Disclaimer: Hermione, Ron and all other characters are copyright JK Rowling; no profit is being made from this story. Don't sue!

A/N: A series of missing R/Hr moments from the books and beyond, or 'Five times Ron Weasley impressed Hermione Granger.' This was written for the Potions Competition and the Ron Love Competition at HPFC.

-: FIVE TIMES RON WEASLEY IMPRESSED HERMIONE GRANGER :-

-: ONE :-

"Maybe we should go and pay Hagrid a visit?" Hermione suggested brightly. "I mean, now that we don't have any exams to study for,"—she still sounded slightly disappointed about this—"there's nothing to fill our time..."

"Good idea," grinned Harry, getting to his feet. Ron followed with slightly less enthusiasm.

"Yeah, I've got a few things to say to Hagrid," he muttered. Hermione looked confused.

"But...but why? Ginny's fine, and besides, we know that the Chamber of Secrets had nothing to do with him, and his name was cleared, and—" she began, but he cut her off.

"We never did explain about Aragog, did we?" Ron said, and the smile was quickly wiped off Harry's face as he sank back down into the armchair.

"Who's Aragog?" asked Hermione.

"A better question might be what's Aragog," replied the redhead. Several minutes later, Hermione was gaping at her two friends as they told her about their adventures in the Forest with the giant spiders.

"But that's...that's...I can't believe Hagrid sent you to the spiders! You could have been killed! Or worse, what if a teacher had found you in the Forest and expelled you?" she gasped.

"That wasn't really high on our list of worries, then..." mumbled Harry, exchanging an amused glance with Ron. "And besides, you know what Hagrid's like with animals. Anything that doesn't actually rip your head off at first glance is basically a fluffy bunny, right?"

"I suppose," Hermione said doubtfully. A thought struck her. "And why didn't the two of you tell me about this earlier?" she added, rounding on Ron, who was nearest. He shrank back in his seat.

"Well, there has been a lot to catch up on, these last couple of days," he said quickly.

"Actually, I just have to pop to the loo," Harry said. "Why don't you fill Hermione in and then we'll head down to Hagrid's?"

"Coward," Ron called good-naturedly, to his rapidly retreating back.

"Did you really go and follow the spiders?" Hermione asked, as soon as Harry had rounded the first twist of the spiral staircase.

"What? Yeah we did," Ron said.

"But you hate spiders!" she cried.

"Well...yeah," agreed Ron. "But you were petrified, and we thought we could help make you better by following them, so..." He shrugged, then yelped as Hermione fairly threw herself at him. "Hermione! What are you doing?"

She drew back, still holding onto him, but so that she was able to see his face. "You went to the place with the most horrible spiders ever just to help me!" she said, gazing at him in wonder. "Even though you're terrified of spiders! You did all that just to help me!"

Ron's ears turned pink. "You're our friend, aren't you? That's what friends do."

She hugged him tighter. "Thank you, Ron," she said, her voice slightly muffled by his shoulders.

He patted her on the back rather unsurely, but a small smile played about his lips. "You're welcome, Hermione."

-: TWO :-

"No, wait!" Hermione hissed urgently out of the corner of her mouth. "You need to stir it seven times both clockwise and anti-clockwise!"

"Huh?" Ron asked, frowning down at his Potions textbook and then at the mixture in his cauldron. Instead of the pretty shade of turquoise that Hermione's was, his potion was a rather nasty shade of green and emitting a foul odour.

"Here," she said, pointing to the textbook open on the desk. "Draught of Peace. Add all the ingredients – you've done that, stir seven times clockwise and then anti-clockwise, then lower the temperature and add the hellebore."

"Oh, thanks!" muttered Ron, as he proceeded to do as she'd said.

For the fifth time that evening, Ron sighed so loudly the force of his exhale lifted up a piece of parchment and blew it onto the floor. After rescuing the parchment – which contained her Arithmancy essay, the ink still glistening as it dried – Hermione turned to him. "Okay, what's wrong?" she asked in a business-like tone.

"Nothing," Ron replied mulishly, doodling absently on his Divination homework. Hermione reached over and pulled the quill out of his hands.

"Clearly, there is something up with you," she said. "You've been looking like something Crookshanks dragged in all day, and all your huffing and puffing is distracting me from my homework. Either tell me what's wrong, or stop making such a fuss."

