A/N: Happy birthday to the wonderful ray of sunshine known as CallieSkye! Hope you have a lovely day my friend!

31st May 1997, 1:13 am

There was just so much to think about, and no space in which to actually think about any of it. The walls of her dormitory seemed to be shifting closer to her, night after restless night, and the tension between her and her two dormmates that had been slowly building since the fall had reached its peak, and was now heavy enough to be suffocating. No longer could she lie in her bed, her wand at the ready beneath her pillow, and remain inert in the face of it all. In the face of Harry serving detention after detention because he'd nearly - well, there was no use mincing words - killed Draco Malfoy. Not when they still didn't know who had cursed Katie Bell, or poisoned Ron. Not when Voldemort and his Horcruxes loomed in the background of everything they did.

Hermione shoved back the blankets and swung her legs over the side of the bed. In the late spring heat, she found it unbearable to wear anything more than a pair of shorts and a vest to bed, but she tossed on a jumper and slid her feet into a pair of slippers as she made her way to the door. Just as she was leaving, she snagged her prefect badge from her bedside table and pinned it on.

Professor McGonagall had made it quite plain, in light of the number of students whose lives had been endangered that year, that curfew would be strictly enforced for all students. There was no need, she believed, for anyone to be roaming the halls past nine at night. And for the most part, Hermione agreed. But she also had a tendency to only follow rules when it suited her, and when she so desperately needed air, space, a change in scenery, she was perfectly happy to use her prefect status to get it.

Her slippers - fluffy, pink, with cat ears on them, a Christmas gift from a distant aunt - made no sound against the solid stone floors of the castle. Hermione wasn't sure where she was heading, but she knew movement felt better than stillness. Even to have her blood flowing through her veins felt like progress, and so she walked to the farthest corner of the castle, to a narrow, tightly-winding staircase. It was the only place in the castle that she could seek solitude and peace. Practically speaking, Argus Filch would never climb all of these stairs in his search for mischief-makers, but more than that, it was the closest she could come to an escape without actually leaving the castle bounds.

Only, once she finally reached the top of the Astronomy Tower, the humid night air blowing her hair into her face, she found she wasn't alone. A lone figure stood silhouetted in moonlight, leaning against the stone rampart at the edge of the tower. There was no mistaking him, not for her: she sometimes thought she knew him better than anyone else. Everything about him was so gut-wrenchingly familiar, from the slope of his lean shoulders and the slight tilt of his head, down to the way he always bounced his left knee when he was anxious, which he was doing now.

Other times, of course, he was a complete mystery to her.

Were it anyone else, she'd have turned and left. She'd have been furious that they'd stolen her moment of solitude before she had even had it. But with Ron - and she couldn't explain it, try as she might - she was drawn to him, like some part of her had known he was up here all along.

"Hi," she ventured, her voice cautious and soft.

Ron jumped like he'd been hit with an electric shock. He spun in place, right hand reaching for his wand, then nearly doubled over in relief at the sight of her.

"Don't do that," he gasped, "you scared the hell out of me."

"I'm sorry," said Hermione, walking up to join him by the low stone wall. "What are you doing up here?"

"What are you doing up here?" he countered, though now with that usual crooked grin gracing his features.

"I asked you first."

The smile fell slowly from his face, and he turned and peered over the wall, to the slowly ebbing waves of the Black Lake in the distance.

"Just, y'know… fancied a walk," he said, not quite looking at her. "Your turn now."

Well. If he wasn't going to be honest, she would be. She'd promised herself that much, weeks ago in the hospital wing, when she'd been appealing to all the deities she could think of for him to be okay. That she'd do anything, that she wouldn't hide things from him anymore, that she'd be honest and open and just say what she meant, if only she could keep from losing him altogether.

But telling him what was on her mind wasn't quite as easy as it seemed.

"Maybe I also fancied a walk," she said, giving him what she hoped was a playfully teasing sort of look.

"Mmhmm." He regarded her skeptically. "Fine. I'm just…" His chest rose and fell as he heaved a sigh. "I'm worried about tomorrow."

"The match?"

"We have to win by so much," he stated, anxiety overflowing in his voice. "Three hundred points, it just - it's never gonna happen, and if they even score one goal, it's gonna be all my fault."

"There's seven people on the team," said Hermione rationally, even though she knew common sense never prevailed when it came to her friends and their Quidditch team. "And Harry's the Captain, no one's going to blame you-"

"Yeah, but he won't even be there, and - and it's so easy to blame the Keeper." He scrubbed a hand through his already-messy hair, blue eyes shining bright in the glow of the moon. "It's probably a stupid thing to worry about, innit?"

