What Second Years Don't Know

What Second Years Don't Know

Hermione frowned and leaned closer to her book, as if proximity to it was directly related to her concentration. The giggling second year girls sitting in the near corner of the common room were grating on her patience. She considered stalking over to them to take points from Gryffindor for their insufferable loudness but refrained. It would only be for her benefit, since there were no specific rules concerning common room etiquette. She hadn't abused her rank as prefect last year and wasn't about to start.

She admitted grudgingly that it wasn't their chattering that aggravated her (Parvati and Lavender had definitely conditioned her to that after five years) so much as the subject matter.

"Vivian, how can you tell when a boy likes you?" asked Esther Mullins eagerly, following up with a healthy dose of giggles.

Vivian Vinehaver drew herself up and looked sagely at Esther and the other girls. Hermione knew, as she had caught them (and she would have overheard their gossip if anything else had happened), that Vivian's only expertise was a flustered peck on the lips from Euan Abercrombie after the first Quidditch game of the year. This was sufficient for the other second years, though. They leaned forward as Vivian spouted some nonsense about how boys made eyes at you and told you that you should go somewhere private.

Hermione couldn't help snorting into her runes text, though the girls were squealing too much to hear the noise. Hiding under the Quidditch stands for a kiss was hardly private. They were just lucky a professor hadn't caught them instead. Ten points was nothing compared to expulsion for lewd behavior, in her opinion. Besides, if those girls only knew how boys talked about kissing they would shut up in a hurry. She had heard first hand the crude things boys said once they got together to discuss details. It was barbaric.

A small part of her mind chided her for being a hypocrite. She was certainly no expert on boys. She had never done anything more than kiss boys on the cheek, or hug them while they awkwardly patted her on the head, or embrace them during mortal peril, and that didn't count, since the boys in those cases were just friends. Well, Harry didn't count. Ron...she didn't want to think about.

Anyway, it wasn't as if a boy had ever made eyes at her, really, or asked her to go somewhere private.

Okay, so that wasn't exactly true. Viktor had made more than eyes at her, and he kept asking her all night at the Yule Ball to go walk outside with him. She had refused, though. There had been a perfectly good reason for that, too, but at the time she didn't acknowledge it. Viktor was very sweet and did have had a flattering crush on her, and they did still write on occasion, but he wasn't someone she was interested in romantically.

Romance: what a silly concept, Hermione thought contemptuously.

That was what those second year girls envisioned when they spoke of boys. In actuality, everything to do with liking someone was filled with annoyance, talking around one another, and miscommunications. In her experience, that is. Not that she would have given it up. All of the ridiculousness drove her mad, but there was some comfort in the predictability of her crush.

Long before the Yule Ball, Hermione had fancied Ron. It wasn't until his miserable attempt to ask her and her subsequent hurt that she understood it, but looking back she had known. She knew Ron liked her, too. His jealousy was extremely irritating, but also telling and ever so slightly endearing.

What she didn't know, however, was if Ron knew he liked her. And even if he did, she knew him well enough to realize there was definitely no way he thought she liked him.

The whole situation was a double-edged sword. If she waited around for Ron to make a move she would grow old and grey, still rowing with him over nonsense. If she made a move he probably wouldn't understand it, and if he did he would react like big prat. Why should she have to do everything, anyway? Maybe she didn't feel like sorting out his emotions for him any longer. He had to learn to do things for himself at some point. Ron Weasley would make a move or else no move would be made at all, she decided fiercely.

She went back to her Ancient Runes book, a small part of her mind envisioning what types of cats she might want when she was a greyish old spinster. Big, threatening ones, like Crookshanks, she mused. If she couldn't have Ron she would simply intimidate him with her pets. The image made her smile devilishly; then she promptly set it aside, as there was real studying to be done.

For a few minutes, at least, she made headway.

"Who do you think the best looking boy in Gryffindor is?" squeaked Tamara Hess in a pitiful attempt to talk quietly. Hermione heard her quite plainly, although no one else in the common room could have from their distance.

"Hmm, Euan is really cute, but I think I fancy the older boys more," Vivian conceded. Giggling ensued.

"Yeah, older boys are so...mature," said Annie Daltry, twirling a ringlet of blonde hair about her fingers.

Hermione snorted even louder than last time at that comment. A couple of the girls glanced her way and lowered their voices. Ineffectually, however, as she still heard them plainly.

