you're happy about being normal. But you aren't normal. You're the most wonderful person I know. You're so dense sometimes, 'Mione! I think that maybe you've been trying to be everything for everyone for so long that you don't know who you are anymore. And it's frustrating every time I'm with you because you won't let me get close enough to know that wonderful person a little bit better. You close up on me, just like you close up on everyone else, and it hurts, because I don't want to be everyone else. Not your everyone else, anyway. And I suppose that's because you're not mine."

He trailed off, sounding confused, as though he hadn't planned this outburst, as though he'd betrayed some sort of Right-I'll-Take-It-Slow code. Then he turned and ran.

Hermione had tried to pretend nothing had happened, she ate dinner, she laughed with Ginny and Harry, she tried to go back to her books, she tried to sleep.

But here she was now, alone, unable to do anything but think about Ron. He'd told her that she didn't know who she was. He was right. But when she was alone, she knew that it was her thoughts she thought, and her words she spoke, only to herself, in the dark. And it was in these times, in the early mornings, after dreams she wouldn't remember and before complete wakefulness took hold, that she seemed to be someone she knew and liked. And she loved to listen to herself in moments like these, creating her desires and achieving them in her head. She painted scenarios that she would never live, and contented herself with knowing she might just reach them one fine day - and if that day never came, she would be happy having had them in her mind.

Oh, yes. She was no fool.

So now she thought to herself. Ron was somebody she trusted. Ron was somebody she knew. Ron was somebody who knew her. Ron was somebody she loved.

Ron was, most wonderfully, somebody who loved her back.

No, perhaps she didn't know who she was. But Ron did. And perhaps, if she went down and looked for him, right now, perhaps if she held his hand and spoke to him and held him and loved him, perhaps he could tell her. And perhaps they could find each other. Perhaps they could be an us.

Just perhaps, eh, 'Mione?

She closed her eyes, sank back into the blankets, and fell asleep with a smile on her lips, Muggle Media: Motion Madness forgotten as it slid softly to the floor.

- end -