Suffering on the Orient-Express

Chapter One -- My Lady's Eyes (Doth Spy a Plot)

My Lady's eyes, each glance I prize,

As gentle as a dove,

And would that I could tell her why

I dare not speak my love.

Too high, as far as any star

Her station is to mine,

Too wide that space to e'er embrace,

Beneath her I repine.

--My Lady's Eyes, from Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey (which is purposefully meant to be drivel, and succeeds admirably!)

~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~

It was 2:58. 2:58, A dot M.

But he didn't know that. He was preoccupied, and the orange-ish glow from the digital clock - a gift from a friend - only served now to cast a little extra light on the sheet of parchment on the desk in front of him.

He chewed absently on the end of his quill - also a present. Had he not been so distracted, he would have noticed that the end of said quill was particularly reminiscent of the hair of the friend who'd given it to him. The brown fletching was torn, cracked and sticking out in all sorts of ridiculous directions and some bits were actually missing all together. Yet the poor defenseless quill hadn't done anything to him. Well, nothing, other than not finish the last blasted lines of this composition.

'Her hair shines down in sun;

Flaxen tiger-eye, facets at once brown and gleaming golden.

So are her eyes -

Sharp and quick, yet full of warmth, and filled with fire.

There is fire in her heart.

She burns with the flames of knowledge, and of charity, and of justice.

And to see her smile...

It is dawn, breaking in the east,

A glory of light and promise.

She is no great beauty.

She is no Cleopatra, no Guinevere, no Helen.

Her face will not launch a thousand ships,

Her guise alone will not rouse men to battle.

Her splendor lies in her soul,

For there is beauty within,

Painted in her words,

Written in the music of her laughter,

And for her, for these things,'

Bleeee-bleeeeeeeeeeeeep! Bleeee-blee -

"Argh!"

Ron swore colourfully, slamming his hand down on the digital clock. He should have known anything Hermione gave him would be both utterly impossible and only interrupt his thinking at the most crucial of moments. He was convinced Hermione had put some sort of charm on it - a Sentimentality Safeguard, so that anytime he got too close to being foolishly nostalgic or sappy, it would shrill it's alarm to the world.

Saved by the bell. Bugger it. And he didn't have the heart to shatter the damn thing against a wall. So he did the next best thing: Ron snatched the parchment off his desk and viciously tore it to shreds.

"Not like she'll ever read it," he grumbled heatedly. "Not like I'd ever let her read it! She'd never think anything I wrote was good, and she'd never care. I could fill the whole of Gringotts with volumes of her virtues, and she'd only tell me they weren't alphabetized properly, or some such nonsense. Sod it! Never again!"

Then he sighed, leaning back in the chair, letting the bits of parchment float down around him like leaves settling in a dying autumn breeze.

"Oh, who am I kidding?"

Not himself. That was certain. He would write more poetry, and write it every single night for the rest of his life, he was sure. Ron was in love. He'd been in love for ages...longer than even he had recognized at first. While he was patently adept at hiding it behind jokes and witty banter now, he hadn't really been when he was younger. That, however, was all in the past, and clearly didn't matter. Now he was twenty years old, a confirmable bachelor with a "pad" and everything. Everything, except the Woman He Loved.

"Gah."

It would have been simpler if the Woman He Loved had been in love with Someone Else. More painful, perhaps - depending on who that Someone was. But there wasn't Anyone Else. Oh, no. There was only Her, doing Her everyday things, going on about life as though there wasn't this interminable beacon of Pain, Suffering, Pining and Loneliness that was Ron Weasley constantly near the boundaries of Her existence.

"Ron, you bloody great pillock...get a hold of yourself."

Ah, but how many times had words like these run through his head? How many times had he silently wondered how he had managed to develop into such an incurable romantic? How many times had he looked in the mirror at three o'clock in the morning, only to be completely done in by the reddish brown stubble that had miraculously appeared on his chin in the three or four days he'd forgotten to live normally?

Entirely too many times to count, really. And now he could add tonight to that infinite number, as well. He rubbed his prickly chin thoughtfully, having turned his chair to look out the window, which caught his Three AM Reflection.

Hmmm. I think I'd rather fancy having a bit of a beard...makes me look older, doesn't it? More distinguished. Great wizarding writers should have beards.