"Well," said Esther, "some of the seventh years are pretty good looking, but I think the sixth years are better as a group."

At that they all nattered excitedly. Hermione heard Harry mentioned more than once, and Tamara said Seamus's name dreamily. Annie even said she thought Neville was sort of cute, in a clumsy way, although her friends poked fun at her for it. What really caught Hermione's attention, though, was Ron's name.

"He's really funny."

"Yeah, I like his freckles, too. They make him look a bit tan."

"His hair is a good red, not that ugly orange like some red-heads have."

They moved on to talk about how Dean's art skills made him desirable, but Hermione had had enough. There was simply no way for a person to read at any acceptable rate in that din. She packed her things roughly in her bag and headed for the library, where she and Madam Pince saw eye to eye on volume levels.

* * *

When Hermione arrived in the library, she headed straight for the table in the back where she always sat, greatly anticipating some peace and quiet. She was quite surprised to find Ron, then, busily scratching his quill across a roll of parchment. Hearing her approach, he stopped knitting his eyebrows together in concentration and looked up to smile.

"Oh, hi, Hermione," he said jovially.

"I thought you had Quidditch," she said, setting her bag on the table and sitting in the chair across from him.

He shrugged. "Well, I did, but I had to leave early to finish some homework," he explained, gesturing to the parchment. She caught a glimpse of what he was writing and pursed her lips.

"Ron, you told me you and Harry finished that Charms essay last Thursday!"

"Yeah, well, I guess I didn't." To her vexation, he didn't sound remorseful about lying at all. In fact, he was grinning.

"I hardly think waiting until the last minute to write a sixteen inch essay is funny. We have N.E.W.T.s in a little over a year, you know. You'll be lucky to pass any if you keep this up. And even if Charms is the only subject you are neglecting, it's a very important one, especially if you want to be an Auror as you continually claim. Honestly, Ron, I don't see why you told me it was done if it wasn't." This was not improving her mood.

Ron's mouth curled slightly in an inadequately-controlled smirk. "I didn't want to worry you or anything. I know how you take it personally and all when I don't get my homework done."

"Where's Harry?" she asked, choosing to ignore his comments. "I suppose he's left his essay for the last minute, as well."

Now his smirk wasn't controlled at all. "No, he finished his yesterday."

Hermione's glare matched her tone. "Well that's better than waiting until the night before it's due, at least. Where were you last night then? We didn't have any essays due today, unless you're getting real assignments in Divination now."

Ron mumbled an unintelligible answer.

"What was that? You'll never get anywhere in life if you don't even speak clearly." Ron really was childish beyond reason, she thought sourly.

"Practicing," he said into his parchment, very clearly and a bit loudly for the library.

Hermione felt an immediate twinge of guilt for being so harsh. Although Ron had been the hero of the final game the year before, he still wasn't the greatest Keeper of all time. Their first game of the year was a close victory, against Hufflepuff, no less. True, much of it had to do with the loss of Fred and George as Beaters, but Hermione knew that to Ron, his eight saves didn't compensate for the same number of misses.

"You must be practicing a lot," she said, her sudden change from domineering to sympathetic making him look up at her, eyes wide.

"Yeah," he answered slowly.

"Well, even so, you can't let your schoolwork fall behind."

He grimaced, clearly waiting for another reprimand, but Hermione only sighed and moved her chair around so she sat at the side adjacent to him. Tilting her head, she scanned his essay, pointing to a few words that he should change, some lines to take out, and complimenting him on some good descriptions.

"So does it pass judgment?" he asked when she finished editing.

Hermione answered while searching in her bag for her notes. "I have to say it's very thorough, for having been written the night before." She found the pages she had been looking for and handed them to Ron. "Here, I took some notes on temperature charms from Wizardly Blizzards: A Consortium of Ice Charms when I was here the other day. They might be useful for the rest."

"Thanks!" he said, reading them gleefully. "You're a real lifesaver, Hermione."

She returned his smile and pulled her Ancient Runes book out of her bag, found the place she had left off, and began reading. Somehow it was even harder to pay attention in the silence of the library than in the common room. A few pages read slowly were better than none at all, though. Hermione had never mentioned it, to spare herself the teasing, but she had a personal goal to read every book in the library by the time she left Hogwarts. By her estimation she was 70 percent done, a bit shy of her target rate. Of course, one couldn't predict basilisks, tyrannical high inquisitors, and evil dark wizards foiling efforts; such things had a tendency to cut into one's reading time.

