Author's Notes:
Today, after lifting some heavy objects for a few hours, referencing my arm muscles as "guns" and collecting the testosterone than seeps from my pores for later ingestion, I decided to write some fluff, because as you all know, the most masculine thing in the world is writing fluffy Harry Potter fanfiction.

This was originally going to be femmeslash (I won't tell you the pairing; you might be able to figure it out) but I changed my mind almost immediately because it worked so much better with a het pairing. This also turned out a bit longer than expected, but I'm happy with the final outcome.

On with the show...

"Professor, could I speak to you about the essay you assigned?" Hermione queried with a slight hint of timidness; even after five years, Professor McGonagall had an intimidating presence.

"Of course, Miss Granger."

"I've been thinking about it some, and I think that I could really explain my ideas better if I knew some of the molecular theory of Transfiguration. However, I've looked in the library, even the restricted section, and I haven't found anything. Would you happen to know of any books that could be useful?"

"Yes, Miss Granger, there is a volume that covers that topic in some depth, but it's located in the Ravenclaw common room, so I would need to get permission from Professor Flitwick," Professor McGonagall said, peering at Hermione over the tops of her spectacles.

"Could you, Professor? I'm really interested in the topic."

"I don't doubt your sincerity, Miss Granger. I will talk with Filius and speak to you tomorrow."

"Thank you, professor!" Hermione said happily before walking out of the professor's office and towards her next class, Ancient Runes. On the way she wondered eagerly what the Ravenclaw common room looked like, and why Gryffindor didn't have any books other than used Quidditch Weekly's.

***

"Harry, can I borrow your map for the afternoon?"

Harry looked up from his barely-started Potions essay looking surprised. "Who are you and what have you done with Hermione?"

"Oh, come off it, I'm not going to be breaking any rules. I need to go to the Ravenclaw common room to pick up a book, but apparently nobody thought to tell me where it was or how to get there."

Harry faked a disappointed look. "Darn, I thought I was starting to make an impression. Sure, you can use it. I'll go up and grab it. Just make sure you don't let anybody see it."

"Of course I won't, that map is almost certainly breaking one rule or another, and you know how I feel about breaking rules when I can help it," she responded with a smile.

***

Well, here she was, standing in front of an eagle-shaped door knocker, right where the Marauder's map said the Ravenclaw common room should be. Should she knock herself or wait until a Ravenclaw came along to let her in?

After a few moments spent in internal deliberation, Hermione decided to try the knocker. Knowing that this was the entrance to Ravenclaw's common room, there was probably some sort of intelligence-related task ahead, but how difficult could that be?

Hermione reached up and knocked. The resulting noise echoed loudly, but this wasn't what caused Hermione to gasp; the mouth of the eagle opened and a sing-songy voice issued from within. "Which came first, the Phoenix or the Flame?" Getting over her shock, Hermione smiled. She should have reckoned that the task wouldn't be strictly knowledge-related. She had been expecting to have to rattle off some date from History of Magic.

"I would say the Flame, because the Phoenix is created by the Flame but the Flame is not dependent on the Phoenix," Hermione said confidently.

"Nicely deduced," said the knocker as the door swung open.

The first thing that Hermione noticed was the sheer massiveness of the Ravenclaw common room. The ceiling was three stories high and there where high, arched windows going around the circumference of the circular room. The second thing she noticed was that Anthony Goldstein was heading towards her.

Anthony was one of the boys that Lavender and Parvati liked to giggle over in the dorm while Hermione was attempting to sleep. She could see why; he was quite muscular from Quidditch and had an easy smile. Of course, she wasn't shallow enough to dwell on things like that. He was also widely known as one of the smartest students in the school, and this fact, combined with all of his other positive traits, had led Hermione to develop a slight crush on him. Nothing major, mind you, just a little infatuation. She'd had a million of them. Nevertheless, when he began to speak to her, she felt a small flutter in her stomach.

"Flitwick told me to expect you. There's no way you would ever find a book in our library without assistance, so that's my job, I guess. Oh yeah, and you're the only non-Ravenclaw in about 600 years to see it, but try not to feel too special."