"No," said Hermione, surprising herself with how much she meant it. "It's important to you-"

"But it's not actually important, right?" he said with a grimace. "It's just Quidditch."

Hermione rested her elbows on the block of stone before her, mimicking Ron's position. "Maybe Ginny was right the other day," she said thoughtfully, "and I don't have any business pretending I know anything about Quidditch. But I know how much it means to you, and to everyone else."

"Yeah, but with everything else going on, I mean there's the whole-" he dropped his voice, though there wasn't another soul in sight- "the whole Horcrux thing-"

"I know," said Hermione, "but it's okay to care about this too."

"Yeah," he said, unconvinced. "Maybe. Can't help it, anyway."

He clasped his hands loosely together, forearms resting on the rampart, and fixed his eyes on the grassy knoll below. It was odd, seeing him so pensive, almost stoic; Ron tended to wear his heart on his sleeve, and he was almost never quiet. And when he was, in those rare times when he retreated inward, Hermione just wished she could unravel him, peel away the layers that he showed to everyone else, and see a side of him that was just hers.

She was so tired of guessing, tired of wondering. Tired of parsing out the hidden meaning - or deciding if there even was one - to overlong gazes, to fingertips brushing, to words he had spoken months ago, that she hadn't noticed at the time, that now wouldn't stop rattling around in her head. She just wanted to know, once and for all

Tentatively, she reached out a hand and placed it on his forearm, letting her fingertips graze over the impossibly smooth skin on the inside of his wrist. He turned his head toward her, eyes searching hers.

"It's okay to want something good," she added softly, convincing herself as much as him. "Even though everything seems terrible… we can still have good things."

"Like Quidditch?"

His words, his hopeful voice, squeezed around her heart. "Like Quidditch," she conceded.

"Sometimes I think people just expect me to fail," he told her. "And I don't want to fail. I don't want to mess this up."

"Those people don't see you." Her voice was shaking under the weight of her words. "Not like I do."

Despite the warmth of the air around them, he was trembling, though almost imperceptibly. "How… how do you see me?"

It was a now or never sort of thing, really. The danger that lurked outside of Hogwarts was beyond anything they had ever experienced, and the castle walls couldn't protect them forever. And she had almost lost him once; she couldn't face the possibility of losing him again without knowing that she had at least tried.

"You still don't know?"

Their hands tangled together, though she wasn't sure he was aware of it, intent upon her as he was.

"I-" He swallowed. "Y'know - sometimes, maybe. But I don't ever let myself think it. I can't, 'cause - 'cause if I'm wrong, then-"

"You're not wrong."

Her words hung, irrevocable, in the air between them. She stopped breathing, stopped thinking, thought even her heart stopped for a second, as she waited.

"Right." He released a shaky breath through a half-formed smile. "Right. So…"

"So."

A powerful gust of wind swept over them, and then it all seemed to happen in slow motion: Ron dropped her hand, brushed her wild hair out of her eyes, and brought his lips to hers.

She had been kissed, exactly once before, by a very nice young man who didn't really know her at all, and it had been decidedly… fine. Not disgusting, not thrilling, just fine. But this - this stole the air from her lungs and turned her limbs into liquid. This was everything she had hoped for, everything she had waited for, and Merlin, was it ever worth the wait.

His fingers slipped into her hair, the pad of his thumb just barely skimming over her cheekbone, and a low hum rumbled out of his throat and against her lips. She stood up on her toes to bring herself closer to him, gripping his shoulders in her eager hands, her heart pounding behind her ribs. His mouth was careful and warm against hers, as though she was the most precious thing he had ever beheld.

She broke off to catch her breath, and Ron's forehead fell against hers. Their eyes locked and she prayed for time to stop, that they could exist in this moment forever. The more aware she became of the world around them - the rustling leaves, the splashing of the giant squid in the lake - the more she longed to push it all away. There was so much in their lives that could slip away in an instant, so much that was unknown. But she knew she wanted Ron, and she had him now, tipping his face toward hers to catch her lips lightly once more.

"Can I ask you something?" he whispered, his hand rubbing along the length of her upper arm.

"Of course."

He smiled broadly at her; she thought she had never seen a smile take over his face like that. "Why do you have your prefect badge on?"

As she swatted his chest, he burst out laughing and bent to kiss her again.

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