"It's Snape," Ron said finally, after a long pause. Hermione rolled her eyes and started to say something, but he cut her off. "No, hear me out. The potion that we did today – the Draught of Peace? That's a tough potion to do, highly advanced, right?"

"Yes, I think so," Hermione said, chewing her lip. "I mean, a few years ago they rejigged the OWL syllabus for Potions and I think that the Draught of Peace used to be a NEWT level Potion but they moved it down to OWL level so there'd be something on the curriculum which challenges the more able fifth year students. Basically, yes it's advanced," she finished, seeing Ron gaping at her.

"I'm not even going to ask where you got that information," he said, "but anyway, I'm not bad at Potions. I'll never be like you—I'm no genius—but the point is, I'm not stupid. And I'm especially not stupid at Potions – Mum used to have me and Ginny brew up simple ones when we were kids for practise, so I've been brewing them for years now. It's not strictly underage magic, and she used to brew up lots of home remedies for illnesses and things because it was cheap—I mean, easier than buying them from the shops. And I got quite good at them – Ginny too. But a Potion like the Draught of Peace – that's hard. It's not like Pepper Up Potion, or a burn salve. It's tough to brew, and it takes a lot of concentration."

"Well, okay," said Hermione uncertainly. "But it's going to come up on the OWL, I'm almost certain. And you can't turn around in the exam and be all 'but I only know how to brew simple Potions, I can't do this one!' now can you?"

"No, and I know that I'll have to learn how to brew it eventually," Ron replied. "The point is, Snape shouldn't have started out the year with such a tough Potion. It's just bad teaching."

"You have a point," Hermione acknowledged, "but what are you going to do about it? What can you do about it?"

"Nothing," he said. "But I am going to show him I'm not stupid."

"Oh?"

"I'm going to write the best essay in the class on the sodding Draught of Peace. And I'm going to practise it so that when it does come up on the OWL exam, I can actually brew it and show him I'm not stupid, no matter what he thinks." His face and expression were both so determined that Hermione was taken aback for a moment, before smiling broadly.

"Well, I think that's wonderful!" she beamed. "And if you need any help, I'm—"

"Oh, no," Ron said, shaking his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm going to do this by myself."

-: THREE :-

"So, that's the Transfiguration, which is in for Thursday, this here is the Charms for next Monday—and Professor Flitwick wants at least three feet, don't forget—and down here is the Herbology, which is the one due in soonest. Now, it looks like there's quite a lot to do, but if you break it down into small sections, like I have, you can get the questions on tropical plants done first, then the—"

"Hermione!" Ron said loudly, breaking across her monologue. She looked up, surprised. "I just got poisoned."

"Yes, but that was days ago! You're just in here now for the rest, Madam Pomfrey says, and it's important to keep up with your schoolwork or you'll never do well in your NEWTs. Anyway, as I was saying, questions first, then the diagrams of—what are you laughing at?" she broke of, suspicious.

"You," he chuckled, looking so amused that she just couldn't find it in her heart to get mad at him. "Nearly get poisoned? Never mind, as long as you've got your Herbology homework sorted, you'll be fine! You-Know-Who wanting to do you in? Just make sure you get your Transfiguration done on time!"

"Oh shut up!" she snapped, but she was laughing too.

"Make me," he challenged. Hermione picked up a pillow and pretended to hit him with it as he ducked away. They were both still giggling when a remarkably familiar female voice broke through the otherwise silent Hospital Wing. Hermione, pillow raised to somewhere above her head, froze in position, and the mixture of fear and horror on Ron's face would have been comical in any other situation – except now, they did not need Lavender walking in on them, not after she had taken offense at Hermione being told about Ron's poisoning a full day before she was.

Hermione peeked around the curtain, and breathed a sigh of relief. The girl wasn't Lavender – she was in fact a fourth year Hufflepuff in need of some Pepper Up Potion who just happened to have a similar accent to Lavender. "It's just Jessica Day, from Hufflepuff," she said.

Ron nodded, and an awkward silence fell between them. They both knew why they had reacted in the way they had, but neither of them was brave enough to say it. Hermione was just about to make an excuse to leave for dinner, unable to stand any more awkwardness, when Ron spoke up. "I don't want to break up with Lavander," he said quickly.

