Hermione's loins roil as she stumbles towards the Gryffindor common room too many steps at a time, undaunted by the reams of parchment shed in her effusive haste—homework assignments and notes, wasted hours of intense color-coding--billowing behind her. She hopes no one notices the scarlet winding up her neck; stretching wide across her face or the sloppy, almost absentminded state of her robes.

Hermione glances over her shoulder and her knees nearly buckle because Ginny is lazily trailing behind her, hand errantly scraping across the stone wall as she goes, lips swollen and eyes present, but not. For a second, a sliver of one, Hermione wonders if her lips are swollen, too, if some deft, conscientious student, a Ravenclaw perhaps, would make the tenuous connection and… and then what? She doesn't know, doesn't care to find out because Ginny is everything the Weasley boys aren't, precious and refined and delicate, and they have spent their whole lives—or rather, Ginny's—protecting their sister from prospective impurities, the bulk of which involve notions of romantic entanglements with fast-moving boys.

Hermione's stomach plummets when she nears the fireplace, sees red hair peeking over the top of an overstuffed chair. She volleys a curse towards the ceiling and tries to ease into the shadows, but Ron turns that fat, opportune head of his and beckons her over with a dopey lopsided smile. "'Mione," he says, "Can I borrow your Divination notes? I spilled spiked pumpkin juice all over mine."

"Sure," and then, dumbly, mutely, she fingers through the remaining mess of parchment pinned between her forearm and midsection.

Ron regards her peculiarly, cants his head and carefully strokes his chin where a sparse handful of red curlicues have grown in gnarled, "Are you alright? You're paler than a Veela's arse!"

"I'm fine," she says, voice whinnying midway. She sees a million microexpressions cascade over Ron's face because he doesn't believe her and she can't help but wonder--as she gives Ron a thin glare that forces his wagging lips shut--if the boy's face will ever explode from sheer over-excitability.

Where is that last bloody page? If Hermione's calculations are correct, and they usually are, Ginny will be arriving soon and she doesn't want to be in plain sight when the girl makes her inevitable entrance. "I'm sorry, Ron, you'll have to make due with—," but Hermione can't finish what she's saying because Ginny is in the room and although she can't see the redhead, she can feel her. By way of tingles scaling up her spine, coiling across her arms, hands, fingers, bending down legs, feet, toes and back up, only to settle inside her stomach--no, Hermione thinks, lip wedged painfully between her teeth, lower.

Ginny sidles past her, slides thin fingers down her arm as she sits, precariously balanced, on Ron's armrest. "You dropped this," she says easily, waving a single leaf of parchment.

Hermione nods, identifies the document as the missing Divination note page and stiffly shoves the bundle against Ron's chest. He oomphs and jumps to his feet, wriggling with an unrestrained energy that reminds Hermione of puppies. "Brilliant! What's this hot pink—oh, I see what you've done, you sly dog, footnotes and everything! You're a gem, Hermione," he says, "I'm going to run these down to the library, see if I can't find someone to copy them for me and save my hands a few bunions. They're fragile, you know, far more unpracticed than the likes of your own. In all fairness, I reckon you were born with a quill in your hand, isn't that right, Gin?"

Ginny smiles, agrees. She winks at Hermione when Ron's not looking and the older girl's knees give an unnerving wobble.

When heavy moments roll by and Ron finally shoves his gangling arms through a maroon sweatshirt and disappears, Hermione doesn't barge into the dormitory and throw herself down all the while bemoaning her existence like she'd expected. No, Hermione is angry, and the way Ginny gazes up at her through long red lashes, like Hermione is some sort of canvass, opening her up as if Ginny herself is some sort of magnificent surgeon, only serves as tinder. She clenches her jaw, straightens her spine stiff and clicks her heels together, but whatever impassioned plea that was nipping at her brain, her nerve-endings, fizzles up and dies when Ginny reaches out a hand, places her palm against Hermione's hip like it belongs there.