Hermione tried to formulate a response but was distracted by Anthony's glasses and how good he managed to look with them. She shook her head slightly and tried again. "If I had known you guys had a library up here, I might have tried to arrange a visit earlier," she said, smiling

Hermione was relieved when Anthony laughed. "We try not to let anybody know about it; they would think we're bigger dorks than they already do. Come on, I'll take you there."

The two of them walked to the other side of the common room, where Anthony stopped in front of a bookcase which held a meager amount of ratty books.

"This can't be it?" Hermione asked incredulously. "In my mind it was much more...grand."

"Oh no, this is just the entrance," Anthony replied with another laugh. "This is just a facade, you know, in case somebody from another house were to walk in unexpectedly. They wouldn't suspect a thing. Of course, most of them wouldn't make it past the question, but we don't like taking chances," he continued, browsing the shelves with his finger until he found the book he was looking for. Hermione craned to see the title but Anthony turned away from her. "Can't let you see that, Hermione. We can't have you coming into our secret library whenever you'd like, that would ruin the system." He began to riffle through the pages.

"Fine, I'll look away," Hermione sighed, turning to observe the common room some more. There was a lot of comfy-looking furniture, similar to the Gryffindor common room, but many more tables for doing homework at. There were a few dozen students lazing around at the moment, which surprised Hermione, who had been expecting lots of silence and diligent study.

"Everybody seems to think we're real workhorses in Ravenclaw," Anthony said, anticipating the question that was forming on her lips. "That's true for a lot of us, but mostly we like to procrastinate just as much as normal students. Anyway, we can head in now."

Hermione turned around and saw that a door had appeared adjacent to the bookcase. Even after six years in the magical community, she was still surprised by this feat of magic.

"Ladies first," Anthony said, holding out his arm. Hermione's cheeks flushed at his chivalry as she approached the door. She grasped the handle and nearly threw open the door in anticipation. She had been expecting another room as extravagant as the common room itself, filled with shelves and shelves of books and no Madam Pince.

Instead, she was greeted with stairs, spiraling downward. "Ravenclaw sure has a lot of towers," she said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"The one you're looking at is actually the same as the tower for the girl's dorms, but we're not here for an architectural lesson."

Hermione giggled in a subconscious effort to be flirty. "I'm appreciative of pretty much any lesson," she said, stepping past the threshold and beginning her descent. A few seconds later she realized what she had just said, and how it could be misconstrued, and blushed deeply. Anthony, in the shadowy stairway, didn't seem to notice anything amiss, and if he had noticed Hermione's unintentional double entendre, he didn't say anything.

They had only been walking for half a minute before they reached another door. Hermione hesitated in front of the door, feeling like she needed to be granted permission. "Go ahead, open it," Anthony coaxed from behind her.

"Alright, but I'm not getting my hopes up. It's probably more stairs," she responded calmly, although inside she was bursting with excitement.

Hermione opened the door and was greeted with a room that was, from what she could tell, about the size of the Gryffindor common room. It featured the same shelves as the standard Hogwarts library, but aside from these, was completely absent of furniture. The color scheme was blue and purple just like the common room, and a bank of windows along the curved wall to her left let in a lot of natural light.

This isn't what caught Hermione's attention, however. Predictably, the books were the main attraction for her. Some of the tomes looked immeasurably old and all of them undoubtedly held a wealth of knowledge, but from this distance she couldn't read their spines. Again, she hesitated to approach the stacks, feeling like the privilege should be granted first.

"What's the book you were looking for?" Anthony asked.

"Oh, I've got it written down somewhere," Hermione responded, unslinging her bag and rummaging through its contents. As she searched, she hoped fervently that she hadn't inadvertently left anything embarrassing in her bag for Anthony to see. Fifteen seconds later, the elusive scrap of parchment had yet to be found "It's in here somewhere!" she said through gritted teeth.

Anthony watched with amusement as she became increasingly frustrated. "I always pictured you as more organized."

"I usually am, but anything involving little pieces of paper is never going to be organized."

"Why not just accio it?"