The words were an actual, physical dagger stabbing her, twisting in her heart. This was no metaphoric broken heart; it was a genuine pain, throbbing and hurting. After everything she'd done the last few days—the homework she'd collected and basically done for him, the hours she'd spent in the Hospital Wing just talking to him so he wouldn't be bored, the cakes and sweets she'd smuggled in from dinner that he wasn't technically supposed to be eating—and this was how he repaid her?

Of course, she still had her pride (if nothing else, at this stage) and she was determined not to let any of that show. No, she'd keep a cool, calm face, as though he hadn't mentioned anything more emotional than the weather, and not let him—"No, no, not like that! I don't lov—I don't want to marry her, or anything," he said hurriedly.

So much for keeping her face neutral, then.

"The thing is, I think...I think she likes me a lot more than I like her. A lot lot more," he said. Articulate as she was, even she could not come up with a response to this – or at least, not one that she was willing to say in front of him. "But the thing is," he soldiered on. "I know what it's like to lov—like someone who doesn't like you back."

She refused to acknowledge the flickers of hope that were stirring in her chest, knotting together the hole that had been opened when he began dating Lavender.

"Basically, I want to break up with her. But I think I have to be careful how I do it. I don't want to hurt her feelings, or anything. And you know me...I have the emotional range of a teaspoon." She gave a small snort of laughter on hearing this. "Anyway, if I don't do it right, she'll probably cry and stuff. And I can't do it at lunchtime when she comes and visits because she has to go back to classes then and she won't want to do that if I've just broken up with her. But at the same time, I don't want to stick with her just to not hurt her feelings because stringing people along is just wrong," Ron sighed heavily. "I just...I don't know what to do."

Hermione was silent for a long while, staring down at her knees. She didn't want to look at Ron and have him see the joy on her face at knowing he wanted to break up with Lavender (because even if he did break up with her, it didn't mean he'd want to jump straight into a new relationship – or even that he'd ever want to be with her). Most of the joy, though, did not come from knowing that he wanted to break up with Lavender (though she was no saint, and had to admit that that played a part in it) – it was knowing that, despite everything, he did not want to hurt the girl. Though she was vapid and silly and annoying and a million other, similar things, he cared enough to not hurt her any more than was necessary.

He was, she thought, maturing.

"I think you should just tell her what you just told me," she said eventually, looking up at him. He frowned slightly. "Just...tell her as nicely as possible that you don't want to be with her any more. 'It's not you, it's me', all that kind of thing."

"Right," he nodded. "I guess that's the best I can hope for, isn't it?"

"Just go with the situation," Hermione advised. "If she wants to yell at you, you'd be best off letting her. If she cries, don't try to comfort her – that's what her friends are for. Be honest, but not blunt."

"Honest, but not blunt," he repeated. "Gotcha."

"If it helps," she said, almost nervously. "I think you'll be okay because you don't really have the emotional range of a teaspoon anymore."

He grinned at that. "More of a dessert spoon, now?"

"Or even a tablespoon," she said, seriously. He nodded solemnly, before they both burst out laughing again.

-: FOUR :-

"You're an idiot, you know that, don't you?"

"What?" asked Harry, finally lifting his head and looking at the two of them. The rest of the family had gone back to the Burrow for the wake after Fred's funderal, leaving only the trio of friends in the graveyard. Ginny had been reluctant to leave Harry, but Hermione promised her that they would sort him out and she should stay with George. The younger girl had helped her brother to apparate home, and after seeing them off, Hermione had turned back to the task of comforting Harry, glad that Ron was there to help her. His choice of words, however, was more than a little surprising.

"You're an idiot, I said," Ron repeated. "If you think we blame you for Fred's death. I don't, Mum doesn't, George doesn't...hell, Arnold the Pygmy Puff doesn't blame you, so you're an idiot for blaming yourself."

"But it's my fault! If only I'd—"

"He's worse than Percy, isn't he?" Ron asked Hermione conversationally. "For blaming himself, I mean."

"I...I don't really think it's a competition, you know," Hermione said nervously. "I'm more to blame! No, I'm more to blame! That's not it..."