Hermione's eyes shutter. She lets the younger girl curl her fingers around her robe and tug, but Hermione ignores the coaxing, doesn't allow her legs to edge forward mostly because muscle and tissue and bone have given way to gelatin, but partly because she's still furious. "Why are you doing this to me?" she says as if this—not countless tussles with murderous wizards or creatures so menacing she's sure they were assembled in Hell, soldered together by Satan's very trident--is the single most insufferable trial she's ever endured.

Hermione doesn't expect Ginny to laugh, but that's what the redhead does, shakes her shiny hair behind her dainty shoulders and laughs, but it's gone almost as soon as it's registered, replaced by a stoicness that quite frankly worries the older girl. "It's always why with you," Ginny says, "Why, why, why..."

And for a while Hermione is hurt because she can't tell if Ginny is making fun of her, but it's fleeting and somewhere between those two thoughts Ginny manages to stand, drive her towards a wall as she advances upon Hermione with languid, predatory strides. "Sometimes," Ginny says and her voice drops just enough to sound sexy if a little derisive, "there is no definitive answer, Hermione."

The older girl is going to hyperventilate, she's sure of it. There's only a foot separating her back from the wall now and Ginny is stepping closer, closer until Hermione's tailbone is digging against the hard surface. The impact pushes a strangled gasp from her lungs and Hermione knows that she is breathing harder, faster than she should, but she can't help it. Ginny takes one final step, stands in the hollow of Hermione's legs, stomach to quivering stomach, chest to panting chest and for a moment, they're staring eye to eye and Hermione's licking her lips because they're dry and Ginny's gaze follows the wet, pink tongue tip as it swabs back and forth and she says, voice soft and husky, "Sometimes the answer to why is just because."

Hermione thinks, knows, that Ginny is going to kiss her again like she'd done in the lavatory a half hour before, but this time, Hermione thinks, this time she might just letGinny do it. Her eyes feel heavy and her chest is heaving and her head is dizzy and light--

"A first-year said he'd do it for three packets of chocolate frogs, can you believe that? Rip-off is what that is—Hermione? What are you doing over there?"

Ron! Hermione's eyes snap open. She thinks she's dead. She thinks Ron is going to finagle a couple Defense Against the Dark Arts maneuvers out of his scruffy wand—whiz! zap! boom!--at least one good one, and she's going to die, fall over rigid, all because of Ginny Weasley.

"Hermione?" Ron repeats, but he's looming over her now, peering into her face with concern, snapping his thick, teeth-ravaged fingers near her ears.

She looks around, sees Ginny squatting near the ground, scooping up parchment, and she nearly laughs when she realizes her arms are empty and that it's her parchment the redhead is picking up. She turns her head towards Ron, smiles weakly because it's all her jellied body can do. "I'm alright," she says when he cups her shoulder and she slowly, very slowly recognizes that Ron hadn't seen them about to-- hadn't seen her about to—God, her cheeks burn, "You better go before that first-year changes his mind and demands more lollies."

He tucks the chocolate frogs away and smiles, "Good idea."

By the time Ron's robe flaps around the corner, Ginny's already shuffling the papers. She sticks them out and Hermione clamps her hand around the offered end, pulls, but Ginny meets her eyes and locks on tight and Hermione is sick of the decidedly supernatural flip-flops and fluttering of wings that are too big to be butterflies churning around and around inside her belly so she stiffens her fingers and yanks with a force that dislodges the younger girl's grip and makes her stagger forward. Hermione feels a little guilty, but sucks it up, chews down on her bottom lip as she turns away.

"Ginny," says a girl Hermione can't immediately name, "Still coming to the study group? Ten minutes 'til."

Ginny nods, but keeps her eyes over Hermione's, intent on, the older girl thinks, smothering, maybe even snuffing her out.

"Come on then, I don't want to be late. Ace Flaherty does not appreciate tardiness. A bit egocentric, but a fantastic tutor. My sister Mary failed the course twice before she signed up for his study group. There's a waiting list, you know, we're lucky," the girl tugs Ginny along, stops at the entranceway to waggle a palm towards Hermione, "See you."

Hermione finds herself waving back even though she still can't name the bespectacled girl. When she's finally alone, she lets her body sink against the wall behind her, hears a deep sigh welling in her chest, and wonders--because she can't help it, because she may never know, because Ginny may just be right--why.