He chuckled at himself. He could hear Harry's voice in his head already, teasing him in a croaking imitation of Hermione's nagging tone.

"Ron, you've got dirt on your chin. Just there. Here, let me clean it off for you - "

And Harry would have cuffed Ron's bristly chin, laughing at the admittedly pitiful stubble. But Harry had been his friend, and Harry would have only been kidding, and Ron would have laughed, too. He could always endure Harry's jests. And maybe, eventually, the stubble would grow into something more substantial. He'd never actually allowed it to, before now. That would show Harry, wherever he was. Harry had never been able to grow so much as a whisker on his chin.

I have to start somewhere. And since all I can write at this point is trite poetry about unrequited love, the beard is likely going to be the more fruitful of current prospects.

Ron sighed again, this time with much less rancor and even a trace of wistfulness. Remembering Harry had always been difficult, but in the last year, it had gotten easier. He found he could concentrate on Harry's laughter, on their adventures together - especially on the smile he'd worn while he stood in front of the Mirror of Erised in their first year, looking at his family reflected in the mirror. Harry was with them somewhere now, standing in the front with his mother's hand on his shoulder and his father smiling down at him. He was happy. Ron simply knew it.

As he picked himself up out of the chair and drifted over to his bed, he wondered idly when he'd developed such an exceptional imagination and inspired vocabulary.

~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~

"Oh, drat, I'm late!" Hermione exclaimed, getting to her feet and starting an attempt to rush the lengthy process of collecting her books and notes.

"Late for what?" Raven asked. Raven Piptein was a slight little thing, all black hair and eyes and tiny scratchy voice - much like the bird she was named for. Fitting, as she was already an Animagus, who happened to transform into the very same bird.

"I'm supposed to be meeting a friend for lunch. I have some very good news to give him. But I was suppose to meet him fifteen minutes ago."

"Well then," the girl said. "You'd better get to Apparating, hadn't you? I'll tidy up here, and see you tomorrow morning to finish this business."

Hermione gave her look of unfettered gratitude. "Are you sure you don't mind? I am your professor. That's a bit much to ask of a student, even an honours student, getting all this put away."

She gestured around to the piles and piles of books and Fil-o-Parches littering the library table. But her best student only shook her head.

"I'll have it all De-Wormed, so we can get at it in the morning. No sense in giving the book worms extra work to do when we're only going to bother them to take it all back out again."

"They do that sort of thing?" Hermione was astounded - mostly because it seemed there was something about the Academy's library she didn't know.

"Oh, yes, all the time. At least they do for me - but then again, I nest here, so perhaps they're more comfortable with that, knowing I'll look after my own things."

She'd always thought it strange that the girl preferred her bird form to her human one. But for now, if it presented the advantage of keeping books De-Wormed and off the shelves for a time, as well as getting her to her lunch date less than appallingly late, she was willing to over look her discomfort.

"So, are you going to Apparate already, or just stand there and think?"

Hermione chuckled at her student's dry sarcasm. "Right then. Thank you, Raven. I'll see you tomorrow, bright and early."

"As the cock crows, Professor Granger," she responded, with a mischievous twinkle in her shining black eyes.

She shook her head, and *popped*.

"You're late," a voice accused from just behind her.

She turned from the sight of the brown leather settee to see Ron, wearing nothing but light blue pajama bottoms and an irritatingly cheerful grin. Hermione could feel her face warming, so she turned away in pretended modesty. After all, it wasn't as though she hadn't seen more of him than that before. But what there was to see now was distracting enough. Ron had been getting a bit of exercise, it seemed.

"And I see you're a paragon of punctuality, as well. At least I'm dressed."

"All to the worse, if you ask me," he teased. "And what's with these bashful airs? It's not as though you've never seen me in the buff. I'm only waiting for you to return the favour."

"Ron," she groaned, "honestly."

"Oh, alright, alright. I'll put something on. But you're missing out, I'm telling you. Not that you don't know it..."

His voice faded and then disappeared, telling Hermione that he'd gone into his room to change. It wasn't a moment later that he'd rematerialized, wearing a faded green knit sweater - Harry's sweater, Hermione realized with a pang - and a pair of dark gray trousers. Harry had grown to be almost as tall as Ron in their last two years of school. The sweater was the last one Mrs. Weasley had ever knitted for him. Hermione couldn't quite understand why Ron had wanted to keep it for himself, as it was still a bit small on him.