"Maybe, maybe not," continued Ron. "Maybe we should put them in a room together, and they can have a blame-off. And I can join in, because I should have seen the wall falling and pulled Fred clear of it – I was nearest to him. And Bill can join in, because he was supposed to be with the two of them but got distracted fighting Fenrir Greyback and if he'd stayed with them, Fred might not have died. And Ginny can join in too, because if she'd not done what Mum told her to, Fred would have had to spend more time looking out for her and he might have stuck with her when she was on the other side of the castle to the collapsing wall. And Charlie might want to take some blame too, because he was absent for so much of the battle – if he'd been there, he might have been able to get Fred out of the way of the wall. And if Dad—"

"Ron!" Hermione cried, cutting across him as his voice rose to a shout. "Stop it!"

Harry gaped at him and he took a deep breath. "The point I am making, Harry, is that you've got a right to blame yourself for Fred's death, sure, but no more than the rest of us," he finished, much more calmly than before.

"Ron's right, Harry," Hermione put in gently. "The Weasleys don't blame you for Fred's death because it's no more your fault than it is my fault, or Ron's fault, or Crookshanks' fault! It was just—forgive me, Ron—a monumental case of bad luck in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fred knew the risks – it was a battle, and he chose to participate. If anything, we can blame him for being the one who stood under the wall as it collapsed!" Ron nodded his agreement.

"She's right, you know," he said. "As always." The two of them shared a small smile.

"I know what you guys are saying – trust me, I've heard it enough from Ginny," Harry said. "But you're all wrong. You're trying to make me feel better. Sure, yeah, Fred knew what he was getting into and all that. But I was the one who didn't go to Voldemort in time. If I'd just gone when he said in the first place, Fred wouldn't be—"

"Oh for the love of—" Hermoine looked to her left, startled to see Ron turning his back and walking away. A quick glance at Harry showed he was equally surprised at this reaction, and, after a second's hesitation, she hurried after Ron. "Ron! Ron, wait!"

He was nearly a foot taller than her, and could take much longer strides than she could. This, combined with his heightened emotions meant that she was fairly jogging to catch up with him. Eventually she caught up with him as he exited the graveyard onto the little country lane, reaching out a hand to pull on his arm. "Ron, wait! Stop!"

He didn't stop, but he at least slowed to a walk, allowing her to catch her breath as she carried on beside him. "What was all that about? You just leaving like that! What for?"

"I left, because if I hadn't walked away, I would've punched Harry's lights out," he replied. "And I don't think Ginny would've been too happy with that."

"Punched his...why?" she asked.

"Because he's being a fool, with his hero complex, 'I should've saved everyone' thing," Ron sighed. "And you know, every single damn say I wake up thinking about another way I could've saved Fred, and—yeah, I know, I can't go back in time and do it, and it wasn't my fault, but do you know what I mean? If only I'd got there five minutes before, if only I'd moved him two feet forwards, if only this, if only that..."

"I know what you mean," Hermione said softly. "But it's true, you couldn't have done anything..."

"I know," he said. "But Harry carrying on like that...I was so angry at him. Does he think he's the only one who feels this way?! And I just...I wanted to punch him for it!"

"Well, lots of people feel anger at something like a death," she pointed out gently. "It's one of the five stages of grief after all."

"Well maybe," he said, clearly having no idea what she was talking about. "It's clearly not normal to want to punch your best mate in the face though."

"But you didn't, though, did you?" Hermione asked. "You didn't punch him."

"...no," he agreed cautiously. "But I wanted to. And no matter how annoying Harry is, that still makes me a bad person, and—"

"But you didn't," she repeated. "And I don't know if the Ron I knew a year ago would've done that. It's better that you walked away than did something rash and stupid and you recognised that and left Harry before you could say or do something you'd regret later. But last summer...I don't know if you'd have done that. You tended to react first and think of the consequences later. Which wasn't always a bad thing, don't get me wrong. I just think you're maturing."

He stopped. "Maturing, eh? Like a cheese?"

"Or a fine single malt."

"I prefer that description."

"I thought you might."

"C'mon," he said as he turned around and held out his hand for her to take. "Let's go and apologise to Harry. I've got it all planned out and everything – 'I know I was a git to you, but it could've been worse'..."

