Hello, readers. I've decided to start cross-posting some of my fics from AO3 and tumblr over to FFN, so if you recognize this story most likely you've read it on either of my accounts there (Ray_Writes and raywritesthings, respectively). If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy!

-RayWritesThings

Notes

"I can't believe you were upset Dumbledore cancelled the exams," Ron exclaimed, not for the first time. He'd been incredulous about it since dinner, and Hermione knew he would have easily dropped it and moved on if she just did the same; she always knew that, and yet whenever it came to Ron she couldn't seem to put that theory into practice.

As such, she found herself responded a touch haughtily, "Well, not that you'd know but some of us appreciate the opportunity to see if we've understood the lessons."

"One of us, you mean," he returned easily, looking to the armchair to his right—oh, but Harry had abandoned them ages ago, said he might as well start packing as soon as listen to them carrying on. Ron shrugged it off easily enough.

"Not as if the last bit of term was all that useful for learning," he continued. "What with the Chamber and all. What if Snape had put all the stuff we learned while you were out on the exam?"

Hermione stiffened. Of all the insensitive things to say! "You think I don't know I missed lessons? That I missed a whole part of my life?"

Ron went completely pale. "Come off it, Hermione, you know I didn't mean it like that!"

"You could have fooled me."

"I was only trying to cheer you up," he insisted. "I was only saying it wouldn't have been fair for them to test you on things you hadn't learned!"

"And I suppose I'll never be tested again since I'm so far behind? Is that right?" Ron had no answer; clearly, he was unprepared for this question. She laughed, though it was bitter and cruel. "Well then, I think you'd better stop trying to cheer me up!" She left him gaping in the common room, and fled to the safety of the girl's dorms. Lavender and Parvati were nowhere to be found, which she could only be grateful for, as she found her eyes welling up with tears.

Why did Ron always have to go and say such stupid things without thinking? Well, he had been thinking, of course, only not carefully enough. He'd had to go and remind her of just what a setback her time being petrified had been.

Hermione valued few things more than her grades, and the knowledge that she was at a disadvantage to her peers had been eating away at her. How was she supposed to complete the summer assignments without the previous lessons? And then their third year assignments after that? How was she ever supposed to catch up?

It wasn't as if Ron had been teasing her over it, though. And of course he'd realized what she'd missed; his own sister had lost whole months of time to a memory of You-Know-Who which Hermione was only beginning to understand. She didn't have it nearly as bad as Ginny.

Oh, what if she'd just gone and made him angry with her in turn? She hadn't meant to quarrel before they left school! Perhaps if she greeted him cordially at breakfast and didn't pick any fight on the train back to Kings Cross, it would all blow over. The approaching summer holiday always put Ron in better spirits, after all. He'd still have to write, wouldn't he?

Hermione retired to bed, though her sleep was fitful and full of strange, fragmentary dreams of her standing outside a locked train compartment watching Ron and Harry and the other Weasleys talk and laugh together, and Professor McGonagall looming over her desk with a report card lined with nothing but Dreadfuls.

Somehow, she still managed to rise later than either of her dorm mates, who'd left without her for the Leaving Feast. Hermione hurried to dress and put the final touches on her packing, hopeful that with a full meal in him, Ron would have forgotten the whole fight.

But to her shock, she found the redhead not in the Great Hall, but waiting in the same armchair as last night. He stood just as she cleared the stairs.

"Where's Harry?"

"I, er, said I'd catch him up." He was holding something behind his back. "Listen, I thought about what you said last night. And I thought, er, maybe you could use this over the summer."

He held a whole, messy sheaf of parchment out for her to take. Hermione approached slowly, noticing the one consistent trait about the whole haphazardly gathered stack was that it was covered in his scrawl.

"It's my notes from the classes you missed." She looked up at him in shock. "They're not near as good as yours would be," he hastened to add, tugging at the collar of his robes agitatedly. "The readings would probably do you better. I wrote down what we were assigned—"

"Oh, Ron!" Hermione couldn't possibly contain herself. She threw her arms about him. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself; his hands patted first her shoulder, then her back.

"Oh, that's alright," he blustered. "One of us has to know what the teachers are going on about next term."

A laugh bubbled out of her. "You can have my notes then," she promised.

Pulling away, Hermione saw his whole face had turned a bright pink that was only just beginning to fade. "That's not exactly a fair trade, is it?"

Hermione shook her head and clutched his notes to her chest, though privately she agreed; she would never tell Ron, but the wrinkled pile meant all the world to her.