A Little Push

"What are you looking at?"

"You're spelling that wrong."

Ron's threw down his quill. "I haven't even finished writing out the word, Hermione!"

She shook her head and scooted closer so that she could see his parchment better. "No, see? It's got one L, not two. Q. U. A. L. I. F. I. E. S."

Ron rolled his eyes despite the fact that his ears were turning a bit pink due to Hermione's leg which kept brushing his every time she pointed out another misspelled word.

Harry watched all of this from his spot in a near-by armchair and gave a great mental sigh. He had no doubt that Ron had been misspelling words on purpose for the last hour just to get Hermione to abandon her spot on the floor and come sit on the couch with him.

Harry also happened to know that Hermione was purposefully brushing her leg against Ron's and that she was wearing a new perfume she'd gotten only after Ron had mentioned that he liked the smell of apples.

It wasn't that Harry wasn't used to this or even against their attraction to each other. He'd had an awful lot of time by now to think on the situation and many months and emotional roller coasters later, he'd decided that anything was better than their constant games and obvious-to-everyone-but-each-other hints.

It wasn't always this pleasant either. Games of jealously had been played more than once this year. Hurtful games that left Harry in the middle of it all, hoping against all hope that his two best friends would just suck it up and tell each other that they were hopelessly in love. Ginny had amused Harry, not two weeks ago, by slipping him a very detailed diagram she'd drawn of her plans to get Ron to trip and fall onto Hermione's lips. She even had the timing and math all down according to their class schedules and who would be in the room at that very time. Harry had thought it was a fine plan, but he really would just be content locking them up in a broom closet together until they either killed each other or dealt with their "secret" attraction.

"You really are hopeless, Ron. Professor Snape will never accept this looking like it does." Hermione seemed to have gotten too distracted by the abysmal spelling to continue the game. To Ron's great disappointment, she'd finally just taken the parchment away from him and was correcting it in her own lap. Harry tried not to laugh at his best mate's disappointed pout. Maybe next time, Ron would know to tone it down a bit and not misspell every other word in the essay.

When finally Hermione had finished correcting Ron's work, she handed it back to him wordlessly, receiving in return a muttered thanks. Harry and Ron then both watched as she packed up her things and bid them goodnight.

"You been a little distracted lately?" Harry asked innocently as Ron quickly jerked his gaze from the girl's staircase where Hermione had climbed out of view.

"What?" he asked, blushing deeply. "Distracted? I..."

"I mean, it's got to be something," Harry said with a shrug and just the tiniest glint of deviousness in his eyes. "Luckily, your spelling seems to be taking the brunt of it, but..."

Ron cleared his throat and bowed his head, pretending to start packing up his homework as well. "Oh. No, I'm just... There's quidditch and..." his excuses turned into incomprehensible mumbles. Harry could just barely pick out bits like, "... didn't eat much..." and "... my quill's faulty..." before Ron breathed a quick "G'night!" and dashed up the stairs.

Harry stared after him, making sure Ron was gone before taking out of his pocket the diagram Ginny had drawn and looking down at it in thought.

"I knew you'd come around soon enough."

Harry jumped at the voice behind him and quickly hid the paper. He needn't have done, however, as it was Ginny's face he looked up to see. She smirked down at him and came around from behind his chair, plopping herself down in the place Ron had just occupied.

"Sorry?" said Harry, still a little wound up. Why did people always have to sneak up on him?

"They're disgusting, right? Ron's always pouting and blushing and Hermione smells like an apple orchard blew up."

Harry smiled at that. He did indeed have to hold his breath at times when Hermione sat next to him in class lately.

"I say we play matchmaker. Give'em a little push, yeah? It couldn't possibly be hard; I mean they're tittering on the edge already."

Harry sighed heavily. "The edge is turning out to be a very uncomfortable place to be."

Ginny grinned. "Exactly! Do this for yourself, if not for them. You deserve less stress in your life. Voldemort's nothing compared to the you-know-what kind of tension there is between those two." She picked up a book one of the other students had left in the common room and started thumbing through it absentmindedly.

Harry chuckled a bit. Ginny certainly knew how to call it when she saw it. He held up the diagram. "You're not actually planning to do this, are you?"

Ginny looked up and shook her head. "Well, no. Although, it did take me ages to work it all out... I especially liked that bit with the chicken and the flobberworm... But I think there are better and more creative ways to go about these things."

-To Be Continued-