-: FIVE :-

"Ron," Hermione said, stepping back into the kitchen she'd vacated only moments before. "I'm not sure but...I think my waters have just broken. And I think all the kicking...I think it was contractions. The baby's coming..."

"Now?" Ron asked, a forkful of casserole halfway to his lips. "Right now?"

"Well obviously it's going to take several hours!" she snapped. "So no, not right now. However, I'd suggest you get my things together and we get to St. Mungo's right now if you want this one—" she pointed at her stomach—"to have any siblings."

Ron gulped. "Wh—what do I need to do?" he asked.

"Oh, honestly, Ronald, we've been through this a million times!" Hermione said rolling her eyes. "Get my bag from the bedroom – it's down by the nightstand – and floo your mother to let her know what's happening. I'll call my parents, and then we can get going. And remind your mother that someone will need to find my parents outside the hospital and get them in – Harry said he'd do that, but I don't think he'll want to leave Ginny what with her being so close to having Albus. Maybe George could? Or Percy? Either way, they'll need to—"

"Hermione," said Ron firmly. "Go and call your parents. There's only time for one of us to lose our heads, remember?" He winked, and she supressed a smile, before waddling awkwardly down the hallway to the telephone.

"I can't do this." Hermione sounded absolutely terrified, and Ron wondered if he should call for the Midwitch.

"Of course you can!" he said encouragingly. "Lots of women go through labour, and they're all fine! Mum did it six times, and she's—"

"No, not labour," Hermione shook her head. "I can cope with th-at!" Her voice rose at the end of the last word as another contraction hit, and she tried to breathe through it like she'd been taught. "Really, I can. This will be over soon. I can't have a baby, is what I meant."

"But you just said that you can cope with labour – surely having the baby is the same thing?" asked Ron.

"Actually physically having it is fine," Hermione said, through gritted teeth. "Well, maybe not fine, but I can cope. I cannot actually raise a child. I can't be a mother."

"What are you talking about?" Ron asked, pulling his chair closer to her bed and holding a glass of water up to her lips. "Of course you can be a mother! Everyone says you're the brightest witch of our age! I heard Pansy Parkinson—or Nott, I suppose now—had a kid a few weeks ago; if she can manage to be a mother, I should think you can. She has all the intelligence of a flobberworm, and you—"

"And I only manage to learn things from books!" Hermione said. "Don't you remember what I said to Harry back in first—ahh!—year? There's more important things than books and cleverness! And being a mother – that's one of them. And how will I know how to do it?"

"Do you honestly think that you're only good at things you can learn from books?" Ron asked, raising an eyebrow at her. "Really?"

"Well, yes!" said Hermione. "I'm no good at babies!"

"You've done better than I have with Teddy, Victoire, Molly, Roxanne, Dominique, Lucy, James, Fred and Louis," Ron replied. "You're fine with babies."

"But not my own—ow!—baby," insisted Hermione. "It's different then. When we had James for an entire night, that was okay because it was just one night. This is different – it's forever. What if I don't know how to do it?"

"Do you remember," Ron began, wincing slightly as Hermione gripped his hand during a particularly strong contraction, "how you kept two horrible mardy boys alive in a tent for months on end when the most evil Dark Wizard of all time wanted to do us in?"

Hermione nodded.

"Then I think a baby will be no trouble. Besides, all my brothers and Dad say that you just make it up as you go along. You've coped with that as a strategy in the past, haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes, but this is a baby. Our baby," Hermione argued.

"Hermione," Ron said, "you will be absolutely fine as long as you have me. And I will be absolutely fine as long as I have you. So if we carry on as we are doing already...we will be okay."

"Do you promise?" she asked.

"I promise," he murmured. The corners of her mouth turned upwards, and she pressed her head against his shoulder, silent for a long moment. She knew he was right: as long as they were together, they could do this. She had known this, of course, deep down, but it took him saying it for her to believe it.

He stood by her side staunchly through even the most gory parts of her labour, not even flinching when she threatened to remove certain parts of his anatomy with a Shrivelling Hex. And the way he looked at Rose, when she was finally placed in her arms, made her realise that no child could ask for a better or more impressive father – and that everything that had happened over the years, from "I'm Hermione Granger, and you are?" at the age of eleven to now, had been worth it.

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