That was one of the reasons she'd given him the Melancholy Watch clock - She knew Ron had always been something of a sentimentalist, even if he'd never admitted it to anyone else. He'd been trapped in a roiling pit of guilt and self-pity after Harry's death. He'd blamed himself. She sometimes worried that his tremendous (and tremendously repressed) capacity for empathy might one day compel him towards some dire path...like trying to avenge Harry's death, for instance, or trying to redeem himself by purging himself of his failings. Harry had defeated Voldemort - but Voldemort had managed to take Harry with him. Ron hadn't ever forgiven himself for it. He'd always felt he should have been there.

But the enchanting smile Ron wore on his face now didn't mesh with Hermione's ominous thoughts. She had good news to give him, news that shouldn't be tinged with her possibly paranoid concerns. So she pushed all that out of her mind, and smiled back at him.

"So, then. What's all this about good news?" he asked her, flopping contentedly down into the armchair across from her.

Hermione blinked and narrowed her eyes, looking at his chin. "Ron. Ronald Weasley. Are you - you're not."

"What? Growing a beard? Yes, I am. I think it will serve to increase my chances with the lay-deees. You know, since I currently don't have any chances to speak of."

She was caught between amusement and dismay - amusement because Ron had always succeeded in making her laugh on the most absurd occasions, and dismay because...well, she wasn't entirely certain why she felt that way. She'd given up on that vein of thought a long time ago. There wasn't any reason it should resurface now. She knew he wasn't being serious. He hardly ever was.

"Well. Yes, I can see where being a baby faced, carrot topped giant of a man would be difficult on the love life. Honesty, Ron," she giggled, blushing at her daring, "you have big feet. I really don't think you have anything to worry about."

It took a moment, but when he sorted out what she meant, it was Ron's turn to blush. Hermione kept talking before the moment became...awkward.

"Your problem isn't that you don't have a beard. It's that you don't come out of your flat. You have to get out of the house to meet girls. Girls - other than me, that is - generally don't just arrive on your doorstep. So, seeing as I'm your friend and interested in your happiness, I'm taking you out. Now."

She stood up, grabbing Ron by the arm before he could argue, hefting him out of the chair and fairly dragging him out the door.

~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~

"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when you said 'lunch'," Ron confessed, finding himself on a brightly coloured blanket in the middle of London's Hyde Park. After they'd picked up the picnic basket she'd stashed for the occasion, Hermione had picked a spot near a pond where people were running, feeding pigeons, or having a kip in the bright spring sun. Noticeably, there were girls everywhere, and they had a perfect view.

"What do you mean? There's food," Hermione indicated the basket filled with sandwiches, a large packet of crisps, cookies and two thermoses of pumpkin juice, "there're plates, cups, forks, knives, and your mouth. All the things you need to have a perfectly acceptable lunch."

"And napkins. Let's not forget the napkins. I do have to keep all those little bits of corned beef out of my new beard."

"Quite right," she smiled. "We can't forget the napkins. Though I didn't pack any corned beef as I thought you hated it, and it isn't a beard yet, so you needn't fret about that either."

"Well, what is it, then?"

"It's...er..."

Ron raised his eyebrows at her, waiting. But she didn't really want to say what she was thinking. She knew if she told him what she thought - that it looked as though he'd spread marmalade on his chin and couldn't get it off now that it was dry - it would hurt his feelings. So she said something else.

"It's stubble. You know, a five o'clock shadow. Not quite a beard yet."

He looked dissatisfied. "You don't like it."

"No, I do!" she said - and blanched. She'd responded a shade too quickly. "I mean, you know - in a 'you're-my-best-friend-and-I'll-support-you-in-whatever-you-what-to-do-to-your-chin' sort of way."

Ron scowled. "Which is to say that you don't like it."

Hermione sighed. "No, Ron, I don't. But that's because I'm not used to it. You know me. I like things fixed, orderly and contained. Normal. I'll get used to it."