Hermione wanted to slap herself on the forehead. The presence of this extremely handsome boy was unnerving her. "I like doing things the Muggle way. Force of habit, I suppose." she responded, uttering a small forced laugh. "Accio parchment!"

Immediately after incanting the spell, Hermione worried that all the parchment in her bag would zoom out due to her lack of focus, but thankfully, only the small scrap containing the title of the book flew into her hand. "Physics 101 With Footnotes By Adam Atomica," she read.

"I tried reading that one last year. It was dull and hard to understand, so I kinda gave up after the first few chapters. Come on, I'll show you where it is."

The two of them walked past several aisles before Anthony turned into one of them. He walked down a quarter of the way, stopped, and pointed up. "It's up there. I'll grab the ladder, you don't want to summon these books if you can help it; they're too fragile." As Anthony disappeared down another aisle to retrieve the ladder, Hermione perused some of the titles of the books that were at eye level. The section they were in seemed to be mostly Muggle books with additions made by various wizards and witches, on topics that didn't seem like they would ever come up in the course of normal study at Hogwarts. They were interesting, but she wanted to see some of the antiques. She vowed to asked Anthony for permission to browse once they retrieved the book she was looking for.

Anthony soon returned with the ladder, carrying it effortlessly under one arm.

"Why not just accio it?" Hermione asked cheekily, although she knew full well that trying to summon a large object like a ladder in a place like this would wreak massive havoc.

"Ha ha, you're a funny one," Anthony replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes with a grin. He leaned the bulky wooden ladder against the shelf and motioned for Hermione to climb up. As she did so, Hermione was extremely glad that she had decided to change out of her regulation-uniform skirt. Still, she could see out of the corner of her eye that Anthony was eyeing her rear a bit more than was appropriate.

"Enjoying the view?" she asked, amazed at her own forwardness. This was the first time she could recall putting intentional effort into flirting.

She was pleased to see that she had managed to embarrass Anthony, who pushed his glasses up on his nose and turned red without saying anything. After a few more seconds of searching, she found the book she was looking for and began to descend the ladder. She had only gone down a few steps when her foot missed the rung it was aiming for. Since she had a death-grip on the ladder with her free hand, she thought everything was going to be fine, until the book slipped out from under her arm in the commotion. Stupidly, she grabbed for it with her free hand while trying to grab the ladder with the newly-freed hand, which caused her to lose her footing completely and begin falling.

One second and five vertical feet later, Hermione lay on the ground in an ungraceful heap. She could hear Anthony chuckling from somewhere. "I caught the book, at least," he said.

Hermione picked herself up gingerly and then walked over to where Anthony was laughing at his joke. She stood directly in front of him, and looking him in the eye, said, "You're a twit." It wasn't the catty remark she had been hoping to come up with, but it got the point across.

"You'll think I'm even more of a twit after I do this," he said, and kissed her full on the lips.

Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, it was over. Anthony was smiling, but it was a slightly timid smile, like he was waiting for her to explode at him. If it had been any other guy, that's probably what she would have done. But since this was Anthony Goldstein, who was handsome, charming, and intelligent, she kissed him back.

This one was much more satisfactory. After a few seconds, Anthony dropped the now-forgotten book on the ground and pulled her closer to him.

Thirty seconds later, Hermione broke off the kiss. She knew she was grinning like a fool but couldn't help it. "I definitely did not foresee this happening."

"I kinda did," Anthony confessed. He nudged the book with his toe. "I didn't actually try to read it, you know. I just said that to impress you," he said sheepishly.

"Now that I think about it, the chances of you having randomly chosen the same book I was looking for were pretty remote," Hermione laughed. Anthony laughed along with her. "Anyway, you don't need to try to impress me, you've already succeeded in that endeavor."

"I'm flattered. Now enough chatting and more snogging."

"Sounds good to me."

***

Hermione walked back towards the Gryffindor common room. As she approached the portrait of the Fat Lady, she realized she had forgotten her book back at Ravenclaw tower. This didn't bother her much, however; she'd picked up something much better in the Ravenclaw library.

Author's Note:
Wasn't that terrible? I need to wash my hands after writing that. While I do that, you can leave a review or something.