In the Firelight

Hermione Granger arched her back and stretched her arms before leaning back over her book. Two seconds later, she huffed in annoyance as her hair swung forwards in front of her eyes. Tucking it back behind her ears, she reached for a quill and jotted down some notes from the book she was reading.

Ron was doodling at the other end of the table where Hermione was sitting. His quill was moving steadily in squiggling lines across the parchment, but he hadn't looked at the pattern for some time. He smiled as Hermione reached for a book and her hair got in the way again. He contemplated commenting on the similarities between her hair and Crookshanks, but decided it was safer not to. At this time of year, disturbing Hermione's work was liable to result in an explosion of some sort. Professor McGonagall had already had to talk to her about some first year girls who Hermione had reduced to tears for falling rather than tiptoeing into the Gryffindor Common Room.

Hermione looked up and Ron looked swiftly back his parchment. His small squiggle had somehow scrawled itself right across his piece of parchment. Luckily, he had not yet started his essay on Centaur Riots in Southern Scotland but he had still managed to waste a good five inches of parchment.

He glanced across at Hermione who was now feverishly turning the pages of a second book before dropping it back on the table and snatching up a third. She probably knew a million charms for cleaning ink from parchment but he didn't dare ask her. He didn't quite have the courage to try anything himself, either, he'd probably set fire to the table and then Hermione would be furious with him anyway. Much safer to tear that bit off, maybe Hermione would like it as a bookmark.

Leaning back in his chair he watched Hermione finally lose patience with her hair and tie it back with a spare bit of ribbon that she normally used to tie parchment rolls. Her eyes hardly left the page.

She was so unconsciously beautiful when she was working. Ron had lost count of the number of nights he had watched her like this but he just couldn't keep his eyes off her. Each night the Common Room emptied around them, Harry had gone to bed an hour ago, ready for an early Quidditch practice. Now the two of them were alone, peacefully for once.

Months of swallowed feelings were welling up in his throat. How could he even begin to explain? It wasn't just the way she looked when she was working, it was how she looked when she was yelling at him too, or when she was trying to persuade Harry that everything was going to be ok, or when she had fallen asleep in front of the fire, exhausted from working too hard.

She was always working too hard. Ron wanted to tell her that she should stop working. That she already knew enough to get full marks in everything. That all she needed to do now was smile at him and he would sit in an armchair and she could curl up in it with him and forget about everything but the two of them. That they could be safe together.

"Ron?"
She was looking at him; Ron's mind was still in the armchair, with her nestled against his neck, soft and warm.

"Ron?"

But Hermione was not in his arms; she was looking at him, half quizzical, half exasperated, from the other end of the table. A stray strand of her hair was glinting in the light of the dying fire. He blinked hard and focused; "What?"

"You should go to bed," she was smiling fondly at him now. "Harry will probably wake you on his way out in the morning, and you don't seem to be managing anything constructive now."

She was right, of course she was right. But he didn't want to leave her.

"What about you?"

"I'm just going to finish this chapter. Nobody in my dormitory plays Quidditch, thankfully."

She'd thought of him. That must mean something. Most people she ignored unless they'd given her a reason to bite their heads off. She'd noticed him. She cared about him getting enough sleep.

She was still looking at him.

"Ok," he gathered his parchment and quill and the two books he'd been pretending to read before he started doodling.

Hermione was reading again, he had to pass her on his way to the stairs. The hand nearest her was free, he knew that he didn't want to leave, he wanted to be in the armchair, but he didn't know how to get there.

The firelight and the loose strand of hair were winking at him. The hair was going to get in her eyes again. He reached out to tuck it back behind her ear, out of the way.

Her hand caught his, snapping out of nowhere, her eyes still on her book, finishing the paragraph before she looked up. Her voice was telling him, firmly to leave her hair alone but all Ron cared about was her hand in his.

She looked up and the familiar annoyance was back in her eyes, but it softened a little as she met his gaze. They looked at each other and then Ron laughed uneasily and drew his hand back.

"Night, Hermione."

"Night," and she went back to her reading.

Ron moved towards the stairs, resisting the urge to check that his free hand was completely clean. At the foot of the stairs, he looked back at Hermione, deep in her book, seemingly oblivious of him already. Grinning to himself he made his way up the stairs and into his dormitory, knowing full well that she would still be there when he came down next morning, fast asleep in a Common Room full of quiet Gryffindors, because nobody else would have the courage to wake her up.