It was a quaint bit of irony for her to be making a promise she knew already she could keep. Well, she could keep it if he didn't actually grow a full beard. She had the feeling he'd in fact look like the business end of a strangely coloured mop if he grew a beard. The scruffy stubble, however...that, she could get used to. She could almost think of it as rugged - and that image told her it was also time to get off the subject.

"And as for being here as opposed to your flat or my house, or even some little caf in Diagon Alley...well, you're not going to have any sort of opportunity for girl spotting if you're in any of those places, really. At least here, you're getting some fresh air, and we can suss out what type of girl you're after and work from there."

"I'd rather hear about this good news. You still haven't told me anything about that."

"Oh! My goodness, I almost forgot. Yes. Well, about three weeks ago I heard an advertisement on the WWN for a contest that Wizard's Wanderlust was holding for an all expenses paid, weeklong holiday on the new Ensorcelled Orient-Express. The trick was that all entries had to be submitted not for yourself, but for a friend that you though might want to go. And since, you know, you've been having trouble with your writing and all, I thought the trip might be the perfect opportunity for you to find some inspiration, you know, and have a good long break from things - "

She faltered. Now that she was saying it to him, Hermione realized how much it made things sound as though she though Ron was loosing his mind and needed to be sent away for a little 'quite time'. She was suddenly quite a bit less enthusiastic than she'd been a moment before.

"...So you could get your mind back onto your writing, you know. And, well, I won. You won, actually."

Ron looked at her blankly.

"You'll be having a whole week's holiday aboard the train, which travels across Europe and into Istanbul - you'll start in Paris, I think - all you're meals and everything are paid for, except things like souvenirs, you'll have to pay for those on your own - "

"Hermione," Ron interrupted as she was finally warming back up to her subject, "are you serious?"

She nodded. "Of course I'm serious. All the details will come by owl tomorrow, I think. At least by Friday, because you're supposed to be leaving in a week's time - "

"Hermione," Ron interrupted again, this time more forcefully. She fell silent.

"Let me see if I can get this straight," he mused. "You heard an advertisement for a holiday drawing. You entered, meaning that you entered me for this holiday, though you didn't tell me about it, because you thought I needed a break. And now you've won, meaning I've won, and I'm supposed to be leaving England to go to Istanbul for a week?"

"Well, you won't be in Istanbul for an entire week, no. But that is basically it."

He scratched his head in a way that reminded Hermione of all the times she'd seen him sitting in front of his Divination homework trying to think up some new fangled prediction for his death that actually topped the last, and failing miserably. Consequently, he did not look pleased.

"So I'm supposed to simply drop everything and go legging it off to Paris to spend a week on a train that goes to Turkey?"

"Well when you put it like that," Hermione began, feeling a familiar annoyance rising.

"You thought I'd be pleased, didn't you." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes, I thought you'd be pleased! I was only thinking of you! You're always so stressed out, always saying how difficult it is to write when there's all this distraction. And you don't have anything to drop, Ron - you have the grant from the Dante Foundation to write, you don't have a job otherwise - there's nothing holding you here!"

He looked at her, and Hermione felt herself flush uncomfortably.

"Yeah. I suppose you're right. There isn't anything holding me here, is there?"

The remainder of their lunch passed in relative silence. Hermoine made a few token attempts at conversation, but Ron's responses were so brusque that she gave up. It wasn't until they were finished and she'd started packing up the picnic that Ron spoke again.

"When is this owl delivering the information?"

"Tomorrow or the next day," she responded quietly.

"Right...well, let me know when it gets to you, then. Or is it coming to me?"

Hermione shrugged. "I don't know. I expect it will come to me, as I did the actual entering."

He nodded, and a moment later, he sighed. Hermione looked at him curiously.

"Are you still angry with me?" she hazarded.

It took a moment for him to answer. "I don't know. Though I think exasperated would be a better word."

Hermione again attempted to squelch her own rising annoyance. Now he was going to tell her that he knew she'd meant well -

"I know you meant well," he echoed, practically reading her mind, "but I wish you'd told me about it."

"I wanted it to be a surprise."

"Right. Well, you got that much sorted, at least."

She gritted her teeth, stuffing the last remains of the picnic into her basket with a little more vigor than necessary.

Well, she thought to herself, that's the last time I try and do something nice for you.

~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~