For a long while they sat, Hermione reading and Ron writing, and it was comfortable. Along with Harry, they had spent a good deal of their Hogwarts careers in the library, doing anything from mundane homework assignments to researching a new trial they had to overcome. It was a surprise, then, when Ron interrupted her and she looked up to see concern in his expression.

"Hermione, do you really think I could be an Auror?"

A bit shocked by his question, she paused before answering, which only deepened the worry on his face. "If anyone could be an Auror, Ron, you could. Look at all the things you've been through! I'm sure there are Aurors out there who haven't faced half the dark magic you have."

Ron shrugged, seemingly not convinced. "That's not really what I meant. I mean how am I going to get into the program? I can't even finish an essay without you giving me your notes." He brandished the pages she had lent him. "I've never even heard of half the stuff you have written here. How am I supposed to get five N.E.W.T.s when I can't do my homework alone?"

"First of all, there's no reason you should know what's in those notes. Flitwick didn't assign us Wizarding Blizzards. I just happened to have checked it out last week for recreational purposes. Second, Ron, you would have been able to do this essay, and in fact all your homework for the past five years, if you didn't wait until the last minute. Third, unless you have suddenly gone daft, you will earn more than five N.E.W.T.s. You passed all but two O.W.L.s last year, at any rate."

"I suppose..." he admitted, his attitude less discouraged. "It's just that here I have you to keep me in line. Once I get to Auror training you won't be around me so much anymore, unless you want to become an Auror, too. Do you?" he added, trying to sound nonchalant but not quite hiding the hopefulness in his voice.

In truth, Hermione wasn't sure. People had told her all sorts of professions she would excel at, from teaching to being an Unspeakable. Being an Auror sounded like a good plan, but she wasn't sure if she would feel as strongly about it if Voldemort weren't a threat anymore. At that point it seemed more like being a police officer to her, and that wasn't exactly what she pictured herself being. She definitely wanted to do something that mattered to the world. Teaching might be nice, but she wasn't always the greatest in social settings, and the best teachers she had were ones that connected with the students somehow, although she absolutely valued every one she had taken classes from (save Trelawney, the old fraud). As for being an Unspeakable, she really had no idea, since no book or person had given her a satisfactory answer on what exactly they did. Either way, the Department of Mysteries was a decidedly unappealing place to work after what had happened there.

"I don't know," she said truthfully. "Does that seem odd? I keep hearing about all these things I would be good at and I can't even choose one."

Ron smiled reassuringly. Sometimes it amazed her how he could go from fretting about something straight into soothing her. "We shouldn't worry so much. We don't have N.E.W.T.s for a year and a half. That means we have...a year and five months before we should panic."

"Ron!"

"I'm just joking, Hermione. Seriously, though, whatever you're meant to do, you'll figure it out. If not, maybe Harry and I can move out together and pay you to clean our flat." She glared half-heartedly at him. "Joking again! Anyway, forget what I said before. You've got enough on your mind without making sure I become an Auror. I just have to learn to live without you around to help."

A pang of sadness shot through her body at his last statement. Even if Hermione didn't become an Auror and had other responsibilities, she didn't want to learn to live without Ron around. No matter what career she chose, she wasn't going to let that stop her from being Ron and Harry's friend and spending as much time with them as possible. She wanted to tell Ron just that, but he had in the interim gone back to scribbling his essay, so Hermione said nothing and flipped the page of her book.

"Done," Ron announced finally. He blew the words at the bottom of the page dry and stuffed the essay unceremoniously into his bag along with his quill and ink. "How much reading do you have left?"

Shutting the book, Hermione began packing up, as well. "That's next month's reading, actually. I thought I'd finish it this week so I have time to read some Muggle Studies books."

Ron dropped his jaw. "You're not taking Muggle Studies anymore!"

"That doesn't mean I'm going to pretend the subject doesn't exist," she said pedantically.

"You're mental," Ron grumbled. "What time is it anyway?"

Hermione craned her neck to see the large clock on the wall. "It's 8:20. You could have stayed to practice a whole forty minutes longer," she quipped.

"No," Ron answered, for once not taking her up on a joke. "I wasn't doing too well with that essay hanging over my head, anyway. I do actually care about grades sometimes, you know."

