Secretive Love

As I lie here with the star-spangled heaves stretched over my head, I can feel his breath beside me, although I am wrapped in many layers of blankets. I glanced over, and watched the slow rising and falling of his chest, and the way the light breeze ruffled his hair- goose pimples danced all up and down my arms just thinking of him.

"Herm?" he said sleepily, propping himself up on one elbow, blinking as if I weren't in focus yet.

"Yea?" my mouth went dry as his hand ever so softly brushed mine while he got up, and my heart thumped wildly. God, would it stop doing that? I breathed deeply and tried to drop the romantic manner, though Harry and I were alone on the Hogwarts grounds at night.

"Er...guess I just dozed off," Harry began, sitting up and peering through the black telescope at our feet. "Damnit, Professor Sinistra will kill us if we don't get this done, where the hell is Ron?"

"Huh?" I asked, too busy staring into his startlingly green eyes to notice he was speaking. "Oh yea.." I suddenly remembered why we were out here in the middle of the night; our astronomy project, completing a chart of the zodiac symbols and related stars. I frowned; I wished he had out here to be with me, in the moonlight...Oh God, why do I keep feeling this way? I then leaned over to the telescope and began to complete the homework, while Harry paced and looked around for Ron.

"He's supposed to be here!" Harry snarled, nervously wringing his hands and turning to me. "I have to work out a new Quidditch play for the Slytherin match tomorrow, yet I come here. And he just decides to have a lie-in!"

Harry sank onto the ground beside me, rubbing his brow and then closing his eyes. My heart leap as I stole a look at his strong body, shaped by Quidditch for all of these years. He was, after all the captain of the Gryffindor Team, and had been since last year. The sixteen-year old had been through more than well...anyone I had ever known. And all I had really wanted to do from the first day I met him was to stare into his eyes and kiss him. NO! No no no, I don't like Harry-at least not more than a friend. And then there was Viktor Krum, who I felt an intense passion toward that rivaled Harry's. But he was away in Bulgaria, and I was here- I wondered when and if I would ever see him again.

"Sorry guys," a deep voice said from behind me. I shrieked whirled around to find myself facing the pointed, freckled face of Ron Weasely,

"Jeez Ron, you scared the bloody daylights out of me," Harry told Ron, grinning and thrusting a roll of parchment and a crumpled quill into his hands. "Here, work for a change. Oh yea, why were you so late?"

"Er..."

"Ron, explain yourself," I retorted, folding my hands, thinking that this was not the first time Ron was late with no explanation.

Ron's face split into a huge, fake smile as he answered me. "Herm, calm down, I was," he then frowned slightly, "somewhere."

"Whatever."

Ron suddenly got that old gleam in his eye back, and smirked, his eyes traveling to the blanketed area we had set up at the foot of the telescope.

"Oh," he began, "I see you two have been quite cozy out here."

"Oh come on Ron," Harry answered. "My heart is with Cho. Herm is like a sister." He then put his arm around me pointedly.

"That doesn't mean you couldn't have had a little fun," Ron rebounded with, on the verge of laughter.

"You're really a pervert you know," I told him briskly, finding it hard to ignore the way my stomach leapt when Harry pulled me into his arm. Giving Ron what we called my superior stare, I said that we really needed to get back to work. I forced my heart to play dead.

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