Rolling her eyes, Hermione stood up. "Want to go back to the common room? Maybe Harry's there to play chess with you. I would offer but I don't think I even present a challenge anymore."

When Ron didn't answer, Hermione glanced at him, seeing an even stranger look on his face than before. He was regarding her with a confused yet knowing light in his eyes, one corner of his mouth pulling up into a smile. "I don't think so," he said quietly. "Hey, Hermione, do you want to go for a walk?"

"Um, Ron," she said, feeling flustered under his gaze, "it's far too late to go outside. And Filch would kill us for wandering around this close to curfew."

"That's okay. I meant in the castle, and we'll avoid Filch. So?"

"A walk where, Ron?" This was very, very odd.

He didn't answer, though, just turned and walked away. If he thinks I'm going to wander around for no reason at all he's lost his mind, she thought, but she still found herself trailing after him. "Ron, where are you going?"

It took him two floors and three long hallways before he stopped. When he did, Hermione examined their surroundings, a quiet corridor near the Arithmancy classroom. Then she examined Ron. He looked determined, but was flushing a brilliant red. She opened her mouth to ask him again what he was doing when he grabbed her arm and yanked her behind a nearby suit of armor. The rusty knight made a stifled noise that reminded her suspiciously of a snicker.

"Promise you won't slap me or stop speaking to me forever?"

That was definitely not what she had expected. Before she had time to argue with herself over the fear that he was going to tell her something awful and the excitement that just maybe he would kiss her, he had started in on the latter.

Just a short, sweet kiss, but Hermione had time to notice everything about it. Ron dropped his head as she stood on her toes. Their hands found themselves entwined near their waists, for balance and because it felt like the right place to put them. His lips were moist, but not wet or roving, and they didn't press too hard or too lightly on hers. Up close as she was, she felt the heat of his blush emanating from him. He smelled slightly like cut grass, from the Quidditch pitch, but under that she recognized the blue bubbles from the third tap in the prefect's bathroom and that Weasley smell that reminded her of the Burrow. Hands down it was the best five seconds of her time so far at Hogwarts.

"Hermione?" Ron said shakily. She realized she had been staring at him and smiled, causing him to grin like mad. "That was good."

"Yeah, it was good," she said, knowing her face must be the same color as his by now. She tried to act casual and brush her hair back, not realizing until too late that their hands were still clasped together. She froze, looking at his freckled wrist, then up to his eyes, which were so open and honest. He disengaged his hand from hers and used it to pull her head closer for another kiss.

This one was much longer. All of the sensations from before had returned, causing her to release a content sigh. She was sinking into the feeling of his mouth working against hers when the conversation she had heard earlier crept back into her mind, about boys making eyes and asking to go somewhere private. Isn't that precisely what Ron had done? Maybe those second years weren't so foolish after all.

Ron's tongue grazing her lips made her turn her full attention back to him. He was breathing heavily against her cheek and had embraced her tightly, one hand embedded in her hair and the other splayed across her back. Her own hands had wound their way up to his neck. Sighs had turned to soft moans and although the kiss was still theoretically chaste, it was rapidly giving way to insane cravings.

Second years definitely have no idea about this, or I'm failing in my prefect duties.

The thought made her laugh, right against Ron's lips. It was a sort of uncontrollably giddy laughter that consumed her and made Ron stand up straight and withdraw his arms.

"What?" he demanded, disgruntled. "What's so funny?"

Hermione only laughed harder. He was adorable when he made that face. "Nothing," she assured him breathlessly in between chuckles.

But that wasn't a satisfactory excuse, apparently, because Ron was still agitated. "You girls are all completely nutters! Harry makes Cho cry, I make you laugh. If Neville ever gets to kiss someone she'll probably run away screaming. And don't say I have the emotional range of a fork or whatever that was. I wish you could see how completely cracked you look right now!"

"Oh, Ron, you'll learn," she eventually got out when the laughter died. She used his shoulders to prop herself up and kissed his cheek, just as she had over a year before.

Ron shook his head in disbelief. "I'm not sure I want to know." They shared a smile and began walking back towards Gryffindor Tower. Before they had gone three steps their hands instinctively interlocked again.

Maybe Hermione didn't know what she was going to do with her life, and maybe Ron would struggle in Auror training. That didn't matter so much at the moment. They would figure it out when they came to it, as Ron had ineloquently said. All that mattered to her now was the feeling of Ron's hand tightly holding hers.

The End